Dear Friends,
Thank you all for following me here at Letters from the Edge of Elfland. I’m happy to announce that I have happily move to Patheos Catholic. You can find me at patheos.com/blogs/elflandletters. Make sure to subscribe and see my first week’s worth of posts. Thank you again for all your support.
Sincerely,
David
Eastertide
Octave of the Ascension
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire
Dear Friends and Family,
A few days ago a new acquaintance (really a kindred spirit and therefore friend, though we’ve not yet met) of mine, Michael Martin, wrote an essay on the Angelico Press blog entitled, “The Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything.” For those unfamiliar with Martin, he is the Assistant Professor of English and Philosophy at Marygrove College and has written several works, the only one of which I have read thus far is The Submerged Reality: Ophiology and the Turn to a Poetic Metaphysics. Martin is like me, a believer in faërie, a poet (though a far better one as I understand it). I think we both can sign off on this line from an interview with theologian John Milbank, “I mean, I believe in all this fantastic stuff. I’m really bitterly opposed to this kind of disenchantment in the modern churches.” So I was overjoyed when Martin decided to put tires to pavement in a new way (he’s been living this stuff for some time now) when he wrote this essay.
Martin’s essay is a clarion call to those who are like minded in this endeavor which he calls the radical Catholic (and I would add catholic) reimagination of everything, or one might it even call it the C/catholic unveiling of sacramental ontology, for, ultimately, this is what Martin is driving at. At the beginning, Martin, a proponent of sophiology (something on which I hope to write more as I understand more), notes the call to Wisdom (Sophia) that appears at key moments in the Byzantine Liturgy. He then turns to another part of the liturgy, a hymn called Megalynarion, “The Magnification of Mary.” You can read those for yourself in Martin’s essay. What I want to draw your attention to is this line from Martin:
“My investigation here is not about the liturgy, however, but about the ways in which phenomenology and sophiology discover the same phenomenon: the shining that illuminates the cosmos. This shining speaks in the languages of poetry, languages that take on a myriad of forms and are sometimes mistaken for science, sometimes for theology.”
Martin is calling us to a different way of seeing, but also a different way of doing, of being, simply put of living in reality. Martin understands that certain strains of theology do not allow for this kind of sight. He notes, via Hans Urs von Balthasar, that Neoscholasticism denuded itself of attention to the Glory of the Lord and that this proper attention was passed through certain poets, philosophers, and scientists while it was lost by the theologians. Even were one to disagree with this genealogy, one need only look at trends in theology today to see that this attention the Glory, to Sophia, to sacramental ontology has been ignored by many (though it is making something of return as theologians find themselves once again desiring to return to the sources).
In the end of his essay Martin issues a call to “poets, artists, scientists, adventurers, teachers, communitarians, distributists, scholars, and visionaries who hanker for something more living in Catholic culture.” He does not desire mere theory, men and women sitting in a room talking about how great it would be if. However, it should be obvious that Martin is not against the study of these issues in order to better inhabit these ideas and live this reality. Rather, Martin wants us to act as we talk. Theoretike and Practike must be united. Some may be Marthas and others Marys, but we need both and we need most of all those who are willing to live the hard life being both at once.
And so this is, in my own small way, my answer to Martin’s call. I am a poet, an author, a theologian, a gardener, a distributist, a husband, and a father (and more besides); I am all of those things bound up together and suspended as one made according to the Image. I am ready not simply to think about a sacramental ontology but to live it. This will be hard, already have I been confronting ways in which my habits did not accord with my beliefs and my knowledge, but I will answer this call. I must answer this call, I can feel it in the very blood that flows through me that this is right, that this is how reality really is. Confronting my son’s cancer was the first step for me in coming not simply to believe that these fantastic elements of the faith are true (I already believed), but to experience them. Yet I have let the shadows overcome me and make me believe that those moments are rare and that real life is lived without experience of the Glory. Well I say no more. I say that that way of living is ultimately damned (though we can be saved from it). Root and branch, twig and bough, I am in. Join me, as I join Martin and others and we radically (which remember means to return to one’s roots) and catholicly reimagine everything.
