In Gail R. O’Day’s article titled I Have Called You Friends, she writes about the subject of friendship. She notes two dimensions of friendship in antiquity that can help us make sense of Jesus’ understanding of friendship—
“the gift of one’s life for one’s friends and the
use of frank and open speech, (both) informed the way that the Gospel of John and its readers understood language about friendship.”

She goes on to say that “the Christian vocation is to give love freely and generously without counting the cost or wondering and worrying about who is on the receiving end of our limitless love…. Jesus gave everything to his friends—his knowledge of God and his own
life. Jesus is our model for friendship—because he loved without limits—and he makes it possible for us to live a life of friendship because we have been transformed by everything he shared with us. Through friendship we come to know God and through friendship we enact the love of God. We
can risk being friends because Jesus has been a friend to us.”

If our beginning assumption is that Jesus makes such friendship conditional, that Jesus withholds friendship from some on the basis of those conditions, that Jesus chooses some to be friends while discarding the rest, then we are seriously missing a key aspect of who God is.

When Jesus says in John 15:12, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command”, He is not limiting the scope of His friendship towards us, He is attaching our actions and words- our willingness to be a friend to God- to the command to love. The quesion at hand is whether we are being a friend to God by loving each other.

To say to someone, we cannot be friends or you are not my friends or I am not interested in friendship with you, is to instead call that person my enemy. And if we are to take the above verse seriously, this is akin to saying to God, you, then, are my enemy.

Jesus’ love has no bounds, no limits. Jesus does not make friendship conditional, He makes it necessary. More than this, He embodies it in His death and resurrection. We are, each of us, called to walk the same path without condition.

“And when now in our enlightened age, where all anthropomorphic and anthropopathic conceptions of God are deemed inappropriate, it is none the less not considered inappropriate to think of God as a judge, like an ordinary magistrate or a superior military judge…”

• Soren Kierkegaard (The Sickness unto Death)

I have a nephew who has been in university getting his degree in criminology. This semester he is taking a philosophy class, studying the existentialists. He is not a believer in God, but we have plenty of great conversation when it comes to religion and philosophy. He inspired me to dive back in to the existentialists, just to ensure I can be a better conversation partner. I forgot how much this stuff speaks my language.

In particular, Kierkegaard, our resident existentialist, has a whole lot to to say about the relationship between things like despair and our conceptions of God. I really appreciated the broader implications of the above quote to this end, especially in context of the book itself. One of the questions the quote begs is this; there are tendencies within Christianity to conceive of God as wholly (or holy) other, and subsequently to resist anthropomorphic depictions and to actively distance the creator from creation.

With one exception- the judge. There seems to be very little hesitancy in these same theological leanings to parlay human conceptions of justice on to the character of God, even to the point of assuming that certain societal constructs and systems are direct reflections of how God does and would act when it comes to justice. We (a generalized we) say, if we would act this way, then God must act this way. And often this way includes ideas such as a God who must punish to be just and/or who must punish with death to be just.

I wonder if this is a point of great inconsistency when it comes to such theological approaches.

I believe that Romans is commonly misread and misapplied due to prior allegiances to the idea of law as “works that save” and grace as “imputed righteousness”, or unmerited favor/grace. This understanding of the law versus faith/grace paradigm also lends itself to particular understandings of other terminology and ideas inherent in the text, such as defining righteousness as “moral righteousness” or seeing in Paul’s letter an in interest in the progression of salvation within an individual. Romans has long been fertile ground for Protestants to see in its pages arguments for divine election and predestination.

All of these things, in my opinion, are readings that fail attend for both Paul’s audience and the context for which he is writing, often ignoring these things outright in favor of upholding particular doctrines, which of course get imposed back on to our readings of Romans effectively pulling the text out of its context and failing to ask the appropriate questions of the text in its world.

So how might I make this case? I think one way would be to appeal to the arc of Pauls story as it develops and forms within actual history. If we begin at the start, meaning if we look at the earliest writings that we have from him chronologically speaking, this is a good way to see the seeds of his ideas taking shape against the larger backdrop of the Jerusalem council, recorded in Acts 15. This is where we see an agreement being reached with the “pillar apostles in Jerusalem (Wright, The New Testament in its World) regarding the primary issues facing the early church amidst Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles.

So where do we begin chronologically? With Paul’s letter to the Galatains. It doesn’t take long to note that the same issues regarding Law and Gospel are present here, if in an earlier state of formation. Wright even suggests that “this letter is sometimes percieved as the angry younger sibling of the more composed and reflective letter to Rome.”

Right from the start, its important to see in Galatians an assumption within certain segments of protestant writings that Paul is “saying Farewell to his Jewish heritage”. This is where we find the seeds of the age old Christainity versus Judaism storyline. That is worth noting because that’s a massive obstacle one would need to overcome in order to even begin to reconsider common readings of Romans. It is that ingrained into our thinking. To change course would feel like losing a grip on the Gospel (I know this because this is what I went through). And yet this is actually intended to get us closer to the Gospel.

