Flagging enthusiasm



This article by Soeren Kern at The Brussels Journal reports on an effort by the growing Swiss Muslim community to remove the famous white cross from that country’s red flag.

An immigrant group based in Bern has called for the emblematic white cross to be removed from the Swiss national flag because as a Christian symbol it “no longer corresponds to today’s multicultural Switzerland.” Ivica Petrusic, the vice president of Second@s Plus, a lobbying group that represents mostly Muslim second-generation foreigners in Switzerland (who colloquially are known as secondos) says the group will launch a nationwide campaign in October to ask Swiss citizens to consider adopting a flag that is less offensive to Muslim immigrants.

Here we have, in a nutshell (it seems to me) Europe’s current cultural problem. They’re desperately trying to find a continental identity, and just as desperately attempting to keep their distance from the one and only thing that historically united them in a cultural sense—the Christian religion. If Europe is not identical with Western Christendom (excluding the Americas), then what in heaven’s name is it?

No one seems to have any idea. Continue reading Flagging enthusiasm

Inability

Novelist Geoff Dyer talks about the craft in The Guardian. “Writers are defined, in large measure, by what they can’t do. The mass of things that lie beyond their abilities force them to concentrate on the things they can,” he says. You can’t practice through your weaknesses like a tennis player, but neither is your work as defined as tennis is. One thing’s for certain: “it’s far easier to give advice about writing than it is to do it.” (via Andy Crouch and Alan Jacobs)

Publishing update



The Gunderson House, Kenyon, Minnesota, which I borrowed for my new book.

[Thousand Ills That Flesh Is Heir To Dept.: My cold continues pretty much unchanged, like a visitor you expected to come for dinner, who means to stay a month. I still have no voice. It’s a little disturbing to realize that I can actually get through 99% of my day without needing a voice.]

Some of you seem to be interested in the new book, which I’m planning to publish digitally. I thought the process would take a while, but I sent the document file to Ori Pomerantz one day, and he got it back to me, tentatively formatted for Kindle, the following night. I think he’s formatted it for Nook too. The big slow-down may be the read-through I’m doing now myself, and the time it takes for me to whip some cover art together.

I can’t promise a release date, and no doubt there will be delays, but as far as I understand what’s going on (not much), it looks to be available soon.

Eventually, if I sell enough electronic copies, I may be able to get some dead tree books printed.

What’s the novel about?

Well, it’s called Troll Valley (you may recall the name of the place from Wolf Time). It’s set at the turn of the twentieth century, in my default literary locality of Epsom, Minnesota, a small town based on my home town.

The main character is Christian Anderson, a boy from a wealthy family, who has a deformed arm and a fairy godmother.

Major themes include Lutheran pietism, the goodness of God, grace, and the Evangelical-Progressive political alliance of that time.

I’m rather surprised to find, doing my read-through, that I quite like the book. I’m prejudiced, of course, but I think it holds together pretty well.

More as the situation unfolds.

Not as dangerous as you think

A mildly amusing event, in the course of my ride to Norway, Michigan last weekend in Ragnar’s colossal van, was our lunch in a biker bar.

We were deep in the wilds of Wisconsin when noon rolled around. Ragnar was following his GPS, which he’d apparently set to “Lose a Tail” mode, because the few towns we passed through were pretty small, and generally didn’t offer any places to eat. However, this being Wisconsin, there was usually at least one bar on every block. We agreed that bars often have food, and we’d look for one that advertised that commodity.

We soon found one, and rolled into the almost empty lot. Once we got inside, we realized, from the décor and the clothing of the customers, that it was a biker establishment.

This is the point where, in a movie or novel, we’d have been set on by toughs and forced to fight for our lives.

I think we might have taken them too, had it come to that.

Because Ragnar is still pretty dangerous, and the entire population of the saloon was the woman behind the bar, and a middle-aged couple in black leather who were more interested in each other than in stomping us.

Hey, we actually fit in pretty well. We had long hair and beards. All we lacked was the leathers.

We ordered hamburgers, which when they came were pretty good.

The only memorable incident was that the bartender noticed I’d paid her with bills stamped with those “Where’s George?” messages. “Are you one of those people who track these things?” she asked.

I said no, but I’d recently been paid by someone who tracks those things.

I think Ragnar was a little disappointed we didn’t get a chance to rumble.

Now that I’m on the subject, I’ve begun to wonder—are there any young motorcyclists anymore?

I remember when biker gangs were the very symbol of rebellious, dangerous youth. The young Marlon Brando. The adolescent Peter Fonda.

It seems as if Biker culture is dying out with the Baby Boomers. The people who ride motorcycles now have square jobs during the week, and get their Animal on on the weekends.

Or they’re retired.

Kind of like Viking reenactors.

"The Perfection of Beauty"

And now, a bit of performance poetry from rapper shai linne with Blair Linne presenting.

shai linne – “The Perfection of Beauty” ft. Blair Linne (Official Trailer) from Lamp Mode Recordings on Vimeo.

The Offensive Stories of O'Connor

Jonathan Rogers has written a spiritual biography of Flannery O’Connor. He writes about it here, saying, “People are offended by Flannery O’Connor’s stories, and they ought to be. They’re offensive… [They are] startling figures drawn for the almost-blind… If the stories offend conventional morality, it is because the gospel itself is an offense to conventional morality. Grace is a scandal; it always has been. Jesus put out the glad hand to lepers and cripples and prostitutes and losers of every stripe even as he called the self-righteous a brood of vipers.”

Endless War, by Ralph Peters

[Personal update: I stayed home from work again today. Still no voice. Maybe I’ll make it in tomorrow. I really don’t want to pass this nightmare on to the students, though.]

The conviction prevails, in privileged circles that, if we study history without reshaping it to our contemporary prejudices, history will corrupt us. May I suggest that the opposite is true?