Sincerely,
David
David Russell Mosley
Eastertide
21 April 2016
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire
Dear Friends and Family,
My life has been a little busy as of late. Between my family, teaching online, applying for more jobs, trying to think of new projects, trying to come up with a proposal for the upcoming Patristics, Medieval, Renaissance Conference, and finalizing, sort of, things for my two forthcoming books, it’s been hard to find inspiration to write here. I tried to start blogging through Taylor’s A Secular Age and while I’m still reading it and taking notes, blogging through all 700+ pages of it feels overwhelming. That said, I am going to try harder to blog more often. So today, I’m going to give some updates on what I’m reading, what I’m doing/working on, and what I’ve got coming up.
What I’m Reading:
Along with Taylor’s A Secular Age, I’m reading Andrew Greeley’s The Catholic Imagination, which I am enjoying; Lord of the Rings; and Dante’s Paradiso. If you look at my goodreads page you’ll see several other books that are currently on the back burner. I’ll also be picking up several new review books over the next few weeks which I’ll write about here once I have them.
What I’m Working On:
So I have four main things I’m working on. First of all, I’m working on putting together an online intro theology course for Johnson University. I’m really enjoying putting this class together. Currently, I’m assigning McGrath’s Christian Theology Reader, Ron Heine’s Classical Christian Doctrine, and C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I’m also working on three possible writing projects. The first is a project on Sacramental Ontology. I’m wanting to follow on from the work of Hans Boersma and connect sacramental ontology to actual sacraments. The second is a collection of essays. I’m working on pulling together some of the things I’ve written here along with some new essays on the relationship of Faërie and theology. Finally, I’m working on a proposal for the upcoming PMR (see above) conference at Villanova. I think I’m going to propose a paper on the relationship between the bread and wine in the Eucharist and bread and wine in daily consumption in Thomas Aquinas.
What I’ve Got Coming Up:
I have two books due at the end of this month. Well actually, I have one book (as in the manuscript) due at the end of the month and marketing stuff due for another book, whose MS has been submitted, also due at the end of the month. To be more specific: The MS for my novel, On the Edges of Elfland: A Fairy-Tale for Grown Ups, is due at the end of the month to Wipf and Stock publishers. Look out for more information on that over the next few months. My other book, the publication of my PhD thesis––Being Deified: Poetry and Fantasy on the Path to God––has the rest of its marketing stuff (I can’t really claim to understand it all) is due at the end of the month as well. Both books will, hopefully, be out this Autumn at the latest. I’ll post more about it as well as time goes on.
So, that’s what’s going in my life, aside from watching my adorable children grow up, spending time with my beautiful wife, and trying to deepen my faith and work with God to prepare myself for the Beatific Vision. I hope you all are well and hope to do better by you here on Letters from the Edge of Elfland.
Until then, I remain your Elfland correspondent.
Sincerely,
David
Epiphanytide
Sts. Timothy and Titus
26 January 2016
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire
Dear Friends and Family,
Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
For I had wandered off the straight path.
-Dante, The Inferno, 1-3.
While I cannot claim to be quite midway through my life (or so I hope, though Dante proved to be wrong about this himself), I have recently begun my annual re-read of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I’m doing it a littler earlier than usual for two reasons: First, I’ve just been dying to re-read it, and this year I bought myself individual volumes for each part. Second, Pope Francis has recommended Dante’s poem as beneficial reading for the Year of Mercy. While I’m not a Roman Catholic, I’m certainly not one to ignore the advice of those far holier than I. As I read it, perhaps even more closely this year due to its multi-voluminous nature, I’m struck rather forcibly by the notion of pilgrimage.
