Rich Kids

I work at a posh, downtown highschool in Melbourne. Only the very well off can afford to go to it. I have loved getting to know the kids there but sometimes the disadvantages of being advantaged break my heart:

Chad: "Where do you live?"
Dom: "Well I used to live with my parents further East, you know? But I was having too many parties and stuffing up the house and everything so they kicked me out."
Chad: "Serious? So what are you doing now?"
Dom: "I live in this apartment with this other guy who's already finished highschool and stuff. My parents pay for it and for our food and everything so it's alright. We can just do whatever you know. There's like a pile of pizza boxes stacked up next to the door."
Chad: "Oh."

Lucy: "Are you going anywhere this weekend?"
Em: "Nah, this will be the first weekend I haven't gone skiing the whole season."
Lucy: "Where do you go?"
Em: "Bulla" (i.e. the Vale of Aus. - snow is rare here, so skiing is pricy)
Chad: (high voice) "I go skiing every weekend, yawn. It's so dull."
Em: "As if you do!"
Chad: "Of course I don't. I was making fun of you."
Lucy: (offended) "Yeah - Em thinks just because we snowboard instead of ski that we're too poor to ski!"

Chad: "So how's the roomie and the apartment and everything?"
Dom: "It's good, yeah."
Chad: "Cleaned the place up in the last two months?"
Dom: "Nah. It was getting really messy so I rung up my mum, you know, to say 'this place is a shocking mess' and she just said [sighing] 'alright - I'll have someone sent over to clean up'"
Chad: "Serious?"
Dom: "Yeah."
Chad: "Oh."

Why is it that we are so caught up with giving our families "everything" only to find that it ruins the people we think we are loving best by addicting them to what matters the least?

Commonwealth Star Struck

I have noticed since being back in Australian that Aussies are actually more obsessed with celebrities than Americans - something I never thought possible because of the infamous Australian "tall poppy syndrome". But I'm beginning to realize, that over here the fetish is for different reasons.

Americans are essentially (I will continue to generalize insultingly here) panderers. In the land of Uncle Sam the celebrities - and they have made quite a few of them - are like royalty. Yanks will stand in the cold for hours just to get a glimpse of George Clooney getting into his car; and become hopelessly incapable of speaking intelligently if he actually looks them in the eye. Americans love to celebrity watch - to know every minutia of their favorite star's life - because it is a sort of pornography - a means of living out their fantasies by proxy. Their stars are their heroes and, as such, the media takes advantage of them before, ultimately, ignoring them. For Australians - the cutters down of tall poppies - things are almost the reverse.

On the radio this morning stories were told about an after-event party at which Moby, who was recently touring Australia, tried to take advantage of his celebrity status on at least two occasions and was hotly rebuffed - by mere plebs, mind you - with something to the effect of, "I don't care who the F--k you are, you can shove it..." Another series of radio anecdotes involved women who had compromised their taste in men to have relations with celebrities. Invariably, the women laughed at themselves for this and, rather than revelling in their exalted connections, made unflattering jokes about the pop-star in question. To me, these are excellent examples of the no-nonsense, a-man's-a-man approach that Aussies take to everything.

On the other hand, you have the first 12 - count them, 12 - pages of one of the major Melbourne newspapers dedicated to Kylie Minogue's breast cancer revelation and an entire ward of a hospital cleared out to give her some "breathing room" while undergoing tests. Not only that, but the news in general and on a consistent basis is about 40% celebrity related, stars are a primary topic of Australian small talk (almost eclipsing the weather) and the visit of a big star to Australia or the success of an Australian star overseas are both central sources of national pride. The two attitudes don't add up.

I think there are three things at work. First, Australians, as a small and sporty nation, need to treat anyone from Australia who achieves anything overseas as though they were a travelling unit of a massive international sports team - the team's membership consisting of everyone in this country. Kate Blanchett at the academy awards is "Aussies' Best Hopes for Academy Gold" and the recently convicted Bali drug smuggler, Chappelle Corby, is an unlucky player who has been given an unfavourable call by the umpire - abusive screaming at his incompetence duly following. Second, Aussies love scandals and outrages at which they can wag a superior finger and these are most easily found in public figures. While Americans tend to build themselves up by wishing they were Russel Crowe, Australians do it by complaining about what a sot he can be - essentially telling themselves that, although RC is a superior human being, "I'm actually better than he is". Third, what good is tall poppy syndrome if there aren't any tall poppies? I suspect an unconscious need to idolize, obssess over and continually ratify celebrities simply to prevent a shortage of people to shake a wizened head at.

If you take all these needs and tendencies into consideration, it's actually not hard to see why Australians are so star-struck. In Oz, the rich and famous are doing triple duty.

Pragmatism and Artistic Stagnation

Phil Nellis has pointed me to a transcript of a speech by David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) on "The Role of Redemption in the Creative Process". It is a good read, if a tad muddled, and he has some really fascinating thoughts on art in the evangelical community.

