Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Or, "Trying to start the New Year by doing something productive."

I had intended to drive the 9 hours back to my messy apartment today (taking advantage of the holiday to get through Chicago with fewer hassles), but instead, I'm still at my parents' house in Wisconsin revelling in the luxury of their DSL internet connection ("oooh! fast and shiny!"). So, to off-set my anxiety about all the work I didn't get done in 2003 and the daunting challenges confronting me in 2004, I feel the need to try to justify my life. Why am I here, and what do I contribute? You know, light-hearted stuff like that (not entirely unrelated to the fact that my 42nd birthday is only two and a half weeks away).

What can I say for myself? I came into this world with certain minor handicaps (close relatives with untreated personality disorders, born a PK, erroneously -- as it turned out -- diagnosed as brain-damaged and mentally retarded at birth, cleft lip, asthmatic, etc.) and some major advantages (born to highly educated parents in the USA who are still married to each other, raised on a very tight budget but never knowing real want or lack of necessary medical care, with a little talent and the ability to score better than 98 out of a hundred doctoral candidates on standardized tests, etc.). I have been educated at a very good college, an excellent seminary, and a highly-esteemed doctoral program, completely paid for by scholarships and my own earnings. While the cynical part of my mind carps that I've spent a lot of time and resources training for careers I no longer want to follow, the smarter part of me recognizes that education is never wasted and trusts that everything I've learned and experienced comes in handy sooner or later.

True, I have no money of my own, and no family beyond my family of origin or a few trusted friends scattered across the continental U.S.. However, I have never been bankrupt or hopelessly in debt, and I try to take comfort in the idea that I've left behind me no trail of broken relationships or traumatized children (the potential relationships that died a-borning because I was too chicken to risk the pain of rejection, or the children that never had the chance to result from those relationships, are a different kind of regret). Though I seem to spend most of my time and energy trying not to deal with the reality of my existence, I've still managed, inexplicably, to accumulate quite a few people in this world who feel that I've helped them or that I'm a good person.

In my saner moments I'm smart enough to know that most of my feelings of inadequancy and powerlessness are unrealistic, and that I have more options than I have courage to embrace them. I don't like a lot of things about my life and about myself, but I don't want to change. Just ordinary neurosis -- everybody has that ("'Nice day for it', said a passing maniac").

So, what's the sit rep for this new year? What's my justification for the disproportionate share of the world's physical resources which have been expended to bring me this far?

Well, I guess there IS no way that I, or any other citizen of the so-called "First World," can truly justify the resources which have gone to support my lifestyle at the expense of so many other human beings on this planet. How could I ever be good enough to justify even one other person starving to death? That way lies madness. Like my share of the national debt, my share of the debt for systemic injustice in this world is paralyzing to contemplate.

So let's re-frame the question along more constructive lines: what am I CALLED to be and do in this year and this life? If I can't guarantee absolute JUSTICE, how can I be an instrument of GRACE -- at least a little bit? After all, if there's one theme to this current season of "Angel" (as well as to most of biblical theology in the Judeo-Christian tradition), it's that grace is to be desired more than justice.

For some reason, I keep flashing back to something I read at the breakfast table last week, in an introduction to Process Theology (which I really should have read up on before now, since it has a lot of resonance with the implicit theologies in many of my favorite SF products, including the Minbari beliefs voiced by Delenn in "Babylon 5" and the final chapters of Diane Duane's THE WOUNDED SKY). The author of this introduction was (as I dimly recall it) making a connection between different theologies and the different philosophical schools they were drawing upon, linking the Systematic Theology of guys like Paul Tillich to the existentialist concern with 'being', on the one hand, and Process Theology to the philosophies more concerned with evolution and 'becoming,' on the other hand. This distinction also related to how scholars translate God's self-identification to Moses in the book of Exodus, as "I AM WHO I AM" or "I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE" or "I AM WHO I AM BECOMING".

As a "Buffy" fan, naturally I was struck by the word 'becoming,' for its connection to the gut-wrenching finale to season 2, as well as its relevance to the whole seven-season arc of the show, where the characters are constantly evolving and discovering that the one truly impossible thing in life (whether or not one lives on a Hellmouth) is for things to stay the same. Yes, it did briefly occur to me that, given all this, Paul Tillich might NOT be the best theologian to use in my research on "Buffy" (but then, I'm using him for his attention to religion and culture more than for his existentialist content -- even if I do wonder now if my next paper wouldn't have been better titled "Finding the Courage to BECOME with 'Buffy' and 'Angel'" rather than the Tillichian "Finding the Courage to Be . . . "). There may also be some stuff in there that I need to think about in regard to whether characters in the Jossverse are defined more by their 'being' or their 'doing' (all those fascinating on-line essays about Spike's redemption journey and whether or not he needed a soul in order to be a good person, seem to deal with that question in some fashion).

But what I'm mainly thinking about right now is whether I need to re-frame the previous question even further, and -- instead of asking how I should be or what I should do this year in order to be found worthy -- ask "what am I becoming this year?"

IF I presuppose (as my religious tradition encourages me to do) that, in spite of all my selfish cop-outs and failures to make the most of opportunities presented, God has a purpose for me and an on-going interest in my life, then I must believe that this new year will bring many more opportunities, more chances to change. And I have to believe that God can work around and through even my history of obstinacy and fear. Considering that I was pronounced "dead on arrival" by the doctor who delivered me almost 42 years ago, and then, after being belatedly encouraged to draw my first breath by a concerned anesthesiologist, mis-diagnosed as mentally disabled, I guess I should have learned by now the danger of closing the book too soon, of jumping to conclusions about the success or failure or final value of anyone or anything before the movie has ended the last line of the credits has scrolled by.

I guess I should have remembered that it's not up to me to justify my existence, at all. What IS up to me is looking for the opportunities that come, for the chances to choose courage over cowardice, kindness over cruelty, and becoming more and more the agent for grace I have the potential to be.

Is this just an elaborate way of talking myself out of making any New Year's resolutions, by intellectualizing and spiritualizing all the real work I should be able to accomplish but can't seem to manage? Possibly. But I'd rather tell myself that there's plenty of growth and change still before me, and that even my past screw-ups have been important in preparing me for what lies ahead, than get bogged down (as I had been the last few days -- I admit it) in the sense of being imprisoned by my past, of having turned into a dead end, a blind alley on the map of human existence.