Art

I received the following in an email from a good friend and lover of the arts.
I wanted to save it, and thought my blog the best place to keep it safe.
Good stuff.

WELCOME ADDRESS TO FRESHMAN CLASS AT BOSTON CONSERVATORY

given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at
Boston Conservatory

"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not
properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very
good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they
imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be
more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's
remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said,
"You're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were
not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And
they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just
weren't really clear about its function. So let me talk about that a little
bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and
entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your
kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a
little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient
Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and
astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study
of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music
was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden
objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside
our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside
us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet for
the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany.
He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a
cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a
place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a
violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these
specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand
prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous
masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why
would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing
music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water,
to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother
with music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have
visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people
created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on
survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must
be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope,
without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were
not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit,
an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we
say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I reached
a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down
at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I
did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on
the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my
hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter?
Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what
happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless.
Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a
piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of
getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I
contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And
then I observed how we got through the day.

At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We
didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we
most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I
saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around
fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang America
the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the
Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York
Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first
communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the
beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military secured the
airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that
very night.

>From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part
of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe.
It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our
budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic
need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives,
one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way
for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heart wrenchingly beautiful piece Adagio
for Strings. If you don't know it by that name, then some of you may know it
as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie Platoon, a
film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you
know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make
you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our
conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good
therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no
music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some
really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very
predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of
emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the
wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if
the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40
percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of
moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move
around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so
that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it. Can you
imagine watching Indiana Jones or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue
but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right
moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly
the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music
stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the
understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of
my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand
concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were
important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris; it
made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have played
for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers,
foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took
place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began,
as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World
War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was
shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the
pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program
notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we
decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out
and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the
front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was
clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair,
square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in
the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to
tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't
the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the
concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk
about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances
in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed
pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had
to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again,
but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in
an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched
my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes
which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords
so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop
away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about
this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this
memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I
didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came
out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost
pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that?
How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between
internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have
ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect,
somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost
friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is
why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class
when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge
your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing
appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would
imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your
emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my
friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and
bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that
is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you
do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell
yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician
isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not an
entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue
worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a
spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works
with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come
into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I
expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this
planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of
equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a
military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the
religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war
as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is
to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit
together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do.
As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the
ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives."

