Hashtag Winning: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here. What follows is an excerpt from the fall 2019 issue.

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Every September I attend a retreat for the Academy of Christian Editors. A feature of that retreat is a sharing circle where we each get roughly a minute to introduce our favorite book we read over the past year. You can see this year’s complete list here.

I always find this exercise a little stressful — I want my choice to be distinct and memorable, something I won’t be judged for except to be judged as distinct and memorable myself.

I had a number of books that came to mind, including the one I was still reading as I flew to Nashville for the retreat: The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead. This novel inspired by true events is set in the mid 1960s at a “reform school” for boys. All the students are tyrannized by the staff, but the black kids are routinely terrorized and brutalized. Whitehead is a master at creating characters and carrying the reader into and through terrible things, and he does so here again. Schools like this one existed in my lifetime. Maybe they still do. I’m haunted by that: How many other atrocities are we allowing to exist, and why are we allowing it?

But I hadn’t finished The Nickel Boys yet, so instead I put forward Mandela and the General, a beautifully drawn graphic novel recounting the true story of how newly elected South African President Nelson Mandela, who was actively dismantling the century-old system of apartheid that had privileged whites over people of color, met with and earned the respect and loyalty of the leader of a nationalist resistance group bent on taking South Africa back for the whites. A story I’d never heard before — powerful, compelling — and nobody else had picked it. #winning

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Resilient Voices: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here. What follows is an excerpt from the fall 2019 issue.

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I may have let my discipline slip a bit lately. I’ve been indulging my interest in vinyl a lot this year, which is at odds with my original purpose for switching to vinyl-only, which was to force myself to be more discriminating. Vinyl records are expensive and they take up a fair bit of space. But it can’t be helped when there’s so much good music to keep up with.

A lot of my new albums are not new, however. Case in point: You’re the Man by Marvin Gaye, the (intended) follow-up to his 1971 release What’s Going On. The record was shelved until this year, when it was released to mark the late artist’s eightieth birthday. I picked it up on Record Store Day in April. It’s a double-album, but the second disc is just b-sides and alternate takes, even a Christmas song. I lean hard into the first disc, and particularly side one. The title track is a nice jam that holds up well as an exemplar of its era; my favorite track is “Piece of Clay,” not written by Gaye but delivered with his signature passionate wisdom:

“That’s what’s wrong with the world today:
Everybody wants somebody to be
Their own piece of clay.”

Like I said, it holds up.

For my birthday this summer I asked for and received a vinyl edition of an album I loved when I was not yet married, Tanita Tikaram’s 1988 debut Ancient Heart. I already had it on CD—like I said, I’m not very disciplined these days—but I wanted to hear it scratched out at me at 33 revolutions per minute. Tikaram was, at the time, being compared to Van Morrison and other resilient voices; I eventually would buy her second disc and lost track of her after that, but something about this album really did it for me. Her breakout hit was “Twist in My Sobriety,” but every track has gravitas to it—even the sing-songy ”Poor Cow,” which my friend Chris and I would play on our college radio program as we announced the cafeteria’s lunch menu for the day. “Slice her up, slice her up, slice her up, poor cow.” Turns out I wasn’t very disciplined then either.

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Teaspoons of Something or Other: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here. What follows is an excerpt from the fall 2019 issue.

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Twenty-five years ago I was a twenty-four-year-old man-child in the throes of newly wedded bliss. Kara and I got married a few months after she finished her undergraduate degree. Our church at the time met in a rented theater, so to hold our wedding service we had to rent a church. Our friend Keith performed the ceremony, his first ever wedding. I remember he wished us ladles of honey for every teaspoon of something else—vinegar, maybe? Our wedding was an over-the-top affair, with a guest list that included pretty much everyone we ever met, testing the credit limits of both our sets of parents. Then we settled in to married life. There have surely been teaspoons of something or other over the years, but we’ve had plenty of honey to wash it down.

This month we celebrated twenty-five years with a vacation in Maui, Hawaii. We were a few steps from a beach and a few more steps from a donut shop (malasadas in the local lingo). We drove the Road to Hana, a long and winding route that is more about the journey than the destination, with plenty of stops along the way to see beautiful things. Not a bad embodied analogy for a marriage—or for life itself, I suppose.

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"God, Part III"

The year I was born John Lennon wrote what was essentially a Declaration of Independence. “God” was the tenth track on his first post-Beatles record (featuring the Plastic Ono Band), and it called out everyone from Elvis and Bob Dylan to Jesus and Hitler. A kind of epitaph for the 1960s, it might reasonably be considered an anthem for Generation X: “I don’t believe in Beatles,” he sang. “I just believe in me. ... The dream is over.” Disillusionment with the world characterized “God” in the first year of my life.

The year I graduated high school and started college, U2 released their film and record exploring the spirit of America. A friend and I went to great lengths to secure our copy of Rattle and Hum (along with a half-gallon or so of Drakkar Noir for the ladies). Featured on the album was “God, Part II,” Bono’s tribute to John Lennon. It featured a veiled threat against Albert Goldman for his salacious biography of Lennon, but otherwise it was a riff on the original idea of Lennon’s “God.” Instead of disillusionment with the world, however, Bono set his sights on himself: “[I] don’t believe in riches but you should see where I live” is only one of his confessions in the song. Disillusionment with the self was the theme of “God,” part 2, in the first year of my adulthood.

Fast forward 32 years. I’m turning fifty and disillusionment has gone out of favor. Everyone is a true believer - or at least wishes to be identified among the true believers; everyone is tempted at all times to be the first (or at least not the last) to out and expel the unbeliever, or the untrue true believer.

Perhaps disillusionment-fatigue is a consequence of all that we’ve learned in the intervening years about ourselves and our context. These days we’re aware that there is not one world to interact with but an aggregation of overlapping empires to be loyal or disloyal to. As Wendell Berry puts it in his masterful novel Jayber Crow,

All the world, as a matter of fact, is a mosaic of little places invisible to the powers that be.

Our little worlds are of little consequence; it's the overarching empire that breaks and makes us.

Meanwhile, there is not one self for each of us to grow tired of but an intersection of many selves to be put forward according to the demands of the moment. As the great Ben Folds puts it in his song “Best Imitation of Myself," our task increasingly seems to be putting forward one of our many selves, "withholding the rest so I can be for you what you want to see." Our intricate selves are of little consequence; it's the persona, not the person, that drives our success.

To survive in this age of overlapping empires and intersecting selves, we have by and large dispensed with disillusion - which is a shame, because as I have long held, disillusionment is a gift, even a spiritual discipline. Disillusionment is the dispersal of illusions, and so without it we are left clouded in our understanding of ourselves and our world. There is no independence to declare, no singular self to confess.

What, then, is the theme of “God,” part 3? St Paul famously wrote,

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? (Romans 7:24, The Message)

The end of the rope, I think, is a fitting theme for “God, Part III.” Here’s my lame attempt to to offer an anthem to send us out into the next season of life, divested of false hope and in search of true hope.

I don’t pretend to think that my take on “God, Part III” is the only or even the best vantage point, and of course I know stepping into the shoes of Bono and John Lennon and St Paul sounds crazy. But as another poet-prophet once put it, unless we get a little crazy, we’re never going to survive.

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“God, Part III”

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son:
and to the Holy Ghost.

