5/10/2005 11:10:00 PM

an ironic orthodoxy

If one is even still to speak of such a thing as Orthodoxy it is prudent to couch the idea in generous terms. Even this be done I find myself uneasy about such a venture. A Generous Orthodoxy still finds itself capitalized. Such a configuration still seems to take its stand with a certain definitional power that, while utilizing the tools of deconstruction, does not allow for the play of autodeconstruction beyond a certain point. A Generous Orthodoxy still inhabits the world of capitalization. So while I take my stand with the generous I must say unequivocally that it is not enough to be generous. If orthodoxy is to remain useful in our vocabularies I would suggest that we require an ironic orthodoxy at least as much as a generous one.

orthodoxy is at its best when left uncapitalized and inextricably commingled with orthopraxy such that ideas and embodied instantiations are not held up as discrete units of correct belief, but as the situated hospitality of a particular community. orthodoxy is a living cosmos of loosely coupled patterns of body and mind. From the outside, when cast in terms of the ecosystem orthodoxy inhabits, we find that it is recognized as a certain hospitality in all directions: toward oneself, toward those communities that have a loose tie through a degree or two of separation and those that are in fact collectives of strangers.

orthodoxy is that difference that makes a difference to a community: the common federation of narrative allegiance and embodied enactment that coalesce into a co-created common identity. The standard that differentiates the orthodox and the heretic is of a community's making as is the substance that is being ruled over by such a standard. Those who inhabit the space opened by a capitalized Orthodoxy (generous or otherwise), the all-too-earnest in their incessant apologies for a body of selected work or a particular genealogy as the static criterion of True truth, would have us believe their interpretive instantiation an unsituated authority that is discovered not made. To this the uncapitalized orthodox sing their ode to irony: orthodoxy is not an unsituated reference point to all situations. Rather, it is the inextricably entwined otherness of a peculiar people in the worlds they inhabit. This is the confession that an ironic orthodoxy carries with it and that differentiates it from many who would also endeavor to use such a word meaningfully.

Any present day Orthodoxy is a silent witness to an originary genealogy of creative friction. Any such bulwarks of self-narrated fidelity to truth inevitably rest within a founding diversity. All of the grand traditions that hold us in their sway ebb and flow through the generative pathways of creative friction. This is their substance and source: The never ending emergence of what is in its manifold embodiment; the causal relationship of both revolution and cannonization. In this way orthodoxy is a statement of belonging more than of correct belief and it is in belonging that we find what it means to begin the journey with such things as beauty, truth and meaning.

In the traditions that I have had the most ready access to in the years that established the base artifacts of my cultural software the definitive binaries and heuristic juxtaposition that came to form the uniquely late modern, Abrahamic reason through which I judged the meaning of such things as orthodoxy came from textual traditions we call scripture and cinematic traditions we call art. These texts, the common memories of my peoples now pinned to a portable document where once they were etched deeply into their flesh, paraded a colorful host of settings and characters that filled my imagination and motivations in a manner not unlike the moving pictures that wove the narratives that inspired the long summer afternoons ensconced on the gnarled stumps at the back of our home in Bellingham, arms raised and right knee up preparing to unleash a devastating crane kick on a well-groomed blond bully or the countless moments of feeling tremors in the Force and convincing befuddled Stormtroopers that "these are not the droids you're looking for."

These, my film-inspired journeys beyond our provincial border town, functioned in a manner similar to and overlapping with the ancient Abrahamic traditions of the people of the book. The diligence in the menial evidenced in the boy shepherd who would be King David that inspired me to pick up the loose trash that the wind would whip from the can on the long walk to the burning barrel; the striking moral clarity in the face of religious self-importance so deeply embedded in the one named Joshua (that my tradition required me to call Jesus) that kept me steady in the rolling stream of churches, homes and cultures that filled the scene notes of my late childhood.

The way that I engaged the stories of my contemporary cinematic and ancient textual traditions was much the same: repetition and embodiment, narrative critique and suspended disbelief. Though, of course, with an inherited propriety that surrounded the latter in a halo of the sacred. The fascinating thing is that, even in my youth, it was clear to me that the difference between the contemporary and the ancient; between the cinematic and the textual; between scripture and tradition was that we said there was one. It was in our actions of selection and interpretation that orthodoxy was born. It is acknowledging this founding act that ushers one into an ironic orthodoxy.

It is the founding act of selection and interpretation that deconstructs Orthodoxy's claims when they reach the frenzied pitch of the all-too-earnest. In the end orthodoxy, as we all experience it, is a nuanced palate; a well-honed collection of shared preferences out of which flows a situated co-existence and the very meaning of a life well lived.

An ironic orthodoxy is an apparatus of community and grounding ethic of diversity that enables a positive confession while presupposing the temporary and permeable membranes that separate peoples and communities. It is the theology of the good Samaritan as distinct from the Orthodox passers by; the germ of another's kingdom that will carry the empire's equipment, but not be the ideological excuse for empire's perpetuation.