A Running Review of iWriter Pro

Purpose of this Post

For work I’ve been getting into the use of Markdown combined with Github and WorkingCopy for a project. I won’t go into too many details, but a broad overview is that we needed to find a way to edit handbooks/catalogues (I work in higher education) that was more efficient than how we did it before. Also, given that I work at a graduate liberal arts school, the people I work with aren’t always the most tech-savvy or even interested in it. Even introducing something new like Zoom a few years ago (way before the pandemic) was a hassle. Markdown sounds especially helpful as it won’t require learning HTML or other forms of coding.

As I was working though I noticed we make use of tables, footnotes, and other various type that aren’t fully supported by Markdown. For the moment I made use of HTML in those instances (as Markdown supports inline HTML) but then I found out about Fletcher Penney’s MultiMarkdown (from here on out MMD) project, which seemed to hit the perfect spot for me. Easy enough to read and learn, which means getting my co-workers onboard wouldn’t require teaching them Markdown and HTML, or just HTML. They would still have to learn some aspects of MMD and Markdown, but it seems this would be easier.

But alas, I work on an iPad Pro and I couldn’t find a great MMD app. I had dug around the internet and found Federico Viticci’s article but being over 6 years old, the best app he mentions (Byword) doesn’t seem to be updated anymore (as of September 2021). I have come across a few other apps, and one of them didn’t seem to have any reviews as far as I could tell (beyond what was in the App Store). So I decided to purchase it and then give a running review of it. Hopefully my use isn’t so niche that this is useless to anyone. I’m going to try to update this every month or so, but I can’t be confident it’ll be consistent as I may step away from the app at times.

The app is iWriter Pro.

The Other (Multi?)Markdown Apps

There are other apps, such as Drafts and iA Writer ,that most people point to when talking about Markdown. While I was able to download a version of Drafts and test it out (it does support MMD), I wasn’t in love with the design and look of it, and while it seems powerful, it gave almost too many options.

This is an example of just one of the tabs.

It feels a bit like Word’s menu bar where there are 500 different things you can do, but all you want to do is preview the document. So I wasn’t entirely happy with it.

iA Writer on the other hand was a little difficult to tell. At $40 (CAD) it wasn’t something I was going to nab and test out, and from all of my research I wasn’t entirely confident it supported MMD. Maybe someone can let me know, but at almost an 1/8 of the cost, iWriter Pro felt like a lower barrier of entry. Also, iA Writer’s other features, such as focused mode and syntax highlighting, while cool, didn’t seem like something I would really need right now. So maybe I will pick it up in the future.

And maybe this blog will end with me abandoning iWriter Pro and picking something else up. But hopefully someone else getting started down the same path will find a lower barrier of entry like I did.

Sept 2021 Thoughts

I purchased iWriter Pro yesterday and have already played around with it a bit. Seems pretty clean, which I appreciate. As I mentioned, Drafts seemed a little too powerful, when what I really need is MMD and a preview of it.

Like most other Markdown apps, the interface is really clean, which I appreciate. I’ve been sticking with the Dusk theme for now. Personally, I like iWriter Pro over Drafts aesthetics. I think if you purchase Drafts you can manipulate that, but outside of lowering the font size (from default 17pt to 14pt) I haven’t felt the need to change too much.

Here is a preview of both the Dusk Theme, and what a new document looks like.

And how it looks when you bring the menu down.

A feature I would like (maybe it exists and I can’t figure it out yet) is to be able to view the preview next to the document, rather than it creating a “new” window.

One of the most important features is whether I can get WorkingCopy to process the MMD properly. A potential workaround is to export our academic catalogue as HTML from iWriter and then dump it into WorkingCopy that way. (To be honest, I’m a little weak on using WorkingCopy well, so part of it may be my own ineptitude).

For now, that’s my thoughts. For $8.50 (CAD) it’s seems pretty good, and not a huge investment. There may be free apps you can use for Markdown, but as I mentioned iWriter Pro was one of the few apps supporting MMD.