America is a concept through which we assert our moral vision.
Race* is a construct in which we sin against one another.
Sin is a classification by which we judge and are judged by ourselves and one another.
Church is a designation with which we settle our insecurity.
Evangelicalism (my own little place) is
a robust theology and a tenuous subculture;
The theology does not support the subculture
and the subculture does not uphold the theology.

Christianity Today does not speak for me.
The Christian Century does not speak for me.
The New York Times does not speak for me.
The Reverend Al Mohler does not speak for me.
The Reverend Jim Wallis does not speak for me.
The late Billy Graham does not speak for me.
The great David Dark does not speak for me.
President Trump does not speak for me.
Vice President Biden does not speak for me.
Nobody speaks for me, even as
Everyone speaks to me.

I don’t speak for GenX.
I don’t speak for cis-whites.
I don’t speak for men;
I sure don’t speak for women.
I don’t speak for evangelicals (my own little place).
I don’t speak for Presbyterians.
I don’t speak for Catholics.
I don’t speak for agnostics.
I sure don’t speak for Jesus
(though I trust he speaks to me).
I speak for no one but myself
And I sometimes fail to tell the truth
About and to myself.

I believe in the great American experiment
And the failure of the American experiment.
I believe in the perseverance of the saints
And the inevitable betrayal of the same.
I believe in the coming judgment
And the boundless mercy of God.
I believe that God will burn away every sin
And wipe away every tear.

I believe that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son:
and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be:
world without end. Amen.

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* I am aware that the cultural references in this post are overwhelmingly if not exclusively white (the invocation and benediction are inspired by John Coltrane’s masterful work of mysticism A Love Supreme"). This is an unfortunate truth about me, that I am largely if not overwhelmingly shaped by white American culture. I'm working on it.

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here. 

PS: Here’s another clue for you all: Bono was the Fly, John was the Egg Man, and the Walrus was Paul.

Add Some Beauty to Your Life: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here. What follows is an excerpt from the summer 2019 issue.

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I’ve started reading George Orwell: A Life in Letters, and I’m enjoying them, although I have the sneaking suspicion that he might have been a jerk. He’s awfully sardonic, which you would think as a cynic I would appreciate (and most of the time I do). But he’s writing letters during the rise of the Nazis, and his morose predictions for the health of the world come off a little uncaring, as though despotism is little more than an annoying intellectual curiosity. In fairness to Orwell, he’s famous for speaking out and less famous for but equally engaged in joining the fight against tyranny. I'm only partway through the book and he's already fought in a war against fascists. Meanwhile, I’m sitting at home toggling back and forth between 24/7 news channels while shaking my head and chuckling at the collapse of democracy. So who’s the jerk?

A more engaging recent read was An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim. I’ve described it elsewhere as The Road with bureaucrats. A time-slip novel with scenes separated by decades of a world-reshaping pandemic, we watch the lead character lose her great love and fight to get it back. We see her great strength in the face of manipulation by people with power and the petty betrayals of people without. It reminds me some of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, another powerful journey story featuring a strong female lead. Good stuff.

Now and then I edit a book that I’d be content to be remembered for. Such books are usually a perfect storm of literary craftsmanship, creative thesis, sound thinking, and struggle credentials. Given, by Tina Boesch, is one such book, a study of what the Bible means by blessing. It’s born of Tina’s experience living overseas, where the language of blessing is woven throughout society. In the face of this culture of blessing, the way Americans encourage one another seems woefully thin, so Tina turned to the Bible and discovered that “blessing” is not just a pronouncement but an ethic to be lived into. Tina commits herself to the dignity of every person and place she describes. It’s a beautiful book because blessing begets beauty. Pick it up and add some beauty to your life.

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If you'd like to get Middling in your in-box, give me a shout and I'll set you up. In the meantime, check out my review of The Underground Railroad alongside my review of Space Opera. You can find it here. Thanks for reading!

People of Unclean Lips: A Lament

I journaled this weeks ago in reaction to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. I considered posting it upon the killing of Breonna Taylor, but I held back. And then George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis and Christian Cooper was threatened by a white woman in New York, who told him she'd call 911 and say an African American man was threatening her, after he reminded her she was legally obligated to leash her dog. This reflection has haunted me with every new news report, and it's high time I posted it. I'm not under any illusions that it will change any minds or serve any real redemptive purpose. But to let it sit in draft as person after person is killed or threatened with racialized violence in broad daylight seems cowardly and inauthentic at this point.

Trigger warning: If you don't like asterisks, you're not going to like this post.

If you don't like reflections on uncomfortable topics, you're not going to like this post either.

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I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.
Isaiah 6:5

The world is a f***ed up place.

These are the words that keep coalescing in my head, the only words that I can muster up when I try to articulate the emotions that surface for me around Ahmaud Arbery. He was shot and killed months ago — I keep trying to remind myself that this assassination is not new news — but I only learned of it when video evidence of the killing finally surfaced. Another execution of another black man at the hands of white men. Another act of degrading violence. Another anecdote in the centuries-long history of racial tyranny and terrorism in the United F***ing States.

I can’t bring myself to type “f***” because I am a Christian and Christians don’t say such words. When I was a kid I used to entertain myself by citing Cohen v. California, the Supreme Court case that affirmed the very sensible argument that freedom of speech extends to vulgar language, so that saying “f***” is our constitutional right. I was a stupid f***ing kid — not because I would occasionally say “f***” but because I took such glee in indulging stupid stuff like this for myself when real human beings were getting shot in the streets for stupid stuff. I was a f***ing Karen before Karen was a f***ing thing.

But I was a child then, and I have since put childish things behind me. I recognize now that when I was enamored with Cohen v. California I was being a stupid f***ing kid, like those f***ers over in Michigan who thought they’d show all of us by marching into government buildings wearing weapons of mass f***ing destruction and ranting about how the state was taking away their f***ing rights by requiring them to change their behavior during a global f***ing pandemic. Those f***ers went home to sleep in their own f***ing beds that night. I’ll be they high-fived each other on their f***ing social media accounts before they kissed their f***ing kids good night.

For some stupid f***ing reason those f***ers can get away with provocative actions like that and Ahmaud Arbery can’t even go for a f***ing run in his own f***ing town without getting shot and killed by a couple of f***ing a**holes who think they’re part of a master race or something. And when they’re caught in the f***ing act they just appeal to some f***ed-up arbitrary law that some f***ing politician threw at the f***ing wall to appease his f***ed up constituency, and then all the other f***ed up politicians who were looking to score some easy points voted yes instead of “hell no” or “what the f*** is this bulls***?” and so suddenly white people with guns can shoot black joggers and call it a f***ing citizen’s arrest.

This is the same f***ed up logic that got Trayvon Martin killed for walking home from a f***ing store, that got Jordan Davis killed for listening to f***ing music in his own f***ing car, that got little twelve-year-old Tamir Rice shot dead for playing with a toy f***ing gun while grown-a** white men in f***ing Michigan are prancing around in camouflage playing with real-a** f***ing semi-automatics in full view of the f***ing police without any f***ing consequence. The world is a f***ed up place.

I can’t say “f***” because I’m a Christian, and Christians can’t abide by vulgar language. We can, apparently, abide by vulgar legislation, vulgar acts of public provocation, vulgar expressions of unchecked entitlement, and countless other displays of vulgarity that demonstrate plainly how f***ed up the world is and yet don’t rise to the level of gross impiety of four-letter words.

