A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Brewery ...

 So I've been in Orlando for about two months now, and I'm trying to rebuild my life. It's sort of a funny thing to say, that. One might think that, as I moved here for Meshparjai, I'd have a life here. But of course that's not really true, and it really oughtn't to be true; you can't make your kid your life. I mean, your kid needs you to not make them your life. But I don't really have a life down here.

One of the reasons that's true is that I don't have a church here. That is, itself, a funny thing to say. A funny thing for me to say, I mean, because I kind of ... really don't like church. Okay, that's not true. I like things about church. I like the rituals of church. Increasingly, I like all the rituals of church, from the ecstatic low church liturgy I grew up with to the stodgy high church liturgies that, in retrospect, have been slowly creeping into my faith life since middle school at Chaminade. I like Communion, which is a weird thing for a Foursquare boy to say, but there you have it. I like the exegesis of Scripture. I like closing my eyes and reaching for the Spirit and saying, Hello. I missed having this time together.

Nevertheless, I don't like the way a lot of Christians expect church to be done, this early-century idea that the church is the hub of your social life. Most Christians I've met in church are just not my people, and while that still gives me a twinge of guilt to say, I'm more or less done apologizing for it. I miss Christians like Archimedes and Blue Rose and Antilles. And I miss Tenranova and being able to talk frankly about how bad so many people are at religion and what we want it to be. I miss talking to people about religion and being on the same wavelength, and it just kind of kills me how many Christians just aren't that.

Antilles has actually been on my mind a lot lately, as I think about church. I don't know about him, but for me, one of the things I valued so much about our freshman worship nights was how different they were from the standard campus Christian fellowships, and how much more intimate they felt. There was my church; there were my people--not at Campus Crusade for Christ, not at InterVarsity, not at Reformed University Fellowship. And I remember being both sort of shocked but also envious when Antilles told me he was, effectively, trying to do church without church--just some folks living in community. It didn't entirely work out, as I recall, but the idea of getting to do church with people you actually liked and respected was pretty powerful to me.

I guess that's the first time I've actually said that. I ... don't respect most Christians I've interacted with qua Christians, I suppose. Maybe that's a me problem.

Anyway ... one of the things on my parental To Do list now that I'm down here is to give Meshparjai access to her Christian heritage. And that's a complicated thing for me, for whom the closest thing I've ever felt to a real church home is The River, all those years ago. And I find, as I think about it, that that narrows the field of churches I'm interested in in a way that surprises me.

Here are the things that I would have said I was looking for in a church:

1. Sermons that aren't just self-help talks.
2. Musical worship that's mystic and alive.
3. Communion as an ordinary part of the liturgy.
4. A pastoral staff that lives and values the liberal arts and all that they entail.
5. A connection to and deep respect for Christian tradition.
6. The ability to commit to Christ without abandoning what we know academically about the Church, her history, and religion as a field of human endeavor.
7. A set of congregational values that wouldn't make me feel like I have to apologize for what happened at church to my own kid.

I find it easy enough to find 1 and 2, but I find that they tend not to coexist with 3-7. And honestly, I find 3-7 increasingly important to me for my own sake, not to mention for the sake of raising someone in the modern church.

Which is how I found myself today at a place called the Hearth, an LGBTQ-friendly, woman-pastored Lutheran church that meets in a brewery. Because I have no idea how to search for things 3-7 on my list, but I figured that looking for a queer-friendly, female-ordination-friendly place would cut out a lot of the places that weren't 3-7.

#2 wasn't there, obviously, because apparently the only parts of Christendom who remember how to do ecstatic ritual are, for the most part, not my people either (he says with a nonzero amount of bitterness). But I ... well, I have a good feeling about this. The pastor reminds me of Tenranova a bit. The people remind me of the Episcopalians I've met, in a good way. I hung out for beer and lunch and talked with a bunch of them and I kind of get the impression there's a nonzero amount of "spiritual refugee" energy in this congregation, which ... at this point, honestly, maybe describes me too.

I don't go to church to affirm my support for the LGBTQ community. I don't go to church to affirm my support for female pastors. I don't go to church to fellowship with my coreligionists, which ... honestly, between you, me, and the blog, is a failing on my part. But I ... had a good feeling about this place. The way the pastor talked about giving. The way she talked about worship (musically, not my cup of tea, but theologically, yesyesyes). The way it was so clearly and unapologetically a Lutheran service, attended primarily by non-Lutherans.The way the sermon walked the line between meaningless exegesis and meaningless "applicability." The fact that they don't have a separate youth program (honestly, in my opinion, a big plus).

The sense of tug on my heart last night, that said, "Go on. Give it a try."

The sense of closing my eyes in the service today and reaching for the Spirit and saying, Hello. I missed having this time together.

I'll be back next week.

Jungle Cruises

I think I figured it out.

Somewhere between today's three hundredth playthrough of Weird Al's "Skipper Dan," a much-needed dinner break reading my latest David Weber novel in which a young priest learns the truth about his fabricated church and wrestles with his faith, and explaining to Kara that I should never have become a securitization attorney in the first place, I think I figured it out. What's bothering me right now, I mean.

Let me back up.

The past few days I've been depressed again. I should be enjoying my spring break, reveling in the fact that I have a book coming out, lots of time to paint, a new roleplaying game I'm running (even if it is D&D, which itself is a sign of depression), lots of time to read, new shows to watch. Instead, I'm feeling like life doesn't mean very much.

Oh, part of me is just mourning the loss of my trip to Disney. I was supposed to be spending a whole week on Batuu as Kalen Lowery, an expatriate from Arkanis fleeing the First Order and the loss of his copilot, flying jobs for Hondo Ohnaka all day and being recruited into the Resistance, trying to get passersby to play a game of dejarik or sabacc or just journaling under the Batuuan sun. I had a plan: for lodging and meals on a budget, for how to carry everything I needed on my person without a backpack in a way that still looked Star Warsy. And now that won't happen. Probably not until next year at the earliest. Maybe never.

It's not about getting to Galaxy's Edge. That I'll be back to, maybe this year. It's about the trip. About having a whole five days in Galaxy's Edge (okay, maybe a day for other Disney stuff), without anybody wanting to do anything else, without anybody else there. About Kalen being stuck on Black Spire Outpost due to circumstances beyond his control and not being sure he wanted to leave. It was about me working out feelings of life being empty and pointless and deciding that it's not, about bringing joy to people's days with my interactions and remembering that magic still exists in the world if only we have the wit to see it. About really immersing myself in a place I wouldn't want to leave, and choosing to leave anyway. Kalen can't really get stuck on Batuu forever, you know. That can't be what the story is.

But good luck finding another week I can afford to take to go to Orlando before my annual pass expires.

Anyway ... as much as I hate having rituals taken away from me, my canceled spiritual retreat to Black Spire Outpost is not actually what's been bothering me.

What's really bothering me is that I feel like my job's being taken away from me, and I don't know what to do about it.

So let me back up and explain that.

I was telling Kara the other day that I never should have become a transactional lawyer. What I should have been was a tax attorney. Transactional attorneys - the kinds of lawyers who actually make deals happen - are too much like diplomats for me to ever be a good one. As my last mentor told me before I quit the profession, in that job, you have to be okay with people being mad at you all the time. And I'm not. Not people I need to work with, anyway. I can dismiss people I can forget about just fine, but i don't have the trick of tuning out the emotional displeasure of people I have to interact with. But tax attorneys ... tax attorneys just wrestle with the law and make pronouncements to the transactional attorneys that Thus Saith the Tax Code. The kind of tax attorneys I always worked with, anyway. By the time I figured that out, it was too late. I'm not equipped to be a good transactional attorney, but I think I could've made a good tax attorney.

Should've been a tax attorney.

Or maybe not. Because then I probably never would've been a teacher. But that's kind of the point.

Because here's what's really bothering me: maybe I'm trying to be the wrong kind of teacher.

My current principal is threatening to put me in an "English language arts" class of newcomers, which is to say brand new immigrants to the US, most of whom will literally not speak English. I use the word threatening and the quotation marks advisedly. I feel wildly ill equipped to teach a class like that. I am, frankly, certain I will fail - or at least fail by the metrics that matter to my principal.

Some of her motivations in making this move are benign; I recognize that. But only some of them. And regardless, it feels like she's taking away my kids and putting me in a situation in which I cannot possibly succeed. And the reason she's doing that is because I have, in her eyes, failed to establish control of my classroom in the way she wants to see it.

Now, I know that is bullshit, in lots of ways. I do connect with my kids. I give a damn, and they know it. I know that matters in ways that isn't going to show up in my principal's precious metrics. But I also know that I have failed to convince my kids - most of them, anyway - that what we do in my class matters, and they should give a damn. Not about me. About reading.

