Lent

So the season of Lent started two days ago, it being Ash Wednesday. Of course the actual placement of various dates is entirely arbitrary - who will ever know when Jesus was born, or exactly what part of the year he spent those 40 days in the wilderness. What's important is that people take it seriously.

Yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend, and remarked on exactly this arbitrariness, that one should strive for spiritual closeness with God all year. But then he made the excellent point that Lent is the one time of year that believers set aside to refocus themselves on Jesus. Just as how in an earlier blog post I remarked upon the impossibility as a person of living one's life entirely with God in mind, so it becomes impossible to live one's year that way as well. And so these 40 days are set aside for just that purpose, to refocus oneself not alone, but with the community aiding one another in this endeavor.

So I was thinking last night, after returning home, why not try it? After all, I am a brand new believer. What have I to lose, by actually taking this time seriously? And so for Lent, I have decided to give up not one thing, but the category of those things in my life which constitute mindless escapism. For me, that means three things: video games, netflix, and alcohol.

I just took the first step this morning: deleting every game from my hard drive. That meant everything from large games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion, down to even the small Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis ROMs. That doesn't mean I took my discs outside and shattered them. That wouldn't do much good anyways, as everything these days is downloadable. But it does mean that I have to take the lengthy extra steps of reinstalling (or re-downloading) and patching these games before I can use them again, as opposed to the simple step of popping in a disc or double-clicking on an icon.

The next to go will be alcohol. That doesn't mean I won't have a beer with friends or maybe even grab an occasional one at the corner store. What it does mean is that I'm not going to be buying six-packs or keeping a bottle of hard liquor in my room, for those nights when I just want to get buzzed and forget about the world. I do put it in the future tense, however, as I do still have a bit of a bottle left, and I'm loathe to waste it. But I'm sure it will be gone soon enough. One thing at a time . . .

Lastly, my netflix billing cycle finishes up on March 17th, so I'll be putting a month-long hold on my account starting then. Again, I don't wish to waste money already spent, and besides, I have a couple Indiana Jones movies coming that a friend and I have been meaning to watch for some time now. However, as soon as the 17th rolls around, netflix is gone as well.

So there it is. This month will be an experiment. I often admit to myself and others that I lack the discipline to remove these crutches from my life, but maybe now, with the help of God and my community, I can do so, for at least a time. And here it is in writing as well, lest I "forget".

So what do I plan to do instead? Well, there's reading. I am fortunate to have two pastors giving me books on nearly a weekly basis, so that a bit of a backlog has developed. I also have yet to read about half of the New Testament, and all of the Old Testament. I of course have my cello. The weather is also getting warmer, meaning opportunities not just for busking in the park, but for actual exercise as well. I also would like to try my hand at writing songs; oh I always say it, and always get some ideas and then always quit before I barely even get started, but no time like the present to try again.

And then there's the most important issue: learning how to communicate with God. Even to my mind now it sounds silly. And yet I feel I'm a Christian today because God communicated with me. Maybe it's time to learn how to speak back, and then to listen. How can I merely dismiss this idea without having ever honestly tried it? So that is what this month will be for as well.

Christianity and power

So the more I read the bible and the more I learn about Christian theology, the more disturbed I am by those Christians in this country (although this applies to religious people anywhere) who wish to insert religion into government. The reality seems, time and again, that when you combine religion with politics, you end up corrupting both.

On American politics -

Take George W, for instance. Most analysts seem to agree that he rode the evangelical movement in this country to victory. And what did they get in return? Abortion is still legal, gays can still get married in some states (ie, the constitutional amendment was talked about but never really pressed for), and the "Hollywood culture" here is still as strong as ever. And yet in the meantime many of these groups seemed to sacrifice Jesus' insistence on poverty and the idea that wealth can be poisonous to the soul so as not to offend his richer donors. Or maybe this was going on anyways, I've heard tell of so-called "prosperity gospels" used in some large churches to attract a wealthier congregation. Still, I get the feeling that part of it has to do with the marriage of certain groups of religious conservatives with the Republican party, which generally seems to promote policies more helpful to people making lots of money (I'm not here arguing for or against either of these groups. I have my opinions on that subject, but it's not the issue I want to get into here).

And so in the end, we ended up with some religious groups sacrificing some core elements of the gospels in order to have their issues heard in Washington, and you had Washington paying lip service to those issues, but in the end not strongly pressing for any of them. And for some reason the issue of gay marriage became more important than the radical generosity and grace of Jesus, at least on the public persona these groups put forth. I would say that may have to do with the idea that when Jesus' message is taken to its logical conclusion, it's not a popular one. Give until it hurts. Don't spend your money on things you don't need. Pray for others, commune with God, and spend less time worrying about your own needs and desires. If someone does violence to you, allow him to. If a man takes your goods, don't try to take them back. That sort of message doesn't tend to go over so well.

And of course, on the political side of things, you end up with the same sort of corruption of message. Now, I haven't yet figured out the theology on homosexuality. I've heard competing arguments either way, read the relevant biblical passages, and am not sure what to think. That said I can see why various people, at least from a biblical standpoint, can come down on either side of the debate, although clearly the "it's a sin" group would be in the majority. That said, LEGALLY, it should make no difference whatsoever what religious people believe. We have this wonderful principle in our constitution and our political culture generally referred to as the separation of church and state. Marriage has been given so many legal connotations, tax laws, visitations, wills, child custody, what have you, that it's currently indistinguishable from any other legal contract. Now, for most people it certainly carries a greater significance, but legally, it's merely a contract between two people. To deny that contract to a group within the population merely for religious reasons is insane. And yet most politicians won't press this issue mainly because it ticks off a lot of religious people.