Comedian Buddy Hackett used to do a bit about the word “f***.” As I heard the bit, he asked some nice-looking Christian lady in the audience if she ever cussed. Of course not, was her proper and predictable response. He then offered a scenario, say, dropping an anvil on your foot. The immediate, visceral reaction is not one of propriety but something guttural, something vulgar: “Ouch! I broke my f***ing foot!” Some words, he argued, are particularly suited for the moment, even though they wouldn’t normally make it through our filters. Some moments defy filters. Some filters muddy up a moment.

I'm reluctant to sign my name to this because I’m a Christian, and it wouldn’t be nice to do so. I think it’s entirely possible that by owning this rant, I'll be subjected to shame by my church friends and my Christian employer will call me down to HR for a chat. But more than that, I’ll resist the idea of putting my name to it because I have shaped my filters in such a way that such language has no place, and in turn my filters have shaped me into a person who is focused on scrupulously moderating his language so as to describe gross violations of human dignity like the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in nice, polite terms, rather than demanding in an outdoor voice and with the most visceral, arresting language available to me that all of us, starting with myself, refuse to tolerate such demonstrations of our inherent vulgarity as a society, and instead scrupulously refashion society in the manner of Jesus, who among other things stood between a vulnerable woman and a crowd that thought it would be both cool and well within their rights to stone her to death; Jesus who stood between a man healed of his blindness and authorities who felt entirely entitled to coerce him and his family into betraying Jesus and one another; Jesus who told his followers in starkly plain language to obey God and not cower before people who were in the habit of enforcing their social power with weapons of mass intimidation; Jesus who threw the opportunists out of the temple and welcomed marginalized ethnic communities into the family of faith.

That’s a long sentence, a byproduct of the filtration system I’ve been enculturated into and have reinforced with my own participation in it. The world is a f***ed up place, and I’m right there f***ed up in the middle of it. May God have mercy on every f***ing one of us.

This is a lament and is to be used as a lament.
Ezekiel 19:14

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This lament is for Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, and Christian Cooper, and for Tamir Rice, and for Trayvon Martin, and for Sandra Bland, and for Philando Castile, and for Botham Jean, and for Eric Garner, and for Michael Brown, and for Atatiana Jefferson, and for Freddie Gray, and for Emmett Till, and for so so so many others.

The Sandwich Season: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here. What follows is an excerpt from the summer 2019 issue.

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I’ve reached the age where the generation behind me is hitting its markers of adulthood. My oldest niece has graduated high school. One of our youngest cousins has gotten married. I had to wear a suit (a jacket, but really what’s the difference?) to the wedding; fortunately it still sort of fit.

And then of course there’s the other side, the generation before mine. Health scares among uncles, aunts, and parents. Major moves to ensure they’ll be cared for as they get older. This is the sandwich season, which makes the fact that my suit jacket still fits all the more remarkable.

I recently got my hair cut by my wife’s stylist. I like her—she has moxie, and I respect moxie. She told me I was long past due for a grown up haircut (she told me considerably more than that, but I’ll preserve my dignity and spare you the details). She offered to make me look like Christian Bale, and so I am now somewhere on the spectrum between Dick Cheney and Batman. Depends on the day, most days—and a little bit on what I had to eat.

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I’m a kickstarter—I kickstart things. Most recently I kickstarted the vinyl reissue of a fantastic record from my young adulthood. Charlie Peacock is a musician living in Nashville, where he and his wife founded the influential gathering place Art House America. He mostly produces music these days, including the late great Civil Wars, but he’ll drop a track or two now and then. Back in the day he straddled two genres: jazz fusion and contemporary Christian pop. That marriage of interests gave birth to some truly distinct music, showcased on his three-volume West Coast Diaries. I kickstarted the vinyl reissue of volume 2.

Charlie’s voice is fragile, wispy. You kind of naturally picture him wearing a fedora (the “big man’s hat” of a key track, perhaps) and carrying a messenger bag. But there’s a lot of soul riding those sound waves. Several tracks function as extended riffs, a tip of the chapeau to his jazz roots, with Charlie sparring/dancing vocally with his collaborator the late great Vince Ebo. Some songs are especially plaintive, such as “Down in the Lowlands,” but every track inhabits a similar overall groove, which makes for an especially coherent, groovy record.

For my birthday Kara got us tickets to see the legendary Stevie Wonder at Red Rocks Amphitheater just outside of Denver. I only own one Stevie Wonder record but it’s a great one: Songs in the Key of Life, which may be the best album title of all time. It’s from this record that we get the infectious “Sir Duke,” The enchanting “Isn’t She Lovely,” and the desperate “As.” I was pretty young when this record dropped—but in case he hadn’t already, it seems to me Songs in the Key of Life cemented Stevie's credentials as a voice for his generation. And I think he realized it: He sings with a calm and settled assurance that is itself reassuring. My favorite track is the first: "Love's in Need of Love Today." I play it when I need it, and I think you will too once you hear it.

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An Exchange I Found Especially Humorous: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you. Sign up for Middling here. What follows is an excerpt from the spring 2019 issue, a compare-and-contrast of two visionary books.

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I've recently read two books that are authors reflecting on and advocating for their particular vision of their particular vocation. One you've likely heard of: Marie Kondo has made a worldwide business of helping people get rid of stuff, taking her most recently to Netflix. The book that made her a phenom is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. In it she unpacks her KonMari method, which involves (among other things) holding everything you own in your hands and asking yourself whether it sparks joy. If it doesn't, thank it for its service and send it on its way; if it does, find its proper place in your home. I borrowed this book from a coworker. (I loaned her in exchange the book Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives, by Tom Harford, a book I very much enjoy, and an exchange I found especially humorous.) I found myself largely skeptical about Kondo's book for a couple of key reasons:

This "Japanese art" is Japanese only insofar as Kondo herself is Japanese. She found a market for her services in Japan precisely because so many people were so bad at dealing with clutter; even her family found her tidying annoying. In fairness to Kondo, she comes off as very much herself in this book--she would have written this book very differently if she weren't Japanese--and she makes no contention that what she's doing is some ancient cultural secret she's bringing to the world. So I blame the publisher for this point: Someone on that team decided the book would sell better if it were classed as a "Japanese art" rather than simply an "art." This prompted a mild ethical dilemma for me, actually, since publishing is my gig: Acquiring authors and marketing their books can, it turns out, come uncomfortably close to cultural appropriation. (That's a long bullet point. I apologize. It makes my next bullet point just a wee bit hypocritical.)

For a person whose whole brand is decluttering, Marie Kondo doesn't write especially sparingly. I found myself wondering fairly often when she would get back to the point.

Unlike many of my reading and writing friends, I wasn't particularly put off by Kondo's controversial suggestion that you limit your book collection to around thirty titles. (I was more offended that she suggested you keep those books in your shoe closet.) She makes an interesting point about the purpose of the things we have, and she's certainly correct that we read most of our books once if we read them at all, so to keep them around has more to do with our reluctance to let go of things than our desire to be stretched by them. Nevertheless, I haven't gotten rid of any books since reading Kondo's (except hers, I suppose, since I returned it to my friend when I finished it).

