John Ralston Saul, Aboriginals, Citizenship, and Our F#$%ing Inferiority Complex

I just finished reading John Ralston Saul's book A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. Quite a hefty read for the holidays, but worth it in the long run, I'd say.

A Fair Country revolves around Saul's argument that Canada is a 'Métis Civilization'*. The reason we have such an identity crisis as a nation is because we aren't asking the right questions. He believes that the mythology that our country is based on a European, Enlightenment-era model of a monolithic nation-state is an inaccurate portrayal of ourselves. Rather, our society is based on the values and principles Aboriginal culture: egalitarianism, social welfare, complexity, and balance with the environment. This current runs through our collective unconscious and has for the past four hundred years, Saul believes. The problem is that it remains in the unconscious, not our consciousness.

The reason we stumble as a nation is because we fail to acknowledge this, and when we succeed and excel as a nation it is not merely by accident. Medicare, Peacekeeping, Multiculturalism--ideas spearheaded by ambitious and forward-thinking Canadians--are not things that came about in spite of our national character, but because of it. He argues that Canada was based on three cultural pillars: the French, the English, and the Aboriginals. It is by acknowledging and restoring this third and senior pillar that we can find a balance and unleash our power as a nation. For the first settlers and traders to survive in the harsh conditions of Canada they had to develop strong and trusting relationships with the indigenous peoples, who already lived there. Every model of industry we inherited from Europe, from government to agriculture, only worked when we compromised them and found a balance with the Aboriginal way of life.

The same is true now for our survival as a healthy society. We suffer from an inferiority complex because, as a former colony, we judge ourselves by an imperial yardstick. The idea of linear progress, of a monolithic, racially defined nation-state devoted to Enlightenment ideals, and a Judeo-Christian, Manichean worldview--these elements together do not work for Canada. When we resort to this worldview, we are imagining someone else, not ourselves. And when we see the reality come short of our self-image, we think there is something wrong with us. These European-U.S. models of thinking are not inherently wrong (except maybe for the racially defined part). At least, they certainly aren't inherently ineffective. They worked well for other countries at other times. But what worked for the U.S. will not work for us.

Our greatest blunders are often a result of this colonial thinking, where we defer power and authority to someone else--we didn't do anything unless it had London's approval, and now we don't unless it has Washington's approval. This, Saul argues, has affected every level of Canadian society, but especially its elite. He credits individual initiatives to make the country a better place, but he argues that unless there are sweeping changes in elite thinking and institutional initiative, real change won't be possible. The part of the book where he levels an attack on Canada's elite--business managers, politicians, administrators, leaders in both private and public sectors--he titles 'The Castrati', implying that our elite has been emasculated and weakened as a group by this kind of colonial thinking. The reason we remain in this colonial mind-frame is because we believe that we are the direct inheritors of European thinking. Saul suggests that if we realize that we owe more to the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit for our identity than we do Europe and the Enlightenment, we might be able to break free from our dependancy on Empire for self-worth.

At the very foundation of his whole argument is that Canada's healthy sense of self is linked to the well-being of the Aboriginal peoples in Canada. The former is dependant on the latter. It sounds like a stretch, but even when his arguments are on the verge of collapsing under their own weight, he somehow ties them together. It all kind of makes sense. At least, I'm willing to give the idea a shot.

He's not suggesting that we abandon our European roots that actually do exist--some of these things work!--and start mimicking Aboriginal culture. This would be a superficial act, disrespectful to all parties involved, and beside the point. Nor does it mean that those who are non-Aboriginal need to romanticize, worship and elevate indigenous people to superior status in order to find who we are. What we need to do is own those fundamental principles we have inherited from our indigenous roots as a nation, and recognize that to lose Aboriginal culture is to lose a vital part of ourselves, as much as it would be to lose our Anglophone or Francophone roots.

I'm not really doing the book justice. He talks of Canada being a 'Métis Civilization', that our motto 'Peace, Order, and Good Government' should be 'Peace, Fairness, and Good Government, and that while these are minor details, being careful and precise about the language we use to describe ourselves will have enormous impact on our social imagination. He mounts argument after eye-crossing, head-splitting argument to show the validity of this point. I also might be oversimplifying or misrepresenting some aspects of his ideas, so I suggest reading it for yourself to decide whether or not there's actually something to what he's saying. I'm drawn in by his theories, because it looks to me like he is giving historical evidence for the reasons we fail, and why we are great, which is something I haven't seen anybody else do before. Not so thoroughly, anyway. I'm very green in Canadian politics and history, but I can tell that this is the kind of book that can make waves. Big ones. Andrew Cohen points out the major problems with Canada and proposes solutions, but Saul takes us to the root of the problem, which might strengthen our efforts to improve this country in the long run.

I think a great thing I've taken from reading this book is that, if what he is putting forward is true, then I don't have to be so cynical about our leaders, and politicians in general. I haven't seen much in our leaders today to have hope, but Saul cites examples of gutsy and effective leaders who really did listen to their people and changed the country for the better. Canadian politics may seem childish and ineffective now, but it hasn't always been, nor will it always be that way for all time. Andrew Cohen said that while we haven't produced a Stalin or Hitler, we haven't produced a Churchill or Roosevelt either. The more I learn about our history, the more I have to question that. What made Churchill and Roosevelt great leaders? They spoke to their people in a way that they needed. The words and actions of these men resonated deeply and directly with a certain time and a certain place, and for that they are immortalized. I think that we had leaders just like this, who connected with the people and place of their time. If one must parade our individuals like shiny trophies before the world, then I could list Lester Pearson (Peacekeeping), Pierre Trudeau (Multiculturalism, Charter of Rights and Freedoms), Tommy Douglas (Universal Healthcare), the Fathers of Confederation, who negotiated our independence--making ours the first colony to do so entirely without bloodshed. This is quite extraordinary in that context, and anybody who doesn't recognize that is simply ignorant. I realize that all of these examples are white males. Yes, we obviously have a long way to go. But that's also me not knowing enough of our country's history, its movers and shakers, so I have to throw in that disclaimer. (That's not even counting the legions of brilliant minds that have emerged from our country: Margaret Atwood, Emily Carr, Mordecai Richler, David Suzuki, Leonard Cohen, K'Naan, Alexander Fleming, Marshall McLuhan, Douglas Coupland, Louis Riel, Robertson Davies, Neil Young, Rohinton Mistry, Michel Tremblay, Robert LePage, Tomson Highway). My point is, that although treating these achievements like scores in a competition is silly, we would have no problem dropping names. We have a culture of highly influential people. If this proves nothing, and people still feel that we are immature as a society, then just wait. If this is true, Saul is wrong and we are simply a baby nation, I think Robertson Davies has the best rebuttle to that. "Cabbages can be grown quite quickly; an oak takes longer, and I do not think my country should be contented with a cabbage culture." Either way, I don't think Saul is wrong. It is also our responsibility to embrace our history and actively participate in our communal affairs so we don't repeat the atrocities committed by our forebears. This is an age-old, tired argument to use, but it must be repeated until we get the point. So not only is it crucial that we rise above apathy and cynicism, but it is entirely possible too.

I find that the more I read these kinds of things, the more I understand the full meaning of Citizenship. For a long time I resisted the concept of citizenship as being more than a legal title (I am a Canadian Citizen because the bureaucrats need a way to categorize me). It couldn't possibly have any deeper connection to my identity. Why couldn't I be a member of the human race who happened to be from Canada? Why, like, narrow your definition of self when you're like, so much more universal than that, man? Citizenship implied patriotism, which implied a worship of the Nation-State as an unshakeable entity that will always exist in its present form. Patriotism is so easily confused with Nationalism. But even so, it just didn't seem to be a big part of my life. But the more I have learned about Canada, the world, and myself, the more I realize that I am who I am because of where I am, when I am, and whom I engage with. I think this is what it means to be a citizen. To be an individual and take part in one's community is to be a citizen. I live in a land called Canada and engage with other Canadians as a Canadian myself. I owe nothing to some abstract idea called Nation über alles. That, I think, would no longer be patriotism, or even citizenship. That would be secular idolatry. Rather, I have a responsibility to the land I live in and the people I live in it with. Canada has proven to have far more to do with me than I would have preferred. But that's the nature of the beast. So, I am learning to embrace the term citizen in a deeper, broader, and simpler meaning.

Now Saul goes into great detail about how this colonial mindset has affected the elite, but I think it has seeped into every corner of Canadian society. Our favourite word is 'sorry'. I find myself saying it, not even meaning it, but as a verbal tick as common as 'like' or 'um'. So often at my university I hear people say, with a dash of contempt, 'how Canadian of you' to someone who decides to take the middle road on an argument, seeking a happy medium--as if there were something really wrong with that. It's one thing to be laughed at and scorned by other countries, but when we ourselves don't have much self-respect, that is when I have to draw the line. I'm tired of 'being Canadian' being spoken of in a pejorative sense, as if it was the worst thing you could be.

As actors in training one of our biggest hindrances, we are told, is our Canadian dialect. It is higher-pitched, nasal, and tight-jawed. I'm tired of this being the outward trappings of Canadian. Of course, it is good for an actor to be able to have mastery over many dialects--as many as possible--but we forget that our own can be of great value as well. We need to start associating 'Canadian' with our strengths as well as our weaknesses.

