Wow, I just received, through email this afternoon, my first response to this blog. So now I have some motivation to keep it a little more current. Here's what's happening in the life of PoMoXian...

My family and I went to an exhibit at the Grand Rapids Art museum of photographs taken on or after September 11, commemorating the events of that day and the efforts made by many to rescue the victims and honor those who perished. Seeing these (mostly familiar) images, which were mainly selected from news feeds, as well as some government and satellite images, left me with a hard-to-describe feeling. I'm struck by how iconic the images have already become - the towers with smoke and fireball bursting out of them, the mangled facade of the World Trade Center crashed in ruins, the ash covered survivors dazed and staggering in the debris, the solemn faces of firemen and rescue workers in the days following the catastrophe, and the funeral services that came later. It brought back a lot of the same emotions that I felt when it was all happening just last fall, but now with an added layer of "settledness" in the sense that we now live in a world where we know such a thing could happen. Now it's close to becoming a part of the historical landscape, for many of us at least, whose lives weren't directly touched by the death of someone we knew.

There was a book where people could write comments about the exhibit, and I saw that the book would be presented to a fire dept. museum of some sort in New York. As I expected, many of the messages invoked the "God Bless America" theme, and a few of them were even on the jingoistic side in their tone. I guess this is an honest reflection of the feelings that the exhibit stirred up in some people, but I saw just a terrible portrayal of cruelly-inflicted suffering caused by people whose lives must be wracked by such despair and sadness that they would intentionally cause the attacks to happen. I don't exactly feel pity for those responsible, because I believe that the hurt they caused is much more than anything they could have possibly suffered to justify such actions. But I do mourn for humanity in general, because so many of us remain chained to the idea that bloodshed and raw vengeance is the righteous path to travel when one is oppressed, victimized or humiliated. Thankfully, the many noble efforts and considered responses to what happened on September 11 give me hope that not all of us are content to be merely reflexive and condemning in our shock and anger. The important thing for us to do now is to communicate to our leaders and neighbors that greater destruction and harboring thoughts of hatred will not make us safer from the kind of people who would perpetrate such horrors on others. Love and truth are the only forces which can really transform the embittered and hopeless of this world, though we have to proceed in faith that, given time, they will yield the desired results. I find war to be the resort of those who are impatient and lack faith, and those who seek through strategems to increase their sense of wealth, power and control. It's a sad thing that those are the kind of people who most consistently strive and are selected for leadership in our societies.

Here's another try on my part to do this blogging thing. Guess what? Today is my birthday! Yep, I'm 41 years old. I'm not going to publicize this to my various Internet contacts out there, but if any of you buddies of mine happen to check out this blog, go ahead and wish me a happy birthday! send your email to daveblakeslee@attbi.com and I will appreciate you thinkin' of me...

So I bet you are interested in knowing what I got for my birthday presents? I got a new CD boombox, a nice Sony unit that I plan to take to work so I can listen to my music there. Also, a couple of shelf-rack storage units, one for videos and DVD's, the other for music CDs. I am starting a collection of Shakespeare on DVD, so I got Branagh's Henry V and Othello, and Julie Taymor's Titus which I haven't seen but I hear is supposed to be quite the production. Also, a new toolbox, which I really need, since my old one is rusty and banged up and just not very pleasant to use. And a bookstore gift certificate, and a copy of Ulysses Annotated, a commentary on James Joyce's masterpiece of modern 20th century literature.

I'm very pleased with these gifts! I got just about everything on my list, what a great way to start a new year in my life..!

OK, now I'm gonna see if this really works. You wouldn't believe how many blogs have been lost because something wierd and (so far) inexplicable causes them to disappear without a trace...

OK, maybe I am just really not quite with it or something, or maybe my computer is messing something up but I have tried to do some blogging but it hasn't worked all that well. I wrote some stuff with cool links and worthy substance, but when I posted it, poof, it disappeared somewhere into the aether never to be retrieved. This has happened more than once with Blogger so what is up?

Now I'm gonna post this and see if it works. If it works, I will be back to try some more later.