The other vision of vocation I read recently might not qualify in some people's minds as a book. Grant Snider is a comic artist, creating strips under the moniker of Incidental Comics. His strips explore the nature of art, the industry of publishing, and, in this book, The Shape of Ideas: An Illustrated Exploration of Creativity. This book is a curated collection of his previously published work, organized in a way that maps and mines the creative process. He's insightful and soulful, and his art hits far more than it misses. You can read this book quickly, but you can reread this book often. I'm not sure it would make the cut if I limited myself to thirty books, but I haven't put it away since I finished reading it.

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The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Epilogue: “More to You Than You Like to Show”

What follows is an epilogue to a running series on the Enneagram. For previous posts, click here.

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The Hulk, it can at last be acknowledged, does not exist. He was the figment of Stan Lee’s imagination when he was introduced to the world more than fifty years ago. He’s been a comic book character, a television character, a cartoon character, and a movie character. He has never been flesh and blood.

So a series of posts like this is something other than a diagnosis of an actual, lived personality. This series has been, essentially, an extended confession. In labeling the Hulk an enneagram 9, I have been projecting onto this fictional being what I think is true of myself. I suspect any person of any enneagram type could have done something similar, finding quirks of the character that echo back some basic truth about themselves. A friend recommended I assign an Avenger to every type, but I think for me this deep dive with the Hulk has been more intellectually honest. In any event I’ve found it a helpful excuse to try to better understand myself.

At the outset of this series I said I would disregard the two official Hulk movies. They were both released before the Mark Ruffalo version of the character was introduced as part of the fully conceived Marvel universe. I’m still inclined to disregard the Ed Norton film — as good an actor as he is, that film seemed most interested in blowing stuff up. (It was, incidentally, retrofitted as part of the Avengers continuity when a scene featuring Tony Stark was tacked onto the credits. I mention this only to shore up my nerd cred.)

But I recently revisited the Ang Lee-directed film simply titled Hulk. I loved that movie when it was released back in 2003, and while its virtual lack of CGI effects leaves it looking pretty dated today, it still stands as the most thorough exploration of the character.

We first meet not Bruce Banner but his father, David, a scientific genius who becomes obsessed with discovering a cure for a genetic deformity he has accidentally passed to his son. His compulsiveness gets worse as Bruce grows from an infant to a toddler, ultimately getting him fired from his job, bringing calamity to his community, and subjecting his home to tragic violence.

Enneagram scholar Chris Heuertz identifies our parents’ inevitable inability to shield us from the tragedy of the world, and our subsequent efforts as small children to recover some safety and security, as a seminal moment in our formation in enneagram types. We create “programs for happiness” (borrowing from Fr. Thomas Keating) that demonstrate insight into what’s going on around us, but we are simply not mature or sophisticated enough to count the cost of these programs, even as we increasingly rely on them to order our worlds for us.

Young Bruce gets hurt while playing with a friend. He doesn’t cry, even though he’s obviously in pain. A neighbor parent is surprised, but Bruce’s mom is not. “Bruce is like that,” she says, with a sigh of resignation. “He’s just really bottled up.”

Bruce learned this response to trauma. His dad is combustible; it does no good to add to the stress of a moment. Even as his mother screams in terror and his father runs toward him with mania in his eyes and a knife in his hands, Bruce sits still, watching passively. He loses both parents that day, but he fully realizes the persona that will accompany him into adulthood.

Inevitably our programs for happiness betray us. St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 that to mature is to leave childish things behind us, and we might be forgiven for grunting “Duh!” in response. But it turns out that leaving behind these childish things is incredibly difficult. What shapes us in childhood is deeply rooted in us, and we spend decades reinforcing the flawed logic of the meaning we assigned to things when we were little.

By the time we meet the adult Bruce, we realize quickly that he is pretty good at sabotaging himself. The obvious love interest, Betty Ross, is his former girlfriend and current coworker. When Bruce asks her if they can still work well together after having been “close,” she jumps on the point: “We were close?”

Bruce is flummoxed by the question, but his response is reflective of how his programs for happiness have betrayed him: after decades of passive impassiveness—sloth, the besetting sin of the enneagram 9—he is unable to express himself to someone he clearly loves and who clearly loves him: “If I could be more, whatever, you know ...”

Betty demonstrates great compassion and insight in letting him off the hook while also letting him know he hasn’t fooled her: “I figure there’s more to you than you like to show.”

Eventually Bruce is exposed to radiation that will unleash the Hulk inside him. Along the way we learn that his father is alive and keeping tabs on him. His father has not changed; he views the world (and Bruce) in the same way—as inherently adversarial, someone/thing to be exploited and dominated. When he first reveals himself to Bruce, he elicits feelings that Bruce doesn’t know how to manage, and the monster almost emerges. His father’s response is belittling, cynical, lacking in love: “You’re going to have to watch that temper of yours.” Good luck with all that.

Bruce eventually does discover that the Hulk is living inside him. Betty is with him as he processes the experience: “What scares me the most is that when it happens, when it comes over me and I totally lose control, I like it.”

I identify with this fear. I regularly indulge in fantasies of giving vent to my anger. These fantasies are not physically violent, but they are what you might call rhetorically violent. I imagine myself saying things that are biting and penetrating, digging into vulnerabilities and leaving my opponents fully defeated and broken. There is no effective counterargument in these fantasies: I am always right and always fully vindicated. There is always someone permanently impacted by the encounter.

It’s worth quickly noting that I rarely — hardly ever — actually engage in such arguments. When I do, I don’t know how to feel afterward. I recently called our insurance company in a fit of rage over a rise in our rates and an accompanying letter that I very much did not like. When the representative explained the issue and reduced our rates by 60 percent — 60 percent! — I said “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” repeatedly. I didn’t know what to do with so much anger that had yielded such great results, and I felt incredible guilt. But I also felt enormous — like one of my fantasies had become reality, like I had been right about everything for my entire life.

I still don’t totally know how to think about that experience — and I still feel really bad about how I talked to the customer service rep.

Why do people like me treat anger as a disease? Why do we respond to it in extremes — either dissociation or violent expression? Betty offers her diagnosis as a condemnation of Bruce’s father: “All you’ve given Bruce is fear — fear of life.” I think she’s right: if sloth is the perpetual challenge of the nine, I think fear might be the underlying motivation.

But, as St John reminds us, perfect love casts out fear. Hulk movies don’t have happy endings per se — the hero is still a monster at the end of it — but they do have moments of reconciliation. We see Bruce find a place where he can make a meaningful contribution to the world. We see him start to manage and channel his rage in at least slightly more productive ways. But the moment that was most striking to me came before all that. It came when the Hulk comes face to face with Betty and she helps him find his way back to himself.

Bruce: You found me.
Betty: You weren’t that hard to find.
Bruce: Yes I was.

At the end of the film Bruce has become a monster but he has discovered his humanity. The path to that discovery was love. It’s love — the perfect love of God that St John evokes but also the stumbling but significant love of the people around us — that reconciles us to ourselves. It’s love that empowers us to become the best, fullest version of ourselves. It’s love that defeats our demons and helps us live in the truth.

It’s love that every nine needs — and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and every one. “So let us love one another,” writes St John, “for love comes from God.”

That’s it.

***

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In Praise of Drew Blankman

I first met Drew Blankman when I was interviewing for my first real editing job. Drew was interviewing for the same job. Seriously, our interviewer introduced us to each other. I was wearing a suit; Drew was wearing, as I recall, a Hawaiian shirt. Drew got the job, I didn't.