One such thought - one that has been in my mind for some time - is the idea that Christians, particularly evangelicals, are creatively restricted by their dogged adherence to a vigorous pragmatism. Pastors, teachers and theologians have, for many years, been propagating the unbiblical idea that Christians are only "still on earth" for the purpose of evangelisation. In fact, the moniker "evangelical" might, partially, be blamed on this strange teaching. From it has come the notion that when a Christian communicates he is to communicate the "gospel message" - or, if he is communicating to other Christians, a Bible teaching (or at least one of the church's circulating cliches, alleged to have been born in scripture and frequently, eisagetically proved there). Thus, the arts are viewed as valid only insomuch as they fall into one of these two categories. Since the second is usually considered fulfilled by established church practice (preaching, hymns/choruses, devotionals etc), the first often becomes the only "useful purpose" for Christian art. (There is a movement in which art is used as a supplement for preaching, worship etc, but even this is highly functional - usually little more than an elaborate illustration or mood enhancer).

Bazan affirms this in his speech and suggests that such an attitude is what makes Christian art "not vital...not honest". Undoubtedly, however, it is not only this error that has squelched Christian artists but the narrow view of art itself. For many evangelicals art has ceased to be a form of expression and conveyance of truth and has become another word for mass media. Christian artists become no more than advertisers.

Iris Murdoch, an atheist, suggests that art is, possibly more than anything else except nature itself, man's best means of perceiving "The Good" - the Platonic supreme form - and, by that perception, of being drawn out of selfishness and into a meaningful engagement with life. The encounter with art, the very act of creating in one's own likeness is, as Bazan argues, one of the signs of God's image within man and a means, therefore of partaking in his nature. Both artist and "audience" are, through the encounter with art, transported in some sense, great or small, above and beyond themselves - they are ennobled and transformed by the experience. The very fact that a piece of literary art - the Bible - is considered one of the primary means by Christians of expereincing and encountering God, should lead us to suspect that Murdoch is right: God cannot be met with through a series of scientific summaries and exegetical cliches aimed at achieving some temporal end. He is not an end or a means and so we must not come to him as such.

Prgmatism can stifle art - it can stifle truth - and if evangelicals do not shake off the misconception that art is no more than a megaphone they may find themselves unable to engage with truth and, eventually - inevitably - unable to engage with God - cml.

Tradition as Renewal

My close friend, Chuck's, blog - konanymous.blogspot.com - recently discussed the meaning of festivals in relation to a migratory instinct with human beings - a need to return to the past in order to find a future.

I have wondered before now, whether that isn't precisely the case. There is an eternal accusation - often by the younger generation to the older - that those who cling to tradition are afraid of and irrationally resistant to change. This is especially an issue in religious circles. But I have begun to realize that ritual, tradition, liturgy, is a vital part of us all - whether we admit it or not - and deserves a more careful look.

For me, an intense tradition is Christmas. It's a season to, essentially, relive the year before (which, of course, was a reliving itself of the previous year and so on) as nearly as possible with the obvious change in a few variables like what gifts are given, what the weather is like and other things beyond my control. My family is in on it, too. We try to watch the same movies on the same schedule, surround ourselves with the same decorations, listen to the same music, bake the same things, go to the same shopping centers: essentially conjure all our powers to bring to our senses things which will remind them of years gone by. It's a fascinating obsession. And for me, though I think of myself as very nearly addicted to change, it is a vitally important one.

Someone might say that Christmas is no different than habits like washing yourself exactly the same way every time you shower, of following a prescribed route through the supermarket or of eating meals at the same time every day. But my suspicion is that such routines are far more mindless and automatic than the intentional re-creation we engage in during festivals, holidays, services, reunions, weekly/monthly/yearly events - it is the difference between the robotic operations we perform because it is easier and speedier to do what we have learned well than to learn something new - and the difficult struggle for some kind of renewal.

Dictionary.com gives this definition of recreation - "activity that refreshes and recreates; activity that renews your health and spirits by enjoyment and relaxation". It occurs to me that our need for tradition is, in many ways, a sort of pure form of recreation - it is, as I said, re-creation. We return to the past in order to have a place from which to launch our future. Just as you might walk back to a starting point when you become hopelessly lost, we return - sometimes alone, often en-masse - to a historical point (recent or quite ancient - usually a combination of the two) we readily recognize in order to regain our bearings and renew our sense of meaning and excitement about life.

Ultimately, it is the sort of migratory instinct, on a more complex level, that drives trout to swim upstream - to concentrate their powers against nature and, in a sense, reverse time so that they can begin anew at the beginning, and so that their beginning may be the same as that of their offspring.

With us, parents pass on their traditions to their children until a society has established "re-creation points" from which its members can restart, knowing that is was not only they that had some beginning at that point but that their ancestors - whose accomplishments and end they know - did as well.

Tradition then, is not intrinsically a thing of stagnation, but a thing of refreshment. We only stand to lose by such repetitions of the past when we treat them, not as a way of renewing our sense of direction, but as an actual escape into history - when our lives become a series of re-creations and never a seizing of the fresh perspective they give us about the present and the future. Simply because we cannot actually go back and because an endless series of new faces will constantly appear to help us in the effort of re-creation, all ritual will inevitably evolve. If we accept this sign that what we do is only an enactment - an exercise of regeneration and not reversal - we will find tradition a healthy, helpful instinct - cml.