When I started Coal we brainstormed what the name could mean. I gave my reasons for using it, some readers gave theirs. They were exclusively positive, if I remember.
With time, I’ve come up with a couple more, less positive. ‘Just coal in the furnace’ signaled a modest contribution to some kind of intelligent discussion, considered much larger than the people involved or anything they had to say. Under pressure, coal’s main ingredient (carbon), turns to diamond, something truly valuable. But coal itself is only valuable for other, less aesthetic reasons. At the same time, take a look at unprocessed Coal and you’ll find a strange, dark beauty there. A dirty beauty. If beatniks had a gemstone, I’d put my money on Coal.
What struck me recently are a few related facts: in the modern world, coal is still used but it’s somewhat outdated, and used primarily because it’s cheap. But it’s less efficient than modern fuels, and more importantly, it doesn’t burn clean. Coal is a hazard for its environment.
Metaphorically speaking, you can go a couple of ways with that. One way is positive. Mostly, I’m thinking that coal’s messy, damaging, and by comparison to modern alternatives, a waste of resources. It’s mostly used in developing countries (namely, China and India), who don’t give a damn at the moment about any harm they might do, so long as they make it where they’re going economically. You can’t blame them: the first world already did the same thing.
I still think the name is a good one. I should write an in depth exploration. Word explorations in general are a riot.
There’s no conclusion to read here other than the literary one. I just found these thoughts, in part, interestingly applicable.
[8]
The blog. I like to speak in the abstract, because it creates a sense of personal absolution. Alfred Kinsey argued, “Everyone’s sin is no one’s sin. And everyone’s crime is no crime at all.” It’s a misleading bit of rhetoric, and patently poor logic, but with a little twist, you have the implicit formula for moralizers of all stripes, times, and ages.
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[2]
‘ku
Haiku haiku hai
Ku haiku haiku haiku
Haiku haiku hai
-An ‘04 era haiku by Tristan Sandulak, originally posted on andcuriouser.com.
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[11]
As anyone with academic experience knows, the world is filled with great men (and occasionally women) whose early life biographies are tales of hardship, discipline, and ultimately, distinction. One studies and ponders these biographies, and it’s hard not to think that if you don’t know fifteen languages, play five instruments, and haven’t published anything by by the time you’re about 16, you might as well throw in the towel and become a plumber, or maybe a writer of other people’s bios.
And then this.
I’m reading Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of J.R.R. Tolkien, who pretty much fits the above description of a dedicated young genius. Impressive, yes, but it’s a story I’ve heard before. What stopped my pulse was a teacher of his named Joseph Wright, who is a story of another kind altogether.
Joe Wright was a Yorkshireman, a truly self-made man who had worked his way up from the humblest origins to become a Professor of Comparative Philology. He had been employed in a woollenmill from the age of six, and at first this gave him no chance to learn to read and write. But by the time he was fifteen he was jealous of his workmates who could understand the newspapers, so he taught himself his letters. This did not take very long and only increased his desire to learn, so he went to night-school and studied French and German. He also taught himself Latin and mathematics, sitting over his books until two in the morning and rising again at five to set out for work. By the time he was eighteen he felt that it was his duty to pass on his knowledge to others, so he began a nightschool in the bedroom of his widowed mother’s cottage, charging his workmates twopence a week for tuition…
...And so on, until he arrives some years later at Oxford and becomes a distinguished professor of Philology.
If that doesn’t make a man feel like he’s wasting his life away, I don’t know what would.
[1]
I really have no special love of politics, or even political discussions. Somehow I always let myself be sucked into them, as you can see from my last few entries. Due to my lack of love for the field, I respect politicians who are capable of putting themselves in the crossfire of political debate – a place I would never want to be. As Bob Dylan said, and supposedly Abe Lincoln before him, “Half the people can be part right all of the time, and some of the people can be all right part of the time, but all of the people can’t be all right all of the time” (World War III Blues). With money, relationships, ideologies, and lives all at stake, this makes politics a disastrous, though necessary, discipline.
Personally, I’d rather be talking theology, philosophy, or (especially) literature. I promise myself that the preceding paragraph are the last words on politics that will appear on Coal, apart from those in the comments section, for the next while.
[3]
John Rose has some good points regarding the metaphysics of Creation Care, but when it comes to pressing for “acknowledgement” at the expense of taking action on behalf of the natural world, I think it may be wiser to let go for a while. I’m sure that it’s not Rose’s intention to place one against the other; as I wrote before, discussion and action really aren’t exclusive, and there’s no reason to stop discussing metaphysics while taking steps to ensure the good health of the world we live in.
Andrew has also been thinking about these things, and returns from a conference to report:
When asking for support from churches, they [a Christian environmental organization called A Rocha] have received responses from pastors such as “We only have one life, so we ought to live it preaching the gospel.” They even have received responses indicating that since one day there will be a new earth, it really doesn’t matter what happens to this one. It is my response that this view is both ignorant and unbiblical.