The Gift of Time

It is an unfortunate fact that could all very well end up disgruntled septuagenarians. We might end up angry at the world, angry at ourselves, outraged at our own lack of ingenuity, creativity, inspiration, and daring. We may look back on our seven decades on Earth and think, “I fucked it up.” We could realize that most of the choices we made were royal mistakes, decisions made without prescience, without passion, and without purpose. We will then have to live the rest of our days with the acknowledgment that we wasted our lives.
Each of us has only one life to live; we are bound by the constraints of time. Time is our scarcest, most precious resource. Pithy adages tell us that time is a terrible thing to waste, and to seize the day (carpe diem!), reminding of the fleeting nature of time. Trite and cliché though they may be, they are truisms too often neglected in higher education, and so on into life. Not until my senior year at my liberal arts college was I pressed to consider that I may be wasting time, frittering it away with trivialities and concerns of no real significance. It was a painful idea to test.
But test it I did, or at least, I have tried. As time ticks away - I graduate in six months – I’ve undertaken the project of critiquing the years I have spent at college. Thus far, the process has been enriching, but tinged with regret. At times, I have been mindful in my decision making and conscientious in my use of time. Other times, I have either lazily wasted away hours or I have been in an all-out war against the clock. How I could have better spent my four years at school? What questions could I, should I, have asked? What efforts could I have made to improve, in so many academic and extracurricular areas? What would I do differently if I could begin again? I am more thoughtful, more deliberate, and more discriminating than I was at eighteen, but I am just as apt to make detrimental mistakes as ever. How am I now to best plan for my future? What sins of omission and commission can I prevent for myself, and for anyone else who cares to listen to the musings of a college senior?
When I was a first-year student, I idolized the seniors. They seemed so worldly, so self-assured, so adult. Now I stand in their shoes, and as ever, I realize how severely I misinterpreted things. The proverbial grass is always greener…and smarter, more confident, more knowledgeable, more responsible, and on and on. I cannot claim to be qualitatively different or better now than a year, two years, or three years ago. However, I believe I can accurately claim to have learned some things these past few years. If any underclassmen have stumbled upon my soliloquy, I hope that they do not view this as an accusatory sermon. I write as an injunction of myself, hoping that my readers might glean some wisdom from the lessons I am learning.
I have composed a list of thou-shall’s and thou-shalt-not’s, both addressed to my present and future self, and with an audience of liberal arts undergraduate students in mind. Regardless of where a student chooses to matriculate, he or she may harbor some aspiration to a liberal education, so a definition of such an education begs mention. In my humble estimation, liberal education is complex, and not all institutions that proclaim to offer a liberal arts education have a clear definition, shared by faculty, administration, and students, as to what a liberal education is and what it entails.
I propose that a liberal education is not limited to four collegiate years; neither is it only attainable at “liberal arts” schools. Liberal education is a lifelong arduous academic and personal process, an engagement of the whole being in the development of identity and self-hood through the rigorous study of the breadth and depth of human ideas. It is not complete if limited by a predilection toward a particular culture, location, religion, philosophy, or epoch. A student limited by his or her, or his or her professors’, biases toward experiential particularities (i.e., the Western world, Western literary tradition, European history, Christianity, etc.) will have considerable difficulty attaining a liberal education, as I have defined it. A student negligent and wasteful of time will likewise face obstacles on the path to becoming liberally educated. A liberal education requires that those who desire it recognize the value of time, and the value of events and relationships that occur within its constraints.
And so, I give a time-focused “ten commandments” for liberal arts learners. It is a list of things I wish I had been told prior to beginning my liberal education process, a list which I hope can engender in readers a sense of the responsibility and duty that are incumbent upon those who aspire to be liberally educated. [It asks that individuals question themselves and their worlds. Time is best spent in such endeavors].
1. Liberal education is not truly liberal unless it eliminates the human tendency to hate and mistrust. If an individual is able, at the end of his formal education, to reason his way to hatred of another individual or collective, then he is guilty of having misdirected his efforts and he has not been liberally educate. Liberal education debases any justification for hatred, it renders mistrust unjustifiable. It would behoove the liberal arts student to enter her education with a critical eye on her own biases. It is a waste of time to spend the collegiate years rationalizing one’s bigotry. Liberal education is only liberal if it breaks dismantles the penchant to prejudge.
2. Time is often best spent in a state of discomfort. Out of discomfort arises a need to search, to question, and to learn. More often than not, liberal education should make its students uncomfortable.
3. Similarly, liberal education, if thorough, should make one feel marginalized. An understanding of the spectrum of human experience is unattainable unless one learns what it means to feel outcast, ostracized, and forgotten. A liberal arts learner must try to discover what it is to be marginalized. He cannot presume to call himself liberally educated if he has not.
4. Moments of clarity and confidence should be followed by periods of self-doubt. Time is well-spent by the individual who faces a torrent of questions, a deluge of ideas that necessitate self-analyzation. The one who extends her academic queries into all areas of her personal, relational, and spiritual life is engaged in a genuine process of liberal education.
5. A liberally educated student engages in a unique process such as few people will ever think to commence. It is oftentimes a harrowing path, the obstacles of which, when surpassed, are able to make one feel proud. Time is misused if spent wallowing in self-importance. The liberal arts student must realize that he is, in fact, small. He is one human being with many rights as any other. To avoid developing a big head, it is important that circumstances sometimes make him feel insignificant and inadequate. Time is best spent in humility.
6. In humility, one develops an appreciation for her ignorance. The liberal arts learner experiences an indirect relationship between the amount of time she has devoted to study, and the amount of things she feels she knows. Rigorous study teaches humans of their own ignorance. A humble acceptance that one may not know everything is crucial for respectful engagement, especially with those with whom one may thoroughly disagree.
7. Learners must be willing to be hurt, and must develop strong self-reliance in order to ‘pick up the pieces.’ A liberal arts student doesn’t run from trials, but should go sprinting headlong into new, different, and difficult situations. Profound learning happens through suffering.
8. As with an understanding of one’s own ignorance, liberal education can sometimes lead to self-dislike. Students mustn’t be afraid of this, but should also determine when such dislike is appropriate. When one realizes one’s own lack of compassion, lack of honesty, lack of motivation, lack of discipline, it is justifiable that one will experience a phase of self-hatred. This is good, for self-hatred is the closest thing to self-love. If one doesn’t, at times, dislike oneself, then she probably doesn’t like herself much, either. Scrutiny indicates a deep caring for one’s self and one’s soul.
9. A liberal arts learner should yearn for situations, places, and peoples who are wholly outside the realm of what is comfortable, safe, and secure. Radical self-development can occur in places and conceptual frameworks least like home. A student should occasionally force himself away from home.
10. One engaged in a process of liberal education must never remain in a state of “arrival.” If one feels he has “arrived,” and never decides to leave, the dynamic wondering that fundamentally characterizes liberal education ceases. True liberal education is as active of an endeavor as can be found. To passively sit on one’s laurels, clinging strongly to ideas without thought of transformation, is antithetical to the liberal arts ideal.
Liberal education is a process without an end. To engage in it, one must have courage, discipline, fortitude, and a deep care for oneself, one’s family and friends, and for those he or she has yet to or may never meet. It is an individual commitment: to be responsible, to be watchful, to be disciplined, to be gently forceful. No institution can provide a liberal education; no one person or entity can presume to develop another’s soul. Liberal education is a deeply personal, transformative experience not contained to four collegiate years. A liberal arts learner never stops learning, never stops seeking, and never stops questioning.
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that the stuff life is made of.” –Benjamin Franklin
Liberal education engenders love of life, and implores people not to squander their time. My collegiate experience has taught me how my time will be best used. I shall spend my days in curiosity.