To dig a little deeper, one of the things that seems to bolster such views of us versus them is the presence of certain opponents in Galatains. It would be the seeds of these opponents that Paul references in Romans 15 and 16, meaning that the division that we find in the Roman Church is the fruit of these seeds taking root. But as Wright suggests, “if we are to avoid making Paul a proto-Marcionite, if we are going to refuse temptations to project our own theological disputes into the letter, then we need to read Galatains very carefully, attentive to both its context and content.”

So who are these opponents? “Paul writes this letter to the Galatians after learning that certain agitators or intruders have gained a foothold in these churches, urging the male gentile believers to be circumsized.”

For reference, the issue dividing the Roman Church following the gradual return of Jews to Rome after being purged, was a “majority gentile church arguing over whether gentile converts need to be circumsized in order to follow Jesus.”

Wright notes the complicated political and theological backdrop behind this concern. Often what gets assumed by specific protestant readings focused on those conceptions of law and Gospel in conflict is that the Jews assumed that works of the law are the things that saved a person whereas Jesus demonstrated that it is only by grace through faith that one is saved, grace anchored in the death of Jesus as the free gift imputed to us by way of His moral righteousness. But, in my opinion and according to my studies, this is not an accurate reflection of what is going on within the text in its world. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls opened up a window into the ancient Jewish world that turns this idea of Law and Gospel on its head, sparking a movement of reform in relationship to that whole Jews versus christianity narrative that had crept into the western, protestant church.

In Galatains, Paul is opposing two things:

1. The agreement reached by the Jerusalem council being undermined

2..A departure from the Gospel

What is the Gospel in Galatains. In line with Paul calling it “the Gospel of Jesus” in Romans, here in Galatians it is simply “the death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ”. As Wright suggests, “the choice that Paul puts to the Galatian believers is whether or not Jesus is Israel’s Messiah.” This has to do with “whether he brings people into the promised new exodus by his own faithfulness to the (covenant promise), or whether he simply adds to and enhances the old dispensation of Moses.”

In simple terms: did Jesus fulfill the promise by ushering in the promised new age, or did he not. And if he did not, what are we left with but the reality of a still persisting exile. That is what concerns Paul. For the objectors, the failed promise is rooted in Israel’s failure to be faithful to the covenant by way of participating in pagan worship and idolatry. This is why circumsicion mattered to them, because it meant that one was being called out of their old life and set apart for particpation in the new. It was the counter to exile. For Paul though, “if righteousness, that is, the status of being forgiven and possessing a right standing within the covenant, could be gained or validated by means of observing Torah, the Jewish Law”, then not only did “the Messish die for nothing”, but the story of Torah has no way of making sense of itself. The story of Torah, which is the proper understanding of the law (not moral works) ended with exile. Therefore this is what circumcision binds them to. Paul’s argument in Galatains, which sets the stage for his dramatic rendering in Romans, is that Jesus invites this community into the remainder of this story, proclaiming the arrival of a new exodus as the true answer to the exile. Something that arrives in line with the story of Torah and the ensuing reality of messianic expctation. Therefore, Law is not understood here as works that save. It is understood as the story of exile, through which the story of enslavement and liberation looms large in the background. It is reflective of a story that says something about their present reality. The Gospel breaks into this not as an altrernative portrait of salvation, but as a way of finding in this story the very thing that allows salvation to come about and be proclaimed- the good news that, according to the scriptures (the covenant promise and messianic expectation), God has at long last did what He said He would do, demonstrating His faithfulness and ushering in the new age. As Wright puts it, he has rescued creation from the grips of “the Evil age”, which Romans describes as the “reign of (Sin) and Death”. Gods “new world has dawned”, and for both the Galatains and the Roman communities, Paul is speaking to those who have already heard this Gospel and who have been met with and responded to the subsequent invitation this brings (the exodus comes first, Sinai follows) towards living as a people of the newly established kingdom, and who are dealing with seeds that threaten to undermine this story and erode their hope in the truth that Jesus is who He says He is and did what He said He did as the fulfillment of Gods covenental promise. It’s on this basis that Paul looks to faith, or faithfulness (allegiance to the kingdom of God) as the thing that cuts through both stories and demonstrates the true point of the Gospel as invitation to particpation, the story of Israel and that of the Gentiles, binding them together under this singular act of Gods faithfulness to acting in and for the world.

In N.T. Wrights book The New Testament in His World, he writes of the process of canonization stating that “the New Testament canon was shaped and developed, in the first three centuries, because the leaders of the early church were determined to keep alive, and present afresh, the news that in Jesus the one true God was setting up his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.”

It’s a statement that on its face pushes back against liberal attestations that suggest the canon is tied to later politics and highly corruptible processes. And yet, at the same time, the statement arrives with clear push back against certain conservative conceptions about the canon and why it matters. Wright also insists that, in the world that gave rise to the process of canonization, by which he means the world that formed nearly immediately after Jesus’ ascension, “there was openness to a variety of Christian writings” in the “culture of the developing Church. If the diverse set of criteria used to determine the canon, for which despite the varied differences between East and West retain a strong sense of catholic cohesiveness, emerged from the convictions of these centuries, these same centuries reflect both a willingness to use, reference and read beyond the canon we have today as well as reflect a willingness to shape this into confessional liturgy regardless of, or in concert with, much dispute and disagreement.

