On the road to find out

November 1, 2016

Los Angeles, CA

I have been considering a biographical essay on “what I believe” for awhile. Ironically, I’ve only chosen to write about it now that I’ve mostly lost interest in the subject. I guess it isn't so much that I've lost interested, but rather that I want to put it behind me and move on to something more edifying and constructive. Part of the problem has to do with the subject itself. Is it really belief that I want to talk about? Why not faith, or religion, or spirituality? A better word for me would have been “gnosis” or “knowledge” but I decided to avoid extremes and go for the modest, middle of the road, concept of belief. But even now, as I settle on this term, I feel myself being pulled this way and that and am sure I will have traversed many areas before reaching my conclusion.

            So, where to begin my  spiritual biography? I was raised in a Protestant home by relatively religious parents. Both of my parents were from not particularly devout Catholic families. My mother rebelled against her upbringing and converted to Protestantism when I was only a year old. She believed Protestantism to be the more Biblical faith. That phrase, “Biblical Christianity” was something I took as a given growing up and which I find much more problematical now, having come to learn the very complex history of developing the scriptural canon and church dogmas. But, that is a whole different issue. All of us kids were fairly involved in the church growing up. My most spiritual memories are connected to reading the Bible and singing hymns and praise and worship songs.
            I remember specifically being drawn to the incantatory power of the Bible. The Bible seemed to offer a level of depth and seriousness lacking in other areas of life. At the same time, I had what I would call "creative" interests that eventually came to compete with my religious sensibility. I was always interested in writing and drawing. I loved drawing and imagining stories. I also liked designing my own role playing games, which I would force my brother to play. Later, while a freshman in high school, I wrote a 200-page fantasy novel. And the year after that, I became addicted to Japanese comics and animation. So, I had these two seemingly contradictory identities—my involvement in the church and my interest in art. There were practical questions I considered, such as, whether I should go to an art school or a local Christian school, but, more pressingly, was the whole question of what to value. I felt aware of the division and knew that eventuality I would have to declare my loyalties, one way or the other.

The summer after graduating I went to a Christian retreat called “The Summit” that was designed to prepare high school graduates for the secular issues they would face in college. Although I had been to many retreats in the past, Summit felt different. For one thing, it wasn’t merely emotional as most such retreats were. The typical catch phrase for these events was "be on fire for God.” The Summit was different. It was intellectual and so was far more appealing to my own interests at this time. It is interesting to note that my church at this time had a relatively new Calvinist pastor who won a lot of enthusiasm from the teens at my church. Most of us, including myself, were eager for a deeper and more intellectual understanding of religion. The Summit invited famous Christian scholars and professors. It was designed to prepare Christians entering college to combat any anti-Christian ideology they encountered there. We learned about evolution, Marxism, the basics of logic and philosophy, and Postmodernism amongst other things. Of course, I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was as interested in the objects of critique as the critique itself. I learned that I had a deep craving for knowledge that, for whatever reasons, had not been fulfilled in high school. These lectures opened up new and fascinating worlds for me, worlds I had only been dimly familiar with up until then. More than that, I now felt compelled to take a firm stand, although I did not yet know on what.

            One immediate change that occurred after this trip was that I threw away my entire collection of movies, comic books, and video games so as to devote myself more sincerely to God. I later spoke with my brother, who also attended this conference, and who spoke of it as a turning point for him as well. Unlike my brother, I was grateful for the new intellectual passion the event gave me, however unintentionally, while he felt betrayed for having been given a false view of ideas he later came to empathize with. I should mention, we went to this event with two other brothers, one of whom became extremely rigid and aggressive in his faith. But, more on him later. For now, I just want to say that I eventually came to define myself (not entirely consciously) in opposition to this other brother. If he was to be rigid and dogmatic I would be open and endlessly inquiring. (For those interested, the earliest entries of this blog were prompted by debates I had had with that brother). 