A Holistic UX Design

I’ve recently started taking some classes in the world of UX (User Experience) Design, which focuses on designing products and platforms beyond “it works” to “that was a good experience I had.” The program tends to talk about the psychological processes of persons as they engage with an experience, and how our emotional responses to them can contribute to increased engagement. As an example, a protein paste and a luxury meal both provide us with sustenance, but nobody pays for a restaurant to provide them with a protein paste. It’s the experience of the meal, the atmosphere of the place, and various other factors that make us return to that restaurant, or rave about that meal to our friends. These factors have often been designed for such an experience, though there may be some parts of the experience that are unintentional: perhaps part of the enjoyment comes from the dingy interior, which the owners may not be excited about.

There is a big emphasis on the psychological aspect of users, which in many ways focuses on the mind. Even the emotive impact of a design is understood in a cognitive manner. At first I couldn’t quite name the discomfort I was feeling about this; there was something odd about it, like a note just barely sharp. And I’m still not satisfied with my answer, but it has to do with the spirituality of whole experience.

Now, I’m partially not happy with that answer because “spirituality” as a term is confusing. It is used in a lot of different settings with various definitions, or someone may not even define it in the first place. I’m trying out the word “holistic” instead to capture my thought, because it is the non-cognitive aspect of UX Design that seems missing. In this way, “spirituality” I think becomes the term used for non-psychological (and non-physical) parts of our being. But like a spirit or a soul, it is a hard term to nail down, and I don’t want my definition of spirituality to be all of the other junk that doesn’t fit into the nice package of psychology.

UX Design is interested, to an extent, in what users do physically, where they might be when engaging an experience, what physical factors may impact them, but what the body does is still in subservience to the mind. But in approaching UX holistically, I’m thinking about how our minds become subservient to our bodies, which are the whole. Because we need to remember that we have bodies no matter the platform, and it can’t be avoided.

Side tangent/caveat: I went to a school that was all about “embodiment” and opposed online courses because they were not “embodied.” I’m not advocating for this approach. Instead, I vehemently disagree with this “embodied” idea because the person on a computer taking classes online is still embodied. They use their bodies to read their books, answer their assignments, meet in video conferences; going online does not remove a person from their body, nor does holding classes in person make us more embodied.

I haven’t fully fleshed out this idea, but I think there needs to be more space given for thinking about experiences as a holistic situation: we may have a great experience at a restaurant because of the design of the experience as much as how we were physically feeling that night. There may be reason to ask your user to sit down or stand up while using your platform; not only to sound like you are concerned about their health, but because we are whole bodies, and not just emotive minds.

We could draw from liturgical practices as a useful example. In the East there are movements of the body. How the priest moves and acts is just as important to what the priest thinks and says. The “bells and smells” are not for aesthetic purposes; kneeling and touching the icons isn’t ritualism; it is not the mind that solely understands and comprehends all that is done in the liturgy.

UX Design may find a whole new avenue of exploration if it were to holistically approach users, to think about them as persons with minds and bodies, and how the interplay between them (and not solely those two things) can impact their experience. There is also the place of the person as well: their geography, climate, community, seasons. Expanding the boundaries does complicate UX design even more. But we’re all about wicked problems, are we not?

The Privilege of Intentional Community

When I was a young Bachelor of Arts in Theology and Bible at Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon, I remember the buzz word at the time was “intentional community.” Caught up in the excitement of Shane Clairborne’s The Irresistible Revolution alongside Don Miller and Rob Bell, I was all about that buzz word as well, and with friends discussed how we could create our own intentional communities. It was a way to think differently about life and the Bible, to throw off the segmented, suburban life we came from. And at the time, it wasn’t all bad: we were trying to make sense of a system that seemed to be cracking apart. All of the hopes and dreams we’d been sold didn’t seem that great, and we wanted something else. Thinking of intentional communities gave us a dream.

I remember one day in class finding out that a friend, someone I’m sure I talked about intentional communities with, discussing why he hated that term. He had a good point: since community requires people being invested and present, isn’t all community intentional anyway? Isn’t intentional community a redundant statement, like lonely isolation? And for a bit there, my thoughts on intentional communities took a hit.

Jump ahead a decade, and to be honest I haven’t really thought about intentional communities all that much. I have continued to think communities, “life together” as some would say, and the implicit design of our lives that can keep us apart: every house with it’s own backyard and play structure so we don’t have to go to the neighbours; personal vehicles to take us to work so we don’t share seats with someone; defunding of community resources so that everyone can have more personal money; the list goes on. However, I was struck the other day with a realization (a decade too late) that the need for intentional community is in many ways a disease of privilege. We need to think about intentional community because we have the privilege of depending on no one, of surviving independently from anyone else. And we can also be intentional, that is, selective of our community.

