Film - Think

The old words of grace are worn smooth as poker chips and a certain devaluation has occurred, like a poker chip after it is cashed in. Even if one talks only of Christendom, leaving the heathens out of it, of Christendom where everyone is a believer, it almost seems that when everyone believes in God, it is as if everybody started the game with one poker chip, which is the same as starting with none.

(Walker Percy, The Message in a Bottle)

So I met a friend the other day that I haven’t seen for a long time. Years ago we converted to different religions which historically have been relatively incommunicado. We went different places, thought our way to different spiritualities, became adults. As this is the case, I was surprised at the ease with we were able to talk. And not about the things that people talk about when they are catching up (the weather in Boston, etc…), but we talked about things we are both naturally inclined towards: first things, “solving for pattern” stuff, all the big thoughts. For me these would be God and language, which seem to have analogues in Buddhist doctrine. I was struck by his articulation of our experience of the world, a world precisely like the one described by Kierkegaard that has so informed Protestant speculation on living in modernity. I was struck by his commitment to life, Catholic in its intense appreciation of prenatal dignity, one that extends farther and more coherently into his daily routine than mine. (In Christian theology, man is granted ontological authority to eat and use animals for survival. In Buddhism, life seems valued in such a foundational way that such distinctions can’t be made.) I was edified by his self-identification as a liberal, one that has points of contact with Walker Percy and Flannery O’Connor, who as leftist Christians critiqued the husk of an American liberalism that drifted from its ethical connections to moral theology and teetered towards Orwellian sloganeering. I think he would enjoy Milbank’s distinction between liberalism and liberality.

I was happy to discover a mutual appreciation for the perils and blessings of religious language, which while slippery and opaque becomes active and possible in its very speaking. Time didn’t permit much more than these surprises, which like Percy’s bottled messages were unexpected in a formative way. And of course, I was interested in hearing him talk about Buddhism and grace, grace being where Christianity begins and ends. But I suppose we did think about it informally, it was present in the setting of two friends who haven’t seen each other for a long time making connections. It was present in the possibility that we could sit at a table outside in the breezy evening and talk about god/God/whatever. I forgot to tip the guy across the street playing the saxophone, an act that now strikes me as a regrettable offense to his gracious presence. When I converted to Christianity, I was quickly schooled in a combative way of talking to people about faith, handed a stack of Percy’s poker chips, and pushed out the door. It took me a long time to realize that grace was not just a concept, but an event, rooted in what New Testament historians often call the “Christ event” (which starts with his birth and ends with the early church), an event like a stone in a pond now rippling through our interactions with other people regardless of their ideological affiliations. God-talk is always an act of grace. I am sure that we can find some things to disagree about, and probably should, but it will always be worth reveling in encounters with people interested in things that are true.

(And since this blog is about film and stuff, it is startling to note how easily the previous few sentences apply to our interaction with culture as well.)