Three More Verses

I did the math, and at my current rate, I think I will finish my translation of 1 Peter just in time to buy Teddy (the younger brother) his 21st birthday present. His birthday is in May. He is also 19. Ouch.

This section was hard, and I felt obliged to read/translate a bit ahead just to make sure I wouldn't contradict myself later -- or too much anyway. I'm sure there are more things to talk about here, but I picked the ones that jumped out at me most after a few revisions. The exceeding generality and particularity of time in the passage still eludes me, I think.

ΠΕΤΡΟΥ Α

First Peter

3-5 Blessed is God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one, according to his great compassion, raising us into living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from those dead -- into an inheritance undecaying, undefiled, and unfading, (an inheritance) being guarded in heaven for you, the ones being preserved by God’s power through faith for a certain salvation to be revealed in the final moment.

***The Greek provides no finite verb for this sentence, a translational difficulty that is usually (and most naturally) remedied by inserting some form of “to be” in the initial clause. Since I can think of no better solution, and since I have no desire to turn any of the given participles into main verbs in my translation, I followed suit. That said, I was tempted (and still am) to forego English grammar altogether. Implying ἔιμι is not an irregular practice, leaving only the difficulty of deciding where and how to put it. By my estimation, “is” sounds far more natural than the third person imperative (functioning descriptively, of course) “be.”

However translated, the whole construction reads like a cause-and-effect stream of consciousness, describing an event that is ongoing and immediate yet still directed at a single and critical final moment. If the writer intended to suggest that God the Father has already raised us into living hope, or that the inheritance of our salvation would come to pass at some indefinite future moment, he could easily have used finite or infinitive aorist, perfect, or future forms. Instead, he speaks of a continuous action always being performed and always intended to have been performed -- an action reserved and protected for that very purpose. The hope is living, we being raised and protected, our salvation-inheritance being preserved. Nothing here is complete in the sense of having been finished nor is it incomplete in the sense of lacking a particular quality or virtue. It actively and fully is. Notably, in this respect, the aorist is only used in the infinitive passive at the end of the passage, in reference to an event that has not yet been revealed. Even the use of “to be revealed” indicates a level of distinction and interconnectedness between what is happening and what has been done and what will be done. Whatever that is and however it might later appear, it is happening and we will see why at some unspecified time.

My translation of “certain salvation” (σωτηρίαν ἑτοίμην) is a devastatingly insufficient conveyance of this. The sense of the adjective implies preparation and immediacy, willingness and zealousness, even a kind of heightened reality and ownership, all with respect to both the past and the future and used in this present progressive context. I can think of no appropriate English word: I shy away from “prepared” if only because it connotes a sense of inevitability, the idea that this salvation was actively set and only has not taken place because the moment has not yet come (when, in fact, it is taking place and the moment could be any time); I equally dislike “ready” or “ready at hand”, both of which give a sense of hesitance, as if salvation is waiting on something and has not already happening-ed; “immediate” is out of bounds for the same reason, and “present” confuses the whole notion of time and actionthat the rest of the passage has already laid out. “Certain”, however insufficient, can at least refer to a present emotion or perception as well as a future occurrence dependent upon a past or contemporary action. Perhaps we should coin a new word: “pre-immediated” or somesuch.

Of final interest is the use of etymological negatives to define a presumably ontologically sufficient thing (salvation): the inheritance being guarded is not “pure, noble, and eternal”, but instead “undecaying, undefiled, and unfading.” Quite pointedly, the writer does not try to say what salvation is while asserting that it is not what it is not. Of course, this renders an apophatic reading impossible to miss. Linguistically, also, the word choice does not try to reveal anything that will be revealed, maintaining its tenuous chronology. Or eschatology. Or And both.

One last note: two things are preserved or protected here, in parallel construction with one another: salvation and the saved. At the risk of unwittingly saying something heretical, I end my observation there.

