Solidarity Again: Rabbi Lerner on Crafting a New Political Discourse and New Political Imagination

 

Rabbi Michael Lerner responding to Chris Hedges re: how progressives should assess President Obama:

. . . [H]ere is a basic truth about communication: if you are referencing ideas that are already popular in the culture, you can do so with a short slogan; but if you are trying to introduce new ideas that do not resonate with the "established wisdom" or "common sense" of the culture, it often takes a nuanced discussion that is longer-and hence the nuanced position may feel too long to people who have been accustomed to the dumbing down of popular discourse by the media and the politicians.

I’m struck, of course, by the recognition that we need a new cultural and political discourse that moves us beyond the stalemate in which we now find ourselves.  One that reaches for hope, even when hope seems far away.  And one that digs into the depths of imagination to craft new ways of talking about our shared humanity and the social and economic institutions we develop to express that humanity.

Solidarity and Soul-Making: More Reflections on the Church Today

 

And so, how to find (and nourish) soul in bleak periods when faith communities appear increasingly unable to facilitate soul-making for many people?  

For me, watching the recent PBS series "Faces of America" has been a soul-making experience.  Far more so than any tenuous contact I now have with communities of faith--with their institutional and liturgical lives.

Karen Armstrong on Theology as a Species of Poetry

 

Karen Armstrong's Spiral Staircase (NY: Random House, 2004):

This, of course, is how we should approach religious discourse.  Theology is--or should be--a species of poetry, which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense.  You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way as you might listen to a difficult piece of music.  It is no good trying to listen to a late Beethoven quartet or read a sonnet by Rilke at a party.  You have to give it your full attention, wait patiently upon it, and make an empty space for it in your mind.  And finally the work declares itself to you, steals deeply into the interstices of your being, line by line, note by note, phrase by phrase, until it becomes a part of you forever.  Like the words of a poem, a religious idea, myth, or doctrine points beyond itself to truths that are elusive, that resist words and conceptualization (p. 284).

Cognitive Dissonance and Catholic Intellectual Gymnastics re: Marriage Rights

 

Michael Bindner writing about the decision of the D.C. archdiocese to drop new spouses of employees at Catholic Charities from health care coverage, in retaliation for D.C.'s decision to permit same-sex marriage:

Telling people their relationships are disordered begs the question of how we know the natural order on same sex marriage. It takes true intellectual gymnastics to continue to hold the traditional view. In the Church's premier text on Ethics, Fagothey's Right and Reason (which is used in Catholic minor seminary), the author had to rely on theism to prove that homosexuality was not within the confines of natural law - he could not do it on the merits alone.

"It takes true intellectual gymnastics": yes.  The church increasingly asks of faithful Catholics a cognitive dissonance that breaks mind and heart.

And that's too high a price to pay for remaining connected to a church that claims to be all about healing mind and heart.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Creeps: Contemporary American Political Discourse and Luminaries of Prose

Why I bother grasping for strawy words to express my mundane ideas when there are political leaders vying for the chief executive office in our land with pithy, suggestive prose that can take such flight as the following, I have no clue:

Postscript On the Disappearance of Poetry and Passion from American Catholicism

 

This is a postscript to my posting earlier today.

When I speak of the disappearance of poetry and passion from contemporary American Catholicism, I'm speaking largely of the politically driven reduction of what it means to be Catholic and to believe.  I'm speaking of the reduction of authentic Catholic identity to repetition of catechetical formulas.

Poetry, Passion, and Cognitive Dissonance: The Death of Soul in American Catholicism Today

So here’s where things stand for me—and I certainly understand readers who don’t particularly care to read confessional literature or rants or outpourings of discontent.  For those readers, let this be a warning that a confessional screed is forthcoming.

But for those who have followed this blog in the past—and I appreciate you very much—I do want to say something, at least.