And I have to admit, it's got me thinking. Look, I know I'm a phenomenal teacher. Give me a student who wants to learn and I can find a way to make the light bulb go on about most things, for pretty much anybody. I'm good at that. Better than most people who hold instructional positions. I know that. I am a teacher, and I always will be.

But am I trying to be the wrong kind of teacher?

This is where "Skipper Dan" comes in, by the way. I've been bingeing it not because of the Disney connection (okay, there's a little bit of that), but because it's about a man who is a phenomenal actor and spent his life failing to become a breakout star, and landed as a tour guide on the Jungle Cruise ride ("Skipper Dan is the name ..."). The actual song is pretty bleak about this, but it's such an upbeat earworm that the unspoken message is that working on the Jungle Cruise ride is actually not such a terrible thing after all. There's a kind of wonderful beauty to it. It's just not how Dan saw his life going.

You get it, I assume.

I could have been a good lawyer ... but I spent ten years trying to be the wrong kind of lawyer.

I know I'm a good teacher ... but am I trying to be the wrong kind of teacher?

I truly hate the thought that there are students out there I might not be able to teach, but ... what if there are? What if there are types of teacher that I'm not suited to being, just like there were kinds of lawyer? I mean, if you put it that way, there are almost certainly types of teacher I'm not suited to being. What if I look back in another ten years and I'm paying the rent and I'm swallowing my pride and I'm working on the Jungle Cruise ride?

Would that be okay? I mean ... maybe? I just don't know that I'd be any good at it.

I don't know what to look for, and I don't even know how to look. If I stay at my Title I school, I get my classroom taken away from me (I might need to stop thinking about it that way, but ... that's where I am right now). It's more than halfway through April, and it doesn't exactly seem like I'm likely to get another classroom right now. Should I even be looking for another classroom? Could I, I don't know, be a full-time tutor?  My coach said she'd like to see what I can do with a real honors class, and hell, so would I ... but how am I supposed to get one?

By the time I figured out I should have been a tax attorney, it was too late to make myself one. It's only been two years of teaching, and I would hate to think I've already become unemployable because I did this career wrong, too. I already lost the last two years of my marriage to this career transition, and for all I know, my chance to raise Meshparjai, too.

I'm pushing forty and, honestly, my working life feels like a failure. A lot of my life feels like a failure, really - that's why I was supposed to be going to Batuu, damn it - and I don't want my second career to be a failure, too.

That's what's bothering me. At least I figured it out.

Now my hopes have all vanished and my dreams have all died

And I'll prob'ly work forever as a

Tour guide on the Jungle Cruise ride

Skipper Dan is the name

And I'm doing thirty-four shows every day

And every time it's the same

Look at those hippos! They're wigglin' their ears

Somebody shoot me, 'cause I'm bored to tears

Always said I'd be famous; I guess that I lied'

Cause I'm working on the Jungle Cruise ride.

Resignation

I solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of an attorney and counselor at law to the best of my knowledge and ability.

I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the State of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of attorney and counselor-at-law, according to the best of my ability.

Today I mailed my transition to inactive status to the California State Bar and began the process of applying to resign as an attorney in New York (neither process technically the same as the other).

I have, as the kids say, all the feels.

I don't plan to be a practicing lawyer ever again, but it isn't very hard to become one after going inactive (CA) or resigning (NY).  There isn't anything irrevocable about this decision.  Practically speaking, its only effect is to save me the hassle of keeping up my continuing legal education requirements and the cost of those CLE programs and registration.  The cost is the main driver; being an attorney in California and New York costs close to $1,000 annually.  Still, I can't help but feel an immense sense of loss at this most practical and revocable of actions.

Above are the words of the attorney's oaths as I took them (the California one has been updated a bit since).  I thought about them a lot, as well as the "duties of an attorney and counselor at law" (to use the California phrasing) to which they refer, before I took them.  There isn't an expiration date on these oaths.  They aren't conditional upon my being an attorney and counselor at law.  That status does affect some of them ... but not all.  It remains my sworn duty, for instance, "never to reject, for any consideration personal to [myself], the cause of the defenseless or the oppressed" (from the California duties). I remain oathbound to support the constitutions of the United States and the States of California and New York - with all their faults, foibles, and injustices.

I was proud to take these oaths.  They mean a lot to me.

As I said, I consider myself still bound by them.  Yet I still feel like I'm losing something.  Or maybe this is just a natural occasion for reflection upon the oaths by which I'm bound.  I haven't made a lot of oaths.  I can only think of ten, really.

Or maybe what's really going on is I feel a need to understand how I'm going to uphold them when I'm not an attorney.  I'm thinking a lot about that, too.  One of the duties that weighs most heavily upon me is this excerpt from Paragraph 6 of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

As a member of a learned profession, a lawyer should cultivate knowledge of the law beyond its use for clients, employ that knowledge in reform of the law and work to strengthen legal education. In addition, a lawyer should further the public's understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system because legal institutions in a constitutional democracy depend on popular participation and support to maintain their authority.

The ABA has no actual authority over American attorneys, and the Model Rules are more like ... guidelines than actual Rules.  The section quoted above isn't part of the duties of an attorney in California or New York ... but as far as I'm concerned, it's part of my oaths.

I think about this as I try to become a teacher.  I have a lot of strong feelings about how government and history ought to be taught, but more than that, I have strong feelings about teaching them.  Because I swore an oath to further the public's understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system.  I need to teach people these things - not just about what our system of governance is, but why I think people ought to believe in it.  There are a lot of things about America I'm ashamed of, and many of those things are rooted in our constitutions.  I really did consider, before I first swore, whether I could swear to support those constitutions for the rest of my life.

And I realized that I could.  That I'm proud of them.  That it was worth it to add these oaths to the others on my ledger.  I want to teach others to understand and be proud.  I have to.

I made a promise.

What Am I Doing Here? Church Edition

The subject of church is on my mind a lot lately.  Swordwind is full of people from weird religious traditions, Meshparjai actually asked to go to church last week, and she and I had one of those powerful parent-child spiritual covering moments a few nights back.  I'm thinking more about the mystical now these days just in general, in large part thanks to Tenranova (who makes me feel like a bad Christian, sometimes).

The truth is, though, that I've always had something a fraught relationship with church.  Maybe that's kind of surprising - I've always found it ironic for someone whom Princess once called "the most Christian person I know."  I've pretty much always found church hugely problematic.  I can recognize its value in my own life, but the more honest I am with myself about how problematic I find it, the harder I find it to commit to as a real spiritual discipline.

This really bothers me, of course.  To a pretty close approximation, Christianity cannot be done outside of a community.  The same is true of most religions, I expect.  And as Hebrews discusses, there is something fundamentally incompatible between the redemption of Christ and "forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some."  But there it is.

The problems I've had with church have varied over the years.  When I was in school, my basic problem was that the fellow Christians I was supposed to be building spiritual community with were not my kinds of people - by which I think I meant some combination of "into the wrong hobbies," "too popular," and "too dumb."

I have never dealt particularly well with dumb people.  I like to think I've gotten better.  But this was over twenty years ago.  And, to be fair, it wasn't just the people.  Church was often infuriatingly stupid.  I used to say that I didn't really understand how you can give a worthwhile sermon in less than an hour.  What I meant by that was that when I gather to hear the Word of God proclaimed, I really want to hear the Word of God analyzed.  I want to understand the text better.  I don't want some kind of "application" to my life.  If understanding the text happens to have application to my life, then great.  But the text - Scripture, the Word - that has to be the point.  Not my own circumstances.

As I got older, my problems with church tended to fall more into this category: that church is a place to meet with God, not a place to get moral or behavioral advice.  And in this regard, I find myself caught - have been caught for about ten years, if I'm honest - between different approaches to church.

I grew up with a very low church sort of liturgy, where the congregation enters the Presence principally through musical praise.  This sort of rock concert worship service has become fairly widespread and especially characteristic of the non-denominational megachurch, though I think my home church was unusually thoughtful about what precisely we were doing.  On the model I grew up with, musical worship is performative.  It's instantiatory.  It taps into the ancient roots within humanity that feel the need to create spiritual space where it is on earth as it is in heaven, whether we're recreating the throne room of Yahweh as revealed to John or recreating the hunting grounds of Ashur.

Perhaps because of this, I find this sort of liturgy a more ... complete experience of the Presence.  There is thunder and fire in it, and tenderness and heartbreak, that I don't find in the more staid liturgies of other Christian traditions.  I don't think I could take seriously an experience of God that doesn't have thunder and fire and tenderness and heartbreak.  Here my heart is open to God in a way that I crave.  Maybe this makes me weaker, in theological terms, than those who can trust God without such direct experience.

At the same time, this sort of liturgy is vulnerable to being ... well ... stupid.  I don't mean pointless: I mean literally lacking in intellectual substance.  It runs the risk of being hollow.  There is thunder and fire and tenderness and heartbreak in it, but God is more than that, and you can't have Christianity without the text.  You just can't.

