Suffering and responsibility are both universal.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 94
Monday, June 24, 2013
...to be is to be passible. God is no exception to this rule. God, should such an object exist, would be one being, one particularly complex multiple, that composes, is composed of, and is in interdependent relation with many other objects. Like every other object, God would be available, passible, resistant, and graced by the unavoidability of hard work.
This last point about the link between grace and passibility is crucial to the experiment I've undertaken because it fundamentally reframes the problem of suffering. To say that grace unfolds as the exceptionless universality of passibility is to say that grace guarantees the universality of suffering. Moreover, it is to say that the imposition of suffering (classically understood as the problem) and the reception of grace (classically understood as the answer to this problem) are equivocal....both sin and salvation turn on this equivocity.
However, whatever the nature of salvation, suffering, because it names the double-bind of resistant availability constitutive of every object, cannot be expunged. To be is to suffer and, outside of classical theism, suffering must characterize both activity and passibility. Available for relation, every object passively suffers its passibility to being enlisted, entrained, repurposed, or redistributed by other objects. Moreover, even in actively influencing other multiples, each object will suffer the only partially reducible resistance of those objects it means to influence. And it is important to note that, because every object (God included) must also suffer itself.
This universality, though, is not simply bad news because suffering is the universal mark of grace. Without exception, grace comes. Suffering it to be so, grace is what enables us to act, think, feel, love, an be.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 80-81
This last point about the link between grace and passibility is crucial to the experiment I've undertaken because it fundamentally reframes the problem of suffering. To say that grace unfolds as the exceptionless universality of passibility is to say that grace guarantees the universality of suffering. Moreover, it is to say that the imposition of suffering (classically understood as the problem) and the reception of grace (classically understood as the answer to this problem) are equivocal....both sin and salvation turn on this equivocity.
However, whatever the nature of salvation, suffering, because it names the double-bind of resistant availability constitutive of every object, cannot be expunged. To be is to suffer and, outside of classical theism, suffering must characterize both activity and passibility. Available for relation, every object passively suffers its passibility to being enlisted, entrained, repurposed, or redistributed by other objects. Moreover, even in actively influencing other multiples, each object will suffer the only partially reducible resistance of those objects it means to influence. And it is important to note that, because every object (God included) must also suffer itself.
This universality, though, is not simply bad news because suffering is the universal mark of grace. Without exception, grace comes. Suffering it to be so, grace is what enables us to act, think, feel, love, an be.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 80-81
Grace is suffered in that it is passively received rather than actively controlled...There are no exceptions to the rule of availability, interdependence, co-composition, passibility, and passivity. This means in turn, that there are no exceptions to the rule of grace. Every object is shaped by forces and relations that exceed its knowledge and control. Every object suffers the conditioning and enabling gifts of the other objects that compose, sustain, and cannibalize it.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 79
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 79
As a working agent, every possible object is dependent both on the other objects that compose it and on the other objects that can be leveraged into business with it. Grace is enabling precisely because the gift of agency is always borrowed. Grace may no longer make every impossible thing possible, but it does enable the fermentation of every possible thing.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 78
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 78
Knowledge, though engaged in the work of tallying objects, is itself a tallied object. Facts unfold as workable chains of partially linked, abstracted, or reduced subsets of objects that, in their novel configuration, are added to or folded back into the multitude of objects from which they came.
...
Strictly speaking...knowledge (as a faithful, mirror-like reflection without surplus or deficit) does not exist. Such "knowledge does not exist--what would it be? There is only know-how. In other words, there are crafts and trades. Despite all claims to the contrary crafts hold the key to knowledge" (PF 218). To know an object is to know how to connect with it, how to link it with other networks, how to repurpose it as a flexible widget in some novel situation. This kind of knowledge is intimate, messy, hands-on, adaptive, and above all, real.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 76
...
