Walking the Labyrinth—August 28, 2009—St Augustine, who in his youth prayed “O Lord, make me chaste—but not yet,” died today in 430. For the last thirty-five years of his life he was bishop of Hippo Regius, a prominent port city in Roman North Africa—now Algeria. Augustine was one of the world’s most influential Christian thinkers—his views on good and evil, creation, original sin, the sacraments and the Church began discussions and—no surprise!—arguments that continue today. His ideas on what constitutes a “Just War” still form the basis for international law on that much-debated topic. Even the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, quoted the saint in a speech last summer (disingenuously, but still), in support of her views on abortion (Augustine shared the belief, common among physicians of his day, that souls didn’t enter the body until 40 days—for males—90 days for females—after conception; thus he regarded abortions done before “ensoulment” as killing but not homicide. I’m doubting the honorable Speaker holds many other 5th century scientific views with such fervor, but who can say?). So there’s plenty of life in the old Saint yet! His most quoted book, written as a dialogue between himself and God, is his Confessions (the opening line above is taken from there); his most famous-if least read-is The City of God. Augustine wrote more than 50 books and over 350 of his sermons survive; we have them all thanks to the infamous Vandals. In 430 those barbarians, having burned their way through France and Spain, invaded Roman Africa and laid siege to Hippo Regius. During the siege, the Saint died from a fever. So famous was he that even the Vandals, having looted most of the city after it fell, left Augustine’s cathedral and library untouched. Abu Bakr Mohammed ibn Zakarijja al-Razi (known to his Latin-speaking contemporaries as Rhazes), was born today in 830. He was regarded as one of the ancient and medieval world’s greatest physicians, though you and I owe him quite a bit, too. Rhazes, a Persian, studied medicine and alchemy in Baghdad, but collected medical texts from Greece, Rome, India and even China. He wrote A Compendium of Medicine, where he not only passed along but also criticized the world-wide practice of medicine. He discarded the use of wire sutures, substituting animal intestine and developed what we now call plaster of Paris (we should, I guess, say plaster of Persia—plaster of Baghdad?—that doesn’t quite work) to set broken limbs. Rhazes developed a theory which is today a medical commonplace—that of allergies. In a book wonderfully titled Why Abou Zayd Balkhi Suffers from Rhinitis When Smelling Roses in Springtime, Rhazes described allergies and reactions and said that certain things seem to set them off. A rich man because of his many wealthy clients, Rhazes set aside half his week to treat the poor at no fee (now there’s subsidized health insurance!). Towards the end of his life, Rhazes went blind. The man who took his place as physician to the caliph told everyone it was because Rhazes ate too many beans. When told, Rhazes responded “At least I fart out of the proper orifice! That fool farts out of his mouth.” It is his last, and unfortunately, best-known, quote. In 1640 the English army of King Charles I was thoroughly trounced by an army of angry Scots at the Battle of Newburn on Tyne. The King wanted to force the Scots to pray using the Book of Common Prayer. The Scots didn’t want to, and killed more than 300 English footmen to prove their sincerity. One might think the Church of England would do something to commemorate these martyrs to liturgical conformity, but alas!-there are no memorials to their sacrifice. Also today, Stonewall Jackson whipped Union General John Pope at the Battle of Second Manassas in 1862. The recently-appointed General Pope spent his military career cultivating arrogance and brought it to a head at Second Manassas (called by the Yankees Second Bull Run). Pope took command of his army on July 14, 1862, and promptly issued a general order that his men would no longer be retreating from the rebels "as is so much in vogue with you.” They would now go on the offensive. As he tried to track down Stonewall Jackson through July and August, Pope began signing all is communiqués, “Jno. Pope, Headquarters in the Saddle.” Stonewall led Pope’s army on a grand tour through northern Virginia until he finally trapped him at Manassas, where Jackson’s army of 23,000 killed and wounded more than 10,000 of Pope’s 60,000 troops. After the battle, one of Pope’s generals received a communiqué “from the saddle.” He remarked to the officers around him “Pope has his headquarters where his hindquarters should be, and his hindquarters where his headquarters should be.” Within a month, President Lincoln asked for Pope’s resignation and he was sent out west to supervise Indian reservations. On August 28, 1837, two chemists, John Lea and William Perrins (sound familiar?), joint owners of an apothecary shop in Worcester, England, concocted a sauce for a local nobleman who’d acquired the recipe in India. None found the result palatable and their experiments were placed, literally, on a back shelf; the sauce was forgotten. A few years later, Perrins found their bottled experiment and tasted it (as a child I reckon he was the one other kids would get to eat bugs and beetles)—he loved it! Lea tried some. The aging process had changed it into a savory sauce and they began selling it out of their shop as “Worcester Sauce.” An American businessman visiting Worcester (according to the Lea & Perrins promotional materials, Worcestershire can be properly pronounced a few ways: “wust-ter-shire, " “woos-ter-sheer", or “woos-ter-sher" sauce) tried some and brought a case of it home. It sold out immediately and within two years, he was importing it by “the hundredweight.” It’s the oldest condiment sold in America. Ketchup followed within a few years, but originally was not made from tomatoes. George Watkins began selling his “Mushroom Ketchup, for Pies, Puddings & Sauces” in the 1840’s. This is a red-letter day not only for American condiments but sodas, too. Caleb Davis Bradham, fooling around at the soda fountain at the back of his pharmacy the evening of August 28, 1898, blended kola nut extract, vanilla, and what he later said were “rare oils" and produced the first cup of what he initially called “Brad’s Drink.” Later he would re-name it “Pepsi-Cola,” sell the pharmacy and buy himself a factory. Forty years later, to the day, Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois, conferred an honorary degree on ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy. The puppet received an honorary degree as “Master of Innuendo and Snappy Comebacks.” Today “Mitch Miller and his Gang” topped America’s music charts with “The Yellow Rose of Texas” in 1955. On the calendar of ancient Rome, today is ante diem V Kalends Septembri, the fifth day before the kalends of September. August 28 is the 240th day of the year, 125 days remain. Today is also “Chinese Halloween,” the Festival of Hungry Ghosts. It concludes a month-long celebration of “Feasts of the Ancestors,” during which prayers are offered for the dead, empty places are left at dinner tables for family ancestors (complete with table settings and favorite foods) and families going out to the theater or a play leave open seats for the departed. On the last day of the Feast, people set lanterns outside their houses to make sure all the hungry ghosts find their way back to the underworld. We are ending National Catfish Month (Congressionally mandated since 1985); more catfish are eaten in Texas than any other State; and it’s illegal, in Tennessee at least, to lasso a catfish.
I’M ON FACEBOOK, but despite all Fr Spencer’s urgings, I’m still not sure why. Slowly it’s becoming obvious that it’s a useful tool to keep in touch with friends and even, thanks to Marsden and Jeff, to learn more about people you thought you knew pretty well. A few days ago, Marsden “tagged” me. I didn’t understand what that meant and was trying to figure it out when Jeff G “tagged” me. Nobody likes to be “it,” so I thought I better figure this out. It ends up being a way people can learn about each other—if there are more nefarious ends, I remain blithely ignorant of them. Marsden’s “tag” had to do with my 15 favorite books, Jeff’s asked the 15 movies that were most influential in my life. I answered Jeff’s day before yesterday and will answer Marsden’s tomorrow (15 favorite books in a house where I’ve whittled my collection down to 5500 essential ones! C'est impossible!). It was fun—not as much fun as when I discovered I could download large size images of ancient manuscripts on the Vatican Library website—but fun still. I won’t pursue this further except to say “Jezebel” remains my favorite movie in spite of all opinions marshaled against it.