The Episcopal liturgy where I've made my home for the last few years (well, intermittently) doesn't have that problem so much.  It may be staid, but as Archimedes once said to me, every word has been examined and re-examined.  The prayers are excellent, carefully grounded in the text and with many layers of function.  There is value in the sense of wholeness that comes from being part of a comparatively long-standing tradition.  I find that there is actual, direct spiritual value in the Eucharist - a value that I think even Pastor Scott would have recognized.  It is a staid liturgy, lacking in fire and thunder and tenderness and heartbreak.  But there is strength in it.

And as for the intellectual substance of the liturgy of the Word - something that, I find, all liturgies place more importance on than I appreciated when I was a kid being annoyed that Pastor Jack's hour-long sermon hadn't included nearly enough footnotes - well, as far as I can tell that's just not something you can control for by liturgy, or even by denomination.  That comes down to the individual pastor.

All three of these things are indispensable to my understanding of church - of what it means to just be in the Presence of God.  There's only one church I've ever been in that combines all three (The River, back in San Jose).  As a believer, I find that thought kind of ... discouraging.  As a parent, I find it exhausting, and a little bit frightening, and a little bit sad.  I want to worship with my family.  I want to wallow in all the things that God has to offer.  I don't want to have to pick and choose.

And this doesn't even touch the community aspect of church.

I have had the thought periodically over the past ten years that perhaps that is the missing part of the puzzle - or at least, the part that I'm supposed to grow in next.  In truth, I've only ever really had one Christian community, which was Testimony - and even then, I was always the one arguing that we had to be an a cappella group first, and a fellowship second.  I've never really appreciated community, is I guess what I'm saying.

And I don't know how to build it.  I don't know how to find a group of Christians who just happen to be the kinds of people I want to make clan - or how to have more than one clan, or how to make my clan big enough to have (say) a fencing community and a Christian community.  I can sort of understand finding fellowship in the context of a larger community where our joint allegiance helps to paper over the fact that we aren't really clan.  But what larger community is likely to have that sort of person, other than a church?  And that brings me back to my problems with church.

Which is why so often I've been in a spiritual headspace - whether it's praying with Meshparjai, sitting in the pews at St. Mark's, administering Communion to myself in the morning alone in the kitchen, or talking fencing with Tenranova - and asking myself, "What am I doing here?"

The Talhoffer Society, and On Killing

I just finished The Talhoffer Society.  This will not be a review as such, although I will write one of those later (probably somewhere else, where it will be seen by more people, although I may do a more personal friends-and-family review here).  I will say that it has been a good long while since I have read a book that is excellent (italicized for the Natalian).

Anyway.  As I said, this is not a review.  It's going to be a post about force, and about killing, and why I think those are important topics.

TTS is about a modern-day tournament fought using real swords, sponsored by the rich and powerful.  This is, of course, a classic martial arts fantasy (cue Mortal Kombat theme), and for that reason I should mention not only that the central premise of the book was considerably more sophisticated than I had anticipated, but that all of the places in the beginning that struck me as sloppy plotting turned out to be satisfactorily addressed by the end.

( For those who are curious, competitive fighting with real swords is not entirely fictional.  I know of one group of people that fought on a semi-regular basis with no protection and real swords that were allegedly properly sharpened.  I have no idea how good these people were, though I know that at least some of them had or went on to have actual killing experience (not of each other, thankfully).  I am fairly certain I know other fencers, of whose skill I have more direct knowledge, who have done it, albeit not as a regular activity.  I am not aware of any top-level organized live steel competition backed by what amounts to the Illuminati, but then, I wouldn't be, would I? )

In a story such as this, as you might expect, a lot of the characters' skull time is spent thinking about the relationship between martial arts, martial arts practice, and death.  Or maybe you wouldn't expect that; I don't know.  As for me, I was ... hoping for it.  I am greatly edified by my hopes having been met (but now I'm getting review-y again).

As regular readers know, I practice KDF in order to think about death.  I vacillate between thinking this is utterly ordinary and probably uncommon.  I've heard real people express the sentiment that most Americans probably don't understand that "self defense" involves killing people, or proclaim in ominous tones that guns are made For Just One Purpose, which is To Kill.  This flabbergasts me, because ... well, duh?  I'd like to think most people who own or practice with weapons understand quite well that before you can get into any nonsense about good guys and bad guys, you've got to be able to kill: to crush flesh and shatter bone; to cause limbs and trunk to part company; to turn a human being who is a parent or child and turn it into lifeless, pitiful meat; to send the spirit of another human being wailing down to hell and leave their body as a feast for dogs and birds.  Murder, combat, attack, defense, justifiable use of force - these are all legal or moral conclusions, not acts.  The act itself is simply killing.

I'd like to believe that this is a commonplace understanding.  Mostly this is because the converse is terrifying to me.  Weapons can be fun, but they aren't toys, after all.  But it's also because the converse is baffling to me.  Why the hell (if I can continue in a Homeric vein) would you want to lay hands on a weapon if not to get in touch with the stark, singular, solitary reality of killing?

Maybe this seems strange.  I've tried before to explain why I think it is important.  I have even said that I think killing is inextricably related to being a good person (not that I think being a good person is particularly important, but it's not nothing, either).  I still think that.  I don't know that I'm going to be able to do a better job of explaining now.  But TTS  offers its own meditation on the subject, and more directly than I can recall any other piece of fiction doing.  It's inspired me, I suppose, to try again.  So here I go.

I have heard it said that humanity is divided into sheep and wolves, usually with the subtext that being a sheep is bad.  I don't think this is true (though perhaps I am being Cicero here).  Certainly I think it is true that most people have a natural aversion to killing, and some people have no particular aversion to it, and some people actively enjoy it.  But I see no way in which this is of moral consequence.  What I do think is of moral consequence is self-possession: to make one's will the master of one's actions (to determine upon good actions is another matter, of course, but self-possession is a necessary precursor).  And the subject of killing, I think, tends to bring this into starker relief than do other topics.  In part this is precisely because most people have a natural aversion to killing.  But I think there's more to it than that.  Killing seems to me like ... well, like a sort of moral nexus.  Because it isn't just about the willful termination of biological life.  To borrow Jesus' example (not that he was the only moral thinker to have posed this question), what really is the difference between killing someone and being angry enough to kill someone?  Is it truly that the stark fact of biological existence is so all-fired important?  I'm certainly willing to say that death is bad ... but am I prepared to say that dealing death is bad?  I don't think so - and yet how can that be?  And of course there are the more mundane questions that killing asks of us, such as under what circumstances we would be willing to do it.  Would we really kill one life to preserve another?  Why?  Doesn't that imply that one life is more important than another?  If not, on what basis are we willing to make the choice (and yet, sheep or not, I think almost all people share the instinct that sometimes, killing is the right thing to do)?  Yet if so, doesn't that imply terrible things about the moral implications of sin and our own ability to forgive?  Or put it another way: if you haven't settled for yourself when you would kill someone, how can you have settled when you would forgive someone?  And if you aren't working to be able to kill someone, how can you be working to being able to forgive?  Does it seem strange to link death and forgiveness so naturally?  I am Christian, after all.

I've begun to wax spiritual.  And I'm not really apologetic about that, because I think people who eschew the spiritual are stupid.  But I don't wish to get too ... esoteric, I suppose.  Because these questions - death, forgiveness, self-possession - are of immediate, temporal urgency.  I mean this generally.  But I also mean it personally, in the sense that meditating on the how, why, and when of killing has helped me not to kill myself.  I keep Ruusaan in my bedroom in significant part to remind myself that I choose not to die: that I choose to live, that I choose to be forgiven, and to forgive.  There have even been times, late at night, when it has gotten so bad that I have to physically hold her in my hands, to see her edge glow in the moonlight, to feel the heft of her that wants to hew, that was made to part flesh from flesh - and to know that I hold her.

Holding On and Letting Go

"Nu gar cuyi ner burc'ya.
Ni kar'tayli gar gai sa ner aru'e.
Enteyo kyr'amur gar.
Ni cuyi kyr'am."

You are not my friend.  I know your name as my enemy.  I must kill you.  I am become death.  After a morning of judging the open longsword competition at the Southeast Renaissance Fencing Open, the time has finally come for me to enter the ring and fight.  I'm looking at my friend the Spider Monkey, murmuring this mantra under my breath.

I'm in the invitational longsword tournament rather than the open, as I had expected to be in.  It's a compliment to be in the invitational; it means the organizer trusts not only my skill in general but also trusts me to put on a display of technical, artful fencing whether I win or lose.  And isn't that the point?  A few days before the event I confide to Kebbura that I don't really feel worthy of the invitation, and she makes this very point to me.  Maybe I can't win.  But I'm not in it to win, right?  I'm in it to fence well.  Tournament success is not the pinnacle of good swordsmanship.