As much as I'd like to think that my identity has nothing to do with my country's identity, everything is interconnected from macro to micro, so any issues with self-confidence I may possess might be related to something that runs deeper in us as a people. This is somewhat a relief, but also rather troubling. We need to learn to own what we have. Really own it. I'm tired of being led to believe that my school is sub-par because it is not American, and my training is not British. I have to face the facts that the quality of training might be elsewhere, but it is tied in with this vicious cycle of self-confidence. So I simply can't think that way anymore. I've seen too much diligence, skill, talent, and extraordinary intellectual and creative energy abounding right where I am to believe that it is of lesser value because it didn't come from somewhere else. I've seen too much weakened self-confidence in others around me and myself to accept that this is okay. We have something great, where we are in this country, and it needs to be identified and embraced.


*He uses Métis in a very loose sense, speaking of Canada being a marriage of European and Aboriginal, but not necessarily the specific group of people that emerged over time.

The Spiritual Actor, or, Where Religion and Theatre Bump into Each Other

AH! The holidays have arrived for yours truly, which means I can spend more time on here! To kick off my holiday blogging, I'm going to bore you all to death with the essay I wrote in Theories of Acting. In it I look at where the art of acting intersects with the central ideas of certain world religions. What I've focused on are Buddhism, Shamanism, and a sprinkling of Christianity for good measure. Feel free to question, comment, critique or condemn at your leisure. I love feedback!

I have often heard actors being identified as “high priests” of theatre—usually meant as no more than a metaphor. But I wonder if there is perhaps some validity in that remark after all. Otherwise, why would the comparison be made so often as it is? Surely there are some spiritual dimensions to the actor’s art. Notable theatre practitioners of the 20th century, including Stanislavski and Grotowski have used these dimensions to inform their work in theatre. One might assume that these spiritual aspects were superimposed on acting from the outside, and that is when they became spiritually endowed. But this seems like an oversimplification of the art, and I believe the conclusions these individuals drew would not have been possible had there not been some spiritual qualities latent within this ancient tradition. But if so, what are those qualities? How does acting resemble a spiritual journey? In observing certain religions and faith traditions of the world, one can draw parallels between the actor’s process and performance, and certain ideas and roles in religion. An actor has all the potential to be a kind of monk on the road to enlightenment, a model for ethical behaviour, a shaman healing the community through story, and a heretic who goes against establishment to keep it from stagnating.

One of the actor’s primary intentions is to pretend to be someone else. In acting training we are taught that to accomplish a truthful portrayal of a character it can only come with the acceptance that we are capable of any kind of behaviour. In studying the art of Half-Mask, we improvise with the mask to find a character, depending on what kind of impressions the mask makes on our bodies. It would be incorrect to say that what develops, what character arises, is not the person from whom it arose. The character is an aspect of the actor, and the mask is a channel that gives that person license to act and behave in ways they would not under everyday circumstances. Even the language used about the creation, finding a character, implies that they were waiting to be discovered rather than consciously contrived by the actor. If we are to agree with Erving Goffman’s theory that all human interaction is acting, then this notion does not seem so farfetched (252). When we embrace a wider view of our Selves, we see that the things we assume to make us us are not as fundamental as we thought. My “Self” is a combination of genetic inheritance and experiences. Free will comes into play of course, but we act largely as a result of these factors. This is a central idea in Buddhist thought about the Self. The Sanskrit word Atman means “Self”, but Buddhism subverts this, and rather acknowledges Anatman, “No-Self”, the idea that there is no fundamental I upon which a person builds their identity (Prebish, 48). Acting as an art form recognizes this plasticity of human nature more than most. The “Magic If” tool used by actors challenges the belief that our identities are solid and unchanging.



A term I always hear when applied to acting is being in the moment. An actor’s hope is to be able to perform with all of their attention focused in the present moment onstage. They are not to be thinking about what they are supposed to be doing next or what their next line is, and must be focused on their character’s objective. Actors must make themselves innocent in a sense, becoming open and childlike to what may happen onstage. This sounds strangely like the Biblical passage about how Jesus’ disciples would never enter the Kingdom of God unless they entered it with the open-eyed consciousness of a child (New International Version, Mark. 10:15). The focus of achieving a character’s objective in a play is a highly complex task, and paradoxically simple. It is as difficult for people every day to live in the present as it is for actors to live in the present of their performance. Often actors use tools to help them attune their bodies and imaginations to the specific needs of the role, a warm-up which can often manifest as a kind of meditation. To be rooted in the present, an actor is like a monk in the Buddhist tradition practicing Mindfulness meditation (Eckel, 63). This often involves physical tasks a monk carries out, to be fully in that task, with their mind not wandering, daydreaming, or thinking to the future while they are carrying it out. The hope is that when a person is doing something, they must do it one hundred per cent with all of their energy. This is exactly what an actor is doing.

As actors we are taught to not “anticipate”. We must not try to play for an effect or a quality, but play the action of the character only, and trust that the desired effect will arise naturally. This is also directly related to the concept of dethroning the ego, which is perhaps the most central element of all of the major religions. “On action alone be thy interest”, says the author of the Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita. “Never on its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor be thy attachment to inaction” (14, 2:47). It is this doing something for its own sake, and not for results, money, or approval of critics or the audience, that is prized most in an actor. This says more about human nature than it does about acting, and it might be questionable that acting can even make a person more selfless and trusting, rather than these qualities making a good actor. But it might work on a person in that way. Stanislavski said that “unless the theatre can ennoble you, make you a better person, you should flee from it” (276). He believed it could make people more enlightened, more in tune with the world; and I do not think he was alone. The goal of letting go of self-consciousness in order to become a better actor might be a way of indirectly helping somebody on that path, helping them because they are relieved of the pressure of being aware that they are on it.



This is an extreme claim to make, connecting the path to spiritual enlightenment to the art of the actor—after all, a good actor is not necessarily an enlightened, or even a good person. But many prominent theatre practitioners have argued that this compartmentalizing of art and life is actually counterproductive. Grotowski argued that for an actor to even take part in the act of creation, “his health, physical condition and all his private affairs cease to be just his own concern. A creative act of such quality flourishes only if nourished by the living organism” (260). This comment is echoed in other artists who worked in a more traditional theatre setting. “If you should feel schizophrenic about attempting to stay an honest artist and worker in our present-day theater,” said Uta Hagen, “for the health of your soul and mind, remember that what makes you an artist is your private domain…only when you are functioning can you try to influence or make a better theater” (212). Stanislavski said that the actor’s “part is not played out when the curtain goes down. He is still bound in his everyday life to be the standard bearer of what is fine. Remember this from the very beginning of your term of service to art and prepare yourselves for this mission” (280). The ethical side has been addressed more than once. Theatre is such a highly social art form and demands working as an ensemble to create quality art, so its very nature forces artists to cooperate, which also demands an adherence to moral principles. As a positive result, it creates a strong sense of community under ideal conditions.


A shaman is a figure in non-industrialized cultures that acts as a spiritual leader, a mediator between the world of everyday humans and the realm of the spirits. The job of a shaman is to use ritual and technique to enter this spirit world, in order to bring healing and protection to the community. In a secular, post-Enlightenment society, belief in spirits is a minority. But that does not mean the shaman disappears; rather, he reappears in a form that is compatible with that society. Anthropologist Piers Vitebsky says that a shaman covers the roles which in “industrial societies are played separately by the doctor, psychotherapist, soldier, fortune-teller, priest and politician.” Vitebsky ought to add ‘Actor’ to that list. Although a shaman may be all of those things, he fulfills these needs through theatre, something which only actors actually recognizes as part of their occupation. Vitebsky says the shaman must be able to “sweep the audience along with the power of his or her performance” (52). I think Vitebsky uses terms like “performance” and “audience” to describe what the shaman does, because it is unavoidably theatrical. However, this is not to reduce what the shaman does to mere charlatanry. Rather, if we recognize the spiritual dimension of the actor’s craft, this comparison somewhat elevates expectations of the actor to that of community healer, and spiritual voyager. An actor plumbs the depths of their imagination and subconscious in the way the shaman plumbs the depths of the spirit world (An Actor Prepares, 305). Both must not get lost there, but externalize the experience in the form of a narrative for the audience. Both use a conscious technique or ritual to achieve this balance (Vitebsky, 65). He is careful to note that shamanism is more than ‘only acting’, as if to imply something false. The shaman’s performance transforms the consciousness of everyone involved, which “makes the question of trickery irrelevant” (120). This might separate the shaman apart from the actor, but that might not give the actor full credit for their potential as an artist. I believe an actor is more than a charlatan; but someone who takes part in a public narrative ritual like the shaman, says and does things that need to be said and done for that community, when nobody else can do it. Whether or not one believes in the spirit world, the shaman’s efficacy in healing is in part because of the reality the community believes in. “Shamanic cultures have particular assumptions about what exists (ontology) and how things happen (causality),” says Vitebsky. “If one shares these assumptions, then the possibility of effective shamanic action follows” (143). Likewise, the power the actor has to heal the community relies on a community that is literate in the actor’s art, and the actor’s sensitivity to the things that carry meaning for that community.

