Know thyself

So Pitzer College, one of the Claremont Colleges, is unveiling a new major in "Secular Studies." I'm not sure what to think. First thought: aren't all the other majors - not perhaps excepting religious studies - already majors in secularism? Second thought: omigod, they're studying secularism as a religion! Third thought: wow, a student at Pitzer could conceivably double major in Religious Studies and Secular Studies!

But to be serious for a minute... I don't have more than a New York Times story on it, so should suspend judgment until I can see the program's rationale - and the curriculum. The founder, Danish-trained sociologist Phil Zuckerman, at least appears from the article's quotations to be a little coy.

"There are hundreds of millions of people who are nonreligious. I want to know who they are, what they believe, why they are nonreligious. You have some countries where huge percentages of people — Czechs, Scandinavians — now call themselves atheists. Canada is experiencing a huge wave of secularization. This is happening very rapidly. It has not been studied."

That last bit isn't quite true - in recent years some of the smartest people around have been exploring "secularism" and "secularity," not to mention the failures of secularization theory - but I imagine his point was a broader one. This research has yet to be taken seriously by the rest of the academy. Religious Studies exists to some degree (or on some accounts) as compensation for other disciplines' ignorance and neglect of something they should by rights be taking seriously; perhaps the argument for an academic study of secularism is analogous.

In any case, this does seem to be a turning point of some kind. In its way, perhaps, it's confirmation that we are entering a post-secular intellectual world - one where secularism isn't the unchallenged and untheorized norm of thought, action and explanation, but seen as one form which thought, action and explanation could take, among others.

Second night with the gods

A few years ago, I bought a CD of Stravinsky ballets. I needed a recording of the opening section of "The Rite of Spring" for a lecture (in the course "Evil in the 20th Century" - over a big sound system, it was awesome!). Also on the CD was a slight handwave of a piece called "Apollo." I've heard it many times since, but it never seemed much. Until today! "Apollo" (originally "Apollon Musagète") was written in 1928 for George Balanchine while he was still with the Ballets Russes, and he brought it with him to what is now the New York City Ballet. Over ensuing decades, Balanchine trimmed and purified it, removing the entire set, costumes, and most of the narrative. What remains is pure joy. A young god comes into his godhood with the help of three muses, representing the arts. Every movement is grace.

Today's was also only the second performance as "Apollo" of a rising star of NYCB, Chase Finlay - who's not yet twenty. That might have been why it all seemed so pure, and playful. I gather that the part is often danced by a mature dancer, who brings more psychological complexity to it. The Times reviewer put it this way: "He’s so young that he hardly yet knows how to be young onstage. But he keeps the ballet entirely fresh."

After the performance (which also included "Square Dance" and "Agon"), there was a free discussion and dance demonstration with Finlay, Sterling Hylton (his Terpsichore) and NYCB Ballet Master and long-time Apollo Peter Martins (that's him at right, in 2005) - who told how he had started "Apollo" young, too. City Ballet had been performing at Edinburgh, their Apollo injured himself, and no well-known Apollo in Europe was available. So Martins was flown in from Denmark, on a second-hand recommendation. Balanchine ("Mr. B") was all encouragement until after the second night, when he said: "All wrong!" and spent three hours putting Martins through his paces for dancing it too classically - it should be "demi-caractère." Martins remembers every word Mr. B then said to him (now over 40 years ago), and Mr. B's words lived again as Finlay and Hylton danced a few scenes, Martins intervening and sometimes showing.

I managed to score a seat in the first row of the orchestra for this. Watching it across the darkened orchestra pit in the kitschy cavern of the New York State Theater, was like seeing the world of the gods.

The grass is always greener ...

Hot but not bothered

I've decided I'd like to stop in Japan on my way to or from Australia this August - it's been too long since I've been there, and now seems the time to check in with friends. (Word on the Tokyo street is that foreigners have fled.) Finding flights is an ordeal in itself, but a Japanese friend has warned me it might be no fun. I know that August is no picnic - although I've spent nearly four years in Japan over what must be close a score of trips and stays, I've always avoided August - but she tells me it will be particularly unpleasant this year as electricity rationing will mean less air conditioning. For the same reasons, the high-speed train to her city has not been running. A sobering reminder of the ongoing difficulties in the aftermath of the recent series of disasters. But that's why I need to go.

Creation ex nihilo?

