23 August 2005

Today begins a venture through various parts of Stanley Hauerwas' book A Better Hope.

In a chapter called "On Being a Christian and an American" Hauerwas draws on Martin Marty as part of the discussion on telling American Stories. He writes that Marty cannot bring himself to abandon the attempt to create a common "sentiment" (within the differences of our common culture) through what he calls the "commensurable possibilities in storytelling."
(Marty) thinks this is possible if we learn to think of the nation less as a community and more in terms of Michael Oakeshott's understanding of a "civil association." An association does not demand a credal bond or personal intimacy but rather requires us, like porcupines, to stand at a distance from one another learning the delight in the other that only distance can produce. ...Marty suggests that we best understand a commonwealth not as a community of communities but as an association of associations. This would allow people in various groups to live in partly incommensurable universes of discourse and yet to find it valuable to interact in ways other than military force and cultural conflict. Rather than reaching for guns, people will learn to "reach for argument, and the telling of stories from different perspectives is a form of argument. One cannot have a republic without argument."

In a world and country set on warfare and threats as a way to deal with life on this planet filled with diverse ways of being humans, who will take the lead in this "association" of porcupines...or story tellers who speak and then listen so that many sides will be open to our hearing and our investigation and our argumentation? If Christians really do want to stand up and be a part of the cultural development of our country then doesn't it make sense that we would never agree to any kind of preemptive actions that cause us to remove ourselves from the intensity of dialogical arguments just so we can use military might as a way to disassemble true community conversation? But then again, if we are afraid, as a country, to enter into the give-and-take of global communication that honors the other voices at the table, we may simply end up with a table that will only have room for our own voices. That sounds like a self-destructive scenario that will also create destruction all around the world.

Connection: I know that listening to the stories of others can be time consuming and difficult to sustain interest and a critical ear. It is always worth a days worth of effort...than another...and another until it becomes somewhat of a natural way of being with others.

In the midst of our stories, O Narrator of Life's Possibilities, we miss so many other stories and can become self- absorbed to the point that we make ourselves enemies of the strangers among us. Grant us wisdom to be patient, critical, respectful, and bold so that we will live our lives engaged by the voices of your people. Amen.