The Sublime Darkness of God

Sorry if the title of this post fooled anyone, but I in no way intend to discuss the question of Jesus's race. What follows are simply some of my not-so-intellectually-rigorous musings some questions concerning epistemology and the philosophy of language as they apply to broader theological issues.

As I see it, in LDS theology we often overemphasize our ability to know God. Yes, there is much comfort in the idea of a close relationship with a loving Father, and it doesn't do anyone any good when we downplay the distinct LDS doctrines concerning God's corporeal nature. That being said, we often speak of God in a way which does violence to his transcendence. Sometimes our way of addressing deity is guilty of making divinity into a banal commonality. Perhaps we have lost something of what Rudolf Otto referred to as 'the numinous' experience in religion in his seminal theological work The Idea of the Holy. In the appendices to this work, Otto includes some quotations from F.W. Robertson which I think can help point in a direction helpful in avoiding reductionist attitudes towards God. I will provide two quotations after which I will give a few of my thoughts on their relevance and application.


1) "There is a sense in which darkness has more of God than light has. He dwells in the thick darkness. Moments of tender, vague mystery often bring distinctly the feeling of His presence. When day breaks and distinctness comes the Divine has evaporated from the soul like morning dew. In sorrow, haunted by uncertain presentiments, we feel the infinite around us...It is true, even literally, that the darkness reveals God: every morning God draws the curtain of the garish light across His eternity, and we lose the Infinite."

This resonates with me in a number of ways. I have always preferred overcast and rainy weather to the sunshine, and counted the early morning and evening as the most beautiful times of the day. If God is so often associated with light in scriptures and in writings by Christian authors such as Tolkien's Silmarillion then how does one explain feeling closer to him as a result of the darkness? Robertson's eloquent observation puts that all into perspective.

At the aesthetic level, this also has very important implications. For instance, it was always puzzling to me how to harmonize my love of Gothic and Horror fiction with my vision of the Gospel. If perfect love casteth out all fear, then is it appropriate to find aesthetic pleasure in seeking out literary fear? After pondering on this insight from Robertson however, I think that it is not a stretch to see the pleasure that I naturally get from certain imaginative kinds of fiction as rooted in the awe in the face of the infinite that the uncertainty and fear that literature and other kinds of art can evoke. Related to this in some ways is my love of certain kinds of literature which could be considered cynical, such as existential and postmodern literature. But that is a topic that could be elaborated in its own post. This could all of course be fleshed out with much greater clarity, and as things stand I have made some basic outlines of assertions without much defense. But for now it suffices me to say that Robertson's idea of God dwelling in darkness opens up areas of discussion which I had not previously considered.

2) "Who does not know how we satisfy ourselves with the name of some strange bird or plant, or the name of some new law in nature? It is a mystery perplexing us before. We get the name and fancy we understand something more than we did before; but in truth we are more hopelessly ignorant:for before we felt there was a something we had not attained, and so we inquired and searched--now, we fancy we possess it, because we have got the name by which it is known: and the word covers over the abyss of our ignorance."

This passage reminds me of many different aspects in continental philosophy. First and foremost I am reminded of Jacques Derrida's critique of what some have referred to as 'logocentrism'. We put so much emphasis on signifiers that we can end up thinking of symbols of knowledge as if they represented direct knowledge itself. Thus we cut ourselves off from the infinitely demanding call to interpret and reinterpret the vast spectrum of experiences we receive from day to day. Closely related to this idea are the some of the important aspects of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Taking both of these Robertson quotes as a whole, we can find some important parallels in Levinas's ideas concerning 'the Other' and our infinite responsibility to this Other. According to Levinas, another human being is infinite in the sense that we can never completely reduce their humanity. When we treat another Being as though we had reduced them to our own concepts, we in a real sense commit an act of violence against their humanity. With this is mind, we can see both how God's Otherness can cause us to shudder in our limitations, and how none of our words or concepts for God could ever fully contain his alterity.

The thought of Jean-Luc Marion also comes to mind, inasmuch as we can apply his idea of a 'saturated phenomenon'. A saturated phenomenon is what fellow philosopher John D. Caputo described by saying that "there are phenomena of such overwhelming givenness or overflowing fulfillment that the intentional acts aimed at these phenomena are overrun, flooded—or saturated." God is of such a nature that he overflows any mortal concepts we employ to experience and describe him.

