Virtual Reading Meeting

I remember going out to Reading Meeting for church every week, on Thursday nights.  There was no possibility of doing anything else on any Thursday evening. It was Meeting Night.  And I remember how it sounded.  I couldn't tune it out, because my brain doesn't work like that.

Now, a former Taylor-Hales Exclusive went to great pains to make a webpage which generated random gobbleygook which sounded very much like what went on in Taylor Hales bible discussions led by their global Man of God, Bruce Hales.  I found it hilarious and terrifying.

Yesterday, for some reason, I couldn't stop turning into something that sounded much more...familiar.  Now I've copied and altered his work (with permission) so it sounds like what I grew up with.  Share my pain.  Click here to try it.  It will make endless pages of randomized "bible discussion."  It sounds like:

VIRTUAL READING IN CYBERSPACE
Mon Aug 29 2016

Ezekiel 5: 4 - 34; Ruth 4: 31 - 33

H.G.H. I was thinking further of this matter of the holy scriptures in Ezekiel 5. We often read about it. I think the tenor of it represents something quite distinctive. I think the writer set out for us the whole issue of what has come out in the brother's meetings. I think it’s truly special the way the spirit of prophecy requires obedience to the evil one in Ruth 4. And I think the kingdom of God is where we haven't held fast, you know, we’ve looked to the sisters and voices speaking out in opposition to the truth of the One Body; we haven’t kept our gaze upon the current state of affairs. But it is an interesting question as to what is seen and brother Hayhoe's ministry; these two should be clearly distinguished, lest we fall into error. That is brought out in this day of failure and ruin in J.N.D.'s comments on Titus 1. So it's really meant to be the assembly, I think. It's held out to us in Habakkuk as it were as to the world I think, isn’t it? He says, from the time a true Chrisitian is over, from that very moment - what does it say? Then we are told that something seriously not right encourages authoritative ministry given that what is left up to personal exercise represents true submission to the saints in a very beautiful way.

C.C.T.Jr. Are these thoughts in keeping with saints who are now in glory through references to water, representing the Word of God. as our beloved brother Bucchanan made so clear to us?

G.A.H. That's so important, isn't it? I was just thinking over what you were just telling us about saints who are now in glory and the whole business and these thoughts. That is brought out in this dispensation of grace in J.N.D.'s comments on Ruth 3. And then what it is to know saints who are now in glory for God's Earthly people, which has been replaced for us with various things that come up and which we must delve into the Word regarding today. So there’s these thoughts, things, the one surely being a type of the other. Then a local matter has in mind saints who are now in glory, in conjunction with our assembly actions.

W.S.L. Did the man in Ezekiel 5 provide the spiritual mind in connection with the point at issue, in this day of failure and ruin?

G.H.H. Yes, yes, that's very precious, that's just what I was thinking about. There's a clear connection, I think, with occurences of the little word 'but' in this passage. Do not let anybody tell you that it's through the spiritual mind that we become established. What's been said, of course, the issue every time in the spiritual mind is one assembly recently. The Lord will come and find adultery and those who have needed to fall under assembly discipline (Ruth 4), so that would add to the thought of the Two Witnesses of Revelation in this verse. And I think the spiritual mind is where we haven't held fast, you know, we’ve looked to the bread and cup and saints who are now in glory; we haven’t kept our gaze upon the recovery of the divine ground of gathering.

H.J.M. Would this perhaps be speaking of separation from evil privately and what is an issue of assembly authority being our nightly prayers?

G.H.H. Yes. It's an area where God has called out, you might say, ungodliness for Himself. So it's really meant to be separation from evil, I think. It's held out to us in 2 Thessalonians in a profound way as to the basis for testimony I think, isn’t it? You'd like to think that true separation from evil, the divine ground of gathering goes forward with the earnest of the Spirit, you'd like to think that the flock alludes to the light of the assembly, in a sense. And then what it is to know separation from evil for God's Earthly people, which has been replaced for us with an Ephesian condition today. So there’s them that cause divisions, worldly ideas, the one surely being a type of the other.


...and so on.

Subversion

I'm writing this because I'm thinking about it.  Right now.  I don't have a lot of finished thoughts about it.  So I'll just think "out loud" on here and maybe I'll get some comments on the post that add to my thoughts.  I imagine this will get boring.  So, if you can't deal with that go look at some cute kitten videos or pictures of food or something.

Sets and Subsets
I grew up in Western, European-descended, North American, Canadian society.  I went to the schools provided by that society.  I turned out educated and well fed.  Employed, eventually, too.

At the same time, I grew up in a sub-society, a smaller niche bit of that Western, North American society.  I grew up in fundamentalist Christian society too.  The kind of fundamentalist Christian sub-society that wants to remove various bits of larger, North American society from our weekly lives.  Things like music, television, fashion, slang and movies of various kinds. Not raising members to be Christ-like outsiders in Western society so much as insiders in their own sub-group.