Blessings and love to you all,

PoMoXian

Here are a few quotes from emails I posted to the faithmaps group hosted by Yahoo. I recommend it both as a good place to dialogue intelligently with Christians of various stripes. I've been with the group for about a year, though I've been off doing other things until just recently. Anyway, here's more of what PoMoXian has to say.

(in response to a statement that "postmodern Christian" is an oxymoron)

Hey! Whose ox are you callin' a moron? Do you know who you are talking to? I am the one and only PoMoXian! I am a postmodern Christian in a philosophical sense! Even though I'm not really all that interested in Derrida and Rorty and the French intellectuals or other academic leading lights associated with philosophical postmodernism, I'm not at all hesitant to embrace the label in an effort to craft a new way of being Christian in a postmodern cultural and intellectual context. Which in my case at least means calling all
sorts of modern, premodern and postmodern presuppositions into question, with the net effect that I'm not anywhere close to being dogmatic on most theological issues as many traditional/conventional Christian brothers and sisters would probably want me to be. And I'm happy that way! :o)

Forgive some of the bluster here, since you probably don't know me, but I just couldn't sit idly by and let your statement go without a response.

Trying to establish a transcultural, transhistoric basis for understanding the "essence" of Christianity, is an endeavor that is grossly misguided. I don't see any need or possibility for an understanding of Christianity that is somehow utterly distinct from (and by extension, superior to) all other "Maps." I understand that the church has a long tradition of making such distinctions, and I must admit that I'm impressed by the many displays of intellectual and philosophical brilliance that have developed as a result of such endeavors, but in each and every single instance, what I basically see happening there is Human Culture manifesting itself in a particular way, which in the universal scope of creation is of some value, but still only one of probably infinite angles from which we can view the thing. The thing, that is, called Life. The fact is, I appreciate quite a few of the qualities that have come into this world as a result of Jesus and the movement that he started, but by no means do I feel compelled to endorse the whole kit and kaboodle. In my effort to extricate myself from some of the snares that the institutional Christian religion has created over the centuries, I found a healthy dose of pomo ironic detachment to be of much value, even though I can agree that I might apply it more liberally than others, and that my way is not suitable for each and every one. But I do think that a sweeping application of postmodern thoughtforms has its place and so I am happy to do my own version of the Johnny Appleseed routine on this list and elsewhere.

(... such as this blog...)

So what exactly is this PoMoXian thing about anyway? Let me offer a quick explanation.

I'm 40 years old, and I've been a Christian since 1983, when I was 21. Before that, I'd been a pot-smoking, alienated, punk-rock social outcast who didn't really know where or how to fit in. For a few years I played in a band called the Church Police, who achieved a small level of notoriety in the San Francisco scene from 1980-82. At the end of my time in that scene, I was burned out and fucked up, to use the vernacular of the time. Through an unusual chain of events, I left that lifestyle behind and embraced fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, returning to my home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I live today.

Over the years, though, I found myself struggling to reconcile the various personality traits and interests that led me to embrace the attitudes and values of my pre-Christian life with the expectations of this church-oriented subculture that I was now expected to eagerly endorse. Rather than get sidetracked with a long rant about all the things I don't like about W. Michigan church life, I'll just say that I don't share a lot of the same passions of my brothers and sisters in Christ when it comes to our stance on social issues, the arts and humanities, intellectual and philosophical matters and how we deal with diversity in all its many forms. So after many years of trying to make it all work (mostly by trying to make myself change or repressing my frustrations, since others around me didn't seem to feel any need to accomodate my interests), I started feeling kind of claustrophobic. That panicky feeling of "what if I get stuck in this situation for the REST OF MY LIFE!?!?!" arose within me and I had to make a change. And that's what got me reaching for something beyond the ordinary, beyond the parameters of the conservative Calvinistic presbyterian evangelical biblical inerrancy new right republican family values style of personal expression that had penned me in for such a substantial portion of my life.

And now I'm PoMoXian, one who has grasped for the golden apple and found it within reach and downright tasty too. (more later)