Zoe

Virtue Unfettered: The ABC's of a Momentary Monk; D is for Delight

I like apples. Not green apples or sour apples but big, red,  juicy Washington apples (just trying to keep it real where I live in Washington state). I especially like them this time of year when I dip them into soft caramel for a fall treat.  What I like about that first bite into a fresh, slightly chilled, apple is how delightful it is. It is sheer refreshment, elemental, simple, and yes -- primal! That is one of the things that brings me delight and puts a smile on my face. I was wondering what delights God? This would be an interesting conversation; Biblically, theologically and in terms of praxis in life.

It caused me to wonder...So I looked up a few texts that were pertinent. I looked at texts that led me to God's primal impulse. Those things where God would smile with delight. Here is where I went...Christologically I began in the New Testament and Matthews script. Two time Jesus tells us what he delights in by what he desires. "I desire mercy not sacrafice" is articulated on two ocassions. In Matthew 9:13 and in 12:7.  He verbalizes mercy, the compassion and long suffering of God for God's people to turn and "go the distance" with God.

In the Hebrew Scriptures it is even more revealing. First, in Hosea 6:6, "For I desire mercy, not sacrafice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings." Again, the desires of God are not toward personal hedonism but God's tender mercy; people to people, person to person, creature to creation.

And then to the teenager in Anathoth, Jeremiah, chapter 9:24 we turn to the heart of the matter, "but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness (read mercy), justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I (and here it is) DELIGHT," declares the Lord. Wow. What makes God smile? What does God delight in? What is God's primal impulse?  Answer:  hesed, misphat and tsedeka or mercy, justice and righteousness.

God delights in and Jesus desires these things. What a great clue for us at to what brings a smile to God's face and ultimately how we order the rhthyms of our own lives. Live into DELIGHT this day!

Virtue Unfettered: C is for Courageous

In the wonderful world of Whatevverrrr, it might seem odd to remove the chains from an olde word like courage but that is exactly what I hope to do. Unfetter the slothful bondage that holds back courage. Acedia is the Latin word for sloth but it is exactly what I believe has us so afraid to do or better yet, BE anything other than whatevverrrr! Dorothy Sayers said that acedia is one of the 7 deadly sins that, "believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” If acedia is the issue then courage is the salve of its reinstatement.

If you know me by now, you may have come to realize that I like the trinitarian dance of living within the tensions of multiple truths coming together to form a unified whole. I enjoy the fortitude of faith and the strength of synergy. In this holy othering, there is a tripartide strength when three come together to become one. In the language of the Trinity, one God finds strength in the Godhead, the Son and the Spirit. Similarily, the strength of courage comes together in humility and fortitude as an antidote for acedia, sloth and whatev verrrr!

First, courages strength or Christological figure is fortitude. Courage is the ability to rise above oneself and most specifically ones fears to be more than they could be on their own. Jesus was strong because of his ability to rise above his fears. He prayed "Father, if it be your will let this cup pass from me."  The Gethsemane prayer when all of heaven held its breath. Was uttered in fear. Yet not a cowardly fear but a humble fear. A fear that found solace in its fortitude. Jesus was able to master his fear of death and therefore, be courageous and a person of primal courage. Thomas Aquinas said that courage is really fortitude and strength. This Christological grounding is important to an everyday outworking of courage.

If courage finds its strength in fortitude then the Spirit figure unfetters courage and grounds it in the wisdom role of humility.  Humility makes the virtue of courage discreet and unself-conscious. A radically humble person is one who is so self aware that they know their limits and fears, yet they do not dwell on them nor do they obsess on them to the point of inactivity. This would be a form of acedia, which we are endevearing to unchain. It is a awareness that is non egoistic and able to believe, in a unnarcissistic like fashion, that they are not God. For only God can be all that it means to be and actualize what God truly is. It is a grateful and merciful self acceptance that recognizes their place without illusions or egoistic altruisms. There is a truthful realism about oneself that only comes through the wisdom of the Holy Spirit that becomes selfless in the fortitude of courage.

If the strength of courage is fortitude and the wisdom of courage is humilty then what is courage? I submit that courage is the ability to bring together fortitude and humilty and therefore be virtuous. Let me explain. To be able to find a hidden strength or untapped resouce when in a humble place of being not god that one is courageous to be and do the heroic thing for a man and sheroic thing for a woman. Courage is the ability to command respect and the humilty to master ones fears and thus be courageous. When one is courageous one is a person of virtue. The Latin word for courage is vir, from it we also get the deriviative viril, meaning manly.  It is also from where we get our phrase "It took balls!" Ironically to be courageous is like a more contemporary phrase, "Man-up!" This is what it will take to set aside acedia and be a person of courage. Now is a time when we need alot more of that!