And yet ... I do want to win.  That's why I'm going, after all.  Yes, I want to win with technical, artful fencing.  A win without that wouldn't mean very much to me, because technical and artful are part of the fencer I want to be.  But they're only part.  I also want to be implacable and merciless.  If I ever come at you with a sword, I want you to know right from the start that death is coming for you, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.  I want to see Ailouros' predatory smile - the one she discovered at Longpoint - the next time we meet, lock eyes with her, and say, "Bring it, bitch."

I'm not there yet.  The art is coalescing in my head and my limbs and my hands; I can feel it.  I'm stronger and faster, less easily winded.  I can see better than I used to be able to, not only what happened and why but what is going to happen.  But it isn't all synthesized yet, not the way I want it to be.  I need to know that when it all comes down to this moment, I can bring all these pieces together and fuse them into a single whole.  So yeah, I want to win.

Most of this is mental.  Part of it is aggression, something I've always had trouble with in fencing when it comes down to it.  Most of it is singing, dancing.  When I sing a patter song I'm not thinking about the lyrics; if I try, I'll trip myself up.  When I dance, part of me is thinking ahead, but most of me is just in the moment, feeling what is and being immersed in it.  I remember the Dance Master talking about this, the joy of letting go while still being hyper-attuned to the instant moment.  Letting everything go, while holding on to my focus.  I can do it when I dance.  I can do it when I sing.  I need to be able to do it when I fence.

It's not a light switch yet.  I have to sink into this mental state slowly and deliberately.  Hence the mantra.  Nu gar cuyi ner burc'ya.  Ni kar'tayli gar gai sa ner aru'e.  Enteyo kyr'amur gar.  Ni cuyi kyr'am.  You are not my friend.  I know your name as my enemy.  I must kill you now.  I am become death.  I repeat it to myself under my breath.  Louder, once my helmet goes on.  The bucket muffles sound going in and out, and I let myself sink further into my own world.  My lips still, and my perceptions begin to change, like a filter lowering into place.  My opponent's joints, limbs, and sword are no longer a threat.  They tell me how I can take him apart.  This is how I want to fence, how my art tells me to fence.  I gaze levelly at my opponent, feel my body arranged beneath me, the fit of Ijaat's handle in my grip.  You can't beat me.

He can, and he does.  Spider Monkey is still better than me in the ring.  But I do much better than the judges' calls indicate, as even some of the spectators tell me afterwards and which my opponent himself is happy to acknowledge.

The next two fights I win.  They aren't shut-outs, but I never feel the fight slipping away from me, either.  I don't know either of my opponents.  It doesn't matter.  I see them, and I hit the cracks that I see until they've been taken apart.  We dance, and I lead.

I make it out of the pool into the final sixteen, along with Spider Monkey.  This is a huge accomplishment by itself.  The only other time this has happened to me in a longsword event was at Iron Gate Exhibition 2014, which was due not so much to my fencing ability as to my superior game theory analysis of the rules.  This advancement is mine.  This one, I am proud of.

I don't make it out of the final sixteen.  My opponent is cagey, harder to trick into making mistakes.  We end the match in a tie, and he beats me in sudden death when I get impatient.  But it isn't the impatience that was the problem.  I can see it now, what I should have done - how I could have pushed him harder, or in a different way, to take him apart.  And I see what I was doing, treating him like my last two opponents.  I was fighting the last war.  Dancing without sensing my partner.  I stopped seeing my opponent.

That's okay.  I will do better next time.  I've proven to myself that I can do it.  I am content.

Longpoint 2015

When I met Zod for the first time, it was to teach a sparring workshop for the first time any of us had sparred with swords (at least in a HEMA fashion).  One of the things he told us was that it was the responsibility of those of us who had a killer instinct already to help the others cultivate it.  "You have it," he said, pointing to one of us.  "You do, and so do you," he said, pointing to two others.  And then he looked at me.  He hesitated for a moment.  "You sort of have it," he said.

At the time, I was pretty okay with that.  Half a killer instinct?  Not bad for someone just starting out.  But in the months since, others found theirs while I did not.

This bothers me.  I want to acquire access to that part of myself that Zod termed the "killer instinct."  I want to be able to turn it off and on at will, to find that part of myself and bring it within the ambit of my will.  I want it even more (if only by a little) than acquiring actual skill with a sword.  More than any other factor, this is the reason I started doing HEMA.  When I talk about the connection between force and morality, or force and good character, this is the very essence of what I mean.

Aside from its moral implications, there are obvious competitive advantages to having one's killer instinct firmly in one's tool kit as well.  Most of the best fencers, if not all, can switch from their normal selves to somebody else when they step into the ring, or before the cutting stand.  That somebody else is a significant part of why they win.

It was also a significant part of why I lost this weekend at Longpoint.  I cut significantly worse than I know I can do, because I let myself approach the mat with less than single-minded intensity.  I fought well enough in my longsword pool, but I didn't push, didn't take, as well as I know I can.  Part of that is rust from not having sparring partners who are as good or better than me.  But a significant part of it is also that I went into my pool in the same headspace I would occupy in any friendly (or even coaching) sparring match.

I think I figured it out about halfway through the event, coaching first Ailouros and then Kebbura in the women's longsword pools.  I said something to Kebbura when she was facing Panthera and holding back (as usual) that stuck in my mind.  I pointed across the ring at her and said, "That is not your friend right now.  I want you to get in there and hit her."

I coached Ailouros through her pool in the women's longsword and into the elimination brackets.  I felt like we developed a good rapport, and I enjoyed analyzing the weaknesses of her opponents and helping her to exploit them (and more, perhaps, on the coaching side of things later).  But I also just tried to get her amped up for the fight, because most of the women she faced had significant exploitable weaknesses and I just knew she could take advantage of them - if she went in with the right attitude.

The night that she got into the elimination brackets - the night after she beat the woman who would eventually take fourth place - she posted something to Facebook that really rattled me.  "I found my inner bitch today," she said.  "And not just the one I fight health insurance companies with.  The one I fight with."

Both of these ladies started training a few "generations" of students after I did (which is a matter of months, mind you; we acquired generations pretty quickly in Manhattan).  Because I like teaching and I wanted the school to succeed, I made an effort to mentor them, and I feel a certain amount of investment in their success as their senpai.  I was, of course, very proud of Ailouros' fighting and I could see, even in the pools, when she made the jump from fencer to fighting bitch.  But I was also kind of shaken.

Son of a bitch, I thought.  My kohai has found her killer instinct before me.

This was the moment that I realized I had been fighting without it all this time.  But it was also the moment that I realized I didn't know what it was, and that bothered me a lot more.  What is my inner bitch? I wondered.  What does she look like?

I tried to think back to the times I had felt my killer instinct in a fight, even if briefly and non-deliberately.  The best I could think of was the dagger competition at IGX (my best competitive showing to date, perhaps not coincidentally).  It felt ... almost cold, to be honest.  Certain.  And focused, ever so focused, on the defeat of the person in front of me.

If I ever kill someone, that is how I want it to be.  Cold.  Emotionless.  Certain.  Implacable.  That is how death should be dealt out, so far as I understand the morality of killing.  It's the kind of swordsman I want to be.

Maybe these thoughts are naive.  Almost certainly they are in at least some respect.  But it was something to start from.

So I meditated on that through the night.  I meditated on it all through Ailouros' fights in the brackets. I tried to keep her in that state as well.  I meditated on it in several otherwise friendly sparring matches I had.  And I meditated on it during today's cutting class, during which I hoped to be able to show, before my friend and teacher and a bunch of people who knew that I was the student of one of the best longsword cutters in the world, that I really can cut.  As I did so, I felt that calm, cold, unfeeling certainty return.  I was interrupted by people saying good bye, and I was able to return to that state.  And when it was finally my turn to cut, I stared down the mat and cut the way I should have cut during the qualifiers, and afterwards people who had felt pretty good about their improvement during the class asked me how I made it look so lazy.

Of course, a good headspace for cutting is not necessarily the same as a good headspace for fighting.  But we shall see.  We shall see.

Fencing Retrospective, Two Years

Two years ago today I had my first KdF class.  Two years have passed in my own timeline since I first began to practice in Prospect Park, in the mornings atop the knoll in the ring of trees.

A lot has happened since then.  I've moved to Charlotte.  I have students of my own.  I own a sharp sword - the first weapon I have ever owned - and I own it on my terms.  I've practiced with the langes messer and dagger, two weapons that I would never have thought I would be attracted to, and discovered that I really like one of them (the dagger) and really hate the other (the messer).  I've started learning the use of the sidesword, a weapon I've wanted to learn for as long as I've wanted to learn longsword, which is the first time I've tried to learn a weapon without the benefit of in-person instruction.