Strictly speaking...knowledge (as a faithful, mirror-like reflection without surplus or deficit) does not exist. Such "knowledge does not exist--what would it be? There is only know-how. In other words, there are crafts and trades. Despite all claims to the contrary crafts hold the key to knowledge" (PF 218). To know an object is to know how to connect with it, how to link it with other networks, how to repurpose it as a flexible widget in some novel situation. This kind of knowledge is intimate, messy, hands-on, adaptive, and above all, real.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pg. 76
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Additionally, if we do try to divide "Nature" from "Society" in a neat and tidy way, then the transcendence that traditionally characterizes the supernatural simply gets transposed into Nature itself. Nature becomes that which forever "transcends" any of our feeble attempts to represent it. "When," Latour asks, "will we finally be able to secularize nonhumnas by ceasing to objectify them?" (PN 51). When will we stop taking objects as masks for noumenal things in themselves? Latour's response to this version of "natural" tanscendence is identical to his response to claims of "supernatural" transcendence: he doesn't deny transcendence, he affirms it while multiplying it. he flattens and secularizes it by rendering it ubiquitous.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 64-65.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 64-65.
The human and the nonhuman bleed into each other as human intentions are animated by powerfully purposeless forces and purposeless processes like natural selection bear the emergence of order and direction...Agency is always only borrowed and a specifically human agency can be borrowed only from a complex of nonhuman objects. Everything human is organized around an unavoidable detour through the nonhuman because everything human is composed of and dependent upon nothing else.
..every agent is a machine that dissembles the multitude from whom its strength is borrowed. An agent is an object that speaks on behalf of others fromt he sake of itself. But such agency is always a two edged sword because there is no simple way to determine when the agent is ventriloquizing the multitude and when the multitude is ventriloquizing the agent. We're not likely to go wrong if we say taht agency is always both.
In an object-oriented theology, grace is the concurrently imposed and enabling strength that emerges in the give and take of agency. Grace shows up in the way that agency simultaneously endows an object with and divests it of itself. Agency ist he grace of acting for oneself on another's behalf. Or, agency is the grace of acting for another on one's own behalf.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 57-58
..every agent is a machine that dissembles the multitude from whom its strength is borrowed. An agent is an object that speaks on behalf of others fromt he sake of itself. But such agency is always a two edged sword because there is no simple way to determine when the agent is ventriloquizing the multitude and when the multitude is ventriloquizing the agent. We're not likely to go wrong if we say taht agency is always both.
In an object-oriented theology, grace is the concurrently imposed and enabling strength that emerges in the give and take of agency. Grace shows up in the way that agency simultaneously endows an object with and divests it of itself. Agency ist he grace of acting for oneself on another's behalf. Or, agency is the grace of acting for another on one's own behalf.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 57-58
The world, always an imbroglio, is no different now than it is has ever been [sic]. It is the urge to reduce and purify that desacralizes the world, not the world's own ontological promiscuity. We cannot be guilty of mixing up this world with another or of cutting the string that once tied us to a higher plane because this world (i.e. these transcendences) is all there is. If the gods exist, they live and move and have their being in the same motley pluriverse as every other object.
The good news is that, "as soon as there is no other world, perfection resides in this one" (PF 233). Every object is simply and perfectly whatever that object is. "There is no rear-world behind to be used as a judge of this one" (RS 118). This does not mean that legitimate judgements cannot be made, but it does mean that non-messy, non-provisional, non-concatenated judgments cannot be made. It means that the messiness of these judgments does not stem from our poor access to what is real, but from the messiness of the real itself. And it means that, with nowhere else to go, "God has come down from Heaven to Earth" and he too must go "to work to discuss, through experimentation with possible worlds, the best of deals, the optimum that no one is allowed to calculate in others' stead" (PN 177).
..if we can manage to renounce our dreams of revolution and reduction, then "the most ordinary common sense suffices for us to take hold, without am inute of apprenticeship, of all the tools that are right here at hand" (PN 163). This work of acknowledging both the modesty and adequacy of the tools an dinstruments at hand--of confessing both the "perfection" and sufficiency of the grace of this disheveled world--is the work of an experimental metaphysics. and, if there were to be such a thing, it would be the work of an experimental religion as well.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 47-48.