I’m going to make a bit of a jump here, but I don’t think that community for many non-privileged persons is a conscious choice, or intentional. It’s a necessity to survive, a way to combine resources in some hopeful way of making it through another week, or to keep themselves sane in a world where they feel alien. Whereas we get to ignore community or forget to maintain it because we can live isolated, independent lives; we can slip into independence. The need to be intentional in community building reveals a privileged position. We can think about who we want to be in community with because we can be selective. We have to plan ways to maintain community with these persons because it isn’t required for us to stay alive. And if we are honest, if we don’t like you, it is really easy to let that connection die because we don’t depend on anyone to survive; we are our own saviours.

In the end, intentional community building did point out that we aren’t actually as independent as we thought, that we need community as humans to truly survive. Yet, because we can maintain a simulation of thriving as isolated persons due to our privilege, we have to be reminded that it is not “true” living. Our privilege becomes a veil nearly impossible to part. But it also works only in a privileged context: we need to be intentional because we can be free to ignore community.

Ultimately, we reappropriate what is necessity for the less privileged to help us in our privilege.

Romantic Drama as Social Critique

Or, Getting Karen to Care about Sexual Harassment

I get it: everyone is into “Tiger King” right now, and from the description I heard from my spouse, it’s a pretty crazy experience. As this extreme form of… depravity? Insanity? Absurdity? plays out, it’s pretty easy for us to pass it off. It’s such a spectacle that we don’t really think about what it means for us. So instead I’ve been watching this:

This is my first and only foray (so far) into Korean drama. Why did I get into it? I don’t know, I think I was just looking for something that could be potentially light and positive in the midst of COVID-19. At 16 episodes, each over one hour long, I had imagined a slow, happy tale with some drama thrown in to keep everyone interested. Disclaimer: I didn’t realize each episode was over an hour, and had thought I’d be in and out in less than 8 hours; silly me. But this isn’t a review of the show. That’s on my personal blog www.please-go-watch-something-in-the-rain-it-made-me-an-emotional-wreck-and-I-cried-for-an-hour-at-the-end-but-I-was-also-really-happy.geocities.com.

In brief, there are two plots running throughout the show: 1. Jun Hui and Jin-a’s relationship; 2. Jin-a confrontation with sexual harassment at work. What happens in one subtly impacts the other; Jin-a’s growing confidence in her relationship with Jun Hui inspires her to confront her supervisors’ inappropriate behaviour. Jin-a begins as a very submissive and passive person towards any authority figure, and by the end sets off on her own to live her own life. But enough of a plot overview, and on to the reason a 35 year old white dad is talking about a Korean drama: because Karen watches it. Well, maybe not Karen, because there is too much reading, but it shouldn’t be absurd to claim it is meant for popular consumption. I want to talk about that aspect of popular consumption.

I, probably like many others, can be pretty critical of popular media. “It’s meant for plebeians,” is a joke I’ve made before, yet somewhat half serious. It’s not entirely untrue; some forms of media are meant to grab the largest amount of people possible, and so it might steer away from sensitive topics like confronting sexual harassment at work, or oppressive systems in society (or potentially give them a passing comment). Eg. “The Big Bang Theory” or “Friends”. Adversely, a show that is overly explicit in its message of social critique can limit the amount of viewers, even if it is really good, insightful, relevant. Eg. “Fleabag” or “The Handmaid’s Tale”. Which is why I find it interesting when there are places where a piece of entertainment manages to bridge this gap, and we’re not entirely aware of it.

Now don’t get me wrong, it is not an easy task, and I’m not sure there are a plethora of examples to draw from. Yet, watching “Something in the Rain” made me think of another romantic story, the novel Jane Eyre, which I read recently for a graduate level history class on sex and gender. When you read a book like Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice against their historical backdrop, you can see the authors making pointed critiques of their social context, but it is also hidden behind a love story that draws people in and keeps them interested. “Something in the Rain,” I think, is doing something similar. While you’re caught up in the story of the two main characters, you’re also confronting sexual harassment in a workplace. Jin-a stares down a corporate lawyer and names the injustice she is suffering. In Jane Eyre, you’re hoping Jane finally finds a happy ending, while also watching her deny suitors that wish her to be subservient to them. “I do this for me,” she proclaims at one point in the story.