I thought today's session of "Aboriginal Australia and the Idea of Religion" would be all about the alleged "fabrication" of "sacred women's business" around Kumarangk (Hindmarsh Island), but students were entranced instead by another case of fabrication, brought in (not as a case of fabrication) by a student. In the 1990s work by an artist named Eddie Burrup appeared in Aboriginal art galleries, and won several prizes. The large diptych above from 1997 is called "Genesis 1 ... In the Beginning" but also has an alternative title:

All that ol' Dreamin' mob —
'e 'alf way now
for comin' out
brom underneath ...

The artist also explains it: Breaking free from some subterranean region, or slough, creative forces emerge — part human, part animal. Fish, reptile, bird and mammal will shape the sentient universe and be shaped by the events of the ensuing epoch before finally submerging again having committed an eternal ontology to perpetuate itself cyclically, via the whole of natural and supernatural phenomena, wherein beginning and end are an indivisible closed circuit.

But "Eddie Burrup" doesn't exist, at least not as an Aboriginal man. He is the "alter ego," the "daemon" of a white Australian painter named Elizabeth Durack, who spent most of her long life in the outback Kimberley. Aboriginal life and ritual have been themes of her work from the start. Durack revealed the - shall we call it a hoax? she didn't think it one, and claimed to be surprised at the angry responses to her revelation - herself, and continued to paint under "Eddie Burrup"'s name until her death. She claimed that he was nascent in her consciousness as a painter for many decades before surfacing.

Everyone in class had an opinion about this, and not everyone understood why Durack has a place on the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation's "Wall of Shame" for "Identity Appropriation." Isn't she "entitled" to paint what she wants, as an artist? Isn't she even entitled to paint "as an Aborigine" if she's put in the time, or is so inspired? Is her painting under a pseudonym any different from George Elliot's writing under a man's name? We'll discuss it more on Thursday, when everyone in the class has had a chance to learn more. Though it makes me a bit ill to think of devoting part of our propenultimate class session to this, it may be the last best chance to discuss the very different notions of identity and entitlement in the cultures we've been studying. But also to look at what we're doing studying them: to some extent, the Burrupians in my class are revolting against my deference to Aboriginal traditions...

Two Boots

A Park Slope classic.

Four noble truths?

Today was the first session of a four-part series a couple of us are organizing at our church around Paul Knitter's Without Buddha I Could Not Be A Christian. I instigated it, but the other three conveners seem to me to bring more relevant qualifications, since they each have long-standing Buddhist practices. Knitter's journey, and his explorations of what he calls religious double belonging, are existentially real to them. One, for instance, who could not join us today, sent this message:

Some years ago I learned about Buddhism and was very drawn to it. I started a meditation practice which I continue to this day. All the while, I've been half-consciously trying to make the connection between Buddhist and Christian practice. I found it gratifying to read Paul Knitter's struggle to reconcile the two, and I found the connections he makes very apt. I was very moved after reading the first couple of chapters, where he eloquently explains things I had been feeling and trying to understand. I think he clearly paves a path to an integrated Buddhist/Christian spiritual life.

We've bought copies of the book for participants, and selected topics for our four discussions (Gospel and Dharma; meditation and prayer; making peace and making justice; and religious double belonging), but we expect this discussion to range all over the place. Not least, I should add, because there is no single Buddhism, and the four of us have different points of Buddhist reference!

This became clear today as we looked at the "four noble truths" routinely trotted out as the starting-point for understanding Buddhism. I'm persuaded by Donald Lopez that they are rarely even mentioned in Asian Buddhist traditions, and more an artifact of the construction of Buddhism as a world religion, but this seemed the wrong occasion for mentioning this. Besides, Knitter starts with them.

1 Suffering (dukkha) comes up in everyone's life.
2 This suffering is caused by craving (tanha).
3 We can stop suffering by stopping craving.
4 To stop craving, follow Buddha's Eightfold Path (which consists essentially of taking Buddha's message seriously, living a moral life by avoiding harm to others, and following a spiritual practice based on meditation). (9-10)

Knitter goes on to discuss anicca (impermanence), pratityasamutpada (interdependent origination) and sunyata (emptiness). This makes perfect sense for someone persuaded by Mahayana Buddhism, but is, of course, not the way these truths have been understood in the Theravada traditions.