…Those who deny history die of myth.

In that quotation from his Introduction, Ralph Peters sums up much of the lessons he propounds in his 2010 collection of essays and columns, Endless War. The first section of the book consists of a series of essays on early Islamic victories in the historic struggle with the West, followed by a series of Western (dare I say Christian?) victories as Muslim civilization went into decline. Then he draws conclusions, and proceeds to analyze various aspects of our contemporary “War On Terror” (a designation he loathes).

Our great mistake, as I read him, is our insistence on “understanding” our opponents. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but the way our academics and academically-trained soldiers do it is so informed by postmodern secularism that they end up violating both fact and logic. Better than academic anthropology and political theory, these people should read original historical and religious texts, and myth. Our enemies are fighting for a dream, not an ideology.

Peters (who is also the author, under the name Owen Parry, of the Abel Jones novels which I’ve often praised in this space) expresses some iconoclastic opinions on our current struggle. Contrary to what you’ve read, he says, Iraq was the “good war,” and Afghanistan (following the original incursion, which should have been more massive) is a waste of time. Afghanistan, he says, has no strategic importance, is impossible to govern, and was only the base for the 9/11 terrorists because they’d been kicked out of every other safe haven. In Iraq, he maintains, the terrorists chose to make their real stand, and Saddam Hussein was genuine military threat. Control of Iraq also gives us considerable strategic advantages.

Having read Endless War, I feel a little better informed than I was, though the whole question remains Endlessly Complex.

The only major problem I had with the book was one essay (can’t find it now) in which he said he was as afraid of Christian fundamentalists as of Muslim fundamentalists. That’s a remarkably “conventional wisdom” kind of observation for a thinker of Peters’ originality. He doesn’t repeat it, so perhaps he thought better of it later.

Full disclosure: I got this book free for my Kindle through a special offer.

Endless War is an extremely readable, highly original, and penetrating analysis of the struggle between East and West. Recommended.

If You Have To Explain It, It's No Longer Funny

Patrick Kurp talks to a ghost about G.K. Chesterton and being funny. “Chesterton is right: Only the serious is worthy of joking. Joy-killers preoccupy themselves with trivia.”

Festival post-mortem (almost literally)

I was going to post yesterday, even though I said I wouldn’t, because I’d scheduled the day off from work in order to recover from the Norway, Michigan trip. Little did I know how much I’d need to recover—enough that I didn’t have the energy to post anyway.

The event in Michigan was generally good. I rode along with a friend to save gas costs, and we arrived mid-afternoon on Friday. I really like Norway, Michigan. It’s a pretty, clean town in a lovely setting among the hills, and it’s got the name “Norway” plastered all over it. The people were nice. I didn’t sell a lot of books, though. I’m not sure I covered my food costs.

Part of the problem may have been that I was purposely keeping my distance from people, in this case out of consideration for them (though that’s my usual reason, come to think of it). On Friday I was starting to come down with a cold, and on Saturday I woke up completely unable to speak. Nevertheless I dosed myself with a combination of nostrums from the local drug store/gift shop, and soldiered through. I even fought a couple combat fights, just to show one of our young guys how the axe was used (I lost them both). Then he took the weapon over, and I considered my obligations fulfilled.

Driving back Sunday I felt pretty bad, and on Monday (today too) I felt no better. I think I’ll prop myself up with drugs and try to go to work tomorrow anyway. Who cares if I infect the whole campus? The point is not to be a sissy!

Bad news today. My publisher has turned down my latest submission. Not because they didn’t like it, but because of financial hard times, and a corporate decision to turn away from fiction.

Our friend Ori says he can help me publish digitally. I’ll let you know how that progresses.

Making Culture Courageously

Filmmaker Anthony Parisi makes some good points in his overly negative review of the movie, Courageous. He writes:

Films like this reinforce the unfortunate impulse that anything we create must be explicitly “Christianized” or evangelistic. Churches are to spread the kingdom not by some sort of cultural revival but by the unglamorous life of local ministry God has founded on Word and sacrament. Making movies falls far outside the bounds of what the church has been called to do.

I sympathize with that first sentence. I chafe at the notion of seeing every cultural good in terms its value for evangelism. But I can’t agree with his next two sentences. Perhaps he means the institutional church should not make movies, and he’s probably right, but the church, as in the whole body of Christ or all Christians, should make movies if they have the skills and talent to do so. That’s what Mr. Parisi does himself or a variation of it.

Andy Crouch argues in his book, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, that the only way to change culture is to make culture. Criticizing and boycotting the cultural goods others have made doesn’t go far enough, because we aren’t making anything to take the place of what we don’t like. With Sherwood Pictures, we have a group of people making movies (and movie tie-in material), and I wonder if they haven’t climbed up to a level where the Chesterton maxim applies: Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing badly.

Movies are not teaching illustrations. I felt that strain while watching Fireproof. Clearly, Mr. Parisi would make different movies, perhaps even better ones. Showing more of what Christ did for us and less of our moral lifestyle, as he says, would improve the story, but I think Courageous is a respectable story in its own right. It isn’t a bad film. I don’t say anything worth doing is worthy doing badly to say Courageous is a terrible movie. I mean it’s good movie which could be a lot better, if the producers had pushed toward the things Mr. Parisi describes. “The gospel,” he observes, “pulls us out of our fragile self-worth built on performance and centers our identity on God’s love for us in Christ.” If one of the Courageous movie characters had been shown blowing it repeated and asking his wife and children’s forgiveness, pointing to the grace of Christ in his life despite his sin, that would have been powerful. Perhaps something like that can make it into the next film. I wish them the best on it.

Speaking of movie tie-in material, I encourage you to look into this four-week study on fatherhood issues produced as a follow-up to the movie.