September/October 2001 newsletter

September 1, 2001

THE RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE NEWSLETTER
Volume 2, Issue 5 -- September/October 2001
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The Religious Language Newsletter is written and published every other month by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D. (linguistics), from the Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS), PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137 USA; e-mail OCLS@madisoncounty.net. It's available by e-mail only, in plain text, and is free to members of the Lovingkindness Network. To join the network, send $5.00 (annual dues for each calendar year) to OCLS; please be sure to include your e-mail address with your check, money order, or credit card information. For more information, contact OCLS. Thanks to a generous donation, all issues are posted at http://www.forlovingkindness.org. [Donations to LK are tax-deductible; Supporting Memberships are $15.00.]
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IN THIS ISSUE: Editor's Note; Network Input; About the Force Being With Us; Cyberstuff; The Mother Teresa Controversies; Quotes & Comments

EDITOR'S NOTE

Many thanks for all the excellent materials you've been sending. Thanks to all of you who upgraded your 2001 memberships to Supporting; unless you've told me otherwise, the additional money counts as a donation to Lovingkindness and is tax-deductible. (Ordinarily, only ten dollars of a Supporting Membership would qualify as a donation, but you had already paid the other five for this year.) Finally, my thanks to all who ordered gift memberships for the upcoming holiday season; please don't forget to let me know if you want snailmail gift cards sent for them, and with what messages.

NETWORK INPUT:

1. Reverend Elinor Artman writes to say that the Myers Briggs prayers (not "Meyers" Briggs, as I had it) "were written by the priest Ellis Harsham many years ago - and remain wonderful." [In case you're a new member: The prayers included "God, give me patience, and I mean right NOW. " The item was in the July/August issue.] The link I gave you doesn't work, but I found one that does: The whole set of prayers is at http://www.mmcom.com/demos/MB/Prayer.html.

2. From Clarke Stone: "Eager to hear your comments about stem cells derived from microscopic embryos. Abortion or not? Violation of your radical pacifism?" I'm not eager to _provide_ my comments, given the reaction they will provoke; but I'll do it.

This is really two questions, since the question asked depends on the answer to "Do you believe that life begins at (or before) conception?" For anyone who believes that stem cells aren't human life, their use in research is obviously a good thing, and pacifism doesn't enter into it. I don't have that option. I'm opposed to embryonic stem cell research, despite the benefits it offers; I also think it establishes a principle from which very dangerous extrapolation is almost inevitable. However, I have to point out that I am opposed to every form of killing without exception; not just abortion, not just stem cell research, but also death penalty killing, killing in combat, and killing in self-defense. No matter how wicked the killee may seem; no matter how just the cause. I know I'm shocking, but you have to give me credit for being consistent.

3. From Franz Metcalf, author of _What Would Buddha Do?_ and _What Would Buddha Do at Work?_, quoted with his kind permission :

" First, though the two WWBD books are indeed intentionally taking the WWJD phenomenon beyond the scope of Christianity, we are by no means parodying it. Both WWBD and WWBD@W (as I abbreviate them) are sincere attempts to help people apply the wisdom of Buddhism to their lives, without having to convert. In fact, in the business book we make mention of the "leadership secrets of Attila the Hun" in disparaging fashion. You may rest easy on this point--at least as far as my publications are concerned."

[WWJD is "What would Jesus do?"; it's a question I'd have thought people would not _dare_ ask, for fear it would be answered.]

4. In the July/August issue, while talking about the Veggie Tales (Bible story videos for children), I warbled: "It's curious that much sacred literature uses the metaphor of a deity as a flower -- a Lotus, for example, or a Rose, or a Lily -- but none (none that I know of, at least) as a vegetable." This from a woman who did her graduate work on Navajo, whose dissertation was on Navajo grammar, and whose Navajo consultant was granddaughter of a Singer. Humbly, then...thanks to all who wrote to remind me gently that sacred Corn beings are prominently featured in various Native American/First Nations cultures. My mind is becoming pudding, obviously.

The question about designating a vegetable that would be acceptable to Christians in the role of Jesus remains, however; I don't know whether an ear of corn would meet that standard. I've given it serious thought and am convinced that it would be acceptable to me -- but that's only me. Perhaps my long association with Navajo has biased me. I'd very much like to know what the rest of you think about it -- and why you think it. I had a chance to discuss this with someone who claims to have no religious faith whatsoever; I was not surprised to hear her say, nonetheless, that the very idea of Biblical bigwigs (let alone Jesus) being portrayed as vegetables was offensive. "To whom?", I asked her, just to be safe. "To me," she said.

