Plans

Today I am searching for my own answers. Perhaps the name of this journal will be prophetic, and I can discover something new.

I have been attempting to get out of foodservice and into 'real work', labors in which I excel and to which I feel dedicated. Vocation. This has been ongoing since I first arrived in New Orleans. Indeed, back when I was hoping to travel to England this was the plan. In December I again took up my flag, my CV, and heard a few responses. The most promising was as a counselor for Loyola's Admissions department. It would have been a job I enjoyed thoroughly, and felt a strong vocational commitment to. It also fit with other life plans well, and I thought it was a sure thing. Two good interviews later, I have been passed over. Lame.

For those of us keeping score, I have not been able to land a big-boy job. Period. Several attempts, several rejections, but all of the others had apparent explanations besides my incapacity: I was out of the country and they were unwilling to sponsor me; I was grossly underqualified; I had bad timing; the position was filled from within more easily/cheaply. Today I have been rejected for none of these reasons, but because I am less good than two other people. Yay for third place.

Pity party aside, what can I do next? There is still an option for the DRE job in Mississippi, about an hour from New Orleans. They have not started interviewing yet, and will contact me. But their office seems super flaky, and it is rather rare that they would take that sort of risk on a newcomer to the community, and a young person. Not to mention the fact that it is far away, further away from New Orleans than either Quinn or I want to live. An hour commute is better than a 12 hour plane, but it would still suck to be living apart. I doubt we could really afford to, anyway. Besides, New Orleans seems to be a pretty dry well for Archaeology jobs, so she would really be here for me anyway. So lame times two.

I could stay here and wait for something else to open up in New Orleans. But why here? Quinn doesn't have much opportunity here, and unless I have a great 'in' (which I thought I did today), I don't see it happening. Besides, nothing is going to open up until much closer to the summer.

I could try to predict Quinn's job market and find work there. For example, San Francisco has a vibrant and progressive Catholic community where I may be able to find some work, and that region has brilliant museums and archeological societies both private and government. But can I get a job without first moving there? Can I afford the travel expenses to interview, etc? Could I afford to live there at all? I love the place, and we have some friends, but I am certainly not familiar with it; do I have the strength for another blind move?

We could wait for Quinn to find a place, and try there. But her professors do not want to talk about that until late summer at the earliest, which, as I learned this year, is way too late for great jobs for me. I could take my Brennan's experience over there and wait tables, playing this game for another year (but with her, this time). That sounds pretty OK.

I think I will start by diving in all ways at once. First, I will be patient and wait until my job market surfaces again. I will continue with the interview in Mississippi (if they haven't lost my number. again), with the hope that I have totally misjudged that community and its awesome and we totally have to live there, prejudice aside. I will keep my ear to the ground closer to home; maybe the Holy Cross situation will improve and I will rock as an adjunct faculty in the fall. I will start watching Bay Area options, and if something perfect shows up I will jump on it.

I am in the same zone as everyone else my age. Being engaged and graduated does not make me terribly special. Blah. Time for some brownies and ice cream.

-Andy

Foodservice

It is midnight after working a double shift at Brennan's, so I am in the mood to break the cycle of morbidity with some plain-old ranting. Last night I conversed with friends about the merits of various restaurants in town, and now I will try to distill that argument/conversation into some big truths of eating out.

The primary skill of a waiter is to be calm under pressure. I like to sing be-bop songs when I get anxious about the food taking too long, pressure from the boss, something on fire, etc. Customers generally only start hating the establishment and the dining occasion once the waiter flips. As a diner, I don't mind waiting or being otherwise patient if my waiter seems well-intentioned and calm. The waiter sets the tone for the diner, as well as fellow waiters and subordinates. So, calm, collected, and pleasant under pressure is the definition of a good waiter.

(Of course, not making mistakes prevents the pressure in the first place. That means the waiter should be surrounded by experienced staff and should proceed carefully.)