We had an interesting discussion about his version of the four truths anyway. One of my co-conveners mentioned that her teacher defined dukkha as "not quite right." I proffered "unsatisfactoriness," and pointed out that Knitter's view could be misunderstood: Buddhism isn't concerned only with the "suffering" in life; it starts with the discovery that everything is dukkha. Even joy causes suffering. Another co-convener raised questions about the identification of tanha as the cause of dukkha; not just thirst is at issue but attachment more generally and, most basically, our preference for some things over others. This led to a broad and interesting discussion, which was not happily corralled into the third and fourth "noble truths." One of my co-conveners' teachers was brought in to ease the transition: too often we stop at the third, but that's just silly. If this is worth doing, it's worth doing. What it comes down to is practice.

Knitter's gloss on the noble eightfold path can be questioned, too, but this seemed too much information. I was struck, however, that our discussion was only about meditation, and about the way mindfulness can accompany all of our daily actions. Not thematized was "right livelihood" - the idea that you might need to change profession. But this, of course, goes right to the heart of the American lay Buddhist question I've been fascinated by forever. Here and now, Buddhism isn't about changing your whole life by leaving the household to become a monastic, but about letting Buddhism be part of your life (and, presumably, affect the rest of it). This would, obviously, be even more the case for "Buddhist Christians."

Much more on this in the coming weeks, no doubt. But let me take this discussion as an excuse to introduce another discussion of the four noble truths which I encountered this week. In Exploring Religious Ethics we read Sulak Sivaraksa's The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddhist Economics for the 21st Century (Kihei, Hawaii: Koa Books, 2010). An "engaged Buddhist" from Thailand (which he calls Siam), Sivaraksa elaborates Buddhist tradition as a social and political movement. He does this brilliantly with those four noble truths, too! They come up in a discussion of conflict resolution.

1. Suffering exists.
2. Suffering has causes.
3. We can stop producing the causes of suffering.
4. A path of mindful living can show us the way.
... We begin by aclnowledging both sides' suffering. Each adversary states his experience clearly, with witnesses present to acknowledge their statements. this is the first noble truth, the acknowledgment of suffering. (23)

Wow: the first truth is not about my suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), nor just about dukkha in general, but about the dukkha of a specific other, one with whom I find myself in conflict. It's an amazing discussion, mind-blowing in the best ways:

Second, we try to understand the external and psychological roots of the conflict. When we project our emotions onto an object (animate or inanimate), we experience the "other" as having traits which, in fact, dwell first in our own unconscious mind. We fail to see the line between the object and our own feelings. ...
The third noble truth is the cessation of the causes of suffering. This does not presuppose that we can reach a state that is conflict-free, but encourages us to grapple with the details - internal and external - every time....
The fourth noble truth - peace as a way of life - shows us how to live in ways that reduce suffering and conflict. The Buddha called this the eightfold path:

1. Right Understanding: understanding the four noble truths.
2. Right Thought: freedom from that which cannot bring satisfaction.
3. Right Speech: speaking truthfully and skillfully.
4. Right Action: not killing, stealing, or indulging in irresponsible sexual behavior.
5. Right Livelihood: not engaging in professions that bring harm to others.
6. Right Effort: encouraging wholesome states of mind.
7. Right Mindfulness: awareness of the physical and mental dimensions of our experience.
8. Right Concentration: staying focused.

This eightfold path encourages peacebuilding as a way of life. It points to ways that awareness can be deepened and the parts of our lives brought into harmony. We begin by living mindfully. Then we can use these tools to dismantle oppressive systems and create a culture of peace. (23-24)

I'll be interested to see how our discussions proceed. With four conveners, we'll certainly get at least four truths, noble or otherwise!

Liberal arts

I just had the pleasure of hosting a wonderful panel discussion on the state and prospects of liberal arts, comprised of faculty who teach in colleges and universities large and small, public and private. That all the panelists were alumni of Lang only made it sweeter. Some highlights:

The first panelist is a historian at the University of Chicago, but he most enjoys teaching classic texts of social theory. He has taught at several great books schools, and gave a powerful argument for great books curricula. They are not, he argued, conservative. They look rigid only from the outside; inside, there is vigorous discussion of issues of canonization. And the ideas? It's a "radical colloquy," more eye-opening than most undergraduates can imagine (he described the pleasure of seeing a young mind, given to speculation but inclined to reverence at classic texts, discover that these classic texts are full of explosive ideas) and the source of many of the most incisive and critical ideas today. Pity that younger faculty members nowadays disdain to teach the whole tradition!

