I need plastic surgery

The Asian concept of saving-face is a kind of face-lift.

And like face-lifts, there is a specific aspect to saving-face that has always struck me as odd. It is in the realm of gifts. I didn't know what all the hubbub was about. When somebody brought over a gift, there was always an outcry, something like "oh, you really didn't have to do that!" And there was the initial refusal, the vigorous thrusting of the gift back into the hands of the giver, and only when the giver nearly appeared insulted, was the gift reluctantly received.

A gift tiff, if you will.

It took me several years (and I am still learning how) to say the words "thank you" whenever anyone gave me a gift, even a compliment. I began to wonder if I was never taught this elegant solution for fear it might seem like I wouldn't take the gift seriously enough. Of course, all the noise drew more attention to the recipient than the gift, or the giver for that matter! Or if it was because we didn't want to feel indebted to the giver because of the gift. Gifts always came with strings attached.

(Ironically, "gift" in German means "poison.")

But I am wondering, and I think C. S. Lewis would agree (cf. "Weight of Glory"), if wanting to appear self-less is not the point. Being grateful is beautiful, because it shows a receptive heart.

My heart is still a shy host, unsure if gifts require something of me. I am conditioned to think that I must at least play puppet to the strings of the gift. So when something is given to me, I hide my blush, and vigorously prove that I should never receive such a gift, if only to show that I do not go down without a fronted fight. If only to show that even in receiving, I can still hold up my nose job of pride.

re:metamorphosis

If you have ever read anything by Kafka, you'll understand why his surname has been adjectivized: kafkaesque, as in something senseless, complex, and menacing. Like his story "Metamorphosis," where, if you recall, a man wakes up one morning to find himself turned into a cockroach the size of a divan.

When I read it back in high school, I didn't understand it one bit. But after having just read the first several parts of Lewis' Miracles, some light has been shed upon the story. Lewis contends that what makes Reason so distinctive in human beings is that it is separate from Nature. Many believe that Reason is natural, that is, the result of an evolutionary process of natural selection. Reason remained in the gene pool because it was useful and helped certain creatures survive better than others. But we have a problem when we claim Reason to be the descendant of Nature. For if this is so, then how can we at all distinguish between them? To say that your reasoning or mine is nothing but the effect of natural causes is to say that we have no 'Reason' at all, but that we are doing just what we have been naturally programmed to do.

I am not trying to lay out the entire treatise here, but I am trying to explain how fascinating Kafka's story is with regards to Reason and Nature. What makes Kafka's "Metamorphosis" so, um, kafkaesque is how a rational, sensible man devolves into an unintelligible and gross carapace with legs. It is a story of a man turning into an animal, while retaining the reason and psychology of a man. And for that matter, it is a horrific story.

He wakes up one morning to find himself metamorphosed into a giant cockroach. If he hadn't had his reasoning powers, he would have never known he had turned into a cockroach. He would just be a cockroach. End of narrative. But he can describe his feelings. He is aware of himself. He has thoughts. But he's just in a body that doesn't quite suit him or the others around him. And his ability to communicate is severely degenerated. He's a rational being in a seemingly irrational body.

But that picture is a picture of humanity, no? Why should it horrify us to find Reason hidden within an animal? Isn't that the picture the evolutionists give us? And who is to say that cockroaches do not have rational powers? After all, they have survived far longer than we have, according to biologists.

All this has been intriguing to me, because what people have considered kafkaesque is actually quite natural according to science and anthropology, except, of course, that it is a caricature of natural. Shocking what you find when you look at a mirror, yes? Furthermore, it is intriguing to me because what Kafka and others have suggested is that when Reason exists within a human body, when a human exercises reason, it is so refreshingly right. It is as if Reason has always existed in humanity, which is indeed what I believe.

Imagine Kafka's reversal: a cockroach becoming a man. Whereas, in the original, there involved a great loss--namely, that of the human body-- this fiction would involve an incredible gain: that of reason, among many other things. The body and the mind fit. Mens sana in corpore sano.