Quinn's rule for eating food at restaurants was that it was only worth it if she could not feasibly prepare the same food, better, at home. That is a very high bar! In that sense I am proud of many of the dishes at Brennan's - poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce are really mean, especially at 10am. No way I could prepare them myself, and even she would probably back off. Then we have a turtle soup which is, well, really good and unique and hard to imitate. Where will I get turtle meat?

Likewise, when we dine out we make a point of ordering interesting, special items. I cannot understand people who ask for eggs benedict when our super-special 'signature' dish is a benedict plus a super-cool sauce. Or people who ask for french toast and waffles. Seriously. Why are you here? Go make that in your hotel kitchenette in under fifteen minutes. I want to know what a restaurant is famous for, what the chef feels like making. And that brings the elephant in Brennan's kitchen - no one cares.

A good cook cares. We know this at home. Well, a good chef is interested in food, too. I promise that the chefs at Brennan's are not interested in food. They are not foodies. They do not eat at other interesting places. They are not excited to try something new. In their defense, they aren't paid well enough to care. Now take a really good restaurant, like my favorite Dante's or Jacque-imo's. The people in their kitchens experiment, eat, love food. The result is interesting and unusual works that are genuinely creative aesthetic works. Philosophically, when eating in or dining out, I don't only want to engage my digestion, but also my emotion. I want to connect with the chef (and the farmer, and the waiter). I try to provide that as much as I can at Brennan's, and people appreciate me for it ($). But eating at Dante's is a connection to the farmers who grow the veg, and the town that holds the chicken coops. The waiters are real people, not just monkeys throwing bananas. The chef is there emotionally and spiritually, and takes an active interest in my enjoyment of the food. The bartender enjoys his work, and likes making good drinks. The cat is fat and cuddly. I connect with the good restaurant in more ways than with my taste buds and duodenum. That is added value, worth paying money for.

So, in summary, a good restaurant offers food that is better than I (Quinn) could prepare, that is to say food that impresses us. A great restaurant adds to that with real personality, promoting a real relationship between me and the food, staff, and place. Real relationships, as we have discussed before in this blog, are the metaphysical stuff of God. So, I can confidently say that a great restaurant is holy. Blessings to Beaucherie, Dante's, Jacque's, Mimi's, Jamilla's, Daisy, Iroha, and all of our favorite places around the world.

Ritual

It has been a while, and I have a reasonable amount of guilt for ditching the habit for a week. Hey – Mardi Gras: when life calls, start living and stop writing. But that will only get me so far, namely about five days. So today I am back, and I want to finally tackle a term whose collected presumptions have been in the midst of this blog since the beginning. Today is the day for Ritual.

And what better day to talk about rituals. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and we saw a particularly ritualized Mass at the chapel, with very little singing, loads of irregular Catholics in attendance, and the whole extra ritual element of the ashes. And tonight I will be gathering with the Vespers community to ritualistically sing the ritual songs. I enjoy ritual more than most, and I purposely surround myself with ritual throughout most weeks, but this is super-ritual week makes me extra keen to tackle this huge topic. In so doing I will try to channel some of my favorite thinkers, especially Chauvet (Prof. Knieps would be proud).

Rituals are moments in time specifically designed, by ourselves or someone else, to be impersonal. That is to say, when performing a ritual (rituals are necessarily experienced in participation, not observation) we perform actions not of our immediate design. Religious rituals, for example, are inherited over generations, and we pass them on without major alterations.

Take the Mass for example. Nothing about the clothes, music, architecture, seats, smells, or even the words spoken is apparently practical. They come from another time and place, and are specifically designed to be different. Dancing between preserving their otherness (get used to that word) while adapting them to particular circumstances is what defines good ritual.