The Newspaper version of "What's in a name?"

What’s in a name?:
The Dangers of Historical Irresponsibility
Shortly after September 11, 2001, President called the impending war on terror a “crusade”. Across the world, people reacted to his poor choice of words. The Christian Science Monitor reported on Sept. 19, 2001: "President Bush's reference to a "crusade" against terrorism, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in Europe. It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a 'clash of civilizations' between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust."
“Crusade” is significant: it recalls the historic crusades initiated by Pope Urban II in 1096, and to many non-Christians it represents the worst of Western and Christian colonialism and expansionism. The term “crusade” separates the world into one group who thinks itself superior, and all the rest who fall short.
It is problematic for interfaith relations, and presents an obstacle to genuine dialogue about faith. The word is not only offensive to the Muslim community. History reminds us that Pope Urban called the Crusades in effort to unite the warring princes of Europe and to end the division of the Church; he chose to make war the vehicle for unification. As the crusaders marched to the holy land, red crosses of Christ emblazoned on their chests, they destroyed Jewish communities and massacred thousands of Jews. Muslims in Jerusalem were brutally slaughtered. Greek Catholics and the eastern Christians in Constantinople were tortured and killed on account of their different interpretation of the Nicene Creed and theology of the Holy Spirit. The Crusades were an unprecedented unleashing of ethnic and religious hatred, all in the name of Jesus.
I caution Christians against labeling themselves “crusaders”. I caution the international organization Campus Crusade for Christ against the use of the term in its name. The crusading concept is dangerous, as it holds one group to be superior to others and one way of experiencing the divine to be true and all others to be false. It impedes attempts to create relationships based on respect of diverse traditions, ways of living, and ways of encountering the holy. Alliteration is nice, but relationships built on mutual understanding and love of neighbor – absent desires to change or convert that neighbor – are far better.

What's in a name? The Dangers of Historical Irresponsibility

I am currently doing an Independent Study in Jewish-Christian Relations with Dr. Paul Jones at Transylvania University. The sole purpose of the IS is to improve my writing. Every week, I turn in a piece of prose, and Dr. Jones and I tear it apart. This week I wrote on the word "crusade". I welcome any comments anyone may have; I need all the help I can get.
-------------
A Contemporary Appearance of an Old Fear
Shortly after September 11, 2001, President Bush gave a speech that alarmed people across the globe. In a moment of gross historical insensitivity or ignorance, he referred to the impending war on terror as a "crusade.” The Associated Press and the Christian Science Monitor reported on the global reaction to Bush's poorly worded call to arms:

'His use of the word "crusade," said Soheib Bensheikh, Grand Mufti of the mosque in Marseille, France, "was most unfortunate.” "It recalled the barbarous and unjust military operations against the Muslim world," by Christian knights, who launched repeated attempts to capture Jerusalem over the course of several hundred years.' (Europe cringes at Bush 'crusade' against terrorists; by Peter Ford; Christian Science Monitor; 9/19/01)

