[MD] The Dynamics of Value

[John Carl]

When asked who we view as heroic, Marsha, my thoughts went immediately also
to Pirsig.  But to mention it seems a bit redundant on this particular
discuss!

Another person also occurred to me, whom I offer for your consideration as
an apt illustration of your forumulation - one that steps outside their
Mythos and offers their culture a view of itself.


  They both ventured outside of the Mythos to offer their culture a
> better explanation of reality; both heroic artists.
>

May I offer you a recent publication of my daughter Cassi's - who commented
upon her mythos in an 11th grade assignment.

Death of a Church from a Child's View

I grew up a Seventh Day Adventist, and, indeed, continue to grow up a
Seventh Day Adventist. After all, have I not attended the schools, gone to
the churches, and been completely immersed in the culture my whole life?
What other affiliation could I pretend to classify myself under? But I am
not a Seventh Day Adventist, and have never been one. And it is not very
likely that I will ever be one.

My earliest memories of going to church are fond and pleasant. Warm sun
streams through the window on the rolls and flows and ribbons of my dress.
My shoes are shiny. My family is together. God feels near. We get out of the
car and my mother takes my hand. There are cracks in the hot black pavement
that my shiny shoes are tap tapping along; we are late because it is hard to
get three girls and a husband out of the house. One is sleepy, one hates to
wear dresses. Two refuse to have their hair brushed. We enter the church and
I feel the eyes, the stale air and the judgment all mingled together with
the smiles and starched collars. Perhaps I go to Sabbath school and perhaps
I enjoy it. Perhaps I am sleepy, so I crawl under a pew in the sanctuary,
where the eyes cannot see me. From there, I can look at all the shiny shoes,
and hear the mumble and hum of the voice at the front until reality and the
fantastic things of my own world, the one I create, melt together in the
sun, and my eyes droop closed.

When I wake up my cheeks are flushed and my hair is damp. My father picks me
up and I feel safe and nice and I can hear his heart beat with my arms
tucked up between us. Or perhaps I am wide awake and cannot sit still and my
sisters and I evaporate out of the church and in fact, out of this world and
into what was the parking lot, but is now.... anything. An enchanted forest
full of beautiful princesses no doubt. Perhaps our friends, who we can only
tell apart by the colors they are wearing because they are the twins, are
also restless. Then they disappear into our world too, and then we are
Indians or fugitives, because they do not like to be princesses like I do. I
feel shy around them and always secretly know which one is which, but I
don't say anything. They are Sarah's friends. and they might not like me.

My shiny shoes are in the shade by the church, filled with droopy stockings
and hair ribbons because I love to feel the hot cracked pavement beneath my
small feet. I love the admiration of the others when they see how strong my
feet are, how long they can stand on the hot hot pavement without having to
run into the shade. Then the church begins to fill with noise and motion and
my stomach starts to rumble at the promise of a meal. I have to wait and
wait, and I go to my mother and I tell her I am hungry but she tells me to
wait some more. Finally, a bell is rung and a prayer is said, and I have to
wait and wait forever *again* in line. At last, I get to heap my plate with
good things, and then there is ice cream which I cannot eat until I finish
my lunch, but my mother is kind and doesn’t mind if I eat it with out
clearing off my plate. I filled it when I was *very* hungry, and I am now
not quite so hungry. My face gets sticky and people start to be finished.
They talk and laugh and this terrifies me, because they want to come talk to
me, and I am afraid of them, but I will be scolded if I don't respond. So I
disappear again. Perhaps with my sisters or perhaps alone. I go sit on a
rock in the warm sun, so that I don’t have to suffer through not having
anything to say to the people, who will laugh because my face is sticky and
my shoes are gone.

That was church to me, and who can deny me this part of my life? It is mine
and it is real. My mother always sheltered my from the eyes that wanted me
to sit up straight in church and stay inside the whole time, and keep my
shoes on. But those eyes where watching, and they would shout and snap at me
if I ran in church. They scared me and made me want to hide. Those eyes are
the reason we stopped coming. Eyes that were not filled with love, but with
judgment. No, none of them made me think about God. They told me to be like
Jesus, but not* my* Jesus: the Jesus in their books and pictures, pallid and
meek. I did not love that Jesus, and I did not feel guilty about it.