Translation and Notes. A Cop-Out

It's been almost a month since I posted "A Promise", which either makes me very patient or a liar. Since I in no way desire to be known as the latter, I will for the time being claim the attributes of the former -- despite the fact that everyone who knows me knows it also is not true. Here's hoping for an in-between place I can wait (stagnate?) for just a bit longer. I am trying to put together a few poems, since none of my stories are working. Because that's easier or something . . .

In any case, to keep myself from becoming as intellectually dry and depressing as this desert and the giant square city it holds, I thought I might start a translation/commentary project. And to keep myself from becoming an existential wreck, it seemed appropriate to do the New Testament. Also, much easier than Plato, my other option. So here begins my translation of 1 Peter. The Greek is available at the Perseus Project. The commentary raises more questions than it answers and, even within the first two verses, is reminding me that I should consider becoming familiar with the Pentateuch. Robert Alter reading parties, anyone?

I'll be going by paragraph or sentence or whatever I feel like doing. So here are the first two verses, since my explanation of the next three keeps getting longer. Exciting, no?

ΠΕΤΡΟΥ Α

First Peter

1-2 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those set apart in exile in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia: according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the spirit into obedience and according to the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, may grace and peace be multiplied unto you.

***It appears most translations accept ῥαντισμον as an object of εἰς (parallel to ὑπακοὴν), rather than an object of κατὰ (parallel to πρόγωσιν). The difference I see is subtle, I admit, and perhaps only a product of my own mental quibbling: is the sprinkling of blood, like sanctification of the spirit, a consequence of the foreknowledge of God which in turn effects grace and peace? Or is the sprinkling of blood itself, along with the foreknowledge of God, a primary and necessary element in the bringing of grace and peace, just as sanctification of the spirit is a primary and necessary element in the bringing of obedience -- which itself relies upon God’s foreknowledge and, consequently, the textual parallel, Christ’s own blood?

Though Theo would take this opportunity to remind me that the many official translators of this book probably know something I don’t, and though I accept this charge, the latter option appears far more likely, both within the context of 1 Peter and within the context of the Christian salvation narrative. Grace and peace are made abundant equally according to God’s wisdom and Christ’s sacrifice, the two becoming at some point necessarily indistinguishable: I am hesitant to suggest that the sprinkling of Christ’s blood is a direct product of God’s foreknowledge and a potential substitute for simple “obedience”, that the action is several steps removed from any abundance of grace and peace.

The “sprinkling of blood” refers to Hebrew practice laid out in Numbers (and one of Deuteronomy or Leviticus, I think), mentioned also in the New Testament in Hebrews, the obvious and unsoundable parallel establishing Christ as the final and ultimate sacrificial lamb Whose blood alone brings sanctification.

Two minor notes: I haven’t the heart to translate ἐκλεκτοῖς as “elect” despite their aural similarities; I apologise reluctantly for the use of “unto”, an archaic and altogether appropriate preposition in this situation.

Relativist Musings. A Promise.

That all things are related does not imply absolute relativity between: the inability to separate the one fact from such proximate folly may constitute the predominate misunderstanding of our age.

For now, the only word that makes sense to me is "tether": all things are tethered and wound, inseparable and unique. The cords that tether are twisted and clear (silver?), not so much a spiderweb as an infinite cluster of monofilament stars. Also one star. Pearls unraveling among pearls and there is no space.

~       ~       ~

That's my whole post for the night. When I figure out a story that makes enough sense to get the idea across, I promise it will make an appearance here. The Dream was an initial shot -- which apparently has made no sense to anyone but me. And has the irritating quality of beginning each paragraph with the same phrase.

All these sentences might be better as a poem.

The Dream

"I love the tiny, sticky spring leaves, the blue sky, so there it is! There's no sense in it, no logic . . ."

You are running. You are running and you cannot run any faster, and the sky engulfed in green flickers with a striping, blending, obstinate brown scar of life and not life -- fear and unfear. You see every leaf on every tree, the colors of every flower, and somehow the smeared reality of it all is continuous and separate, transience and permanence alike. Every ant has made his journey across your path a thousand times and he is at once in all the places he has been and will ever be. Every flower blooms and unblooms, falling under the weight of its own opening, rising backwards to bud and stem, pausing gently mid-flight in one last entrancing display. There is nothing unknown here, you have seen it all and are seeing it all and again it rushes past in articulate unchanging motion.