"U.S. leaders should be especially leery of anything that hints at a holy war, many said, because it plays into the hands of Osama bin Laden, who has said he wants the world to plunge into a war, or jihad, between Islam and Christianity. 'It's what the terrorists use to recruit people -- saying that Christians are on a crusade against Islam,' said Yvonne Haddad, a professor of the history of Islam at Georgetown University in Washington. 'It's as bad to their ears as it is when we hear 'jihad.'" (Bush's use of word 'crusade' a red flag: Muslims link it with invasion by Europeans; by Sally Buzbee; Associated Press; 9/18/01)

"President Bush's reference to a "crusade" against terrorism, which passed almost unnoticed by Americans, rang alarm bells in Europe. It raised fears that the terrorist attacks could spark a 'clash of civilizations' between Christians and Muslims, sowing fresh winds of hatred and mistrust." (Christian Science Monitor 9/19/01)

"...to many Muslims, the Crusades represent the worst of Western expansionism and colonialism, said James Lindsey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution." (Associated Press 9/18/01)

"It is their support [that of moderate Muslims] for Washington's war that could be undermined by the sort of language on the president's lips, warns Hussein Amin, a former Egyptian ambassador who now lectures on international affairs. 'The whole tone is that of one civilization against another,' he finds. 'It is a superior way of speaking and I fear the consequences - the world being divided into two between those who think themselves superior' and the rest." (Christian Science Monitor 9/19/01)


In the aftermath of the President's speech, the press found that the word crusade could sow "fresh winds of hatred and mistrust" in Arab-American and Muslims-Christian relations; that the use of the word indicates a "'superior way of speaking and ... the consequences... [of] the world being divided into two between those who think themselves superior' and the rest" are to be feared; and that "to many Muslims, the Crusades represent the worst of Western expansionism and colonialism."
Benign words do not receive such lengthy treatment in press releases. Benign words are not given consideration. The word “crusade” is more than a combination of letters; it is a word laden with significance. The Oxford American Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus, as well as most online dictionaries, define "crusade" in several ways - but the first listing in any entry points to its history: "any of several medieval military expeditions made by Europeans to recover the Holy Land from the Muslims" (Oxford).
The Crusades were initiated in 1096 after Pope Urban II called all Christians to a reconquest of Jerusalem, to retake it for Christianity after it had been held for years by Muslims. "God wills it!" was his cry. "A hundred thousand people dropped everything to... 'take the cross' (Carroll, 239)" and march on Jerusalem. However, the Crusades were far more than any simplified dictionary definition would lead one to believe. Beyond what the Crusades were, it also must be noted why the Crusades occurred at all. James Carroll writes that "the pope's impulse was to unite the warring princes and the divided Church" (241). He did this by calling them to band together "against a common enemy outside Christendom" (241). The drive to unify the Church was realized not by uniting Christians in common love of neighbor, or help of the poor, or Christ-like compassion, but in bloody brutality against outsiders. Carroll notes with sorrow that the unification of Christendom was both the cause and result of an unprecedented unleashing of horrific "ethnic and religious hatred,” and to the massacre of tens of thousands of dissenting Christians, Muslims, and Jews.
While the most basic definition mentions Muslims as the prime target of crusading fervor, the Crusaders impacted the lives of far more people. A firm theology of anti-Jewish, anti-eastern-Christian, and anti-Muslim hatred fueled the crusading impulse. In Mainz Anonymous, a surviving chronicle of a German Jewish community's experience of 1096, the author writes his understanding of the Christian crusading mindset: “We take our souls in our hands' in order to kill and subjugate all those kingdoms that do not believe in the Crucified. How much more so (should we kill and subjugate) the Jews, who killed and crucified him (Jesus) (Carroll 238).
Western European Christianity was unified by that mindset. Murder was sanctioned and sacralized. "To rescue 'captive Jerusalem' was to rescue a kidnapped Jesus" (253) who was being blasphemed by non-believers. Theological and religious outsiders were victimized; communities were exterminated. In Trier, Germany, crusaders attacked the Jews, destroyed the Torah scrolls, and forced baptisms upon unwilling and terrified people. As the Crusaders marched toward Jerusalem, they repeated the Trier incident in numerous Jewish communities. Europe's first large-scale pogroms against Jews occurred during the Crusades. Christians were also targeted; both Greek Catholics and the eastern Christians of Constantinople were tortured and killed on account of a different reading of the Nicene Creed and theological interpretation of the Holy Spirit (241). Similar destruction befell the Muslims in Palestine.
The history of the Crusades is a tale of bloodshed and death. It is the knowledge of this history that rang alarm bells of fear and suspicion among Europeans and Muslims when President George W. Bush employed the word. And it is with knowledge of this history that I make the following statement: that the decision to use the word "Crusade" in the title of the organization 'Campus Crusade for Christ International' was an act of gross insensitivity, a decision highlighting great disregard for or ignorance of both history and non-Christians. Further, the use of the word crusade blackens what many see as caring motives behind the group's proselytism. As a Christian, I have great difficulty looking on the evangelism of Campus Crusade for Christ International and thinking pleasant and delighted thoughts. Instead, I see the word "crusade" and fear that the original crusading motive may come again to fruition - not in bloody war, but in cultural and religious annihilation.
Crusading for Christ is, in essence, finding fault and error in other religious expressions. The project of evangelizing is to save the unsaved, to win souls for Christ -- to convert individuals to Christianity. This necessarily finds other forms of religious expression to be, at best, disingenuous, incorrect, and improper ways to behave in relation to God. At worst, proselytism sees members of other faith traditions as on not only the wrong path, but on a path that can only lead directly to hell. Thus, the call is to Crusade for Christ to save individual lives and souls from what is believed to be a disastrous end. The business of saving souls, however, is also the business of finding all other cultures and religions categorically wrong and illegitimate. It is a program whose logical end would be the annihilation of all non-Christian cultures; the cultural and religious genocide of those considered to be "outsiders.” Under modern proselytism, lives are not lost, but priceless ways of life are. Just as the Crusaders of the first millennium found non-Christians unfit for life due to their lack of belief in the Crucified, second millennium Crusaders find non-Christians categorically wrong in their ways of living. Proselytism does not seek to end lives, but to end ways of living that are deemed incorrect, or "on the wrong path."
Is this the image that a Christian organization would want? Is the historical irresponsibility of using the word "Crusade" to be condoned with a simple brushing aside of gravity of the matter? In a world divided by misunderstanding and suspicion, is it wise for Christians to be ignorant of the history of their faith and the history of the followers of Christ? No, no, and no. Because of such ignorance on the part of my co-religionists, I am embarrassed to identify myself as a Christian. It is for such boldness and blatant disregard for those with whom we share both the world and God Almighty that I am outraged. This is not what Jesus of Nazareth could have envisioned. In no place in the canonical Gospels are we called to Crusade - bloody or ideological. In no place does Jesus call us to remove from human beings their cultural and religious identities - to erase their sense of being because we think it to be wrong.
"Crusade" must be seen for what it is. When President Bush used the word, he invoked memories of horrific destruction and extermination in the name of the Cross. Campus Crusade for Christ International does the same in its self-identification. Is this what Jesus would have wanted of His followers?

