article | On Dating and Love.

"Dating presents itself as an education in human relationships. In fact it’s an anti-education. You could invent no worse preparation for love, for marriage, than the tireless pursuit of the perfect partner. Keep Looking, says dating. You’re Not Done Yet. What About That One? And That One? Dating, like the tyrant, seeks perfection (within a certain price range). Whereas the heart, like the eye, can only cling to imperfections: her funny stride, and the way her voice breaks, child-like, on the phone. And so the dater, self-baffling, seeks what the heart cannot understand."

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AYT's light-hearted, but thoughtful read of the day.

"Let us run with perseverance..."

Headlines are fickle. Pain/evil resilient. Run.


Podcast of the week.

Today. . .

. . . is the feast day of Saint Thomas Aquinas, born in 1225.

theology | Masquerading as a Fox (in the Fox's Hole)

Sometimes AYT feels like a stay-at-home parent. His schedule isn't 24/7, but it does bear some similarities. There are mornings that I'm up at 6:30am waking up the core members of our community and starting them on the process that will have them clothed, fed and out the door by 8:45am. That's two hours and fifteen minutes to help four different people navigate their morning tasks, things like helping with a shower, brushing teeth, helping pour a proper amount of cereal, socks on, zippers up, lunches in hand and out the door. It's true that my commute is only two flights of stairs down from the third floor and I can wear sweatpants to 'work' (since L'Arche is an intentional community we try not to use words like 'work' and prefer to say 'share time'). For those who know AYT personally and his preference for keeping 'vampire hours,' it might be amusing to think of him puttering around before the winter sun has even cracked the horizon.

There are countless other things which add to this domestic feeling. A story:

Our community gets together every other Tuesday night with a few other homes for people with overt disabilities. It's the third week of October and this week's prayer night involves costumes since Halloween is around the corner. In a strange confluence of prayer night and Halloween, everyone was to dress as a prayerful figure. So, the domestic task of the day: help find a costume for every core member. Michael, going as the technicolored Joseph, ends up being wrapped in the colorful runner that normally adorns our piano. Eileen's costume exhibits her own poetic innovation: "Funky Jesus." Prayerful, check. However, she wears what looks like a Raggedy Ann wig and an ensemble that is the pictographic equivalent to indigestion. Mark, one of our other assistants and the only Buddhist in our community, true to form dons the clothes of a particular Buddhist monk. Walton, being wheelchair bound, got a wizard's hat. Jill, another assistant, went as her father, Pastor VanEssen. Nicholai, who already shaves his head regularly, appeared as Gandhi. If all this is hard to imagine, let me help:



(L to R) Nicholai as Gandhi, Sonny as a "Fisher-of-Men," Jill as Pastor VanEssen,
Michael as Joseph (or Pancho Villa if you prefer), Mark as Buddhist monk.



(L to R) Mark as a Buddhist monk, Debora as the biblical Ruth, Dee,
Eileen as "Funky Jesus," Sarah, Walton the Wizard.
"That's all interesting and good," you may say, "but what does America's Young Theologian wear when it's time to conjure a costume." Patience. We'll get to that in a moment. First, dear reader, you should know that we have our prayer nights at The Pastoral Center of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. So, what costume does AYT, without thinking, wear? You guessed it, AYT goes as a Catholic Priest, failing to appreciate the awkwardness of walking into the fox's hole dressed as a fox. As we arrive at the Pastoral Center, the man at the door says, "Hello, Father." Since this is not the time to explain that AYT is really just wearing a costume, a simple "Hello" is returned as AYT walks through the door. One would not think that this domestic life would find me masquerading as clergy, but caring for others will take you to places you never imagined.



"Funky Jesus" and America's Young Theologian.

music | Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying

AYT will, of course, be attending the sold out Belle & Sebastian / The New Pornographers show in D.C. on March 5th. Captain Inertia will, of course, be joining the festivities. In preparation, AYT has been spinning a lot of B&S albums and this song always remains a favoite. It's heartbreaking, it's beautiful, it's good...my three trancendentals.