And I also grew up in a smaller niche-fragment of the fundamentalist Christian sub-society; I grew up in what is called the Plymouth Brethren movement, which is  a group of Christians which removed various bits of the larger, Fundamentalist culture from our weekly lives.  Anything but King James bibles, anything but women being silent and uninvolved, any hymns written after the Victorian era, any use of colloquial language in talking about or to God, and so on.

And I grew up in a smaller sub-set of the Plymouth Brethren movement too.  I grew up in an exclusive, or "closed" Brethren group, which wanted to limit (unofficial) membership to people who had likewise cut themselves almost entirely off from the rest of fundamentalist Christian culture, and from the actions and events of local churches.

And I grew up in an assembly, and in a family, which wanted to keep things as they'd always been in our sub-sub-sub group.  Which wanted to put up an unassailable wall against change.  And we did.  And people left or we kicked them out.  Mostly because they wanted to include more stuff, or wanted to allow change.  Sometimes because they mocked or spoke out against the Powers That Were among us.  Because they were seen as subversive.

Subversion in Western Society

Now I can come to my main topic.  Let's zoom back out to Western, European-descended, North American society.  I attended the schools provided by that society, rather than attending a special fundamentalist school, or doing homeschooling or an online fundamentalist curriculum.  And here's the thing:

School is largely about social conformity.  No farting.  Shower regularly.  You can't do school in your pjs and slippers.  You need to have a shirt on.  You have to show up to the right room with the right teacher at pre-arranged times of day.  You can't just do math when you feel like doing math.  Attendance is taken.  Bells go off.  It's really very, very structured, and good luck changing the schedule even slightly, unless you are running the entire school, if not the school board itself.

But: there is in my job a very big place given to dissenting voices.  Not mine, certainly.  To the ones in the books.  Literary attempts to subvert the very system itself.  So, in school you have to show up to that room for that hour with that teacher, who has been encouraged to teach, say George Orwell, or Mark Twain, or Ralph Ellison, or Margaret Atwood or Harper Lee or John Steinbeck or Shakespeare.  Who are very, very subversive, if you read them.   And the thing is that literature and art are almost always subversive.  That's why the books were even written to begin with.  And they don't merely thumb their noses at The System which keeps the trains arriving on time and the electricity and wifi on, and the garbage collected on Wednesday morning.  They create works designed to directly challenge it in insightful ways. Question it. Indict it.

So, the most common thing of all is for an artist (I am most familiar with novels and short stories) to see things that are going by seemingly unquestioned by the folks in a society, and to showcase exaggerated versions of them in art, so people will think about them.  George Orwell isn't impressed by the level of transparency and truthfulness of the British government and the BBC news service, so he creates 1984, in which people construct "truth" out of whatever lies serve the system.  He creates a fictional world in which past news stories (and history textbooks) can be edited after the fact, so the past can be remembered and taught and talked about and learned from, in a changeable, negotiable, politically expedient way.  So there are no awkward questions or complications.  And people who aren't 100% "on board" vanish.  Like under Stalin, in the real world.

I read and teach books like 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale, and movies like V for Vendetta.  Works which present an exaggerated view of the authors' fears and problems with the society they saw around them at time of writing.  And I find it comforting that the very System which is so very, very powerful, and which forms the backbone of so much of what we see around us, is paying me to say "question the system.  Think for yourself. Find freedom. Find joy.  Don't be manipulated."

I have occasionally had administrators and colleagues who were of the opinion that literature studied in schools shouldn't be as dark and paranoid as it tends to be, but should instead perhaps present idealized, positive views of human nature and society.  Optimism as literature.  But these dear tykes have, fortunately, been very much in the minority.  Knew they were up against Pretty Much Everyone.  I mean, on the one hand you have the idealized speech of someone who's collecting money or votes (which isn't what literature is all about), and on the other, you have a troubled artist, questioning how far short the reality of it all seems to have fallen.  And the latter goes on to be recognized as literature.  Because truly creative people are generally troubled.  If you're at peace, you don't need to give birth to anything new.  So you don't.  If you're troubled, you create things which are sometimes very hard to justify and you don't know why.

A Troubled Person
I am that troubled person, rather than a party-PR person.  I am not selling sunshine and rainbows.  I have not recently read a book with a list of surefire ways to make life rock, that I am now presenting.  I am not telling you that going gluten-free or living off the grid, or removing all "negative people" from your life, or getting acupuncture or taking mindfulness or success-focused seminars are where you should put your faith.  Instead, I am always looking around and I find I am feeling troubled by what I see.  And I'm not even going so far as collecting pictures of animals tortured to test cosmetics and then posting pictures of their anguished bodies on social media.  I am not spouting daily rhetoric about how bad the patriarchy, and entitlement and privilege are.  But some things find their way to me and they trouble me.

And I think a lot of people are troubled, just as I am.  It seems like none of us can put all of our faith in, say, a political party, or a new diet plan, or seminar or whatever anymore.  We've lost our ability to put our whole faith in anything.  We're not expecting the world to rock.  We're open to the idea that almost everything and everyone sucks, mostly.  And the only thing that scares us still is people who want the world to proceed as if we can trust most people and things, as if "things" are going in a mainly positive direction, living our lives as if modern thinkers have most things figured out, and that hospitals, prisons, courts, schools and government are all going to be better now.