Experiencing otherness means being taken out of a personal comfort zone, being put off routine, and lowering defenses. Experiencing otherness, embracing otherness, helps us avoid objectifying the other. Rituals create that experience with the hope that the unusual elements help stimulate the brain to be open to new experiences. That part of the brain, the openness to new experiences, will hopefully translate into an openness to the other, empathy, and relationship. For religious ritual, that other to be experienced is God.

So rituals are codified weirdness because God is weird; they are programmed otherness because God is other. Rituals remind us that the world is full of not-us, that custom-made is not the greatest good. Ritual preserves Truth over opinion. At least that’s the thought.

Of course, ritual also collects barnacles. Just as we modify our traditions with, say, acoustic guitars and microphones, previous generations have modified traditions with the elements that suited their context. Many religions are trying to find the bright light at the end of the vale of misogyny. In Western Christianity, a history of violent persecution has led to rituals predisposed to morbidity and guilt. Protestant churches, founded and developed as a minority, are friendly with populism and/or judgment.

Take the Tridentine Mass, the pre-Vatican II Latin liturgy that is making a comeback in the US. The priest facing away, chanting quietly in Latin, the hyper-reverence for the eucharist, all of these preserve tradition at the expense of the comfort of the people in the congregation (and of the priest). That is to say, the Tridentine Mass focuses on – it considers its purpose to be – the other, God, not the congregation. Post-VII churches are all about the altar in the middle, the congregation interacting with each other; not so with Tridentine churches, where all of the action is directed towards the altar on the back wall. In a Tridentine church, everything is literally directed to outside of the church. Can’t get more other than that.

But it all feels obnoxious unless people know what’s going on. Ritual is much easier to appreciate if you are aware it is happening, and of its general purpose. Perhaps if we lived in a more ritually-minded society this could happen, but that’s a non-starter. Education goes a long way, but it usually starts and stops with the simplistic explanation of symbolism, which is misleading. I think that if we were aware of the purpose of ritual in general, not just the item-for-item metaphors that compose the periphery of ritual, we would allow ourselves onto the ride. That’s my personal experience.

But maybe not, too. My personal experience presupposes a broader comfort with symbolism, storytelling, and fable. I appreciate being circuitously lead to notional meaning. I fear that is an underappreciated virtue. Scientism (the derogatory cousin of science) does not get along with ritual symbolism.

The other caveat is that ritual must be balanced with relevance: the other must be approached with a hefty dose of the self; the unfamiliar will be exhausting without the comfortable. Very good liturgical directors, priests, and other moderators of ritual are sensitive to the requirements of the community. That’s why different masses are set up for the youth, or old people, with different attitudes towards the tradition. But even then, the larger the community the more impossible providing a rich ritual for everyone becomes. I like to improve my mass experience (pun) with more intimate rituals that can adroitly change to meet our needs that day. I like the Vespers, of course, where no more than ten of us can pretty much figure out how to communicate the other meaningfully using an ancient program.

So rituals: newer or more relevant is not always better; be explicit about its foundational meanings; and try to do it in small groups. Get to know your God by knowing your grandparents’ God, and Cyril’s God, and Moses’ God, and your great-grandchildren’s God. Practice feeling uncomfortable, lowering defenses, really knowing someone else, and you’ll be better at knowing God. And knowing God, transcendence, is the root of any spiritual/religious inclination.

And 1000 words makes up for a day?

Praise and Worship Music

I missed a day, and I feel terrible about it. And, honestly, today's post is not going to be very long. Mardi Gras is exhausting from rise to bed.

Today I am thinking about praise and worship music, thanks to Ken and my discussion regarding its place (or unwelcome) in the liturgy. There are a few steps - what is any music's place in the liturgy? How does praise and worship music not meet these criteria? What pitfalls do they suffer more than any liturgical music?

Music is integral to liturgy. I would not have always said that, and I myself still suffer from the music at most masses. But I am not the target audience of most masses, and liturgical music is generally successful at its main goals. Liturgical music is meant to solidify praying persons into a praying people through the sort of temporary/generalized relationships we have mentioned before. Through collective singing of well-known, common songs, we each feel part of the group. Think of going to your favorite band's concert - you aren't you anymore, you are a fan, with other fans; or Christmas carols - you aren't a cold joy-bringing person, you are a choir of carolers. Liturgical music can/should do that, too.