I got a similar job a couple of weeks later at the same place. Another editor had announced she was leaving, and I had proved that I was a good speller (and a sharp dresser, I might add). So I moved into an office down the hall from Drew, and gradually we became friends.

Drew is a few years older than I am, and he recently texted me to let me know he's retiring this year. It's a big deal to me, because Drew shaped me as an editor probably more than any other person.

Among other things, Drew helped me not to approach an author with starry eyes. It's a big deal to write a book, but to write a book doesn't make a person a big deal. As important as platform (or celebrity, let's be honest) has become in deciding what books to publish, content rightly belongs at the center of any book: attention to craft, credibility in relation to topic, struggle credentials, passion and vision are the true difference makers in a book. Especially for the task of editing, celebrity is a distraction, and the best editors (I learned from Drew) don't allow themselves to be distracted by it.

Drew also helped me to be a believer in what I was editing. If the first lesson was to not drink the Kool-aid, the second lesson was to catch the vision. As my work gradually moved from copyediting (the line-by-line effort to bring a manuscript to internal coherence and stylistic consistency) to acquisitions (the author-by-author effort to bring books into a publishing program that contribute to a coherent publishing identity), a willingness to be moved by a book became incredibly formative not only in my work but in my life. Over the years I've come to greater clarity about my convictions book by book by book, and Drew was a catalyst for me to take the books I edited as seriously as a serious book should be taken.

Drew and I once set out to write a book together. We grabbed lunch on the regular to talk about how such a book might take shape, how we might divide the labor, that sort of thing. I think the working title was The Unsettled Life or somesuch. We never wrote the book together - I think we both realized that we didn't have the platform to pull it off - but if there has been any slowing in my life of the entropy that tends to settle in on us as we move through adulthood, it's probably largely due to those regular conversations with Drew.

Drew and I also wrote an editorial style manual together. For people of our craft, that's roughly equivalent to building your own light saber. I can't tell you how long our style guide guided the style of our publishing house, but I can tell you that it's guided my own thinking about what is (or ought to be) normal in a manuscript ever since. And when I think of that style manual, I think of an old bit by comedian Colin Quinn (at the time the "Weekend Update" anchor on Saturday Night Live) in which he compares Matt Damon to Hitler:

You have the two best friends, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, you know, they wrote the movie together, Good Will Hunting, but you know it was Ben Affleck that did all the typing, you know, while Matt Damon was on the bed doing hammer curls.

In this scenario, Drew was Ben Affleck, and I was Matt Damon. I mean that as a compliment. Put another way, Drew is Batman, and I bought a zoo.

All this to say, I'm glad I got to work with Drew along the way, and I for one am sad for Christian publishing that we are now entering its post-Drew-Blankman era. I hope we all remember and are regularly reminded to never drink the Kool-aid but to always be open to catching the vision, to always resist the temptation to settle into an unexamined life, and to always strive for coherence in our words and our thoughts. I hope we'll work hard and enjoy ourselves, and someday retire with a consciousness that we made a real and concrete contribution to our craft. I hope, in other words, we all get the experience that I had so many years ago: the opportunity to ride in Drew's wake.

***

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The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part Five: "The Brains and the Brawn Together"

For previous posts in this running series of posts on the enneagram (including the rationale for the series), click here.

***

The Avengers: Infinity War begins where Thor: Ragnarok ends. The Hulk has never been beaten before, but we’re not long into the film before Hulk suffers defeat at the hands of Thanos (who may also be a nine, but that’s another story). With nowhere left to hide in the universe, Hulk hides inside Bruce, refusing to emerge even when he is desperately needed. Bruce will have to find another way to be a hero.

Ironically, he puts on the armor of the Hulkbuster first introduced in The Avengers: Age of Ultron. We see Bruce elated — great power with no corresponding loss of control. He gets a taste of a different kind of life, foreshadowing the fulfillment of his arc to come. (Shown here with the film's audio over some random animation.)

The endgame for Bruce is further foreshadowed in his appeal to the Vision — the second, more evolved monster he helped Tony create (after Ultron; see part three of this series) — to lay down something that seems central to his identity but is only the most obvious thing about him: “Your mind is made up of a complex construct of overlays...all of them learning from each other.” We may contain monsters, but we also contain multitudes. Bruce is coming to recognize that a persona is something distinct from a person. In a way, the Vision, like the Hulk, has been imprisoned by what the people around him have understood him to be. As Thomas Merton wrote, "The person must be rescued from the individual" - who we really are must be distinguished from and privileged above what we've made ourselves up to be.

Consider this thought experiment: Thanos’s intent is to eliminate half of all life. The climactic moment in the film is when he snaps his fingers to achieve his vision. Is it possible that only Bruce or the Hulk — not both — will survive? We don’t find out in Infinity War; we have to wait for the endgame.

***

The reveal of “Smart Hulk” in The Avengers: Endgame is thrilling to the superfan — this iteration of the Hulk was wildly popular in the comic books — but as much is concealed as revealed. There’s nothing more basic to superhero films than the origin story, and yet we meet Smart Hulk without the benefit of watching him come to be. Set five years after Thanos’s snap, Smart Hulk is firmly established in society: he poses for pictures with adoring children, eats in restaurants, wears cardigans, and is thoroughly comfortable in his own skin. It’s a happy ending — one of the few eucatastrophes we observe in the wake of the Infinity War — and the film is nowhere near over. How did this happen?

“For years,” Smart Hulk explains, ”I’d been treating the Hulk like he’s some kind of disease, something to get rid of.” Again we see the disassociation that enneagram nines resort to in privileging peace over emotional expression. ”I put the brains and the brawn together, now look at me — I’m the best of both worlds.” There is no longer Bruce and “the other guy,” no longer the Hulk and “puny Banner.” He is an integrated self, a person with no persona. He has no secret identity, no mask. He is a fully realized self.

This transformation happens offscreen, as many transformations do. Spiritual growth is soul work, and much of it happens in secret. But even such secret transformations can be epically impactful. It’s the Hulk who speaks kindly to Thor and helps coax him back into action after Thor has effectively checked out of life. While other Avengers treat Ant-Man like a second-class citizen, Hulk happily gives him his food after Ant-Man’s tacos are blown away by an approaching space craft. (Remember, it’s a superhero movie. Just go with it.) Hulk is ebullient, light of heart, compassionate, kind. When he is confronted with his past behavior, he is embarrassed by it, but he isn’t paralyzed by it. It’s Smart Hulk who is sent to persuade the Sorcerer Supreme to part with a stone she is sworn to protect—and he succeeds. She prophesies over him as she hands over the stone: “I’m counting on you, Bruce—we all are.”

Much has been made of Iron Man’s ultimate sacrifice at the end of Endgame, but it’s worth noting that Tony Stark's death was an act of violence: He died in the process of killing Thanos and his entire army. His final act was punctuated with an ego-soaked assertion of his persona: "I am Iron Man." Contrast this act of mass destruction with the Hulk, who like Iron Man put on the glove with the expectation that using it would kill him, but rather than using it to destroy, he brought half of creation back to life.

Thor, notably, wanted to be the one to wear the glove and make the sacrifice play - the latest example of him desperately trying to prove himself as “the strongest Avenger.” But Hulk was the one to do it, and he made the case calmly and soberly, not seeking to make a name for himself but seeking the greater good. “It’s like I was made for this,” he says not with a flourish of ego but a sigh of acceptance.