The good news is that, "as soon as there is no other world, perfection resides in this one" (PF 233). Every object is simply and perfectly whatever that object is. "There is no rear-world behind to be used as a judge of this one" (RS 118). This does not mean that legitimate judgements cannot be made, but it does mean that non-messy, non-provisional, non-concatenated judgments cannot be made. It means that the messiness of these judgments does not stem from our poor access to what is real, but from the messiness of the real itself. And it means that, with nowhere else to go, "God has come down from Heaven to Earth" and he too must go "to work to discuss, through experimentation with possible worlds, the best of deals, the optimum that no one is allowed to calculate in others' stead" (PN 177).
..if we can manage to renounce our dreams of revolution and reduction, then "the most ordinary common sense suffices for us to take hold, without am inute of apprenticeship, of all the tools that are right here at hand" (PN 163). This work of acknowledging both the modesty and adequacy of the tools an dinstruments at hand--of confessing both the "perfection" and sufficiency of the grace of this disheveled world--is the work of an experimental metaphysics. and, if there were to be such a thing, it would be the work of an experimental religion as well.
Adam S. Miller, Speculative Grace, pgs. 47-48.
The first superscripted word in each of the four Gospels is the Greek proposition kata. The basic sense of this preposition is "according to..." The gospel according to Matthew, the gospel according to Mark, the gospel according to Luke, and the gospel according to John. That this little preposition should so prominently headline each of the gospels is significant. It indicates that what follows, in all of its personal particularity, is not an abstract or objective recitation of facts but a profoundly personal and subjective declaration of Jesus's atoning grace.
It is sometimes tempting to view the incongruous particularities of each of the gospel narratives as a kind of deficiency that needs to be corrected by correlation--but it is not. Rather, the fact that each gospel narrative necessarily comes to us filtered through the beating heart of a particular, individual experience of God's love marks the exact point at which truth without truthfulness would show itself to be utterly inadequate to the gift Jesus wishes to give. When it comes to the announcement of the good news, bare truth is no virtue. The very aim of the gospel in confronting us with certain truths is to induce in us a reorientation of our subjective relation to the truth. In order for the gift of grace to be received, we must take up the truth as our own, as something spoken truthfully with our own mouths about our own selves. The kata that opens each of the Gospels indicates that what they give to us is not simply the truth, but their own personal experience of its truthfulness.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 117
It is sometimes tempting to view the incongruous particularities of each of the gospel narratives as a kind of deficiency that needs to be corrected by correlation--but it is not. Rather, the fact that each gospel narrative necessarily comes to us filtered through the beating heart of a particular, individual experience of God's love marks the exact point at which truth without truthfulness would show itself to be utterly inadequate to the gift Jesus wishes to give. When it comes to the announcement of the good news, bare truth is no virtue. The very aim of the gospel in confronting us with certain truths is to induce in us a reorientation of our subjective relation to the truth. In order for the gift of grace to be received, we must take up the truth as our own, as something spoken truthfully with our own mouths about our own selves. The kata that opens each of the Gospels indicates that what they give to us is not simply the truth, but their own personal experience of its truthfulness.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 117
The humanities remain essential to any genuine education not because they directly address the question of the being of the world (this is the work of science), but because they are faithful to the question of what is other that "what is." Religion, art, fiction, music, film, theater, poetry, etc., are all essential because they protest the vanity of the world and aim to induce the birth of the new.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 110
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 110
The image of the "veil" plays a crucial role in Moroni's elaboration of faith in Ether 12 because (1) the image of the veil ties together faith, weakness, and grace, and (2) their divergence in relation to the veil marks the difference betweent he power of the word and the power of the sword. Where the sword professes strength and refuses to acknowledge the limit of the veil, the word takes as its strength nothing other than a confession of the weakness that the veil marks.
Thus, to exercise faith, Moroni argues in verse 19, is to be like the Brother of Jared "whose faith was so exceedingly strong" that he "could not be kept from within the veil." As Moroni recounts, "When God put forth his finger he could not hide it from the sight of the Brothe rof Jared, because of his word which he had spoken unto him, which word he obtained by faith" (vs. 20). In this parting of the veil, all of the concepts at work so far come together. Note the logic of their intersection. (1) The veil can only be penetrated by faith. (2) Faith comes only in response to the power of the word. (3) The word reveals to us our weakness. (4) To come unto to God, to penetrate the veil, is to be shown our weakness and, more importantly, it is to be shown the truth of this weakness: that our weakness is in fact the strength of God's grace. When, in the presence of God, we see the truth of weakness, then "weak things become strong" unto us, not because our weakness has been expunged but because we have ceded our debilitating claim to mastery or autonomy.