It also separates 'out there' from 'in here', creating a ritually sacred space by surrounding us with extra-ordinary items, architecture, scents, and sounds. The creation and importance of ritual and ritual space is a big topic, but the general idea is that, along a continuum or balance, the ritual space breaks our routine and allows us to get out of our heads, thus aiding our contact with others and 'the other'. That is what defines churchy music - it is music of any genre or age that is not found outside of churches. When you hear any churchy music you should think of church, and when you think of church you should think of churchy music. By being so limited, churchy music is only identified with the ritual space, and so helps us create the ritual space. Hearing the music reminds us of how to be in church, so to speak.

What helps churchy music, good liturgical music, do this? Well, things that make it different and also common. Being around for a generation is a good start. If you have heard a song in church from the time you were using crayons on the pews, you probably remember more or less how to sing it. Not to mention that songs have a long life if they survive a natural selection of sorts, so older songs may actually be better than much of what you hear. Its not like every song in the 60s was awesome, but the ones we remember were pretty awesome, then and now.

Next to that, a good song has to be accessible, singable, easy to play well on the piano, easy to hum on the way home. Liturgical songs are for the masses (pun).

Lastly, liturgical songs should not sound good on the radio. That's a hard thing to say, but the place of liturgical music is the ritual space, exclusively. If it sounds good outside of a church, it undermines its identity as liturgical music because it is no longer unique to the ritual space. Church and driver's seat and cereal box aisle are not the same, and liturgical music must help preserve that difference.

These are all very Catholic things to say, and could be taken to paint me as a traditionalist. Insofar as tradition is necessary for ritual, I am a traditionalist. So yes, I am a liturgical music traditionalist. I believe that ritual is key to Christianity, and I think that tradition is key to ritual - both very catholic things to say because they are founded on ideas like hierarchy salvific acts. So, without shame I say that praise and worship music is a non-catholic phenomenon. Please stop playing the latest Christ Tomlin hits in the Mass. They do not fit between the 2000-5000 year old rites of the Word and of the Eucharist, or being sung by an ordained man in ritual vestments, under a canopy of medieval architecture. Its just confusing.

Praise and Worship music confuses the Mass because it does not meet the above criteria. It is not a generation old yet. Some few songs are making the cut already, and have crossed over a little maybe. So my septuagenarian grandmother, who is relatively keen, who has a blog, may not be part of our congregation of singers when the song is played. The song may become a moment for a few individuals to have an emotional experience, and for the guitarist to really jam, but the liturgy is not a coffee house venue.

We do adjust over time, and we do grow into some songs, but most praise and worship music simply does not have the lyrically rich content to support thirty years of regular singing/praying. I hate to cast wide dispersions, but an hour listening to the praise and worship radio station will confirm my generalization. To really last, all good songs have more than generic personal emotion; very few praise and worship tunes make that bar. So, mark one against praise and worship music.

Part of what makes praise and worship music is its accessibility, but in a pop context. They have simple lyrics, sure, and easy to sing tunes. But can a congregation drudging through the motions, as most do, still give the song meaning? Can the song be sung without barefooted, over-delighted college musicians? That is the litmus test for en masse singability (punx2). That quality is present in some contemporary Christian music, so a tie.

But much of contemporary Christian praise and worship music has fallen into the trap that pulls other songs down with it - christian radio. If you see vestments on sale at the Gap, they cease to be ritually significant. If a church is an apartment building, it ceases to be a church. If ritual music is sung outside of the ritual, its ritual efficacy is eaten away. Oh, christian radio, let me count the fail.