Those people terrify us.  You put a Koolaid-drinking, smiling, agenda-pushing positivenik in charge of any of all that, and we know immediately, we are not in good hands.  We are not safe from any of the chaotic things that these folks are blind to.  Hiring a blind bus driver may be very inclusive and tolerant, but letting him drive the bus doesn't make the kids safer.  Doesn't mean the bus is now "headed in a more positive direction." And optimism is the most popular form of blindness ever invented.  No one wants to be supervised by a dog who scampers off every time someone throws a stick and urges him to chase it.

Also terrifyingly popular in the modern world is simply not letting anyone steer, and trusting that if we push the gas to the floor, the bus is obviously going to end up somewhere good, because you know... forward momentum, excitement, positivity and enthusiasm.

Doing Subversion

We have subversive messages in all of our art and much of our entertainment.  Voices saying the emperor has no clothes.  We mock politicians.  We have novels with chilling depictions of tyrants needing to stamp out voices of dissent.  We have TV and movies with black ops being carried out by branches of government so obscure said government doesn't have clearance to know about them.  And we make kid's versions of this, with Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Hunger Games and countless others, allowing kids to imagine worlds in which, yes, you can't necessarily trust the government, the teachers, the parents, the neighbors.  Because they're selfish, flawed human beings who don't have all the facts and sometimes have bad days.  And putting that stuff in the imaginative fiction makes it feel real.  Makes us believe the robots and magic wands.  (The least believable thing about the rebooted Star Trek is how supportive and understanding Kirk's superiors are.  They're mostly there to help him look cool and reward his ignoring of their rules.)

But what also scares me is when the edge is dulled from what should be that slicing commentary on "what is" in creating those "what could be" artistic works.  When instead of targeting real stuff and doing fine-tuned surgery, we just endlessly club the Body Politic with a hollow plastic bludgeon.  Like clowns.  And worse yet, when we get told "you can't joke about that."  When voices of satire and subversion are silenced.  Because this is serious.  Sense of humour is the first casualty, right after sense of proportion.

When things get serious, you need humour more than ever.  Killing it right at that crucial point is beyond suspect.  And doing a childish, sloppy job of humour about serious things is just about as bad.

Don Miller used to write books that were enjoyed by folks who thought that the fundamentalist Christian niche of Western society wasn't getting everything right.  And something always used to annoy me.  If Miller ever wanted to joke about or seriously point at anything at all in that sub-group, he always sounded afraid of judgment.  Of being misunderstood.  Of being shunned.  He seemed apologetic.  He seemed to have to say "Now, I'm not saying there aren't churches who aren't doing absolutely wonderful stuff, or that all pastors are getting this wrong, or anything like that at all. I've attended some truly wonderful churches.  I've sat under some truly amazing pastors.  I just had coffee with one, in fact."  It's like he felt he needed to say all of that before making any serious points.

Yesterday I saw this video of a guy named Ben, seeming so apologetic to point out something that mattered to him about church camps and whether or not they made most people feel included.  I saw how awkward he seemed to feel even talking about that very important topic.  And I remembered Don Miller.  And I thought something:

George Orwell didn't bother with all that tentative awkwardness and apology.  Alan Moore certainly doesn't take the time to do that. Margaret Atwood either.  In Western society, from Swift, through Dickens, Austen, and the Brontes on downward, there is a place for the skeptic.  For the artist.  For the whistleblower.  For the satirist.  For the social critic.  For what, in the Old Testament would have been called, the prophet.  People making it possible to view Things from the outside a bit.  To give the opposite viewpoint.  To voice more than the one opinion.  To break the self-indulgent tedium of "positive only."

In 1858, R. M. Ballantyne wrote a children's book called The Coral Island. It presented the delightful idea that if a bunch of schoolboys were stranded on an island without adults, they'd have the most wonderful adventures.  Ralph, with his friends Jack and Peterkin, have a wonderful time, living off the land and eventually triumphing over cannibals and pirates and other romantic menaces. Now William Golding, being a teacher of boys of early teenage years, knowing The Coral Island, must have thought to himself "I teach boys. If they were stranded on an island without adult supervision?  They'd kill each other.  They'd provide all the menace necessary." 

And so he wrote The Lord of the Flies, which culminates in a kiddie-war between a boy named Ralph and one named Jack. Spoilers: Piggy dies without anyone even learning what his real name is.  Probably Peter(kin) I'm guessing.

Not a very "positive" or "inspiring" outlook on human nature.  Also not terribly pro-war, right after the Second World War had just been fought.  But that's what artists (or in this case, high school teachers) do.  They question things perhaps not enough people are questioning.  And a place is made for them. In the case of these authors, a very honored place.  