I’ve learned quite a bit about my friends from the many emails we've traded back and forth about the Fifteen Movies (I know that sounds like a set-up, but I mean it as a “straight” line). Woody listed “The Passion of the Christ” among his Fifteen, to which Jeff responded, “I'm averse to such movies as ‘Passion’ … Sister Haemorrhoida's little tales of the saints, as told to the second grade [ran]: ‘...And then, children, the Roman soldiers took St. Crispa and they tied her to the stake and...’ The overt message was that being a martyr is great, almost as good as being a nun. The subtext was somewhat less healthy than that.” You may have seen the signs, commonplace around Los Angeles, on the walls of Catholic schools reading “A Catholic Education Stays with You for Life.” Jeff is proof of the pudding! But Woody’s comment, and Jeff’s, got me thinking first about the movie and the prominent place Jesus’ suffering plays in it (titled “Passion of the Christ” so it’s not surprising) and then about the place of suffering generally. That’s something the Labyrinth’s path has for each of us, no avoiding it.
Suffering is too big a topic for a year of Labyrinths, but holding fast to a few things will make our labyrinthine walk joyful in the midst of suffering--ours and others'. Jeff’s 'Sister Haemorrhida' has twisted her suffering into a cat o’ nine tails and uses it to terrify. She’s not singular. Once in the confessional I had a child tell me how frightened she was of God because another priest had related, in gruesome detail, the punishments of the damned—including hot pokers, searing flesh and gouged eyes—and told the young child she could expect the same if she continued her sinning. So let’s agree 'Sister Haemorrhida' and 'Father Caligari' are ill (which is not the same as saying they’re rare). Suffering is not a pleasure, it’s not meant to be enjoyable, seeking it and inflicting it is a perversion of our nature. But if I can state that so dogmatically, I need to equally insist that something in our nature is perverse. Not evil, but corrupted, twisted like a permanently sprained ankle. There is something wrong, and it’s not just with you. We approach a consideration of suffering predisposed to make it something other than it is.
I distinguish between suffering and pain. Pain is a reaction to a stimulus. It may be physical, but can also be psychological or emotional. Pain stops when that which is causing it stops. Suffering is more an attitude than a reaction. Suffering is internal; I carry it around with me. That why Sister Haemorrhoida and Father Caligari are so insidious: they continue to impose on others something which was in times past imposed on them. They perversely cherish and nourish their suffering, clinging to it with a noxious love. They have no pain; all that remains for them is the love of suffering. God didn’t make us for suffering but for joy. It would be trite if it weren’t true. If I distinguish between pain and suffering, I want even more emphatically to distinguish between joy and happiness. Happiness is good and suffering is not, in spite of what Sister Haemorrhoida and Father Caligari may have told you. But what we call 'happiness' passes. We are happy when we win the lottery. We’re happy when we hear from a friend or find a new copy of a cherished book we loaned to somebody and long ago accepted they’d never return it. But we are joyful when we are in touch with God and the world in which it pleases Him to place us and the people who are our family—joy doesn’t go away if we lose a winning lottery ticket or miss the bus or learn that we have cancer. Joy is the unshakable certainty that regardless of what happens, grace is everywhere and we are living in the midst of it. To step into God’s labyrinth is to step into grace, regardless of the circumstances. If we walk in grace, suffering can be seen through new eyes. Sister Haemorrhoida may have passed along the story of the saint’s suffering, but she didn’t understand what she was actually saying. Her tale tells of masochism past made present; it’s a story of perverse pleasure. But the tale untold (because uncomprehended) is a recounting of joy. Not joy because of pain, but joy because the sufferer’s hope is fixed, not on the threatening blade or blazing poker, but on the certainty that God is unspeakably good, the world is holy, and all is grace. It’s not the happy-go-lucky view of pig-tailed Pollyanna. It’s the vision which comes from passing through suffering knowing that there is so much good yet to come.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, for the sheer pleasure of reading a good writer, I picked up Hilaire Belloc’s Characters of the Reformation. If you don’t know Belloc’s writing, this is Belloc at his best. At his best Belloc is a literary bull in a china shop. You may not agree with what he says, but he says it so well it doesn’t really matter. He was born in France, and reared in England. In 1895 he graduated with honors in history from Balliol College, Oxford, and was president of the Oxford Union, the University’s debating club. It was good practice for the combative Belloc; he breathed controversy the whole of his life. When a boy, he was given the nickname “Old Thunder” and it stuck like truth till his death at 83. He was an enthusiastic and argumentative Catholic in a blandly Anglican country. When he went before his examination board for an Oxford fellowship, he placed on the table between him and his questioners a gilt statue of the Virgin Mary. Nobody was surprised they didn’t offer him the position.
Belloc earned his living writing books and churning out newspaper columns. The pretended impartiality of modern journalism was, to him, nothing but veiled hypocrisy. Everything Belloc wrote bore the firm impress of his belief and it burns through the pages of Characters of the Reformation. The theme of the book, that the Reformation would never had succeeded anywhere else if its progress had been arrested in England, drives his narrative. One by one he marches forward the good guys and the bad ones, the guilty and the innocent—from Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and Pope Clement VII down to Cardinal Richelieu, Rene Descartes and William of Orange. He recounts their stories with unblushing partisanship, and pronounces either guilt or innocence. His insights are sharp and cut deep: Henry, he says, “…always a great liar…was passionate for having his own way—which is almost the opposite of having strength of will.” Guilty! Thomas Cromwell, the architect of Henry’s Reformation, was “an adventurer of high talent and no scruples.” Guilty! If Pope Clement VII “had a stronger and more direct mind...the English schism would have arrived with less loss of honor and more moral authority to Rome.” Not quite so guilty. Cardinal Richelieu, 100 years after Henry’s death, bears the principal blame for the balance of Protestant and Catholic in Europe. Guilty! The most interesting of the 23 character portraits Belloc paints in this book, though, is of Saint Sir Thomas More. More, he says, is venerated for the wrong reasons. Belloc insists More is a saint in spite of everything, his private opinions included. He writes as an unabashed Catholic, punching lackluster Catholics and scheming Protestants with equal relish. He takes for granted the reader is on his side. While warming to his discussion of Thomas More, Belloc says “What I may call the conventional portrait of the man, the one which both Catholics and Protestants accept (for he is quite as much admired in the other camp as in ours)…” He analyzes with bare elbows, and I revel in his words and wit. You will too, even if you're not interested in the topic. His exuberance in a lively argument entices us to follow. The book was written in 1936, and a copy like mine, a paperback from the mid-50’s, can be picked up from Amazon for under three dollars; it was republished this year by Tan Books and can be purchased new from Barnes and Noble for $12.00. Your local library probably has it; there it’s free! While you’re looking, peruse whatever you can of his other books (he was more prolific than Saint Augustine, and was a much more entertaining poet). Belloc's topics range widely and on none of them was he neutral.