But what does the work of the shaman for the community have to do with the actor in the 21st century performing repertory at a regional theatre in North America? Maybe nothing. Does the content have to be a particular type to benefit society? If so, perhaps only the theatre of a highly moral or overtly religious tone would be permissible. This would leave no room for non-canonical, non-religious drama, subversive or slapstick comedy, spectacle, or art for art’s sake. In that case, the actor’s performance cannot always benefit the community as a whole on a spiritual level. But I think this implies a very narrow view of spirituality, and even morality. The stories we tell ourselves survive because they have something to do with the human spirit. We operate in the theatre with the belief that the spirit can be enriched by joy, silliness, and pure imagination, as much as morality. Humour, even that of an irreverent, scathing flavour has a place in a moral universe. When Augustine of Hippo called theatre an anti-temple, with anti-rituals, and actors its anti-priests, he probably would not have imagined that eventually he would be doing us a huge favour (Barish, 64). If we are to agree with his statement, we must take this as a great complement and a great responsibility. This might be where an actor least resembles a priest. A priest upholds a tradition that a community generally puts their faith in. The actor, as an artist, doesn’t necessarily buy into it as well. That is why the actor must play the role of Heretic. He must be the Outsider who challenges the rites and rituals of the Establishment, not to replace it, but to keep it in check and offer a broader view of the human condition. The actor does this by daring to create new rites, by daring to laugh at the Establishment, and by daring to laugh at himself.

The answer to the question of how acting intersects with religion is complex. At the end of the day an actor is not quite a monk, a priest, or a shaman. An actor is an actor. To overlook the differences of each would do a great injustice to all of them. I am not trying to elevate the status of actor to someone better than anybody else, within the theatre or without. There's nothing worse than that kind of moral superiority complex that runs amok in art and religion. And there is also a danger of mystifying acting in making these kinds of claims. But I believe there is also practical value and technique in what a monk or a shaman do, so the comparison isn't as outlandish as one might think. I also think that there is room for mystery in art, so let's not look on it as a bad thing. And while acting isn’t a spiritual vocation by necessity--sometimes it can't be--it has all the potential to become one. Even in my own experience I have been unable to avoid the parallels. Those parallels imply that there is something in acting as an art that goes beyond itself. It is not simply what story the actor is telling that causes some sort of vague religious experience. It is the act itself—the event of summoning one’s courage, discipline, cooperation and imagination to share something with a community, to share the community with itself—where those spiritual dimensions can be most tangibly found.


Works Cited:

-Barish, Jonas. The Antitheatrical Prejudice. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1981.

-The Bhagavad Gita. Trans. Franklin Edgerton. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

-Eckel, Malcom David. Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

-Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday Publishing, 1959.

-Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. New York: Routledge, 2002.

-Hagen, Uta and Haskel Frankel. Respect for Acting. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons,
2008.

-The Holy Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984.

-Prebish, Charles S. and Damien Keown. Introducing Buddhism: Second Edition. New
York: Routledge, 2010.

-Stanislavski, Constantin, Elizabeth Hapgood trans. Building a Character. trans. Elizabeth
Hapgood. New York: Routledge, 1989.

---, An Actor Prepares. trans. Elizabeth Hapgood New York:
Routledge, 1989.

-Vitebsky, Piers. Shamanism. University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.



Whew! You made it! Well, thanks for reading. Hope you got something out of it!

I'm thinking about writing another Christmas-themed tale this year, but we'll see. Either way, I'll be back shortly!

-Liam

Rondeaux

So recently, the writer Douglas Glover started a Rondeau writing contest on his website, Numero Cinq. The winner of the contest, as well as the finalists, as well as the rest of the website, can be found here. My sister, who is in contact with this author, suggested I enter it if I had the time. Somehow I did find the time to enter a rondeau. In fact, I wrote two! Never having written one before, I'd say that's not too shabby (a famous example of a rondeau is "In Flanders Fields"). Here are my entries for your amusement!


In Nicaea

In Nicaea, did they all choose
To gild the words of old Good News.
In god-like robes, for all to see
They dressed that soul from Galilee:
No longer man, this King of Jews.

Hundreds gathered, filled up the pews
With Bishops, all to air their views,
On that old question of Divinity
Once and for all, in Nicaea.

Arius said: "Do not misuse
The name of Christ. Be not confused!
Our Lord was Man!" That was his plea.
The rest believed that God was three,
And from a vote did his side lose,
A dead man became God in Nicaea.


Dreams

In my dream, I swung from the sky
Like Spider-Man. And who did I spy
Standing atop a 'scraper tall
But Barak Obama, all poised to fall:
Had I not caught him, he'd have surely died.

I also saw, in my mind's eye
A poor man chopped to bits. I tried to cry
Out but awoke, struck my head on the wall.
Jesus Christ! It was just a dream.

One night I saw dark heav'n up high
Burst open in a blaze of light. It dyed
The air with gold and violet falls,
Cascading down the starry walls.
A beatific sight, I dare not try
To reach. It was only a dream.


I'll be able to post more often on here as of next week, when I'm on HOLIDAY! Bye for now!

-Liam

Happy Birthday, Universe!

Today is James Ussher day. Why is that? Because 6014 years ago, God created the universe, and this 17th century Irish Archbishop figured it all out. That's right, ladies and gentlemen, on the eve of October 23, 4004 BC, EVERYTHING came into being. And we all owe it to Ussher's intrepid scholarship for pinning that date down.

Darwin was obviously on crack. Clearly, the dinosaurs and other prehistoric flora and fauna were wiped out in the Great Flood. It's a fact. Get used to it, evolutionary theorists. So today is for you, Creationists, you wacky bunch, and your champion, Mr. Ussher. I salute you!

Zappity Thanksgiving!

So sorry I'm late! Didn't have a moment to blog over the weekend, as it was filled with a whirlwind trip with Kayla to Vancouver, and turkey dinner. The dinner was delicious and enjoyed among good friends. But the highlight to my weekend was definitely Vancouver. It's amazing that it's taken me this long to hop across the water to go there. What I saw of it, which was very very little, was really cool. Unfortunately there was only so much I could take in in one day. I would love to go back (and I probably will). There was only one thing that seemed strange. The Vancouver Public Library, seen here...



...looks strikingly similar to a building located on Caprica, from Battlestar Galactica, seen here:



Coincidence? I think not! The Capricans must have studied Earth architecture and built a replica. It's the only explanation.

Hope you all had a wonderful Canadian Thanksgiving!

Humour, and Professional Goals

Well so far I'm keepin' my promise to post on Sundays. So far my score is 1 out of 1 Sunday since I decided to do this. That's 100% on schedule!

I realised something recently about my sense of humour and my prejudices, that I want to test. I have this theory that there could be a person who is relatively quite uneducated, dumb and unsophisticated, tell a very vulgar joke and I'd probably think it was terrible, and I wouldn't laugh. Then, have another person who is well-educated, intelligent and sophisticated person tell the same trashy joke and I'd laugh my ass off. Why is that? Is that the result of my own prejudices? Do I judge the less educated person with harsher standards? Or is it just the hilarity of hearing a very intelligent and classy person totally subvert their image with a raunchy sex joke, while the joke in and of itself isn't all that good? Is it simply the irony? I don't think it's a class thing; but I'm not entirely sure. I have to wonder if there's a correlation, like the smarter the person is, the funnier the joke will be, or something like that, as if it's a matter of having the authority to say it. Or maybe I will find the same joke funny whoever is saying it, but I'll give the smarter person more kudos, because it shows that they might have a broader range of humour? It might be that, because I know no matter who says it, I still hate potty humour. Sex? Yes. Violence? Sure. Fart jokes? Hellz no. But again, I do think there's something to all this. For me, it does depend on who's saying the joke. What do y'all think?

--------

The past week has been a very inspiring one. I had about three evenings in a row where I was so motivated to work on my Half-Mask and Acting Masque pieces, and I've been prolific. I've virtually finished my first draft, four days before I have to present it in class. I really enjoy this year, because the emphasis put on self-created works. It's a delicious synthesis of writing and performance, two areas of interest that have always remained compartmentalised. Now it has me thinking about all of my post-post-secondary goals as an artist. There are so many projects I want to devote myself to, and I don't know which one is the best one to do first! FYI, here are my most immediate goals:

-write/perform a Fringe show
-get involved in the spoken word circuit, either here or wherever I end up living in the near future. This means writing poetry again! After so long!
-start up a theatre troupe that does Full and Half-Mask performances, and other non-realistic forms of theatre, like Clown and Puppetry. I want to take workshops in all of these things. This might even be a possible idea for Fringe. All, but especially Mask. The work I'm doing on it in Movement class is so gratifying, and it's surprisingly uncommon in the biz right now. There are pretty much no companies in Canada that do this kind of Mask. So yeah. That needs to change.
-finish my Writing degree. Wanna wait a bit before I go back to school, but this option is very plausible in my mind.
-while at some point I'd like to get involved in Film and TV, right now I'm more interested in doing smaller, self-produced projects. If I could get a camcorder and some other friends with cameras, we could make little indie movies and videos to put on Youtube.
-On that note, I'm strongly considering starting a video blog. The problem is it would need a point of focus, which I don't have yet that will lend itself well to video, rather than text.
-do more classical theatre. I fell in love with Shakespeare last year, and I think I still want to audition for Stratford in a couple of years. But, you know, that's in a couple of years, so it doesn't exactly count. I need other professional work under my belt before that. Maybe Bard on the Beach?