After giving up videogames I found that I had a lot of free time on my hands. I always loved art and I now felt that I needed to take my passion more seriously so I decided to learn what I could about classical culture. I started paying more attention to great works of art, classical music, and literature. It so happened that my mom and aunt were reading Les Misérables around this time. It looked interesting so I picked it up. It may have taken 6 months for me to read, but I was nonetheless very engaged the whole time. The early scene where the priest’s saves the wayward Jean val Jean with that beautiful act of generosity and humanity, has remained a touchstone for me to this day.
I began hunting around for other books, greedily seeking something that would consume my imagination as that one had. I considered books I had heard of from school that I hadn't read, books like The Catcher in the Rye and The Lord of the Flies. Their mere titles intrigued me. I read both quickly and passionately, realizing now the kind of books I wanted to read. Serious books. Dark books. Books that seemed to speak a kind of evasive truth. I started asking anyone I considered learned if they had any books they could recommend. I was surprised at how uninterested in literature my childhood community was. The recommendations were both meager and dispassionate.
I had hit a dry spell. I now had a vague sense of the kind of books I wanted to read, books that were dark, transgressive, and yet ultimately profoundly humane, but I was clueless as to where to find them. I was listening to a lot of classical music at this time as well. I became interested in the great Catholic mass compositions by Beethoven, Bach, and Schubert. Bach's Mass in B Minor, in particular, was deeply moving for me. I hunted around for live performances to see with what remained of that summer and found one in the twin cities of southern Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. There I attended a performance of Bach’s St. Mathew’s Passion. Later I realized there was a great orchestra in my own backyard and so I signed up for a year of concerts at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra with a college friend I barely knew at the time, Paul, who remains my closest friend to this day.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I did not begin college immediately. I worked a construction job and took community college courses first. It was in an English class I took in community college where I was given my first poetry anthology. Our teacher was clearing out her office and let us students take whatever books we wanted. I greedily swiped up the anthology. A second important event occurred in that same English class. We were given a writing assignment that led me to the local library and in turn to the great Yale literary critic, Harold Bloom. I faintly remember the assignment being something about finding a work of criticism, although I don’t remember writing anything about Bloom at that time. How I would love to read that paper now. The book was, of course, Bloom’s The Western Canon. Like most people, I kept coming back to Bloom for that list in the back of the book. I’d go to the library, scan the list and slowly work my way through it, title after title. Funny thing is, I didn't actually read "The Western Canon" itself for years. I bought many of Bloom's other books before finally getting around to it.

In the Autumn of 1998 I went to the Christian college, William Tyndale. There I decided to major in English literature, which I did for my first two years. I remember being very excited to take a philosophy and psychology course my first semester. The psychology course ended up being fairly soft and not impacting, but the philosophy course, like the English course earlier, proved pivotal, if only because it introduced me to my next obsession, Dostoyevsky and Russian literature. We read the famous “Grand Inquisitor” chapter from The Brothers Karamazov. A few years later I would start up a Russian literature club with a guy named Ryan. Ryan, it so happens, would connect me with my friend Paul. The Russian club didn't get far, we got stuck on Dostoyevsky though and spent the year just reading his four great novels.
Around this time I met up with the friend who I went to Summit with and saw he was reading Dostoyevksy’s Notes from Underground, which he was rather turned off by. His disinterest in the book only further confirmed its greatness to me and I eagerly and greedily picked it up the next day.  I also took several English literature classes those first two years at Tyndale and so was exposed to many of the greatest works of world literature. I also continued to read a lot on my own. Notably Don Quixote, Paradise Lost and Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad.

It was at this time that I realized how difficult writing was for me. Writing would remain an anxious undertaking for all of my undergraduate and graduate school days as well. I write like I draw. I begin very sloppily and painfully. The words come out awkward and ill-formed. Then begins a process of endless revision where I occasionally catch glimpses of the imagined form.

These first two years I was also visiting a lot of churches and continued questioning my faith. I wavered between trying to rationalize Christianity and desiring to have some kind of religious, quasi-charismatic, experience. I felt there was too much that I could not rationalize and I also knew that I lacked the deep emotional and spiritual conviction of the charismatic believers. I knew that I did not like the idea of believing that the whole world needed or should be converted. I desired diversity. I enjoyed living in a world with disparate views. It seemed like a kind of hell to have a world full of single minded people. What I could believe in was the aesthetic power of reading literature.