In the course of this post I have not reached many firm conclusions. I am okay with that, for in my judgment it is folly to get too caught up in our desire to taxonomize( the dictionary says that this isn't a word, but I am going to go on the authority of that great master of language William F. Buckley Jr. and just go ahead and use it anyways) and reduce our experiences to systems of knowledge. Of course we have to be cautious that we don't go so far down this road that we end up espousing obscurantism and needless esotericism. Thinking analytically is indeed a marvelous thing, yet we must always keep in mind the limited contexts within which our mortal perspectives leave us.

Confessions of a One-Time Soccer Hater.

The culture of the United States, particularly the Midwest, doesn’t exactly encourage the appreciation of soccer ( or football as the civilized world calls it and how in the world did the sport that Americans call football come to have the name football? It’s pretty much rugby with more padding, how in the eff did they get football out of that?!?) It is considered by some to be somewhat effeminate and not worthy of the respect granted to more ‘manly’ sports like American football, basketball or baseball. That baseball is considered manly is in itself beyond my comprehension in the first place, but that’s another topic altogether. The point of the matter is that in many ways the common American conception of soccer is that it is ‘for pussies’ if you will excuse the strong language.

Not being too much of a free thinker growing up I just accepted that soccer was not cool.  I think the way that people went about defending it just made things worse. Somehow being told that the rest of the world loved soccer and America was just backwards made me want to hate it all the more just to spite all those Europe and South America loving traitors.

Living in South America had a way of changing all that. For those that have never lived in Brazil, nor ever spoken to a Brazilian about soccer it is hard for me to convey just exactly what I’m talking about. Perhaps a few anecdotal stories from my mission will better illustrate the Brazilian mindset concerning soccer.

It just so happened that I served my mission during the summer Olympics of 2008, a.k.a. the Olympics in which the U.S.A. women’s soccer team defeated Brazil for the Gold Medal. If that wasn’t enough, the game was extremely close and Brazil ended up losing because the officials took away one of their goals. Based on some peoples sentiments expressed to me after this game you would have thought that I was the ref who had taken the goal away. You would have thought the United States had invaded Brazil and destroyed some of its cities or something. At the time I was thankful that lynching is generally frowned upon in the 21^st century.

But my very favorite of all happened when I was at the doctor’s office. Having had my large toenail removed (epic awesome story which I will have to save for another day) I was having some bandages placed on my toe. In the course of being treated I happened to overhear a nurse playfully chiding a man for having missed his daughter’s baptism into the Catholic Church. “I can’t believe you would miss your own daughter’s baptism!” she declared, “But they had it at the same time as soccer comes on t.v.! How was I supposed to miss that?” The man had missed his daughter’s baptism to watch a soccer game on television!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The Roman Catholic Church is certainly a powerful force in Brazil; but it’s got nothing on soccer.

Interestingly enough the soccer fever didn’t actually strike while I was in the field. Such was my condition, that when the 2010 world cup rolled around I wasn’t even sure that I was going to watch it. Having watched a few Ronaldinho and Robinho clips on Youtube however, I decided that I would watch one Brazilian game and see if anything cool happened.  

Brazil’s first game was against North Korea. Seeing that it was playing on the t.v. on the bottom floor of the Wilkinson Center I sat down on the couch to watch my very first full soccer game. After a few minutes and a few missed goal attempts by Brazil I began to feel a strange sensation rising in the pit of my stomach. I was getting stressed, I was getting into it. By the beginning of the second half I was at the edge of my seat, desperately wanting Brazil to score a goal. And then it happened. Maicon scored a beautiful side net goal and I was jumping up in the air, screaming, and beating my hand against my chest in pure joy and adulation.  All of the sudden I had transformed into the crazy soccer hooligan, ready to riot and tear down a city in a wave of enthusiasm because of a soccer game…………and it felt wonderful. I then of course made sure I watched all of the following Brazil games. I really thought they had a chance to win it all, but those bloody Dutch effers turned things around and ruined everything. I can think of but few times in my life when I have been as deeply disappointed and upset as when they lost that game. “It’s just a game!” you might wish to say, and that’s certainly what my pre-mission self would have said. But oh!!  you just don’t understand!!!!!!!!!

Now I have switched completely over to the soccer enthusiast camp. I don’t have much time for following sports, but when I do it is invariably to see how Brazilian teams are doing and what my favorite Brazilian players are up to lately. More than anyone else I follow the careers of the before mentioned Ronaldinho and Robinho, and guess what? They are on the same team right now! It goes without saying that AC Milan is currently my favorite team, and I would totally root for them even if they played Real Salt Lake (sorry, I’m a traitor). Right now im looking forward with great anticipation to the next Olympics and especially the next World Cup, both of which will be held in Brazil. Here’s hoping that the greatest soccer nation in the world can get that sixth star on their jersey.

