On June 16, Bloomsday (a holiday in remembrance of James Joyce and his novel Ulysses), we sat down with David Dark to talk via Twitter about his new book: The Sacredness of Questioning Everything. Here is our conversation:
- I can’t think of a better way to celebrate #Bloomsday than to sit down with @DavidDark and talk about his new book.
- THE SACREDNESS OF QUESTIONING EVERYTHING is not only a plea for critical engagement, >
- it also is a gloriously dizzying tour through literature and pop music!
- @daviddark Welcome! Thanks for sitting down with us!
- @ERBks glad to be “here”
- @daviddark LOL! Your book is very countercultural >
- @daviddark Why should people read it, especially ones who tremble at the thought of questioning everything?
- @ERBks Well, potential reader, if you think asking questions is at the heart of developing (and keeping) your soul, this book’s for you>
- @ERBks and if U think the opposite’s true (keeping your soul saved requires somehow silencing your mind) I’d say this book’s REALLY for you!
- @daviddark You cover a lot of ground here ?ing so many thngs,which can be overwhelming. Where is a good place for us to start asking qstns?
- @ERBks With our taking in of news (happenings b/w people we know as well as events b/w Letterman and Palin or Iranians and their go’vt) >
- @ERBks What are we hoping for in our consumption of stories? Why do we tune in? Here, I always like to quote Fred Friendly >
- @ERBks (played by George Clooney in the fantastic film, Good Night and Good Luck.) He said that He said that the job of the news-teller>
- @ERBks to create a pain in the audience’s mind, a pain that can only be relieved (or eased) by THINKING. >
- @ERBks I think of thinking (questioning, probing, wondering, re-envisioning) as a religious imperative.>
- @ERBks Certainly a biblical imperative at least. Without it, the people perish.
- @daviddark On that note, as we question everything, how do we fend off acedia >
- the sadness/lethargy “arising from the fact that the good is difficult” (Aquinas)? Or should we?
- Oh, I’m getting a little sloppy there… forgetting my @DavidDark tag… Sorry!
- @ERBks For starters, we can note that we aren’t alone in the good work of redemptive skepticism>
- @ERBks We’re surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (past and present) via popularly sacred texts and songs >
- @daviddark “we aren’t alone in the good work of redemptive skepticism” AMEN!
- @ERBks as well as the cosmic plainspeak on the airwaves thru comedians, country singers, and all manner of commentators>
- @ERBks its communal discernment I’m after, not isolated cynicism. Holding unexamind allegiances up 2 questions isn’t a forsaking of hope>
- @ERBks it’s a refusal 2 settle for easy imaginings IN THE NAME OF hope, a determined pursuit (in faith) of better ways of seeing the world>
- @ERBks I think the Bible is a tracing of this trajectory.
- @daviddark Your comments remind me that individualism is seemingly one of the greatest cultural axioms that merits questioning. >
- @daviddark Would you agree, and if so how do we go about questioning it?
- @ERBks I do. Not to get overly Buddhist-sounding, but I believe my sense of myself as an individual self somehow divorced>
- @ERBks from relation to other people,from relation to other people, the ground beneath my feet, and all of life>
- @ERBks Is a death-dealing delusion, what the bible calls a false covenantIt’s probably our religious traditions>
- @ERBks (religious in the ancient, life-giving sense) that question psychotic individualism most powerfully and thoroughly>
- @ERBks I’d recommend people gathering and watching and discussing Wall-E and following it up with almost any Wendell Berry essay.
- @daviddark You’ve touched on it a little already & there are a few references in the book to the local church community, >
- @daviddark but could you elaborate on a local church’s place in questioning everything?
- @ERBks Well, if I might speak of the church VERY broadly defined (to include everybody even remotely CALLED OUT by and to the ethic>
- @ERBks made so powerfully known in the career of Jesus), James Joyce’s HERE COMES EVERYBODY, I’d say I’ve learned (and keep learning)>
- @daviddark nice #bloomsday reference to Joyce! 🙂
- @ERBks the practice of sacred questioning by way of the example of my ragtag, local AND cosmic church>
- @ERBks (which includes people who might wish I wouldn’t call them that) My local church>
- @ERBks , in this sense, facilitates (for me) the space of the talkaboutable.We talk about everything: film, gardens, television,>
- @ERBks coffee, books, education, affordable housing, all of it. It is precisely within my local assembly>
- @ERBks (and here I have Sunday mornings in mind) that I/we are summoned to note that THERE ARE NO UNRELATED PHENOMENA.>
- @ERBks We come together to imagine together (again) the world announced, for instance, in the Eucharist. We come together to remember>
- @ERBks again the world that we’re in. TO get reoriented within the whole (the economy). I lose my economic sense>
- @ERBks (McKibben’s DEEP ECONOMY, for instance) when I forsake the fellowship. Sacred questioning is, above all, COMMUNAL discernment>
- @ERBks I’d argue that we aren’t practicing it if we aren’t in consistent relationship with people with whom we disagree.