My junior year I transferred briefly to Eastern Michigan University. I had become unhappy with the English department, which I felt was too small and not very challenging. I signed up for several classes at EMU and then, my first week, the whole school went on strike. This ended up being a very fortuitous turn of events. I had already learned that many credits would not transfer from Tyndale and, feeling like I might be delayed a semester as well, I decided this was all too much and so went back to Tyndale. I’m not sure how it happened but I ended up in a conversation with the head of the Middle Eastern Studies Department, Dr. Judith Mendelssohn Rood. I told her my situation and she quickly recruited me into Middle Eastern Studies program. All the magic and challenge that was missing from the English department was found in abundance in her courses. Although she, by and large, led the whole department on her own, the classes were still very rich and individual. For example, our class on Middle Eastern Literature met at a local Lebanese restaurant, and our class on Jewish, Christian, Muslim relations met at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington. I was amazed at Judy’s endless energy and enthusiasm. I felt like I finally found the intellectual environment I had been searching for.

I could say much more about these years, but I'm trying very hard to be brief. 9/11 happened, and I gave a talk to the local community on Afghanistan, which was prompted by a paper I had written earlier that year. My junior year began auspiciously enough. By the end of that school year Judy would be gone, a presage of the dark times Tyndale was headed for. Leadership roles were changing quickly in the school as it sought to shift away from the liberal arts to a, the school board felt, more lucrative model of business degrees. But that was only the surface issue, the school had also been illegally investing money in other ventures. The fallout of these dealings would eventually lead to the school's going out of business, but that happened several years after I graduated. Nonetheless, the first signs of trouble were occurring my junior year.
During this time, I continued to read Bloom and visit different churches. I remember distinctly that by my senior year I was convinced that I was no longer a Christian. I now consider myself a gnostic and so, in a kind of whimsical manner, think of myself as one of the rare "true" Christians. But in truth my religion is Goethe's religion, one of art and science. I wrote a paper for my class on World Religions where I expressed this. The professor tried to give me a D for the course, surely on the grounds that it was “un-Christian” although I was able to negotiate him into a low B. That last year was chaotic at Tyndale. With Judy gone, most of the excitement of school for me was gone as well. I trudged through, doing a lot of reading on my own. I started reading more poetry, I read more of the modernists including Yeats and Joyce, but also other figures like T.S. Eliot who I now feel ambivalent about. I read Bloom’s book, Omens of Millenium, which I sometimes consider, along with Agon, to be my favorite book by him (I would not read Agon until I returned from the Peace Corps three years later).

As I approached graduation I didn’t know what I wanted to do. After high school I had flirted with being a missionary. As graduation approached I considered the army or the navy. I thought that at least these options could give me the chance to focus on languages and so perhaps eventually lead to an academic career. I ended up choosing the Peace Corps and going to Uzbekistan.

Now that I've touched on the Peace Corps I realize that whole new worlds of events and experiences are before me and that if I hope to make this biography at all brief I will have to rush over most of them. So, to be brief, the most important intellectual development to occur during my time in the Peace Corps was my introduction to the Romantics. I had brought two Bloom books, The Visionary Company and Bloom’s commentary on Blake in The Complete Poetry of William Blake. Along with these I had an anthology of English literature that included the first three cantos of The Faerie Queene, all of Paradise Lost, and most of the major High Romantic British poems. I also brought a lot of Shakespeare and would later come across some Emerson, Whitman, and Nietzsche. With this reading behind me, I finished the Peace Corps in 2005 and promptly applied to Wayne State University, eventually to enroll in a masters degree in English literature. Once again, many years passed, I kind of dream like period of my life. I did not graduate until 2012. After receiving my MA in English Literature I moved to Boston and eventually ended up getting married, having a daughter, and becoming an English teacher.

I want to stop there and reflect on the evolution of my thinking over the years and so, hopefully, come round to the purpose of this essay—my feelings about belief, faith, religion, spirituality, gnosis. The best thing I did in those early years was read widely, and memorize poems. I expanded my horizon immensely and continue to do so. For many years I primarily shared the interests of Bloom, especially his gnostic and apocalyptic tendencies. The first poet I latched onto, oddly enough, was T.S. Eliot. Modernism in general was very appealing to me. I liked the density of the images. The juxtaposition of ancient and modern. The sense it gave me was that in linking modernity with the past it was in some way giving a full picture of life, a glimpse of the whole. Joyce, more than anyone else, epitomized this method for me. This was my earliest vision of what literature could be. It inspired a passion that has continued to evolve until today.