So there you have it. In a few years I went from your classic American soccer hater to your stereotypical soccer fanatic. Some things you just can't judge until you've given them a chance!

Pixote at 2 a.m. in a Ghetto Bus Station, and Other Pretentious Musings.

Transfers can be a hectic time in the lives of missionaries. While serving in the city of Jequie transfer time came around and my companion, some other elders in our district and I were informed that an elder would be arriving at the bus station late at night. We were instructed to go to the bus station and wait for his arrival.

We got there prepared for what we assumed would be at the most a few hours of waiting. Now if you have never been in a Brazilian bus station (rodoviario) than you are really missing out. Oh wait, just kidding. Imagine a dark and lonely place which at night is full of drunks, vagrants, and those individuals who have become trapped in the tedium of everyday life, slowly plying their pointless time until they die, caught up in the senseless existential hum of being. Then maybe you will have somewhat of an idea of where we were.
Let’s just say Franz Kafka would have found material for about ten novels in such a locale.

Before I get to the main topic of this post I must digress in order to help the reader better appreciate the vibe of that station by explaining the delightful little drunken man who kept harassing us throughout the night. At the beginning of our epic night he seemed like just your average little man, sitting at the bar (they sell alcohol EVERYWHERE in Bahia) having himself a beer. Well, that beer became another, and another, and another, until our little friend was rather noticeably inebriated. Not content to keep his drunkenness to himself he made varied attempts to engage us in conversation. What was great about these attempts was that the little man seemed to be under the impression that we were german, and his speech consisted of enthusiastically repeating what to his mind were german sounds, consisting mostly in the repetition of ‘sprachy, sprachy, sprachy’. After a little of this he realized that we spoke Portuguese and the conversation turned to him showing us pictures of his family. All well and good except for the fact that every time he walked away he would seemingly forget the previous conversation and would soon return with a hearty ‘sprachy, sprachy, sprachy’ and the cycle would begin anew.

So there we were, trying to be comfortable on hard bus station chairs, getting accosted by our little drunk friend every now and then, and watching the hours drag by. Ever so naughtily my attention was caught by the television from time to time.  When we arrived night at the museum was playing, “Well,” I thought to myself “at least this is better than that novella crap they usually watch”. As time went by they went through some other Brazilian programming until finally around 2 a.m. (or perhaps even later) I was surprised to see them actually running a Brazilian movie. Not just any movie, but the Brazilian cinematic classic Pixote.

Why is this significant? And why did I choose this instance for the title of this post? Because it illustrated perfectly what I see as one of the gravest issues in contemporary Brazilian culture. Some have become so inundated with low quality, mass produced, American pop culture that they have no more notion of their own cultures authentic roots. Now before you write this post off as just another elitist jab at American cultural imperialism just hear me out.

Those novellas I was talking about, you know where they came from? They were inspired by American soap operas. Anyone even slightly acquainted with Brazilian life knows that many people spend literally their entire day in front of that inane, ersatz trash. And as for movies, I was so surprised to see a Brazilian movie because in Brazil today they are almost nonexistent. When the majority of Brazilians watch movies they are poorly dubbed American films, purchased in cheap pirated form from the ubiquitous road side salesmen.

And Pixote? It is a gritty and realistic story of the streets of Sao Paulo, critically acclaimed and considered by some to be a forerunner to the contemporary classic Cidade de Deus. Nothing could be more telling than that it was relegated to a time slot when it would watched by very few people. Instead of a socially realistic and artistically interesting piece of film, the majority of viewers are given for most of the day entertainment which requires less thought than banging your head against a door.

  While the state of Brazilian apathy towards Brazilian films is bleak, it is at least a little better than the state of Brazilian apathy towards Brazilian literature.  As I have touched upon in a previous post the majority of Brazilians I ran in to couldn’t even name their great authors, let alone had they read them. But are average American really that different? Not as far as I can see.  My point is not to make any sweeping criticisms of Brazilian or American society, but to mention the mind numbing effects of cheap mass produced culture in all its manifestations.

To a certain extent it is hard to blame the masses for turning from aesthetically and intellectually legitimate forms of art to the mindless kitsch churned out by the corporations. If I can be so bold as to define a common characteristic of humanity, it seems evident that people naturally want to take the path of least resistance. And when you’ve been working all day who wants to make the extra effort of having to think about their entertainment? On one level the numbing miasma of popular culture offers an escape from the vicissitudes of everyday life. Yet sadly in running from these vicissitudes people leave themselves vulnerable to be controlled and manipulated. The great Bahian poet Telmo Padilha said that he who has read and understood Shakespeare can never be taken advantage of. Obviously this is a bit of a romantic exaggeration, yet the principle rings true. Those who are not exposed to higher thought will not be able to think critically enough to appreciate to what extent their opinions are shaped and controlled by media and entertainment bureaucrats. It is my humble opinion that a big part of the reason that the nation of Brazil is so politically corrupt is because the people are cut off from their natural cultural greatness, and therefore unable to appreciate and change their plight.

