The pastor today was sermonizing on what is a Lutheran and said it's not someone who eats ludefisk, or is a northern European, since Namibia is 95% Lutheran. In addition, 22,000 Japanese are Lutherans, and there is someone in Shanghai. There are even Australian Lutherans and Lutherans in India and maybe in Antarctica.
Lutheranism means that you believe in Jesus, and that's it. Anyone who tries to add on works righteousness as an aspect of Christianity isn't really a Lutheran. No one knows what they are, but they're not Lutheran.
So much for the Lutheran part.
What then is a surrealist? Well, surrealism is a French movement that ended in 1966 with Andre Breton's death. Or sputtered on for another few years, depending on which history you read.
Breton was an extreme secularist some say, but nevertheless he drew inspiration from George Hegel (who was a Lutheran), and from Soren Kierkegaard (who was a Lutheran), and from Marx (who was raised as a Lutheran), and who searched throughout his life for a spark of insanity from some unworkable system (he tried Marxism, but threw it over, and then the Occult (the above card is from a Tarot deck that was designed by a surrealist named Matta), and finally, anarchism, but never found anything that worked and his movement was ultimately eclipsed by the Existentialists, who took off from Kierkegaard, and managed to garner adherents throughout French Bohemia). Breton had been raised as a Catholic and his mother boxed his ears when he didn't attend Sunday School.
So breton rejected Christianity, but was he in fact a Christian? He was against sin: against mercantile exploitation, against high incomes, against the use of others as only a means to an end. Was he Christian in everything but name?
Lutheran Surrealism is a continuation of the Bretonian search for love and humor, as subsets of the marvelous, but we claim to return the movement to the Christian context that was foolishly rejected at its inception. Jesus was always the truest avatar of the Surrealist conception, and Lutheranism was always the truest aspect of Christianity. Thus, Lutheran Surrealism is an intertwining of two strands of research that were always looking for one another: the Lutheran part as ethics and religion, and the surrealist part as the artistic aspect. It's an open movement. Anyone can join in our conversations. Well, as long as you feel called to do so.
8 comments:
kirby it seems a little distasteful that you would engage in identity politics at a time when the very integrity of the democratic system is at stake
i mean we're at a corssroads aren't we we're staring into an abyss are we not?
that you would propose some esoteric purity some kneejerkslapstickcognitiveshortcircuitingsophomoric humor that passes for doctrine only here yeah you've articulated your own little doctrine
big EFFFFFING deal
ooo the little way of kirby
surrealism in the narthex
do lutheran churches have
narthexes
what's next
i gotta go
still
this is a little shameless
you have to admit
happy all saints day
all saints all saints
saints siants saints
everywhere you look saints
peace
jh
jh,
I don't know. It seems that between the picture on this thread, the "Let Greenland be Green," and "Dreams of Illegal Immigration," Kirby is working out his secret desire to become a third-rate pornographer. You've got to watch out for these repressed types, but I do feel obligated to say that if this is the where this blog is going, there are better products out there.
Anyway, Lutheran churches have narthexes. Not to pick at scabs, but you might remember that (1) we stole our first church buildings from you guys, fair and square, narthexes and all, and (2) the narthex of a Lutheran church is where Scott Roeder sold his soul to the devil.
You know, I often close with "peace," and I mean nothing less than "peace," to you. But the question of the day is which applies, Isaiah 57:19, or Jeremiah 6:13?
It was written, and indeed, sung, that "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." But Brother, these days, I do.
Peace
What was Breton's beef with Ilya Ehrenburg?
The Ehrenberg story is quite complex but Ehrenberg penned an article about the surrealists in which he said that Breton and the surrealists were writing literature for the bourgeoisie who liked their meat as gamy as possible. Even now in Paris you can buy a pheasant from a corner shop in which the meat has been left to nearly rot.
Breton slapped Ehrenberg.
But Ehrenberg had a good point, which is why Breton was so incensed.
Shortly after this Breton had been scheduled to speak at a communist rally in Paris. But he was not allowed to speak. The only surrealist allowed to speak was Louis Aragon, but he spoke at about 3 in the morning, with the mike turned off.
Two days later one of the central surrealists who had put the surrealists in touch with the communists (the surrealists needed funding, and for a while the communists were willing to supply it) committed suicide. Rene? I can't come up with his name right now.
I think the Breton-Ehrenberg feud continued for quite some time.
They both had good points about the other, and were both intelligent, good writers.
I thought Stalin sent all the good writers to the gulag. Was Ehrenburg a self-hating Jew or a self-hating German? Either way, it looks like it payed off for him.
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12112008-155317/unrestricted/HuebnerKarla2008.pdf
Here's a link to a recent dissertation by a woman whose ancestors were integral parts of the Prague avant garde. She seems to have a pretty good handle on race, gender and class. I'm looking forward to reading it all the way through.
Quite a few of my dad's Prussian cousins married Bohemian immigrants who settled in his part of Wisconsin. Many Poles, Slavs and Czechs are or were quite fluent in both German and French.
My theory is that my dad's ancestors lived in Lusatia or Lausitz during the Thirty Years War. The orphans who survived moved north from what's now the Czech Republic into Saxony and eventually Brandenburg where they were adopted by Frederick the Great post-Enlightenment. The Red Army during WWII was a church picnic compared to the Thirty Years War. Keeping track of the witches burned required exponential notation.
The Elector of Saxony thought playing the Austrians off of the Prussians was great sport until he ran out of subjects. What's Obama's policy on defenestration?
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has there ever been a president who has actually thrown someone out the window...i mean literally...i mean you'd think that maybe someone like william harrison got so upset one day he just threw someone out the window...or lyndon johnson maybe
when the eyeball with omnivision circles round then the world stops and the photos are taken and life stops for a moment and we eat pickles for what it's worth
and alas then the hot iron burns the white shirt and hypobiogenetics makes cactus glow by inserting the firefly gene all is going along just fine let the scientists go they need some room to move bricks melt and bells shatter like abused crystal
everywhere you go a square is being pushed into a round hole
a polyhedron is being exploded
what am i saying
i think the end times are nigh
armegeddon is nigh
but it will look more like a circus going through town than anything else
julia child will be leading the marching band
after a lecture last night on the smalkald articles i'm convinced that you've got it all wrong kirby but i have also come to appreciate that the whole lutheran thing started out so all wrong that nothing was going to fix it it just had to manifest itself in various sequences of ignorance and comedy...without bach the whole project would be a wash...yours is just one more manifestation a sort of cloning of all lutheranism ever pretended to be...a fierce weapon of landed merchants and arsitocratic military madness
it may not have been luther's intent but he thrashes at the mass like it was hocus pocus and it never was...there he betrays his ignorance...yet i will concede he does uphold a necessary constraint the what i call -'not so quick there buster' - approach to doctrine and practice
for all the bibles being read in the world i'm not as yet convinced that we understand the jews or jesus or our faith any better than people did in the 12th century
lutheranism - an ism that luther never intended - is an ism that is but a refinement of a standard christian paradox so it's a sort of paradoxism - if you will
anon
jh
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