- @daviddark Wow! That’s inspiring (and sadly,I expect, very rare)! Unfortunately in many places today conversation is often a lost art. >
- @daviddark What can churches do to nurture practices of conversation, ie, questioning together?
- @ERBks We can (must) distinguish unity from agreement and view differences of opinion in many matters as a blessed and fruitful fact>
- @ERBks rather than a devastating deal-breaker. Karl Barth noted that when we “pass the peace” with one another>
- @ERBks we’d better remember (and perhaps be intimately acquainted) with points of difference between one another. If we don’t, Barth said>
- @ERBks the gesture is meaningless. If we believe (heretically, I’d say) that the peace we have with God is DEPENDENT UPON our rightness>
- @ERBks of opinion or belief, open-ended conversation will strike us as an insane risk. This is why>
- @ERBks I begin the book by questioning this nightmarish view of God.
- @daviddark Nightmarish indeed! In American culture, it seems like questioning often comes paired with rebellion (running the other way).
- @daviddark Can you address the place of commitment (staying put in a place/people/conversation) in regard to questioning everything?
- @ERBks Sure. Don’t confuse bad ideas for the sweet, infinitely valuable human beings who hold them (or who R momentarily possessed BY them)>
- @ERBks Look for common ground and work it redemptively. If you walk away from a conversation and the person with whom you disagree>
- @ERBks thinks that U THINK she/he is an idiot, this might B YOUR problem. Try again. Look (or pray) 4 the opportunity 2 B good 2 them again.
- @daviddark Can you elab. on your idea of the Bible as a “living text” & why that is relevant to questioning everything -including the Bible?
- @ERBks Yes. The Bible documents a redemptive-redeeming trajectory in the way a number of people, over generations, envisioned, celebrated,>
- @ERBks wrestled with, complained to/of and called upon God. I believe it also traces the ways the the Spirit of God>
- @ERBks (thru priests, peasants, and prophets) lived through, and often in spite of, these voices (“You have heard it said>
- @ERBks but I say unto you.”). The Bible questions the Bible even within the Bible. The voices within the collection question each other,>
- @ERBks call to each other, respond to each other. In my tradition, we say “Listen for the word of the Lord” before we read the Bible aloud>
- @ERBks and follow the reading by saying “The word of the Lord.” The word of God, as I understand it, lives in this call and response—>
- @ERBks this dialectic—and we receive it by engaging (and being engaged by) the living word. We let it live and receive its life when we>
- @ERBks refuse to read it flatly or out of context. The flat reading, where we pull out a phrase to buttress an argument as if the magic>
- @ERBks words make our position instantly right and righteous, is not only irresponsible and damaging and perverse. It’s unbiblical.
- @daviddark One last question, on a lighter note… >
- @daviddark What have you been reading/listening to recently in which you find glimmers of the eschatological good news?
- @ERBks Well…so much out of Iran, of course. Watching ostensible power-holders fritter their own legitimacy w/ every act of wanton violence>
- @ERBks I think the last few days and the days to come will have produced myriad case studies for the annals of nonviolent resistance >
- @ERBks DM Stith’s Heavy Ghost has me very inspired lately, eschatologically speaking. And David Bazan. Lots of David Bazan.
- @daviddark Thanks for talking with us! You’ve given me a ton to reflect on… Actually, I’m taking your book on a retreat next week>
- @daviddark and am looking forward to re-reading, savoring (and questioning, of course!) 🙂
- @ERBks thanks so much. Yay for ERBks and I hope y’all have an intensely rich Bloomsday. Dark out.
- Thanks to all who have been following the #twinterview w/ @DavidDark You will certainly want to get a copy of his new bk: http://tr.im/oH1
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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