The irony of the veil, then, is that it is self imposed. We are separated from God by our unwillingness to faithfully confess our weakness. God is hidden by the veil that we throw over our own weakness in a vain attempt to cover it.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 105
Thus, to exercise faith, Moroni argues in verse 19, is to be like the Brother of Jared "whose faith was so exceedingly strong" that he "could not be kept from within the veil." As Moroni recounts, "When God put forth his finger he could not hide it from the sight of the Brothe rof Jared, because of his word which he had spoken unto him, which word he obtained by faith" (vs. 20). In this parting of the veil, all of the concepts at work so far come together. Note the logic of their intersection. (1) The veil can only be penetrated by faith. (2) Faith comes only in response to the power of the word. (3) The word reveals to us our weakness. (4) To come unto to God, to penetrate the veil, is to be shown our weakness and, more importantly, it is to be shown the truth of this weakness: that our weakness is in fact the strength of God's grace. When, in the presence of God, we see the truth of weakness, then "weak things become strong" unto us, not because our weakness has been expunged but because we have ceded our debilitating claim to mastery or autonomy.
The irony of the veil, then, is that it is self imposed. We are separated from God by our unwillingness to faithfully confess our weakness. God is hidden by the veil that we throw over our own weakness in a vain attempt to cover it.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 105
In reference to Ether 12:26-28
the Lord does not address in this passage the question of our human "weaknesses" (plural) but the question of human "weakness" (singular). The difference is crucial. The Lord is not claiming to be responsible for the particulars of whatever various sins or weaknesses we may have. However, the Lord does claim to he "gives unto men weakness." The weakness referred to here is constiutive and essential. Rather than naming our sinfulness it names precisely the opposite. Weakness names our createdness, our lack of autonomous sovereignty, our persistent dependence on God and his grace for life and agency. In short, weakness names our essential relatedness to God and, thus, our unity with him. Or, again: our weakness is God's grace.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 104
the Lord does not address in this passage the question of our human "weaknesses" (plural) but the question of human "weakness" (singular). The difference is crucial. The Lord is not claiming to be responsible for the particulars of whatever various sins or weaknesses we may have. However, the Lord does claim to he "gives unto men weakness." The weakness referred to here is constiutive and essential. Rather than naming our sinfulness it names precisely the opposite. Weakness names our createdness, our lack of autonomous sovereignty, our persistent dependence on God and his grace for life and agency. In short, weakness names our essential relatedness to God and, thus, our unity with him. Or, again: our weakness is God's grace.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 104
A testimony, in order to be true to its unmitigated reliance upon the Atonement of Jesus Christ, must accept the indefensible weakness imposed upon it by its own boundless certainty.
The sign-seeker finds this prospect of weakness and dependence impossible to accept. In contrast to the humble submission needed for a testimony, every search for a sign is motivated by a desire for mastery and control. To look for a sign is, like an adulterer, to want to be in control. To look for a sign is to say, in effect, that you are unwilling to take the risk that a testimony's objective weakness demands. It expresses an unwillingness to cede control to God. "We will participate," the sign-seekers say, "but only on our own terms and only if we are in control of the evidence." Sign-seeking misses not only the point of a testimony, but the whole logic of a saving relationship with God: it fails to submit its will to his. Saving truths, insofar as they are distinct from knowledge of actual facts, always take the form of a testimony. They are always centered on the task of bearing the world-opening possibilities that God wishes to bestow.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 69
The sign-seeker finds this prospect of weakness and dependence impossible to accept. In contrast to the humble submission needed for a testimony, every search for a sign is motivated by a desire for mastery and control. To look for a sign is, like an adulterer, to want to be in control. To look for a sign is to say, in effect, that you are unwilling to take the risk that a testimony's objective weakness demands. It expresses an unwillingness to cede control to God. "We will participate," the sign-seekers say, "but only on our own terms and only if we are in control of the evidence." Sign-seeking misses not only the point of a testimony, but the whole logic of a saving relationship with God: it fails to submit its will to his. Saving truths, insofar as they are distinct from knowledge of actual facts, always take the form of a testimony. They are always centered on the task of bearing the world-opening possibilities that God wishes to bestow.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 69
It is nonsense to say that someone has a testimony apart from their actively and directly experiencing the power of the Atonement...Testimonies do not refer to objects or creeds. They refer only to a living experience of what solicits their witness. Testimonies are no accidental by-product of God's grace. Rather, they are its indispensable embodiment....