Devil's Advocate

I'm told that in their endless debates over how exactly to run much of the Western world, the medieval Roman Catholic Church saw a real flaw in place if their debates and planning only covered one viewpoint or strategy or agenda.  Made them one-sided.  Made them blind.  They thought they were serving God, but they could see a weakness in how they were proceeding.  So they appointed a figure, kind of laughingly called the Devil's Advocate.  His job was to make sure no one was missing the Other Side to anything.  Most discussions should have at least two opposite sides to consider.  When we put all of our eggs in the one basket, we're screwed if we trip.  When we walk, we need a leg on each side.

And it terrifies me when we plan and run people's lives in rooms where only one side is allowed.  Whichever side is promising the fastest, simplest, most positive and exciting-sounding success, normally.  Or whichever side is proposing no changes to be made to what is already not terribly workable.  When no one can play devil's advocate.  When no one is allowed to complicate what is clearly a sales pitch.  

Apologizing for Addressing a Second Side

Yesterday, a friend linked me to that video Ben had made, while at a (very) Open Brethren youth camp.  It has a bunch of Ben and another guy (now an Open Brethren pastor) comparing their extensive collections of tattoos, and laughing about how, back in the day, they had real conscience qualms about the dubious role of tattoos in a Christian's life.  About thus "giving the wrong idea" to people in a Christian community such as that one.  And both delighted in having reached a point where even a guy with sleeve tattoos can be an Open Brethren pastor in certain Brethren groups.  Inclusion! Freedom!

But then Ben decides to steal a moment with the camera, and addresses what he calls "the darker side of camp."  And in hushed tones, kind of awkwardly, like he's telling a two year old that everyone dies one day, he starts to talk about how the camp has kind of an unwritten criteria for who "fits" and who doesn't.  Who gets status and power, and who doesn't.  And he admits that he himself could never even try to be the kind of person who would get any status or power in that type of group. That he's allowed to "be there," but he's been sidelined.  Because he's made differently.  And he says resolutely  "And I'm actually cool with that..."

But he's really kinda making this video, isn't he?  To tentatively express not being terribly cool about something.  He's wondering, for every happy adult person who comes back to that camp to drop off their kids, or work there, the camp they attended when they themselves were kids, how many never came back? How many weren't included, and today aren't part of the fundamentalist Christian sub-set anymore, partly for that reason. Partly for having been told by clear social cues that it had been decided they didn't fit.  Wouldn't ever fit.

I have only very occasionally seen comedy created by and about fundamentalist Christians and their groups, which was genuinely funny, truly subversive, actually thought-out, and perhaps to be considered seriously as well as laughed at.  But that's almost never.  And I always hear all that apologetic stuff surrounding it:  "Sorry for saying something that almost sounds a teeny bit critical.  I sure don't mean to suggest that all Christians are horrible Nazis!  Please don't shun me!  I'm a positive person, honest!"

And I feel like, if we were stronger, if we were surer that Who we follow is real and good, we could take that stuff which challenges our assumptions.  We could create that stuff.  We wouldn't be threatened by it.  But I think there's very little subversive stuff, very little Devil's Advocate stuff, very little "well, here's the downside" going on in the fundamentalist Christian subset of our society.  And I'm afraid it's the same in the hospitals, prisons, schools, courts and police stations.  I'm afraid that we live increasingly in a society of "Well, what can you do...?" rather than "What are we going to change?"

Not everything's bad. Not everything needs to change.  But why is informed two-sided debate, let alone change, so scary?  Why do we shout down and treat as enemies, anyone who takes "another" side to an issue?  Why is joking about stuff that's not ideal so polarizing?  Why do we want to club the other side and toss out anyone among our own number who doesn't give full-throated, ringing support of what we're all too unthinkingly continuing to do, over and over?

When did it turn into "Agree with me or we're not friends?"  Into "Say our thing and be positive about it, or we don't talk to one another?"

When we expel devil's advocate views, when we punish and ostracize subversion, when we outlaw "negativity," we aren't safe.  We are helping tyrants. 

Narratives

Narrative (story) is the packaging we use to share the past with others.  The box we use to hand 500 paperclips to someone who needs a few hundred paperclips.  We don't just hand them handfuls of paperclips, one handful after another. We use a box.

Narrative is a box you can use if you're trying to hand someone a decade or two of experiences.

We don't invite someone over and serve them a bowl of flour.  We make the flour into a loaf of bread. Or a cake.  And we choose what goes into it and what doesn't.  Some of us just wants lots of sugar in it.  Others like a bit of lemon or a bit of nutmeg or ginger or cinnamon (bitter-tasting things to go with the sweet).  You can make it with whatever you think "goes."

Narrative is a thing you make, and you decide the exact "mix" of experiences to include. Your narrative is going to "taste" a bit like how you tend to remember things.  Telling someone your narrative is a way for them to experience what things were like for you.

When I wrote "Pharisee" to put my past experiences (and my various current random encounters) with my birth culture into a narrative, I kept hearing people say they'd "forgot" about all of "that stuff."  Some found it deeply upsetting to revisit their own pasts.  It really made me wonder how people could somehow forget so many things. Forget their own childhoods. Forget their own experiences.