I was always fascinated with the idea of the epic and the promise that one could somehow capture the fullness of reality. It did not matter whether this was possible or not (of course it’s not). But the promise of it, the drive towards it, remains endlessly fascinating and moving for me. There is a line from the famous Renaissance author, Sir Thomas Browne, “Methinks there be not miracles in religion enough to merit an active faith.” This Faustian craving for more knowledge is what has inspired and driven me more than any other. But it is not merely an endless parade of facts, it is the belief that one shapes a vision of the world out of this knowledge that has most inspired me. This drive to both expand one’s view of the world, but in so doing consolidate and bring together one’s knowledge so that one forms an image of the world. It is what Shelley meant when he referred to poetry as being both the center and the circumference of knowledge. That is my understanding of the work of poetry. That is my belief.


In closing, I have just reread this essay and while mostly satisfied with what is here I would like to expand considerately upon it. I'd like to say a lot more about my time after the Peace Corps and even some things about my time in Boston. But that will have to wait until another day. For anyone reading this, I think I will write a second part to this detailing those later years. 

Roth and Saramago

(EDIT: I noticed that this post had been saved as a "draft" and never been published. I'm publishing now as is. October 19, 2016--originally written in perhaps 2008 or so)

Okay, I started this journal as a forum between me and some friends to have some type of debate: literature v. religion but that didn't really pan out. I keep a journal of reflections on my readings and so I figured I'd just post them up here.

I just finished Philip Roth's American Pastoral and Jose Saramago's All the Names. In Saramago the scene that impressed me most was in the later chapter where Jose ventures deep into the Central Registry at night with Ariadne’s thread around his ankle in search of the death certificate of the woman. Names are one's identity and give a certain presence to persons and things but the title of the novel “All the Names” referred to on pg. 184 is the motto of the General Cemetery. There are comparisons between the Central Registry and the General Cemetery in the story as well, the obvious parallel is that they both deal with dead things, literally or figuratively and in both the line is blurred. The most powerful scene that I referred to in the central registry is when Jose confronts the ominous blank wall. Also interesting is the registrar’s friendliness towards Jose. This is not the God of his Gospel. There is a whim that pervades the novel, the whole quest is done out of whim, Jose endangers himself out of a whim, there is danger in the book but there is a kind of headlong abandonment into that danger as though all else has been used up and that in order to have some sense of life or vitality one must throw one’s self into this rather random quest. I decided to read All the Names after reading an essay by one of my favorite scholars Angus Fletcher titled I believe "Allegories without Ideas." Fletcher listed a few writers including Saramago and another favorite writer of mine, Paul Auster, as exemplifying this kind of Allegory. In both there is a questing for meaning and it is the quest itself rather than the end that drives the search. In All the Names this wall, like Melville's White Whale, seems to be the central looming figure. Saramago likes to make many of his figures speak, including ceilings and although the wall doesn't speak it is definitely an ominous presence.

Recently read an interview with Bloom from the Onion A/V club where Bloom compares Blood Meridian to Roth’s American Pastoral which rather surprised me. A very odd comparison—I remember most from American Pastoral the Whitmanian chant from Seymor on the things he loves which is fiercely mirrored by Merry on the things she hates. There isn’t really an innocence in Blood Meridian unless it is the land itself. There is merely brutality from beginning to end, it is therefore odd that the story begins with a description of the country as “yet harboring a few grey wolves” which suggests a tame landscape. This reflects in the judges statement that the dance will become a false dance. I suppose that if this is a fear in McCarthy that there is an element from the judge we need in some way it is perhaps true that there is this element in American Pastoral as well. There are, say, two sides in each story. There is the naïve Swede who is oddly accused of being part of the Vietnam violence and then there are the aware revolutionaries who are more aware of reality and are too rather violent. But both sides have knowledge and the Swede’s seems to be more rooted while Merry’s and Rita’s while visceral is likely more ephemeral. We do not see too much of the lack of knowledge in Blood Meridian because all seem steeped in knowledge if only to greater or lesser degrees, and here I mean by knowledge experience particularly the experience of violence.