Second to last night in Cairo

“I let Kathryn take a fat kid picture today. And in my head I was like, ‘That’s a fat kid picture. I’m not gonna tell her.’”

- Allison Ray

“And in the first century, the Jews and the Jesus followers were all in this one group. And the Jews were like, ‘Your messiah sucks. He died. That doesn’t work.’ And the Jesus followers developed into a distinct group and the Romans got that they were different, and the Romans were all angry, and the Jews were all angry, and the Jesus followers were all like, ‘SHIT!’”

-also Allison Ray, in a brief summary of first-century Roman Jerusalem

Went to see the Great Pyramids today, and the Sphinx, and lots of impressive old statues.

Two days ago, I woke up at 1:00am to hike up Mount Sinai. Three hours, and over a mile and a half of intense uphill climbing. The sunrise was beautiful, but obstructed by a little cloud cover. The hike down took about two hours. Then we went to visit St. Katherine’s Monastery and met a cool American monk named Father Justin, and were given special access to the Monastery’s private library. This monastery has the second largest collection of manuscripts and icons in the world – second only to the Vatican.

Father Justin spoke to us for about 20 minutes, and at the end of his talk, I walked away from the group, stared at a bookcase full of some of the oldest known printed books, and cried. I still don’t know why.

I didn’t eat until 1:00pm (after about seven hours of hiking, walking, and jogging, by the end of it all), and didn’t sleep until 1:30, with the help of sleeping pills.

Tomorrow’s the last day. The trip has been such a whirlwind, I don’t think it’s intensity will hit me until much later, when I break down into emotional overload and realize what it is I’ve seen, what it is I’ve said, and who it is I’ve met.