To have a testimony of the Book of Mormon can only mean that through it one has experienced the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The same follows for Joseph Smith, President Monson, tithing, the word of wisdom, the Church as an institution, etc. To have a testimony of these things is to have experienced the Atonement in connection with them--nothing more, nothing less. Who would be more horrified by the idea of people having a testimony of Joseph smith than Joseph Smith? Who would be more horrified by the idea of people having a testimony of the Book of Mormon than Mormon? We may be justified in making certain inferences about Joseph Smith, President Monson, or the Book of Mormon based on our experience of God's saving grace in connection with the, but this is not the same thing as having a testimony that refers directly to them.
In each instance, the message and the messenger are only as effective as they are transparent. To claim otherwise is to claim for them something that they would not claim for themselves. To claim otherwise is to exchange a testimony for a sign. The moment when any person, object, doctrine, or principle detaches itself from the task of occasioning an experience of Christ's atonement is the moment when that thing becomes a sign, a dead limb splintered from the tree of life. If adultery is a desire for sex without the demands of genuine intimacy, then the trouble with adultery is that it substitutes the sign of love for love itself. In this sense, Joseph Smith was right to claim that every sign-seeker is undoubtedly an adulterer. To want a testimony grounded in signs is to want the idea of a thing without the responsibility of submitting to the difficulty of the thing itself. It is to want "a form of godliness" while "denying the power thereof" (2 Tim. 3:5). Such is the perpetual temptation of religion.
To have a testimony of the Book of Mormon can only mean that through it one has experienced the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The same follows for Joseph Smith, President Monson, tithing, the word of wisdom, the Church as an institution, etc. To have a testimony of these things is to have experienced the Atonement in connection with them--nothing more, nothing less. Who would be more horrified by the idea of people having a testimony of Joseph smith than Joseph Smith? Who would be more horrified by the idea of people having a testimony of the Book of Mormon than Mormon? We may be justified in making certain inferences about Joseph Smith, President Monson, or the Book of Mormon based on our experience of God's saving grace in connection with the, but this is not the same thing as having a testimony that refers directly to them.
In each instance, the message and the messenger are only as effective as they are transparent. To claim otherwise is to claim for them something that they would not claim for themselves. To claim otherwise is to exchange a testimony for a sign. The moment when any person, object, doctrine, or principle detaches itself from the task of occasioning an experience of Christ's atonement is the moment when that thing becomes a sign, a dead limb splintered from the tree of life. If adultery is a desire for sex without the demands of genuine intimacy, then the trouble with adultery is that it substitutes the sign of love for love itself. In this sense, Joseph Smith was right to claim that every sign-seeker is undoubtedly an adulterer. To want a testimony grounded in signs is to want the idea of a thing without the responsibility of submitting to the difficulty of the thing itself. It is to want "a form of godliness" while "denying the power thereof" (2 Tim. 3:5). Such is the perpetual temptation of religion.