ABOUT THE FORCE BEING WITH US

Australian Star Wars fans want to have the Jedi philosophy counted as an official religion and mark it as their faith on census forms. "We have submitted a written proposal to have the Jedi Faith entered into the already substantial Religions Database," they say, and, "If this is approved, the Jedi figures (on the census forms) will be recorded." You can read all about it at http://www. artsjournal.com/Media.htm. [If you want to read even more, from all over the world, go to http://www.google.com and do two searches -- one for "Jedi Faith Australian census" and one for "Jedi faith religion"; just follow the links.]

[Quick note, while I'm here, because I keep getting questions about it: No, your Google search terms don't have to be in a format that your English teacher -- or your algebra teacher -- would have marked as "correct." Google isn't pedantic.]

The Bureau of Australian Statistics tried to moderate the international brouhaha that resulted from the Jedi census movement, explaining that if you really are a Jedi believer it's okay to say so on your census form but that if you would ordinarily call yourself Jewish or Buddhist, et cetera, and you fill in the blank with the Jedi faith "this may impact on social services provision." And it explains that there is something called "the Australian Standard Classification of Religious Groups" that lists all the religions considered real for government purposes.

In the 60s there was a flurry of activity in the U.S. with people founding churches right and left, and getting ordained licketysplit as clergy of those churches, with resulting major tax advantages; it sent the IRS scurrying about trying to restore order. I had a lengthy and solemn (and genuinely interesting) interaction with the IRS in the early 80s regarding the status of Lovingkindness, which I had until then defined as a church but which the IRS ruled unfit for churchhood, decreeing that it was instead a religious educational organization. [My offer to sign a legal document waiving all the possible tax advantages -- which were of no interest to me -- had no effect on them, although they were very polite about it.] This is how I know that the IRS, like the Australian equivalent agency, has a set of criteria for what is and isn't a real church and for what is and isn't a real religion.

Creating such criteria, like creating standards for "genuine" religious language, is a horrendously difficult task; proving that someone or something doesn't meet those criteria comes close to being impossible. See, for example, the elegant and beautiful religious language that appears in the Deryni novels of Katherine Kurtz, which is certainly abundant enough to constitute a liturgy, complete with detailed instructions for every sort of ritual and ceremony. I defy you to find a way that it could be classified as not "real" religious language if it were not overtly labelled as fiction. Nevertheless, the IRS must "rule" on these matters.

[Just as I was finishing this section I got a copy of a press release written by Elizabeth Barrette, reporting that a property tax dispute between the Ozark Avalon Church of Wicca and the state of Missouri has been resolved. The Missouri Tax Commission has ruled that Wicca is a religion as defined by Missouri law, and that Ozark Avalon Church of Wicca is a church like any other Missouri church. (Ozark Avalon had already been granted status as a 501(c)(3) religious organization by the IRS, in 1999.)]

CYBERSTUFF

1. The Web, says Jonathan Rosen, is not like God, but like a page of the Talmud. The Talmud has a tiny strip of text at the center of the page; the rest of the page is filled with commentaries, so that to study it is "to eavesdrop on a conversation spanning centuries." Rosen says the commentaries are like Internet links, that you read by leaping from commentary to commentary, only arriving back at the central text after following an intricate path. "Scholars and pundits wring their hands about how the Web will change the act of reading itself, but it won't change a thing for Talmudists." And a bit farther along, "What the Talmud has long reminded Jews, and what the Web promises to remind Christians, is that the particular kind of internal coherence demanded by the higher critics, and the linear way of reading sacred Scripture presumed by them, is not the only way to read." [From "Truth, Suitable for Framing," a review of Rosen's _The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds_ and Joshua Hammerman's _Thelordismyshepherd.com: Seeking God in Cyberspace_, by Lauren F. Winner, _Christianity Today_, 2/19/01, pp. 66-67; on page 67.]

2. "And in that summer evening's fading light
I saw his angels gather in the wheat:
Like beaten gold their beauty smote the air
And tongues of flame were streaming in their hair."

That comes from a poem by poet and artist Roger Wagner in _Fire Sonnets_ (Belsalel Press, 1984), quoted in a wonderful long article by Rupert Martin, "Roger Wagner's Visionary Landscapes," from the Summer 1995 issue of _Image_, Issue #10. You can read the whole thing online by going to http://www.imagejournal.org, the _Image_ website, and clicking on the link for that issue. When Wagner published his _The Book of Praises_, Martin writes, he "began by learning Hebrew, translating the Psalms into a fresh idiom, and then engraving woodcuts placed between the Hebrew and the English texts, in a way that varies from page to page." [Note: I've been doing websearches to find out more about Wagner, using every conceivable variation on keywords, and the pickings have been very slim; I did manage to find a note that a reasonable price for one of his paintings is 45,000 pounds, which you'd think would mean materials about him would be _easy_ to find. Your input would be welcome.]