Nearly onwards to Morocco.

Qumran and Beth Shean pictures

I think I neglected to mention a visit to Qumran, a site in the desert near the Dead Sea. It is the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered on accident by a local shepherd; that discovery led to the excavation of a first century BCE-first century CE settlement that was most likely inhabited by an ascetic and separatist group of Jews known as the Essenes. They're cool, and John the Baptist could have either spent time with them, or at least have known of their teachings. The discovery of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls revolutionized study of the Second Temple Period (20BCE-70CE), of New Testament texts, of the development of the Hebrew canon, and of the development of Judaism during that period (and thus its effects of the Judaisms to come).
It's important.
And above is a picture of from the top row of seats in the theatre in Beth Shean/Scythopolis. This site topped almost every site I saw in Turkey and Greece. The preservation of the Roman period buildings here was remarkable, and standing on the top of the tell (the hill in the background left of the photo), you can almost see the grandeur of Rome come to life. The might and genius of the Roman empire hits you upside the head. (Josh Wenta and I had similar feelings and words to describe it).

Oh, and that wooden stage in the foreground of the picture---- I danced on it. It was requested, I obliged. I never pass up an opportunity to be one of the only people to do a jig in a Roman theatre.

Jerusalem, Days 1-3

This will be a sadly short post, entirely inadequate to describe the past few days. It's late, it's been a long day, and tomorrow will be longer still. A short post will suffice for now.

In Jerusalem we've explored the excavations of the Temple Mount (Robinson's Arch, the Western Wall tunnels), ascended the Mount (al-Aqsa Mosque and the breathtaking blue and gold Dome of the Rock), visited numerous churches (the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem [the oldest church structure in the world; constructed in the 320's by Constantine per request of his mother], the Church of Pater Noster [where Christ is said to have taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer], the Church in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Church of San Pietro Gallicanti [I got the name a little wrong, I know, but this is the church where Peter is said to have denied Christ three times], and a Church [name I cannot remember] where Christ mounted the donkey on 'Palm Sunday' and rode into Jerusalem.

We visited today the Shrine of the Book (a museum housing the Dead Sea Scrolls and other important scrolls and codices--- probably the most enthralling site for me, thus far), and cross several checkpoints on our trip into the West Bank to visit the aforementioned Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which is in the Palestinian Territory.

I've seen lots of guns and lots of soldiers. A soldier boarded our bus today on our first checkpoint stop. I haven't yet been scared or found this out of place. Some of my friends are incredibly disturbed and anxious when guns are around, but I haven't been. I can't figure out why.

I had a three hour conversation with Dr. Russell last night about traditionalist Christian traditions, gods, Vatican II, conceptions of the holy, cultural clashes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, abrasive and ignorant Americans, Morocco and Tunisia, theodicy and not liking God, fearing God, believing in all the potentialities and possibilities that exist. The discussion began after he and I explored St. George's Cathedral at dusk while the organist worked on tuning the organ. I cried in the church, the first time I had really shed some significant tears. (The Sea of Galilee, comparably, was more like a lone tear rolling down my cheek). I was emotional at various points throughout our conversation, at more or less appropriate times. I apologized for my melodrama, but the timbre of the conversation was so intense and heightened -- on another plane -- that the apology was unnecessary.

I had a likewise intense conversation with David Clifford tonight about Poland. He and Dr. Jones and I are doing a short 'presentation'/preparation for the group before we set off for the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. We spent three hours pouring over ideas as to what to say, and went off on numerous tangents about death camps, theodicy (a recurrent theme in my conversations, apparently; which is strange, because this doesn't figure nearly as prominently in my thought processes), horses with blinders, naivete, and silence. Towards the end of our planning, Dr. Russell joined us for a recitation of our planned presentation, and for a crash course in the history between the years of the First and Second Jewish Revolts against Rome (66-73CE, approximately, and the later 132-135CE). I have a long reading list and a new academic pursuit for the summer.

Developments: I want to learn Hebrew, I might take Greek, I'm worried about taking Arabic, I am fascinated by Jewish history and can't seem to shake it (that's not new), I love the Middle East, I feel drawn to studying ancient, old, and dusty or destroyed things.

And I miss Irish dancing, even though I attempted it in the lobby tonight. Made it through my slip jig and treble jig, and could do no more, as I had gained an Arabic-speaking audience, and who can pass up a chance to learn some more Arabic?

Love.