Sartorial terminology for facial hair

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I have been walking around with the above beard for sometime. It is a styled full beard that, depending on various factors, is more or less pointy. In the past few weeks people have been complementing me on my goatee. A barista at Metropolis coffee one of my favorite haunts in Edgewater, last week began to so complement me on my goatee and then stumbled over himself saying "Well Iguess its not a goatee is it, but I... uh... the pointy bit ..."

I have come to conclude that the cause of this sartorial confusion is due to the preponderance of the untamed "I could be an Orthodox monk if I didn't like sex so much" beard that I am told is all the rage among hipsters who can grow facial hair. And I have observed that the untamed monk beard has become more common among those sporting facial hair.

As a goth, who does not feel the need to have my beard eat my face, and as clergy, who is married and Protestant and thus the monk avenue isn't realy available to me, I am perhaps in a unique position to help clarify satorial terminology of facial hair.

Most assume that the circle of hair around the mouth uper lip and sides of mouth and chin is a goatee, I in fact assumed this until very recently. Such a style of facial hair is a Genial (or as I like to say a moutee, because its fun to say). Technically a goatee is simply the tuft of hair on the chin that makes one look like a goat. Also not a goatee is a mustache and a hair on the chin (often pointed like my current styling of my beard), but rather a Van Dyke. There is also the soul patch but I know only one person who pulls that off successfully so we will simply pass over it in silence.

I did have a moutee for about six years (about 11 years ago), and then decided to shave it off and my wife discovered I had no chin and hid in the bathroom for a couple of days, and I began growing a beard immediately. The point of my beard evolved over time but it's been pointy since about 2003 or so, I think.

In fairness as another friend of mine said the satorial terminology of facial hair is obscure and arcane, and even highly disputed. This handy guide slightly contradicts what I said above and backed up by the Wikipedia articla on Goatee. I offer it as a potential handy guide and if you must have a term for my styled beard it appearantly is a "ducktail", it would seem. But even according to this slightly different taxonomy of facial hair I do not, I repeat, I do not have a goatee!

Bonhoeffer Church and American Christianity

I am unsettled, by Bonhoeffer. I am uneasy with the appropriation of Bonhoeffer by American Christians: what we hope to find in him. I have been reading Eric Metaxas' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer published last year. This is not a review though I do plan to write one. However, I have been puzzeling through somethings about our use of Bonhoeffer and the parallels and the divergences of Dietrich's time and place and ours in the US in 2011.

Metaxas has said he sees Bonhoeffer as particularly relevant for our time, in part because he sees parallels between contemporary America and Germany between the wars. One reviewer I read of the book claims that Metaxas wishes to present a Bonhoeffer that can be or is on the side of the Religious Right culture warriors. I think both Metaxas and Metaxas' critic are missing something.

One of the things that the reviewer pointed out was that Metaxas deemphasizes aspects of Bonhoeffer's times at Union and emphasizes his experience with the Abysinian Church in Harlem in such away as to paint Bonhoeffer as being on the Evangelical side of the curent culture wars. I think this critism could have some weight except that Metaxas is insistant that Bonhoeffer comes from and is other than American Christianity (liberal or conservative). This has long been my sense of Bonhoeffer. I first read his Discipleship (under the English Title of Cost of Discipleship) in a moderate evangelical context, the spin that was attempted didn't fit my reading of the text. Then I encountered liberal scholars who sought to build whole positions out of his musings about "religionless Christianity" and claim Bonhoeffer's authority for what they spun out of that musing. As I am reading Metaxas it seems to me that Bonhoeffer's convictions don't make alot of sense unless we step back and recognize that we can't use Bonhoeffer for our theological and ideological ends.

My thoughts in part are at the moment around the Church Struggle after the Nazis gained ascendency, and Hitler ruled Germany. In seminary I read various books and accounts of it, and I found it difficult to grasp, and even Metaxas in attempting to give an account through Dietirch Bonhoeffer's life leaves a great puzzle. Its not the facts that aren't clear, but the responces to it from all players. Even the actions of Christians outside Germany is puzzling. Metaxas gives greater prominence to Bonhoefer's role in the Church Struggle than any other account I have read before. Bonhoeffer had a sense of the church that caused him to be frustrated both with the Confessing church and the ecumenical movement of his time. In some sense Bonhoeffer also stands out against his own time and theologies.