The next panelist is also a historian, but teaches at the University of New Hampshire, and gave a report on the state of the state schools. It's a frightening time, not only because of cutbacks but because state legislatures are scaling back collective bargaining rights of state employees (like professors); at least it's not yet come to monitoring emails. She drew attention to the experience of spending time over texts and discussions at the heard of a liberal arts curriculum, and reminded us how rare it is - but also important. It's another privilege, and perhaps a responsibility, for those acquainted with the power of such experiences to to share it with students who could not perhaps imagine that you could spend a life - or even a year - in the realm of ideas, inquiry, study.

The third panelist teaches in education studies at SUNY New Paltz. A Native Alaskan, she explored how social science and liberal arts might help Native peoples rather than harm them. Too much research on indigenous and other marginalized populations focuses on damage, she argued, and can lead to a distorted self-understanding in these populations. Could not one imagine research which helps communities resist understanding themselves as damaged by focusing on desire? Liberal arts could also be of use to Settlers, if they (we!) recognized the historical and structural affinities between settler colonialism and traditional conceptions of the liberal arts - and transformed or transcended them. Suppose we understood land as knowledge rather than property, and recognized human traditions as sovereign rather than insisting on a project of "inclusion"? In words which named some of the issues I've been grappling with in my Aboriginal Australia course, she proposed a new mission for the liberal arts: "teaching the settler to be indigenous." Wow!

The next speaker is an anthropologist at Wesleyan, and came to Lang from India. She sees the liberal arts as under serious threat from a neoliberal takeover of the univeristy, though in this situation the liberal arts are as important as ever in teaching us to question received categories - from "diversity" to "globalization" to "human rights" to "citizenship." Unfortunately, the most interesting work on these fronts takes place in interdisciplinary work which slips through the cracks of disciplined universities, and which often takes forms - blogs, performances - which universities don't value. Reflecting back on her time as a student here, she found that many of the most important things she had learned had been learned not in classes but outside them, in teach-ins and sit-ins and demonstrations. Neoliberalism represents a grave threat to a liberal arts which overflows the academic disciplines.

The final speaker is, unlike the others, not a full-time professor. He teaches part-time at our own institution, as part of a career as an advocate for environmental justice. He praised liberal arts as an antidote to the desire for simple, single answers which he finds both in the first year students he teaches and in the environmental justice professionals with whom he works. The advocacy community, he reported, is reluctant to admit doubts, and so is less self-critical than one might hope or expect. It is thus good not only for his studenst but for him, as a professional, to participate in the exploratory, self-revising and open-ended discussions which are the heart of a liberal arts education. Everyone would benefit if we could find ways to open the conversation of the liberal arts to professionals and activists.

I haven't emphasized all the way these reflections - which address and reimagine all the major contexts in which liberal arts fights for survival in our day - resonated with each other; you can connect the dots. But I have to say, I can't remember the last time I heard so many important issues in higher education explored in so generous, critical and visionary a way. I can't imagine a better way for a liberal arts college to pat itself on the back than to assemble a group of alumni like this. (I assembled it, but had no idea how remarkable it would be). Well-done, Lang!

In the beginning was

For the final section of our exploration of Aboriginal Australian religion, we turned today to Aboriginal Christianities. We've already encountered Christianity at several points along the way, notably in David Mowaljarlai, in the paintings of Linda Syddick, and in the film "Sampson and Delilah." Today we began with the lovely interpretation - better, recontextualization, if not indeed appropriation - of Genesis 1 in The Rainbow Spirit in Creation (Liturgical Press, 2000), with a translation by (Job scholar!) Norman Habel and paintings by Jasmine Corowa, daughter of one of the Rainbow Spirit Elders. I projected images of the book on our big screen, and read the Biblical text. Meanwhile, the book passed from one student to another, each reading the artist's explanation of the symbols and colors. (Here are the first, seventh and ninth images - with the explanatory texts at the bottom of this post.) Even though my projections were in black and white (d'oh!) the effect was magical. A new world unfolded before our eyes, strange yet familiar. You try too!

Havoc

One hundred and fifty tornadoes in one night, some a mile wide? Over two hundred dead, and countless homes destroyed? Life on earth is getting scarier and scarier.

There's some pretty intense weather coming our way, too.

(Update: there were tornadoes upstate, but we're unscathed.)