Sing carefully. The songs you sing are effective, they have an effect. Mass is not open mic morning, it is ritually planned. And, praise and worship music lovers, give me a song.

1050 words - does that roll over?

Our Exploding Sun

Dang, I'm just going to roll with death here. Maybe I'll get it out of my system? The vision of Christianity, this end-times prophecy stuff, all assumes that the Kingdom of God that replaces the world happens, well, here, on Earth, with our familiar New England graveyard with Washington's bones and such. But the natural final destination of Earth is being consumed by the Sun as part of its death. So, how to be cosmic big-picture about the end of the world and the Christian vision of final salvation?

First the facts, as I understand them. All the matter we have experience with - the sun, planets, our planets, the calcium in our bones - is the result of a few generations of suns exploding and pulsing forth elements forged in their core. We are a second generation solar system, meaning there was the Big Bang (which may or may not have been 'the beginning') and then there was another star that exploded, and now there's us. And our sun will explode, too, eating up all our calcium and making new cool stuff out of it. The exploding sun planet thing is just how stars and planets and matter works. The only force strong enough to manufacture elements is an exploding star, and they just so happen to have lots of element-rich planets hanging out nearby when they explode.

This should really change our perspective of our relationship with our planet. We are minuscule passengers on a cosmic rock whose destiny we apparently cannot change. Environmentalism, husbandry, and general ecological stewardship is all for our survival, not the survival of the planet. When a Hippie says, "Earth is dying," he may mean the ecosystem, which is dying, but the planet is always dying, and living, and not terribly affected by us. Humans have not changed the gravitational pull of the sun, nor its effectiveness at blowing up.

Thinking cosmically like this should also raise questions about the place of other planets, with or without life, in the Christian vision of final, universal salvation. But another day.

What it does provide is a context for the values of faith and hope and love that is sensible today. We have faith that the Christ-event is, if not an unique, an important event in space and time. Christ says that the Earth is important, people are important, and our actions and prayers affect the history of salvation. You are my people and I will be your God, says the Shoah, the Jewish confession. We are the people of God, created in (one of) God's image(s). So feel important in the face of boggling scale.

And we have hope for a future that is not nihilistic but important, unique, and positive: The Kingdom of God. Even if the Final Horizon, the Omega Point, is beyond our solar system's history, that is, even if Salvation comes after the explosion of our Sun, we have hope that our world is not vain and nil, but important to an ongoing history.

Here I can see myself telling tales to preserve my sanity. But if religion is nothing else, if all our faith is in vain, is it not still worth it? This is the definition of denying mortality - denying the finality of a supernova. Is that good enough? When taken at this scale, has Christianity ever been anything else? Are we ready to call this necessary to humanity?

Love has a place in the scheme, something like the Noosphere of Teilhard. Another time.

Gradual School

John Irving has it right: we all die, the trick is to live some beforehand. Watching "The World According to Garp" reminds me of the importance of adventure in life; the journey is the destination, and all that. It has been a tenant of comfort to me this last year, undertaking an unexpected adventure that might elsewhere be called a detour, or simply 'suck'. But it is more than consolation in tough, passing time - it is a philosophy worthy of consideration.

I do not mean to be macabre, but many of my posts are about death, and will continue to involve death and its avoidance our of necessity. One of my favorite philosophers, Kierkegaard, calls death the cause of all anxiety and angst, and thus all sin and evil acts, and ultimately he suggests that it is itself what Augustine called Original Sin. We humans are both blessed and cursed with an imagination of infinite potential, but a finite ability and time to act because of mortality. This conflict makes us wish to have done something else, to see the grass greener on the other side, to take both roads diverged in a yellow wood. And that anxiety after choices, an unavoidable angst, eats its way to become jealousy and lust and pride and fear and all causes of hurtful actions.