So far one of the more puzzling things about Metaxas' account that it doesn't explain but simply recounts Bonhoeffer's politicking to get the ecumenical movement to condemn the Reich German Evangelical Church and recognize as the only true representative of the church in Germany the Confessing Church Movement. Bonhoeffer does this while the leaders of the Confessing movement wanted the ecumenical recognition they were reluctant to become an "alternative" church to the church headed by the Reich Bishop. Why wasn't it enought for Bonhoefer for the Confessing Church movement to be a movement, or even why was it a travesty for the confessing church movement to be simply recognized as a church in Germany by Christians outside Germany and the ecumenical movement? From an American perspective you don't like what is going on in your church and you've tried to change it well its perfectly legitimate to start your own, and then you show up at ecumenical groups (if you are so inclined) as a new Christian church. One is left wondering why the agonizing over leaving an institution that was so clearly corupting the Gospel?

I think the above is difficult to unpack, there are unexamined assumptions underlying this for both Bonhoeffer and those of the Confessing Church. There is also the unexamined assumption for many American Christians I know that continuity has no role in the character of being the Body of Christ, and while from a Roman Catholic perspective those who went with Luther in the Reformation had not retained continuity with the church, it seems to me that in the Church Struggle both Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church were struggling with a belief that contrary to Rome it was in fact the Evangelical (ie. Lutheran) church that had retained continuity. Also, there is indication that Bonhoeffer's sense of ecclesiology was other than that of the Confessing Church.

Lastly it is perhaps significant that Bonhoeffer's thought was formed in conflict and struggle. As such I think it is perhaps best to approach him as one whose theology can never be appropriated. Rather he stands as a challenge as he did to his contemporaries. Metaxas may be correct in having written and hagiography rather than a critical biography. Bonhoeffer stands and as a martyr challenges us with the impossibility of the Gospel and the church, and theirs simultaneous absolute claim upon us who name ourselves as Christians, followers of Christ. This disturbs me and wont let me alone, and I am disturbed by the ways we all want to tame and make this martyr of Christ become a martyr of our pet ideas and American philosophies and theologies.

Civility Violence and Evil

Today I signed Sojourner's Peace and Civility pledge" I could agree to all the points of the pledge and so feel it is the least I could do in response to shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the six others.

Yet, what are we to do? What does such a pledge mean? For me I signed it because I know hatred and evil lurks in each and everyone of us and because to the best of my knowledge and awareness I am already living according to the pledge. It would be false of me to say that I signed it out of some sense that I had failed in recent memory to do what I have now pledged to do. Maybe I am in a minority and suddenly liberals and conservatives are realizing the small or large ways they contribute to vitriolic in our public discourse, but I doubt it.

I suppose I am not sure Jim Wallis is correct to suggest as he did in his editoiral yesterday in the Huffpost that this violent event is a moment of transformation. I am not sure that if I believed vitriolic was perfectly okay 7 days ago that this event in and of itself (as sad and tragic as it is) should cause me to change my ways. Partially I am unsure about that because I am not sure we can truly say we know the causes of this event. Second, because as much as the pledge and Jim Wallis are seeking to call for introspection, it falls short of real and deep and truly transformational self-examination.

You see I can read the pledge and feel satisfied. I agree with it wholeheartedly, I even can honestly say that I have for most of my life sought to live according to the principles that the pledge seeks to encourage. But as I read the Christian tradition it teaches us that sin and evil are far more subtle, and thus tell us that something far more disturbing than vitiolic is at the root of the violence that occurred in Arizona this past weekend.

Jim Wallis actually gives us the easy way out. He wants us to take responsibility, and thus wants us to correct the wrong and the environment that caused this to happen. This is an easy way out because I am not asked to identify both with victim and perpetrator, rather I am to see how I who would never succumb to the evil of this violence have inadvertently through violent language caused something I personally would never do. This sort of distancing from another human being is what I see the Christian Tradition and Scripture and Jesus calling self-righteousness. From the Christian perspective pledges and even gentle rhetoric will not uproot the evil that lurks in us and is the true source of this tragic event. The transformation we seek comes from a God who in human form suffered this very violence not from the hands of "madmen" but from legitimate peace loving authorities.

In the end I took the pledge not only because I could agree and have striven to live according to the principles of the pledge, but because I know that this evil lurks in me as it does in us all, and I follow the one who suffered this evil to rescue us all from it.

My friends this is much worse and the good news is someone has already begun to transform us and our world and liberate us from it. But we need to name it as evil, we need to name it as that which is in all of us, whether we use vitriolic or not. In the end we can't take responsibility but must surrender ourselves to the one who suffered this evil to free us from it. Only in allowing ourselves to be close to victim and perpetrator as both fully human and sharing our humanity may we find the place of finding a truly transformative word and action, whether or not we have or have not used vitriolic.