I appreciate fully that these are potentially inflammatory opinions and that I have not gone into an extensive defense of my positions. In other words all of this is bound to strike some as merely high falutin ranting. And perhaps it is. What it really comes down to is that I have a deep respect for authentic Brazilian art and thought, and think it a shame that many get so caught up in cheap entertainment that they don’t appreciate the good things that real artistic expression can bring.

We spent all night in that god-forsaken bus station. And as it turned out our leader from the mission office had given us the wrong date of arrival. The missionary wasn’t scheduled to arrive until the NEXT day and we had wasted a night on bad information………………………….. I guess we didn’t understand Shakespeare well enough.

"Tornou-me o pôr-do-sol um nobre entre os rapazes" by Sosígenes Costa

Queima sândalo e incenso o poente amarelo
perfumando a vereda, encantando o caminho.
Anda a tristeza ao longe a tocar violoncelo.
A saudade no ocaso é uma rosa de espinho.

Tudo é doce e esplendente e mais triste e mais belo
e tem ares de sonho e cercou-se de arminho.
Encanto! E eis que já sou o dono de um castelo
de coral com portões de pedra cor de vinho.

Entre os tanques dos reis, o meu tanque é profundo.
Entre os asas da flora, os meus lírios lilases.
Meus pavões cor-de-rosa, os únicos do mundo.

E assim sou castelão e a vida fez-se oásis
pelo simples poder, ó pôr-do-sol fecundo,
pelo simples poder das sugestões que trazes.

The Ever so Elite Group of Bahian Literature Aficionados

Having served a mission in Brazil in the state of Bahia I was privileged with exposure to an extremely vibrant literary world. Our at least a literary world that had been vibrant once upon a time. Due to a variety of factors (many of which I will discuss in later posts) the people of Bahia have very little interest in their own literature. Yet  I can't put too much blame on them for no one else seems to have an interest in their literature either. In fact most of the books I purchased by native authors were from used book stores.  Now the fame of Castro Alves and Jorge Amado does give me hope. At least they remember them! Alves is still recognized as one of Brazil's great poets with important places named after him galore in Bahia, and Amado was the best selling Brazilian author of the 20th century so I suppose even the non-literary have reasons to have heard of them. Having served in Itabuna and Ilheus, the cities where Jorge was born and raised respectively, I was right in the midst of Amado fame.

The problem is that for most  people they are the only Bahian literary figures they have heard of. Having learned to love Adonias Filho, Telmo Padilha, Cyro de Matos, Helio Polvora, and Sosigenes Costa just to name a few, I consider this general ignorance to be a shame to say the very least. As may be gleaned from the above links, the majority of the Bahian masters don't even have pages on wikipedia!* I have noticed a distinct ignorance of those otherwise fond of Latin American literature when it comes to the literature of Brazil. And among those fond of Brazilian literature I have noticed a distinct ignorance of the literature of Bahia. What is to be done? I don't know. Perhaps I'll have to remain being ever so elite in my minority literary tastes. I'm actually okay with that as it helps keep aflame my feelings of pretentious superiority and whatnot. Though I suppose I could do something. Starting next time I am going to begin slowly posting the poems of Sosigenes Costa. I was lucky enough to find a volume of his complete work, and as his verse is not even available online perhaps I can provide an avenue for at least a few others to come to appreciate one of the tragically forgotten giants of Brazilian Symbolist poetry. And if you don't speak Portuguese, well, now's as good a time to learn as any!'

*'Well why don't you make Wikipedia pages for them instead of whining about it?' The reader may be tempted to ask. That is a very good question. Maybe I'll get around to it someday.

Hey look, I have a blog(again)!!!

There was a point in time where I blogged under the name of Anonymous Medievalist, but now I figured I might as well just man up and put stuff out with my name on it. My old Blog is still listed on Professor Nokes' blog Unlocked Wordhoard but as anyone can see who clicks on that link, it has been discontinued. It was discontinued because I didn't want to worry about it while serving an LDS mission in Brazil. Now that I am back studying English and Latin at BYU in preparation to one day move into Medieval studies however, I suppose I can start things up again. My basic plan is to post on various topics concerning Medievalism, Mormonism, and Brazilian culture in general.