I've attended two major tournaments and two minor ones.  At one of the major ones I made it to the finals in the dagger tournament, I actually won a medal in a rapier tournament, and I made it to the eliminations in longsword.

Am I any good?

I don't really feel like it, to be honest.  There are others from AHS who have been practicing for as long as I have, or very shortly longer, who are better than I am - better in technique, better in cutting, better in sparring.  I suppose it is natural to compare myself to those of my peers whom I know to be the best.  As for my students, I am not as far ahead of them as I would like.

Am I better?

Absolutely.

I have now executed cuts that I couldn't execute a year ago.  The progress hasn't been entirely forward, but it has been forward in the aggregate.  I understand the art better than I did a year ago.  Whereas a year ago I could more or less explain pretty much all of the hauptstücke, I can now just explain all but a few of them, at least in a much deeper way than I could a year ago.  And I understand the foundational concepts of the art better now too.  I no longer think in terms of tempi, the Italian concept that forms the basis of so much modern fencing theory, and instead think in terms of vor and nach, the Liechtenauerian concept that serves the same purpose.  I can exert pressure ... not well, perhaps, but much better than I could a year ago.  And I can feel pressure better than I could, which is just as important.

The reasons I fence have changed somewhat.  I started fencing as a thing for me - a corner of New York to make my own.  I needed that, to keep me from succumbing to depression.  I needed a tribe, and fencing gave me one.  I needed a reason to exercise, and fencing gave me one.

I still fence for those reasons.  The thing that keeps me eating well (well ... better than I otherwise would) and exercising is the need to do honor to my weapon.  Here in Charlotte most of my tribe are students.  And there are certainly times, even here with Thayet and Meshparjai, when I feel the weight crushing me down like one of Rodin's caryatids and I just need to feel Ruusaan's grip in my hands.

I also fence to teach.  I'm still a lawyer, but I can teach through my fencing.  It isn't really the same teaching peers as I think it would be teaching those younger, but it's still teaching.  It gives me a chance to work on curriculum and lesson design, as well as my presentation skills and pacing.  And this, as much as holding the sword in hand and hammering body and will to the demands of the art, helps to center me.

I am thirty-four now.  The five years will be up when I am thirty-seven - too old, in all likelihood, to ever be a truly top-tier fencer in the competitive world.  But I find that I remain determined to be a swordsman.  It has morphed from an exploration of force into its own thing - I must fence because I must.  I will be a swordsman.  I am a swordsman - I'm just not a good one.

Three years to go.

An Tion Jate?

"The very formula, 'Naus means ship' is wrong. Naus and ship both mean a thing, they do not mean one another. Behind naus, as behind navis or naca, we want to have a picture of a dark, slender mass with sail or oars, climbing the ridges, with no officious English word intruding.” - C.S. Lewis

An tion jate?  This is a question I ask myself a lot lately.  I in Mandalorian because it makes me think about them in a different way than if I ask in English.  I ask it because it means, "Is everything okay?"  And I am not okay.  I am sick.  The anxiety and depression, the "impaired executive function" - it's all back (I'm back on medication, but these things take a month or so to really kick in).  Everything is not okay.

I ask it because, without additional context, it also means, "Was everything okay?"  And I begin to wonder if perhaps it has not been okay for a long, long time.  I am better prepared this time, more aware of when parts of my mind shut down and better able to re-route around the dark sectors or at least tread water until the lights come back on.  One of the things I have learned that helps is to sing - to roar, the kind of singing that feels like a core workout, songs that are choked full of emotion, to thunder into the void.  And I remember ... this is not the first time I have felt that way.  I have always loved to roar (as my sophomore year dormmates can attest), but it has not always been out of desperation.  But it was out of desperation in New York, when I started attending Hillsong NYC because I needed that space to roar in, a cathedral of light and smoke and sound and spirit.  It was out of desperation in the worst times in California, when the smothering blanket of depression was so thick that I couldn't sing, even when I wanted to.  It was out of desperation as far back as law school, when I first created a playlist of Disney songs that I could thunder because it was the only way I could feel something - anything at all.  

And you know what?  It wasn't out of desperation any further back than that, that I can recall.

So I ask it because it also means, "Is everything good?"  And I wonder.  Maybe this profession is not good for me.  Certainly the sector of it in which I have worked almost my entire working life is not.  I need to face up to the fact that I am sick, and this kind of job is not good for someone with my condition.  I am not certainly it is good for anyone, to be honest, but perhaps I am being overly judgmental - or overly naive, which is sometimes just as good.

And I ask because when Meshparjai is sad, truly sad, I cradle her in my arms and stroke her hair and whisper, "An jate."  And asking this question makes me remember that it will be okay.  I think, "How long have I been sick like this?" and, armed with greater experience of my illness, I suspect that the answer is a good deal longer than you thought.  But there was a time when I was not sick, and there have been times when I was at least asymptomatic.  It can be okay again.  I can be okay again.

I ask because as much as the answer is no - nayc, an nu jate - the answer is also a faithful, defiant elek.  Yes.

No, everything is not good.  My sickness is not good.  But God is good, and God is above everything, and it will be okay.

A postscript digression: One of the things I have learned helps me keep it together when the lights go dim is fencing.  This is, of course, why I have bothered to emblazon my gear with the phoenix earth; it's a way of reminding me that this is one of my anchors, not just a hobby.  When I was making my sword pillows, Thayet jokingly reminded me not to forget to include embroidering a cheesy saying on them.  So I did, and it is cheesy, but it's also quite serious.  I embroidered them: Gotal'u an kebise evaar'la, from Revelations 21:5: "I make all things new."  But thanks to Mandalorian conjugation, without specifying the subject, it also means: "He makes all things new."  And he will.

Gotal'u An Kebise Evaar'la

Now it is Christmas.

This is the first Christmas in a long time that I have spent away from my immediate family.  Certainly it is the first without Thayet or Meshparjai.  I did not go to Dickens Fair.  My house is empty and undecorated.  There are no presents here.  I may not be able to stay in Charlotte.  There has been little about this Advent that has seemed Christmas-y.

But Christmas is not about family, nor love, nor togetherness, nor cheer.  It is not about goodwill towards men.  Those are all good things, and worthy trappings for Christmas.  But what Christmas is - what the Black Pearl really is - is praise.

This is not a plea to keep the Christ in Christmas.  Even in its most traditionally religious incarnation, Christmas is already an abstract memorial of events and ideas that the Church finds significant.  If other people want to turn it into an abstract memorial of other events or ideas that they find significant, I shan't object; it doesn't diminish the sanctity of my own memorial.  But for me, what Christmas memorializes is the invasion, the return of the king ... the promise that I make all things new.

And while I love spending time at the holidays with my aliit (moreso, truth be told, than with my family in the traditional sense), and I love spreading Christmas cheer at Dickens, and I love spreading a sense of magic with decorations and presents, the one thing that Christmas really needs for me is a memorial of that epic moment, when the trap was laid for the great enemy and the powers of heaven rolled forward upon the territory of the prince of the air with all the thunder of the angels of the one whose thunder and trumpet terrified the people at Sinai, spearheaded all by the cry of a newborn.

I need the sense of remembering with others who are remembering the same thing, and are similarly moved.  It used to happen with Xenophon over Christmas carols at my parents' house.  Then I moved away, and some years it never happened.  Tonight it happened at St. Mark's Episcopal, filling that old church with carols and invoking the weight of generations past.  And at home after midnight, in this empty house with the lights off, thundering songs of praise.

I may, as it happens, be trading in my accustomed low church tradition for something somewhat more liturgical.  But I think that my cathedrals will always be made of thunder and smoke, light and shadow: full-throated worship roared to the heavens, a vocal salute.  Tonight I build one of those in this empty house, and the home is full.

And now it is Christmas.

Things I Find Troubling About the Brown Shooting

The St. Louis County prosecutor released an interview with Darren Wilson recently, in which Officer Wilson recounts his version of his encounter with Michael Brown.  As I expect anybody reading this knows, the grand jury returned no indictment of the man, and naturally, I accept that as a matter of state law that's the end of it.  But I nevertheless find myself troubled by the story recounted.  There are, of course, questions of systemic justice that the case raises or at least has made people think about, but this is not a post about those.  Even among those who see this as an exemplar of systemic injustice, I expect that many people who are fascinated by this sort of thing are at least in part fascinated by the question of what they would have done had they been in the defendant's position, and I admit that a goodly portion of my own fascination is inspired by just that line of thinking.  In short: what do I think about Wilson's story, and how does that better help me understand myself?