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”—Hilaire Belloc
“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”—St Augustine of Hippo
“Man wishes to be happy even when he lives so as to make happiness impossible.”—St Augustine of Hippo
“The self-admirer should not glorify himself nor be so conceited that he elevates himself above his companions. Neither should he belittle himself and become inferior to his own peers. If he follows this guide, he will be free and people will see him as one who truly knows himself.”—Rhazes
“Let us understand each other. I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies; from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary and to beat him when he was found; I presume that I have been called here to pursue the same system.”—Major General John Pope, from his opening statement to his new command
“Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave."—General Stonewall Jackson
“Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?”—Charlie MaCarthy
Friday, August 28, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
A Theology of Speech--Free and Fettered
Walking the Labyrinth—August 21, 2009—Today, Western Christians observe the feast of St Pius the Tenth, the 257th Pope. Though he died in 1914, he was one of the most influential popes of the 20th century, the first pope to be canonized in four hundred years. He came from a poor Italian family and his family continued poor after his election to the Papal throne; one of his brothers died as the postal clerk of their home village. Throughout his life he was a champion of the poor. He loved the Church’s rites and did much to restore the obscured glory of her worship—most impressively the restoration of Gregorian chant; as a theologian he ensconced the teachings of St Thomas Aquinas as normative for the Church. He had a love of grim humor and developed the reputation of a stubborn old man. Others eulogize John XXIII and Pope John Paul II—St Pius X is my kind of pope. Today Eastern Christians remember St Bassa and her sons Theognis, Agapios, and Pistis. Bassa, who lived in northern Greece, was martyred about 390. She was married to a pagan priest, who didn’t take her conversion, or those of his three sons, well. Her angry (and no doubt embarrassed) husband denounced her to the authorities—this at a time when Christianity was being persecuted throughout the Roman world (saints don’t always have good timing!)—and the four were imprisoned. When her sons refused to revert to their pagan upbringing, St Bassa was forced to watch as they were beheaded. When she still refused to deny her faith, the local politician (just upholding community standards), ordered her drowned. She was rowed out some distance from land and tossed into the sea, but (according to a medieval chronicle written much later) an angel rescued her and miraculously took her to the island of Alonnisos. There she was promptly arrested and her head was cut off. Not all angels, evidently, are equally competent! Tomorrow, Muslims around the world begin their month-long observance of Ramadan, a kind of Islamic Lent. “Forty days and forty nights,” begins the old Lenten hymn, calling to mind the Christian Fast. Ramadan has this difference—Muslims fast from sun-up to sundown: but they party from dusk till dawn! John Hampton Randolph, a Louisiana sugar-cane planter, spent ten years building what he considered the “finest home on the river” for his wife. Most people who see it today agree. Nottoway Plantation House is 53,000 square feet, with 64 rooms and 365 windows. On August 21, 1841, Randolph patented the “Venetian Blind,” wooden slats on a series of cords he devised, enabling the slats to be raised or lowered, opened or closed. He fitted them into the 365 windows of Nottoway but his bride preferred curtains, so down they came. Still, Randolph liked his idea and worked with the English company that fabricated his originals to popularize the blinds. Randolph attributed his idea to cloth window shades he saw when visiting Venice. Nobody knows what became of the 365 sets of Venetian blinds that once graced the windows of the South’s largest plantation. Ninety-nine years later, August 21, 1940, Leon Trotsky died, one day after an agent of the Stalin’s Secret Police buried a mountaineer’s pick-axe into the back of his head. Trotsky plotted to take Lenin’s place as leader of the Soviet Union after the latter’s death, but lost out to Joseph Stalin, who plotted even harder. When the dust settled, Stalin decided Russia wasn’t big enough for the two of them so Trotsky was exiled and eventually ended up living outside Mexico City. His incessant criticism of Stalin continued from afar until “Uncle Joe” decided he'd been criticized enough. In May, 1940, four assassins entered Trotsky’s home and attempted to kill him. While they killed or wounded almost everybody else in the place, they missed their target. The second attempt was more successful, though Trotsky survived long enough to interrogate his assassin. Ironically, Trotsky was dying before he was assassinated. Doctors told him early in February that he was suffering from what they believed was a brain tumor. He wrote a Last Will and Testament (see the engaging quote below) and, at the time of his death, was planning to commit suicide. Today the Trotsky compound outside Mexico City is a museum and the old Marxist’s ashes are buried in the garden. His granddaughter heads the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. If you think we need more lawyers, this is a red letter day for you. On August 21, 1878, one hundred lawyers met at the fabled Grand Union Hotel—then the world's largest hotel—at the Saratoga Springs Spa in New York to draw up a charter for a national organization of lawyers. They chose a name (the American Bar Association) and wrote a charter (100 lawyers agreeing to all the words of a document in a single day?) which lists among their goals “the advancement of the science of jurisprudence, the promotion of the administration of justice and a uniformity of legislation throughout the country...." Today the ABA has more than 410,000 members and employs over 110 full-time lobbyists in Washington DC. Shakespeare had a suggestion about lawyers, but John Adams, no mean lawyer himself, said “I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, two useless men are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress.” Mount St Helen’s erupted throughout the first part of August, 1831, and the skies across America turned gray-green. People had to use candles to read during daylight hours. At the time, almost no one in the country knew the reason, but one man took the darkness as a long-awaited sign from heaven. Nat Turner was a slave in Southampton, Virginia, though his owner had virtually given him his freedom. He was a Baptist preacher of some eloquence and influence over both Africans and whites in the area and for some months had been asking God for a sign. The gray-green sky, he determined, was it. Ten days later, 55 white and 56 black residents of Southampton County were dead and Nat Turner was in hiding. He had led about 100 black men and women on a two day anti-slavery revolt, charging them to “kill all the whites,” orders he said he had received directly from God. Unfortunately for his followers, several hundred local militia and groups of wandering vigilantes took up the cry “kill all the blacks” and Southampton County was awash with blood, not black or white, but all of it red. On August 21, 1945, Patricia Ellen Russo, a pretty blond baby, was born in Brooklyn. Her mother was a professional roller skater and her father was a firefighter. Guided by her mother, she began a modeling career when she was four years old. When she was six, Patty appeared in her first movie, Two Guys and a Gal under her mother’s maiden name of McCormack. In 1956, she portrayed Rhoda Penmark, the eight-year-old sociopath and fledgling serial killer, in The Bad Seed –the movie that turned an irritating piano tune into a piece of horror music and changed the image of blonds for a generation of boys. The ancient Romans celebrated the feast of the Consualia on August 21st. Consus was the “Protector of the Harvest.” By Senatorial decree, on this day all horses, mules and asses were exempted from labor, and were led through the streets adorned with garlands and flowers. The Romans reckoned today as ante diem XII Kalendas Septem. This is the 233rd day of 2009, 132 days are yet to come. Today is New Year’s Eve for Zoroastrians, so don’t forget to send a card.
“IF LIBERTY MEANS ANYTHING,” said George Orwell, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” When I first read this quote, decades ago, I wasn’t aware of having anything I wanted to say that I thought people wouldn’t especially want to hear, but it sounded good so I wrote it down. Only later in life did I discover how true it was, and that when I came to realize there were times I couldn't, and sometimes shouldn't say what I wanted. Oftimes, it’s better for us—and others—to curtail our right to free speech: we don’t always have to say everything we want to, or can. Our words can cut and wound as much as bind and heal. The exercise of liberty, we discover as we grow, is more often a matter of restraint than license.
George Orwell wasn’t a theologian; in fact, though he was baptized, confirmed, married and buried according to the rites of the Church of England, most literary scholars believe he was probably an agnostic and perhaps an atheist. But his above-quoted statement about liberty is, at its root, religious. It is essential, in his thinking, for us to be free. Freedom means being free to speak, and, as his words make plain, free to criticize. That freedom enables, and at times requires, us to say what we think about the words and actions of others—and, as importantly, for them to do the same us-ward. Why is this important? Not so the free speech of comedians with limited vocabularies and small repertoires will be protected—though that’s a necessary side-result—but so an unfettered discussion can go on about who we are and what we’re doing with ourselves. Freedom to speak is freedom to think and freedom to engage one another. Underlying this, like a massive stone bridge, is the bedrock belief that by engaging one another in discussion, we can arrive together at notions of what is right and wrong, good and evil, true and false. In a world where "it may be true for you but that doesn't mean it's true for me" is regarded as expressing legitimate thought, I understand many people are uncomfortable with the belief that there is right and wrong and true and false. In a world where politics and media and even religion and science answer questions only after they've reviewed their polling numbers, we can't be too surprised if many people believe that everything is relative (something Einstein didn't believe). If numbers impress, though, here's something to consider: most people, for most of the time people have been thinking, have believed it is possible for us to distinguish right from wrong and truth from falsehood. For those who believe such is the case, the freedom to think and so to speak are necessary parts of the process.
There's a movie being marketed right now-I don't know or care to know the name of it-for which I saw a few seconds promo on television. If I understood it correctly, the premise for this film is that some (Jewish?) gangsters (from Brooklyn?) are parachuted into Germany during World War Two and shoot up or blow up an incredible number of Nazis. How convenient, how anemic and how typical. The most acceptable villains are Nazis--even the Germans are morally obligated to root against 'em. We thrash cardboard enemies instead of engaging real issues. Look at the current debate on "health care." The only thing both "sides" have in common is that they each want the other side to lose. The President and his allies aren't honest about many of the real problems plaguing the system because if they were, they might "lose." Their opponents raise false or misleading issues because if they don't, the President will "win." Both sides play a national shell game and regardless of which side "wins," what gets lost is the truth.