A key aspect of canon formation that perhaps we have lost side of its adoption.

I was listening to an interview with author Cole Arthur Riley on her book This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us

In it she says that “the truest stories are rarely the ones that get told”. By this she means the stories we tell about ourselves, about others, and about the world in which we live.

She locates the primary reason for this in the fact that such stories are shaped primarily by external forces. We are, others are, the world is, the stories those external forces tell about us. And it is often the forces with the most power that determine which of those stories get told. This is as true for those of us who exist in a group like this, as it is for the ways the stories we can tell about the world shape how we see the world and act in the world. What makes this more problematic is that, be it in theology or in the world, we tend to take such stories and turn them into propositional truths which then bind one or the world or an idea to that proposition. The stories not only define us, but ones interpretation of that story defines us.

This had me thinking of another book that I recommend quite often- Biography as Theology: How Life Stories Can Remake Today’s Theology by James William McClendon Jr.

In this book McClendon makes a case for biographical theology as the antidote for propositional theology, which has run rampant through much of the modern theological landscape. Biographical theology is really just a reconstitution of narrative theology given a personalized and relational twist. Such an approach dares to wonder about this- if an existent God tells a story about Himself, about us, and about this world, how would this reshape who we are, how we see the world, and who we see God to be, if we gave this story the same sort of defining power over our world and over our lives? Which of course begs the further observation- which story is in fact being told, and how do we genuinely hear the story of God without our own stories getting in the way?

We can, I believe, say this with confidence: the stories we tell, or the stories another tell about us, matter deeply, and perhaps matter most of all. Because they determine who God is, who we are, and how we see the world. The challenge of biographical theology then is to pay attention to the ways we find ourselves in those stories and who precisely has the power to place us in them in particular ways. If we can begin with that question, we can then begin to ask how it might look different to belong to a different story.

And then, as it just may be, we might also be confronted with the truth that we have the power to shape another’s story based on how we tell it. And we can begin to think about how our own words and actions place others in the stories we have determined to tell. Which of course, is something that matters greatly.

I was listening to an interview with new testament scholar John Dominic Crossan (titled The Other Gospels) on how it is that we understand the nature of the four Gospels and their adoption as liturgy in the life of the early church given that they emerged in a world where there were many gospels in existence.

He notes that it would be a mistake to simply discard and ignore the other Gospels using blanket terms like gnostic, for example. It would be much better to recognize that these gospels emerge in a world shared by the synoptics and John, they have a history, a theology and a polemic that can help us understand that world,.and they can point to the larger conversation that did exist at the time.

He also talks about how understanding the nature of the four gospels adopted into the NT can allow us to see how they don’t function apart from that larger conversation. For example, if, as it is often suggested, Mark was written first, and if, as is often suggested, Matthew and Luke (and even John) borrowed from Mark, what this then tells us about tradition of Matthew, Luke and John is that they had some of these other gospels and in fact incorporated them into their own retellings of Mark with intention. Crossan makes the interesting observation that the gospel (or gospels) they incorporate are in fact apocalyptic traditions, whereas something like the gospel according to Thomas is functioning as a polemic against the apocalyptic tradition. This suggests a shared world with two different viewpoints, likely determined by context.

Perhaps the most important point comes from his assessment of the 4 gospels shared genre/tradition being one of the primary reasons they got primacy- they are narrative gospels, or belong to the narrative tradition/genre. Meaning, for these gospel writers, telling the story was necessary. In fact, it is this narrative function and characteristic that binds them more directly and intentionally than any other known gospels to Judaism.

I was then listening to a podcast episode from the historical Jesus. It was titled Interpreting the Visitation. In it the host leans into the necessary place of the theophany in Jewish and Christian history. Meaning, telling the story of God. He cites Ezekiel as an example, noting how in Ezekiel 34 it begins with the promise to send a shepherd, followed by the statement that “I will be your shepherd”. Eveything that follows the proclamation of what this shepherd will do is defined as Gods work. So when we get to the story of Jesus and Jesus is applying the words of the shepherd to Himself, the story comes alive as theophany. Same with the way John the Baptist is depicted as leaping in the womb when he encounters the infant Jesus in Mary, langauge that is pulled directly from David dancing (leaping) before the ark. The theophany comes alive.

A reminder of how the Christain Tradition is anchored in the art of storytelling. This is how we encounter God, through the shared story. Crossan calls this the art of gospeling. News is information, but good is an act of interpretation. And the good news becomes the gospel according to you and me when we tell the story within our own contexts.

Matthew 16:13-16
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

1 John 2:21-23
21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. 23 No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

I’ve been spending some time with the existential philosophers lately, with Kierkegaard topping the list. One of the things that Kierkegaard argues is that true despair can only come from rejection of eternity, and rejection can only come through knowledge of eternity. By eternity he means the infinite, or god, or that which the finite/mortal challenges.

In many ways, I think this same idea is present when it comes to Jesus. One cannot escape the fact that all four gospels are shaped by the question, who is Jesus. This question drives the narratives, frames the tension, and informs their proclamation (good news).