This is a way of instilling complex and sensitive topics to everyday people (like me), and to make them feel for a person, rather than an abstract argument. It pushes people to empathize with the characters so they may then empathize with the people in their own life. And I think it is something under utilized by those of us trained and brought up in academia. We argue on logic, data, reason, rational, etc. We think more information or debunking another’s point of view will get our point across.

But maybe instead we need to start writing romantic dramas. We need to become conversant in creating empathetic characters that suffer injustice when all they want is to be loved. We need to be better at hiding sensitive topics in the midst of positive stories about friendship. Maybe they aren’t full of footnotes and references to philosophical journals, but who among us ever empathized with an argument? Who finishes Plato’s Republic and cries for the characters? Maybe the fact that Pride and Prejudice is still read by people today speaks to its ability to draw people in, and also maintain that connection while critiquing society at large without us being wholly aware of it. And that is a powerful tool in shaping our world.

And it might be good to remember this powerful tool is being used, potentially to non-constructive ends. Think about how many people may have their expectations of relationships influenced by “Twilight.” Imagine how subtly unhealthy relationships are encouraged because the only people writing at the popular level are pushing a certain perspective that the more “elite” consider below themselves to engage with.

Disclaimer: I’m not saying “Something in the Rain” is perfect. There are obviously larger issues to talk about, but oh Lord did I like it. I’ve watched it twice now.

Babylon Bee on #Womensmarch, you disgust me.

It takes a bit to get me writing these days, mostly because I feel too busy, but also because I feel like I need thousands of words to adequately flesh out a topic. But for once, I feel like I can simply say what I want succinctly. Babylon Bee, shut your fucking mouth.

I get it: you’re trying to be like The Onion, but the Christian version. And typically I find your articles trite, or cute, at best. You make funny little jokes at the church so we can all laugh at ourselves, without ever calling for real change. You think that hiding behind satire will change something, makes you edgy, like your idols at The Onion. But The Onion doesn’t pull its punches like you do. It doesn’t let anyone off. I get a chuckle occasionally, and move on with my life.

As hundreds of thousands of people, not just women, descended on Washington, physically and spiritually, you decided to simplify all of their voices to one simple issue: abortion. Out of all of the horrible things Donald Trump said during his campaign (which you never commented on), out of all of the issues facing women in the world today, you decided to bringing it all back to one red herring issue: abortion. As thousands of people held signs on a myriad of issues, you decided to turn a blind eye to Trump’s claim that he has a right to grab a woman by her pussy because he is a celebrity and instead raise the issue of abortion.

Thank you. Now please shut the fuck up.

Warmly,

An irate father, husband, son, and Christian

Cameron

But They Don’t Read Their Bibles

This probably has a lot to do with where I am studying, and the people I am surrounded by, and the manner of studies I am getting into (and out of), but I have become increasingly pessimistic of the phrase “but they don’t read their Bibles” as a critique of those scholars whom one does not agree with. I’ve typically heard it said in Evangelical Protestant circles because Evangelicals are “the people of the Word,” the descendants of that long standing mission to get the Bible back into the hands of the everyday person, to free it from its clerical imprisonment. And of course, the world has suffered ever since.

I’ve become so tired of this critique because it inherently assumes so many problems: that somehow the critic does read her/his Bible, that the expanse of this scholar’s work can be nullified on one mere point, that simply by reading the Bible one might be imbued with knowledge, and that there may be no outside influences on the critic’s own reading of the Bible. I feel like this is all I need to say, but my hunch is that for some reason I need to elaborate of these points. Maybe some other time.

It’s About Ethics in Storytelling

I’m curious about the proposition that there should be ethics in storytelling. I’m not sure if it is something we really even talk about because storytelling is an imaginative pursuit. There might be a similarity here with other creative pursuits: do they require ethics? What purpose would there be in laying down ethics for creative pursuits such as storytelling? And what might these ethics look like?

Why?