Indeed, there are so many obvious flaws with those responses it’s amazing they make it past the speaker’s lips. It is an example of how a unconsidered metaphysic can provide a (in this case weak) veil justifying actions that are really completely unrelated to the metaphysic. Although I agree with Rose, I initially thought that given the prevalence of this kind of thinking, it may be wise to present the metaphysical questions only after making it clear that, indeed, the environment is worth taking care of. But then I realized that that leaves those very Christians Andrew is speaking about with a comfortable little house in which to hide, however flimsy its walls.
[4]
John Allen interviews Cardinal Avery Dulles.
What does the blind man now see?
Kierkegaard knew that faith is absurd. A man is blind because he does not open his eyes. His eyes have never been opened, though they could be. Another man comes to him, a man whose eyes have been opened, and says, “Open your eyes.” But the blind man is skeptical and afraid. Life has treated him well thus far. Why risk ruining everything by opening his eyes? What can there possibly be to see? The seeing man explains the visible beauty of the world, but the blind man has never seen and cannot understand him. He sounds like a madman. Who listens to a madman?
Perhaps he wants to believe because he loves the fantasy. The visible world sounds enchanting, and the blind man revels without end in his imagination of it. He imagines himself opening his eyes and walking awestruck through the world for the first time. But he is afraid to destroy this fantasy. He knows that reality never matches ones expectations.
Or perhaps he does believe, and wants to open his eyes more than anything. What if he opens his eyes and still sees nothing? What if he tries to open his eyes, and finds that he cannot. He is the only one who cannot, while all his friends and family open their eyes and speak to him about the glorious world they have found. He sits alone in the dark, wishing he could open his eyes. They tell him he can, just do it. But he can’t. Perhaps he has never really tried. He doesn’t know anymore.
Worst of all, the blind man does not know he is blind. He can see clearly, and has seen clearly all his life. A man comes to him and says, “close your eyes, and I will teach you to see clearly”. This sounds absurd, but perhaps there is something about the man that leads the wide-eyed blind man to believe him – or want to believe him. There is the promise of something beyond that which he has seen and knows and fails to satisfy. Still, all the fear and doubt remain, and the whole thing seems absurd in moments of clarity. The wide-eyed blind man notices that the people who close their eyes do so only when their sight has already become clouded and they have difficulty seeing. He sees well, so why should he close his eyes?
How can you tell me what the blind man now sees?
[2]
Four possibly, but not necessarily, unrelated things to ponder, if you care to do so.
In a world where success means gaining time, thinking has a single, but irredeemable, fault: it is a waste of time.
(Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Explained)
Pragmatically, aesthetic value can be recognized or experienced, but it cannot be conveyed to those who are incapable of grasping its sensations and perceptions. To quarrel on its behalf is always a blunder.
(Harold Bloom, The Western Canon)
God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
(Reinhold Niebuhr, a prayer)
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
(Charles Dickens, Pip in Great Expectations)
[3]
Esoteric Christianity consists of the substance of the religion (of which faith is an integral part, but by no means the only part – it is worth noting here that faith without religion can consist of nothing but a solipsistic emotivism), accessible only through language, comprehensible only in the language developed within the Church community, of which there are many, many dialects, yet a grounding commonality due to a joint subscription to a single root text (this is why non-scriptural Christianity very quickly stops being Christianity). It might be assumed that the word ‘esoteric’ could imply some kind of hermetic self-sufficiency or gnostic revelation to the elect, but that is not how it is being used here.
Exoteric Christianity consists of the symbols and language, accessible to all, apparent in public representation, easily misused, abused, and impossible to understand properly (yet alluring) outside of the contexts and contents of esoteric Christianity.
In actuality, there is no clear distinction between the two.
The Protestant Church tends to destroy the exoteric aspects of the faith. This is based on the realization that without the substance behind the symbols, the symbols are pagan and misleading. This attempt is futile, and dangerous, because the elimination is believed to be necessary (symbols are deemed idolatrous), but its impossibility leads adherents to ignore the exoteric aspects of their religion (sometimes even denying religion itself, and substituting it with mere faith or spirituality), which ironically prevents them from delving behind the images into the substance.
It is worth noting that the many of Protestant orthodoxy’s greatest representatives, most notably John Calvin, did not make this mistake. But the reader who does is likely to miss the tensions existing in Calvin’s text.
The Catholic Church recognizes both aspects of Christianity, yet at times extends the distinction empirically to its adherents (such that the clergy are initiated into esoteric Christianity, while the laity are left with pagan symbolism).
I have no desire to comment at this time regarding the relationships between theology and practice and the errors involved in relating esoteric and exoteric Christianity. But I thought these observations were worthwhile (if not completely developed) in and of themselves.
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