Aramoana and Dr. Phil

I woke very early today and before dawn drove out to Aramoana with my camera. Yeah, I know, what the world desperately needs right now is another photo of a sunrise...

...but really, I was just wanting to think on this first day of my sabbatical and to be present in the world and a camera is something that helps me do that.

Try as I might I couldn't think of any profound or holy thoughts even though the morning was a beautiful one. Instead I kept thinking about Dr. Phil. Catherine watches him sometimes and yesterday I wandered into the room when the mustachioed one was dispensing advice. A young girl had apparently developed a hopeless crush on some pop star or other. Her infatuation had taken over her life to the extent that there was room for nothing else and Dr Phil was pretty blunt with her.

"You're emotionally lazy" he told her. By being infatuated with her idol she had made for herself an attachment without any of the difficulties or hard work of a real relationship. She had found an easy and safe way to be emotionally alive, but of course although her manufactured feelings were real, the relationship was illusory and its sheer size took up all available space and left her no emotional or intellectual room to be getting on with what was really happening around her. Emotionally lazy. That's profound. And it's not far from what Emmanuel Levinas rattles on about.

In his early life Levinas was a student of Heidegger the great philosopher of Being. Heidegger was interested in what it meant to exist. He argued that it's a mistake to get too preoccupied with all the various things that exist - that is, with beings; he said that behind all these beings is something bigger and more profound, that is Being (note the capital) of which all beings are merely a manifestation.

Unfortunately Heidegger got a little too keen on Naziism for Levinas's liking and Levinas became critical of his old teacher. He thought Heidegger's philosophy was too coldly objective, too distanced from what it actually means to be human. So Levinas, drawing on his Jewish heritage, and his experience as a scholar of the Talmud, developed Heidegger's thought and arrived at a philosophy based on relationship. While we might treat the various things in the universe as objects and use them as we wish, we can't do that with people. In the presence of another person we have to recognise something that is completely Other - distinct from us and able, as we are, to manipulate the universe for its own ends. We relate to the Other, and in relating, discover who we ourselves are. In this way, it is relationship which makes us who we are, and relationship is difficult and problematic and never under our control. An adequate philosophy of Being, said Levinas must be ethical - that is, it must be all about how we act and treat the Other.

I don't know if Dr. Phil reads Levinas, but he is making a not unrelated point. I dimly grasp it. Today, and later,I will plough gamely through Levinas' books. They're the sort you read with a pencil in your hand because underlining bits and making notes is the only way to maintain concentration. It's a difficult relationship but a rewarding one, because it pulls me away from the fantasies my own emotional laziness has constructed and points me to the whole real, engaging world. God calls me out of fantasy and into painful and demanding engagement with the actual, real people who fill my life every day, every where.

Comments

How To Walk 800 km

John is just walking the 80 metres back to his bike here, but you get the general drift. The question I get asked more than any other at the end of the Hikoi is "how are your feet?" It's nice that people care, but my feet have never been an issue on long walks. Good shoes and socks prevent blisters and cushion the effects of long distances on hard surfaces, but I have had other issues. When walking the Camino Santiago knees, Achilles tendons and shin splints have all at one time or another given me trouble. This time round, these have all been fine and I finished feeling as though I could just keep on going indefinitely; to Cape Reinga if needs be. Over the last couple of years I have learned 6 things that have made all the difference. Namely: 1. Footwear. On the Camino I wore walking shoes - Salomon in 2009 and Asics in 2012. A year ago I changed to full walking boots - Salomon Cosmic 2 - and the difference was instant and major. When walking more than 15 minutes...

Why I Hold the Views I Do

St. Hilda's Collegiate School, taken with my phone after a recent meeting. This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what follows, but I like the interplay of shapes and particularly the shadow on the wall. My mother is a Methodist, liberal in her theological and social opinions. My father was a socialist, just slightly to the left, in his politics, of Karl Marx. My siblings -there are 5 of us- are all bright, eloquent and omnivorous in their consumption of books and other intellectual fodder. One of my most cherished childhood memories is of mealtimes in our little state house. The food was ingested with copious amounts of spirited, opinionated, clever and sometimes informed debate on whatever subject happened to catch the attention of one of the family that day. Or whatever one of us thought might get a rise out of someone else. So, sex, politics and religion it was then - oh and motorbikes, economics, international relations, demographics, cricket, company ownersh...

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

It happens sometimes. I have a question or am pondering some conundrum or other and the right book arrives at pretty much the right time. In a session with my supervisor a few months back Paul mentioned an article by Rene Girard, whom I had never heard of. I read the article and over the past month have read two of his books, The Scapegoat and this one. I have another couple sitting on my shelf and they have elbowed all others in my to be read pile out of the way and sit firmly on the top. Girard has pulled a number of threads together for me: he has enabled me to rethink the atonement in a way which is consistent with an evolving Universe: he presents a view of scripture which is again consistent with what I know of science but is also faithful to the Bible as the Word of God; he has given me, for the first time in my life a theology (if that is the right word) of Satan which makes sense to me. Most importantly for me, he is consistent with my own lived experience of God's s...

2 More Years

An autumn leaf, the evidence of the death whereby the grapevine lives and bears fruit There are 31,102 verses in the Bible, or at least in the Protestant version of it which the conservative section of our church recognises. Of these, there are 6 verses which explicitly condemn homosexual practice. The best scholars in the Christian world have pointed out the ambiguity of even these scraps of scripture, but this does not prevent their becoming the basis of an antipathy to contemporary same gender sexuality which I was repeatedly told, during General Synod, was "First Order". I'm not sure what "First Order" means exactly, but I was told that this is a "Salvation Matter". So, presumably, holding a proper view on homosexuality is right up there in importance with belief in the doctrines I would consider foundational for the Christian faith: namely the Holy Trinity, Incarnation and Resurrection. In any event, antipathy to homosexuality has already ...

Wood Pigeon

On the front lawn There is a bundle of green and white feathers. A woodpigeon. A dead one. We have a lot of trees in our neighbourhood and a very busy road, which is not a good combination for wood pigeons. They are great big ungainly birds and before they have acquired a sense of self preservation the young ones are inclined to accidental jousts with cars. The cars seldom lose. This bird has just won the silver medal in a bout with a Toyota Camry and has retired as far as our front lawn before becoming considerably short of breath. I go out with a shovel and dig a hole in the flower garden, and go a pick up the carcase. I love these birds. Their feathers have a rich metallic sheen, and the green and white of their plumage reflects back every shade of red - but just in suggestion, depending on how the sunlight catches them. They are preposterous in their clumsiness. They fly overhead with no pretense at stealth, making a sound like a pair of old fashioned manual hedge cutters with eac...

Available Light

Search This Blog