Belle & Sebastian
Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying

Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying
Play me a song to set me free
Nobody writes them like they used to
So it may as well be me
Here on my own now after hours
Here on my own now on a bus
Think of it this way
You could either be successful or be us
With our winning smiles, and us
With our catchy tunes, and us
Now we're photogenic
You know, we don't stand a chance

Oh, I'll settle down with some old story
About a boy who's just like me
Thought there was love in everything and everyone
You're so naive!
After a while they always get it
They always reach a sorry end
Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then
With a winning smile, the boy
With naivety succeeds
At the final moment, I cried
I always cry at endings

Oh, that wasn't what I meant to say at all
From where I'm sitting, rain
Washing against the lonely tenement
Has set my mind to wander
Into the windows of my lovers
They never know unless I write
"This is no declaration, I just thought I'd let you know goodbye"
Said the hero in the story
"It is mightier than swords
I could kill you sure
But I could only make you cry with these words"

misc | Things to Check Out Online

1) Catalogue of Ships - This is not to be missed! Catalogue of Ships (the title is a reference to Book II of of Homer's Iliad) is an excellent podcast of personal narratives which are then remixed. Besides being a high school friend of AYT, David Terry is a scholar/artist currently working toward a PhD in Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Research interests include the performance of personal narrative, oral history, performance ethnography, genre theory and the process of adaptation, the intersections of scholarly and creative writing.

2) Last.fm - If you use iTunes (or a host of other media players), you should check out Last.fm which keeps track of all the music you listen to and presents it in nice little charts, which you might find handy next time someone asks you what kind of music you listen to. It also provides recommendations based upon people who like similar music to you.

theology | A Painting on My Wall...

As many of you know, AYT moved to the District at the beginning of September to live/work in a L'Arche community. During my first few months I decided to put blogging on hold. Now happily settled, AYT is back to blogging and many of the stories that follow will relate to life lived in an intentional community which centers on those members that have overt needs (developmental disabilities, mental retardation, etc.). This is my biographical theology, an involvement with the world that many mistakenly avoid. If only everyone knew what they were missing...

To that end, let's look at a painting hanging on AYT's wall:



This painting was gift from one of AYT's housemates who is involved with Art Enables, an arts-and-enterprise program for adults with developmental and/or mental disabilities from the D.C. metropolitan area. Eileen likes working on canvas and her color-rich subjects range from garden scenes to dancing shrimp. [Should anyone be interested in purchasing any of Eileen's work, click here.]

I thought that this post would be a good entry point into my life with L'Arche in Washington, D.C. After moving into our house, Eileen was quite excited to present AYT with this painting to help decorate his room and we found a place on the wall where it would look nice. I love art and love when it is shared. AYT naturally asked Eileen if the painting had a title. She said, "Nope." I left it at that. After a week or two with this painting on the wall, I queried again.

AYT: "Eileen, you know the picture on my wall that you gave me?"
Eileen: "Yeah, I gave you that painting."
AYT: "I was wondering if you could tell me what it is."
Eileen: "Yeah, I can tell you." [Pause]
AYT: "Well, what is the painting of?"
Eileen: "Yeah, well, it's a painting of, umm, well, it's a painting of hotdogs.
AYT: "Hotdogs?"
Eileen: [with a big smile and the tone saying "obviously"] "Yep, I like hotdogs and them's three hotdogs."

And there it was. A single house-warming gift and I found myself a collector of abstract realist neo-pop hotdog art. Here I find my life filled with moments like this that ask me to see the world through different eyes which have their own expectations. Hotdogs are 'obviously' a worthy subject and something must be wrong if my expectations make me blind to that. Part of the gift was honoring our relationship, part was sharing a talent, part was sharing a love of hotdogs. These are the kind of moments that parents say they'll forever cherish, that possess a singularity of sincerity so powerful that one can only say "thank you" and receive both a hotdog painting and life as a gift.

A Reminder to Myself...

I found a book which would be excellent (albeit intellectual) beach reading, but am not going to the beach any time soon. So a reminder to myself: Consider checking out Bernard-Henri Lévy's American Vertigo.