What I mean is this: Traditionally, the main character in the Divine Comedy is called the Pilgrim. This is to separate Dante the Pilgrim from Dante the author since he is a character in a story, similar to how there is Lewis the author and Lewis the character in Out of the Silent Planet. So we call the character the Pilgrim. But we do this also because he stands for us as a kind of Everyman. It is not only his pilgrimage from Hell to Heaven, but ours as we journey with him (Bilbo works in a similar way in The Hobbit, as do hobbits in general in The Lord of the Rings). In this sense, that the Pilgrim is a representative for me, can I say that I am the Pilgrim. This is not because there is anything special about me but precisely because I am interchangeable with any other. I am, in my own way, just as much an Everyman, just as Dante is also an individual. In a way, I replace the pilgrim. I am the one journeying through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. I am on a pilgrimage, not to Rome or the shrine of a particular saint (though I hope to make this kind of journey someday) but to God himself. The Pilgrim and I go on this journey together, our identities sometimes being blurred.
Augustine will often talk about our journey in life as one that is intended to end in our Patria, our Fatherland. The allusions to Philippians 3 are obvious, but Augustine also means that our journey in life is to the Father, the Beatific Vision. A misunderstanding of this view has, unfortunately, led some to the conclusion that this world itself does not matter. Of course this is precisely not true for our journey to the Patria is not a spacial one. We do not move from Earth to Heaven. Rather Earth itself, in fact the whole cosmos, is moved to both Hell and Heaven. It is this pre-resurrection life that is not our homeland, not our Patria, not creation itself. This is key, I think, to living the Good Life. We must recognize that it is not material existence in a material creation that we are journeying away from. Instead, it is sin, evil, death itself; these are the things we hope to leave behind as we journey to God. Even as we journey on, we bring the rest of creation with us, lifting it up as priests to God, but also offering thanks on its behalf.
So I am trying to return to a life of pilgrimage. I am trying to remember that this life is a preparation for the life to come when Christ returns and makes all things new. This should mean that everything I do in this life be done as if by a pilgrim. I ought not to tie myself to sin and death, to the corruptible, but to set my sights on things eternal. Only in this way can I have creation, including my own, as I ought. Only in this way can I be in right relationship with the world around me. I must remember first that I pilgrim journeying to the Patria, in the process of being deified. Christ has paved the way and journeys on with us; the Spirit guides us, corrects us, points us back to Christ and his saints; and the Father is our journey’s end. Join me, won’t you, in this pilgrim life?
Sincerely,
David
Dear Friends and Family,
You may remember that a few years ago I wrote you concerning whether or not the Chronicles of Narnia is an allegory. I cam out firmly against it. Here, Brenton Dickieson goes into much greater detail, being the better (and proper) Lewis scholar, showing you what allegory is, what Lewis thought of it, and why Narnia is not an allegory. Do give it a read.
Sincerely,
David
No. It’s not.
While tempted to leave it at that and produce the shortest blog of history, I think it is important to let the Narnian himself address the question. C.S. Lewis was, after all, a literary scholar who had written an entire academic book about the development of medieval allegory (The Allegory of Love). He knows what allegory is, when it works well, and how to use it when it is the best genre to use. He liked Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and George Orwell‘s Animal Farm. He himself wrote an allegory, The Pilgrim’s Regress, and never chose to do so again.
When Lewis turned to writing for children and his earlier science fiction books, he could have easily chosen allegory. Instead, he wrote fairy tale and space romances. J.R.R. Tolkien hated allegory “in all its manifestations” (see his 2nd edition foreword to The Fellowship…
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Advent
12 December 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire
Dear Friends and Family,
Well, I’m behind on sharing this news by a few days, but for those who don’t already know: I am completely done with my PhD! In many ways I still can’t believe. In other ways, this is an unbelievably underwhelming time for me. It’s difficult to get too excited since everything has happened while I’ve been physically removed from the University of Nottingham (where I did my PhD).
