Grace Beats Karma

This book is a collection of letters written from prison* by Neal Cassady, primarily to his estranged wife, with excerpt ripoffs at the footers of each letter to be read to their kids; but also to his godfather who was in the Catholic clergy. We're only getting Neal's letters here, not the responses - if you need a reminder who he was, N.C. was a close friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, being immortalized by both as Dean Moriarty in On the Road and in various poetic referentialisms; little of Cassady's poetic writings survive in the world of Actual Publishing, but his impact as a personality is pivotally central to the whole generation of avant garde wordsmithery that followed in his wake.

   We forget too easily how deeply religious the Beat core founders were: Cassady and Kerouac devout catholics, Ginsberg a reformist Jew - as such, a considerable bulk of these letters is Neal talking on and around the history and understandings of his faith, trying to memorize the whole list of all the Popes** there's ever been while doing daily exercises in his cell and committing longer and longer passages of Scripture to memory.

   Ultimately it boils down to his inner wrestling with the transcendental realisations of dharma that he and his fellow poet-beats had 'discovered'*** the dharmic truths of Eastern religions, and were trying, through their business of poetry, to syncretize or harmonize these insights with Western Christendom; ultimately a task they were halfway successful in, but Neal paid for it with his life, being imprisoned by dint of his own trust in American libertarian amenities and losing his family soon after. These letters are not tragic - nor are they entirely pleasant reading; you can see the boredoms and hypocrisies and mental gymnastics he puts himself through each time his wife writes back - and the tidbits he feeds as half-truths to the kids make this an actually interesting case study book for psychologists looking into the neuroses of the archetypal charismatic leader of folks. Well worth a read if you're interested in modern American cultural history, or the roots of all Cool Poetic stuff since WW2.

Since grace, in real Christian life - really does beat karma, I'm going to take the timely opportunity here in this post to talk briefly about my exit from my home church, which I'd already given some intimations towards here and here.
   So, my home church, The Crowded House, has been hemorrhaging members for some years - often under legitimate pretences of planting new churches elsewhere, but also because something was rotten in the local Danish crown, if you know what I mean. Anyway, the dams holding back the leak or leaks of refugee testimonies burst - it made big news - and I don't entirely know where to look to for spiritual leadership now, as it kind of feels like waking up to the fact that Acts 29, the meta-church body of which I was a part, is no different from the personality cult megachurches where book sales and speaking tours take precedence over pastoral care for all in the flock.
   Others have said far more than I would like to say here on the whole messed up scenario, so rather than testify myself (which I have done, to the formal enquiry) I'm just going to linkdump a few things. Some have seen it as fishy since Driscoll days; signs of unchristian leadership were noted and undealt with a full decade ago; from 2016 red lights began popping up more and more - this was the same year both of my parents left TCH, forcing me to stay and decide whether I trusted them or my Elders more for my longterm spiritual welfare; and now, with all that has come to light having come to light - we need to be having serious conversations about what ministry looks like in the 21st century, dealing in Hard and Certain terms with celebrity status and bullying.

* Some policemen gave him a lift home once and he, well-spiritedly and not knowing they were cops, paid them for fuel in form of two or three jazzy cigarettes.

** He lists them, including their dates of popehood, in an appendix. Another appendix is a letter from Neal's long-suffering wife to Allan Ginsberg - or is it the other way around? In any case, it adds a good bookend.

*** "Disco inferno" I was, somewhere on the internet, told translated from Latin as "to learn through the fires of suffering" - but Google Translate didn't let me get away with this, and only by playing around with its phrasing to "discos infer no" which renders "bring no dishes" - which is arguably a Zenlightened kind of roundabout means of saying what I meant anyway.