According to Wilson, here is what happened:

Wilson encountered Brown and his friend walking down the middle of the street, heading towards his car.  He drew up to them in his patrol car and asked, "Hey guys, why don't you walk on the sidewalk?"  One of the two demurred.  Wilson repeated his request, and the second told him, "Fuck what you have to say," and the two continued to walk past Wilson's vehicle.  Wilson backed up, I suppose to keep pace with them, began to open his door, and said, "Hey, come here."  One of the two (Brown, the interview seems to imply), said, "What the fuck are you gonna do?" and shut the door on Wilson before he could even get his leg out of the vehicle.  Wilson tried to push Brown back with his door, Brown said something that Wilson doesn't recall, and then began punching Wilson through the window, pressing the door shut with his body.

Brown bent down to enter the vehicle with his upper body while continuing to do something with his arms ("tryin' to get his arms out of my face and him from grabbin' me and everything else," in Wilson's words).  Brown paused his attack to hand his companion a pack of stolen cigarillos with his left hand, saying, "Here, take these," which afforded Wilson the opportunity to grab hold of Brown's right arm.  Brown then rounded on Wilson with a full punch from his left hand.  Wilson continued to hold Brown's arm with his left hand while attempting to use his right to draw something to defend himself with.  He didn't have a taser, couldn't reach his mace on his utility belt (and didn't want to use it at such close proximity anyway for fear that it would incapacitate him too), couldn't reach his flashlight in the bag on the passenger seat without leaning away from Brown and rooting through the bag, and so decided on his gun.  He drew his firearm, pointed it at Brown, and ordered him to stop or be shot.  Brown informed Wilson that he was "too much of a fuckin' pussy to shoot me," grabbed it over the top with one or two hands (Wilson doesn't recall), and twisted it around to point at Wilson's pelvic area, with his hand around Wilson's trigger finger, which was inside the trigger guard.

Wilson let go of Brown's arm with his left hand and used it to lever the gun back around towards Brown.  He tried to fire twice, but the gun didn't fire, presumably because Brown's hand was still on the slide.  He tried to fire again and the weapon discharged through the door, sending glass from his rolled-down window flying along with blood.  Brown rocked back and then forced his upper body into the car again, swinging and grabbing wildly at Wilson.  Wilson defended himself with his left hand and tried to fire through the door again.  The weapon clicked, so Wilson racked the slide and as he did so the weapon "just came up and shot again."  Brown fled, and Wilson exited the vehicle and shouted at him to stop and get on the ground.

Brown stopped, and with "the most intense aggressive face I've ever seen on a person" charged Wilson at the run, putting his hand under his shirt into his waistband.  Wilson ordered him to stop and get on the ground again, but Brown kept running towards him.  Wilson began to backpedal, fired "multiple" shots and repeated the order, and Brown continued to run, "hands" still in his waistband.  Wilson fired multiple shots again, at least one of which hit Brown in the face and caused him to pitch forward onto the ground a few feet from Wilson.  Brown had "made contact" with Wilson "multiple" times, and landed "at least two" "solid blows," resulting in a swollen right cheek and jaw and scratches on his back, neck, and shoulders.

 Now, I have to admit that this story does not strike me as especially credible.  But let's suppose that everything happened exactly as described.  What are we to make of this?

My ethics of violence boil down to two aphorisms:

1. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.  To he who strikes you on the [side of the] jaw, offer to him also the other (Jesus); and
2. Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back (Malcolm Reynolds).

The difference in verbs is important to me, and dictates what I believe to be the morally appropriate response.  The first (socking you on the jaw) is, in Natalian parlance, merely violence.  The second (trying to kill you) is a threat.

To unpack that a bit - as a Christian, I think that killing is bad.  This is not to say that it is always the wrong thing to do; I think that killing can be the right thing to do, despite being a bad thing to occur - and I think it remains a bad thing, even when it is the right thing to do.  Because killing is always bad (even when it is the right thing to do), it seems to me that the onus is on the prospective killer to decide whether it is warranted.

Christians have of course struggled with when it is appropriate to kill someone since almost before there were Christians.  My personal resolution of the dilemma is bound up in the distinction between violence and a threat.  I do not believe that Jesus intended for us to suffer every attack without resistance, and God seems to be perfectly okay with killing human beings under many circumstances.  The moral question for me boils down to what is actually being threatened.  Mere injury, or loss of honor or authority, does not warrant resistance.  If something more important is threatened, such as a life or a psyche, then resistance is warranted.

I don't believe in threats, and I don't believe in going into any kind of fight that you aren't prepared to finish by any means necessary.  So if resistance is warranted, death is on the table.  If it isn't worth killing over (if the altercation should escalate to that level), it isn't worth punching over.

How does all this apply to the Brown shooting?  I find myself troubled by the fact that Wilson drew his gun.  At the moment he made that decision, he had suffered back-talk, a punch to the face, and attempted grabs.  This is certainly offensive, but does it warrant killing?  I hesitate to say that being punched and grabbed on the street rises to the level of a threat, let alone when the attacker is awkwardly wedged through a car window.  I cannot help but notice that in Wilson's account, Brown only went for the gun after Wilson drew it - and then did so in a way that one normally associates with preventing an automatic from firing, and in fact did prevent it from firing twice, even after Wilson had regained some control over his weapon.  Is that a threat?  To be honest, I find it ambiguous.

I find it less ambiguous - somewhat, I admit, but significantly less - as to whether a large, wounded, apparently berserk teenager charging one is a threat.  I do not believe in reciprocal force.  Once an actual threat has been offered, I believe in ending it as decisively as possible.  I can buy classifying as a threat being charged by a kid with murder in his eyes, even if he does have to hold up his pants while charging.

But how did it get to that moment in the first place?  It is difficult for me to escape the conclusion that the escalation to lethal force came from Officer Wilson, after being offered no more provocation than being punched and unsuccessfully grabbed - in short, after being attacked, but not threatened.

It would be disrespectful to say that I would have done differently.  If that is what happened, though, it is difficult for me to say that it was right.

I do understand that what I am classifying as the morally correct way to deploy force is not the tactically correct way to deploy force.  If a person is close enough to strike you, after all, they are in all probability close enough to kill you before you can effectively resist.  Not only that, but your chances of being able to effectively resist are significantly diminished if you have first been struck, even by blows that are in themselves not actually threatening.  At the end of the day, I think that following Jesus sometimes requires one to do the tactically unsound thing in order to do the morally sound thing.

It's worth observing, though, that civilized society requires the same.  Imagine a society in which you can be justifiably killed for punching someone in a bar.  We all know instinctively that being punched in a bar is highly unlikely to be a prelude to homicide.  It's almost certainly about establishing dominance, not about rending body from soul.  But of course that's an assumption, and after all, one has been attacked by a person at a very dangerous range.  It would be safer to incapacitate them than to ignore it, or walk away.  And there have been and are times and places when society was much closer to that norm.  It was not, I feel confident in saying, an improvement.

I should emphasize that it is not the escalation per se that troubles me.  As I said, I don't believe in reciprocal force.  In fact, I affirmatively believe in unreciprocal force, which is why it does not particularly bother me that Brown was, at the time of his death, unarmed.  What troubles me is why Wilson, according to his own account, chose to escalate.  His account does not make it sound like Brown intended to kill him, or indeed was in any reasonable danger of doing so inadvertently, and yet Wilson threatened to kill him.  That is what troubles me.

I have heard from various parties variations of the sentiment that Brown deserved what he got, because he assaulted a police officer.  To this I feel it should be sufficient reply to ask why, if assaulting a police officer is sufficient cause to warrant death without a trial, no legislature or court has seen fit to articulate that doctrine.  We will search the law in vain to find the proposition that a police officer may lawfully kill another prior to receiving an imminent threat of death or serious physical injury that an objectively reasonable person would interpret as such, even the laws of self-defense.  And we know, of course, that not all assaults do constitute, to an objectively reasonable person, imminent threat of death or serious physical injury.  In this case, Brown was allegedly attempting to punch and grab Wilson through the window of a patrol car.  It is difficult for me to see how he could have caused Wilson's death or serious physical injury in that position, and if he could not have done so or done so only through a very improbable series of events, then he could not present Wilson with an imminent threat.  So again ... what was it, other than Wilson's subjective fear, that justified his drawing his weapon?

I find myself troubled.

Fencing Retrospective, A Year and Three Months

When I first came to New York, I gave myself five years to get any good at fencing.  It has now been fifteen months, and I am headed to my second competition at the end of the month.  I've decided to participate in four tournaments at Iron Gate Exhibition: dagger, longsword, "mixed weapons" (really a series of competitions all involving one-handed swords), and basic cutting.  This will be the first time I've competed in a dagger or one-handed tournament, the first time I've competed with a steel longsword, and the first time I've competed with a sharp sword.  I am, in other words, jumping in with both feet, and we'll see how I do (perhaps later I can share my thoughts on why).  But this seems like a good time to ask: how is it going?  Am I getting any good?