So those are some of them. The idea of self-created, self-produced work is shining brightly in my mind right now, knowing how hard it will be to get myself out there in the industry otherwise. I'll play it by ear, but I intend to do all of those things. Just you wait!

Here's to You, Eva.

Today was Eva Markvoort's Celebration of Life, at the Phoenix Theatre. It was a beautiful event. It featured the screening of her documentary 65_RedRoses; various people speaking, including Jan, Linda, Eva's fellow classmate, and her parents; and even a recording of her vocal masque. For non-Victoria readers, she was a former student at the Phoenix Theatre who was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a baby and lived with it throughout her all too short life. The doc was about her harrowing journey waiting for an organ donor, a few years ago. She died on March 27, this year. I came to the Phoenix the year after she graduated, and I know a lot of people who knew her personally. It's a strange position to be in. Stranger still is that today was the closest thing to a funeral I've ever been to, and I didn't even know her. But that doesn't mean that her life and her message haven't touched me. The things she has accomplished in her all too short life is staggering and humbling. The amount of love that that event generated--because from what I've been told of Eva, she was full of love--has already inspired me to share my life with others as much as possible, and to work passionately on what I am passionate about in life. During the documentary, as I watched Eva struggle simply to breathe, I became so aware of the healthiness of my own lungs, my own ability to breathe deeply, my own capacity to live deeply. Who am I to take that for granted?

I should also confess that I haven't been a faithful follower of her blog. In fact, the first time I ever went on it was tonight. I expect that I'll be on there more, now. On top of everything else, she's inspired me to keep blogging, and to remember that I do have something to say, even if it's not as big of a something as her journey.

Thank you, Eva.

As I had suspected, school has already started to take over life. No more leisurely reading--nope! I have to read Oscar Wilde, and various acting theores--and no more leisurely writing--it's VOCAL MASQUE TIME!--but I will certainly try to keep up on here. With any luck I can get a book in if I read slowly and patiently on bus rides. Also, Christine has approached me about a very interesting and exciting newspaper project, and I await with puppy-dog eagerness to hear more about it from her.

That's all for now! I hope to blog again next Sunday. Have a beautiful week, everybody!

By the Way...

Happy International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Sweet Jesus!

When I was on campus today, there was a free ice cream booth by the bookstore. You heard me. FREE. ICE CREAM. What a brilliant idea. Anyway, one of the people giving out the ice cream was a Catholic priest, Father Dean Henderson, whom I recognised from Holy Cross Church where I went for Lent. After I left the booth, I got this picture in my head of a Catholic mass where the priest dishes out a decadent maple walnut flavoured ice cream cone to each devotee for the Eucharist. I guarantee the Church would be way more popular if the Body of Christ was ice cream, and not some silly wafer. God Inlactate, if you will.

I at least think it's a good idea.

Now that the summer has drawn to a close, my year so far has been radically different from what I planned it to be. While the idea behind my Year of Extraordinary Thinking remains true and admirable, my own plans have had to change. I ended up not doing tree planting, I didn't enter the 3-Day Novel Writing Contest, I didn't finish writing my submission for SATCo, and I didn't ever get an artist's retreat. The reasons I didn't do these things were partially out of my control, but to the degree that it was in my own hands I chose not to do these things. There were a lot of personal demons that reared their ugly heads this summer and I wasn't brave enough to face them and soldier on. Because of that, I simply didn't have the energy to work on these things. I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed.

What this summer did bring with it was worthwhile in its own way, however. In producing and creating a puppet show for kids, I had a renaissance of sorts for children's literature. The fact that my mom is studying it right now only further whetted my appetite. Being around little kids (3-10) for the first time in a bajillion years was great. The immediacy of their imagination and life was invigorating. My mom made a remark a week or so ago about her granddaughter Lucy's visit to Calgary; she said that it's good to always have a young child in the house. I think she's absolutely right; she speaks as a grandmother, and I speak from a different place of course-- only as an actor, a person who depends on remembering how to reach the world of play. But I can see why that is true. Children were a good thing for me, during a very hard summer when I sometimes verged on taking myself way too seriously.

But: I'm biking more, I observed Lent and went through a lot of spiritual inquiry, I've learned a few new recipes from my cookbook (although I've fallen embarrassingly behind on that resolution), I've already hosted two storytelling parties, and despite the drawbacks, I did devote more time and energy to writing. These are not to be written off. It is progress. Yet the real measure of this Year of Extraordinary Thinking is whether or not I've been living truly and honestly. Have I been honouring my values? Have I been true to my self? That is perhaps the hardest thing anyone can do, but it is also the most important. It's important to check in with that question as often as possible. More often than I have been. So to start my fourth year on the right foot, now is a good time to ask it. In the short term, I can't say I am living as honestly as I know I can be, as I was meant to be. Two days from school starting and excited though I am, I don't feel ready. There is not enough time and my life is kind of crazy, what with moving in to a new place. Things haven't settled yet, and it's frustrating because I can't think straight right now. My desire to create is greater than my time or energy for it. Thankfully this can all be mended. Once school starts things will be settled, I'll be in a rhythm, and it'll be okay. But it's important to have the right start. Every little step counts.

Hey folks! I'm back from my Puppet show tour! Whew! Finally finished.

I'm happy to report that while I was out on tour I wrote quite a few pages of my "Tolkien rip-off" story (see June 7 and June 18, 2009 entries for more information). This is a big deal to me. It's a story I've been working on for years, and it shows no sign of speeding up. So when I can actually get a measurable amount of work done on it, however small, I'm happy.

But I'm torn. I don't feel like I'm ready to write this particular story. I feel like there's so much I need to learn about the world and myself, so many other stories and attempted flights of fancy, ambitious trials and flaming errors, before I can even think of committing this one to paper. But the thing is it's the only one I really care about writing. I abandoned my SATCo project this summer because I just wasn't getting excited about it, and I am for this other one.

I see this Faerie Tale as one of two things: this story is either the one I was called to do, the one to which all other stories I write are stepping stones, the one I was born to write; OR this is the story I need to get out of my system, regardless of how good or bad it is, before I can actually go on to have a fruitful career as a writer. Who knows? Either way, it haunts me, no matter what I do.

P.S. What do you think of the new layout?

K, Dis One's For Gabi!

Oh hey there!

My sister Gabrielle has started her very first blog, which has inspired me to get back on here, after almost a month's unintentional hiatus. The truth is, she was the writer in the family first. She was doing it for as long as I can remember, perhaps as long as she can, too. Granted, I was making comic books and story boards for movies when I was a five-year old, but that always belonged more to the realm of drawing, in my mind. It was nothing like writing out a picture-less story, and being a true Author. I started doing it after she did, trying to be like her. Only I would start a story and never finish; I never had the stamina to finish one. But anyway, I've been inspired once again to keep it up, thanks to my sis.

It's been a fast-paced run through July. And frankly, that's okay by me. The puppet show has been going very well, and we've just finished out Salt Spring tour. We're back in Vic for a week, and then we hit the road once again!

I've developed a very interesting relationship with books, in the past year or so. You might even call it an intuitive one. I find that timing is important when it comes to reading. I won't touch a book, no matter how much of a gem it is, unless it or a subject it deals with has been on my mind for some time. Until then, I won't give it all the attention it deserves. Sometimes a book can put itself in my mind where it wasn't before, and then I'll see if it takes root. But it can't be forced. So if you recommend a book to me, please don't be offended if I turn it down or never bother to pick it up. No matter how good it is it probably just isn't the right time, so I won't be interested.

For instance, having read a couple of C.S. Lewis' books in the past few months, as well as some of his literary essays, I've been thinking more and more about his fiction. So in all likelihood I might end up reading his sci-fi series, and maybe the Chronicles of Narnia, one of these days. Reading his works has also led me in the direction of George MacDonald, a huge influence on Lewis, so I read the Princess and the Goblin. I might find my way back to him pretty soon as well, perhaps to read his adult fairy tale Phantastes. Ever since reading Peter Pan the play, I've been curious about the novel Barrie made out of it, so that is another one I want to get my hands on very soon. My point is, this is how my mind and appetite for reading works. I know what I want. And it might be more difficult, though not impossible, to come in from the outside and plant the desire for something entirely different. It all depends. Please don't stop recommending books, because there is no way that you can know whether I want to read it or not, but like I said, don't be offended if I turn it down. If it really is such a page-turner and just up my alley, then rest assured I will get to it in due time, and it's my loss alone for not reading it, right?