You are running, but you don't know why. Everything around you is clear, nothing hidden, and you can see nothing that should make your soul sprint with your heart, your lungs, your mind. The green blur engulfs the sky and the sky is not obscured: sunlight trickles into every corner through cracks in the treetops that cannot possibly be there, and you note every crack from height to depth as the light seeps into the ground and out into the vastness on the other side -- green and blue and black and light. Ants and bears and undergrowth form a chimera altogether unlike itself, and each is altogether not the other though their motions meld and their actions are unsettlingly same. Only you are separate, a fleeing observer, an unwilling guest and an unwilling host. The scene would almost peaceful, if you weren't there to see it. Serene if not for the running.

You are running and you cannot stop. You cannot stop and you cannot continue and the infinitude of your stride is only dwarfed by the infinitude that remains ahead. Seeing around every trunk and every stream of light and under every sticky leaf, there are only more trunks, more cracks, more budding falling furling flowers. There is no distance though space is distinct, and the particularity of all things only heightens their separation and proximity to one another. You are running through a blur of definitions, a seamless mismatched pattern, stretched and ripped and unaffected in itself.

You are running through infinity, and infinity comes to an end. Still in the blur you are also at a great height, and below the pinnacle -- in and through and beyond and before the trees and leaves and light -- a shimmer. It is wide and unrelenting and straight. It is blinding, and yet you watch it. It is straight and thin and all consuming. It is the water below and the water above, but you are not the water in-between. You draw closer with every infinitely motionless infinite pounding step. You know you have reached the end of the heights without climbing, that the water below is closer without ever having moved. You are still running.

You are still running and there is no fear and there is no cause for fear and the beyond moves closer and stays precisely where it is and the trees grow from tiny pellets dropping flowers and growing again and receding into nascence with every heightened inch. You are still running and there is no more time. There is infinity in every moment, but the moment grows closer that you know is coming and for some reason has not come.

You are running and you know you must jump or fall or dive. You are running and you must enter the beyond and there is only one question:

When do you wake up?

why my kitten knows more than you do (and maybe my crazy parents do too)

         Well, there it is, a mewling shadow with oddly bright and dark eyes, clinging and scrambling up the split live oak in the backyard. Two years have gone by since the Craigslist Kitten Catastrophe (see "Drivers, Kittens, and Thieves: Our Modern Life"), and my parents finally decided to get another kitten. Or, as they tell it, they accidentally happened upon one. I think their mutual developing craziness helps them to forget bad things ever happened. It makes their aging quite endearing, if a bit frightening sometimes.

         Example: the parents have never been big on finishing projects. They're "project-starters," they would tell you, not "project finishers." Sometimes things come up and money or time or family keep us from finishing, says the dad. We have a lot of maintenance, from the mom. And it's true -- two acres in NorCal is no national park, but it's no walk in the park either. Still, I'm pretty sure maintenance means starting fewer projects as much as it means finishing fewer projects. And with at least 100 people showing up to my dad's birthday party in less than two weeks, I've made a mental list of things they intend to finish "sometime" or "soon":

         At least one room in the house is recently remodeled and unfurnished; one shed in the pasture still needs doors and windows (these have been missing so long the plywood covering the holes has warped fully inward, providing a splendid view of the garden through the north-facing wall); another shed in the backyard is still only half-completed and could run up to three tokens at lower-class county fairs, a maze of broken and uninstalled cabinets, bookcases, table-saws, and sawed up tables stacked up inside; a third shed on the other side of the creek is almost fully concealed by blackberry brambles that might serve equally well as bullwhips of spiky death.

         There is a retaining wall of concrete blocks next to the house, upon which sits a broken tractor and all its broken parts, decorated Deliverance-chic with cracked five-gallon buckets, sheet metal, picnic tables, and enough Rubbermaid trash cans to service Fenway Park. (A carport is supposed to grace the foundations of the wall at some point. The tractor was purchased some 4 years ago since which time it has never moved). The first layer of another wall takes up most of the parking space in front of the house -- which makes the parking of six cars an effort in creativity. Six cars, you know, for the two drivers that live here year round -- not including the two they just recently got rid of (sadly, in one case I was the buyer . . .).