God gave us the ability and created us with the freedom to think and understand and so to speak and create. As you walk your path through the labyrinth it has pleased God to drop you into, you have an obligation to speak for truth and right and the Good and the Beautiful. "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done," runs the General Confession in the old Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer. A walker of the labyrinth isn't close-lipped about the Things that Matter. There's little virtue in screaming and no one's heart or mind is changed by shouting, but if we engage each other in a search for truth, we will gradually begin to uncover it. It's been all around us, "hidden," as they say, "in plain sight."
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I plucked The Culture and Customs of Egypt, by Molefi Kete Asante. This isn’t a great book or even a good one, but it’s one of the most recent books written about “modern” Egypt (it was published in 2002 and repeatedly refers to the events of “9/11”), a topic I wanted to do some reading on. The book is interesting in unintended ways. Primarily, the author is insistent that his readers understand they cannot grasp anything about Egypt unless they first acknowledge that the country is through and through, an Islamic nation. That sounded reasonable when he mentions it in the book’s preface. He then reiterates it a few pages into the first chapter and goes on reminding his readers of the fact every 5 or 6 pages throughout the whole text. Even I got—after a couple of chapters—that he was trying to make a point. Let me digress just a moment to say that it’s my rule, before reading any non-fiction book, to see who the author is and learn a bit about his background, so I can understand the point of view and beliefs he brings to his work. I didn’t do that with this book. I saw his name, leafed through the book (I checked it out from the library) and compared it with the other 2 or 3 books they had about modern Egypt and decided this one was best. I assumed the author was an Egyptian. I discovered differently only when—about half-way through the book—I got sufficiently irritated by its preachiness (an unremitting “Egypt for the Egyptians” message that never lets up, whether discussing Egypt’s geography, economy, television, fine arts or cuisine) that I looked up the author on the internet. It turns out Dr Asante isn’t Egyptian but the head of African American studies at Temple University. Now I grasped the essentials of the book. It was less about Egypt than it was what Dr Asante wants me to believe and acknowledge about Egypt. Still, I did get some information I wanted, though through a sieve. One of the most fun things I learned was that the Aswan High Dam, built by Nasser in the 50’s and 60’s, the most monumental project in modern Egyptian history, produced all sort of unforeseen consequences. The flooding of the Nile, the annual renewal of Egypt, enabled the founding of the civilization of ancient Egypt. The Nile brings the rich silt of Africa and deposits it along the riverbanks of Egypt. But since the dam was completed, the silting has been much reduced. The ancient Nubian people, who lived along the less-fertile southern Nile, were displaced by the building of the dam. Dr Asante grudgingly lets us know that the Arabs of northern Egypt little regard the older Coptic people and Nubians—both racial descendants of pharaonic Egypt—and so the government had no qualms about simply moving them out into the desert to make way for the soon-to-be formed Lake Nasser. It turns out, though, that the shoreline of the new lake is the property of the displaced Nubians and the rich silts are now principally lining the shores of the lake. The once-impoverished Nubians are becoming the prosperous farmers and fishers of Egypt and the farmland of northern Egypt is slowly losing its fabled fertility. A crisis is brewing in Egypt.
My advice? Don’t bother with Dr Asante’s book. Read this one instead: A Short History of Modern Egypt by Dr Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot. Dr Marsot was born in Cairo and is the first Egyptian woman to earn a doctorate from Oxford. She lives in Cairo, a retired university professor. Cambridge University Press published her book a few years back, and while it’s not at my local library, I bought a copy on Amazon for less than $2.00. I haven't finished reading it yet, but it's by far the better of the two .
QUOTATIONS FROM THE PRINCIPALS:
“For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.” –Leon Trotsky (I imagine he must have monopolized most dinner-table conversations)
“I was born poor, I have lived poor, I wish to die poor."—St Pius X
“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”—Joseph Stalin
“Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.”—Joseph Stalin
“Having soon discovered to be great, I must appear so, and therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer.”—Nat Turner
“A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England.”—George Orwell
“IF LIBERTY MEANS ANYTHING,” said George Orwell, “it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” When I first read this quote, decades ago, I wasn’t aware of having anything I wanted to say that I thought people wouldn’t especially want to hear, but it sounded good so I wrote it down. Only later in life did I discover how true it was, and that when I came to realize there were times I couldn't, and sometimes shouldn't say what I wanted. Oftimes, it’s better for us—and others—to curtail our right to free speech: we don’t always have to say everything we want to, or can. Our words can cut and wound as much as bind and heal. The exercise of liberty, we discover as we grow, is more often a matter of restraint than license.
George Orwell wasn’t a theologian; in fact, though he was baptized, confirmed, married and buried according to the rites of the Church of England, most literary scholars believe he was probably an agnostic and perhaps an atheist. But his above-quoted statement about liberty is, at its root, religious. It is essential, in his thinking, for us to be free. Freedom means being free to speak, and, as his words make plain, free to criticize. That freedom enables, and at times requires, us to say what we think about the words and actions of others—and, as importantly, for them to do the same us-ward. Why is this important? Not so the free speech of comedians with limited vocabularies and small repertoires will be protected—though that’s a necessary side-result—but so an unfettered discussion can go on about who we are and what we’re doing with ourselves. Freedom to speak is freedom to think and freedom to engage one another. Underlying this, like a massive stone bridge, is the bedrock belief that by engaging one another in discussion, we can arrive together at notions of what is right and wrong, good and evil, true and false. In a world where "it may be true for you but that doesn't mean it's true for me" is regarded as expressing legitimate thought, I understand many people are uncomfortable with the belief that there is right and wrong and true and false. In a world where politics and media and even religion and science answer questions only after they've reviewed their polling numbers, we can't be too surprised if many people believe that everything is relative (something Einstein didn't believe). If numbers impress, though, here's something to consider: most people, for most of the time people have been thinking, have believed it is possible for us to distinguish right from wrong and truth from falsehood. For those who believe such is the case, the freedom to think and so to speak are necessary parts of the process.
There's a movie being marketed right now-I don't know or care to know the name of it-for which I saw a few seconds promo on television. If I understood it correctly, the premise for this film is that some (Jewish?) gangsters (from Brooklyn?) are parachuted into Germany during World War Two and shoot up or blow up an incredible number of Nazis. How convenient, how anemic and how typical. The most acceptable villains are Nazis--even the Germans are morally obligated to root against 'em. We thrash cardboard enemies instead of engaging real issues. Look at the current debate on "health care." The only thing both "sides" have in common is that they each want the other side to lose. The President and his allies aren't honest about many of the real problems plaguing the system because if they were, they might "lose." Their opponents raise false or misleading issues because if they don't, the President will "win." Both sides play a national shell game and regardless of which side "wins," what gets lost is the truth.
God gave us the ability and created us with the freedom to think and understand and so to speak and create. As you walk your path through the labyrinth it has pleased God to drop you into, you have an obligation to speak for truth and right and the Good and the Beautiful. "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done," runs the General Confession in the old Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer. A walker of the labyrinth isn't close-lipped about the Things that Matter. There's little virtue in screaming and no one's heart or mind is changed by shouting, but if we engage each other in a search for truth, we will gradually begin to uncover it. It's been all around us, "hidden," as they say, "in plain sight."