In the meantime, I'm on a mission to read more post-Tolkien fantasy, a whole world which I snubbed before I even gave it a chance. in grade 7 I read The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, and assumed that most fantasy from the 60's onward was like that, so I didn't bother. I read The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, and thought it was alright. I can't remember what it's about at all. It simply didn't leave an impression. BUT, those are only two writers in the genre, and there are many. Most of them probably are, to my tastes, crap, but I shouldn't spite the jewels for being rare. Currently I'm reading the Ursula K. Le Guin's novel A Wizard of Earthsea. She is highly acclaimed, and not just a New York Times bestseller, so I'm hopeful. I'll let you know how it goes. What's everyone else reading, these days?

Happy Canada Day, Everyone!

And happy Dominion Day, to you, Andrew Cohen.

143 years and we still haven't quite moved out of our parents' house.

Tarantino's got nothing on Homer

I'd like to read to you a couple of passages from the Odyssey, Book 9:

'He leapt to his feet, lunged with his hands among my fellows, snatched up two of them like whelps and rapped their heads against the ground. The brains burst out from their skulls and were spattere over the cave's floor, while he broke them limb from limb, and supped off them to the last shred, eating ravenously like a mountain lion, everything--bowels and flesh and bones, even the marrow in the bones. We wept and raised out hands to Zeus in horror at this crime committed before our eyes: yet there was nothing we could do. Wherefore Cyclops, unhindered, filled his great gut with the human flesh, and washed it down with raw milk. Afterwards he stretched himself out across the cavern, among the flocks, and slept.'

And also, from Book 9:

'Some power from on high breathed into us all a mad courage, by whose strength they charged with the great spear and stabbed its sharp point right into [the Cyclops'] eye. I flung my weight upon it from above so that it bored home. As a shipbuilder's bit drills its timbers, steadily twirling by reason of the drag from the hide thong which his mates underneath pull to and fro alternately, so we held the burning pointed stake in his eye and spun it, till the boiling blood bubbled about its pillar of fire. Eyebrows, with eyelids shrivelled and stank in the blast of his consuming eyeball: yea, the very roots of the eye crackled into flame.'

Good old classical literature.

While I was reading Letters to a Young Poet, which Kayla recommended to me, I came across this passage:

"In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life; learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!"

This summer has so far come to be a big lesson in patience. Patience in the knowledge that I will find a job, patience with my health, fitness and well-being, and patience with my artistic pursuits. I've become enthralled by the need to be efficient. If I'm not doing something with my time, I feel very anxious about it, and then depressed and greatly frustrated. Even if I am doing something, if it's not something my ego arbitrarily deems worthwhile, then it's as good as doing nothing. If it doesn't have a tangible result, then all is lost, it seems. I need to keep looking to this passage for a reminder that I don't have to do everything all at once. More importantly, the times where I feel inactive, something--an idea, a picture, a song, is in me and needs that time to bloom in my mind. The evenings I get home from work and I may accomplish nothing all evening, it's worth remembering that while my conscious self may not have done much, my unconscious might be working very hard, and is waiting for the right opportunity. It's worth remembering that any inspiration I get came to me not in spite of that seemingly endless wandering and floundering, but because of it. Nothing is a waste.

I've idolized the idea of maximizing my time, doing the most with it as possible; a distortion of the carpe diem mantra, I guess. Perhaps we're not meant to be that efficient. Stanislavski, who devoted his entire life to acting, likened himself to a prospector, who had to sift through tons of useless rocks just to gather a few pieces of gold. I think he found an abundance of it, but the important part is all of the time and energy he put into sifting through all the rocks. One can't get around that step.

A word I came across, also from reading Rilke, was fruitfulness. This word struck me instantly. I think this is what I've been working for, but I mistook it for its deceptively similar, utilitarian counterpart, productivity. Yes, they're synonymous, but I believe there is a difference, in our day and age at least. To me, fruitfulness implies fruit, which comes from an organic kind of growth that will only yield over time, with great patience and humility, after enduring great pain. Productivity is an Industrialist word, and it smacks of quotas in my mind. It implies efficiency, and economy. If a human being was a lightbulb, it would not be a very cost-efficient one. Yes, it can create light--and it is a marvelous light indeed!--but not without producing a lot of heat. The metaphor itself doesn't come close to it, because I don't think we're meant to be that way. We are from Nature, and Art is from Nature, so we really are more like a tree. That's why we live according to the seasons, and that's why there is a time for everything under the sun. (So for God's sake, we've got to stop believing that we are what we make! Our creations already have that covered.) Efficiency is something that I cannot satisfy right now. I think there's a reason why people say the "fruit of one's labours" more often than the "product of one's labours". It's got a far nicer ring to it, and it speaks of something that comes out of life and is life-giving. I believe this word is closer to Art, as well as Life. And that's what brings me back to the passage above. And that's why I've got to be patient. I will not yield anymore than my earth will allow.

Confessions of an Armchair Anarchist

Hey everybody,

I haven't posted much of anything lately, and I don't really have too much on the boil at the moment. But that should change fairly soon. In the mean time, since I have no new material, I thought I'd share with you an ooold and silly entry from when I was 15, because it's just too amusing:

"I think laws are stupid. For as long as they exist people won't be able to continue in their evolution. Rid ourselves of laws and people will gradually become more self-reliant upon their potentiality for common sense. Things will seem chaotic at first I'm sure, but I believe the long-term effect will be better. Until then, we will be bound by laws; external agents that we look to rather than looking inward. Laws are like over-protective parents, doing more harm than good, since they are ultimately supressing the growth and development of the children (i.e. the subjects under which laws are implemented, a.k.a us). My two cents for today."
Liam Volke
October 13, 2004

Seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.

I feel that I should explain a few things.

I often wonder why I even bother with Christianity anymore. I'm very aware of how much time I've put in writing about it on here, and frankly I would like to move on to other things again. But the fact of the matter is that it's been on my mind a lot lately, and it won't stop until I've followed this train of thought to its natural conclusion and it's done with me. All the same, I do wonder why I bother with it. For a long time I didn't, but it kept bobbing up every now and then throughout my teen life. Encountering figures like Desmond Tutu, C.S. Lewis, the mystics John of the Cross and Meister Eckhart, and especially people in my own life, showed me people for whom this faith had something real and true and beautiful, and it was a constant source of inspiration to them. Seeing them live this deeply within their faith made me admire them, and envy them their ability to access that through Christianity. It has long stopped doing that for me. For a while I wondered if their convictions, their love and compassion, was proof that Christianity did work. But then I realized that it was not the system, but the people themselves that inspired me. As I've mentioned here before, I have great faith in people who have faith. I also viewed these kind of people as an outsider. But I wanted to know what it was at the centre of their faith that inspired the joy and serenity they seem to possess. I wanted back into Christianity, but I felt it was too late, and I had moved on. I don't necessarily need it. Nonetheless, this religion has still been a subject of great fascination and frustration for me. So I should explain where I stand with it. Get comfortable, this is going to take a while.

As I grew older, I became more aware of different religions, a process that was accelerated in the post-9/11 era, where religion and diversity became a huge topic in schools and media. As I became more aware of different religions, I took an interest in them and studied them. The more I studied, the more I realised that there was something of God in each of them. Understanding their system of ethics, and the profound experiences that they were rooted in brought me to the conclusion that they too had a grasp on the sacred as much as my own faith tradition. This unhinging of my previous understanding of religion--the deep humanness of it--was liberating for me. I was someone who was raised in an environment of tolerance and open-mindedness. To discriminate against others for their religions never would have entered my mind, and yet I felt I needed some divine sanctioning for this ingrained attitude. My heart wanted to celebrate diversity, but my head wanted God's permission first. I believed in my newfound universalism, but I had no direct evidence for it. Yet seeing the way people of various traditions conducted their lives according to their faiths, reading the texts they regarded as holy, I was convinced of this idea. There were similar traits among each of them. How could a religion like Islam--that endorsed critical thought and social justice--be evil? How could a religion like Buddhism--that endorsed compassion for all beings, and offered the chance to transcend endless suffering--be godless? How could a man like the Dalai Lama not be holy, just because he didn't worship the God of Abraham and Isaac?

However, this liberation also brought with it a sense of inertia. I still felt I needed a way to express my own spirituality, but what were my options? To choose one road would be to exclude all the others in a way. I couldn't stand the idea of not making a choice, but the idea of defining myself also meant creating a border around me, which excludes more than it includes. You may ask, "why choose at all?" If the mind, as Comte-Sponville says, has no fatherland, then why the need to pretend it does? To choose did indeed feel futile, because I understood intellectually that the truth ultimately transcended any single path. God was greater than religion. Yet I still needed a way to that truth and I did not feel I could trust myself on my own to reach it.

For years I've been orbiting around Buddhism, but I can't make a decision about following it specifically for a few reasons, one of them being my fear that I would commit to it for all the wrong reasons. In some ways it felt more true to Buddhism not to officially convert to it, because otherwise it would simply be exchanging one parochial worldview for another. Again, perhaps I needn't make a choice. But a large part of me longs to actively express my spirituality, and to openly acknowledge the sacred in my every day life, something a secular lifestyle often overlooks.