I should probably begin with discussing the “why?” of this topic. They might seem like two different endeavors, that is ethics and storytelling. But that might be the dangerous nature of this discussion, that we might think the two would have no overlapping points at all. Storytelling becomes a completely free endeavor, unbound and unrestrained by any limitations because it is the basic nature of creativity: freedom. (Freedom is a very dangerously undefined word these days, but I must not divulge into it at this moment. Read “freedom” as “completely unrestrained”). I think this partially accounts for why there is the ready acceptance of issues in storytelling that would otherwise be viewed as taboo: rape, child molestation, torture, sexual abuse, etc. to name some. As a friend once said regarding these issues in movies, “Film has to be real!”

The ready-made disagreement to this is that the prohibition from discussing these issues allows them to be perpetuated without any discussion. Or, that which is considered taboo is often established so by those in power who do not wish to be confronted with their own oppressive actions. Or, taboo is merely repression. I do not wish to deny or ignore these points, for they are an important part of this discussion, especially as storytelling has forced us to confront some of the very dirty issues that we wish to ignore.

But I think there is a importance designation to be made here: confrontation for the sake of ethics, and confrontation for the sake of disruption.

Why?: Confrontation for the sake of…

This is one way in which ethics may find its way back into storytelling, when we ask, especially in light of taboos or other such issues, what is the purpose of confronting us with this topic? Why has the author chosen this issue, at this time, in this way? I am certain many stories have included rape either as a subplot, or as the main conflict. But there is a difference between those who include it merely for disruption, to shock, disturb, make the reader feel uncomfortable, or even as a means to raise the stakes. And then there are stories where it is used to make a point, to make it aware to us when we often want to be blind to it, for the purpose of making us reanalyze an important issue that often goes undiscussed. I see the former as confrontation for the sake of disruption, and the latter as confrontation for the sake of ethics.

Now, this designation is probably really hard to clearly divide. I can’t imagine we can do so perfectly, but I think there are times in storytelling when an author wishes merely to relish in the uncomfortable or disruptive nature of broaching these issues, and I want to call this out as unethical. There is no larger purpose to this; it is merely for the sake of reaction. And then there are stories where we have been confronted with a taboo to make us aware of those issues we are uncomfortable with confronting, but need to be confronted because violence and harm have continued to be perpetuated without remorse. This then is ethical storytelling.

So then it’s about ethics in storytelling. It’s about asking our authors, “Why have you broached this issue in this way? Are you being ethical?” This probably looks largely ignorant today; I’m sure there are authors and readers who would think I’m naive to talk about this. But I think it is important for us to hold this whole process accountable, to ask why, and for what purpose. Much like yelling “FIRE!” in a movie theatre, the why, and for what purpose are really important, but we shouldn’t isolate that to single word expletives (read expletive in the sense of an interjectory word, not just a profanity). Storytelling should also be held to an ethical accountability.

And Readers

I also want to make the claim that as authors we should be ethically minded as well. We need to be careful about how we treat our readers, to ask why we think it is necessary to subject them to the many turns and twists that we include. Are we killing off our main character because we think it will be a great twist? M. Night Shyamalan’s twists are probably a great example of this. Does it do anything ethically, or is it just for the sake of disruption, reaction? Are we making our readers read a disturbing account of rape for the sake of disrupting them so that it sticks with them, or because we really need to start calling out those underlying systems that continue to perpetuate one of the most noxious human crimes?

This is a very short and truncated discussion, but something I started to think about, and something I wasn’t sure I have heard much discussion about. Why does it seem like storytelling can be uninterested with ethics?

Bullet point thoughts

Here is a list of bullet points that I would like to flesh out more at some other time, but maybe worth drawing out

• Selfish or selfless interest? Are we as authors doing this for our own fame/notoriety/reward? Or for the readers?
• Callous disinterest: when we use these issues that have harmed others, are we displaying our own callous disinterest? Is it because we aren’t disrupted by it because we have become inundated with violence, harm, injustice?
• Are we assuming our readers are ready/receptive to these issues? Have we thought about what harm or violence we might be doing to them ourselves?
• What troupes of storytelling might be most affected by this? What might we need to never use?

These are my very undeveloped thoughts at the moment.

Cameron

Perfectionism and Creativity: Friends for Life!

I haven’t written on here in a long time. I want to say it is because I have been working on other writings, or deeply researching some topic. But to be honest?

