quote | Hauerwas On Hauerwas

Currently, I'm working on a review (with a friend) of a book that came out late in 2007, written by friends (of mine and each other). The book is Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary, written by Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles. I met Professor Hauerwas for the first time in 2002 when, as an incoming student to Duke University's divinity school, I was sent by my advisor to his office with the instruction that I had to take Hauerwas' seminar on virtue ethics. At the time, neither did I know much about Hauerwas nor did I forsee the influence he would have on my thinking, my reading lists and my choice of interlocutors. While in Aberdeen, Scotland, I started corresponding with Professor Coles as I considered switching my Ph.D. from theology to political theory. During that time, I read many of the chapters of this book as they were emailed back and forth between Coles and Hauerwas. Later, back at Duke University, I'd take a seminar on Kant taught by Coles.

I guess I love the book because it offers what is so often lacking in academic texts, pictures of the engagement that goes on between scholars (and friends). Obviously, knowing the two of them adds to my enjoyment, but I think it nice to see the two working on understanding and learning from their shared commitments and differences. The inclusion of letters between the two helps, something which one usually gains access to only after a scholar's death. So, until we get the review finished, here's a few lines from one of Hauerwas' letters which I think are worth hearing again:

In an odd way you and I are haunted in quite similar ways. You claim that you are haunted by John Yoder, but John would not have wanted you to be haunted by John Yoder. He would have wanted you to have been haunted by Jesus. And remember the Jesus he would have wanted to haunt you was the Jesus who has been raised from the dead. The only difference between us is that I try to put my body in positions in which I cannot avoid being hauted by that Jesus. This mean I go to church. Indeed going to church is one of the most exciting things I do.

That I go to church does not mean I think that Jesus is only to be found there. It just means that he has promised to show up there in a manner that can help us discern how he shows up in other places. Thus, my claim that the first task of the church is not to make the world more just but to make the world the world, is not meant to restrict God's care of us to the church. Rather, it is a way to remind us that whatever we mean by politics, justice, or democracy will be determined by how we have learned to celebrate, that is, to worship. (CDRO, 105)

Though not the newest book, I heartily recommend it.

Avoid Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, I recommend:

film | Something To Watch, Something I Missed

I'm not sure how, but apparently Scott Hicks' documentary on Philip Glass flew beneath my radar for the last couple years. Definitely add Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts (2007) to your NetFlix queue...

film | The Soloist

American audiences are served certain cinematic plots with such regularity and predictability that we know what to expect when we see them coming. There’s the sports film in which the over-the-hill athlete gets one more chance for glory. There’s the underdog team that overcomes obstacles and makes it to the big dance. So, when the main character in the The Soloist meets a homeless man who happens to be to be an extremely talented cellist, the film has all the material it needs to become a cliché. Thankfully, The Soloist avoids many of the easy mistakes that it could have made.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Steve Lopez, a LA Times columnist who stumbles across a homeless man (Nathaniel Ayers played by Jamie Foxx) playing a violin next to the statue of Beethoven in Pershing Square. Their conversation, which includes the detail that Nathaniel attended Julliard, gives Lopez his column for the week, a human interest story about a talent lost in society’s cracks. Through the film Lopez tries to help Nathaniel, bringing him a cello, finding an instructor, an apartment, all while an unlikely and challenging friendship develops between the two. The friendship is challenged not only by Nathaniel’s schizophrenia, but also by the conditions within which the relationship began. Downey’s character initially is open to doing the small things he can do for Nathaniel because Nathaniel is his story. If one went back to Aristotle’s description of friendship, this would be a friendship of use. Lopez relates to Nathaniel because he gets something else from it, a story rather than simply being involved in Nathaniel’s story. The character of the relationship and the vulnerability Lopez expresses changes over the course of the film. In dealing with Nathaniel’s mental illness, Lopez initially looks for a fix. He wants a diagnosis so that some results, some improvement can be had. He asks at one point in the film, “How do help somebody if you don’t know what they have?” That is the question of the film and answer forces the film to part from our expectations.

The film does not end as a typical uplifting Hollywood drama might and at times it seems unsure of itself. It has both its gritty and maudlin modes. Some will criticize the film on these grounds, as unclear about its intentions, but they might just be the movie’s gift. Sure, a deeper exploration of mental illness can be had, but our expectations are upset by the film just as Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, which recurs in the film, upset expectations in its day. Compare, for example, the light-hearted theme from one of Mozart’s earliest operas, Bastien and Bastienne, with the first subject of Beethoven’s piece and one finds an utterly identical progression except for Beethoven’s ominous deviation from the tonic. The film provides a similar deviation. It asks: Can you be a friend to someone if they are either a means to end, in this case a newspaper column, or a project to be fixed? Can you solve social ills from afar or without personal transformation? Downey’s character must be transformed if a true friendship is to be formed and we see him struggling to be vulnerable to Nathaniel. Again, thankfully, this film doesn’t end with Nathaniel playing at Carnegie Hall; thankfully because friendship, which always learns to flourish by attending to and accepting the special needs and qualities we each possess, is a more salutary end than easily measured results. Director Joe Wright gives us a film anchored by solid performances by both Downey and Foxx that may leave some audiences unsure of its intentions, which although a vice, is perhaps also a virtue of the film. Denying easy notions of success and as a conversation starter about homelessness, mental illness, and friendship, The Soloist succeeds. I'm not sure I'd send you to theaters to see it (and I don't think it is still in theaters), but you could do worse than adding it to your Netflix queue.

quote | Augustine on America

"...is it reasonable, is it sensible, to boast of the extent and grandeur of empire, when you cannot show that men lived in happiness, as they passed their lives amid the horrors of war, amid the shedding of men's blood--whether the blood of enemies or fellow citizens--under the shadow of fear and amid the terror of ruthless ambition?"

-Augustine City of God 4.3 (Bettenson, 138).

update | A Month Really?

Has it really been a month since I've posted anything? Wow. A lot has been going on which needs to be filled in. I'll just have to remedy that once the weekend is over. In the meantime, I added a new song of the week. Happy listening.