Amid all this, Christianity hasn't completely lost its appeal. For all its baggage throughout history, even in spite of its narrow view seemingly built into the Bible, I've been drawn to it. I felt the ministry and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth has a great deal to offer to our contemporary world. This I cannot deny. I believe this is so because it is mirrored in other faiths. The problem with that was that I only really saw its value when I held it up to the alternatives. I could not put stock in Christianity until it was validated by other systems, so this meant I had other built-in standards by which I was measuring it. I think that because I've tried to view the Gospels through the lens of Eastern philosophy to make sense of it, I wondered if I belonged to that mindset, which is why I turn so often to Buddhism. The language of this faith tradition was always more accessible to my logic-saturated mind. It allowed me to think more. And yet, for whatever reason, my sights always wandered back to the images of cloistered cathedrals, humble monastic cells, bread and wine, lambs, blood --and crosses. Always the Cross loomed in my mind whether I wanted it there or not: a symbol of death turned inside out, into a symbol of selflessness and love. It is a dramatic and therefore unforgettable image, and therefore I could not forget it. This may be because I have been raised in a predominantly Christian context. To deny this cultural heritage would be apocryphal. But whatever the reason, I am drawn to it, like a big, horrific magnet.

This past Christmas, I read Karen Armstrong's book The Case For God, and my hope for religion--not just faith, but religion--was renewed. She showed me that it does have a place in human society, but only because she illustrated its original meaning. Religion, she argues, is not something you intellectually believe in, but something you do. It was a skill, a technique, similar to practicing scales on a piano, which could help someone improve and expand their spiritual life the more they did it. It was the way one carried out what one believed. The ritual in religion had potential to awaken the spirit of action and enlightenment. She also gave historical evidence of the same transcendent experience in all religions, eastern and western, so this put my mind to rest about that. That wasn't enough to make me consider returning to Christianity, however. It was a crucial moment, but not the end.

I tried going to church a few times over Lent, and while I wanted a spiritual community, I couldn't relate to the liturgical practices. I couldn't say the Apostle's Creed without feeling a knot in my stomach, knowing I didn't believe 95% of it. I believe in forgiveness, and I believe in God, (although in no form resembling the traditional bearded patriarch), and I believe that in all likelihood Jesus died under Pontius Pilate's governance, since this governor was a real historical person. Everything else I couldn't swallow. The biggest issue barring me from Christianity is its historicity. In our contemporary Darwinised world it is perfectly alright for Christians to believe that the story of Genesis is nothing but a creation myth. A lot of the supernatural aspects of the Old Testament are generally viewed as myth and metaphor to most Christians today, thankfully. Therein science and religion may coexist. The problem comes up with the stories surrounding the life of Christianity's protagonist. Can a person see the Virgin Birth, the various miracles Jesus performed, and the Resurrection, as metaphor rather than fact, and still be considered a Christian? To be a Christian, in the orthodox sense, meant that these things had to be accepted as things that actually occurred in history, even if the Fall, Noah's Ark, and the parting of the Red Sea did not. And even if the Virgin Birth and the miracles were debunked, the Resurrection surely had to be accepted as a real historical event in order to be a Christian. This was the event that everything Jesus' life lead up to, we are told. It was what the Christian argument hinged upon. This does not work for me as literal, so I decided I must not be a Christian.

Furthermore, I could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity, which sucked the humanity out of Jesus and injected him with divinity--all done centuries after his death. I believe he was a man, nothing more. Therefore, I must not be a Christian. I also knew that all of the documents in the New Testament were written decades after Jesus' life ended, and in all probability he never said most of the things he was quoted to have said. So I could never be certain what the original followers of Jesus actually said and did. Unable to reach the historical Jesus, I couldn't be sure either way if the Gospels had any validity. It troubled me that people called these books the Word of God, when they were selected out of a plethora of gospels that were floating around at the time. For example, why did the Gospel of Thomas get rejected from the canon? Why did the canon close at all? Why did Paul get so much stage time in the New Testament? This to me seemed like the texts were edited by individuals who had their own agenda to promote, and closing the canon for all time was a way for the Church to exert its power and authority. How could I call it the Word of God when I knew it was tampered with, not to mention penned by humans? I could make no final conclusions from looking at history, so the way was barred for me.

But that wasn't the end either. At the beginning of the summer I started reading a book called The Sins of Scripture by John Shelby Spong. Spong is a Bishop in the Episcopal Church of America. He is also a theologian and a Biblical scholar. In this book he basically says flat out that the Bible is not the Word of God, but a document of very human origins. He deconstructed the Bible, one argument at a time, showing how its books were the product of human insight at best, and aggressive nationalism at worst. He goes through the passages that promote anti-Semitism, child abuse, homophobia and misogyny, and says they must be jettisoned from the Bible. They are not Holy Writ so they have no reason to be there. He does the same with texts that promote a patriarchal order, including the image of God as Father, and even the texts that the Church uses today to defend its stance on birth control. To "be fruitful and multiply" Spong argues, may have had a place in a time when the Jewish tribe was small and relied on its progeny to survive, but now that the planet is groaning under the weight of overpopulation, birth control is now a moral necessity; the sacredness of life is being compromised by the unchecked quantity of it. The best way to view the Bible is as a Jewish Epic, like the Odyssey was for the Greeks, or the Mahabharata was for Hindus--not the final truth, but a way for a people to tell the story of their nation using the language they had, with all its power and limitations. Finally, Spong casts the light on Jesus not as a god, but a man. He is not God, Spong says. In all likelihood he was a person conceived out of wedlock (yes, a bastard child; hence using the story of the Virgin Birth to avoid the scandal). And in all likelihood he had a wife (there are many theories about Mary Magdalene being this person, and Spong thinks that there is text evidence for it). Not only that, but he may have even had female disciples, so his community was not a Boys Only club as it has become and been up until now. He probably did a lot to infuriate the orthodox Jewish authorities, and so he was crucified and died for it. That's it. The Bible is not the Word of God, it is a collection of books conceived by human minds and shaped by their limited knowledge. But knowing this, Spong argues it is still possible to be a Christian. He believes that even though none of the Gospels can be seen as historically accurate, they point toward a man with whom people had a profound experience and that the miracles and the Resurrection, are still viable symbols for today, even if they did not literally happen.

I read about this further in Spong's book This Hebrew Lord. Its argument was that Jesus must be viewed "through Hebrew eyes", and that most of the imagery we have inherited in Christianity has been removed from its original context, and therefore distorted. Obviously Jesus had an effect on the people around him which they could only express with the words they possessed. It is important to look at him in his original Jewish context to understand the things that were said about him. People called him 'Lord' and 'Son of God' because these were images and words pulled directly from Jewish scripture to describe the Jewish Messiah, a human. 'Lord' and 'Son of God were titles for a man, the descendant of King David, not a divine being who came down to visit us from Outside. Even if he wasn't literally the descendant of David, he acted in such a way that made people believe he was the Messiah. This was the only language they had to express the experience they had with him. Spong also argues that as long as the Bible is seen as a human document and not the Word of God, it is possible to be a Christian, because Jesus was a man who defied tribal barriers: instead of rising up to crush and scatter his enemies, he preached the idea of loving his enemies. He reached out to communities outside of his own, regardless of who they were. His message of love and compassion are what shine through the Gospels, though hidden beneath the political biases and limited language of their writers. His story, Spong says, was the turning point at which the Jewish epic was transformed into a universal epic, and that is why he is significant and worthy of following. That is why he was called Christ.

After reading his work, I've been able to look at these facts not with trepidation, but relief. Of course all of this information has existed before Spong came along, but the fact that it was admitted by a person of considerable authority in the Christian Church, a Bishop no less, gives me hope for this faith tradition. Indeed, Bible scholarship came into its own about two hundred years ago, and yet it so much of its discoveries do not reach laypeople. Not through the Church anyway. Church authorities view it as a threat to the status quo, a threat to certainty which they seem to think that regular people cannot grasp. So they repress it, while people curious enough find out anyway, from other sources less friendly to Christianity. People use this information to level attacks against Christianity, and what I find interesting here is that Spong uses it as a defense of Christianity, or at least what he believes it should be.

There is one more problem I haven't addressed though. Still unsure about how to enter any path without negating the others, I read something else Spong said:

"Is our only alternative then to seek to honor positive tradition in all religious systems, creating in the process a pantheon large enough to hold us all together, a religion of consensus where the edges are blurred and the divisions are papered over? Some traditions, like B'hai, seek to do that, and they do it with great integrity, but that pathway, while positive for many, does not seem to me to offer the best hope for either religious toleration or a religious future."

This was exactly how I was feeling.

"I propose, rather, a different route into what I think is our inevitable interfaith future. Each of us as participants in our own particular faith must journey into the very heart of the tradition that claims our loyalty. I, as a Christian, must plumb the depths and scale the heights of my own faith system. I must learn to separate the essence of Christianity from the compromises this religious system has made through history...We Christians must journey beyond these forced political divisions to the core of our faith and there allow ourselves to discover its essence, to enter its meaning and finally to transcend its limits. We do that, however, while still clinging to what we call our ultimate Truth and what we regard as our 'pearl of great price.' That must also be the pathway that every Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and any other participant in any other religion of the world must walk."