The implication is this. The greatest praise comes when who Jesus is finds its proper confession. The greatest warnings come when those who know this confession set out to convince Jesus followers that He is someone else. Why? Scholar Colan Kruse does a great job in his commentary on 1 John detailing the warning of 2:21-23- by convincing people that Jesus was not who He said He was and did not do what He said He did they are being stripped of their hope. And as Kierkegaard suggests, this is the truest and most tragic form of despair. This is precisely what the dissenters who had broken away from the church and who were now infiltrating the church were doing to the readers of 1 John.

For Peter to declare that jesus was the messiah, the son of the living God, was to locate Jesus not as the prophet that the others were citing, but within the expectation of Gods promised work. In the story of Israel this identity couldn’t have been more clear, and yet in the person and work of Jesus it also does something quite unexpected- it announces that God has in fact broken into the middle of history and done a new thing. And when we get to 1 John, it makes these bold statements:
(1:2) He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

1:1 That which was from the beginning (the Gospel of the person and work of Jesus the Christ), which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life

1:3 Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ

3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters… This is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us

4: I have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world

4:2-3 Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.

4:9 He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him

Now, there can be some disagreement on this front regarding how this knowledge is known and whether it needs to be known in order for one to be in the kingdom of God. But I don’t think one can deny that in the scriptures we find the harshest words saved for those who know this to be true and who strip this hope from those for whom this truth is very real. It is to say that this reality that we know; this world enslaved to Sin and Death, our suffering and exile, enslavement and poverty, is more true than the proclamation that God has at long last done something about it. It is to say that our faithfulness, our conviction to live in allegiance to God and in the way of His character by way of obedience to His Word, is all in vain and meaningless.

1 John is probably the best place to go to hear what God thinks of such dissension. But it’s also readily apparent through the whole of the Gospels. Who am I, or who are you, is the most vital question concerning Christianity. That’s what made it so scandalous.

Reading Journal 2023: Existentialism: A Very Short Introduction
Author: Thomas R. Flynn

One might ask, is it possible to write a book that breaks existentialism down into words the common person can read and understand? Flynn gives this his best shot in this short introduction. But alas, if this is any indication, such a question is bound to become its own form of an existential crisis.

In truth, I’m not sure the existential philsophers entirely understand their own ideas. In many ways, such understanding kind of betrays the point of a philosophy that is designed to live in the tension of an existence both seemingly bound by the constraints of time an beholden to the problem of infinity.

What Flynn does undoubtedly achieve however is giving us a necessary foundation from which to explore existentialism. If there is a single defining factor, Flynn breaks it down to this idea- authenticity. Existentialism is ultimately interested in locating the authentic self in response to the problem of self deception. And part of what leads this endeavor into a perpetual state of crisis is the fact that authenticity is, by its very nature, an allusive construct.

How can we speak of the self when it seems impossible to locate ourselves in the present, the past always defining us and the future always deconstructing us?

How can we speak of truth when all truth is perpetually bound to contingency?

How do reconcile the fact that our lives seem pulled and driven by conceptions of the infinite when they are simitaneously bound by time

How can we build our ideas around an idealised humanism when reality seems determined to redefine us according to the universal rules and laws of nature?

How can find joy in the midst of despair?

How do we find the real when all of the mind seems built on illusion?

How do we recognize the importance of irrationality when authenticity demands we be concerned with the rational.

How do we reposition our focus in the practicalities of living in the present when such investments demand an allegiance to the irrational experiences of awe?

How do we give allegiance to the self when reality tells us the self is a construct and an illusion?

How do we appeal to the idea of the free self when such freedom is depenendent on the external forces that define it?

How do we live when the process of life is defined by dying

How can the reality of finitude motivate us to live when to live seems to need the infinite to justify itself?

How can we speak of freedom as responsiblity when nothing in life appears to be within our contol.

These are the sorts of questions that lie underneath the density of the philosophy. It is what allows for a diversity of thought to exist within the uniformity of that existential concern for authenticity, or the authentic self. And yet this diversity of thought also exists within the realization that such concerns place the weight of existence on their shoulders. To think of such things is to be embroiled not simply in the hard matters of existence, but in the fact that a perpetual awareness of what these hard matters actually are leaves existence stuck in the tension. Its kind of like the concept of love. When we understand what love is, we are faced with the realizationn that love is the reality of a physiological process doing its thing and creating the illusion of a feeling. We are faced with the truth that such physiological realities have a clear biological purpose- suriival. We recognize that love is not some external reality that exists outside of ourselves as some motivating force. An we recognize that love is a highly manipulatable construct.

And yet, to say anything at all about the authentic self also seems to require us to give the illusion allegiance as a motivating force. To speak of love as though it is something that exists outside of ourselves. So which is more true? And how does one exist alongside the other? This is the sort of tension that gives rise to the existential crisis. When we know what is happening when we fall in love, for example, and we note the processes that give rise to the emotion, and further when we can note the process and how easy it is to manipulate it, would such manipulation be more or less authentic to the self? Take this a step further- what if love, in reality, is all a matter of manipulation based on illusions of the self? Could we still authentically fall in love?