The world will resist you. It will exceed your grasp. It will gractivce indifference towards you. Like a borrowed shirt, it will fit you imperfectly, it will be loose in the neck, short in the cuff, and the tag will itch. The world will irritate you, bruise you, thwart you, anger you. In the end, it will even--for at least a time--kill you. Suffering the indignity of these rounds, yo will, be default, be tempted to just flit from one offense to the next, simmering in frustration, stewing in quiet desperation. But to live, you will have to let these offenses go. You will have to learn how to make and accept recompense. You will have to forget the fiction of cash equivelances and barter with whatever is at hand. You didn't get what you wanted? Or even what you needed? Your life was repurposed by others fro something other than what you had in mind? Join the party. I'm sympathetic, but in the end these objections are going nowhere. That bus, while always idling, never actually leaves the station. You presume a world that doesn't exist, and you fantasize a fixer-God who, unlike ours, is Himself doing something other than divinely serving, borrowing, and repurposing. Ask instead, what were you given? where were you taken? what was your recompense? Learn to like lemonade.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 57
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 57
To address the unconditional character of the present moment is to address the nature of my relationships with my parents and family. To lay aside the screen of judgment and preference in favor of life is to set myself the task of unknotting the threads of fear and desire that have prevented me from unconditionally embracing my family and my family from unconditionally embracing me.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 17
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 17
In sin, we become unplugged. When we refuse the givenness of life and withdraw from the present moment, we're left to wander the world undead. Zombie-like, we wander from one moment to the next with no other goal than to get somewhere else, be someone else, see something else--anywhere, anyone, anything other than what is given here and now. We're busy. We've got goals and projects, We've got plans. We've got fantasies. We've got daydreams. We've got regrets and memories. We've got opinions. We've got distractions. We've got games and songs and movies and a thousand TV shows. We've got anything and everything other than a first-hand awareness of our own lived experience of the present moment.
If we are not capable of being where we are right now, we will not be capable of being fully present when we arrive at some ostensibly more desirable destination later on. Thus unplugged, what good would heaven be?
The zombie-life of sin sets us wandering away from the present moment because it sifts everything through a screen of preference that inevitably filters out the absolute givenness of life itself. Spiritually undead, we see things only in terms of our own (often legitimate) preferences. Undead, we see things only in terms of our selves. How will this benefit me? How will this harm me? How might this current situation be leveraged for my own profit? If something doesn't show up as being to my advantage, then typically it doesn't show up at all. Absent the appearance of what fails to comport with my preferences, the fountain of life is squeezed back to a trickle.\
....
Sin refuses the unconditional givenness of life by imposing its own conditions.
The results are predictable. Striving after the gnat of pleasure, straining away from the sting of pain, we ignore the bulk of life and marvel at our own morbidity. Failing to be where we are, to receive what is given, to feel what we are feeling, we fantasize instead about what has not come, fret over what has already passed, and are bored to tears by the grace of what is actually present.
Fantasy, fear, and boredom: the hallmarks of sin.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pgs. 11-12
If we are not capable of being where we are right now, we will not be capable of being fully present when we arrive at some ostensibly more desirable destination later on. Thus unplugged, what good would heaven be?
The zombie-life of sin sets us wandering away from the present moment because it sifts everything through a screen of preference that inevitably filters out the absolute givenness of life itself. Spiritually undead, we see things only in terms of our own (often legitimate) preferences. Undead, we see things only in terms of our selves. How will this benefit me? How will this harm me? How might this current situation be leveraged for my own profit? If something doesn't show up as being to my advantage, then typically it doesn't show up at all. Absent the appearance of what fails to comport with my preferences, the fountain of life is squeezed back to a trickle.\
....
Sin refuses the unconditional givenness of life by imposing its own conditions.
The results are predictable. Striving after the gnat of pleasure, straining away from the sting of pain, we ignore the bulk of life and marvel at our own morbidity. Failing to be where we are, to receive what is given, to feel what we are feeling, we fantasize instead about what has not come, fret over what has already passed, and are bored to tears by the grace of what is actually present.
Fantasy, fear, and boredom: the hallmarks of sin.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pgs. 11-12
The present moment, so irreparably and unconditionally given, brings the full weight of life to bear upon us. givenness gives without consulting us, without condition, without recourse. We suffer the imposition of its grace with an unavoidable passivity. In opening our hands to receive what it offers and give what it requires, we must confess our dependence, our insufficiency, our lack of autonomy. but we grit our teeth at the shame of it, refuse to suffer the grace of it, and seek refuge from the present moment in the conditional character of sequence. we cower before the absolute, failing to recognize its image in our countenances, and hide behind a fragile veil of fantasies, memories, and projected improvements. we withdraw from the present, abandon life, give ourselves wholly to the past or future, and die.