This does not explain why, when faced with two roads diverging, we should take the one less traveled by. I don't know if The Dane would enjoy adventure. I think he would - the implicit and explicit criticism of formalism at the heart of much of his work suggests a mind comfortable with long walks. He respects the process of coming to understanding. And, in a way, that process mirrors the process of coming to death. We cannot be mature or adult or accomplished or elderly or dead without living the hours between, experiencing unusual circumstances and making tough choices.

Exactly what does the passage of time give us? The ability to coordinate and interact with others whose schedule of decisions is their own. The experience of various conditions, in terms of environment and peers. Aging, physical change in the self. Changing seasons and tastebuds. So to say, many factors of life depend on the passage of time in ways that our infinite imagination may not appreciate. So we should engage the process.

We must engage the process. What are our other options? Time will pass, and must pass, regardless of our wishes otherwise. Same as with other persons, time asks for an intimate relationship as it goes to work graying our hair and updating our months. And, as with other persons, we are free to reject time at our loss. But the rejection is vain, impossible, and the mark of insanity.

Plastics are a symbol of the eternally new in our world, but they themselves are a metaphor for time. They are formed from petroleum, which has itself been grown from the remains of carbon-based life in the dinosaur age. Animals lived and died, mostly died, and have now become clam-shell packaging and car interiors. With time enough and heat, our plastics today will become fuel for a new star system, just as the plastics of our parent solar system were re-forged in a supernova to become us. That sun died when it radiated the elements from which we make lip injections and sweaters.

Our sun will die, too. But I like to think that, in the meanwhile, the Earth will have been pretty interesting, creating an inner universe and interconnected web (Teilhard's noosphere) of a complexity rivaling that of the stars themselves.

Sacrament

This post will be the first of many in which the word sacrament is used. I like this word, which is closely related to sacred, a word that I do use regularly in various contexts. I will try to illuminate the ideas behind sacraments in general, and thus the relationship between the sacred and the Church, the sacred and the world, and so the church and the world.

Sacraments connect people to each other in ways I have described before - a superficial, temporary connection between acquaintances that helps affirm everyone's humanity. Live music and sporting events do the same. But sacraments go further by using ritual. Ritual deserves its very own post, but basically is the use of aesthetic elements like architecture, clothing, choreography, and scents to separate a gathering and action from present reality to connect it (or suggest its connection with) another reality. For Christian rituals, and most religious rituals, that other reality includes the imagined divine world far away, or the narrative fiction that is the reduction of a paradoxical spirit.

That element may come and go depending on one's spiritual...resonance. But the indisputable, foundational element to sacraments is the connection they provide between generations. Sacraments help us cheat death by directly impacting future generations by ourselves experiencing the impact of our forefathers. No matter one's relation to or belief in God, that alone is sacred. That is the definition of transcendence.

I want to bring back the word sacrament. I think that its association with the rote memorization of the seven established sacraments of the Catholic Church has done the word great harm. Regardless of what Sr. Mary Angelica made you believe, there is no limit to what could be considered sacramental. Any action or occasion that promotes transcendence is sacramental. It just so happens that the Church, as the cornerstone of its existence and the reason for its founding, is a sacrament machine. Seven occasions have risen to the top after 2000 years of natural selection, as universally significant. But here in New Orleans we have sacraments (Mardi Gras and Jazz Funerals), and the US has a few all over (like the Red Mass). I have personal sacraments - writing every day has become one. I share some with friends, like Wednesdays with Melanie, Izzie, and Connor. And I want to do more, like Vespers, which is blatantly and apologetically ritualized community singing in a 1600 year old tradition.

These are all rather religious examples, but they set the template for our experience of transcendence in the West. But trees are also sacraments, as is water, and (increasingly, and arguably,) television. I cannot speak to a river's experience of the sacred, but our experience of the sacred, our being made aware of our interconnectedness, is prompted by any number of things. I say 'our' and I mean the plural, because sacraments benefit from a plurality of persons. You can pray (metaphorically) alone, certainly, but its by praying together that we heighten our awareness of the past and future and, thus, divinity.