We can apply this same reasonsing to the concept of the self. In fact, this is what all of existentialism ultimately boils down to. If the self is not some entity that exists external to our “self”, as in something preexistent that we grow into or discover, and if the self is an emergent property based on circumstance and  choice, and if circumstance and choice bind the self to the external forces that shape us, then what do we do with something that can’t be whittled down to the present? If we are always becoming how can we be? And more astutely, if becoming is something we can manipulate and which is also completely beyond our control, how can we even speak about something such as authenticity in concrete terms?

It would make complete sense if you look at all that and simply choose to walk away. In some sense its easier to live rather than to think about living. And yet, at the same time the thinking matters because life is ridiculously hard. Sometimes it just seems necessary to pose the hard questions back at it. Does such angst actually have anywhere to go but into the empty space of that large philosophical void? Debatable. But it can be a way of allowing us to navigate the crisis. Or at the very least allowing us to feel like we are. For some of the existentialists there certainly was a sense of ultimate defeat lingering in the background. of this philosophical process That’s the risk. For others, there are moments of freedom that emerge, even if the path is long and treacherous and steep. This is just my observation, but where that intersection seems to meet is at the point where the authentic self meets with some sense of an ultimate reality. A freedom to say, this is true, or at the very least I can believe this to be true of reality. That is the singular, necessary facet of the process that then allows one to pursue authenticity in relationship to that ultimate reality, precisely because authenticity has something to measure itself by. And thats when we can recognize where our lives deviate from this measure and become inauthentic, or self deception. This won’t afford us certainty, but it can afford us functionality inbetween the inevitability of our next existential crisis.

(some pictures used from different promotional online sites or undocumentated available pictures online)

A local resident to Alabama described their state to me in the following way- the money’s in Huntsville, the cultures in Birmingham, and the power is in Montgomery (meanwhile, the good folks over there in Mobile seem to defy definition).

I was thinking about this descriptive while visiting the iconic southern locale. In fact, a number of people I talked to even suggested that the “southern” label is something that no longer makes complete sense when speaking of their “sweet home”. When you consider who is living and working in Huntsville today, for example, what you find is a space populated by leaders in the field of space, nuclear military, and technological development whom come from every corner of the greater United States and beyond. A truly international community. This thread continues through the diverse landscape that is modern day Birmingham.

I’m sure there would be plenty Alabama residents who might disagree with this descriptive, and for legitimate reasons, but it actually rings true to my own experience of visiting their space. This was not the south that I expected to find. What I found was something more nuanced and complex.

If I was to restate the above sentiment in my own words, I might say it this way- Huntsville is progress, Birmingham is present, and Montgomery is the past. What’s curious to me about this descriptive is the way these three things seem to function together as somewhat disparate entities, however unified they might be within the same overarching narrative of the southern experience, an indeed the larger umbrella of the American experience. This would be especially true when you consider the kind of progress that Huntsville represents. It boasts the marks of an upscale city marked perhaps most definitively by one of its most iconic sites, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

Last year it topped the U.S.’s best places to live list largely based on a mix of economic opportunity and a still relatively low cost of living, both of which are playing a role in its prestigious position as a leading player in a number of essential fields. With both eyes on the future, it is remaking itself in the glow of some America’s most wealthy and important companies.

Just an hour and a half further south, standing at the top of Birmingham’s gradual incline, a veritable city on a hill, is the unmistakable site of the Sloss Furnaces, a national historic landmark reflecting Birmingham’s long standing role in the industrial revolution.

Alongside this stands a massive statue of the Roman god, Vulcan, known as the god of fire forge, directly overlooking Birmingham’s university district.

These two images taken together provide a compelling portrait of the city that lays unassumingly at its feet, one steeped in its industrial past but one also shaped by a commitment to modern intellectualism. Birmingham truly is a city of the present, priding itself on a massive subsidation of the arts and culture. Fueled by a growing and diverse population and anchored in a well formed value for real diversity, led as it is by its deeply charismatic “put all the people first” mayor (43 year old Randall Woodfin, who is worth a google), the city uses its civil rights district, a testament to its pivotal role in the civil rights movement (something I’m looking to dive into with Diane McWhorter’s book Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climatic Battle of The Civil Rights Revolution) to tie its storied and often tragic past to its present in a tangible way.

This is a city that invests in and values its creatives, a fact that is nearly impossible to miss traversing its different neighborhoods. It is through its diverse cast of creatives that it finds an opportunity to tell its story in a way that translates to the lived experience, for those who’s lives connect directly to the past and those who have found themselves adopted into it. If the past is all but invisible in the perfectly paved streets and illustrious institutions of Huntsville, Birmingham finds new life by making the past a clear part of the narrative going forward. Nicknamed magic city for its iron rich landscape, to me this place presented itself as a case study for how build forward towards true reconciliation.

As one resident proclaimed, Birmingham might not be flashy, but its honest and homegrown, passionate, and real. A sentiment one might find in the sheer absence, relatively speaking, of endless suburbs and big box/chain stores.

