For less than a dollar a day, you can neglect this child

"For the record, minimum wage in Honduras is over a dollar an hour. The rest of Central America is similar.On the off chance you care."

This was a tweet-response that a classmate of mine wrote today as we hit some final topics in our Theology and Culture, while the professor talked about Globalization.  And my immediate response was to jokingly say who does care?  Not because that's what I actually think, but that's how I think we actually operate.  


But then the thought occurred to me.  We get outraged (or pretend to be) by the unequal distribution of wealth.  And I think that reveals an underlying worship of money.  We see our global neighbors living in squalor, and if we're motivated enough, we throw some money at them--or try to.  And how much actually gets to where we think it needs to go, anyway?  How much is our belief system Money Will Make It All Better actually working?


I don't really see money as the actual source of happiness and well-being. Quality of life is not exclusively linked to finances.


So when I see my friend's comment about the wages in Central America, I don't get particularly outraged or saddened.  What I want to know is, do they have access to education? Health care?  Sanitation? Avenues of communication? Vaccines? Clean water? Governments and police forces run with far less corruption?


But Nicky, you say, those things take money.  And yes, that can't be gotten away from, in the current state of our world. But what I am saying, is that if we simply send more money, or get the minimum wage to be doubled in Honduras, the problems aren't going to go away. 


I'm asking, what will it take to improve the quality of life for those people who make $1 per hour? I'm suggesting it will take more than our money.  It takes our participation.  It takes our community. 

At that point, we can bring our cash with us if we like.

About Religion Ch. 10: Indifference

In the end, I find that although I understood Mark C. Taylor’s about religion more than I had expected, I still understood it less than I had hoped.

Having said that, however, I can taste the urge toward Christ that I think he’s getting at in the last chapter. I can hear an echo of the quizzical declaration “I am that I AM” that thundered – however quietly – from the burning bush. We’re familiar with the statement, and so it doesn’t always seem that complicated or profound. But it is.

But as I try to push through Taylor’s closing thoughts, and there is so much in the last chapter, it could pretty much stand alone, my mind ticks along both with and against him.

“With the loss of gravity, nothing remains serious. When nothing weighs us down, we loose our moorings and are left to float freely.”

I suppose that might sum up the things that I’ve been thinking—not just this quarter but all year. In a sense it feels like a mistake to try to push into God, to learn more, to understand more, to wield more. It feels like a mistake because we can forget more, mistake more, hurt more. It has a gravity that you don’t really understand until it’s too late.


*as part of an assignment/educational experiment, I am blogging my way through the required reading for one of my courses this quarter. If you wish to read all the posts that I write for this class click on the label TC 500, below. I will also be tweeting some thoughts as well. Check them out at @nickybarger, they're labeled with #tc500

About Religion Ch 9: Learning Curves

In Japanese culture, there is the understanding that space and time are inseparable. They call this MA. It is a concept that is asserted in the sculpture of artist Richard Serra. The whole business is very complex, and for the most part, I think I follow what Taylor is saying about it. But at the same time, I am distracted by the memory of a scene from an old episode of Tiny Toon Adventures—a cartoon I watched after school when I was much younger.
In the episode, all the characters are presenting student film projects that they have done, and one girl (who’s name I can’t remember—I tried to find the clip for you but had no luck) had a LONG clip that was supposed to be metaphysical, or transcendental or something. Instead, it was so obtuse that no one got it but her.
That’s how I feel looking at Serra’s sculptures pictured in the book.



*as part of an assignment/educational experiment, I am blogging my way through the required reading for one of my courses this quarter. If you wish to read all the posts that I write for this class click on the label TC 500, below. I will also be tweeting some thoughts as well. Check them out at @nickybarger, they're labeled with #tc500

About Religion Ch 8: Apprehension

Here, Taylor introduces us to the minimalist sculptor Fred Sandback:

“When art works, it provokes the return of the repressed by rendering apprehension apprehensible.  The art that really matters turns us toward that which turns away from us and from which we tend to turn away.  This is what Sandback’s empty sculptures to.  They are effective because they are about nothing.  When art is about nothing, it surrounds the nothingness that surrounds it.  By de-limiting nothing, the work of art exposes us to the void in whose midst we are destined to dwell.  In the seemingly tranquil spaces framed by fuzzy lines drawn by thin strands of yarn, nothing is apprehensible.” 

And while I can’t say that I find the installation world-altering, reading about the context in Taylor’s book does paint Sandback’s work as inspired and intriguing.  I find myself staring at that piece of acrylic black yarn and thinking that it is more inspiring than any Thomas Kinkade painting I’ve ever seen. I wish I could be in the space, with the book and just take a moment to inhale the empty space and see the connections made—that must look entirely arbitrary—and just ponder what I might learn about my own life in that moment.

How’s that for unexpected?

*as part of an assignment/educational experiment, I am blogging my way through the required reading for one of my courses this quarter. If you wish to read all the posts that I write for this class click on the label TC 500, below. I will also be tweeting some thoughts as well. Check them out at @nickybarger, they're labeled with #tc500

California Girl

What follows is an approximation of an actual conversation between a friend and myself in the recent past. It should be noted that  ever since I decided to come to Fuller, my friend has been pessimistic about the prospects of my ever returning to Idaho. Here, she was trying to determine the chances of my return: 

My friend: So, are you a Californian yet?

Me: Well, I was forced to get a California license. Does that count?

My friend: not especially.  What else?

Me: Well, I have lived here for several months and I really do like it. Oh, and I also wear really big sunglasses now.

My friend: ok, what else?

Me:  Um, lets see.  I've taken up yoga, and I only drink soy lattes now.

My friend: NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

About Religion Ch 7 The Virtual Kingdom

“When art becomes so abstract that it is irrelevant, it provokes efforts to develop socially useful art; conversely when art becomes so worldly that everything seems to be art, strategies to create critical distance begin to emerge. The history of art in this century can be understood as the dialectical interplay of these two contrasting tendencies.”

So, once again it comes back to tension. Conflict and tension. Apparently it is the very thing we run on—we need it to create, to motivate, to inspire, to move. Without it we are bored, lethargic, gluttonous, lazy, passive and cruel. This must somehow be hard wired into us, right with the impulse to bite that first apple.

We aren’t self-starters after all.

“The Fall”, as we put it, wasn’t a surprise to God. But it is to us.

And not to credit God with the creation of Evil or anything so extreme, but it seems to me that he knows how he built this crazy, complex existence with far more intricacy than we could possibly ever realize.


*as part of an assignment/educational experiment, I am blogging my way through the required reading for one of my courses this quarter. If you wish to read all the posts that I write for this class click on the label TC 500, below. I will also be tweeting some thoughts as well. Check them out at @nickybarger, they're labeled with #tc500

About Religion Ch. 6 Christianity and the Capitalism of Spirit

What is the Currency of God?

Does He deal in inflation?

Does the price of art fluctuate in the Kingdom?

This is a total play on a sub heading in this chapter—and not really what the chapter is about, but Mark C. Taylor heads a section here with the phrase “The Currency of God”.

It makes me wonder, though, because the phrase “economy of God” is so dang popular. I use it—and I use it with purpose. I like the phrase, frankly because it usually helps me make a point.

And Mark C. Taylor makes another: our Protestantism is married to our capitalism in ways that we don’t even want to acknowledge.


*as part of an assignment/educational experiment, I am blogging my way through the required reading for one of my courses this quarter. If you wish to read all the posts that I write for this class click on the label TC 500, below. I will also be tweeting some thoughts as well. Check them out at @nickybarger, they're labeled with #tc500