Spong makes the case that Christianity is a way that points to the truth, and not the truth itself, and that eventually one must go beyond it. This made perfect sense to me, now. I think I could understand this because of my experience as an artist, and a person. We as humans deal with the concrete, the tangible, and physical, in order to reach the abstract, the intangible, and the spiritual. Great art is created by focusing on the specifics. That is what specificity is to acting choices, that is what imagery is to literature. We deal with particulars to reach the universal. Jesus spoke in the concrete language of symbols because that is how the human mind works. Tibetan Buddhism employs the same method, by focusing one's energy on mandalas. We can't tend to the soul without the body, which is something I think Jewish wisdom understands quite well. We can't reach God but through the physical, because that is what our minds can wrap themselves around. It is like in the Bhagavad Gita: Arjuna asks Krishna to reveal himself in his full glory, but to do that would blind Arjuna, so Krishna takes on a physical form while on earth. That is what religion is. Trying to be specific in spirituality as one is specific in art. Trying to put clothing on the ineffable. Of course, it gets to a point where the clothing must be shed, but until then, it's a necessity.

So that's where I now stand with religion in general, and Christianity in particular. It's a very complicated relationship, but one I feel strongly about. Spong is just one individual, but his ideas resonate with me quite deeply, as does Armstrong, and even Lewis. That being said I haven't reached a final conclusion, but this doesn't bother me anymore. I know my journey is not over, and it excites me. But all in all, after reading these authors, I feel it is now possible to enter this faith tradition if I so desire, let alone any tradition, without giving up my intellect and my skepticism.

It occurred to me yesterday that it's been over half a month since I've posted anything new on here. It's already almost the end of May! This won't do. At this rate I'll never be able to beat my record of 48 entries in 2009! I'll have to pick up the slack, one way or another. Right now, to be honest, I can't say I've been motivated to write on here recently. I prepared another spun out entry and I couldn't bring myself to finish it, so I'll leave it for a later date.

In the mean time, I've been doing a hell of a lot of reading in my oodles of free (unemployed) time, so nobody can say I haven't been keeping busy (not to mention applying for one job after another, but that's not very interesting to talk about. So I wont.) If nothing else, I'm rather pleased about this. But even during the school year I can say--with a hint of smugness, I'll admit--that I managed to get some leisurely reading done. In fact, I'm proud to say that I've gotten a lot of reading done over the year. When I'm asked what my hobbies are, the list comes up rather short. The list comes up headed by reading and writing. I feel like I should do more with my time. I'm not a part of any clubs or teams. I just read. I rarely watch movies, and I barely even watch TV. I never play my video games. Don't get me wrong, I love doing all of those things, and reading isn't necessarily superior to any one of them as a pastime. That's just what I seem to do.

It's funny to be saying this now; I think I can say I've always been a sort of academic type, but I don't think you could say I was a bookworm. I was never prolific enough to deserve that title. Granted, having all this free time has changed that, it seems. I do do other things with my day, to be fair: I exercise, try to learn to play piano, run errands and stuff like that. But at the moment, reading is something of a primary activity. For some reason I feel guilty about this fact, like I should be doing more. Instead I just sit there and absorb a story or an argument. It doesn't really benefit anybody but myself. At least with writing, I'm giving or creating something and putting it into the world; someone else has the chance to be engaged with me. But reading is more of a selfish act. At least it can be; I've spent more time with books than I have with my own friends, recently. It's a sorry sight: if left alone for too long, I will be a hermit. Old habits die hard, I guess.

On the other hand, why shouldn't I be happy to be reading? It's more than an act of slightly sophisticated spongery, isn't it? It's a noble and enriching thing, and although this may seem obvious, I think that fact bears repeating, (if nothing else to make me feel better about all of my involuntary free time). So I say to anybody who's realized they just spent the last few hours, days or even weeks doing nothing but: don't feel bad about it! It may seem passive to an outside observer, but that doesn't make it so. Whether you're reading Stephen King or Batman or James Joyce or Robert Munsch, your imagination is a flurry of activity and that should be honoured! So don't take that for granted.

C.S. Lewis' Theism vs. André Comte-Sponville's Atheism

As I had mentioned three weeks ago, I would devote an entire entry to my readings of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and André Comte-Sponville's The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. I read these because I wanted to hear from the most credible and intelligent advocates the strongest arguments they could make for their respective beliefs about God. I thought I would line up each of the arguments that resonated the most with me, and tried to choose the ones that were arguing about the same point to make it as fair as possible.

A few notes before I begin: I have my own opinions separate from either of the one laid out here, but I felt a lot of what both of them had to say to be quite persuasive in some ways, although less so in others. Furthermore I don't believe that you can prove or disprove God's existence, certainly not just by logical debate. Thankfully, I think this is something which both authors would recognize as well. Ultimately I wouldn't leave the matter of such personal significance up to other people whose experiences I haven't had. This is just for fun.

I should also admit that to compare these gentlemen's arguments is an unfair business to begin with. They were not contemporaries and they had different audiences. Not to mention they were using different means to put their arguments across. C.S. Lewis delivered Mere Christianity as a series of radio broadcasts to the beleaguered people of the British Isles during the German blitz of World War II. He was acting as a voice of hope and he was speaking directly to the British people, trying to be as simple and clear as possible without dumbing down his message to for the people. His writing style is full of humour, wit, piercing intelligence and beauty. His argument as a whole is not without its warts however. He makes claims that show quite clearly where he is and when he is in history, and he cannot exactly be judged by our standards for having these beliefs, but they are prejudiced beliefs nonetheless and we can't follow his advice in those areas, knowing what we know and being who we are in a 21st century secular context. That being said he strikes me as quite a progressive man for his time, and was not someone to let Christianity fall into the hands of simpletons who believe the "common" person is unable to engage with his or her faith on a deeper, more contemplative level. Lewis never stood for blind faith. Indeed, a man of letters like himself, I should hope not. On that note, he uses a more literary style for his argument, employing scenarios and images that will resonate with a regular English person, whereas Comte-Sponville follows the tradition of Western philosophers and uses their words to fuel his arguments. Both write clearly enough and beautifully enough for the layman to appreciate, but sometimes their tactics are so different they seem to be speaking different languages, on different premises.

The reason why I find both of their voices compelling is that both of them have seen God from both sides, so to speak. The only difference is they went in opposite directions. For a long time, Lewis was an atheist, and then he found his way back to theism, and then ultimately Christianity. What he is very successful in doing in this book is making Christianity seem like the most sensible thing anybody can do, and I imagine the arc of his reasoning might reflect his own personal journey. Comte-Sponville came out of a Christian context; he was one in his youth, and when he entered adulthood he found his way into atheism. But he understands quite thoroughly what he is arguing against, and even acknowledges the value of belief without outright dismissing the whole thing. I feel I can engage in what he is saying because he maintains his respect for people who have different views than his own. He does not launch an attack on religion like individuals such as Richard Dawkins and his staunch 'militant atheism', but he calmly and firmly says why he is not a believer and makes a damn good case for it. Finally what I find appealing about his argument is that he believes it's possible to be spiritual without God, and His non-existence does not preclude living a life of the spirit.

I only wish they knew each other and that I knew them, because I would love to hear what I'm certain would be a lively debate between them. Anyway, enough of my yammering.

THE LAW OF MORALITY

Without touching Christianity, Lewis makes a claim for the existence of a God based on two things. The first is the Intelligent Design view that with a universe so beautiful and immense and elegant, it must have been made by Someone or Something. This would be extremely weak evidence if he had stopped there. But he doesn't, thankfully. In fact, it's not even the main thrust of his argument. "If" he says, "we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built."

He recognized that the world is governed by laws, but when it comes to human beings, the Law of Morality is the law that we can choose not to follow. Lewis says that we act one way even though we know we should be acting another. It is something deeply ingrained in us as animals, and the cause for it being there is that there is a force in the universe telling us to listen to it, and the reason why this is what we feel we should be following is because it is in fact the law we were originally meant to follow. "Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know--because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions."

So for Lewis, the voice of conscience is a sign of God's existence. I won't go into it here, but he skillfully reasons from this point that this voice inside of us is directly linked to the origins of the universe. This is based on the assumption of course that right and wrong are truths that govern the entire universe, and not just the way we understand the universe. But he makes the case that even if they as concepts only concern human beings, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't exist.

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust," he says. "But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning." This last statement, although not verifiable as definite evidence in any way, is compelling in my eyes.

LEWIS' CONCLUSION: EXISTENCE OF GOD=LEGITIMACY OF CHRISTIANITY

From here he goes step by step to his final conclusion that Christianity is the most logical choice one could make. Make no mistake, Lewis is arguing for a very particular idea of God, and does not want it to be confused for something else. "To be complete" he says, "I ought to mention the In-between view called Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution...people who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet 'evolved' form the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the 'striving' or 'purposiveness' of a Life-Force. When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then 'a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection' is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind 'strives' or has 'purposes'? This seems to me fatal to their view". So if you believe in God, Lewis says, you might as well believe in a personal God, as in a God that actually has a personality and is not just some abstract law. If you're going to go that far you might as well admit that because there is so much evil and because we fail to climb out of it despite our best efforts, you might as well admit that we need help from the outside, and that's where God's Incarnation comes in.