Sin: a refusal of life.
Sin: a refusal of givenness
Sin: a refusal of grace
Sin: a refusal of the present moment
Sin: death.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 10-11
Sin: a refusal of life.
Sin: a refusal of givenness
Sin: a refusal of grace
Sin: a refusal of the present moment
Sin: death.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 10-11
To the extent that work is instrumentalized as a means to an end, its value is conditioned by that end. Work, in and of itself, is devalued. In order to take work seriously, a theology would hav to uncouple work from its outcomes and consider it non-sequentially. That is to say, in order to take work seriously as work, we would have to acknowledge its unconditional givenness. We would have to see work as a grace.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 8
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 8
A common feature at work in all of this living is that things are given and things are recieved. Breath, rest, words, food, excrement, handiwork, sensations, ideas, bodies, and intentions--each of them, the very stuff of life, are given and each of them are recived. Life is this giving.
A guiding axiom: life is givenness
A theological version of this axiom: life is grace.
Grace names what comes as a gift. In short, grace names what is given. Or, more precisely, as Jean-Luc-Marion puts it, grace names the givenness of whatever is given and received.
Givennes names the giving and receiving that constitute life. It names our interdependence. It names a dynamic process of exchange, of giving and receiving, acceptance and conversion, that is always already dependent on things outside of itself. here, to be alive, to give and receive, is to be in an open relation of interdependence with the world for food, air, words, materials, sensations, and companionship.
...
The primary difficulty faced in approaching life in terms of grace is that grace so easily slips the knot of our attention. Our preoccupation with what is given and received so easily eclipses any awareness of its having been given, of its givenness. How easy it is to receive a gift from someone and, in light of its heft, shine, and appeal, forget that it is a gift. How difficult it is to keep its gifted-ness at the forefront of our attention.
Addressing ourselves to the givenness of life (and not just to what is given), will require a kind of focused attention that we don't generlaly employ. We will have to attend to the immediacy of life with a kind of awareness that we rarely bring to bear. We will have to shift down a few gears, ease off the gas, and be patient enough to linger with the given-ness of the present moment. If we are racing off to somewhere else, we will see only what is given and its givnness will fail to appear.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 4-5
A guiding axiom: life is givenness
A theological version of this axiom: life is grace.
Grace names what comes as a gift. In short, grace names what is given. Or, more precisely, as Jean-Luc-Marion puts it, grace names the givenness of whatever is given and received.
Givennes names the giving and receiving that constitute life. It names our interdependence. It names a dynamic process of exchange, of giving and receiving, acceptance and conversion, that is always already dependent on things outside of itself. here, to be alive, to give and receive, is to be in an open relation of interdependence with the world for food, air, words, materials, sensations, and companionship.
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The primary difficulty faced in approaching life in terms of grace is that grace so easily slips the knot of our attention. Our preoccupation with what is given and received so easily eclipses any awareness of its having been given, of its givenness. How easy it is to receive a gift from someone and, in light of its heft, shine, and appeal, forget that it is a gift. How difficult it is to keep its gifted-ness at the forefront of our attention.
Addressing ourselves to the givenness of life (and not just to what is given), will require a kind of focused attention that we don't generlaly employ. We will have to attend to the immediacy of life with a kind of awareness that we rarely bring to bear. We will have to shift down a few gears, ease off the gas, and be patient enough to linger with the given-ness of the present moment. If we are racing off to somewhere else, we will see only what is given and its givnness will fail to appear.
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 4-5
In Mormonism, Christ's work of atonement is generally seenas operating on two related but distinct planes. I propose that as a basic schema, we should see it as working on at least three planes. Traditionally, Christ's atonement (1) gathers up and reunites human bodies with human spirits through the resurrection, and (2) reunites or reconciles human beings with God. This is sound Biblical doctrine. But in light of Joseph Smith's revelations, it seems essential to see the atonement as being at work on at least one additional plane: Christ catalyzes not only the reunion of bodies with spirits and humans with God but, additionally, he gathers and seals husbands to wives and parents to children. Christ's work will not end until the whole human family has been gathered together in "one."
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 3-4
Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 3-4
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