Somewhat to my surprise, I find myself able to answer that question unambiguously in the affirmative.  Liechtenauer divides his unarmored longsword art into seventeen hauptstücke, high-level concepts that group together several individual plays or techniques.  I've now at least seen all seventeen, can explain them all at least superficially, and I am starting to be able to apply them when analyzing other people's fights and in my own fighting.  Occasionally I can even make some of them work.  Five of the hauptstücke are special cuts, and I can execute about half of them with a sharp sword against a resistive target almost all the time.  In fact, there are thirteen cuts on my "to do" list (there are others that one can do with a longsword, but these thirteen will do for now), and I can reliably cut about eight of them (eight and a half, if that's a thing).  My fundamentals are definitely better than they were a year ago.  And I find, as I contemplate my first steel tournament, that I am willing to fight anybody.  I don't necessarily expect to win, but ... I'm confident that I won't completely embarrass myself.  In cutting, I am by no means capable of fancy or complex feats, but I feel that what I am capable of is solid.  The gap between my sparring and my cutting is narrower than it was, and I feel like the one informs the other.

I'm not really good yet, by any means.  When it comes to dancing, there are a few dance forms in which I feel like I can dance with a partner of any skill level and any training background - anybody from anywhere - and make the experience uplifting.  And as for other dance forms, while I may find them scary, I am confident that I have the skills to pick things up quickly enough that I can at least make it workable in short order.

That's pretty much what good means to me in fencing: I want to be able to fight anybody from anywhere, at least with my chosen weapon(s), and make the experience uplifting.  I don't necessarily have to win (in fact - post for another time as well, I suppose - the more I learn, the more complex I find is the line between the martial and the non-martial), but I want my opponent to come away from the fight feeling like my fencing really brought out the best in them.  And I want to be able to pick up any weapon and be able to at least make it workable in short order.

And ... while I'm not there yet, you know what?  I think I am getting there.  And hey, there's another forty-five months to go.

You Keep Using That Word

... I do not think it means what you think it means.

This is one of those topics that has bothered me for a long time.  To be perfectly honest, it's one of those topics on which I feel like the church lied to me, and that made me pretty mad.  I am speaking of the issue of lust, that bugaboo of American Protestant Christendom about which we harangue our young people from puberty until about the age of 30.

I think America in general cares far too much about morality, and American Christendom is certainly not immune to this peculiar cultural defect.  And I suppose, if one is going to focus on morality, one might as well focus on sexual morality - since, for better or worse, we as a species seem to be obsessed with it (Christianity hardly being the only religion, and America hardly being the only people, who have made veritable fortresses of rules to protect our sexuality from ourselves).  But that doesn't stop me from feeling like the church lied to me about it.

Specifically, I feel like the church lied to me about lust.  I don't think anybody did it intentionally.  They just ... left out a really important piece of information.

APC teachings on lust generally begin with Matthew 5:27-28, with the better sort ending at verse 29 instead.  My favorite commercial translation (the NKJV) renders it thus:

[27] You have heard that it was said to those of old, "You shall not commit adultery."  [28] But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  [29] If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

I say that "the better sort" include verse 29 because I think that makes it pretty clear (if the preceding verses were not clear enough) that there is ample Biblical support for the notion that the problem is with the luster, not the lustee.  That by itself gets lost often enough.  It doesn't get lost in the teaching, precisely.  Frankly, you have to be a fairly incompetent teacher not to get that point.  Everybody I know teaches that it's my responsibility not to lust.  But it gets lost in the overall messaging mix, because everybody I know is also deeply concerned to let people know how they can help me not lust.  And the next thing you know well-meaning older women are teaching younger women in their women's groups (no men involved!) about what to wear and not to wear, to "help" their brothers, and girls are getting sent home from proms because their dresses aroused lustful thoughts in the chaperones, and even I am deeply, genuinely upset over what a girl is wearing who is trying to convince me to date her.

I don't think that the APC obsession with lust is to blame for all of America's sexual dysfunction.  But I think it drives - granted, oftentimes from many removes - a lot of it.

And there really is no problem with the desire to help me avoid what is, quite clearly, something Jesus thinks I should avoid.  "It's your problem, not mine" can (and should) live hand in hand with, "How can I help?"

But.  Before we get there ... what exactly is the problem?

Matthew 5:28 starts off simply enough.

Egô de legô humin, Jesus says: "But I say to you all."

hoti pas ho blepôn gunaika, "that everyone who is looking at a woman."  Still pretty straightforward.

pros to epithumêsai ...

... and here is where I think insufficient attention is focused, in APC practice.  Pros is a preposition that, like most prepositions, can have a variety of meanings - but they all have to do with the idea of directionality.  Epithumêsai is an infinitive (specifically an aorist infinitive, I know, but I don't think that's relevant to my present argument), here being coupled with the accusitive article to, to make it clear that pros (whose meaning, like most Greek prepositions, is shaded by the case of its object) is being used in the sense of motion or direction towards the object - in this case, the infinitive epithumêsai.

Epithumêsai is conventionally translated as "to lust," but I think we have a tendency to forget what that word means - and since it is the thing Jesus is exhorting us to avoid, I feel like that is a significant oversight.  Ancient Greek is a language that is in love with compounds, and this is one such.  There is a danger in getting too reductionist with foreign compounds, since sometimes they don't literally mean what their compound would suggest (idiom is a thing!), but in this case, I think the lexicon is on the side of a reductionist reading.  So what is this word?

Epi is another preposition, also with an overall idea of directionality, but in a much more pointed way than pros.  If I walk pros to you, I am walking in your direction.  If I walk epi to you, I am headed in your direction with a more distinct purpose.  Thumos is the "soul," if you want to put it that way (but English-speakers tend to be used to thinking of psyche as the soul); it's the part of you that houses your strongest passions and feelings.  Epithumêsai, therefore, is to "set one's heart upon," to drive your desire towards something (in this case, the aforesaid woman) with great purpose.  So lust is ... not a bad translation.  "Covet" is equally good.

No matter how familiar one is with grammar, it should be clear by now that there is a lot of directionality in this prepositional phrase.  In fact, as much as I like the NKJV generally, this is one area where I feel like it drops the ball.  "To lust" is an adequate translation of epithumêsai, by itself - both are infinitives.  But it does nothing to render pros to - we are not just lusting here, we are looking pros to lust.  We are looking in order to lust (or, if you aren't particular about translating the infinitive literally, for the purpose of lusting).

There are two small points that just got made, both of which have what I believe are outsized significance for real-world morality.

Point the first: Jesus is not talking about lust in general.  He's talking about looking, for a specific purpose.  Why is this significant?  Because all too many young people in American Christendom (myself included, and I feel like I generally had a higher-caliber of theological teaching than most) are worried about the fact that they just lusted after someone.  We twist ourselves into real knots about this, as a community.  We have gender-segregated groups to talk about "struggling with lust."  We form awkward partnerships for "accountability."  We wring our hands about pornography because of it (depending on the pornography in question, there might be other valid reasons to wring our hands about it, but in my experience, those are never the actual reasons hands are wrung).  In a million and one ways, we feel ... guilty.  Dare I say it, we feel condemned.  And that is not something we should ever feel.

And all over ... well, what?  Because we had some sexual thoughts about a person, or our sexual response cycle started.  I'm going to avoid the secular cop-out of saying that there's nothing wrong with that; there can be.  But let's start with the text: did you look (even if we're defining "look" pretty broadly, for instance to include imagination) for the purpose of lusting?  Or was it something that happened?  It makes me almost want to giggle uncomfortably just typing that, as if lust is something that can happen by accident, but ... well, look, that's what the text says.  We are not talking about lust.  We are talking about looking for the purpose of lusting.

Universities, high schools, and youth groups are filled with young people wringing their hands about lust, and the nation is filled with adults who never really stopped, but how many of them - how many of us - actually do that?  How often do you really take a mental step back, and deliberately cast your gaze upon someone to lust after them?  I won't say it never happens; it does.  But it happens a lot less frequently than one might infer from the amount of play this issue gets with our young people.

Point the second: what is lust, anyway?  I can't recall a single sermon, or discussion, of this point that has bothered to ask that question, let alone answer it.  But I can say that, even in my generally high-quality theological environment, the never-actually-discussed, de facto, assumed answer is that lust is sexual arousal.

This is a lie.

Epithumêsai is not describing getting aroused, or finding someone sexually appealing, or having an orgasm.  There is a reason that the Septuagint uses it in the ninth commandment ("Thou shalt not covet").  It is describing a state of mind in which you have an object in mind and, like Sauron, all your thought is bent on it.

Now, this can be sexual, yes.  But it is a very particular part of a person's sexual life.  A person can find someone attractive, initiate a sexual encounter, and have sex, all without lusting after his or her partner in this way.  Most of a person's sexual life, I daresay (most of mine, anyway), occurs outside of this focused, laser-like, I-must-have-it-and-it-will-be-mine state of mind.

