Perhaps the minority community of slaves and midwives [in Moses' Israel] was able to affirm the freedom of God just because there was no other legitimated way to stand over against static triumphal religion, for every other less-free God had already been co-opted. Perhaps the minority community of slaves is able to affirm the politics of justice and compassion because there is no other social vision in which to stand in protest against the oppression of the situation. As George Mendenhall has urged, the social purpose of a really transcendent God is to have a court of appeal against the highest courts and orders of society around us. Thus a truly free God is essential to marginal people if they are to have a legitimate standing ground against the oppressive orders of the day. But then it follows that for those who regulate and benefit from the order of the day a truly free God is not necessary, desirable, or perhaps even possible.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg. 22-23
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Prophetic Energizing
In Exodus 11:7 there is a wonderous statement of a new reality that surely must energize: "But against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, not a dog shall growl; that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel." In our scholarly ways we may miss the power here. It is too terrible to be contained in a "doctrine of election." It occurs not in a doctrine but in a narrative and an unproven memory that we must let stand in all its audacity. It is not reflective theology but news just for this moment and just for this community. The God who will decide is not the comfortable god of the empire, so fat and well fed as to be neutral and inattentive. Rather, it is the God who is alert to the realities, who does not flinch from taking sides, who sits in the divine council on the edge of his seat and is attentive to his special interests. It is the way of the unifying gods of the empire not to take sides and, by being tolerant, to cast eternal votes for the way things are.
...in his passion and energy Moses takes sides with losers and powerless marginal people; he has not yet grown cynical with the "double speak" of imperial talk and so dares to speak before that data are in and dares to affront more subtle thinking. The affirmation whispered in the barracks is that Moses is "up front" about his commitments, and Pharaoh is not going to like it.
Seen at a distance, this bald statement is high theology. It is the gospel; God is for us. In an empire no god is for anyone...For Moses and Israel, energizing comes not out of sociological strategy or hunches about social dynamic, but out of the freedom of God. and so the urging I make to those who would be prophets is that we not neglect to do our work about who God is and that we know our discernment of God is at the breaking points in human community.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pgs. 15-16
...in his passion and energy Moses takes sides with losers and powerless marginal people; he has not yet grown cynical with the "double speak" of imperial talk and so dares to speak before that data are in and dares to affront more subtle thinking. The affirmation whispered in the barracks is that Moses is "up front" about his commitments, and Pharaoh is not going to like it.
Seen at a distance, this bald statement is high theology. It is the gospel; God is for us. In an empire no god is for anyone...For Moses and Israel, energizing comes not out of sociological strategy or hunches about social dynamic, but out of the freedom of God. and so the urging I make to those who would be prophets is that we not neglect to do our work about who God is and that we know our discernment of God is at the breaking points in human community.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pgs. 15-16
Real Prophetic Criticism
Criticism is not carping and denouncing. It is asserting that false claims to authority and power cannot keep their promises...real criticism begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg. 11
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg. 11
Freedom of God, and Alternative Community
The liberal tendency has been to care about the politics of justice and compassion but to be largely uninterested in the freedom of God. Indeed, it has been hard for liberals to imagine that theology mattered, for all of that seemed irrelevant. and it was thought that the question of God could be safely left to others who still worried about such matters. As a result, social radicalism has been like a cut flower without nourishment, without any sanctions deeper than human courage and good intentions. Conversely, it has been the tendency in other quarters to care intensely about God, but uncritically, so that the God of well-being and good order is not understood to be precisely the source of social oppression Indeed, a case can be made that unprophetic conservatives did not take God seriously enough to see that our discernment of God has remarkable sociological implications. And between liberals who imagine God to be irrelevant o sociology and conservatives who unwittingly use a notion of God for social reasons because they do not see how the two belong together there is little to chose.
The point that prophetic imagination must ponder is that there is no freedom of God without the politics of justice and compassion, and there is no politics of justice and compassion without a religion of the freedom of God.
The program of Moses is not the freeing of a little band of slaves as an escape from the empire, though that is important enough, especially if you happen to be in that little band. Rather, his work is nothing less than an assault on the consciousness of the empire, aimed at nothing less than the dismantling of the empire both in its social practices and in its mythic pretensions. Note the significance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership in integrating a lunch counter or a local bus line! Israel emerged not by Moses' hand--although not without Moses' hand--as a genuine alternative community. The prophetic tradition knows that it bears a genuine alternative to a theology of God's enslavement and a sociology of human enslavement. That genuine alternative, entrusted to us who bear that calling, is rooted not in social theory or in righteous indignation or in altruism but in the genuine alternative that Yahweh is. Yahweh makes possible and requires an alternative theology and an alternative sociology. Prophecy begins in discerning how genuinely alternative he is.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pgs. 8-9
Prophetic Ministry
The prophet is called to be a child of the tradition, one who has taken it seriously in the shaping of his or her own field of perception and system of language, who is so at home in that memory that the points of contact and incongruity with the situation of the church in culture can be discerned and articulated with proper urgency.
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Thus I suggest that prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated. It may be, of course, that this enduring crisis manifests itself in any given time around concrete issues, but it concerns the enduring crisis that runs from concrete issue to concrete issue. That point is particularly important to ad hoc liberals who run from issue to issue without discerning the enduring domestication of vision in all of them.