But every now and then, randomly reminded by something or other, I find I am thinking of someone or something I haven't thought of for a long time.  Something or someone that hasn't ever been part of my narrative in any of my books. And I realize it's not so much that we really forget things, as that we just haven't slotted certain events and people into the narrative we have formed about our pasts. So when we tell or call to mind that narrative, those people and things just aren't in it. There are "cut scenes."  Some stuff hit the cutting room floor.  Stuff we still have. Stuff that can be edited back in to provide a broader, more accurate telling of events.

So I don't really think it's mainly that I remember more things than my fellow Brethren; it just seems like I've taken the time to construct a bigger, broader narrative, which more interrelated things fit into, than most people have bothered to attempt.

I've had more time to think than a lot of people have. Having time to think has always been a big priority of mine. Having summers mostly "off" helps.  Not having kids will make it possible, too.

So I did. (Think.) Made the narrative of my recent book. Made it as big as I possibly could. Kept looking for more and more people and things that all had to fit into it. Tried to include people and events and ideas that didn't fit easily. Changed the shape and flow of it to include them.

Because everybody's got a narrative to try to make sense of their past. Some people's narratives are only one sentence long.  Mine was approaching 1000 pages by the time I pulled the plug on adding (even) more stuff.

I'm sure to some people, it looks like I made one of those crazy conspiracy/serial killer walls you see in TV shows, connecting a bunch of things that maybe aren't really connected outside of that crazy person's head.

But I believe the connections I made in my "Pharisee" narrative are valid. I believe my narrative goes a long way toward making a certain amount of sense of all the crazy, random stuff that went on. Still, this gives me insight into how people view projects like "Pharisee." It explains the look I see in their eyes when I talk to them.

I see that look still, nowadays, when I get to look at people's eyes when we interact. If they will give eye contact when we do.  Like maybe they haven't quite decided whether they're talking to an obsessive crazy person doing utterly inexplicable things no one should, or to someone who knows things they don't really want to think about much.

The former is more comforting for many to believe.  Because the latter might mean expanding and rebuilding your own narrative to include more people and things.  But if you just say "no" over and over, and shake your head, you can leave your narrative alone entirely.  Bad people stay bad.  Good people stay good.  Things are how you see them.  Simple. Over. 

I remember a few years back, one still "in" guy had heard that my quick explanation of the 1991 Ottawa/Nepean division was that traditionalists and modernizers were fighting over how Meeting was going to go.
(Over "King James only" and praying with "you and your" and using modern hymns, and over the traditional "one right place/divine ground of gathering" doctrine and so on.)

     He asked me, "Is that really what you think it was all about?!" 

     So my response was: "Tell me one other thing that it was also about..."
     He had no response whatsoever to give me at that point or afterward. No narrative to relate. He just wanted to object to mine.

But it showed me that the story I had made, the narrative to explain the 1991 division, was one quite foreign to his way of looking at it. Maybe to him the whole thing was an utterly inexplicable pool of chaos that can never be resolved. And my attempts to explain it are silly or insane.  I'm not sure, of course.

Or maybe his story is a simple one with "us," the good guys, valiantly fighting off and driving out "them."  The barbarian, Mongol hordes who had somehow infiltrated "us" and who were seeking to destroy our precious community. Because they hate our freedom? Our close relationship with Jesus? Our scriptural correctness?   You can make the narrative whatever you want.  But in the end, "we" always seem to be victorious. And we all went out to Meeting happily ever after?

I don't know if that's this guy's narrative. I assume he has one.  He didn't share his with me, though I'd just shared mine with the world.  He just wants to object to mine. To ridicule it.  To try to chide me out of it.

In a story like the one I've imagined for Mr. "Is that really what you think...?"  it is clear I just don't fit in that story.  Anywhere at all. I wasn't seeking to modernize anything in the 90s. I wasn't trying to destroy anything in there.  I didn't contribute to the turmoil or help cause the division.  I didn't leave when all the people left. I wasn't kicked out until much later. And I was kicked out.  I didn't leave.  I didn't do anything that hurt anyone or anything when I was in there. 

Not unless you count the fact that the man the next Ottawa division blew up around supposedly cried at my mock outreach pamphlet.  And I don't count that.  I think that dude's fine.  Just fine.

In similar fashion, the idea that people who seek out my narrative, dip into it, and find their own narrative to be missing a whole bunch of pieces and how they all connect?  The idea that they can then claim that this uncomfortable feeling, the one they feel once they've heard a bit of my narrative, as I name and label all of these pieces and how they connect is me "hurting" them?  I don't buy that either. If it's as simple as you say, your narrative should tear mine to shreds.  Mine should be revealed as crazy, misguided, and missing important things.  And I should be able to see myself in your narrative with a clear "You Are Here" arrow.

But I don't fit in a whole lot of people's narratives. Unless possibly as the crazy guy with the conspiracy wall.  Trying to make sense of the past, instead of leaving it alone and risking repeating it endlessly.  And that's their narrative, not mine. They can cast me any way they like.  They can even cast me as "The Most Bitter Wronged Brethren Brother Who Ever Claimed To Be Right About Something."  Whatever works.