I went to the _Image_ site just to give it a brief look, and stayed two hours; I'd have stayed longer if I hadn't had work that wouldn't wait. It's extraordinary. All the back issues of the journal are there, with links to some of the contents and art from each one. I recommend the Martin piece; I recommend "Reviving the Word," a review of Scott Cairns' _Recovered Body_, in the Summer 1999 (#23) issue, which begins "The trouble with a great deal of contemporary religious poetry is that it lacks drama" and goes on to explain why Cairns' poetry doesn't suffer from that handicap. I also recommend following the links to the various programs described at the site, including the Moral Imagination Project, which says: "Plato said that children should be brought up in such a way that they will fall in love with virtue.... Most attempts to inculcate virtue in our children are doomed because most offer nothing to counter the imaginative pull of popular culture. The entertainment industry has been successful in molding young minds precisely because it provides them with stories and dramas and images. Anyone hoping to recapture the moral imagination of the current generation will only succeed by offering more powerful narratives and more compelling visions." The project's plan is to offer a website that will offer those narratives and visions; more power to them.

3. Religion Bookline for 7/24/01 reviewed _Wild At Heart:Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul_, by John Eldrege (Thomas Nelson). It said: "When John Eldredge looks at the faces of men in a typical church service, he sees boredom. It's a look he's worn himself. The problem, Eldredge told BookLine, is that Christian men have lost heart, and he's intent on helping them find it again." The book "takes aim at the church's 'tendency to turn men into nice guys rather than warriors fighting for the gospel.' " ... "Eldredge believes men should be encouraged to embark on a spiritual journey that incorporates three quests nearly every boy-turned-man still desires: a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue and an adventure to live." Eldredge is also writing for women; because, he says, "women--especially mothers of boys--need to understand the male's inherent attraction to danger and allow their sons to take the risks that underscore their masculinity. ... Whether the father is present or not, a boy--or even an adult male--must be accepted into the company of men by other men; reassurance of his manhood from a woman is not enough..." Eldredge is also writing a companion workbook and conducting weeklong trainings. Another empire founded.

That example of the Rule of Three -- "a battle to fight, a beauty to rescue, and an adventure to live" -- has a nice ring to it. However, it's going to be hard to keep "a beauty" from being understood as a woman -- a young, thin, woman. If you've read the book or attended one of Eldredge's presentations, I'd be interested in your opinion.

4. There's a new website devoted to openness/foreknowledge theology, at http://www.opentheism.org. It seems to be just getting started, and is a bit spotty, but looks as if it's going to be useful; unlike some of the other sites on this topic, it doesn't present you with a moatful of alligators and a raised drawbridge when you arrive. You can also find an excellent bibliography on the subject -- with numerous articles on links -- at http://edgren.org/bibliography.html.

5. It's been a long time since I mentioned Needle In A Cyberstack; I think it's time to do it again. It's not a religious language site, but is so useful when you're looking for a needle in a cyberstack that I think it should be mentioned anyway. Before there was Google, there was Needle In A Cyberstack. The URL is http://members.home.net/albeej/pages.

6. SpiritSite -- at http://www.SpiritSite.com/writing -- offers an extremely useful resource that I want to tell you about: a large archive of brief book excerpts on topics related to religion and spirituality, all on links, all conveniently indexed by category. Everything works, and navigation is fast and glitch-free. Highly recommended.

THE MOTHER TERESA CONTROVERSIES

On 8/18/01, NPR's "Morning Edition" had a feature about the sainthood of Mother Teresa being on a fast track, which isn't news; what caught my ear was the comment that she had been very opposed to the idea that she was or would become a saint, and that she wouldn't be pleased to find herself a saint against her will. Something about the tone of the discussion seemed to me to suggest another idea -- that she had _claimed_ to feel that way, but was faking it.

This fell into one of the permanent pigeonholes in my head; I've always been fascinated by the paradox of sainthood-against-one's-will and related issues, ever since -- long ago -- I read the descriptions of Saint Teresa's misery over finding herself levitating in church and having to be held down by other nuns to avoid becoming a public spectacle. I published a novella about a Southern lady who found herself a saint against her will, called "Lest Levitation Come Upon Us," all about her struggles to get rid of the saintly phenomena that made _her_ a public spectacle. (My title had been "Lest Levitation Come Upon Us Unawares," but editor David Hartwell thought the last word made it too long.) It's an extraordinary infinitely-repeating paradox, because what could be more saintly than not to want to be recognized as a saint? Fascinating.

