Thursday poem

Back in 2006, Mama gave me a book of John Donne's complete English works with the inscription "The sky's the limit." I've never read the whole thing, but I've been working my way through it for the past few weeks. I think what I love most about Donne are his strings of staccato syllables, lines like "let / Mee travell, sojourne, snatch, plot, have, forget" ("Loves usury", ll 5-6) and "Sighs, teares, and oathes, and letters I have spent" ("Lovers infinitenesse", l 6). It is a quintessentially English language sound and the sound that Donne does best, setting those unruly consonants to work hammering out line after line of exquisite meter.

My favorite Donne poem is his Holy Sonnet XIV (below). Can you guess which lines are my favorite?

****

XIV

Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you

As yet but knocke, breath, shine, and seeke to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, 'and bend

Your force to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.

I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,

Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,

Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue,

Yet dearely'I love you, 'and would be lov'd faine,

But am betroth'd unto your enemie,

Divorce mee, 'untie, or breake that knot againe,

Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I

Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,

Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee. 

This week

Reading (and finally finishing) Love in a Time of Cholera (Garcia Marquez). This was one of my philosopher's Christmas presents to me. I loved the book, really loved it. It didn't have the magical flair of One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I appreciated the fact that it centered on individual characters and their development (instead of on whole generations of a family with a penchant for giving its sons identical names). And I especially enjoyed the way this unusual love story unfolds against the overlap of two eras.

Watching The Thin Red Line (Terence Malick). I invited a friend to see Malick's Tree of Life with me last summer. For me, that movie was sheer joy, but there were audience members at our showing who walked out in the first twenty minutes. If you were one of those people, you might consider giving Malick another chance with Red Line. The film has almost all the elements I loved about Life, but without the 20-minute nature scenes (although it does clock in at almost three hours!) It's a little about love and death, and a lot about courage; and it raises more questions than it answers (which is my kind of movie!)

Planning my itinerary for the next month. Tomorrow kicks off the chaos with an overnight flight to Greensboro (where I will get to see my philosopher for the first time since November!) So far, I will for sure be in North Carolina, New Jersey, and Illinois. Two of these are for conferences, the third for a campus visit. I also have a tentative trip to Ontario on the calendar (though I don't have the official word on that yet). Will there be more trips to squeeze in? Who knows.

Repost: Happy Valentine's Day

kisses are a better fate

than wisdom.

-e.e. cummings

February 13, 2008

Atheism in America

Julian Baggini wrote an article for FT Magazine earlier this month on what it's like to be an atheist in America. Mostly, it's a description of the isolation that atheists experience in the ultra-religious communities of small- (and not-so-small-) town America, an offering of anecdotes that blend feelings of ostracism in social and community settings, with concerns about religion in the workplace or the courthouse. The fact that I have mixed feelings about the article is, I think, a result of that blend.

I understand the worry about religion at work or in politics: prayer shouldn't be required in those settings, and in those settings religion shouldn't be assumed or catered to. I also think atheists can justifiably complain about the attitudes of some religious people, who often equate being an atheist with being a rapist or a murder, or at the very least a person of uncertain to negligable moral character. Where did that idea come from? The fact that someone is an atheist doesn't mean that they're going to kidnap you or beat you up (any more than the fact that someone professes to be a Christian doesn't mean that they're NOT going to do those things--I mean, one can hope they won't, but there's no guarantee). So I get this: being nonreligious doesn't necessarily mean being unethical or immoral, and religious communities need to refrain from endorsing that inference. That's all very reasonable.

But here's what I don't get.

Baggini notes that atheists often feel isolated in their communities because all of the social activities are church-centered--even, he points out, the volunteer opportunities. Again, I sympathize with the feelings of loneliness. I'm headed for a career in a field where it's not really socially acceptable for me to publicly express my religious beliefs, but where it's acceptable for authority figures to make negative comments about religion. I can practice my religion, of course. But if I talk about it, most people are going to give me funny looks. This has the potential to be lonely, right? People are going to be laughing about things that aren't humorous to me, and I won't be able to join in; there is a kind of non-religious solidarity that is sometimes exuded by my colleagues that I can't partake in.

But what should we do in scenarios like these?

Baggini implies that, in the case of the atheist, everything could be resolved if religious folks would just be a little more tolerant. And if tolerant means refusing to endorse the inference from "atheist" to "bad person," I'm all for it. But if it means making religious activities less, well, religious, I'm not on board. It seems unreasonable to expect a community to give up the things that make you uncomfortable, especially when those things are what define them (like the Jesus talk, for example, and the emphasis on a personal relationship with God).

I don't expect people to change the structure of the academic community for me and I certainly don't expect them to give up their beliefs (or repress them) in order to make me feel welcome (even if those beliefs include things like "Christians are creepy" or "Catholics hate women" or "Evangelicals are loony," all of which I've heard expressed at various times in the last five years). I'm prepared to volunteer and get involved even in organizations where I "don't quite belong," whose members share and advocate a system of (non?)belief that is alien to me.

I'm not saying that's not hard to do, and I'm also not saying that the lonely atheist is going to hit it off with every Christian group or person he or she meets. There are some really annoying religious people out there; I get it. But it's not impossible to make friends with people who are different from you, either. In fact, the mark of the tolerant person may be just that: the ability to interact constructively with people who disagree with you, even about things like the existence of God.

Oregon Winter

by Jeanne McGahey

The rains begin. This is no summer rain,
Dropping the blotches of wet on the dusty road:
This rain is slow, without thunder or hurry:
There is plenty of time--there will be months of rain,
         Lost in the hills, the old gray farmhouses
Hump their backs against it, and smoke from their chimneys
Struggles through weighted air. The sky is sodden with water,
It sags against the hills, and the wild geese,
Wedge-flying, brush the heaviest cloud with their wings.
        The farmers move unhurried. The wood is in,
The hay has long been in, the barn lofts piled
Up to the high windows, dripping yellow straws.
There will be plenty of time now, time that will smell of fires,
And drying leather, and catalogues, and apple cores.
        The farmers clean their boots, and whittle, and drowse.

(rediscovered in a childhood favorite: Winter Poems, selected by Barbara Rogasky, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman)

[Update: make that 3/9!]

One more acceptance today. 2/9 so far and no rejections yet. I have choices.