Even in my small brain, which was so  new to the world, questions began to
arise. Why should a people who teach us to be kind and love each other, also
teach little children not to be little children? Why should a people who
teaches about Jesus mock and ridicule and judge everyone who is different?
Wasn't Jesus different?  Why should a church ever be a bad place to go?
Shouldn’t I want to go there, because I love Jesus, and I love to think and
learn and I am not a bad child? Why would a good child who loves Jesus not
like church? Now I am a grown child, hardly a child at all, but not an adult
either, so I stand here and I look back at a smaller version of my same
self, and forward to another version, my future self, and I think about the
person I was and am and want to be. Here, in the front row of my life, sits
religion. It plays such a big part of my life, the thing I rebel against. It
is like a parent to me, only, it is a bad parent, one who doesn't understand
me. One I resent. Its actions and words and intent seem all to contradict
each other, and I want so badly for it to be something to rely on, something
to trust. Instead, it is like a parent who has divorced my father, left my
mother, betrayed me and disappointed my naive ideals. I do not hate it. Hate
is such a strong emotion. I feel sorry for it, like an old dying dog that
was once so full of life, but now lies on the front porch all day and scowls
at all those who still live. He does not know he is jealous. He is merely
holding so viciously guarding the bit of rotten truth that he once knew was
real, a truth wilted from holding it too tight. He snarls at anyone who
challenges that first belief, for fear that if they try to change it, they
will kill it completely.

I walked in to the old church, and the feeling of apprehension, that I had
not quite realized the weight of till now, fell away. I thought it would
still be intimidating, but I realize how different the world looks when you
are taller. Something on 14 years had passed since I was a be-ribboned
child, sleeping under these pews, afraid of the grumpy old scowlers. It was
foolish of me to think things would be the same now. There was no one left
any more. Just an empty old building and the ghosts of my memories. The
building was condemned, the walls rotting from to many years of holding back
water that dripped continuously from the roof. I was home visiting my family
and had learned of the sad fate of my childhood church. So I'd come holding
my grandmothers keys tightly in my balled up fist, to see it one last time.
Perhaps, partially hoping to come to terms with it, and part as friends.You
couldn’t immediately see the sad state of the building, A fresh coat of
paint and new carpet cleverly concealing its decay, it smelled old though,
and if you stayed long you would begin to notice the dark stains in the
corners where water had already begun to seep in. In odd juxtaposition to
the water soaked walls was the brittle dead vegetation surrounding the
church, as if the walls had soaked up all the water that was supposed to go
to them. I walked into the sanctuary and sat down, I had always liked it
best when it was empty.The stained glass window at the front depicted an
orange Jesus carrying a lamb, a picture I had always hated. I looked in to
Jesus's face and tried to think of one good reason to dislike the picture. I
dislike stained glass, its depiction of a scene is rarely ever very pretty.
It is warped and pretentious looking. Also it makes it completely impossible
to look out at the world. Ironic, it seems to me. For a common theme in
churches, to obscure the view of the world by staining and warping the glass
into gaudy depictions of a contrived Jesus. All the hymnals and bibles had
already been removed, but on the floor under neath the pew in front of me
was an offering envelop. I picked it up and ripped it open, revealing the
only part that I had paid any attention to during the years I went here, the
bare paper, containing enough space to make a picture with a stubby pencil
meant to check one or another box at the front of the envelop. the pencils
were all gone by now, and much to my regret so were all those old drawings.
I never knew what to do with them after church back then, so I think they
all ended up in a hymnal, the trash or my mothers purse. Memories hounded my
mind, it had been a long time since I’d come, having found a nobler cause
then to sit and listen to old men, whose breath smelled of denture cream and
moth balls, talk about life after death. Life after death. Something that
they claimed you could have merely by accepting it, and then would proceed
to talk about for the next hour and a half. Life after death is simple. But
they never talked about life before death, which is the most exigent
interest for those of us more living then dead. And that is my purpose. God
has promised that tomorrow will take care of its self, and the past will be
taken care of by him, but today it is our decision. Today is the only thing
we have any control over, so why do so many of us take it for granted? I sat
up and stretched out my limbs, wiping sleep out of my eyes. Old habits die
hard i suppose. The dull sunlight of late afternoon had all but disappeared.
I stood up and took one last look around. Goodbye old church... I’m sorry it
had to end like this. But this doesn’t have to be my end. I will not stay in
a condemned building while it falls down around my listening ears. But I
promise to tell your story, so that your end will not be in vain.


*“I shall still be waiting-there is nothing else that I can do.
There is no wilderness where I can hide from these things,
there is no haven where I can escape them;though I travel to the ends of the
earth,
I find the same accursed system-
I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity,
the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs,
are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory greed!”
*

*the jungle, page 186)*