Anyhow....my websearch quickly found the interview with Christopher Hitchens about his book and film "debunking" Mother Teresa that was published in _Free Inquiry_ 16:4; you can read it, if you like, at http://www.its.uidaho.edu/ ngier/490/theresa.htm. Hitchens and the interviewer do a ferocious slash-and-burn which, if accepted, would qualify Mother Teresa not for sainthood but for its opposite number, however you want to phrase that. Over and over, as I read the interview, I was struck by how much easier it is to warp and bespoil a religious belief than it is to explain one.

The question remains. Suppose you don't want to be a saint; can sainthood be forced upon you? It turns you into a religious celebrity at best, and a religious freak even more often; is that fair? What about free will? Tsk.

QUOTES & COMMENTS

1, Something daring from the 2/19/01 issue of _Christianity Today_, on page 34, after a brief intro saying that websites have been having trouble turning a profit: "Dot-coms aimed at the Christian market haven't fared much better. Heavily promoted iBelieve.com lasted less than nine months before a sudden rapture to the land of deceased startups." There will be outraged letters from subscribers about that "rapture" crack and about the article's title. (From "Is God.com Dead?", by Mark A. Kellner, on pp. 33-40.)

2. The 5/21/01 issue of _Newsweek_ had an article on pp. 31-35 by Sharon Begley, titled "The Roots of Evil"; it was followed immediately by one titled "Overcoming Sin," by Kenneth L. Woodward. Begley says that most of us would like to believe that there's an enormous difference between ourselves -- we "normal" people -- and serial killers, mass murderers, and the like. But "In their search for the nature and roots of evil, scholars from fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, philosophy and theology are reaching a far more chilling conclusion. Most people do have the capacity for horrific evil, they say; the traits of temperament and character from which evil springs are as common as flies on carrion." The question is, then, "if we all have the capacity for evil, why does it become a reality in only some?" Forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner says that "evil probably includes an intent to cause emotional trauma, to terrorize or target the helpless, to prolong suffering and to derive satisfaction from it all." [I think there must be a glitch in the quote; I suspect that it should read "an intent to cause physical and/or emotional trauma."] Begley notes that just a lack of empathy doesn't explain evil acts, since there are sociopaths who do understand what the victim feels and simply don't care -- a conclusion I'm dubious about, but I'm not an expert on sociopaths. The conclusion researchers have come to is that the one trait that leads to pure evil and separates "us" from "them" is "the extreme form of self-centeredness called narcissism. "Narcissism," says neuropsychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, "is what allows you to get evil acts from seemingly normal people." (All on pp. 31-32.) Woodward's article adds on page 36 that "doing evil seems to come more naturally -- and certainly more easily -- than doing good"; on page 37 he defines evil as "the nothingness that God permits, that the Devil wills and promotes, and that human beings freely choose when they sin."

This dismal pair of articles poses the questions with great eloquence and offers no useful answers; I recommend reading them nonetheless. Thanks to Pat Mathews for the copy.

3. As an antidote to the mess in item 2, I went websearching on the "eight verses for training the mind" that the Dalai Lama is said to have learned as a child. They turn out to be widely available on the Net and, like the Jabez thing, are in many and varied translations. All of them, in vivid contrast to the philosophy (or whatever it is) of narcissism, have as basic principle "Put the welfare of others before your own welfare." I'm going to quote three versions of the first verse below; like the various translations of the Jabez thing yet again, they present drastically different meanings. The third version is transcribed from a teaching _by_ the Dalai Lama, which may or may not mean that it is the most accurate translation, depending. Ah, the dangers of religious language.....

(a) With the thought of attaining enlightenment
For the welfare of all beings,
Who are more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel,
I will constantly practice holding them dear.
[at http://www.angelfire.com/yt/fairtibet/verses.htm]

(b) With a determination to achieve the highest aim,
For the benefit of all sentient beings,
Which surpasses even the wish-fulfilling gem,
May I hold them dear at all times.
[at http://www.angelfire.com/co2/fifi/perfect03.html]

(c) By thinking of all sentient beings
as even better than the wish-granting gem
for accomplishing the highest aim
may I always consider them precious.
[at http://www.tibetanculture.org/audi/index.htm]

The search also led me, serendipitously, to the Hundred Mountain site, where there is a link that reads, "Foundobjects: Spacey Buddhism from 'Babylon 5'" -- and that's not all. Interesting things here. For example, from "Page One Feature: Bleacher Buddhism," by I-know-not-whom, because there is no byline:

"This Buddhist business of taking total responsibility for not only your overt actions in the world, but your moment-to-moment mental states -- the fertilizing and nurturing of positive ones, the culling and replanting of poisonous ones -- is an alarmingly big job. My mind rebels; it's cozy with its bad habits. ... Those grooves of unwholesome habits and behavior -- killing rage, zombie-eyed lust, Olympian self-absorption, to name just a few -- run deep. Hard to get my wagon wheels out of them." [The address is http://www.hundredmountain.com/Pages/ pageone_stuff/dalai3.html.]