Hulk doesn’t die, but he is left permanently scarred, a good reminder that the truth will set you free, but it will send you off with a limp.

Flourishing nines reflect the best characteristics of the enneagram three — “the achiever.” Undaunted and ambitious, threes can accomplish great things, and the Hulk certainly does that. He no longer seeks a peace that looks suspiciously like quiet. He seems, actually, to seek the opposite: the confounding complexity of a universe twice as crowded as it once was. A flourishing nine seeks not to make peace but to make shalom — an environment of flourishing — and Smart Hulk’s ambition is met with success.

We all learn a lesson from Endgame, articulated succinctly by Thor’s mother Frigga, with echoes of Thomas Merton:

“Everyone fails at who they’re supposed to be. ... the measure of a person — of a hero — is how well they succeed at being who they are.”

Thor ends Endgame at the beginning of that heroic journey; the Hulk has already arrived, and the universe is blessed for it.

***

In previous posts I've commended several books on the enneagram: Alice Fryling's Mirror for the Soul, Chris Heuertz's The Sacred Enneagram, and The Road Back to You by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile. In this post I'll commend to you a book about the Hulk. Hulk: Gray is an origin story, written decades after the Hulk's origin. A thoughtful, poignant consideration of how hard it must be to crave peace and love but be plagued with loneliness and violence. The Hulk, it seems, could be any one of us.

***

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The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part Four, "Hulk Like Raging Fire"

For previous posts in this running series of posts on the enneagram (including the rationale for the series), click here.

***

The Marvel universe is intricately interwoven. It’s a delight to sit down to watch a film focused on any one character and to be treated to an appearance from another. Thor: Ragnarok is an especially gleeful example, with a brief cameo from Dr. Strange and the prominent inclusion of the Incredible Hulk.

Several films after Age of Ultron we finally learn where Hulk has been hiding — in space, where he is celebrated as a gladiatorial champion. He revels in the cheers of the crowds and gripes to Thor about how he was treated on earth. He has slipped into the six space again - that enneagram space where nines go when they've succumbed to stress, a space with a complicated sense of loyalty and betrayal. Unlike Age of Ultron, however, in this film we see not Bruce but Hulk move from nine to six. "Earth hate Hulk," he complains. "Thor go; Hulk stay." He has given his loyalty to this battle-crazed planet that has made him both its champion and its prisoner.

A planet enamored with violence is only too happy to let Hulk be Hulk, but a planet enamored with violence is no place to make a life. Hulk has enjoyed his exile, but he needs to make his way home. For whatever reason, I'm reminded of Walt Whitman:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) ...

(Whitman’s omission of punctuation is perhaps prophetic; he contradicts himself “very well,” thank you very much. All large and multitudinous persons do. But I digress.)

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. ...

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Hulk wants a world that loves him, or at least doesn't hate him, or at least lets him be. Bruce Banner wants to be his own person, to be sought out for himself, to be accepted contradictions and all.

He has reason not to trust that what he wants will come to pass. Thor continues to see both Bruce and the Hulk as discreet challenges to be managed rather than a whole person to be cared for. He tells Hulk that he prefers Hulk over Bruce; he tells Bruce he prefers Bruce over Hulk.

Technically it’s Thor’s movie, so we allow it, and technically the movie is a comedy, so we laugh. But the capacity to be manipulated, to be absorbed into another person’s drama, is a particular vulnerability of the nine. For the Hulk, it’s just another way for his personality to be suppressed and subsumed.

Nines are always at risk of losing their selfhood. It’s no small wonder that Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America all have three films named after them; while Hulk has two feature films, his last solo outing was more than a decade ago. (Black Widow and Hawkeye, the other two original Avengers, have no feature films to date, for what it’s worth, but that’s another story and in any case it's in the process of being remedied.) Hulk is widely acknowledged as the “strongest Avenger,” but his willingness to be contingent, to be absorbed into another person’s story, makes him particularly vulnerable to losing touch with himself.

***

In previous posts I've commended a couple of books on the enneagram to you: Alice Fryling's Mirror for the Soul and Chris Heuertz's The Sacred Enneagram. In this post I'll point you to the immensely popular The Road Back to You by Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile. This winsome and gracious introduction the enneagram takes a different starting point than the other two books; you jump quickly into the characterizations of the nine enneagram spaces, which is immensely satisfying for the enneagram-curious, and Ian's tone (he is the primary writer and the dominant voice in the book) is friendly and pastoral. Considering how tender a thorough discussion of the enneagram can be, establishing such a tone is a real kindness.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part Three: "You're Confusing Peace with Quiet"

Part three of a series. Read the prologue here.
Read part one here.
Read part two here.
***

The next film to feature the Hulk, Avengers: Age of Ultron, demonstrates early on that the team has figured out a way to manage the monster. Tony (with Bruce’s help) has developed special Hulkbuster armor for Iron Man in case Hulk goes on a rampage. But that's the remedy of last resort. Natasha has developed an incantation, a liturgy, that calms Hulk down and restores him to himself after most battles.

Just because the Avengers have developed these workarounds, however, doesn’t mean that the Hulk has been fixed. At a party, Natasha asks Bruce, “How long before you trust me?”

Bruce confesses, “It’s not you I don’t trust.”

Under stress the nine goes to six, a complicated Enneagram space that struggles with loyalty. Some sixes are hyper-loyal to a fault, assuming that they’ll be made safe by an unflinching association. Other sixes are more oppositional, assuming that their supposedly safest places are not safe at all. Bruce wrestles with this stress-induced loyalty by keeping his team at arms length. But as I said, it’s complicated, and when Tony invites him to help put “a suit of armor around the world,” Bruce goes along with the plan against his better judgment. “Peace in our time,” Tony says. “Imagine that.” That’s the way to a nine’s heart.

Age of Ultron is in some ways a Frankenstein story, and Bruce here plays Igor to Tony’s Frankenstein, helping him to build his own monster, Ultron, an artificial intelligence that develops self-awareness and an Oedipal rage toward Tony. The world is at risk once again, and Bruce, acting out of his damaged sense of self, is complicit.

Bruce is swayed by the prospect of peace, as most nines are. Natasha calls him on it in a particularly knowing way. “All my friends are fighters, and here comes this guy who spends all his time avoiding the fight because he knows he’ll win.” For Bruce, the avoidance of conflict is the path to peace. Ultron offers a cutting insight for him and all of us: “I think you’re confusing peace with quiet.”

Age of Ultron is preoccupied with the monsters in all of us - which is, in a way, also the agenda of the enneagram, which helps us to identify the false self that is subsuming and suppressing our true self. Natasha shares the story of her tragic background with Bruce and asks, “Still think you’re the only monster in the team?” The Vision reflects out loud on his essential nature: “Maybe I am a monster. I don’t think I’d know if I were one.” And Stark, once again manipulating Bruce’s loyalties, asserts plainly: “We’re monsters, buddy. We gotta own it.”

The marvelous monstrosity of the Hulk is that pain and increased stress only make him stronger, more invincible, more monstrous. He is not safe for the world, and he knows it. “Where can I go? Where in the world am I not a threat?"

He also, however, knows that the world is not safe for him, and after a particularly destructive battle he realizes that, now that “the world has seen the Hulk as he really is,” he has to disappear or he will never find his elusive peace.