The alternative conciseness to be nurtured, on the one hand, serves to criticize in dismantling the dominant consciousness. To that extent, it attempts to do what the liberal tendency has done; engage in a rejection and delegitimizing of the present ordering of things. On the other hand, that alternative consciousness to be nurtured serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith my move. To that extent it attempts to do what the conservative tendency has done, to live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give.
The functional qualifiers, critical and energizing, are important. I suggest that the dominant culture, now and in every time, is grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate serious and fundamental criticism, and will go to great lengths to stop it. Conversely, the dominant culture is a wearied culture, nearly unable to be seriously energized to new promises from God. We know, of course, that none of us relishes criticism, but we may also recognize that none of us much relishes energizing either, for that would demand something of us. The task of prophetic ministry is to hold together criticism and energizing, for I should urge that either by itself is not faithful to our best tradition.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg 2-4
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Thus I suggest that prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated. It may be, of course, that this enduring crisis manifests itself in any given time around concrete issues, but it concerns the enduring crisis that runs from concrete issue to concrete issue. That point is particularly important to ad hoc liberals who run from issue to issue without discerning the enduring domestication of vision in all of them.
The alternative conciseness to be nurtured, on the one hand, serves to criticize in dismantling the dominant consciousness. To that extent, it attempts to do what the liberal tendency has done; engage in a rejection and delegitimizing of the present ordering of things. On the other hand, that alternative consciousness to be nurtured serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith my move. To that extent it attempts to do what the conservative tendency has done, to live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give.
The functional qualifiers, critical and energizing, are important. I suggest that the dominant culture, now and in every time, is grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate serious and fundamental criticism, and will go to great lengths to stop it. Conversely, the dominant culture is a wearied culture, nearly unable to be seriously energized to new promises from God. We know, of course, that none of us relishes criticism, but we may also recognize that none of us much relishes energizing either, for that would demand something of us. The task of prophetic ministry is to hold together criticism and energizing, for I should urge that either by itself is not faithful to our best tradition.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg 2-4
Needs, and Liking Your Mom
People're a nestful of needs. Dull needs, sharp needs, bottomless-pit needs, flash-in-the-pan needs, needs for things you can't hold, needs for things you can. Adverts know this. Shops know this...I've got what you want! I've got what you want! I've got what you want! But walking...this afternoon, I noticed a new need that's normally so close-up you n ever know it's there. You and your mum need to like each other. Not love, but like.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 194
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 194
Perspectives On Bullies and Bullying and Being Bullied.
Contrary to popular wisdom, bullies are rarely cowards.
Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence.
Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice.
Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable.
Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims?
The brutal may have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed.
Let guile be your ally.
Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent.
Don't laugh at what you don't find funny.
Don't support an opinion you don't hold.
The independent befriend the independent.
Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 212-213
Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence.
Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice.
Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable.
Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims?
The brutal may have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed.
Let guile be your ally.
Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent.
Don't laugh at what you don't find funny.
Don't support an opinion you don't hold.
The independent befriend the independent.
Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 212-213
Hate
Dogs hate foxes. Nazis hate Jews. Hate doesn't need a why. Who or even what is ample.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 198
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 198
On Poetry
Once a poem's left home it doesn't care about you.
- - -
"Beautiful words ruin your poetry. A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you throw a hill of it into the pot! No, the palate becomes nauseous. You beleif a poem must be beautiful, or it can have no excellence. Am I right?"
"Sort of"
"Your 'sort of' is annoying. A yes or a not, or a qualification, please. 'Sort of' is an idle loubard, and ignorant vandale. 'Sort of' says 'I am ashamed by clarify and precision.' So we try again. You belief a poem must be beautiful, or it is not a poem. I am right?"
"Yes."
"Yes. Idiots labor in this misconception. Beauty is not excellence. Beauty is distraction, beauty is cosmetics, beauty is ultimately fatigue."
- - -
...the poem is a raid on the inarticulate...Poems who are not written yet, or not written ever, exists here. The realm of the inarticulate. Art fabricated of the inarticulate is beauty. Even if its themes is ugly. Silver moons, thundering seas, cliches of cheese, poison beauty. The amateur thinks his words, his paints, his notes, makes the beauty. But the master knows his words is just the vehicle in who beauty sits. The master knows he does not know what beauty is.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 146-147.
- - -
"Beautiful words ruin your poetry. A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you throw a hill of it into the pot! No, the palate becomes nauseous. You beleif a poem must be beautiful, or it can have no excellence. Am I right?"
"Sort of"
"Your 'sort of' is annoying. A yes or a not, or a qualification, please. 'Sort of' is an idle loubard, and ignorant vandale. 'Sort of' says 'I am ashamed by clarify and precision.' So we try again. You belief a poem must be beautiful, or it is not a poem. I am right?"
"Yes."
"Yes. Idiots labor in this misconception. Beauty is not excellence. Beauty is distraction, beauty is cosmetics, beauty is ultimately fatigue."
- - -
...the poem is a raid on the inarticulate...Poems who are not written yet, or not written ever, exists here. The realm of the inarticulate. Art fabricated of the inarticulate is beauty. Even if its themes is ugly. Silver moons, thundering seas, cliches of cheese, poison beauty. The amateur thinks his words, his paints, his notes, makes the beauty. But the master knows his words is just the vehicle in who beauty sits. The master knows he does not know what beauty is.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 146-147.
Being Right
"...not hurting people is ten...thousand time more...important than being right."
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 118
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 118
On War
War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 109
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 109
Listening to the Earth
The earth's a door, if you press your ear against it.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 91
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 91
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