In general -

A theocracy is a really, really scary form of government. Fortunately, we don't have one in this country, although it seems sometimes as if some people wish we did. The simple reality is that you cannot force people to be "moral". And God certainly wouldn't have it that way. If God wanted us all to follow His laws all the time no matter what He would never have given us free will. Of course He wants us to follow His laws, but He wants us to do so willingly, and I can't imagine that He doesn't realize that in the meantime we are going to mess up a LOT. It's part of the journey to becoming children of God. Of course, a theocracy wishes to take away that journey, to use the weight of law, of violence, to make sure that everyone is in compliance. And that's just insane. It's peoples' hearts that matter, not their actions. And if hearts are in the right place, actions will inevitably follow.

In the end, there are quite a few biblical passages that talk about how as Christians we must become weak and humble, because in the end such things are where true strength lies. In the story of Jesus, an omnipotent deity allowed himself to become a baby, to grow into a man and be tortured and killed, when He could have saved Himself with a word, and did it all for the salvation of humankind. His weakness became the greatest strength. And thus Christianity and political power will never mix. And that is a beautiful thing.

And now back to music

So in the past few weeks I've recorded tracks for two different albums - five tracks for Emanuel and the Fear, my longtime project, and another two for Roxanne De Bastion, a London-based singer/songwriter who actually opened for us on our first show in London. These two sessions had one thing in common: they were low-pressure, chill, and the end results were really quite stellar.

Which brings me to the point: you don't have to spend a ton of money, basically destroy your sanity, and do all sorts of editing, to make a good album. You have to have good music, the capability to perform it well, and some good mics. And that's really it. Yeah of course there's some editing going on, but really, these tracks are all going to be pretty close to legitimate performances, and if there's one thing I've learned from these sessions, it's how I want to record everything. What you hear on the record is what you'll get live, for the most part (obviously dependent on a decent sound man and good gear, but meh, you work with what you have). I'm immensely pleased with these recordings, and I can't wait to hear the final versions. Plus, the recording engineers for both projects were really sympathetic types who really seemed to believe in the music, and that makes all the difference in the world as to the vibe in a session.

On another topic -

My passion for being a musician tends to wax and wane. Lately it's definitely been trending upwards - I've been having some good gigs recently, not only good in the sense that they have enabled me to pay my rent and make some more connections, but good also in the sense that they have been very artistically fulfilling. Like doing a lecture/demonstration series for high school students, or last week premiering a piece by a NYC composer and performing another by one of the composers in residence with the Chicago Symphony (for the record, Mason Bates, who apparently is a well-known turn-table artist as well as composer. Fun piece, too). Having gigs like that, good sessions, rewarding work, I just often find myself at a gig thinking, "thank God I'm a musician." And that's a nice thing to be able to say, it's not always so true. Or maybe it is always true and I just forget it sometimes. And it looks as though the trend will continue, as I just landed a gig recording some tracks later this month with a Cuban pianist/composer, whose work I have played before and had a blast doing it. Can't wait to see what he's cooked up this time.

On the God front:

Currently reading a book about Paul and women. There's a lot of stuff in Paul that can certainly be taken as fairly misogynistic, at least in the context of modern culture. This book is actually claiming that Paul was in fact urging equality between the sexes, and that his meaning was twisted by people unwilling or unable to break out of the Athenian mindset (as opposed to the Spartans, where women were generally equal, but they didn't end up influencing the cultural trends in the way the Athenian philosophers did), which generally held the view of women as inferiors at best. I've only read half of the book so far, but from what I've read, he is using a lot of arguments based on various uses of Greek words that had more meanings and connotations than the simple English translations could convey. It's a very interesting book, and it's certainly helping me see just how difficult it can be to really puzzle out the meaning of scripture.

For instance, he is pointing out how Paul uses different words that can be translated to mean roughly the same thing, but actually have vastly different connotations. For example, he uses one word when referring to the relations between children and their parents, and masters and slaves, but then uses a different word when talking about the relationship between wives and husbands; and yet the two different words are translated in basically the same way "to be subject to". The argument is, if Paul really meant for women to obey their husbands in the same fashion, as has often been taken for granted over the course of history, then why did he use two different words?

Now, one may say that, if mistranslations cause us to call into question views of the bible that have been mostly unchallenged for most of its existence, then how can we trust anything in it? I would argue that part of that comes from experience. For instance, we currently live in a world that, at least in large chunks of it, provides women with opportunities equal to, or at least nearly equal to, those that men have. And thus we have seen that any differences between the genders don't extend to such things as leadership and intelligence. We see in the world little reason to think of men as coming before women, and it turns out that this book I'm reading ends up making a very convincing argument that, in fact, Paul was indeed arguing for basic equality between the genders, and not reinforcing the old cultural norm, as has been thought for centuries. Regardless, it's a fascinating argument, one that has given me much food for thought.

Oh and for the curious among you, the book is "What Paul Really Said About Women", by John Temple Bristow. I don't really know enough about the subject to know if his research is accurate, but I'd guess he's basically on target with most of it, given that his conclusions certainly make the letters of Paul make a great deal more sense to me.