Last time I wrote you was right after I had passed my Viva. Since then, I had to resubmit my thesis with all the necessary corrections in October. I found out in mid-November that my corrections had been accepted. I was overjoyed at that news. There was a not-so-small part of me that worried I had not done enough, but evidently I had, for Rev. Dr. Alison Milbank (my internal examiner) emailed me a few days before the official word, telling me that she was happy to pass my thesis with the corrections I had made. Once I got the official word I had to get my thesis printed and bound and submitted to the appropriate people at the University. That was slightly difficult to manage from the States, but in the end it got done and I graduated, in absentia, on 8 December 2015, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.
As I said, I am overjoyed, but it has been a strange process. In a way, it has been a bit like becoming a husband or a father for me. That is, it is something that comes on gradually with new complexities at each stage. When does one become a father, after all? Is it when you find out your wife is pregnant? Is it when the baby is born? Or what about becoming a husband, after all, the process starts when you begin dating your spouse and changes once you become engaged, and changes again during the wedding ceremony, and changes once again on your wedding night. Becoming a doctor has been something like that. Was I a doctor when I passed my viva? Or when my corrections were accepted? Or when I graduated? And let’s not forget all the writing that went on before that, like dating before marriage, or having sex before conception. Becoming a doctor, of course, is not exactly the same as becoming a father or a husband, but the process, the gradualness of slowly passing stages that further your steps toward the end goal, that is the same.
Whatever the case, I am, unequivocally, and irrevocably, Dr. David Russell Mosley. I thank you all for your support, for your love, prayers, and interest during this process and while I wrote this blog, occasionally updating you on what I was doing toward getting my doctorate.
A final piece of news: As you already know, I am publishing a work of fiction with Wipf and Stock Publishers.
I am also pleased to announce, though this has been the case for some time, that I will also be publishing my thesis
, Being Deified: Poetry and Fantasy on the Path to God, with Fortress Press in their Emerging Scholars series.
In light of all this good news, I could still use your prayers. I am still applying for jobs, teaching theology at the undergraduate and/or graduate level(s), but have not landed one yet. Please pray that one of the jobs I have already applied for, or, if not one of those, then one I will apply for in the near future, will come through and that I will be employed at an academic institution for the 2016/2017 school year. This is, perhaps, ambitious as many of my colleagues from Nottingham and elsewhere who have finished before me are still looking for work. Nevertheless, I pray for it for myself and for them and I ask that you do the same. In the mean time, I will continue to apply for jobs, write letters to you all here, and attempt to move forward with some new research topics. Until next time I remain,
Sincerely yours,
Dr. David Russell Mosley
Advent
3 December 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire
Dear Friends and Family,
As I continue to apply for jobs, applying for nearly three for every one I don’t get, I can’t help but reflect on what it means to be a theologian. Whenever I meet new people and they ask the inevitable question, “What do you do?” I always end up answering, somewhat bashfully, “I’m a theologian.” It was easier when I was still working on my PhD. I could just tell them that I was a PhD student in theology. But I’m not anymore, and that complicates the matter. After all, I don’t have a full-time job teaching theology. So I’m not a professional theologian in the sense that I get paid regularly, and enough to make a living, to teach theology. I remember in undergrad there was a professor in our seminary, Dr. Bob Lowery, who wrote once concerning what it means to be a scholar. Did it mean publishing journal articles, writing many books? Did it mean having a PhD or a teaching position at a university? Or did it mean being something more, something about being driven to learn and research regardless of whether one had met all the “proper requirements.” Dr. Lowery seemed to think it was the latter far more than the former. He thought that being a scholar was something much deeper than having a PhD and writing books and teaching at a university. But this is precisely what causes me to wonder what it means to be a theologian. I have academic training, the highest you can get, but does that make me a theologian? I think the answer is both yes and no. Let me explain.