         All of this strikes my parents as normal. They are wonderful people for it, really. And the fact that they accidentally have more cars than Usher (or, for the older folks, Liberace), more unfinished business than Edmond Dantes (or, for the younger folks, Bruce Wayne), and (for the second time in three years) a kitten -- this is probably as much a sign of their kindness as their craziness.

         But I digress, and as I'm thinking all this, little black kitten has clambered over 7 feet into the oak tree, choosing to stare down at me from a particularly claw-attracting patch of moss. He has fallen partway down the trunk on several occasions now, head- and tail-first, and once I was sure I would have to explain to my mother that her new kitten was no longer . . . again. I'm sure I could find someone into kitten taxidermy on Craigslist. Fortunately for my mother's psyche, the kitten's developing claws are sharp and his balance good -- and it appears he is determined to show this particular tree exactly how intimidating it is to him.

         Strangely, I know the kitten is going to come down before he looks around and checks the area, before he stops licking his back and stands back up, even before he reaches the green kitten-velcro mossy patch at all. I know he could make his way up the whole tree without trouble, though it is easily 40 feet tall. I know he is physically capable of scrambling down as well, despite his size and youth: I know how the subtle twisting branches and gnarled bark of the oak are so suitable for climbing. I know he probably wants to sit atop the very highest branch and survey his land; he is, after all, going to be king. I know the attraction of the height as a place to see and a place to be seen. He could be the kitten that did it, and all the people of the world would climb their ladders in order to wonder at his unparalleled cuteness, point out his bravery, and offer to help him down. I know and he knows, though surely in different ways.

         But I also know he won't do it, and he doesn't. He skids clumsily groundward from one velcro patch to another, bounding past me in my reverie to chase the brown and crunchy leaf which scuffled past him in the afternoon breeze. The green ones can wait, I suppose, until he's bigger or brighter or less suspicious of the fallen ones. The tall ones will fall eventually too, though he can't possibly know that and he probably does. There are new leaves to chase and new trees to begin climbing. The world is filled with things a kitten knows and doesn't know. Why would he miss out on all that for the sake of a single tree?

         So I guess, in a weird way, the hundreds of incomplete projects around my parents' house may not be inspired by laziness as much as eagerness -- as much as wonder. Maybe their foolishness is actually wisdom, something they've always known even though they don't. Maybe I don't know it either.

         I think I've got too many things to do to figure that out.

         Oh, and this is Tuba. Or, if you're my dad, Tarmac. He's pretty smart, and undeniably cute. He does not like being photographed. He also has fleas.

my u-haul the universe

          It first struck me somewhere in eastern Oklahoma, I think, careening down a hill in my 5-ton, 14ft. U-Haul rental truck. In the past 16 hours, I'd driven through hundreds of towns, each with its own infinite set of possibilities, every sign an invitation and every face a reminder that I could be anywhere. Anywhere at all. And there I was, driving 2100 miles to a giant city in the middle of the desert. And here I am.

          To be fair, I've never lived in the plains states and I never really intend to: Oklahoma, at least, is by no means without it's own personality, and it has its fair share of hills to break up the monotony (how else could I have been careening?). But the westward drive on I-40 left me with a vast sense of dislocation. The swollen greens of Missouri blended through Oklahoma into the patched openness of northern Texas, which subtly and suddenly became New Mexico desert all the same – and there I was in the middle, my ability to see out the window forever impeded only by the sloping curvature of the earth. The space itself was an open invitation to everything and nothing all at once, potential and entropy crashing together where the last green-brown blur met the sky.

