Am I a radical? A 50-something woman asked the question somewhat casually as we left a room at the University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse. I had just used the word jihad and said that the idea of the nation/state is passé in a global economy. But in reality, I am wearing clothes from Banana Republic and just bought a Honda truck before the trip. How radical can I really be?
Radical must be a relevant thing. Or am I becoming an armchair radical, content to be comfortable while monks are beaten in the streets of Rangoon? Or shirking when a former colleague writes a paper I think is a bit controversial and I try to edit his opinions on homesexuality so that I don’t have to deal with the aftermath.
In the Emergent Church blogosphere (see theoblogy) these days, there’s all sorts of accusation and response about heresy and radicality. These days, I think about radicality in ways that are beyond church narthex conversations, wondering about changing the world, invoking both local and global manifestation. I don’t really know the word heresy anymore and know that orthodoxy like radicality is also a relevant thing that creativity and imagination and even God at times require us to transgress.
I feel guilty but honestly happy about buying a new truck with gas mileage that hovers around 20 mpg. It further implicates me into the global connectivity of blood for oil while letting me live out my inner redneck desire for a pick-up. I like cheap meals at Chinese restaurants which further connects me to the reality of undocumented labor in this country so that I can eat cashew chicken gluttonously at the buffet for $4.99. I bike as recreation, not to save gas. I shop the sale rack at Banana Republic when I can afford to purchase high quality and well-marketed clothes produced probably by paying unjust wages. I buy my electricity from PECO Wind, totally relying on wind power, but know the controversy of continuing to stick humongous windmills on the top of Appalachian ridges. This is definitely a nonradical paradox that I live.
So I am a conflicted radical; living, breathing, swimming, consuming in a global economy. Maybe the radical thing is to realize that conflicted connectedness. If that’s radical, then so be it, but I can hardly take myself seriously. I am writing on a Mac from a Holiday Inn in Wisconsin, sipping what seems to be a non-potent Bloody Mary wondering if I would have courage like the Monks in Myanmar or the insight of Merton to even understand spiritual transformation and the courage to stand more for compassion than arrogance, which as Jean Baudrillard says are always the flip sides of the same impulse.