Evagrius of Pontus, a fourth century theologian who is sometimes frowned upon in Western Christian circles has written, “If you are a theologian, you will pray truly. And if you pray truly, you are a theologian” (Treatise on Prayer, 61). So there is a sense in which every Christian is called to be a theologian. Being a theologian, in this sense, is one who is dedicated to life in Christ and the contemplation of the Holy Trinity. Even that can sound daunting to many lay Christians, but if you pray, you are a theologian, you are engaging in theology because you are engaging in thinking about and even talking to God. Yet even within this understanding, there are clearly some who spend more of their time engaged with thinking about and communicating both about and to God. There are levels, gradations, of being this kind of theologian. But these gradations are not inherently tied to education. No one would deny that St. Anthony was a great theologian, but he wrote no books and had little to no formal theological training. Nevertheless, St. Athanasius views Anthony as his superior both in the faith generally and as a theologian, which is why St. Anthony was appealed to during the Council of Nicaea.
So if every Christian is a theologian and this isn’t necessarily tied to formal education, what does it mean when I call myself a theologian in the same way a cleric might call him or herself a priest, a vicar, a parson, a preacher, or a pastor? Here I have to introduce the language of vocation. Today vocation has typically come to mean training in skilled labor. This is why we have “vocational schools” which train people to be electricians, plumbers, mechanics, etc. (worthy and wonderful things). Other times it simply means the career path one has chosen. But originally, to have a vocation meant to have a calling from God to a certain way of life (the priesthood, monasticism, etc.). The word vocation itself comes from the Latin vocare: to call. I believe that I have a vocation to be a theologian, and this required for me formal and academic training.
I remember having some interactions with a former student at the University of Nottingham. He had trouble with some of the theologians in our department who often focused on issues he determined not strictly theological but philosophical (that’s as specific as I care to be, but I’m sure many of you can figure out the kind of stuff I’m talking about). He once told me that he’d rather pray in the gutter with me than read the work of some of our theologians. The Philokalia was his primary guide for what it meant to be a theologian. I don’t want to denigrate some of these opinions. Praying with the downtrodden is an immensely holy thing to do, and there are worse guides for one’s spiritual and theological life than the Philokalia. However, my issue was that this student had no room for academic training which included philosophy and critiquing modern society. He had no real room for theology as an academic discipline. And while I am sympathetic that there is a kind of theology which does not require academic training, and firmly believe that there is another kind that does.
One of my PhD supervisors, Simon Oliver, has two sayings that I often return to. He says that we know we are a royal priesthood because there are priests, that is that there are a class of people set aside for the priestly office. Similarly, he says that we know the world is sacramental because there are sacraments. The particular instantiation of the latter, priests and sacraments, allows us to understand the general instantiation of the former, royal priesthood and the sacramental nature of the cosmos. I think this applies to theologians as well. We know that all Christians are called to be theologians because there are theologians. We need people set apart to spend their lives studying theology, studying the deep things of God and his creation, for in this way can we understand that all Christians are called to some level of being theologians.
I do want to make one caveat here before I conclude. I want to return to Evagrius. Prayer, that is an active “devotional” life, and by that I mean a life of prayer and contemplation, a life of worship of the Holy Trinity, is necessary to be a theologian of any stripe. If that is missing, then one is certainly not a theologian, at least not in the Christian understanding of that word. One might study religions or a particular religion or even doctrines, but if one is not living a life of worship, participating in the rites and rituals of the Church (whichever tradition) then one is not a theologian. Another former professor of mine once told me that he never trusted, and nor should I, a theologian who doesn’t pray. I think there is much wisdom in this and the history of Christianity would certainly agree.
So, if you and I have never met and one day we do and you ask me what I do, I will tell you that I am a theologian. It has become as fundamental to me as being a husband and a father. Part of that is simply because I am a Christian and part of it is because I have trained and worked and continue to read and study and write. I am a theologian. I am a theologian because I pray. I am a theologian because I have studied to be one and continue to study. It is my calling, my vocation. At least for me, but I think more broadly as well, this is what it means to be a theologian.