Ultimately the Avengers defeat Ultron and save the day. But Bruce can’t be coaxed into acceptance of the monster within him — nor can he accept the acceptance he’s been offered by the team. Natasha tricks him into converting into the Hulk and tells him, “Now go be a hero.” He takes off to fight — nines are famously agreeable — but after the fight is over, he cuts his friends off and runs away. He is seeking peace — a peace that sounds suspiciously like quiet.

“Humans are odd,” Vision says near the end of the film. “They think that order and chaos are somehow opposites and try to control what won’t be. But there is grace in their failings.” Bruce has failed at self-acceptance, failed at intimacy with those who love him, failed to trust, failed to live in the truth. His friends have failed him as well, managing and manipulating him, drawing out whatever incomplete aspect of his essential self is most convenient to them at the time. The Hulk will run away, looking for peace. The world will be left without his strength. We won’t see the monster on earth ever again.

***

In the previous post I commended to you Alice Fryling's book Mirror for the Soul. In this post I'll point you toward Chris Heuertz's sweeping and moving book The Sacred Enneagram. Like Alice, Chris is not overly preoccupied with the enneagram numbers/spaces but rather with the enneagram's agenda - a deeper understanding of the self, a more gracious and graceful way of moving in the world. Worth a read for real.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part Two: "I'm Always Angry"

For previous posts in this running series of posts on the enneagram (including the rationale for the series), click here.

Having left Bruce Banner in the rubble of the building he destroyed, we now travel to New York, where the rest of the team has rallied for the final battle of the first Avengers movie. Things are about to get crazy. Bruce arrives late to the party but just in time for the worst of it. As the team steels for an attack, Captain America says, “Dr Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”

That’s when we learn the truth behind the Hulk: “That’s my secret, Captain—I’m always angry.”

Nines live in the gut triad. Whereas other triads act from the head or the heart, nines act on instinct, and just as often on impulse. Anger is the key emotion of the gut triad, and while eights give vent to their anger and ones seek to suppress it, nines prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist. They disassociate from their anger, banishing it from their presence.

Of course this is impossible, as we discover that Bruce has learned. But it’s the wish fantasy of the nine that they can protect the world around them from the monster within them. The catastrophe is all the more pronounced when the lie behind this logic is born out. The heroics we observe from the Hulk are especially destructive, with inordinate collateral damage. In a comical moment, the Hulk and Thor team up to put the beat down on an invading alien, destroying a building in the process. They enjoy the victory for a moment—then Hulk punches his ally Thor out of the shot.

In the end the team has won, but it looks as though it cost them Tony Stark—until Hulk shouts him back to life.

Nines make for good friends, and they are often appreciated for their contribution to the greater good. But the unreconciled self is never far removed from their besetting struggle, so that even the most constructive contributions of the Hulk - of any enneagram 9 - may involve an undercurrent of violence.

***

There are lots of good books on the enneagram. I'll mention some of them in this series. A particular favorite of mine is Mirror for the Soul, by Alice Fryling. Alice's book approaches the enneagram slowly, inductively, in a way that I find especially helpful for identifying your type and finding spiritual practices and postures that interact productively with your type. You can get it here.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure | Part One: "I'm Sorry, That Was Mean"

For the rationale for this running series of posts on the enneagram, click here.

We first meet Bruce Banner, in the first act of The Avengers, in a remote village in Kolkata. He has taken himself off the grid and entered a monkish life: celibacy, solitude, service. Serenity. His life there is interrupted when an emissary (Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow) is sent to “persuade” him to help confront an imminent threat. She marvels at the fact that he hasn’t had “an incident” (by which she means becoming the Hulk) in over a year. She’s all the more impressed given that he’s set up shop in a deeply impoverished, justice-deprived corner of the world - not exactly the best place to avoid stress.

”Avoiding stress isn’t the secret,” he replies, and we are introduced to a running theme for Bruce throughout the film. We won’t learn the secret until the world is about to end.

Turns out it’s not the Hulk that Natasha is looking for. The government needs Bruce’s expertise in gamma radiation to track down a weapon. But come for Bruce and you get the Hulk as a bonus, whether you want him or not.

Bruce is savvy. As we’ll see in future scenes, he’s always assessing the situation, considering what might cause the “other guy” (his language for the Hulk) to emerge. ”You brought me to the edge of the city—” he notes to Natasha. ”That’s smart.” He even tests the situation, startling Natasha to react instinctively with her military training. He apologizes as she pulls a gun on him. “I’m sorry. That was mean. ... Why don’t we do this the easy way where you don’t use that and the other guy doesn’t make a mess?” An entire military contingent stands down, and Bruce/Hulk joins the Avengers. He has made peace, in a manner of speaking.

We next see Bruce at a flying military base. (Remember - it’s a comic book movie. Don’t overthink it.) All the members of the fledgling Avengers are being introduced to each other, taking stock of each other. Bruce, unlike the others, moves to the margins, avoiding direct encounters. We’ll learn from Natasha in a future film what drives this behavior.

Two people—Loki, god of mischief, and Tony Stark, the insatiably curious Iron Man—are interested in seeing Bruce release the beast. Loki has scornful, malevolent reasons: He mocks Bruce as “a mindless beast who makes play he’s still a man” and wants to manipulate him for his own purposes. But Tony, a self-made superhero who clearly enjoys the savior business, is convinced that the Hulk is inherently heroic.

Bruce is unconvinced. Unlike Tony, whose heroic persona is securely encased in armor, “I’m exposed, like a nerve—it’s a nightmare.” As tensions mount, he gives voice to his motivation to keep the Hulk contained. “I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good" — note that he equates goodness with the active suppression of a central aspect of himself — "until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk.” The enneagram 9, it is widely understood, is happily left alone. No people, no problems. A lonely existence is a small price to pay for peace.

We return to the film’s steady tease: “You want to know my secret? ... You want to know how I stay calm?” He’s interrupted before he can tell us. Soon enough, his anger takes over and the Hulk finally emerges. Chaos ensues. Loki wins this battle, and we watch Hulk fall to the earth.

But we learn quickly that the Hulk is not the mindless beast Loki takes him for. We learn that he took care that no one would be hurt by his fall. “Son,” says an observer,” you’ve got a condition.” But whatever condition he has, the Hulk is human, created good, capable of good.

***

Check back here in a couple weeks for part two.

The Hulk Is a 9: An Enneagram Adventure (Prologue)

Every now and then I come out of my shell and risk ridicule by suggesting, ever so softly, that in the pantheon of the Marvel Entertainment Universe, the best representation of an enneagram 9 is not the stoic Vision or the empathic Mantis but the Incredible Hulk. People think I’m kidding. I’m not.

The enneagram is a system devised to explore human personality. Organized by nine spaces in three triads, it considers how individuals learn to go through life, how their inner logic is derived from their essential identity but damaged through trauma and misunderstanding, and ultimately how they might confront the inner barriers to their becoming their true selves.

The enneagram 9 is commonly thought of as the peacemaker, the person most invested in establishing or restoring equilibrium to an environment. “Can’t we all just get along?” is something of a mantra to the 9 (at least in caricature). People come to rely on the 9’s quietude, unflappability. You might say they enable it.

The first goal of the enneagram is not to classify a person for the sake of social organization; it is rather to help a person come to an awareness of their shadow self, the thing that is keeping them from a full and fulfilling experience of life in community. (It is, in fact, pretty easy to damage people through a preoccupation with enneagram numbers.) If there is any fictional character in the modern imagination that would benefit from such help, it is the Hulk—a man-monster alternately reclusive and disengaged from society, on the one hand, and violently destructive, on the other.