I used a day to tour the city’s neighborhoods via its bookstores, which took me from historic Woodlawn

Beautiful Mountain Brook, a unique neighborhood tucked away into Ruffner Mountain

A local market built into an old Dr. Pepper bottling plant in a once glorified suburb now dedicated to local goods, markets and store fronts and connected directly to its culturally rich downtown hub

A downtown hub bustling during my visit with its annual sidewalk film festival.

Occupying the outskirts of the downtown area is also the railroad park, sitting directly adjacent to the cobblestone streets of Morris avenue, one of many sections of the city utilizing green space and forest as the driving force of its development. Morris avenue, by the way, a fact made apparently by its well marked signs, originated here through business aspirations from Montgomery, naming its district, an indeed modelling it after the famed English city from which it drew its inspiration. Take a walk down the historic street and you’ll be greeted by the smell of peanuts at the classic Alabama Peanut Co. and an endless array of local shops, cafes and restaurants. A perfect stroll to combine with the Park.

Its literary history and presence, which of course spills out into the rural, Alabama countryside, was my main draw, but you couldn’t talk to a local resident without the first thing out of their mouth being- the food. Perhaps due to chef Adam Evans winning the James Beard award, there is something in the air here that seems to be generating excitement over being the next great paradise for foodies. Beyond the homebred southern fare (I’m told beyond the typical BBQ and biscuits, hot chicken, pimento cheese fried green tomatoes, and boiled/freshly roasted peanuts are the must tries) which has apparently been trending more and more in Birmingham towards emphasizing its proximity to the coast, you’ll find a heavy mix of African and Mexican fare (I heard one person say that Birmingham was leading the way in important and necessary African studies).

About an hour further South of Birmingham, through the colorful mountain ridges and valleys that form the Red Mountain landscape, the foothills of the Appalachian region, is Montgomery. Trending towards the coastal regions of the Gulf of Mexico, this small city center looms large as the State’s capital. Truth be told, stepping on to its streets is like travelling back in time, the political shape of Montgomery rooted firmly in the story of its past. Its position on the Alabama river gives its coastal identity the sense of being a hub, connected to the southern trade routes from its inland position. You can actually smell the ocean air the minute you exit the valley and enter its city limits. This is a long ways off from the modern flourishes of Huntsville, to be sure, and its here that I actually felt most connected to what I perceived to be a genuine portrait of the “south”, if only because everywhere I went people were telling its story as a distinctly “southern” one.
Perhaps the most southern experience I had, outside of my eventual stop in Charleston (which is a whole other thing), was the opportunity to then get off the interstate and drive the backroads to places like Monroeville and Selma. Here the biscuits and grits, if only I could have indulged as a celiac, really come alive. Walking in the footsteps of the inspiration for To Kill a Mockingbird at Harper Lee’s hometown. Stopping at the small fruit and veggie stands. Reveling in the ability of brief rain showers to break the humidity (I’m sure I seemed strange driving with my sunroof open and my windows down as the rain came down, but it was glorious surrounded as I was by the long leaf pines), it was hard to experience the area without hearing Nat King Cole and Hank Williams lingering in the background, two natives to Montgomery’s past. Singing some lines from Hey, Good Lookin’ just seemed necessary to ordering up any necessary fare, if just to say I had some Jambalya on the Bayou.

Getting off the interstate and onto the backroads was actually the perfect way to process the weightiness of Montgomery’s history, captured so poignantly by its visual presence be it through the incredible and quite modern Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice, its well marked paths noting the story of Rosa Park, Martin Luther King, the Freedom Fighters, or on the road to Selma.

These backroads would eventually merge with Birmingham’s now familiar cityscape, bringing with this small loop the voices of reconstruction and the civil rights movement. As it encounters the revitalized culture of this present space, it attempts to reimagine a better way of living together. This to me sat in powerful contrast to the very visible notes of progress in Huntsville, cloaked as it is in the allure of the enlightenment project. Truth be told, its money comes from a history as a cotton trading center. I wondered, then, about the promises of these institutions as they continue to exist beyond the confines of this necessary conversation with Alabama’s past, and perhaps some of the irony to be found in the fact that Huntsville remains Alabama’s birthplace. Without Montgomery would we even know the right questions to ask of this unending pursuit of progress and advancement? To what end do these projects reach? I’m not sure myself when it comes to the right questions an potential answers. What I can say though is that I felt more sure of these questions navigating and experiencing the streets of Birmingham, anchored more firmly in the here and now. An unexpected place that, to me, reminded of the inevitable draw that I have towards Omaha, Nebraska, an equally unexpected small sized city that sort of reformed my idea of what a place can be when it is free to grapple with its past. In truth, it had been Charleston and Asheville that had long been on my checklist, one immersed in the sort of highly charged allegiances to confederacy and independence that I expected to find in the south, the other clearly prided on upholding its commitment to liberal ideas in the middle of Appalachia. In the end it was the understated Birmingham that won me over, a city I hope to return to someday.

Rewind to summer 2022. More than a little stir crazy from a prolonged pandemic, borders had finally begun to swing open, offering us an opportunity to go somewhere. Anywhere but here was the mantra. After some time deliberating, we ended up in Oklahoma City. Why Oklahoma City is a question we would be asked more times than we could count. If I sat down to explain the path to this somewhat obscure, mid-western escape, I promise it would make sense. It just became easier after a while to reduce it to a simple “why not”.