How often do we bother to explain this to the generations of people who have grown up wringing their hearts into knots about lust?  How often do we actually ask, "Have you ever felt that way?"  I have, but not often - and when I first started hearing sermons about this passage, I definitely had not experienced what it is actually talking about.

But let us finish Jesus' thought.  Êdê emoikheusen autên en têi kardia autou, he finishes: everyone who is looking at a woman in order to covet her already committed adultery with her in his heart.

I mention this final phrase because I think it nuances what Jesus is talking about in a way that I think is incorrect misunderstood to the sorrow of whole generations of Christians.  I think the most common understanding of this verse is that looking at a woman in order to lust after her is morally equivalent to having sex with her.

If we understand pros to epithumêsai in what I believe is the vernacular way, we might translate the verse like this: "Everyone who is looking at a woman and finds her arousing has already had sex with her in his heart."  And this would indeed be a terrible challenge, one so difficult to meet that it could well justify all the effort and, frankly, broken spirits that the American church has sacrificed to meet it.

But that's not what it says.  The looking must be with purpose.  And the object of that purpose is not mere arousal, but hyper-focused desire.  Again, to covet is a perfectly good translation here, and one that I think is helpful.  What I understand Jesus to be saying is this: If the only thing stopping you from having sex with someone is that you have not, in fact, had sex yet, then in your heart, you have had sex.

And this does happen.  But again: how often do we ask our youth groups, in all of our earnest discussions, "How many times has this happened to you?"  In my experience, this verse is taught (with due solemnity by our elders, who presumably know what it's like to be a young person) as something that every young person struggles with, pretty much all the time.  That is certainly how it was taught to me, and I left a lot of sweat on the ground struggling against what everyone assured me as a daily struggle.

And ... well, I feel like the church lied to me.  Sexual arousal is a daily occurrence.  Looking at a [person] for the purpose of lusting after [him or] her, quite frankly, is not a daily occurrence.

When I in college, I met a girl.  She was amazing.  She was ... well, I haven't discussed this with her, so I won't give any more details than that.  But she was intoxicating.  From pretty much the instant I saw her, I wanted to jump her bones and do things I didn't even have names for with her.  The attraction, we quickly discovered, was mutual.  We flirted not just outrageously, but intensely.  When she was anywhere near me, I could barely keep my hands off her, let alone think straight.  We weren't dating, but the sexual tension between us was so thick that a knife would barely have made a dent.  We planned a date in my room to watch a movie we both thought was sexy and had no plans to watch the movie, except maybe as foreplay.  Leading up to that day, we both texted and IM'd each other to drive each other even crazier (this was before that was cool).

That is looking at a woman for the purpose of lusting after her.  It's intentional, it's consuming, it's directed.  Sex is a part of it, but its defining features are not actually sexual at all.  The critical thing - the thing that left me with such an indelible impression that now, for the first time, I had really seen what Jesus was actually talking about - was that I wanted her (and she wanted me) in a way I had never wanted anyone before, and we both took deliberate steps to encourage that desire in ourselves and each other.  We both came to our senses before "anything happened" (if you'll forgive me the use of such a mealy-mouthed phrase), but for a few weeks, the only way in which we hadn't had sex was ... well, we hadn't gotten around to having sex.

Contrast this with a more typical scenario.  I am walking down the street.  I see a woman wearing pants.  Like many women's pants do, these pants show off her legs to advantage.  I find this sexually appealing.  I maybe even get the start of an erection.  We go our separate ways.

In that second scenario, while there is certainly a bit of attraction, I think it is plain that the intensely directed experience of coveting is missing.  I don't actually want that woman at all, and if she offered to have sex with me right then and there I'd not only say no, but be kind of repulsed - despite the fact that I find her attractive.  And while I did look at her, I certainly didn't do it for the purpose of coveting her (which I didn't do, in any case).

This leads me to suspect that one of the greatest lust bogeymen of the American church is actually a paper tiger.  I speak, of course, of pornography.  The principal use of pornography, in my experience, is to arouse.  It may have many ancillary uses (comfort, relaxation, a sense of safety, stimulation of the sexual imagination, whatever), but I think one use is almost always missing: desire to be in the scenario depicted.  People don't use porn because they want to have sex with a particular actor or a particular character.  In my experience, there is almost never any wanting involved at all.

Now, there are many reasons why we could wring our moral hands about porn.  It may be professionally exploitative (but it doesn't have to be).  It may be morally destructive for the actors involved (but I'm not sure it always is, and there aren't always actors involved to begin with).  It may just be an artistic travesty (which, let's be honest, most of it is).  But is it looking at a [person] in order to covet [him or her]?  I see no way to make that argument with a straight face.

I don't think that what Jesus is talking about never happens (nor, I should probably state for the record, is it always bad).  It happened to me in the story above (and it's happened to me since).  But it's a lot rarer, and a lot more recognizable, than I think it is generally given credit for.  I don't think this verse should never be taught, but neither do I think we should teach our young people - by our words and by how much time we spend dealing with "lust issues" - to be constantly looking over their shoulders to make sure they haven't lusted after someone.

Phoenix Earth

This weekend at Fechtschule New York somebody asked me, again, what my phoenix earth patches are about.  I've been asked this a bunch of times since adding them to my HEMA gear, and I always chicken out.  Yeah, I guess part of it is that I don't really know how to explain, but mostly ... I chicken out.  Usually I say that the phoenix earth stands for me, or that it's been my coat of arms since I was fifteen or so (when my sister first designed it).  And those things are true ... sort of.  But that isn't what my patches are about.

My phoenix earth patches are representations of my arms as they have existed in my mind since some time in late undergrad: On a circular shield gules, a diminished bordure, a phoenix earth Or.  The circular shield recalls a hoplite aspis, and symbolizes faith (a shield) that benefits others (in the hoplite form).  The red field is for strength and magnanimity, and for honoring a father (or, if you will, the Father).  The gold is for faith, obedience, gentility ... and for vengeance.

Which ties into the phoenix earth itself.  The phoenix earth represents Earth after the end times, the New Jerusalem.  It is the new beginning after the resurrection of the dead, after whatever tribulations the end times may bring, after the reign of a thousand years (if there is such a thing), after the last rebellion of the adversary, after Judgment Day and the second death, after earth, after heaven ... when all that is over and done with and life begins.  I saw a new heaven and a new earth, says Revelation 21, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.

And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”

When I look forward to an "afterlife," this is what resonates with me: when there is no more heaven and no more hell, when the brokenness of the human condition and the glories it can produce in adversity are replaced by a better human condition, one utterly free of the brokenness that haunts every corner of our existence and yet produces better glories, in ways we, who have come to depend upon darkness to let us distinguish and appreciate the light, can hardly imagine.  When we get our bodies back, recognizably flesh and bone and yet transcendently better than before, and live in a physical world that is recognizably our own and yet so much better that it may as well be an alien planet, when the source of all joy and satisfaction is closer, and more present, than any human being has ever experienced.  When all things - all things, everything that makes life the bittersweet mixture of joy and sorrow that it is - are made new.

This is, as I said, the afterlife that resonates with me.  I do not care for heaven.  In heaven, I am still dead.  Not obliterated, perhaps, but my body and soul are sundered, and that is just fundamentally wrong.  The Biblical descriptions of heaven, if that's what they are, sound either dreadfully dull or eye-wateringly intense yet dreadfully one-dimensional.  Give me a body, give me an earth ... give me the promise of the wild, unfettered and alive life that my [probably metaphorical] ancestors experienced.

But it is not really the afterlife itself that motivates me.  It is what this new life - this New Jerusalem, this phoenix earth - represents in the here and now.  For me, the [Biblical] phoenix earth is the ultimate expression of the promise that God makes things better.  That he is not the god of consolation prizes, nor the god of jury-rigged solutions held together with duct tape and a prayer, nor a god for whom some things are simply broken beyond repair.  If the earth - the human condition, life itself - can be fixed in Christ, then anything can be fixed in Christ.  And not only fixed, but made better than it was before.  No matter how bad a marriage is, it can be better than it was before.  No matter how broken a friendship, how sundered a family ... it can be made better.  It may involve a phenomenal amount of effort, soul-breaking vulnerability and hard work.  But in Christ it can be done.  Whatever it takes to get there, it's not impossible.  Knowing that makes all the difference to me.

So what do my patches say?  They say, I believe in a God who not only can, but wants to, make all things new.  I believe he will come in indomitable strength to have his vengeance upon evil itself, not only to fix what is broken but to make everything better than any human being has ever experienced it.  I believe in creating that kind of world through self-mastering forgiveness and unconquerable gentleness wherever I go.  And I will hold this trust in the face of the slings and arrows of life, for my sake and for yours.

That's what my phoenix earth patches are about.