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I plucked The Culture and Customs of Egypt, by Molefi Kete Asante. This isn’t a great book or even a good one, but it’s one of the most recent books written about “modern” Egypt (it was published in 2002 and repeatedly refers to the events of “9/11”), a topic I wanted to do some reading on. The book is interesting in unintended ways. Primarily, the author is insistent that his readers understand they cannot grasp anything about Egypt unless they first acknowledge that the country is through and through, an Islamic nation. That sounded reasonable when he mentions it in the book’s preface. He then reiterates it a few pages into the first chapter and goes on reminding his readers of the fact every 5 or 6 pages throughout the whole text. Even I got—after a couple of chapters—that he was trying to make a point. Let me digress just a moment to say that it’s my rule, before reading any non-fiction book, to see who the author is and learn a bit about his background, so I can understand the point of view and beliefs he brings to his work. I didn’t do that with this book. I saw his name, leafed through the book (I checked it out from the library) and compared it with the other 2 or 3 books they had about modern Egypt and decided this one was best. I assumed the author was an Egyptian. I discovered differently only when—about half-way through the book—I got sufficiently irritated by its preachiness (an unremitting “Egypt for the Egyptians” message that never lets up, whether discussing Egypt’s geography, economy, television, fine arts or cuisine) that I looked up the author on the internet. It turns out Dr Asante isn’t Egyptian but the head of African American studies at Temple University. Now I grasped the essentials of the book. It was less about Egypt than it was what Dr Asante wants me to believe and acknowledge about Egypt. Still, I did get some information I wanted, though through a sieve. One of the most fun things I learned was that the Aswan High Dam, built by Nasser in the 50’s and 60’s, the most monumental project in modern Egyptian history, produced all sort of unforeseen consequences. The flooding of the Nile, the annual renewal of Egypt, enabled the founding of the civilization of ancient Egypt. The Nile brings the rich silt of Africa and deposits it along the riverbanks of Egypt. But since the dam was completed, the silting has been much reduced. The ancient Nubian people, who lived along the less-fertile southern Nile, were displaced by the building of the dam. Dr Asante grudgingly lets us know that the Arabs of northern Egypt little regard the older Coptic people and Nubians—both racial descendants of pharaonic Egypt—and so the government had no qualms about simply moving them out into the desert to make way for the soon-to-be formed Lake Nasser. It turns out, though, that the shoreline of the new lake is the property of the displaced Nubians and the rich silts are now principally lining the shores of the lake. The once-impoverished Nubians are becoming the prosperous farmers and fishers of Egypt and the farmland of northern Egypt is slowly losing its fabled fertility. A crisis is brewing in Egypt.
My advice? Don’t bother with Dr Asante’s book. Read this one instead: A Short History of Modern Egypt by Dr Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot. Dr Marsot was born in Cairo and is the first Egyptian woman to earn a doctorate from Oxford. She lives in Cairo, a retired university professor. Cambridge University Press published her book a few years back, and while it’s not at my local library, I bought a copy on Amazon for less than $2.00. I haven't finished reading it yet, but it's by far the better of the two .
QUOTATIONS FROM THE PRINCIPALS:
“For forty-three years of my conscious life I have remained a revolutionist; for forty-two of them I have fought under the banner of Marxism. If I had to begin all over again I would of course try to avoid this or that mistake, but the main course of my life would remain unchanged. I shall die a proletarian revolutionist, a Marxist, a dialectical materialist, and, consequently, an irreconcilable atheist. My faith in the communist future of mankind is not less ardent, indeed it is firmer today, than it was in the days of my youth.” –Leon Trotsky (I imagine he must have monopolized most dinner-table conversations)
“I was born poor, I have lived poor, I wish to die poor."—St Pius X
“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”—Joseph Stalin
“Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs.”—Joseph Stalin
“Having soon discovered to be great, I must appear so, and therefore studiously avoided mixing in society, and wrapped myself in mystery, devoting my time to fasting and prayer.”—Nat Turner
“A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England.”—George Orwell
Friday, August 14, 2009
Uncivil Discourse
Walking the Labyrinth—August 14, 2009—Eastern Christians today celebrate the martyrdom of St Markellos, Bishop of Apamea in central Syria. The bishop was an eloquent preacher and after hearing one of his sermons about the evils of paganism, some of his overenthusiastic flock went down the street from the bishop’s church and torched the local Temple of Zeus. When a mob of irate pagans learned the conflagration was ignited through Bishop Markellos' incendiary sermonizing, they marched down the same street, pulled the bishop from his throne, dragged him to their burning temple and tossed him into the flames. This was on August 14, 389. Markellos' martyrdom elevated him to sainthood, but none of the succeeding bishops of Apamea sought to make reputations for themselves as firey preachers. All through the night of August 13-14, 1814, Francis Scott Key and two friends watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry from the deck of the British warship HMS Tonnant, anchored outside Chesapeake Bay. After a continual, 25 hour bombardment, the British gave up the assault. As dawn broke, Key and his friends marveled at the sight of the American flag waving above the fort. Well they should have. When the commander of the garrison, Major George Armistead, learned of the impending British assault, he hired Mary Young Pickersgill, a well-known Baltimore seamstress, to sew a flag “so large that the British will have no difficulty seeing it from a distance." She did. With the help of her daughter, two nieces, and two African servants, they made a flag thirty feet high and forty-two feet long. Each stripe was two feet wide and each of the fifteen stars measured twenty-six inches across. The result was a flag which could be seen several miles from the fort. Later that year, Key published the “Star-Spangled Banner,” inspired by Mary’s nimble sewing and Armistead’s stalwart defense. The flag is now on display at the Smithsonian; it is still big. One hundred and sixteen years ago, the city of Paris became the first European metropolis to issue drivers’ licenses to owners of automobiles. Drivers had to register their names, residences and next-of-kin (in case the horseless carriages “combusted”—like a certain Syrian bishop we know), and pass a test proving they knew how to “operate the carriage so as to leave others unharmed and unthreatened.” One might wish the last phrase was incorporated into the California Driver's Handbook today. Henry Sweet matriculated at Balliol College in Oxford, England on August 14, 1869. He devoted himself to the study of Old English and Old Norse, and published his first book of Anglo-Saxon medieval texts while still an undergraduate. The vanished tongue of the Anglo-Saxons would remain a passion for the rest of his life, and he published texts and grammars of the language till his death in 1912. But Sweet is most remembered as the real-life model George Bernard Shaw used for the character of Dr Henry Higgins, eventually immortalized by Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. He wrote several groundwork studies on phonetics and was often introduced as “the man who taught Europe phonetics” on the lecture circuit. Like Higgins, he was blunt and had a reputation—particularly among fellow teachers of phonetics—of being hard to get along with. He long-wanted, but never obtained, a professorship at Oxford, despite the many academic honors awarded him through his lifetime. One of the Masters of Balliol explained it plainly: “He was an irascible young man and is an irascible man now in his middle years. There is no doubt he will be an irascible old man, and nobody likes irascible old men.” On August 14, 1945, five days after Nagasaki was devastated by an atomic bomb, Emperor Hirohito said in a radio broadcast “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage” and announced Japan’s surrender, ending World War II. That morning, after President Truman read the news to America, Alfred Eisenstaedt went out into Times Square intending to make photographs of people as they learned the news. He spotted a sailor “running along the street grabbing and kissing any and every woman in sight, whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, young, didn't make a difference . . . Then suddenly I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse." The picture made him famous; it was printed on a full page in the next edition of Life Magazine. The nurse was Edith Cullen Shain, but the sailor has never been identified. Ninety-nine years before, to the day, Henry David Thoreau was jailed as a tax resister. Thoreau, the author of Walden Pond, (almost as popular with American high school students as Melville’s Moby Dick), believed the Mexican War was unjust and being fought at the behest of American slaveholders. The only practical way he could see to oppose it was to refuse to pay his $1 poll tax—this was before the days of federal income taxes, Medicare taxes, Social Security taxes, state income taxes, state and city sales taxes, property taxes, federal and state excise taxes, transfer taxes and our soon-to-be-introduced Value Added Tax. Thoreau hoped a stay in jail would bring attention to his protest against the War, but his friends and relatives paid his overdue taxes (he hadn’t paid for several years) and all the attendant fines before he’d languished more than 12 hours. He reluctantly accepted his freedom after a single night in jail when the jailer refused to let him remain. The evening of his imprisonment, Thoreau was visited by his close friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson asked him, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is, what are you doing out there?” On August 14, 1880, the great Cathedral in Cologne, Germany was completed. Work had begun on the Cathedral of St Peter and St Mary on August 14, 1248. For a variety of reasons the work was abandoned in 1473 and not begun again until 1842. During the intervening four centuries, a large crane, perched atop an uncompleted bell-tower, sat unused. The crane was visible from all parts of the city and is depicted in many paintings and even a few photographs of the cathedral until work was taken up again. This is the 226th day of the year, 139 days remain till we welcome 2010. The Romans reckoned this day as ante diem XIX Kal. Sept.; in 1957, Debbie Reynolds topped America’s music charts with her song Tammy. By order of the United States Congress this is “National Kool Aid Day”; today is the first day of Mae West Week.