          Maybe it was the week at Math Camp, but I couldn't help thinking of Zeno in that moment that he first considered his paradox. Imagine: the man stands at one end of a room staring across the infinite expanse of infinitesimal spaces set before him, unable to register the wall before him so bewildered is he by the inch and half inch and millionth of and inch and a millionth of that millionth right before his toes. He cannot help but quail at the task before him: the infinitude of motion closes in on him, the expanse ever approaching him in these millionths of millionths, some kind of inexorable localized eschaton trumpeting the banality of every possible step. He is paralyzed by the task. Which millionth of a millionth of a millionth might he dare to cross?

          In an instant, the world spins away in that green-brown blur – the walls and floor, his hands, those feet. And Zeno, a man who has never heard of canvas, finds himself twisting through some kind of monster scene, the bastard child of Van Gogh and Dadaism. His mind a swirling, darkening, stationary monument to the rigor of Greek logic, he has beaten Descartes and Sartre to the punch. He cannot know the impossible distances his blood has traveled, the countless electrons shivering with anticipation in his own fading body. How could he eat a peach?

          And in one further cosmologically shattering motion, his right foot comes into perspective, swinging confidently across such infinite space, the room bursts back into existence, and first half, then all of his body crosses this immense mass of space. As step follows step, he does what he cannot, and his mind is restored to an order that his logic could not define. Reaching the opposite side of the room, he begins to write.

          And, strangely, here I still am – me and my new city in the middle of the desert, walls and roads and sand beyond. I have taken Zeno's step inductively and crossed that room, marked the blur and walked into it. I have crossed these 2100 million millionths, and the horizon has become a solid thing – faces here and signs as well.

          There's good news, too: the blur is ever returning and the curvature of possibilities themselves ineluctable. I do believe I will enjoy taking more steps, making these infinite millionths of anywheres into somewheres to behold.

ironicisms

Poetry
Is easy, like cake, or whores,
Except not like cake, more like
The frosting or the roses
Pretending to be frosting, that sweeten
and sour --
Or something like that.
I don't actually know much
About whores.

Experience
Is tripe. As if Emily Dickinson
Had to go anywhere
And Hemingway died in his bed.

this poem is new and out of season

I was trying to think of something to say about magic squares at the first day of science camp, but I got distracted. So a poem popped out instead (so it IS like magic . . . kind of). At any rate, for lots of nifty arithmetic, check out the wikipedia page on magic squares. Also included are magic turtles, Roman deities, and crazy Germans. You might even like it.

Please don't judge my poem too much, since I don't claim to be good at this. Suggestions are welcome. I already dislike lines 2 and 3 more than the rest.

TS

Virgin Winter

Fledgling snow whirls drowsily,

Polarized jumble knocked from full-nest sky,

And breaks with the morning,

Glistens brightly, forms white transparencies

Fractured over aspirations,

Jettisoned upon those dark strands.

Such vagrant adolescence

Hopestruck and enveloped in her rising,

Her dancing, brighting eyes.

Drivers, Kittens, and Thieves: Our Modern Life

Well. First off all, despite the post title, this post has nothing to do with Rocko. Sad, I know. It may trend that direction as time goes on. Why? Well. It turns out graduating from college has left me with no pressing creative or academic demands and more time than I know what to do with. So, of course, it's back to the blog that I made once in a fit of irrationality -- and never posted to again -- because, well . . . why not?

This is an essay I wrote in the fall (2010), now a memoriam for the house I no longer live in, if you will. I'll be posting thoughts, essays, stories (if I ever finish one), and poetry (if I ever like one) as the mood strikes me (frequently, I hope). For now -- a slight tirade against modern egapathy (I just made that word up, and I did not use it in the essay itself. That said -- I like it.). The poem is a recent addition, since the essay made me think of it.

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
-- Talking In Bed, Philip Larkin

How My Cat Was Sold On the Internet

(and related musings from the road)

The small campus of Hillsdale College lies just outside the downtown area of the small town of Hillsdale, which itself lies within the small county of Hillsdale – which, perhaps merely to break the trend, lies in the very average sized state of Michigan. In any case, my apartment is perhaps 200 yards away from that small campus, and between my front door and the first set of classroom buildings lies exactly one road. So one might make the assumption that my walk to class each morning passes without any incident, at least most of the time. So I assumed, at least, when I signed the rental agreement: it's not as though I am trying to cross a street in New York or Bombay. Unfortunately (and to my great displeasure), in making this assumption I was terribly wrong.