A quick caveat: I have been busy. Let’s be honest, starting a Masters program doesn’t mean unlimited free time, nor does it mean I haven’t been writing. In all honesty, that half of what I’m doing: papers and assignments. And reading. Lots of reading. But it isn’t a complete cop out.

I have also been writing some other things on the side, stories and the such, or at least thinking about them and writing down ideas and notes. But I just haven’t been writing as much as I would like (or should?). But I was talking to Alicia the other day about art, specifically visual arts like painting and drawing, and how I’ve never been too good at it. That in and of itself is a whole other topic about whether I have the abilities and talent for it, which we’ve talked about before, but there was a revelation I had, pointed out by Alicia, about creativity. And that is that I have the worst combination motivating me to never work at my projects. I am not only creative, I’m a perfectionist.

Now a quick defense against others who claim they are perfectionist. Being a perfectionist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re anal retentive, that you have a high standard others must ascribe to. That’s called being controlling. There is a difference between feeling that something must be perfect, and controlling a situation so that it fulfills your personal whim. It is different to look at something and think it could be better, and to manipulate something because you think you have all the answers. Again, that’s called controlling. They can often go hand-in-hand, but I think many of the people who attempt to pass off their criticism and undermining as being a “perfectionist” are really just controlling. They are afraid to lose control of the reins.

So what does this mean for me? It means I have all these thoughts, ideas, creative concepts, but I never write them down, or tell anyone. Even when I do there is always a nagging feeling that it could be better, it should be better, and I’m not pulling it off. It means I often freeze up because I have this sense that it should only exist if it is the most perfect I can make it. And often it is not, and I just want to quit. I am tortured by “perfection” even though I am unable to voice what that really means. Which is in itself an imperfection.

Why am I telling you this? Because I’m attempting to create anyway. I facetiously put in the title to this post “Friends for Life!” because they often eat away at each other: there is the drive to create, that wants to create, that demands creation, yet unless it is perfect it will never come to light. All ideas exist in my mind where they can stay perfect because no one will ever be able to say otherwise. But I need to break out of this cycle. I need to lay my ideas out for others to see, because if I don’t, what good is being creative? And I also want to acknowledge that there is also some truth to my comment. Perfectionism and Creativity are not sworn enemies, but can work together so well. These two drives are what stop me from just placing crap before everyone, from being negligent in my art. Perfectionism pushes me to always reanalyze my creation, to make it better, to view it from as many angles as I can, and to submit it to criticism again. It is to know that before I even commit something to paper (or computer, or instrument) it is the best I have been able to come to at that point. And I think that is appreciated by others, to know that I haven’t just negligently placed something before them. It is also a way of opening myself to criticism, because as much as you may be hesitant to add a critique, I want you to know that I need to hear it, or else I’ll always have a nagging feeling that something could have been better.

In the end I know that nothing may ever be completely perfect. That is something I am working through as well, to acknowledge that I may not always be able to reach “perfection” in creativity. But that shouldn’t stop me, and I try to make sure of that as often as I can.

But also, being in a Masters program really limits my time. So don’t expect a plethora of posts on here.

Cameron

(A funny fact about my perfectionism: I never edit these posts. Partially because my perfectionism makes me just want to delete it, but also because I’m a bit lazy. These are really just my chance to jot some thoughts down. So…)

On Post-Modern Silencing

I’m pretty partial to post-modernism in some ways. I don’t believe it is the answer to all our problems, and it does have some glaring mistakes. But still, the critiques it makes against modernism and all of its issues warms my heart a little. I say this at the outset because I don’t want to sound like just another post-modernism critic, an evangelical conservative who longs for the good ol’ days when Christianity was logically sound, and truth meant objective, factual science. I anticipate my disparaging statement will hopefully gain me grace points with any post-modern advocates. If not… well…

I’ve been playing around with an idea regarding ontology (a big word for “being” though in actuality much more nuanced that just a display of synonyms and eloquence) and the closing of the human system through time, especially in relation to the rise of a scientific worldview. That statement is not what this post is about, but I feel the need to state it so that I can personally recall this idea more easily, as well as pre-establish my defense against any critiques that this is part of a larger idea. It is just a micro-view into a larger issue, but hopefully one that can stand, maybe precariously, on its own. Let us hold our breath until the end lest we tumble the structure before it is completed.

