Improvising toward Flourishing

This is Part 2 of a series thinking about rules, creativity, and freedom. See Part 1.

Another prime example of the interplay of rules and structure with creativity and freedom is grammar. In any verbal communication, some basic structure and rules (often implied rules that people can’t precisely name and aren’t consciously thinking about) allow for communication to function. Parts of speech, sentence structure, verb tenses, and similar dynamics facilitate our relationship through speech. These develop over time as humans continuously work out how to communicate what they need to. Often later in the development of languages, people write these rules out in books describing the rules of grammar and begin to teach those rules to others as the way the language works. On the one hand, this is helpful, giving new people the tools to communicate, but on the other, it can have unintended consequences. Formalized grammar rules can introduce the idea that certain grammar is correct and other grammar is incorrect. That can lead to privilege for those who speak in the same dialect or style as those with the power to publish and teach formalized grammar and social or even economic consequences for those using different styles. Enforcement and coercion can become natural next steps from formalization as educational institutions promote the formalized version and assimilate those who vary from it, erasing their cultural distinctives. Official “language” is no more valid than unofficial “dialects”, the official one just has coercive political power endorsing it. Is learning the official language/rules useful? Yes, but it must be understood as a tool for functioning within the frameworks of the systems of power, not as an inherently correct/better way of speaking.

Beyond this, misuse of “official” grammar can lead the masses to misunderstanding of how language works. Over centuries, language is constantly adapting to new circumstances. Any grammar and vocabulary that communicates effectively is real language and just as valuable as any other, but that is lost when language “rules” communicate that there is “correct” and “incorrect” grammar and vocabulary. Individuals and communities exercise creativity in coming up with new words and ways of speaking that take new realities into account, such as new inventions or elements entering their reality from cross-cultural interactions. Borrowing words from other cultures but adapting them to one’s own language is a key creative move to address these changing realities. Slang also often is an adaptation that addresses changing material realities or social realities, developed as part of a process of developing individual and group identity through differentiation from power structures via new terms or identification with others by adopting their slang.

So language is constantly being created and improvised. A significant amount of rules and structure make the space for that improvisation to function, but attempts to overly formalize the rules of language can misunderstand or even stifle that creativity, or worse, function as a tool of political coercion. (Graeber’s Utopia of Rules, mentioned in the previous post, has some discussion of all of this, as well as many works from the field of linguistics itself, of course, such as John McWhorter’s The Power of Babel - I’m sure there’s better out there, but that’s one that got me thinking a while back.)

From the Beginning

These dynamics illustrate our human nature. From the biblical origin myths of humanity, we see in the book of Genesis a creation story in which God creates structures and boundaries that make human freedom and creativity possible. God is depicted as bringing order, separating seas, land, and sky, putting each thing in their place, with a purpose of seeing all of them filled with overflowing creative life. Genesis envisions God as the maker of structure with an intention of facilitating creative flourishing. Into this creation, God places humanity, gives them freedom, and invites them to be co-creators with God, cultivating the earth and making it fruitful, naming and caring for its creatures. God doesn’t give them point-by-point instructions, or coerce them into a particular path, but gives free will - the freedom to improvise and creatively adapt to changing realities. That creative adaptation, exercising freedom to wisely adapt to new circumstances for the sake of flourishing, is foundational to who we are and what we are made for.

Improvising Ethics

I’d suggest that in ethics, as in language, rules need to be able to flex and shift to adapt to new situations, contexts, technologies, and more, seeking wise and creative improvisation that finds just solutions in changing times.

I grew up basically understanding the method for connecting scripture to life as a straightforward process of finding the one meaning of the text and applying the right answer for ethical questions.

I wonder these days if it is more complex. In scripture interpretation and ethics, like in language or improv or art or gardening or cooking or friendships, we have constant need to see what is in front of us in changing situations/contexts/cultures and to develop new solutions to meet each present moment’s needs. For followers of Jesus, we do this seeking to live within the trajectory of all that has gone before us in the community of those formed by Jesus and the scriptures pointing to him.

This is, in fact, what we see happening within scripture itself. Scripture is an anthology recording the experiences and improvisational solutions of the people of God over a long history. In the scriptures we see changing contexts and ethical questions arising at different moments in history and a people wrestling with how to approach them. Scripture records their solutions, and sometimes those contradict each other. We see contradictory laws within the Torah, vastly different perspectives on suffering between Proverbs and Job, prophets challenging priests, Jesus giving new instructions to his followers that contradicted and upset the rabbis of his time, a church actively working out how Torah mattered for their Jesus-centered community and how to integrate non-Jews into a Jewish story and people, Paul giving different instructions to different churches in different cities regarding how to navigate cultural realities within their churches and amid their surrounding communities, and significant shifts in approaches to slavery, marriage structures, gender dynamics, political engagement, and more throughout their history. Scripture is full of situational and pastoral theology, not systematic theology. Its writers are generally not concerned with making generalized pronouncements about God or generic rules for all times and places separate from all context. Instead, scripture’s non-narrative portions are typically contextualized responses to particular needs and situations, creatively addressing the reader with a response dedicated to that moment. Even many narrative sections function the same way, as the community tells and retells stories that shape their identity, hopes, and resulting ethical responses in the ways needed for their moment (for instance the ways that much of the narrative of Hebrew scripture is in conversation with the concerns of the people in exile in Babylon and compiling the scriptures into collected written form at that time).