Summer 2023. Once again in deliberations, this time staring down potential flights to England as they jumped to an average price of $1500. Where to go when prices are literally sky high. We already had an early trip to Milwaukee planned around a concert, but it is a long summer- rest assured that’s not a complaint- and for as much as I love that Wisconsin cheese I was craving something more substantial.

As the summer days whittled away, so did potential ideas and options for getting away. We had some potential pieces on the table, but no significant agreement and even less that made practical sense to necessary budget travelers like us. The closer we got to the start of a new school season, the less desirable it was for Jen to venture too far off the beaten path. That’s when the idea of a potential solo trip came to the table.

Full disclosure: I had never travelled by myself before, so this was a first. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the experience. But we started the initial thought process. Where is somewhere I would like to go that Jen has little interest in? What were the parameters?

Sky high prices continue to rule out overseas. Local flights to particular North American destinations were within reason. Places I can drive to even more reasonable. One place that had been sitting at the top of my list was Charleston, South Carolina. It often finds itself in the fray of travel magazines and site’s top places to visit from year to year. I love the ocean. There was intrigue over the history and its stated old world charm. Considering that late August would put it in the thick of that southern, summer heat, such an idea was an immediate write off for Jen.

That’s when some other potential pieces started to fall into place. I had just started reading the recently released biography by Jonathan Elg on Martin Luther King.

What about taking those other southern states and turning that into a kind of pilgrimage? Giving the biography some boots on the ground context? Birmingham and Atlanta weren’t exactly on my radar in terms of potential travel destinations, but the more I reflected on its potential the more it seemed like a perfect fit for a solo venture.

Plans started to take shape and a last minute late summer escape came into being.

Along the way- and yes, for anyone wondering, this budget traveler did decide to drive the 2300 kilometer stretch to Birmingham by myself- I used the time to reflect, making my way through Elg’s biography. As I went along, the story of MLK turned into the story of America, and in many ways began to form into a cross-cultural movement from my own context into another. That last point is significant to me. I recall the moment this really hit for me, sitting just outside the doors of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church on Sunday morning, the day before the anniversary of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech an historic march.

Borrowing from the story behind the album, DJ Khaled’s album God Did, the preacher used Ezekiel 37:1-14 as a way to tie the story of Israel to the story of King to the story of the Black experience, to the story of the Black experience in Atlanta, to the story of Atlanta, to the story of America, to the story of the world, and ultimately to the story of me an you.The message walked through these following observations and questions:
Something happens when God changes your viewpoint from high to low.
“The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of the a valley; it was full of bones.” (Ezekiel 37:1)

Can these dead bones speak?
“Son of man, can these bones live?” (37:3)

Surrounded by death, do we believe in the power of the resurrection?
“So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, an the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them an skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.” (Ezekiel 37:7-8)

Do we believe we have this power?
“Come breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live… these bones are the people of Israel. They say, Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off. Therefore prophesy and say to them: This is what the Sovereign Lord says; My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel…. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.” (Ezekiel 37:11-14)

The phrase that binds this portrait together as a picture of hope is this- “Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 37:13). If you read further in the passage this connects directly to the idea of God’s faithfulness to the covenant promise. Even in the midst of dry bones, God makes an “everlasting promise”, a “covenant of peace” (37:26). A promise that “God’s dwelling place will be with them”, these raised up bones, and “I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

I came into this service still shaken from my time visiting Birmingham/Montgomery/Selma.

If there was one thing I was struck by, and to be sure there were many revelatory moments, standing in the spot where Rosa Parks boarded that bus, traversing the path of the freedom riders, walking the Edmund Pettus Bridge, or experiencing the EJI’s (Equal Justice Initiative) incredible museum and memorial, it was just how much of a cross cultural movement this was for me. As a Canadian I tend to encounter two primary responses to things going on south of the border. Either I encounter those who, on the grounds of Canada’s tendency to major in American history and minor in our own, want to distance our story from theirs claiming full understanding of what that story is, or I encounter those who want to shine on a light on the story of black discrimination north of the border, resisting those moves to distance ourselves from the problem.

And yet what became clear to me was, this is not my story. This is not Canada’s story. And the story I thought I knew was not the one I encountered. Not unlike the sentiments in an opinion piece on the anniversary of the march on washington penned by Jamelle Bouie for the New York Times titled The Forgotten Radicalism of the March on Washington, it was clear how easy it is to reduce the civil rights movement to a quick list of popular touchpoints, kind of like a tourist hitting all the necessary sights. And yet, as Bouie points out, “less well remembered… is the fact that both the march an King’s speech were organized around much more than opposition to anti-Black discrimination.” Bouie goes on to say that the “march wasn’t a demand for a more inclusive arrangement under the umbrella of postwar American liberalism… it was a demand for something more.- for a social democracy of equals, grounded in the long Black American struggle to realize the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the potential of Reconstruction”, defined as they were by the official ten demands given to Washington.

Which is to say, this is a distinctly American story with an American context and a very real concern for the oppression that existed an exists on American soil. Which is also to say- this is not my story. This is not the story of Canada. Canada has its own story. If I am to know this story I must resist the tendency to make the story synonymous with my own.