Loving "Across" Is Hard

Growing up, our family wasn’t the best at showing love.  We were, after all, a Plymouth Brethren, middle-class, Canadian family from Ontario.  Not known for warm, effusive outgoing affection, really.  Of course we had as much love inside us as most folks, but we really didn’t know how to let that out, much of the time.

One thing you couldn’t miss: we loved animals.  Infants. Old people.  People who needed our help.  All that was obvious.  We had a lot of family pets and a hobby farm, and we lavished pretty much all of our affection on those miscellaneous kittens, puppies, gerbils, calves, piglets and lambs.  And people’s kids and old “shut in” folks. 

We doted on babies and small children.  Anything too young to disagree with us, or be willful or rebellious or disrespectful to us, really.  Anything young enough to really need us.  We cooed and oohed and ahhed over them.

And really old people.  We went and visited them, and took them food and sat with them and listened to them for what seemed to my young brain to be centuries at a time.  If they’d grown old enough to really be lonely and needy, to be frail and sick and helpless, this melted our hearts and we were right there to pour out time and care and affection.  It made us feel like angels in time of need.

And if anyone’s car broke down, or anyone got injured or sick or something, we were absolutely delighted at the chance to be a rescuer of that person.  To swing into action and make their life better, because we could.

Loving "Downward"

I’m going to call that “loving downward.”  Loving someone or something that needs you, or is under your power in some way.  It’s easiest.  It’s easy to love kittens.  If they try to scramble away from your fond touch as a child, you can just grab them and hold them.  Hopefully they won’t scratch or bite.  Ultimately, they’ll likely starve if you don’t feel like feeding them.  They need you.  And if they really don’t warm up to you, you might have to eventually just “get rid” of them.  Or for now, you can go pet the dog instead. 

You aren’t obligated.  It isn’t a duty.  If an old person is nasty or ungrateful, you just don’t come visit the following week.  If an infant is aggressive or standoffish, you just ignore them and don’t bother to bring them treats.

“Loving downward” is easiest because you have all the power.  It’s very black and white.  They are needy, and you have stuff they need.  If you don’t like how things are going, you change things up.  They can’t really do that.

Loving "Upward"
“Loving upward” is a bit harder, because it’s the opposite.  Your teachers, your uncles and aunts, family friends, your parents, people at your church.  How to love them? 

In my experience, these folks often had love to offer you that was very, very conditional.  The roles were reversed.  Now you were the kitten.  You had to know what they wanted, if you wanted to give them anything they’d like.  In some cases, it was friendliness, helpfulness, respect and warm smiles. In other cases, it was correct answers to math word problems, or emptied garbage pails and made beds. In other cases, it was being able to memorize chapters of the King James Bible.

Some of these people were capricious, cruel and unfair, but the fact is, if they were your teacher, your aunt or someone important at your church, you couldn’t do much about that.  At all.  Same thing if they were your parent.  So you tried to work with them.  Tried to gain love or be in the right place at the right time, or catch them in the right mood to get their approval and favour. 

Tried to keep a bit of dignity and individuality while still doing this, of course.  Tried to stand up if you didn’t think things were fair.  But sometimes that latter situation didn’t work out well.  Became a fight.  And when you’re trying to love and be loved by someone with power over you, if you fight, you almost always lose.  Especially if you have a tantrum.  All because you got fewer cookies, or a B+ when you wanted an A.  The tantrum seldom wins you love.

Loving "Across"

This brings me to the most complicated situation of all: “loving across.”  With cousins and brothers and sisters and friends and other kids at school and church, you started to realize that there were a finite number of kittens, a finite number of kids who got to smack the chalk brushes against the brick wall of the school, a finite number of kids who got prizes for memorizing Isaiah 53.  There were, at home, a finite number of cookies, a finite amount of cake, and a finite amount of time parents could spend focussed on each child.  This caused problems, to say the least.

Thing is, hating siblings, cousins, other kids at school and church certainly happened, but it didn’t help.  Hating Jared Hayhoe didn’t help you get Isaiah 53 memorized before he did.  Hating Sheila Thompson didn’t mean she somehow didn’t get to smack the chalk brushes, water the rink or feed the classroom goldfish.  Hating your brother Steve didn’t mean he suddenly didn’t get more cookies than you after all. 

So hate didn't help, but “loving across” was very hard.  Because there was a lot of competition.  You didn’t have the kind of control and power you did when feeding a kitten or choosing to spend an hour with a dying, senile old person.  And it wasn’t just a case of you trying to please someone with more status and agency than you, as with your Sunday School teacher or the grandparent who might buy you things.  You were supposed to love your brothers and sisters, and the students at school, and the church kids.  But they were sometimes selfish and annoying.  And they could mess up every “loving upward” relationship you had.  The “loving downward” ones too, often.  They could upset the kitten and cause it to run and hide.  They could be rude to old people.  They could spread rumours about you.  They could, Heaven forfend, outperform you at soccer, or spelling or bible verse memorizing. 

So...

We’re full of love.  What to do with it all?  Easy to mishandle having all of it.  And we need love, too.  What to do about that?  Easy to get needy and nasty and jealous.