Sincerely,
David
Ordinary Time
27 November 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire
Dear Friends and Family,
Well, another few weeks has gone by and I haven’t posted anything. This hasn’t been due to a lack of ideas, or even a lack of events in my own life on which I could write. Instead, I think a lot of it come from sloth. Sloth and getting out of the habit of writing, anyway. You see, I’m a stay-at-home dad for the time being. And most of the time I love it. I love getting to cuddle with my boys and watch them grow. They’d probably love it better if skills went beyond bread and jam, bread and eggs, or bread, ham, and cheese. But still, with two 18 month-olds running around, getting extra work done can be difficult. Sadly, this isn’t because I’m too busy chasing after them, not most of the time anyway, but because it’s too easy to just sit and watch TV or sit and read. These would be OK, the latter at least, if when they went down for their naps I exercised or wrote or something. But so often I don’t. Writing while they’re awake has its own problems too. Little fingers like touching computers and when they don’t, the little mouths attached to them start crying. But still these are just excuses. I could probably find a way to work around this, to train my kids not to grab at my computer while I’m working and still spend time with them. So what’s the problem? Getting out of the habit.
As many of you know, since I wrote to you about it, I’m publishing a novel (or Faërie Romance as I like to call it) with Wipf and Stock Publishers. What you might not know is that I wrote that book while also blogging and working on my PhD thesis (which is also being published by Fortress Press). Just on my thesis and novel alone, not counting conference papers or blog posts or letters or journal entries, in the three years I was resident in Nottingham I wrote over 150000 words or close to 400-500 pages. Add in everything else and I probably hit thousands of pages (not all of it good, admittedly). You see, for me at least, and I think for most writers, writing begets more writing. I had a routine of writing in a few different journals, reading books for research, pleasure, and enrichment, writing letters to friends, blog posts, my thesis and more. All of these outlets for writing made me want to write more. So, once I finished my novel, and then my thesis, and stay-at-home parenting took over more and more of my time, I started writing in the other places less and less. Hence my relative silence here. Once I stopped writing in some areas, it became harder to write in others.
Virtue and vice have firm roots in habit. Vices are bad habits we engage in, they become second nature to us, so much so that often we don’t even recognise temptation or the choice to give in. There is only one way to rid ourselves of vices (with the aid of God’s grace), and that is to replace them with their corresponding virtues. These virtues must become habits replacing the vicious habits. I mention virtues and vices because their inherent relationship to habit has been precisely my problem. Vices like sloth (and others I won’t mention here) have gotten in the way. I have not simply gotten out of good habits (though some might contend that my writing here is not one) but have fallen into bad ones. That needs to change. I must pursue the virtuous life. For only then can I co-operate with the grace of God and work toward my deification. This might sound strange, writing for a blog doesn’t necessarily lead one to deification. But writing for me is part of that process and the only way I can get back into the habit of writing is to write, to replace sloth with diligence. So, I am committing myself to write in my journal every day; to write letters when I have some to write; to post here twice a week; and to begin work on a new research project; all while I work on preparing my two works for publication.
So, I have a request for you my correspondents, please help keep me accountable (a word with which I have some hang-ups). Feel free to ask me about my writing habits, clamor for new content out loud––I know you keep it bottled up, let it out. Being a father should not keep me from caring for my children and fulfilling my vocation of being a theologian, help me make sure it doesn’t. Give me advice, tell me about your own struggles, ask me to write about something, do anything you think might help me keep writing. I’ll let you know what works and what doesn’t. In the meantime, look out for two new posts next week.
Sincerely,
David
Edwyn during chemotherapy.
Ordinary Time
Feast of the Holy Cross
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire
Dear Friends and Family,
I had planned to write this letter before I realised today was the feast of the Holy Cross. I feel strange using a term like providential when it comes to writing this letter on a blog that is really of no great, or even medium, consequence. Still, it is at the very least fitting and so I will praise God for the fittingness of today’s topic and today’s feast day.