And in the midst of this play I read Charles Taylor’s Sources of the Self, a fascinating book tracing the history of how we’ve come to regard ourselves as selves (a highly charged sentence once you’ve come to see what those three words, “ourselves as selves” might mean). Over the 25 years since the book was written things have surely changed in our world, and many arguments have pushed some thoughts forward, or so I hope. But something I started to think about while reading the book was the post-modern change in meaning and authority. This is by no means anything Taylor really deals with, more a tangent that the book inspired. To simply and inadequately state it, post-modernism, often through deconstructionism, devalues authors, authorial intent, and “meanings” placed on to any piece of art outside of the self. All such ideas are just plays for power, and by revealing this insight, readers are freed from oppressive powers that attempt to overlay a meaning which oppresses those not in power. Like I said, simple and inadequate, and probably inappropriate.

Now many critiques and idioms have been lobbied against this concept as just another power play, or a self-deconstructing system. In some ways I agree, and in other ways I am frustrated. Destroying the argument of post-modernism doesn’t remove the ethical problem that many interpretations are oppressive forms of power. No matter your stance on post-modern deconstructionism, it is still necessary that you feel remorse at the ways in which, often, minorities have been silenced by, again often, white, western, male authorities. There is a history which must be acknowledged lest we keep repeating it.

So am I here to lobby another critique against this hermeneutic? Not necessarily. I like to think I’m here to put forward a I’m-afraid-to-say-better-so-I’ll-go-with different way. This is an attempt to view the subject from a different angle, to pick up the pieces and rebuild, not just harken back to a better year.

I have written before (long-winded) about the problem with the critique against authorial intentions, and I want to touch on it again. I’m not entirely sure why I find myself spending energy on this issue, though it may have to do with my own sense that as an author I want to be able to defend my work and myself against abuse without being told I can’t and must accept any and all meanings that someone finds in my works, lest I become a tyrant. This is an abuse already.

I find in the post-modern silencing of outside voices in the act of interpretation and meaning a dangerous closing off of the self from others. In the attack against power plays, post-modernism also seems to silence all voices that could influence the individual’s reading of a work. By closing of the search for authorial intent, post-modernism has silenced the voice of the author, the voice of the other. While it can be said that doing so allows unlimited liberty to the reader to find those meanings which might have gone unread, or silenced themselves, it is done so at the cost of listening to other voices that might tell us otherwise.

There is a larger issue here that I have no time or intention of tackling, and that is knowing whether we can even trust those other voices, and even if we could, how do we decide which to trust and which to ignore. But that we must trust and listen to the voice of an other (purposefully spaced apart) is a part of being human. We would largely be dead, or maimed, or lacking if we didn’t. I want to put forward that we must develop a hermeneutic of humility. The hermeneutic of humility emphasizes that we must always be willing to listen, to acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers, all the interpretations, or even all the works of art. It is a position of submission to all voices, to open oneself and to listen deeply to the words that the other is speaking. It is even a position of dependence on the other, to say with our whole beings, “I need you to speak into my life.”

By no means is this without problems. There are millions of voices out there, and at some point we must always be willing to add to them ourselves. And there are millions of voices that often repeat the same thing as the other. There are also a million Youtube voices which I want to kindly ask to shut up. Forgive me this once for not enacting a stance of humility, of acknowledging the humanness of those comment authors. But please for once just shut up.

And we will always, at some point, need to make judgments and summarize the thought of one another, or make statements that attempt to interpret and explain the other with different words. These are human nature. These are the markings of dialogue. But when we stop listening to the other, we cut off all dialogue, no longer opening ourselves to the other, ending communication. And yet all works of art are, in one form or another, communication. It is one human to another. But when we silence them, we not only dehumanize them, we dehumanize ourselves. We put a stop to part of what makes us human. We close ourselves off to the world around us. This is the irony of post-modern thought: what was meant to liberate us, to open us up to other voices in the end closes off dialogue. Both extremes must be avoided, the despotic authority which silences the minority, and the liberating openness which listens to no one.

We have to take on the hermeneutic of humility, to be willing to keep all forms of dialogue open, to listen and to speak, to hear and to be heard. When that relationship is held intact there will be no harm in saying, “I don’t understand you,” or, “Wouldn’t it be better to say…?” Or even to say that most controversial statement, yet necessary if we are to protect one another: “You cannot say that.”