Powerpoint karaoke

One of my colleagues tells me of a new game among the truly nerdy - finding someone's powerpoint slides online, and then improvising a lecture to them at a party (while drinking, of course). Apparently it's quite a hoot. I can sort of see it... This isn't a slide from a powerpoint presentation (at least not where I found it) but I imagine a generous admixture of spirits might unlock its mysteries.

On the shoulders of giants

Just came from a gathering celebrating the contributions of philosopher, feminist and peace activist Sally Ruddick to The New School. Ruddick was probably the most influential of the long-term faculty of the Seminar College and Eugene Lang College in its first years. (She actually started at the university in 1967, shortly after completing the first PhD on Wittgenstein at Harvard.) I never met her - she had to stop teaching because of Parkinson's Disease a few years before I arrived - but I knew her as the author of Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace, one of those amazing books that change the world. (It was actually introduced that way to me; a graduate student colleague told me it made her grateful to have been born late enough to be there to read it.)
The little I've been able to do is to ensure that Sally is duly remembered by the school to which she gave so much - and from which she got so much, too (her husband Bill reminded us that she felt no other school would have allowed her to explore so widely, and so to write her truly path-breaking books). We celebrate Lang's 25th anniversary this year, but there would be no Lang to celebrate (that is, Eugene Lang would never have made the donation for which the trustees expressed their gratitude by naming the college after him) had there not already been something pretty fantastic going on here. Sally was a big part of that thing - something you could still feel tonight in the tributes of old colleagues and students old and new.

Here we go

Spring!

Triduum plus

Ought one go to church on Easter? The Triduum is pretty intense, and complete; many let the Easter Vigil sound the final note, and rest from their churchly labors. As is becoming my wont (it started in Melbourne), I rested in a different way - went to a different church. Indeed, it seems like spreading oneself around makes a kind of theological sense, too. Maundy Thursday with one's own congregation makes sense - though/and I enjoyed the sense that the same scene of footwashing was taking place throughout the city and beyond. (Of course traditional Catholics visit seven other churches that night.) But attending Good Friday at an unfamiliar church proved valuable in its way, too: the events of that awe-ful day are
too grand for the comfort of a familiar worshiping community. The Easter Vigil back home with one's peeps makes good sense: turning one's church in to a catacomb and then living out the history of salvation together (especially as it is read and sung by your regular fellow worshipers) is powerful. But Easter Day? Spend it with glad strangers! The Easter message is big news, after all. Out in the open now it reaches way beyond any congregation or denomination, embracing all. So I went to the Roman Catholic church of St. Francis Xavier, the parish of my friend M. Overflowing with people! Pastels abounding! (The newly restored and reconsecrated church itself appeared to be made of marzipan.) And top-quality performance of the rather Broadway-type music favored in contemporary Catholicism. After the austere and archaic Episcopal Triduum it seemed almost evangelical in energy, overflowing with life.

Mourning dove

That dove is still outside my window, at least two weeks on. She's persisted through some pretty nasty weather - whatever its other merits as a nesting site, a fire escape offers no shelter from above. I've been amazed each day to find her still there. What devotion.

But does it really take that long to hatch eggs?

Perhaps not, I learned today. I raised the screen to take a picture of her covered in pearling raindrops and she fluttered briefly away, revealing... not an egg.

Pange Lingua

Stumbled on the largest French-style pipe organ built in the last half century today - also the only French-built organ installed in New York. It's at the Church of the Ascension, and it's brand new - official consecration is May 1st. (The organ it replaces did not extend into the sanctuary the way this one does.) Its deep rich power enveloped us as we sang the lovely "Pange Lingua" (166 in the 1982 Hymnal) which I am familiar with as plainchant (mode 3!) - unison, and a capella or accompanied by a simple recorder. What a difference! But appropriate to Good Friday. Human voices nearly drowned out by resonant depths, troubling modulations, tragic grandeur.

Lake Eyre

The Queensland floods, having made their way through Central Australian desert, have reached South Australia's Lake Eyre (source).

On an overcast day, the riot of flower on one of the trees nearly felled by the tornado last Fall (the one at Vanderbilt and Prospect Pl).

Dotty!

Looking through the catalog to the influential 1988 Asia Society exhibition on Aboriginal art, we had a good laugh over this ad, Melbourne, 1987. Could there really have been a sleepwear company called "Young Colony"?