To frame the problem mathematically: the nearest intersection of major roads to my point of crossing is approximately 120 steps to the east, and it takes me (approximately) 10 steps to cross from my sidewalk to the sidewalk on the opposite side, going north. Given my experience hiking, I know that when walking to class, I am traveling at an average rate of 3.5 miles per hour. So if distance equals rate times time, and we measure distance in steps covered, then my ratio of steps covered to rate of speed is .35. Almost daily, however, there is a car pulling across the intersection and towards my crossing point as I step out into the street, and almost daily there is very little distance between me and that car by the time I reach the opposite side. Which is only to say, applying my ratio above (where our time of travel is approximately equal), the car in question must be traveling at an average speed of 42 miles per hour across those 120 steps – though the sign clearly says 25.

This is frustrating for a number of reasons, and not included among these reasons is the simple fact of law. I, too, am known to drive ten miles over the speed limit, especially on the highway. I am not a backyard cop, nor am I some kind of legalistic whistle-blower. I am, however, someone who appreciates being able to cross the street without fearing for my extremities, someone who does not appreciate being sprayed by standing water during the wet part of the year, and – perhaps most importantly – someone who does not appreciate dirty looks when I am clearly doing nothing wrong. By all means, drive 45 miles an hour in a 25 zone, but don't start shaking fingers at me and honking your horn when you have to slow down so that I can finish crossing the street in safety, if not without discomfort. As far as I can tell, this is a reasonable agreement, if you are aware of the basic terms.

For the most part, then, it seems as though the most logical explanation for the average speed of cars on this road is a kind of illiteracy – an inability to contextualize the statement “SPEED LIMIT” and the two digit number “25”. It is a simple application of Ockham's Razor, and the most charitable I can imagine: drivers around the intersection of College Street and Manning Street at the entrance to Hillsdale College simply cannot read the signs, and are therefore unaware of the rules. They cannot help but find me a nuisance, an interruption of their all-too-proper driving protocol. According to their standards, I am showing great discourtesy, even as they are making the same transgression according to mine. I should feel obligated, in the context of charity, to forgive them their various offenses if they were, in the most literal sense, idiots. We are speaking different languages: I am the sea and they are the wind.

And yet. All of these people operating vehicles are driving around a college campus, and so it is safe to assume that a large number of them are students of the college. It would be ridiculous to suggest that a population of young men and women uniformly expected to understand The Odyssey and Hamlet would be unable to interpret such simple words as “speed” and “limit.” They know the language as well as I do, and they are certainly not idiots – though their driving is particularly marked by occasions of both sound and fury. Ockham's Razor fails to explain this phenomenon, and my efforts toward charity prove themselves to be misplaced. Fully willing to concede an average (or even above-average) level of intelligence, then, I am still left with a sort of dilemma: why am I standing on the other side of the road, wet and out of breath after scampering away from yet another vehicle hell-bent on starting my morning with an uncomfortable rush? And why in the name of all that is good and beautiful are they the ones angry at me?

In order to answer that question, I choose only to observe the egocentric nature of people today – of whom these drivers are but a sample. It is a symptom of a culture which does not understand the underlying notions of courtesy and discourtesy – notions which provide any culture’s very foundation. In the drivers' eyes, I am at fault, if only because I am me, and they are them, and I am not. My existence as a person, to whom some deference might be shown, never comes up as a blip on their XM radar: I am but a chunk of flesh in the way of their morning destiny, a fly in their double-espresso, grande, two cream no sugar, shot of vanilla flavoring, Costa Rican blend Starbucks coffee supreme. Once again – I am not.