Virtue Unfettered: The ABC's of a Momentary Monk; B is for Beauty

My middle daughter Kate asked me, "Hey Dad, what is beauty?" In the next moment my wife asked me, rather she told me, "Take out the garbage!"  I was thrown for a loop regarding the juxtaposition and the irony in those two moments, tethered together like the seams of a baseball moving at 90 mph. 

However, it got me thinking about beauty and garbage.  Garbage is what we make, it is a symbol of our effieiency. The ability to manufacture, produce, consume, reduce, in order to go and buy again, to re-consume. It is what makes us modern-- and insane!

Beauty is what we want. It is the most provocative promise that one has of the BEAUTIFUL ONE. As I thought about my daughters question. I thought for anything to be beautiful it must capture, even if just a shadow, something of what is ultimate Beauty, or God. The variety of colors, leaves changing hue in the fall, good music, fine tastes, silence, a walk in the woods, snow capped mountains all are penultimate and point to the ultimate. Those beautiful things are beautiful because they point to the One who is beautiful. They capture something of what it means to be creative, intelligent, expansive, humorous, and to participate in the very life of the divine. Beauty feeds this type of contemplation. This contemplation leads us to the greatest end-- to the presence of God. Beauty calls us beyond the present and the banal to an everlasting NOW where Beauty dwells in fluid perpetuity. Beauty removes the mediocre and lifts us to the height of consciousness. It is why when I experience something truly beautiful I am energized, awakened, stimulated, and breathed afresh with new life.

The poet and artist create beautiful prose that pushes us in the direction of the ONE. They must awaken our imaginations to the greater possibilities. Emily Dickinson writes that there is more to existence than what we experience. She writes, "The World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond--Invisible, as Music--But positive, as Sound--It beckons, and it baffles--Philosophy--don't know- And through a Riddle, at the last-Sagacity, must go...Strong Hallelujahs roll-Narcotics cannot still the Tooth, That nibbles at the soul--"

Garbage is interesting because it is what we prefer. The ordinary, the consumption, the effecient, that which is functional. As a people we create garbage and trash. Hence, the need for me to take out the trash. But that is exactly what must be done to experience something, or more appropriately Someone, beautiful. Take it out; the trash, the garbage, the clutter, the plastic flowers, the remains, in order to see what is meant to be seen, the Beuatiful One. When the garbage is gone there is room for beauty and when there is room for beauty, there is room for God. So take out the garbage!

Virtue Unfettered: the A B C 's of a post capitalistic Shero

Friends keep telling me to write and post more. Unfortunately time limits me but I will try and give it more of an effort. I have a hobby and an interest in virtue, or as I have written elsewhere arete'. Arete' is a Greek work that means goodness, excellence and virtue. It finds its original usage in Plato's Allegory of the cave, one of my favorite books in aiding one in determining what the ultimate end game in life is all about. 

What is the ultimate reason for being, the end that offers meaning, purpose and significance? This  is a good question in a world going more and more chaotic and out of control with wall street-mania. I like the notion of questioning the ultimate end in a democratic republic built completely on the free market and the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness as it plays itself out in the current market place. Today that end is all about the money. We define most of life around one's portfolio. If you do not believe me have a honest conversation with a person who is "in between" jobs and looking for the next "opportunity." There is a heaviness and slight, if not, overt depression. There is such a strong connection between what we do and who we are. This is the direct result of a culture that is based on the ultimate end of the unholy economic un-trinity of consumption, purging/reduction in order to consume again.  

If it is not about how much then what is IT about? I submit that IT is about arete and virtue. Virtue finds its origin in the word viril which means strength and fortitude. Until the Industrial revolution IT, life, the end game, was all about character and being strong and viril as a person of character. It was character that carried a person through the ebbs and flow of life. Character is rooted in the image of God in humankind. Character is a reflection of human beings created imago Dei. I submit, how refreshing it would be to build ministry, people, lives, cultures and countries around virtue as oppose to capitalism. Maybe it is time to unfetter virtue and recover the wisdom of the ancients and repent from our arrogant progressivism that has stripped humanity of what it means to be different than an animal. I submit that as we begin the ABC's of virtue unfettered, we begin with arete. Arete is the re-Imagining of what it means to be strong in character, to find something more than a greenback or two with Ben Franklin printed on the face of it to get ourselves out of bed for in the morning. Simply, to be human again!  

The following posts will be a series of words that take each letter of the alphabet to suggest what it might look like to be human beings again. The endeavor will become people of character who are a little lower than the angels as opposed to a little higher than the animals. It you have suggestions for me for words like Beauty and Courage all the way through to Zeal, then send them my way and we can intentionally dialogue about Virtue unfettered...