Look Closer

I've been doing some blog-cogging lately, and want to change my blog's name. It's a name I've had in mine for a while: Look Closer. I take that phrase from the film American Beauty, but the meaning I give the term has more than one layer. (I also want to dress up the look of MHB and in general make it more visitor friendly, but give me a little time). It's true the new moniker represents N.T. Wright's approach to epistemolgoy, what is at the center of what he calls 'critical-realism.' However, it also represents my own thinking about reality for some time, even years. I watch my own truth unfold, in my recovery for example, and see how complex all human questions actually are, how there are so many opinions on OCD, for example, most of them limited pieces of the truth, a few erroneous. The actual answer, the Path, what Bruce Lee would call 'personal truth in combat'...that takes work to find. One has to Look Closer.

This is what N.T. Wright (brilliantly) calls the 'epistemlogical spiral.' We interact, question, probe, critique, test, all that we can do as we hammer toward the truth. And, for some issues at least, 'The Truth is Out There.' Or the human truth, which is as close as we will ever get.

For some questions, we can find answers. For others, knowing what we can't know is as important as wrestling toward what we can.

Take the post below, my mini-rant on the current tragic fighting in the Middle East. I admitted I knew little about the topic; as I look closer, I learn things about Hizbollah, the history of Lebanon, Israel's own experience and internal politics, al which allow me to see how complex this issue surely is. Do I still think Bush, and too many American Christians, view Israel as the chosen people, that that belief goes back decades before the 'war on terror?' Yes, I do think that. But the fact is, to say anything really cogent on the current confict I'd have to look closer, wouldn't I? This is the whole purpose of expertise. Of all critical thinking. Of, let's hope, good blog.

Look Closer has other meanings: look closer in to the heart of the beloved, look closer at the wonder of nature, look closer whenever one can to uncover personal and corporate truth; of course, and here I am weakest in praxis, look closer at God, at his manifestion within and without.

So many ideas sound great on paper. Many possess a psychological appeal which can be hard to resist. Marx and Freire come to mind for me. But look closer and the truth begins to unreel like a poem.

I apologize for the friends who will have to change their link (some, wisely, just call me Troy in the margin just in case). I won't do this today, but soon, the name will change though I guess I'll keep the link. Looking closer is what I want.