REASON VS. THE ABYSS

I can also see just what Comte-Sponville might say in response to Lewis' argument for God. He might say that because we are able to find meaning in the universe, that does not mean the universe innately has it, or that it is even built to be meaningful. He looks at the question from the philosophical angle "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Gottfried Leibniz asks, and Comte-Sponville reiterates. He makes the case for a universe of contingency, that is, the absence of necessity. The universe is here without having to be here, and that drives us with our need for order, meaning and reason, up the wall. "Contingency is an abyss in which reason loses its bearings," he says. "Disorientation, however, does not constitute a proof. Why shouldn't reason--our reason--get lost in the universe, if the latter is too big, too deep, too complex, too dark or too bright for it? Indeed, how can we be certain our reason is perfectly rational? Only a God could guarantee us that, and this is just what prevents our reason from proving his existence...That our reason stumbles and feels dizzy when confronted with the abyss of contingency proves that we would like to get to the bottom of the abyss, not that the abyss has a bottom." I have to admit, the flaw in Lewis' thinking is that the universe is a teleological one, where everything has a designated purpose, a trajectory. This is not necessarily the case, as Comte-Sponville believes, and there really is no way of proving it.

WISHFUL THINKING

He also argues that the very belief in God is wishful thinking. "What is at stake in this argument? Nothing less than us--and our wish for God. Yes, I desperately wish that God existed, and I see this as a particularly convincing reason not to believe he does. This is only apparently contradictory. To be an atheist is not necessarily to be against God. Why would I be against what does not exist? Personally, I would go even further and admit that I would definitely prefer that there be a God. This is just why, in my eyes, all religions are suspicious...We are in favor of justice, too, but that hardly proves it exists. As Alain rightly put it, "Justice does not exist, which is why we need to create it."

COMTE-SPONVILLE'S SUMMARY

Comte-Sponville actually sums up the reasons behind his atheism in 6 clear points:

"A final word to sum up and conclude this chapter: We have discussed six major arguments, the first three of which lead me not to believe in God and the latter three of which lead me to believe that he does not exist. They are:

1. The weakness of the opposing arguments, the so-called proofs of God's existence.
2. Common experience: If God existed, he should be easier to see or sense.
3. My refusal to explain something I cannot understand by something I understand even less.
4. The enormity of evil.
5. The mediocrity of mankind.
6. Last but not least, the fact that God corresponds so perfectly to our wishes that there is every reason to think he was
invented to fulfill them, at least in fantasy; this makes religion an illusion in the Freudian sense of the term."

EVIL AND SUFFERING

The Problem of Evil has always been a powerful argument against God's existence. This is something which neither the Jewish nor Christian traditions can adequately answer. The Book of Job is a testament to this. They might say something like how evil exists because God gave us free will. He preferred that we choose to follow Him out of our own volition rather than by his. This almost works, but it still doesn't cut it for me. Even if human beings were less despicable, bad things will still happen to good people. The Judeo-Christian tradition uses the story of the rebellion of the angels in heaven as a mythological model to explain evil; so evil came from outside the natural order of things. But even this has its flaws. I like to ask the question, Who tempted the Tempter? Lucifer may have free will and that's what enabled him to turn away from God, but God did not have to organize free will around morality.* Evil did not necessarily have to be the alternative. We only can't imagine anything else because that's all we know and if that's what the omniscient ruler of the universe decided out of all of his infinite options for what this universe would be, then he must be a cruel despot indeed.

To answer believers' claims that we are not meant to know these things, that "God works in mysterious ways" makes the matter more complicated, according to Comte-Sponville. His third point is his reason. "From a theoretical point of view, believing in God always amounts to trying to explain something we do not understand (the universe, life, human consciousness) by something we understand even less (God). How can such an attitude satisfy us intellectually?...Much will always be unknown--this is what relegates us to mystery. But why would that mystery be God, especially given the fact that God can't be understood either, since ineffability is part of his definition?...Religion becomes the universal solution, something like a theoretical master key--except that it opens only imaginary doors. What use is that? God explains everything, since he is all-powerful; but in vain, since he could just as well explain the opposite. The sun revolves around the earth? God wanted it that way. The earth revolves around the sun? God wanted it that way. This does not get us very far. And in either case, what is the explanation worth, given that God himself remains inexplicable and incomprehensible?" I find this argument incredibly compelling.

FAITH AND HOPE

I must touch on Christianity in a little more detail, and while the debate about God's existence does not mean bringing this particular religion into the ring, both writers draw from it heavily (albeit for different purposes), and it greatly concerns me as well, because I live in Western society, which is predominantly a context of Judeo-Christian thinking. Furthermore, as someone who is currently grappling with Christianity and trying to give it a chance, I feel it important to talk about.

I think that Lewis understands that Christianity cannot ultimately answer these questions any better than Comte-Sponville can. Paradoxically enough, I think this is what gives me hope for Christianity's survival, provided its adherents can admit to it. It also makes me believe that there can be a real dialogue between theists and atheists. The real point of Christianity is not to answer the question. Any attempts to do so is a human attempt, including the story of Genesis. But Christian faith, at its bare essence, acknowledges that we are in a world gone wrong, and no, ultimately we won't find out why we are creatures who are conscious of suffering, but that there is an antidote to that suffering. It's the specifics of that antidote that cause disagreement.

The reason why I believe C.S. Lewis is a sobering voice for Christianity, and the reason why I think him and Comte-Sponville would have something to agree on is the topic of faith and hope. They use different words, but I get the sense that they are speaking about the same thing. In Christian doctrine, the three theological virtues are Faith, Hope, and Love (Charity), as outlined by St. Paul. Comte-Sponville believes that Christians spend too much time on the first two. "In the kingdom of heaven," he says, "faith and hope will have disappeared; only charity, or love, will remain! From my own standpoint as a faithful atheist, I would simply add that this is already true. Why dream about paradise? The kingdom is here and now." People who wait around, dreaming of a better world are missing out on the wonder and beauty of this one. This is because it was largely influenced by Greek philosophy, specifically Neoplatonism and Plato's Theory of Forms, which separated the body from the soul, the world of thought from the world of being. A lot of Christian thought over the years has been obsessed with the Hereafter, and paid little attention to the Here. From this conclusion Christians have justified abuse self-flagellation, poverty and any sort of abuse against the physical body to remind themselves and other people that it is sinful and the sooner we can be rid of it (without actually doing the deed ourselves) the better. I think that Lewis might agree with Sponville however. "God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it."

Sponville also thinks that Christians put to much emphasis on belief, and instead ought to follow Jesus' example, rather than lean entirely on him for the solution. "If Jesus himself, as even Saint Thomas acknowledged, was inhabited by neither faith nor hope, then being faithful to Jesus (and attempting, with the means at our disposal, to follow his example) would not entail imitating either his faith or his hope; it might entail imitating his vision and comprehension (as Christians do through faith and hope and as Spinoza does through philosophy); it would definitely entail imitating his love (such is the ethics of the Gospel--or, again, Spinoza's ethics)." There is a passage in Lewis' book that might also make an appropriate response to this statement, as well as Comte-Sponville's statement that the "kingdom is here and now", and it has to do with the Christian idea of faith. "Handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you." Jesus himself was quoted to have said that 'the kingdom of God is inside you', and all it takes is to recognize this ( to me it is actually not unlike the Buddhist view of Samsara and Nirvana being the same thing, merely two side of the same coin). I think one of my favourite quotes of Lewis' about the matter is this one: "Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary."

Again, even though I think Christianity still has a fighting chance as a faith tradition, that doesn't mean it's the best solution for all people at all times, or that its potential for good prove that God is necessarily behind it. I think it has a fighting chance because it has the wisdom enough to point to something greater than itself, indeed greater than any single creed or philosophy, and I feel fortunate to have learned from two individuals who I think have tapped into that idea. Lewis although deeply Christian in his way of thinking, I believe is open-minded and compassionate because of his faith. With his trademark cleverness as a writer, he gives this answer: "Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him." If you ask me, it's not a bad response at all. You certainly wouldn't find an intolerant bigot in him, that's for sure, and that's what makes me feel like I can read him without feeling uneasy, like I'm going to have my wrist slapped (or my soul thrown into eternal damnation) for disagreeing with him when I do. I only wish more Christians thought like him. Comte-Sponville speaks with this same open-mindedness as well, which shows his willingness to have dialogue with theistic thinkers. "It would be madness" he says, "to attach more significance to what we don't know and what separates us than to what we know from our own experience, in the depths of our hearts, and what brings us together, namely, the idea that people's real worth is measured neither by faith nor hope but by the amount of love, compassion and justice of which they are capable...when summits are involved, why should we need to choose? When sources are involved, why should we need to exclude? The mind knows no fatherland, nor does humanity."

Ultimately, they haven't answered my questions. Nor did I expect them to. But Lewis has reminded me what Christianity, as we know it, is at its essence. Comte-Sponville has offered a reminder to always search for the truth, no matter what, at the expense of comfort, at the expense of hope, at the expense of religion, and even at the expense of God. I feel that I can engage with both of these belief systems, because at heart they know they are dealing with something greater than either of their traditions can accurately describe.