There are days when I wake up and find myself but a little better than a cockroach. David Cockroach Ro. I can't seem to communicate. I dislike the way I look. I get apples thrown at me, and I feel like rot and scum. And the question that buggers me is this: is everything I do simply the product of my natural self? Have I no control whatsoever?

But the fact that I have even written thus, the fact that I know that I am a man stuck inside a cockroach and not just a cockroach with no sense or sensibility at all, is hopeful. For even to long for something like true humanity, a resurrected humanity if you will, is to show that Reason exists outside of Nature. Not everything is fated by my biology or physiology or even my sociology.

Reason, I am finding, is reason enough to hope that there is something more than just Nature.

Towards a Blogging Ministerium

What if I could get a bunch of pastors together to blog for a particular generation of blog-readers? Why pastors? One, we need each other. The pastoral outfit is not a solo mission. There is so much that bearing the cross and the cloth demands that one person is not meant to handle it. A crass way of putting it would be that if you think you are able to take it on all by yourself, either your cross is too small or your ego is too big. Maybe that's saying the same thing.

Two, sometimes the most effective rhetoric is not soliloquy or one-man-versus-the-world (ala Athanasius) sort of speaking, but rather dialogue. Or a concert of voices. For example, take the way we study the Bible. Fruitful study comes not only when I have my own interpretations and thoughts, but when I also check them--converse--with commentators and scholars who have studied the same passage with more rigor. We stand, if not on the shoulders of giants, at least shoulder-to-shoulder with fellow stone-slingers against them.

Lastly, and on a personal note, I need motivation to write. The idea of blogging on my own seems daunting, like trying to write a novel. Too many days separate my last blog entry from my current one. Too many thoughts spoil my literary kitchen. Too many distractions exist in an already technolopolized world (to borrow from Postman). Writing, nowadays, has the invitation to being utterly exposed on the Internet. You were taught not to spew out just mere rambling (this is the traditional view of writing), but yet that sort of rambling is what has made blogging so accessible and popular (the contemporary view of writing). For someone with traditionalist leanings like me, blogging and Internet publishing has that kind of paradoxical hindrance. People might actually like your unfiltered thoughts. They might actually connect with you and write a response. And so the blogosphere turns.

On the whole, we need to write. And I need to write. So, help us write together in the midst of generational turmoil, neuroses, and angst. And writing our wrongs, we may just right them, Lord-willing.

Initial Observations

Funny. I don't feel like a lumberjack, but that's okay. They used to call them loggers. And if you have the tendency to spew, then, blumberjack, it is apropos that we call you 'blogger.'

And that is what I am now: a blogger in this blogosphere. All sorts of studies could be done on me, and could be neatly labeled under the category 'blogology.'

Just what sort of word is 'blog'? Originally from web-log, I suppose, the initial, communal prefix has been excised to create it; although it could also be said that 'we blog.' And that is what we bloggers do: blog. For a bit, I shall compose some neo-blogisms.

I'd like to say that I go blogging once every morning, when the air is crisp and I have just stretched my fingers and straightened my back and tied my laces. Just a brisk blog, nothing more. Afterwards, I have my coffee.

Or perhaps I go check out the next city blog, which is ten blogs away, swinging on my world wide webs from post to post.

Maybe I accidentally drip some blog onto my shirt after taking a bite of my egg-blog sandwich. Its golden, congealed yolk makes for some amusement at the neighborhood blog party.

Once, I got blogged out of my house. The firemen were not happy when they had to knock the door down for me. I had gone blogging without my keys. Silly me.

Blog! That tastes horrible! Get me some water.

At any rate, I b-log to you, and you b-log to me. That's how this sort of thing works. We b-log to each other.

Blog. Blog. Blog. Captain's Blog, Stardate 03112011:

Hello fellow bloggers. I am living da vida roca. Ricky Martin, watch out.