New cultural situations are always coming up. Community leaders, whether formal or informal, develop creative solutions to address new realities while seeking to be aligned with the core values formed by the narratives shaping their identity and the traditions of their ancestors. Those solutions are offered to the community and as the community accepts and lives by them as consistent practice, they are often codified and formalized, becoming part of the tradition that governs and shapes the community’s life. That’s not specific to the church, but functions similar in many communities. Think back to linguistics - much of the same process is at work here. The key difference is that the core values and narratives for the church are rooted in the life of Jesus and all that points to him before and after.

For the Word of God…

I recently became regularly a part of a different church congregation than I had been previously. One thing that particularly struck me when I first visited was the response the congregation gives after the reading of scripture. Instead of the common “The Word of the Lord/Thanks be to God” heard in many churches, we say “For the word of God in Scripture, for the word of God within us, for the word of God among us, thanks be to God.” If one isn’t thinking too closely, one could just jump right past that as not all that different, but there is a vastly different philosophy of interpretation being communicated.

“This is the Word of the Lord” locates God’s communication in the words of scripture itself and alone, with an implication its meaning is self-evident and unchanging. My congregation’s alternate response reflects the way of thinking that I described earlier. Yes, God is communicating through scripture, and the scriptures are relevant for our ethical discernment. At the same time, God’s Holy Spirit dwells within the people of God, empowering and equipping us to hear how scripture connects with and informs our current realities, to discern the needs of our present moment, and to find the solutions that live out the way of Jesus in our own day’s circumstances and concerns. We look back at scripture to see how God’s people, filled by God’s Spirit, addressed the questions of their own day, and that informs our own practice of that same process in our day. We do this not with rote solutions to be directly transferred from the past, but with a living and dynamic process modeled for us by our spiritual ancestors which we imitate for our own time under the guidance of God’s Spirit.

Improv at the Margins

In both linguistics and in ethics, creativity and new developments are often happening at the marginal places of society. This is because of the different experiences that exist in marginal communities causing differing needs and new ethical questions to arise there before they hit the mainstream. (Examples: think of both ethical and aesthetic/linguistic development in these kinds of contexts and subsequent flow from these places to the mainstream: LGBT community, street fashion, Black vernacular slang, hippies’ counterculture, punk, hipsters, etc.) In addition, through experiences of scarcity and the resulting development of the creativity to deal with that scarcity, people on the margins are often practiced practitioners of creative improvisation of solution-development. Finally, in these areas of society, there is often a felt need to express differences from the mainstream and to protest against its failures in various ways. Often the creative developments from the margins are co-opted to become part of mainstream culture and practice and the cycle begins anew with further creative developments on the margins to meet needs or to protest new realities that arise. Now, that’s not to place all actions/solutions developed on the margins onto a pedestal of perfection, but I do think it is interesting how new developments often show up in these marginal spaces. It’s important for communities to pay attention to the experiences of those on the margins around them, attend to the new questions being raised through those experiences, and wrestle well as whole communities led by those experiencing marginalization in finding the solutions that honor their needs while being formed by and continuing to form the inheritance of identity and ethical tradition that has come before and within which the community lives.

Letters photo by Sven Brandsma on Unsplash

Shore photo by JOSE ALMEIDA on Unsplash

Reading photo by Daniel Morton on Unsplash

Historical Heroes: Rich Mullins

I'll regularly highlight historical heroes, often in the week of their birth or death. Today marks the anniversary of the death of Rich Mullins.

Rich Mullins (21 October 1955-19 September 1997) was a singer and songwriter. He was born to a Quaker farming family. He learned music from his great-grandmother and a Quaker tutor from a young age and was inspired by the Beatles. He was pianist, songwriter, and vocalist for a local choir that toured widely. He was a youth pastor and music director for a church, but when he saw the impact of music on the lives of some of his youth at a large music festival, he entered into the Christian music field. He was also involved in a medical ministry serving Chinese refugees that had crossed the border to Thailand and also taught music on a Navajo reservation. He wrote many songs, recorded multiple albums, and toured for concerts. The money from his music career went to his church elders who paid him an average laborer's wage and gave the rest to charities, particularly Compassion International. He respected and was inspired by St. Francis and wrote a musical based on Francis’s life. He died tragically in a car accident.