While I was never a strong devotee of either, I have been a fan of comedian Stephen Colbert since his days on The Daily Show and later The Colbert Report. Despite, and sometimes because, of the persona he put on, Colbert has had a way of getting to the heart of the matter with his interviewees that I have greatly appreciated. Add to this Colbert’s love of Tolkien and his faith and while I may not always agree with him, I have a profound respect for him. So I was happy to hear that he would be taking over The Late Show since it would mean the real Colbert, to an extent anyway, finally coming out and I have not been disappointed. Colbert has recently spoken twice on the subject of suffering and it is to this subject I wish to turn.
In an interview given to GQ magazine almost a month ago, Colbert and the interviewer come to the story of greatest tragedy in Colbert’s life to date, the death of his father and brothers. Colbert says of this incident that “‘I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.’” When asked to follow this up, Colbert responds, with tears in his eyes, with a quotation from a letter written by J. R. R. Tolkien, “What punishments of God are not gifts?” Colbert is living out the reality of Romans 8.28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” God is not always the direct source of suffering in our lives, but he turns them to good, just as he turned the most seemingly evil moment in human existence, the death of Christ, into Good Friday because Christ rose again on Easter Sunday. We too can say of that moment that we love the thing we wish most had not happened.
So, imagine my surprise, after having been made aware of this interview, that a few episodes into his run as host of The Late Show Colbert would go on to interview Vice President Joe Biden. Now, there’s a good chance many of my readers may not be fans of Joe Biden’s politics and I’m not asking that we separate out politics from faith. Nevertheless, I want to draw attention to this interview, especially the first part you can watch below.
Colbert asks Biden about the suffering he has endured first in the death of his first wife and daughter and then in the death of his son, Beau. Note the two, or possibly three, things Joe said he relied on. First was the support of his family, particularly it would seem in the context of his Roman Catholic faith (Colbert asked him how his faith helped him through these tragedies). After family came the rituals of his faith, the Mass, the Rosary, those rituals we can go through regardless of how we feel at a given moment. Biden even notes that his faith at times left him. All that would be left were the rituals, and these were aids in returning him to faith. Now Biden next mentions the theology of his faith. I don’t think this is actually separable from the rituals of his faith for the liturgy informs the theology as much as the theology informs this liturgy (this is true of lower churches as well as higher churches, though not always to their benefit).
I too have gone through some suffering. I have not had to experience the death of a loved one, not yet (both of my grandparents on my mother’s side have passed but I was too young to be much effected by one and the other was in many ways a blessing to cause too much suffering). However, as many of you know, one my twin sons was diagnosed with cancer when he was 8 weeks old. The cancer is now gone and has been for nearly a year. I bring it up, however, to note that like Vice President Biden I found solace in the rituals and theology of my faith. And like Colbert I have already begun to see some ways that God is turning this moment of suffering into joy. You can view an interview my wife and I gave on this subject here along with an interview with another member of our church who has seen even greater suffering than we have: On the Grow: Suffering. (Our interview begins at about the 5’33” mark).
Here’s the truth I’ve learned from all of this. There are times when we will suffer, it’s part of being human in a fallen cosmos as well as part of being a Christian. We can survive this suffering, however, when we take solace in our faith, remembering that Christ suffered and died to defeat all death and suffering. We can take solace in the rituals of our faith when our belief is fleeting. But most of all, we must so align ourselves with God’s will that we can have joy in those moments we truly wish had never happened. I wish my son had never had cancer, but I can love that it happened for the ways it has grown the faith of my family, my own faith, and how it may touch the lives of others in ways I cannot conceive and will never know. To be clear, this isn’t an argument for why there is suffering in this world. I’m not terribly interested in theodicies. Rather, this is simply how I think Christians are meant to respond to suffering and how God responds to our suffering. I hope those of you who are suffering now or have suffered can take some solace in that.