I find I reach middle age very delighted by cute little animals and babies and little children and old people and anyone who needs help with anything.  I know how to “love downward,” because it's easy.  And so I do.  It’s simple.  When you’re giving food or money to someone who’s hungry, when you’re hanging out with someone who’s lonely, you know you’re doing a good thing.

And in middle age, fewer and fewer people have authority over me.  I find I still get disproportionately, childishly furious with anyone in authority over me who, to my mind, is being unfair.  Is squashing my good plans or ideas.  Is doubting my good intentions or competence.  It makes me feel like I’m ten again, railing against an unfair teacher of mine.  Or against my dad.  Or both.

And “loving across” is still hard.  People at work can compete, can complicate things.  People at church can get you ostracized.  And if you don’t actually have a wife and kids, it’s like you haven’t managed to start your actual adult life yet.  You’re a failure.  (Until someone needs help with something you’re good at, or needs your time or money.  Then you can “love downward” to them and feel like you know what you’re doing.)

So, what about people you don’t agree with?  People who disagree about abortion, gun control, gender issues, washrooms and so on?  How many different ways can you love them?  So easy to hate them, and that doesn't help.  At all.  So many people suggest the bible (or something they've made up themselves) gives them the right, or even the duty, to hate people, or what they believe.  But that doesn't help.

If you judge them and feel that you are more correct, this puts you in an ideal position to “love downward” to them, rather than across.  In fact, if you decide a president or prime minister or senator or boss is wrong, you might even be able to view them as beneath you, and do the same thing there too.  Condescend.  Console yourself with the idea that you have correction they need, if only they’d see that.  So you’re loving downward, or would if they let you.  It’s comfortable.  Simpler.

What if we're all citizens living in a country and we have to love other citizens “across”?  What if we really can't all have our way, no matter how right we think we are?  Do we hope to do better with our country than we did as kids in our family?  What if there’s a finite number of things?  Is it tantrum time?  Will some hate help?  Does the bible, in fact, assign us the duty of hating?

And what if it’s God we’re trying to deal with?  Seems like we have to get our problems “loving upward,” our problems with pleasing people, with shame, with our daddy issues, with past bosses and abusers, sorted.  If we want to deal with Him, that is.  If there isn’t a Him, that’s easy.  If there is, we’ve got work to do.

Alan Dean Foster, Star Wars and Star Trek

I sent this email this morning:

Alan,

   I wanted to tell you about how I became a lifelong Star Wars and Star Trek junkie and your key role in it all.  I was raised in the 70s and 80s in a small town outside of Ottawa, Canada, in a very strict fundamentalist Christian group called the Plymouth Brethren.  Some Brethren families were stricter than others, and mine was one of those that, as it "got serious" about status, reputation and success in the group, clamped down with more and more rules.  I was never allowed to go to movies, and at age 6, the television was removed from our home as well. 

In 1977 when I was 7 years old, the movie Star Wars came out.  I was fascinated.  It was showing up on cereal boxes and posters and places like that.  It was all the other kids at school were talking about.  I had no idea what it was all about, and knew I'd never see it at the movies or on TV.  But then, in July of that year, our local paper The Ottawa Journal started printing daily installments from a novelization of the movie, purportedly by George Lucas himself.  I was really starting to read independently that year, and I devoured these adventures.  I know that the main thing that fired my learning to read was being able to read the newspaper strips and novelizations of things other kids were enjoying on TV and at the movies. 

Then I got a couple of the Star Wars figures, until my father forbade me buying them, because of the "occult" element of The Force.  So I started making my own compressed tin foil sculpture action figures, making spaceships and sets out of old boxes and plastic containers and styrofoam. 

  

Eventually the novel Star Wars (by "George Lucas") came to our school library, and I read that.  The plot of Star Wars:The Empire Strikes Back I learned mostly from the spoof in Cracked Magazine, which our school library again had. I had to read the Empire novelization when that eventually arrived, to sort it all out.

I don't know why books were ok and movies were not, but one summer my father, a gym teacher, came home with a small novel in his hand. It had been abandoned in a change room at his school and he was going to throw it out unless I wanted it.  It was called Star Trek: Log Seven.  By Alan Dean Foster.  My dad thought it was a Star Wars book and wanted to encourage my reading habit. 

I knew it wasn't a Star Wars book, but read it anyway.  It was surreal and fascinating and had a head-to-head Federation/Klingon space battle.  It had weird "inside the characters' heads" sequences and was utterly riveting.  Star Trek had been cancelled ten years previous, but many kids liked it, and eventually a movie came out for that too. 

But before it came out and I could read the novelization for it, I pillaged the school and town libraries and read every single Star Trek: Log __ and also James Blish's Star Trek #__ books.  I read Splinter of the Mind's Eye.  I read Brian Daley's Han Solo adventures.  I read everything even close to Star Trek and Star Wars.  Eventually I was reading a book or two every evening.  (No TV, remember. And my father was my gym teacher, which made sports not much fun for either of us)  And as I read my way through Krull, and Alien, The Black Hole and The Last Starfighter, Starman and Alien Nation, that same name kept cropping up: Alan Dean Foster.