MOST OF THE WEEK, if you turn to the news—print or broadcast—you’ve read about or heard played the excitable Town Hall Meetings, angry people shouting at politicians come home for a vacation. Depending on your political disposition, these people are either hirelings or patriots. That’s where most of the media attention is focused—who are these people and why are they being so rude to our elected officials? I’m not so interested in who they are—time will tell—as in what they’re doing. Videos of some of these events show politicians who seem genuinely hurt by the public voice of disdain and distrust they’re encountering. Senator Claire Macaskill asked an angry crowd “Don’t you trust me?” She got a resounding “no!” back. It reminded me of the wisdom of the old political adage “don’t ask a question unless you know what the answer will be first.” She was crest-fallen. One politician after another this week faced crowds which gave truth to the polls that members of Congress today are less popular than George Bush is with 9/11 Conspiracy theorists. Political pundits, so used to playing coy with the politicians who are their guest stars, are scratching their heads and lamenting the deterioration of public discourse in America. That’s because nobody learns American history anymore. Angry confrontations of political figures is nothing new; we could truly say it's one of the oldest of American traditions. If this was early 18th century America, politicians would be less worried about somebody shouting at them than they would about a bunch of people appearing with a barrel of hot tar and a big bag of feathers. John Edwards or Larry Craig wouldn’t be wringing their hands and hoping to get absolution from Oprah, they’d be afraid an outraged crowd would break into their house, bust it up and steal their stuff.
On May 22, 1856, a Congressman from South Carolina, Preston Brooks, entered the senate chamber just as the day’s business was concluded. He approached the desk of Senator Charles Sumner and calmly told him he objected to a speech Sumner had delivered two days earlier. The speech had been a vicious personal attack on Brooks’ uncle, an aging Senator, and against the entire slave-holding South. Brooks took his cane and beat Sumner with it until he broke it over the Senator’s back and head. It took Sumner three years to recover. Brooks survived an expulsion vote from the House; over the next few months he received hundreds of gifts—canes—from Southern admirers.
Throughout the 1960’s, 70’sand 80’s American politicians, left, right and middle, faced angry demonstrators: Johnson was a warmonger, Nixon was a crook, Carter was soft on communism, Reagan was a fascist. But these weren't the first American Presidents to hear the shouting. George Washington was hooted down as a pawn of the British, John Adams was pilloried as "King John the First," and Thomas Jefferson was ridiculed as a man "who loves some certain of his Monticello slaves overmuch." Politics in America has been a tough business since the Mayflower bumped into these shores. The were many British glad to see those ships full of malcontents head west to the New World.
How does all this ruckus sound in the labyrinth? It's noise. Noise from the left and noise from the right, it's all noise: it may make frustrated and angry people think they feel better for a day or two, it may temporarily disturb the cozy slumber of a few politicians, but shouting changes neither the hearts nor the minds of the people being shouted at, nor does it truly relieve the hearts and minds of the shouters. If the country ever changes for the better, it will be when Americans enter into reasoned discourse. When we listen and try to understand what others are afraid of, what they hope for, what they aspire to. The labyrinth teaches us first to listen, then to reflect, and last of all to speak. That would bring genuine hope and change. But it's hoping for a change which will never come. It can't. Because each of us, from the President of the United States to the local dog-catcher, is afraid. We can't tell each other the truth because we so rarely tell it to ourselves. We tell ourselves the truth in broken bits and pieces because that's how we are. Every great religion, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, all acknowledge the truth of St Paul's cry: "I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't do it!" Political systems always fall short of their aspirations, it doesn't matter who is in charge, and that's because it's always us--one of us, a batch of us, or, as we try to convince ourselves here, all of us--who are in charge. If I become perfect, there's always--you--and you're not.
So what are we labyrinthine plodders to do? Do we chuck it all with a "a plague on both your houses?" Not if you've taken more than a single step on your way. One of the things you discover the first time you walk an actual labyrinth is how narrow its curves and walkways are. You can't avoid other people who are walking it. Your spiritual journey is continually interrupted by others--almost, we might say, by design. No politics on this planet can satisfy the heart that beats in any of us. Those who imagine themselves thus satisfied will discover--too late!--that they've set their sights too low. The magnificent ocean vista they've been admiring is merely a wall-painting. "No man is an island." Nor do we wish to be--but we walk the labyrinth, broken as we are, knowing Washington and Sacramento--and even the Texan's Austin--are merely steps on a journey that take us Elsewhere.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, a book I actually added to the pile for the occasion. When I saw last week that today was the anniversary of Thoreau’s jailing, I pulled my old Signet paperback edition of Thoreau from the shelf and put a bookmark in his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau wrote the essay after his jailing, but it summarizes the thoughts which caused him to go there in the first place. I haven’t read the essay for many years, but remember, even back in high school, when I (was forced first to) read it, how challenging it is. Thoreau cuts straight to the bone in the essay’s first sentence: “I heartily accept the motto, — ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.” He is one with Tom Paine, a revolutionary to the core, though unlike Paine, he has no truck with the pike or the guillotine. In Thoreau’s view, everything the State involves itself in becomes tainted because the power of the State is ultimately based, not on reason or truth but compulsion. The State can take away a person’s possessions and even their life; but the one thing the State cannot compel, he insists, is the conscience. “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? …we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right…Law never made men a whit more just…” These were dangerous words when they were written and they remain as dangerous today. America has a strong tradition of law and its place in defining our society. That tradition stretches back to the field of Runnymede and the Magna Carta. But we have another tradition, equally ancient, running deep in the American marrow, calling us to “do justice,” in words ringing through the Testaments. Thoreau gives most eloquent voice to this tradition. If you want to stretch taut the strings of your mind and heart, find a copy of this old essay and read it. But be careful: it’s not for the sunshine patriot or curious antiquarian. You will chaff at the headlines in every day’s paper. A Signet paperback copy of Thoreau can be had for less than a dollar on Amazon.
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?”—Francis Scott Key
“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will follow it.”—Henry David Thoreau
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”—Henry David Thoreau
“Whatever insults my State insults me.”— Preston Brooks
“The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come.”—Charles Sumner
“Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.”— Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I discovered freedom for the first time in England.”— Emperor Hirohito
MOST OF THE WEEK, if you turn to the news—print or broadcast—you’ve read about or heard played the excitable Town Hall Meetings, angry people shouting at politicians come home for a vacation. Depending on your political disposition, these people are either hirelings or patriots. That’s where most of the media attention is focused—who are these people and why are they being so rude to our elected officials? I’m not so interested in who they are—time will tell—as in what they’re doing. Videos of some of these events show politicians who seem genuinely hurt by the public voice of disdain and distrust they’re encountering. Senator Claire Macaskill asked an angry crowd “Don’t you trust me?” She got a resounding “no!” back. It reminded me of the wisdom of the old political adage “don’t ask a question unless you know what the answer will be first.” She was crest-fallen. One politician after another this week faced crowds which gave truth to the polls that members of Congress today are less popular than George Bush is with 9/11 Conspiracy theorists. Political pundits, so used to playing coy with the politicians who are their guest stars, are scratching their heads and lamenting the deterioration of public discourse in America. That’s because nobody learns American history anymore. Angry confrontations of political figures is nothing new; we could truly say it's one of the oldest of American traditions. If this was early 18th century America, politicians would be less worried about somebody shouting at them than they would about a bunch of people appearing with a barrel of hot tar and a big bag of feathers. John Edwards or Larry Craig wouldn’t be wringing their hands and hoping to get absolution from Oprah, they’d be afraid an outraged crowd would break into their house, bust it up and steal their stuff.
On May 22, 1856, a Congressman from South Carolina, Preston Brooks, entered the senate chamber just as the day’s business was concluded. He approached the desk of Senator Charles Sumner and calmly told him he objected to a speech Sumner had delivered two days earlier. The speech had been a vicious personal attack on Brooks’ uncle, an aging Senator, and against the entire slave-holding South. Brooks took his cane and beat Sumner with it until he broke it over the Senator’s back and head. It took Sumner three years to recover. Brooks survived an expulsion vote from the House; over the next few months he received hundreds of gifts—canes—from Southern admirers.