Yours,
David
Ordinary Time
9 September 2015
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire
Dear Friends and Family,
Today I finally read an article posted on 1 September entitled “The Social Injustice Done to Adjunct Faculty: A Call to Arms.” In the article Randall Smith, who is the Scanlan Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, argues that the adjuncts are being severely mistreated. Smith notes that the origins of the adjunct professor are to be found in honored members of a community coming in to teach one-off classes for which they are particularly qualified to teach: for instance a business executive teaching a class on business management or a long-time clergyman teaching a class on pastoral care. These people were paid an honorarium because the work they’ve done requires some kind of remuneration but because they already work full-time jobs, typically with benefits, elsewhere they don’t need to be paid their normal salary nor be offered benefits like the other members of the faculty. This is no longer the case, at least not exclusively. Now, most adjuncts are people like me, qualified, or nearly so, academics who have attained our terminal degrees but haven’t been able to find full-time academic work.
You should read the whole article and the call to arms at the end, for me it’s quite moving. After all, I have such a little voice in these conversations. I have no one to represent me, to speak for me and others like me to the universities at which we teach. Now, I should say that things aren’t so bad for me as they are for others. For starters, at the university for which I currently teach one class online their tuition rate is much lower and one student spends less per credit hour than I make, unlike the examples in the article. Also, when I teach the class again this Spring, I’ll make a bit more since I have my PhD now (or will have it more firmly after I finish my corrections for next month). That said, even in these slightly better circumstances, my class, which had 11 students made the university $9570 and only cost them $1800 for my pay (I’m sure it cost them more than that for the web developers with whom I worked and fees related to that; they also paid me separately, and rather well, for developing the course, but that’s a one time fee, I won’t be making it again in the Spring since I’m teaching the same course). Even if you add the $3000 they paid me for writing and recording the lectures and otherwise developing the class, they still gained $4770 and can now use this class with other online instructors, paying them either $1800 or $2100 depending on whether or not they have a PhD, for as long the university and the digital recordings exist. I don’t say this to denigrate the people for whom I work. I’m glad for the opportunity and mostly had a good time teaching the class. Nevertheless, there’s a systemic problem here when people like myself, and many of my former colleagues from my PhD program, have to take these little one off jobs that don’t pay us enough to support ourselves let alone the families that so many of us have. (Another person in a similar boat to mine is Artur Rosman who wrote on a similar issue on Labor Day: “The Anxiety of the Freshly Unemployed Man on Labor Day“).
So, things are hard, not just for me, not even primarily for me. I’ve been very fortunate in receiving aid of various kinds from friends and especially family. I don’t want to be a downer, to be that guy who just sits around complaining about how bad things are for me or people like me. It’s not typically in my nature. But I feel like we need to draw our attention to this issue and others like it. We need to start thinking about the changes that need to be made on a societal level. There have to be solutions to these problems. Perhaps a kind of guild system as Smith suggests is one way of avoiding poverty-stricken academics (for those who have read the work of John Milbank, you’ll know that this would appeal to someone like him). Perhaps its time for parents and students to ask more out of their universities, but not more sports centers or hotels, or greater focus on how x degree is going to get me jobs y or z, but instead a better focus on the actual teaching and forming of the students.
To end on a lighter note, I want to share part of another article I read today, “7.5 Tips to Survive and Thrive in (a Jesuit) College.” I’m a big fan of Jesuit schools, at least on the philosophical level, because I agree with their notions concerning holistic education. In nearly every cover letter I send out I write some version of this sentence, “I am dedicated to the notion that education, particularly theological, but all education, is intended to help form human beings, to prepare them for the Beatific Vision and to participate in the transformation of this world.” The end of education isn’t to get a job, but to be formed as a human being. So let me share with you this quotation from Tim O’Brien who definitely seems to agree with me:
Who you are today, and who you become in these four years, matters a great deal to us as Jesuits. Because we believe that who you are and who you become matters for this world of ours. Because we believe that who you are and who you become matters greatly to God.
Yours,
David
Letters from the Edge of Elfland 