Cameron

The Problem with Honesty, Vulnerability, and Brokenness in Christian Community

We’ve all found ourselves in either position, and probably both: in a small group, bible study, accountability group, or any sort of such group and the problem of confession arises. Either as a leader you have attempted to bring about more vulnerability, to get everyone to open up and really talk about what is happening in their lives, or as a member of the group you have called out for honest confession, or at least heard the call for honest confession. And then…

Awkward silence.

Fleeting glances to one another.

Sudden interest in your fingernails. Your shoes. The ceiling.

And then maybe, if you are lucky, someone stutters along some vulnerable moment and everyone secretly breathes a sigh of relief. And sometimes this catches and everyone feels safe to open up, to admit their faults, their brokenness. That is great news! But at some point it never completely lasts indefinitely. Read on to find 5 clues to help you foster vulnerability as a leader.

Let me be confess something to you. I don’t know how to foster vulnerable, honest confession. I have been in group settings as a member and as the leader, and I can’t honestly tell you what works. I have never successfully, 100% of the time achieved honest confession. I don’t have 5 clues to help you along. But I know how to write a bunch of words about things I have experienced.

I believe vulnerable, honest confession is like fine wine (but not like you think). Fine wine isn’t planted as a seed, grown with care, and then plucked to be enjoyed. Even cheap wine isn’t like that. It requires roots from a parent vine; it cannot just be grown ex nihilo. The vines must be tended carefully, but the grapes aren’t then plucked, smashed, and consumed. They are selected, carefully pressed, and then allowed to age.

What does that have to do with vulnerable, honest communion? I am sure you have already guessed what I am going to say. But the most important thing is that it always starts with you, the leader. I think this is a sorely missed inclusion into the work of creating vulnerability. Often our leaders are considered the mature, already achieved, perfected people. They want you to be honest so they can help you achieve, reach maturity, and then one day you too can be the leader. Or maybe we dance around with our mask of honesty on as leaders, admitting we have sinned before, or saying the all-too-common catchphrase, “I’m not perfect.” But how many of our fellow group members can honestly tell anyone what we struggle with?

To foster vulnerability you must be the first root, the awkward, too honest, too open leader. Because the secret to vulnerability is that like calls to like. There is something too weird about hearing someone honestly break down and open up about what they struggle with, because it hits us in the face with honesty, and the only way to respond is to ignore the call within us to respond in like, or to open up, to be vulnerable and share our own brokenness.

But what holds us back so often is that we have accepted another idea of what a leader should be. We all too often accept the successful, perfectly-together, self-controlled leaders in businesses and on TV. Especially in the Protestant church we love to remind people that ours “is not a performance religion” and yet our leaders are far too often the successful, good-looking, well-mannered, white males. They are never awkward, openly-broken, with weird idiosyncrasies, failures. Because God is a god of success and prosperity.

But the church is to be the community of subversion, a place where the world looks in and says, “Well that is just silly, let us ignore them and they will go away.” Leaders of Christian community should be, and have to be, the most openly broken people, the first to admit fault and mistake because without these leaders we follow the same criteria as the rest of the world, that performance is the rule of the church, that perfection is the requirement for leadership. We want to have our cake and eat it too, i.e. we want to say it doesn’t require perfection, but we want to promote those who are perfect in our midst.

If you want vulnerability, honesty, then you must foster that within yourself first; you must be the example to others, the voice calling to their own vulnerability. It will be a difficult road, and it will hurt. I will say that some wisdom may need to be exercised so that we don’t needlessly damage ourselves, that we not throw our hurt and pain onto others abusively. But the most sought after leaders should be those who are most in tune with their brokenness, most aware and open about it, most willing to acknowledge it, and not just as some conceptual idea of sin, but as the reality of day-to-day life, with eyes to see and know how each day we hurt the people around us because we ourselves are broken, failing to hold all these truths, constantly acting as ones who do not believe.

And then we can be a community flipped upside down, where the most broken people lead us into the presence of God as the vanguards of our faith, the examples screaming out to the world that subvert their expectations.

Leadership is to know, and breathe, and speak about our brokenness as something present and real.

Cameron