What is keeping the Hulk from a full and flourishing life? And what is the internal logic that drives the Hulk’s dysfunctions? We can ask the same questions of ourselves. The challenge we are led through with the enneagram is to stare the monster in the face and not flinch, and to come out the other side closer to shalom for ourselves and for those around us.

So then, over the course of a series of posts, I'll be taking a close look at the Hulk, or Bruce Banner as he’s known to his friends. I’ll skip over the two major films in which the Hulk is the central character, not because they’re unhelpful to my argument but because they aren’t as deeply rooted in our cultural imagination, so only the true nerds would know or appreciate the references. No, for now we’ll stick with Marvel’s movies in phases 1-3, starting with The Avengers, in which the Hulk plays a significant, though not central, role.

Final prefatory note: I am by no means an expert on the enneagram. I am, I believe, an enneagram 9, and so I think I bring some helpful perspective to bear on the question. (I did run this article by a friend or two who are enneagram experts, and they seemed to think it would be harmless.) If you find yourself wishing for better footnotes and more overt references to Richard Rohr, may I advise you to relax? It’s an article about a comic book character.

Check back here for new installments over the next several weeks. If you want to pick a fight with me along the way, feel free. But fair warning: You may like me in my resting enneagram 9 state, but you wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

You're So Fabulously Absolute: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you if you're game. What follows is an excerpt from the spring 2019 issue, a tribute to musician Joe Jackson on the occasion of his fortieth anniversary as a recording artist.

(This is as good a time as any to tell you that I keep a Spotify playlist of the songs I commend in my newsletter. You can access it here:

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I have no illusions about the superficiality of my musical interests when I was a kid. I grew up in a town with a very limited musical palate, with radio stations that focused narrowly on Top 40 and classic rock. I did, however, come into early adolescence at the dawn of MTV, and in those early days of music television the dominant form was the New Wave. I have clear recollections of Elvis Costello asking what's so funny about peace, love, and understanding; I somehow identified with the relational angst of Squeeze as they drank black coffee in bed and reflected on times they were tempted by the fruit of another; and I was regularly cut to the heart by the ferocious melancholy of the great Joe Jackson.

Jackson, in the unforgiving glare of history, is one of the New Wave's lesser lights. There are certainly reasons: He lacked the charm of contemporaries like David Byrne (of Talking Heads) and Sting (of The Police), and while his musicianship is indisputable, his pretentiousness worked at cross purposes with the democratization of music that came with its transition to television. Video did, in fact, kill the radio star, and Joe Jackson is arguably one of its many victims.

This year marks Jackson's fortieth anniversary as a recording artist, and so I was excited to purchase his new record, Fool. The liberation that comes with a marginalization precipitated by pretentiousness is evident in the music Jackson has made in the intervening decades: He's a remarkable pianist and composer, and so his tracks are consistently intricate and interesting, even as they break the reductionist rules of radio-friendliness. The new record kicks off with a decidedly cool track called "Big Black Cloud," reflecting the artist's fundamental cynicism: "Hey, hey, today's another day" is the first line of this first track. The chorus rejects the graces of grammar and punctuation to shout its indictment on life in our age:

NO LUCK NO MONEY NO SEX NO FUN
GET ON THE TREADMILL AND RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN.

Let's be honest: To fully appreciate this record, it helps to have already become a fan of Joe Jackson. You have to accept the worldview that colors his art, and that train left the station in 1979. But I'm absolutely a fan, and so I don't even take it personally when he writes a damning anthem of modern midlife and calls it "Dave":

COULD IT BE THAT
WHILE WE'RE RUSHING ROUND THE WORLD
WE'RE WASTING ALL OUR TIME?

Forty years ago Jackson released the impressive introductory album Look Sharp! featuring tracks like "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" and "Fools in Love." So cynicism is kind of his thing. Jackson wrote about this record in his memoir A Cure for Gravity (yeah, I read it--bought it off the rack in a resale shop, which made me simultaneously happy for myself and sad for Joe Jackson). Here's what he had to say:

It positively reeks of the year 1978, although it wasn't released until the beginning of 1979. . . . At twenty-three or twenty-four it seems very clever to say that the world is just a bag of woe. By the time you get to, say, forty, you've seen some woe, and it's not so funny anymore.

The album that won me over came out in 1982: Night and Day, featuring three tracks on heavy rotation on MTV in my formative youth: "Breaking Us in Two," about a relationship in the process of falling apart; "Stepping Out," about a relationship on the hunt for a renewed hope in one another; and "Real Men," a confusing song for a twelve-year-old, I freely admit: In it he addresses toxic masculinity and fluid sexuality. I didn't know what to do with the song; I only knew that it made me want to cry a little:

What's a man now, what's a man mean
Is he rough or is he rugged
Is he cultural and clean
Now it's all change, it's got to change more
Cause we think it's getting better
But nobody's really sure

Check out two tracks: One a chart-topper from his glory days, and one a throwback track from today. He's an acquired taste, I freely admit, but maybe you'll acquire it.

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Simultaneous Gravitas and Lightness of Heart: Excerpts from Middling

I write an occasional newsletter (quarterly when I don't forget) to friends and family about my life: music, books, work, and getting older. I'd love to send it to you if you're game. What follows is an excerpt from the spring 2019 issue, a tribute to my godmother, who had recently died.

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I grew up in a tradition in which infants are baptized into the Christian faith, with parents designating two people to see to the spiritual nurture of the child into adulthood. For me, one of those two people was Sharon Kobusch. (The other was her first husband, Bob, who died twenty years ago.) I grew up a little resentful of this arrangement, as I was the only kid in my family whose godparents weren't blood relations. Sharon was a dear friend of my parents and a sensible choice, but I was a bit dense and self-involved, and so I occasionally experienced her choice as a personal affront. On the infrequent occasions when Sharon and I crossed paths, I wasn't very friendly or deferential toward her.

In the decades since, I've become a godparent to two of my nieces, and I've come to understand how complicated the role is in the modern age. Officially, godparents commit themselves to help a child learn "to practice the Gospel in personal and social life" and to do so in part by being "a bearer of Christian witness and a guardian over growth in baptismal life." We live in a time, however, when the godparent role is mainly an honorific. Unsolicited spiritual nurture these days is not generally considered especially caring, and positional authority tends to be the weakest kind of authority. And so the role of the godparent is something of an archaism.

Over time, I've come to respect Sharon more and more--her willingness to be the adult in our relationship and to let me be whoever I was becoming at any given moment. With a little critical distance, and in the process of figuring out how I would relate helpfully and meaningfully to the people I have committed to godparent, I've come to see the depth of her spiritual maturity and the grace with which she's dealt with me over the decades.

Sharon died a few months ago, shortly after Thanksgiving, after a brief period of hospice care in her home. I had the opportunity to sit with her briefly over the holiday; I was visiting my parents, and they live a short distance from Sharon as the crow flies. We had a nice chat and I was impressed with Sharon's simultaneous gravitas and lightness of heart as she was coming to terms with the nearness of her death. She gave her final witness to me and I'm grateful for it. God is good, and precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints (Psalm 116:15).

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If you'd like to be added to the distribution for Middling, give me a shout and I'll set you up. Thanks for reading!