And yet, as the sermon that Sunday demonstrated, it is at the same time a story that is not contained to such boundaries. To hear and to learn how the Black experience approaches an applies the story of Israel, for example, is to invite me to consider how I read the same story from my own vantage point. For me, the a portrait of a prophet speaking to an enslaved and divided nation, offering a word of hope to those dry bones, who are being raised up and given power to enact change and declare liberation, was an invitation to know this same God in my own context. standing as I was on the outside looking in. To know that this story is not simply about an oppressed people being afforded liberation and life, but that such liberation and life comes with the invitation to bear witness of this knowledge of God to the whole world is the thing that invites me in as a participant.

Talking to one Atlanta resident prior to the service, I noted how the weight of my experience in Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma, an experience that evoked similar emotions to visiting Auschwitz, contrasted with the hopefulness that I felt travelling this path from King’s childhood home and boyhood neighborhood to his final resting place and Church. There was something in the air here that helped turn immense tragedy to life, even in a climate where, as the sentiments they shared seemed to echo, the dry bones of this present moment felt more like witnessing to zombies wandering around in a zombie land (to borrow the language of the preacher).

Right before I left on my trip someone sent me a timely article. It was also from the New York Times, and it represented two different opinions on the subject of travel. In one article, penned by Agnes Collard titled “The Case Against Travel”, the general sentiment was that “travel turns us into the worst versions of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at our best”. The target of this sentiment was this- travel as a status symbol. This can equally be applied to being well read or well educated. Collard conjures up the great philosophers of the past and contrasts them with this emergent idea called “tourism”, locating the greatest ideas and most fruitful accomplishments in those who disdained the idea of turning other places into shrines. When we are at home we tend to avoid touristy spots like the plague. When we travel, touristy spots become the portrait we find of places not our home. And the only thing travel really tends to foster are people who love to talk about their travels and those who hate to listen to travellers talk. As the writer puts it, “forms of communication driven more by the needs of the producer than the consumer.” The primary question becomes this: “(One) might speak of their travel as though it were transformative, a once in a lifetime experience, but will you be able to notice a difference in their behavior, their beliefs, their moral compass? Will there be any difference at all?” And then they pose this question:

“Imagine how your life would look if you discovered that you would never again travel.”

Collard suggests that what would become immediately clear is all the ways in which travel functions as an illusionary practice breaking up the monotony of life in a singular place, “obscuring from view the certainty of annihilation.” And just to dial this down even more, Collard accentuates this with the following sentiment: “You don’t like to think about the fact that someday you will do nothing and be nobody. You will only allow yourself to preview this experience when you can disguise it in a narrative about how you are doing many exciting and edifying things…. Socrates said that philosophy is a preparation for death. For everyone else, there’s travel.”

Ross Douthat penned a responsive opinion piece to this article titled The Case For Tourism: “Community and Sublimity on a European Vacation”. He sums up his opinion in this way.

“Seen clearly, one might argue, the entire world is shot through with majesty, which is why the perfectly enlightened need never practice tourism. But there are places where the sublimity is especially strong… Going in search of such places is no substitute for seeking deeper forms of conversion an communion. But neither is it just a detour or distraction from those obligations. The sublime justifies itself.”

I had these dueling think pieces lingering in the back of my mind for most of my trip. I wondered about what the sublime means, what enlightenment means, what it means to distinguish between a traveler and a pilgrim or even if we need to, and how my own sense of wanderlust relates to this. For me I returned, as a I typically do, with a greater appreciation for my home. But I also returned with a greater awareness of what travel means for me- it broadens my world. It broadens my awareness of the world. It helps me to see how this place I call home is indeed a microcosm of the bigger picture of this story we call the world, one pertinant an aware with its own particularities and questions.

One of the things that Elg’s biography did, being the first to incorporate the recent release of a mountain of information and documents along with testimonies of eye witnesses now free to speak this many years later, is demythologize King in the public eye. He was a complicated human with very real shortcomings. And yet it is in the demythologizing that we are able to see the true power of his accomplishments. As travelers, we romanticize the places we have not been to and have not seen. To traverse these places is to have them stripped of their mystery and cast in a new light. The real question becomes, is a demythologized figure someone we can still find wonder in? Is a demytholgoized place somewhere we can still find wonder in? The true worth of travel for me is its ability to encourage us to do just this. To recover the sort of wonder that is willing to reclaim the mystery of the myth in a world that threatens to redefine these stories as mere illusion. The problem with demythologizing is that things like wonder an hope tend to be tossed out the door as well. And yet thats not what I experience in the doors of this church. Rather, what I found was an inate desire to allow the God known in the demythologizing of these dry bones to reveal the greater reality of the resurrrection, hope in a world often thrust into darkness. In this sense the myth becomes a truer representation of their reality. In this sense travel opens us up to a greater awarness of the world and its genuine mystery an wonder. That we can appreciate and enjoy the art of good travel at the same time- good food, good sunsets, the joy of an ocean front, good company, interesting and awe inspiring sites- is simply part of the wonder.