I don't mean to indict anyone in particular, certainly no specific drivers residing in the town of Hillsdale near Hillsdale College in Hillsdale County, Michigan. Much to the contrary, my first goal here was and still is to be charitable – lest I fall into the very habit of mind that I now criticize. I am, however, concerned with the common notion that their arrival to work within thirty seconds of their intended time-frame is vastly more important than my safe conduct across one street. Which is not to say that I consider my being on time more important than their being on time – or my comfort more important than their punctuality – but that it is possible to live in a world where we both are on time, and neither one of us is wet, out of breath, or angry. I concede, in my scampering, their human desire to avoid humiliation and tardiness; I only ask the same in return. It is not the actual event that bothers me – people are waterproof, clothes are washable, and if I have to run too fast, I know where I can find Gatorade. It is rather the thought, or lack thereof, which causes the event in the first place that leaves me a bit unsettled.

I am only observing the trend – that common courtesy has somehow become uncommon, lost in the great expanse of camera-phones, American Apparel brand, “Coexist” bumper stickers, Coldplay t-shirts and automated iPod dispensers. It seems we are quickly forgetting what it means to be considerate, becoming increasingly unaware of persons outside our individual selves.

A slight divergence, but an appropriate story nonetheless: three years ago (2007), after a summer spent working at Boy Scout camp, I returned home to find that one of my neighbors had sold my cat on the internet.

From her perspective, the action appeared perfectly rational: she had found the cat wandering through her yard and wanted to find a home for it. Through a popular animal adoption forum, she quickly contacted a new owner in my area, and the deal was made. There was no longer a cat in her yard, she had found it an owner, and all was well with her world. For my neighbor, there was no longer any problem. Yet it seems such a small request to ask that, before driving the cat to a home 15 miles away, she ask her closest neighbors if they were missing a cat, or if they knew who someone who was. (Since we live on adjacent parcels of land ranging from two to five acres, she would have to make maybe five phone calls, a walk less than 200 yards down a few homely country lanes). For her, the result would have been the same: the cat having a home, her not having a cat. For us, her immediate resolve to eschew real human contact made all the difference: my mother still has not allowed my father to get her a new cat.

Perhaps my neighbor did not do anything particularly wrong – there was no moral or legal transgression in her finding a home for a lost domestic animal – but she did not do anything right or good either. It never crossed her mind to ask her neighbors if they were missing a cat; the idea of being considerate, of having what was once called common courtesy, never once crossed her mind. She was, like so many people today, living by the lowest standard of perceived obligation. She was content to be a neutral.

What I am suggesting, then, is that many frustrations, insults, lawsuits, and cat-nappings are caused less by a culture intent on rudeness, but rather by a cultural inability to define itself as anything other than not wrong, not bad, not untrue. Everyone wants everyone else to know one simple thing: “I am not a bad person.” But what a way to define oneself – not by the potential for good, but the absence of a potential for evil! We are encouraging each other not to desire to excel in our existence as human beings, and our goods are becoming not merely opposite, but defined in terms of our evils. We recognize charity because it is not theft. The foundation of our collective morality – and thus legality, community, and thereby culture – has become, in every sense, a negation.

Maybe, I should think, instead of honking and four letter words, we should ask the guy on the side of the road if he needs a ride for the next couple miles – even if we know he will refuse. Maybe instead of trying to get rid of the cat, we might take care of it for a few days. But more importantly, we cannot forget that the guy on the side of the road is a person, just like ourselves, and that stray cats usually have owners, if not good ones. These people are, in fact, people. They exist. If you prick them, do they not bleed? To determine your relation to a complete stranger by the harm you do not do him – and the potential harm he does or does not do you – leaves us in a terrible place, one where cats are sold on the internet without even the slightest remorse. Perhaps we should consider a new perspective as we make our way across and down roads, asking not what we should not do to the guy on the side of the road, and asking what we can do for him.

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was set upon by theives. They took his things, stripped him of his clothes, and went away. Some men walked by, causing him no harm, and went on their way. But a Samaritan saw the man, bandaged his wounds, and took him to the inn – all at his own expense. One of these men has been praised for generations, has been called a neighbor, and is known for his mercy; the others have been condemned since this story was first told. The question is not whether we can manage to abstain from intentionally causing others to suffer: the question is whether or not we will go and do likewise – and what we will become when our actions form an answer.