Throughout the 1960’s, 70’sand 80’s American politicians, left, right and middle, faced angry demonstrators: Johnson was a warmonger, Nixon was a crook, Carter was soft on communism, Reagan was a fascist. But these weren't the first American Presidents to hear the shouting. George Washington was hooted down as a pawn of the British, John Adams was pilloried as "King John the First," and Thomas Jefferson was ridiculed as a man "who loves some certain of his Monticello slaves overmuch." Politics in America has been a tough business since the Mayflower bumped into these shores. The were many British glad to see those ships full of malcontents head west to the New World.
How does all this ruckus sound in the labyrinth? It's noise. Noise from the left and noise from the right, it's all noise: it may make frustrated and angry people think they feel better for a day or two, it may temporarily disturb the cozy slumber of a few politicians, but shouting changes neither the hearts nor the minds of the people being shouted at, nor does it truly relieve the hearts and minds of the shouters. If the country ever changes for the better, it will be when Americans enter into reasoned discourse. When we listen and try to understand what others are afraid of, what they hope for, what they aspire to. The labyrinth teaches us first to listen, then to reflect, and last of all to speak. That would bring genuine hope and change. But it's hoping for a change which will never come. It can't. Because each of us, from the President of the United States to the local dog-catcher, is afraid. We can't tell each other the truth because we so rarely tell it to ourselves. We tell ourselves the truth in broken bits and pieces because that's how we are. Every great religion, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, all acknowledge the truth of St Paul's cry: "I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't do it!" Political systems always fall short of their aspirations, it doesn't matter who is in charge, and that's because it's always us--one of us, a batch of us, or, as we try to convince ourselves here, all of us--who are in charge. If I become perfect, there's always--you--and you're not.
So what are we labyrinthine plodders to do? Do we chuck it all with a "a plague on both your houses?" Not if you've taken more than a single step on your way. One of the things you discover the first time you walk an actual labyrinth is how narrow its curves and walkways are. You can't avoid other people who are walking it. Your spiritual journey is continually interrupted by others--almost, we might say, by design. No politics on this planet can satisfy the heart that beats in any of us. Those who imagine themselves thus satisfied will discover--too late!--that they've set their sights too low. The magnificent ocean vista they've been admiring is merely a wall-painting. "No man is an island." Nor do we wish to be--but we walk the labyrinth, broken as we are, knowing Washington and Sacramento--and even the Texan's Austin--are merely steps on a journey that take us Elsewhere.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, a book I actually added to the pile for the occasion. When I saw last week that today was the anniversary of Thoreau’s jailing, I pulled my old Signet paperback edition of Thoreau from the shelf and put a bookmark in his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.” Thoreau wrote the essay after his jailing, but it summarizes the thoughts which caused him to go there in the first place. I haven’t read the essay for many years, but remember, even back in high school, when I (was forced first to) read it, how challenging it is. Thoreau cuts straight to the bone in the essay’s first sentence: “I heartily accept the motto, — ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.” He is one with Tom Paine, a revolutionary to the core, though unlike Paine, he has no truck with the pike or the guillotine. In Thoreau’s view, everything the State involves itself in becomes tainted because the power of the State is ultimately based, not on reason or truth but compulsion. The State can take away a person’s possessions and even their life; but the one thing the State cannot compel, he insists, is the conscience. “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? …we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right…Law never made men a whit more just…” These were dangerous words when they were written and they remain as dangerous today. America has a strong tradition of law and its place in defining our society. That tradition stretches back to the field of Runnymede and the Magna Carta. But we have another tradition, equally ancient, running deep in the American marrow, calling us to “do justice,” in words ringing through the Testaments. Thoreau gives most eloquent voice to this tradition. If you want to stretch taut the strings of your mind and heart, find a copy of this old essay and read it. But be careful: it’s not for the sunshine patriot or curious antiquarian. You will chaff at the headlines in every day’s paper. A Signet paperback copy of Thoreau can be had for less than a dollar on Amazon.
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?”—Francis Scott Key
“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will follow it.”—Henry David Thoreau
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.”—Henry David Thoreau
“Whatever insults my State insults me.”— Preston Brooks
“The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come.”—Charles Sumner
“Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.”— Alfred Eisenstaedt
“I discovered freedom for the first time in England.”— Emperor Hirohito
Friday, August 07, 2009
Salty Words
Walking the Labyrinth—August 7, 2009—Mary Magdalene is believed by some to be the wife of Jesus. The foremost proponents of this article of faith, though, are ones who know—and almost certainly believe—little else about Mary Magdalene or her purported Husband. Members of the Russian Orthodox Church—and other Christians who continue to use the old Julian calendar—celebrate the feast of St Mary Magdalene today—and venerate her as “The Holy Myrrh-Bearer and Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary of Magdala.” So, laying the gobbledygook of the Da Vinci Code in the same trash heap as claims that the pyramids have an extraterrestrial origin because the Egyptians were too stupid to have built them or that Kentucky Fried Chicken is clandestinely controlled owned by the Ku Klux Klan which is using the profits to develop a new “secret recipe” to make black Americans incapable of reproduction (there are websites devoted to both these theories), what’s the real juicy story about Mary Magdalene? That the first Easter morning, Jesus chose to reveal Himself to her first of all. Women in the ancient world weren’t allowed to serve as witnesses. Their testimony wasn’t accepted as having any legal or societal value. The risen Jesus chose her as His first witness and sent her as a witness to His disciples, who were all still in hiding, afraid for their lives. The Gospel story is far more compelling than the anemic fiction that she was Jesus’ girlfriend. Russian icons of St Mary Magdalene graphically display her role on the first Easter Day. She is always depicted holding a red Easter egg on which is inscribed in Cyrillic letters the words “Christ is risen.” The Roman Emperor Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus, commonly known as Trajan, died today of a stroke, in AD 117. During his nineteen year rule, the empire reached its widest geographical limits, and enjoyed peace and prosperity. The historian Edward Gibbon called Trajan one of the Five Good Emperors—not bad considering there were 170 of them! After his death, the Senate instituted a prayer for every succeeding emperor: felicior Augusto, melior Traiano, meaning “May he be luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan.” The next time you go through a revolving door, thank Theophilus Van Kannel. On this day, in 1877, he patented the “Van Kannel Revolving Storm Door.” Although the world’s first revolving door was installed at Rector’s, a restaurant on Times Square in Manhattan, Van Kannel originally tried to market his doors to homeowners. He also invented and owned the Witching Waves attraction at Coney Island and for some years it was the Witching Waves rather than the revolving door that made Van Kannel a wealthy man. In 1620, Katharina Kepler, admittedly a feisty old woman, was arrested for witchcraft. Her son, Johannes, yes, the famous astronomer, directed her defense. Though it took more than two years, he finally won her case. The first potatoes were planted in Hawaii on August 7, 1820, by a newly-arrived group of Congregationalist missionaries. They introduced New England cuisine—potatoes, apples, salted cod, corned beef, butter, and cheese—to the Hawaiians, believing this, and the replacement of hula skirts with hoop skirts, would lead the natives to eternity. They’re still eating poi. Margaretha Geertruida Zelle was born today in 1876. Forty one years later, at the height of World War I, she was convicted of spying for the Germans and executed by a French firing squad. Earlier in her life, while living in Indonesia, she studied dancing, Hindu mysticism and the arts of the Oriental courtesan. She changed her name to Mata Hari (“the eye of the Sun”), moved to Paris and hired an agent. She achieved overnight success in the theater and became mistress to some of Europe’s most powerful businessmen, military officers and politicians. Wilhelm, the Crown Prince of Germany, was enamored of her and paid for her lavish lifestyle from his own pocket. During the early days of the First World War, she was questioned by British intelligence officers and told them she was a French spy. The French denied it—and they were probably telling the truth. Most of her biographers think she claimed to be a spy because it sounded exotic and would add to her mystique. If that was her intention, she succeeded. French intelligence officials began watching her and built a case—now regarded as flimsy—claiming she was a German double agent. She was executed in a deserted army camp outside Paris at dawn, on October 15, 1917. The popular press of the day reported that, just as the soldiers were about to fire, she flung open her full-length coat to reveal her naked body and cried, “Harlot, yes, traitor, never!” Eyewitnesses dispute the account, but all agree her last act was to blow a kiss to her executioners. In 1957, Oliver Hardy (he was the fat one) died of cancer at his home in North Hollywood. Together with his good friend, Stan Laurel, Hardy (born Norvell) made twenty-three full length films over twenty years. His Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 1500 Vine Street, just at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. Napoleon Bonaparte famously said with enough ribbon, he could conquer Europe. General George Washington was more sparing. During the American Revolution the General created the Badge of Military Merit, a military order for soldiers who exhibited, “not only instances of unusual gallantry in battle, but also extraordinary fidelity…” Unlike European military medals, however, which were only awarded to high-ranking officers, Washington wanted to create an award for common soldiers. The Badge was designed by Washington himself. It was, he wrote, to be a “figure of a Heart in Purple Cloth or Silk, edged with narrow lace or binding.” During the entire course of the Revolution, he awarded only three of them. The recipients were Sergeant William Brown of the 5th Connecticut Regiment, Sergeant Elijah Churchill of the 2nd Continental Light Dragoons and Sergeant Daniel Bissell of the 2nd Connecticut Regiment. After the War, the General discontinued the order. It was re-introduced on George Washington’s birthday in 1932 by the War Department with a new name: the Order of the Purple Heart, given to soldiers wounded in combat. In Oxford, on August 7, 1970, Tarawood Antigone, a brown Burmese cat, gave birth to 19 kittens. It was, and still is, the largest number of cats born to a single litter. The father was a half-Siamese whose whereabouts remain unknown. The old Roman calendar reckons today as ante diem VII Idus Augusti. This is the 219th day of the year; 146 days remain. Today is the last day of both Intimate Apparel Week (surely a popular day in the hallowed halls of Congress) and the United Nations’ Worldwide Breastfeeding Week. More disturbingly, tomorrow ends National Clown Week (no DC asides from me here—I wouldn’t know how to stop).