"American Vertigo, while somewhat adhering to the 'footsteps of Tocqueville,' careers around, allowing him to drag the ironies out of Cooperstown (which he describes as a church), a suburban Chicago megachurch ('neo-paganist'), an anti-Semitic Indian leader, the Mall of America ('a church,' again), John Kerry ('a European at heart'), and a big retirement community (it reminds him of apartheid). He visits with clueless Hollywood liberal Sharon Stone (whom he manages to observe crossing her legs) and finds Las Vegas strippers mechanically standoffish ('the wretchedness of Eros in the land of the Puritans'). In Michigan, he marvels at the solidity of the American identity among Arab immigrants. (The book was finished before the riots broke out in Paris: 'We have our crisis there, sure,' he says. 'You had your riots in the nineties.') In Dallas, at the assassination site of JFK, he wonders, 'What is a myth that you no longer believe in that still functions?'"

If it sounds interesting, feel free to read the rest of what New York Magazine wrote about it.

review | Woody Allen's "Match Point"

"Match Point" is Woody Allen's best film in years for the following reasons: effective pacing, and unwavering narrative and philosopical clarity without predictability. A full review is unnecessary, since much has been written about the movie already (see Roger Ebert or the NYTimes). The movie succeeds because it is true to it's premises. First, Allen's latest is true to Allen. It is full-blown nihilism at its narrative best without needing to employ characters and situations too dark for an audience to relate. The characters are not good, but neither do they seem to be beyond those with whom one normally interacts. The central focus of the movie is life’s contingency or how luck determines our lives. With this focus, a predictable outcome would destroy an unpredictable movie. The movie stays true to its premise and the end does not disappoint. The other pitfall it avoids is allowing the winds of fate to blow the plot so randomly that it leaves the audience either lost or bored. The plot is unrelenting. The story is firmly driven by the desires of the characters but remains unexpected because the contingency which luck bequeaths. Since the characters' desires are not good and luck is neither malevolent nor benevolent, the scenario presents an interesting impossibility when Chris, the main character, states, "I'll do the right thing." At this point, what possibly could "the right thing" be? The movie goes directly to its destination without stop or layover, but also without predictability. In the end it demonstrates what Chris states in the beginning, "I'd rather be lucky than good."

If you haven't seen this film, you should.

"Match Point" doesn't seem to preclude the possibility of good. It simply isn't displayed. Had it done so, the film would have a different feel and be a different film; instead of Allen’s level and iniquitous field of struggle, one would either have a struggle against evil or a demonstration of how luck can overturn virtue. Certainly, Aristotle is right to think that a life of virtue is never safe from contingency. Said differently, contingency plays a large role in our lives regardless of our character. Contingency affects both virtue and vice and even the most virtuous life can be shipwrecked by a strong enough wind. However, the reverse might also be said, namely, virtue and vice might influence the locations occupied when the winds of fate blow. The film demonstrates why in a world of equal virtue luck makes the difference. However, this film doesn't deal with how possessing goodness and luck might be different than goodness alone nor does it display the fragility of goodness. Instead, Allen’s is a different movie from either of these focusing on life and its contingency, which is to say, its fragility.

article | Behind the Deluge of Porn, a Conservative Sea-Change

by JIM SLEEPER

"'Erotic Empire' billboards, bus-shelter underwear posters, fashion-cum-kiddie porn ads, commercials for erectile dysfunction cures, and the fetid currents wafting suddenly through our homes at prime-time. The Thing that’s exposing itself to us increasingly is more degrading than porn because it’s so unchosen, so public, and so purely commercial: The pornification of public spaces and narratives, an eros-burning equivalent of second-hand smoke, isn’t malevolent as much as it’s a mindless groping of our persons to goose profits and market share...

...Nothing liberating, either – and my authority is the author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, who thought porn 'a sign of a diseased condition of the body politic.'"

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article | Suburbs: A cliché from hell

by NICHOLAS HUNE-BROWN

"There are certain landscapes that have been described so often they exist as much in the imagination as in reality. A first-time visitor to New York will find it difficult to see the city with fresh eyes as she walks down the familiar streets of Woody Allen movies. Parts of London will always belong to Dickens, and to this day Casablanca remains more a romantic symbol than an actual city...

...Despite its relative youth, suburbia is already a thoroughly mythologized landscape with its own set of clichés and conventions. The word brings to mind a number of images and associations, many of them negative. The suburb is a land of white-picket fences and well-trimmed lawns, of teenage angst and mindless materialism."

Read the entire article