  

Many years later, as a young adult, I rented all of the Star Wars and Star Trek movies.  I videotaped every episode of the original Star Trek at the house of a friend of had both cable and a VCR. 

Eventually, it became possible to pirate TV shows from the Internet.  I'd always assumed the stories in the Star Trek: Log __ were entirely the invention of the author, as none of them had showed up in my complete VHS taping of the original series.   Then I got Star Trek: The Animated Series.  And it was for kids.  It was barely twenty minutes long.  And I simply could not believe how much more there was to the novelizations than had existed in the original cartoons.   Missing from the cartoons was all of my favourite stuff. 

By this time, I'd found out that the first Star Wars novelization had actually, like Splinter of the Mind's Eye, been written by Alan Dean Foster, the same guy who'd written the books that introduced me to Star Trek as well.  He'd written it for $5, 000 up front, and they'd put "George Lucas" as the author.

And I'd learned how to read mainly in order to devour these books.  And having rented all three Star Wars movies, and the Star Trek movies as well,  I went back reread the novelizations for these movies over again.  Almost everything was by the same few names.  Alan Dean Foster.  Vonda McIntyre.  A.C. Crispin.  And I found that all manner of insight into the inner thoughts of the characters, where they were coming from and going to, what they were thinking and feeling and doing between scenes and why, was so much more richly developed in the books.  Amazing.

Today, a middle-aged high school English teacher who has written a book about leaving my birth culture, instead of going to church I sit down to read the novelization of Star Wars: The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster, author's name prominently on the cover.  And I think about how, nowadays, high school libraries have a whole lot more screens and actually very, very few books.

So I decided to find an email online for you, and tell you all of this.  And to thank you for being truly important in the life of a child whose imagination was his only escape from an oft-times empty, grim, oppressive upbringing.

Thank you. You have no idea.
--
Electronically signed,
Mike Moore

I got this email an hour later:

Subject:  Re: Star Wars and Star Trek
Date:     Sun, 24 Apr 2016 09:26:41 -0700
From:     Foster Alan Dean
To:       mike_moore

Hi Mike;
 Quite a tale.  I’m happy to have played some small part in it.  Thanks for the kind words.
 When I was young, books were always my best friends.
Regards,
Alan

And then I sent an email saying that, although I knew he'd written the novelization of Star Trek: Into Darkness, that I hadn't liked the new movie itself.  Too much blowing up and stuff flying around.  Not enough ethical dilemmas and interpersonal stuff.  Just making Spock act like Kirk half the time didn't make it fresh and new.  Not like the stuff he'd written about and brought to life in the 70s.  He said:

Mike;

Movies today gotta blow things up.

Alan

...and here's William Shatner interviewing Alan Dean Foster on YouTube.

But this is more interesting, as he talks about how he came to meet George Lucas while Star Wars was being made, and how he came to write two books about it, starting with the novelization of the first film.

December Book Promotion

I'm still slaving away, reading hundred of pages of densely-packed text into my computer, and editing it and integrating the voices of others who read their own sound bits into it, to make my podcast/audiobook.  It's quite a thing.  I've had to sing like smurfs, the Muppets, Billy Corgan and people at meeting.
It's here:
http://www.teenagepharisee.com/Chapter-01.html

What I'm doing this December, is shipping free 'movie posters' (24" x 36") of the book to the first five people who want one.  (There is no movie, but the cover of the book is a pretend movie poster, so the merch is... a poster)

The poster being up on a wall is free promotion for my book, so if you're willing to put the poster up on a wall, I'll ship you a free poster.  Comment below if you'd like one.

Audiobook

I finished my latest book I Was A Teenage Pharisee (through making myself stop adding things to it) and quite unexpectedly, Jeremy pressured me to do an audiobook. At first I thought this was ridiculous, as there are so many pages in my book, but for some reason I started in on it.

     And it was interesting.  Things that are visual and work in a book (charts, quoted lyrics, pictures) do not translate into audio.  And I also realized I could do things like sing the lyrics instead of quoting them, and get people to read the little quotes they'd provided for my book, with stand-ins reading for those who wanted anonymity.  It's been ridiculously fun to get people from various far-flung parts of the world to read things into their cell phones or tablets, and send them to me to edit into this thing.

     I think that hearing real voices, often of the actual people who provided the quotes about their own experiences, has a much deeper emotional impact than merely reading the quotes in black and white.

     I found doing the audiobook has allowed me to add all manner of interesting or silly sound-based things, while knowing various charts and things will have to be left out.  And I  found that really, it's more like a podcast.  A long thing people can put on to listen to while working out, or in the background while washing dishes or something.  And I'm not interested in selling it or making money from it.  So it's just... there.

     Still hard at it, working on chapter five.  I put up a site for the book, mainly to put up the audiobook bits.It's here: http://www.teenagepharisee.com/

     Feel very free to share it around, and to comment to let me know what you think.