[There is an analogous "Navajo business," in that Navajo theology considers Beauty to be something that the human being and the Holy build cooperatively, with the human being having the responsibility of doing a full share of the work. Right thoughts; right perceptions.]

4. "Atheists can write perfectly good and realistic fiction, because there is nothing about being an atheist that prohibits a person from understanding human motivation and the physical world. But being nonreligious does deprive you of the one thing an ambitious fantasy author needs: a plausible cosmology, a myth that tells us how things got to be the way they are. The great religions all provide this."

This comes from a review by Daniel P. Moloney of the Philip Pullman trilogy (_The Golden Compass_, etc.), on pp. 45-49 of _First Things_ for 5/01. I don't follow Moloney at all. I see no reason why an atheist can't write fantasy using any religious cosmology he or she chooses, even if the writer's personal feeling is that the cosmology is a myth. I see no reason why it should be any more difficult for a nonreligious person to write a story using a religious framework than for a religious person to write something using a nonreligious one, which happens every day. Furthermore, it seems to me that atheism has its own cosmology, bleak and terrifying though it may be, and that it's as available to the writer as the Christian or any other cosmology. [You can also read this review at http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0105/reviews/moloney.html.]

5. Defining our terms: "We Catholics talk about the saints and the martyrs, but I've heard it said that the Catholic Workers are made up of the saints, and the martyrs are those who are willing to live with the saints." [Dorothy Day, quoted in "Saint Dorothy?", by Maurice Isserman, on page 7 of the 5/1/00 issue of _The National_. My thanks to Jeanne Gomoll for the copy.]

6. I can't give you a precise reference for this next item, but I don't think it matters; apparently the story has been all over the media. It seems that the first session of the Kansas Senate was opened by Rev. Joe Wright with the following prayer (excerpted):

"...We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We confess that.... We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it Pluralism. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. .... We have disciplined our children and called it building self-esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. ..."

It goes on like that a while. A zipper song is one where the lead singer can lay out the first verse and everybody else can follow the powerful and simple pattern established, creating new verses ad infinitum; this prayer of Rev. Wright's would have to be called a zipper prayer. Such patterns are precious. They help in the sharing of genuine wisdom, if you happen to be wise; if you're _not_ wise, they make it possible for you to sound as if you are. (This one was familiar to Aristotle and may have been familiar to the Neanderthals, but it remains effective.) The badly-spelled and badly-punctuated news story that landed in my e-mail box said that although quite a few of the Kansas State legislators walked out in protest during the prayer, Rev. Wright's church has since received more than 5000 phone calls, only 47 of which were negative -- and that requests for copies of the prayer are pouring in from all over the world.

People don't need copies of the whole prayer, they just need the pattern -- "We have done X and called it Y" -- plus a single prototype example -- "We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery" -- to give them the hang of it. From that base they can generate an infinite number of additional examples, attaching quotations from the Bible or other religious literature at will, and assemble them for whatever purposes they like.

7. Thanks to Pat Mathews for a copy of "New 'Jefferson Bible' edition ready," by Richard N. Ostling, in the 8/11/01 _Albuquerque Journal_. Beacon Press has just published a new edition of _The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth_, put together by Thomas Jefferson. "The founding father's treatment of the Bible...was radical," Ostling says. He had no interest in the Old Testament; he considered the writings of the Apostle Paul to be "corruptions of the doctrines of Jesus"; he eliminated much of the Gospels, in particular any section that "hints that Jesus was God, or even had an unusual relationship with God, and all supernatural events." According to Ostling, Jefferson didn't base his choices on study of ancient languages or on theories of biblical scholarship: "He simply picked what he liked." I'll be watching for the reviews, and I welcome your input.

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[E-mail newsletters by Suzette Haden Elgin for 2001 are: _The Linguistics & Science Fiction Newsletter_; _The Religious Language Newsletter_; and _The Verbal Self-Defense Newsletter_. Each $5.00 a year ($15.00 Supporting) for the six issues of the calendar year, by e-mail only, advertising-free; for more information or a free sample issue, send an e-mail request to OCLS@madisoncounty.net.]

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