two new hatchlings
Ah!–the sinuous path of pragmatism on the way to the “Chinese Dream.” Unique? Oh, no. Actually sounds American. We did, after all, build an interstate highway system that allows us in our powered conveyances to conquer the heights and hollows that Lewis and Clark, Daniel Boone, Jedediah Smith, and many others — not to mention the American aboriginals — took centuries to “discover” and to name. So, China wants to build a highway to the base camp on Mt. Everest. (By the way, one may ask, isn’t Everest in Tibet? Oh, no, not that Tibet, but the one now located within Greater China.) Tourists will benefit, they say. They deserve to see it. I imagine the pique of world-class mountaineers on hearing such a statement, climbers who trained for years for a shot at Everest, took their opportunity, and were lucky to come down alive. Knowing the life-and-death risks involved in climbing earth’s highest peak, elite adventurers have marveled at the presumptuousness of others less well prepared who seemed to take Everest too lightly and who all-too-readily paid for their misjudgment with their lives.
At least now adventurers will be able to conserve energy by taking the road to the base camp located at 17,000-plus feet (so said the spokesman quoted in the AP report). To possible altitude sickness they would add carsickness!
But in 2008 the Olympic torch will be taken to the summit of Everest! That’s an astonishing goal–possible surely, but the tortuous drama of it, and with no guarantee of success, makes it seem so improbable. Could that be just the point, though? Back to the dream, then . . . . In the world’s largest country, with the longest “Great Wall,” with the largest dam–the Three Gorges, and there are myriad other superlatives, one might be excused for being audacious. Having been named the host country for the 2008 Olympics after a long wait (actually twice, their 2000 bid having been denied), China will put on the world’s greatest show in Beijing and other venues. In fact, China itself will be the great venue, and China will be proudly, resplendently on display, and the world will be impressed. Guaranteed. The arrival of the Olympic torch in the hand of a climber will punctuate China’s grand statement that the Chinese have indeed stood up (Mao Zedong) and in a spectacular way (yes, in yet another way) long prepared for, long dreamed of, indeed, long anticipated.
What, you say, about the ways China has not and will not have arrived by August 2008? Yes, there will be many ways, but they will be less visible. On this point China warrants credit, even if not every Chinese has an equal slice of the dream, or even knows anything about it. Suffice to say for now that more Chinese will become acutely aware of the world beyond the borders of the Middle Kingdom — Zhongguo — and their thinking; their dreams will respond to the pull both of their own land and the recognition coming from lands beyond. At no time in human history will the world have paid more attention to China — no, not even at the time of Liberation in 1949, nor even during the height of Chairman Mao’s power in the Cultural Revolution, nor even during the Tiananmen Incident. No, the Olympics will be the height of exposure, and accomplishment, to date. You will know it when the climber and the torch reach the Everest summit.
How would you like to be on the media crew?
Ah, perfect love! For today, let us relegate the classical, sacrificial charity-love to a wall seat where it shall surely remain, but for a few lines. Take up (as C. S. Lewis did in his The Four Loves) the subtle joys of Affection (Storge) or the often-neglected, sometimes scorned, virtues of Friendship (Philia) or the state-of-being-in-love, that is, one’s desire for the Beloved, that is the essence of . . . Eros! But Eros is not what most people think; they do have in mind, actually, Venus, what Lewis referred to as “the carnal ingredient within Eros.” Lewis has much more compelling stuff in the pages following that comment, and I recommend him to you: for example, his astonishing comments on Ephesians 5:25 and context on the husband as the head of the wife:
This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is–in her own mere nature–least lovable. For the Church has no beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely. The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care or his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence. As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and labours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs. (Harvest Book edition, 1960, 1988, pp. 105-6)
I said astonishing. And so it is. Moreover the kind of headship described here is impossible apart from the pre-eminent and sacrificial headship of Christ himself. It is in fact the comparison between the husband and his wife, and Christ and his church that is so vast; Christ’s love for the Beloved is such that the husband’s love for his wife pales by comparison. That which so consumes the lover and beloved as Eros ultimately can be fulfilled, that is, perfected, only in the Charity-love (Agape) modeled in Christ. Eros is fundamentally powerful and effective, but cannot be pre-eminent without being demonic, and if demonic, then not truly Eros: Eros is terrifyingly imperfect and unsatisfying unless fulfilled by obedience to God.
Lewis’ commentary catches the hyperbolic emphasis of Paul the Sent: here, an emphasis on complete sacrificial commitment, and there, the fact of its impossibility unless Christ makes it happen. In the broader context of Paul’s teachings we can make sense of this by recognizing the pervasive life of Christ not only in individual believers but in his church, which is (again, astonishing!) :
his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Ephesians 1:18b, NET Bible
This is no obscure spiritual mysticism but a spiritual theology that flows from life (the life of God) to life (the life we are given in God), and which touches all of our human, natural loves, to, and beyond, the point of fulfillment in the source of love. I would struggle to describe it adequately; perhaps for now it is enough to call Charity-love back from the wall seat, to be the center of attention as that perfect love.
On a previous post from December 3 I mentioned the conception of “god” or “God” in the Chinese tradition. The emperor could be seen as a god of sorts. I have visited all too briefly with my Chinese academic friends about this, but one comment resonates with my growing understanding of the ages-old “secularity” of Chinese society and belief: even without the modern, naturalistic, atheistic world view of most educated Chinese today, to have “God” is something very difficult. In traditional China, the emperor–Son of Heaven or tianzi–dominated over the people, and together they constituted the main reality of the world. There has been no “emperor” since at least 1912, but there has been no lack of authoritarian government. Beyond mundane boundaries, though, and subordinate to the world itself, is the traditional Chinese conception of a god or God, and it is well-nigh inconsequential: “It’s hard to be a god in China,” said one friend. And I must say it can be hard to accept the idea of a loving, redeeming God and along with that idea, the concept that a Chinese person would need such a god. Read more…
It’s no secret to my extended clan that BuzzFever is alive and growing. I want to congratulate son Curtis and supportive, collaborative daughter-in-law Crystal for a truly interesting business site with The Lord-Only-Knows potential. It’s just one idea, but it is REAL.
This is my first entry for 2007; I hope to have more to say about BuzzFever, among other things more typical of my own and some other common interests. Today is the Ninth Day of Christmas according to my lectionary . . . Read more…