ALL THE FOCUS ON SILENCE with Agatho’s Stone elicited an curious letter from a friend this week on the “other side” of silence. Liz, who maintains a website of those suffering chronic pain, sent me an excerpt from a letter she had from a woman who believes she ought to speak only when her words meet Scriptural requirements—i.e., her words must always benefit someone. My initial response is why there aren’t more people like this living in California, but I know it’s a selfish thought. Liz’ correspondent quoted a verse from the New Testament, which the King James translators rendered: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” As I pondered this odd preoccupation with a single Bible verse, I couldn’t help but connect it to Agatho’s silence. Agatho’s stone was to help him “learn” silence, but the books of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers attribute quite a few words to Agatho, wise and sometimes bold. His silence didn’t shut him up. His stone taught him there were times for silence and times for speech. His speech was powerful because he didn’t open his mouth to give utterance to his every passing thought. His silence taught him how to speak—and what to say.
Aristotle defines man as the animal who speaks. We speak, other animals don’t (regardless of how much it may sound like your dog is trying to). Since we all talk, even Liz’ friend, it’s what we have to say that matters. “Speech is the mirror of the soul,” said Publius Syrus 2100 years ago in Rome. “As a man speaks, so he is.” The consummate politician, Monsieur Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, a cynic if ever one lived, takes a contrary view: “Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.” Subtle, very French. With Bartlett’s Quotations in hand, we could amass an army of quotations about the use (and misuse) of speech, but I think this unlikely joining of Publius and Talleyrand is just what we need to consider how we speak as we walk the labyrinth, and what to suggest about Liz’ sincere and very serious friend.
Publius, Talleyrand, certainly Aristotle and Agatho all would agree speech has power. How we speak, what we say, can reflect our hard-to-see souls or hide them. In the Book of Genesis, at the very beginning of the Bible, we see something else very basic about words. God speaks and His words create. “Dixitque Deus ‘Fiat lux’ et facta est lux.” “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light." (When God speaks, all my instincts tell me He speaks in Latin.) Words are creative and when you and I speak, we create something. We can’t say “Fiat currus” and have an automobile appear, but without words, there would be no such things as automobiles. How did you feel the last time someone you love told you they loved you? How did you feel when someone you respected called you stupid? This is the power of speech. Words create and destroy, they wound and heal.
Most obviously, though, words communicate. They allow us to speak and listen to each other (your dog, through her whines and barks and the odd sounds she makes when she wakes you up at 2 AM, is communicating something, but because she can’t speak, you have to guess—and we don’t always guess aright!). Words express love and hate; passion and indifference. With them, we join God as creators. Speech is a gift, a sharing of the divine. There are times when we tread softly and silently along our labyrinthine path; but there are times we cry or laugh, times we speak to encourage, times we reach out because we don’t want to be alone. Sometimes we speak because the beauty that overwhelms us must be shared. Silence opens us to God; words open us to each other. Our walk through the twisting curves of the labyrinth makes plain we are made for both.
St Paul said something more about speech: “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt…” Not bland, maybe a little spicy, and most emphatically alive.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I plucked Kwaidan, loaned by my pal Melissa and recommended as “some of the scariest stuff you’ll ever read.” In Japanese, Kwaidan means “weird tales” and that they are. The book is a collection of strange stories collected from 1000 years of Japanese story-telling by Lafcadio Hearn, an old favorite of mine. Hearn lived in New Orleans after the Civil War and wrote about the jazz of Jellyroll Morton, the birth of Creole restaurants and the demise of the steamboats. Then, unexpectedly, he chucked everything in 1890 and moved to Japan, where he remained for the rest of his life. He published Kwaidan in 1905, his own translations—with some notes to help his English readers—of tales of ghosts, goblins and spirits which intrude into the lives of the Japanese peasant and feudal warlord alike. It’s not the scariest book I ever read—that honor belongs to a book on 20th century American politics—but it is a book that allows its reader to step back into the soul of a vanished world. It’s much more like reading an unexpurgated version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales than it is a Stephen King horror book—but since I’ve never read one of King’s novels, it’s a one-sided comparison. The tales depict a world where people not only believe in tree spirits and flesh-eating goblins, they live in expectation of encountering them. There are beautiful fifteen-year old girls just about to marry whose sudden death reveals a mystery (most of the young women who die in these tales are fifteen—I don’t know what significance that holds); samurai who break their vows and suffer supernatural consequences; a stock character in many of these stories is a wandering Zen priest, who sometimes steps in to make things right, and sometimes, like the Pharisee in the parable, passes trouble by on the far side of the road. There’s an surprising story about a cruel samurai who outwits the ghost of a man he unjustly executed; another about a ghost who summons a blind bard to sing to the dead in a graveyard. In all seventeen stories in just 240 pages—if you pick up the book (you can buy a new copy on Amazon for about $5.00), plan to spend a few evenings venturing back to medieval Japan. Buy some good green tea to go with it.
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.”—Mata Hari
“Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.”—Johannes Kepler
“You are dunces. Do with me what you want. Even if you were to pull one vein after another out of my body, however, I would have nothing to admit.”—Katharina Kepler, when shown the instruments she could have been (but was not) tortured with
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”—President George Washington
“My door possesses numerous advantages over a hinged-door structure: it is perfectly noiseless, effectually prevents the entrance of wind, snow, rain or dust and it cannot be blown open by the wind . . . there is no possibility of collision, and yet persons can pass both in and out at the same time."— Theophilus Van Kannel (this is the only quote I could find; admittedly it’s hard to be moved by these words but remember, this man also invented a ride in an amusement park)
“Regimes may fall and fail, but I do not."—Talleyand
“Treason is a matter of dates."--Talleyrand
“I don't know much, but I know a little about a lot of things.”— Oliver Hardy
ALL THE FOCUS ON SILENCE with Agatho’s Stone elicited an curious letter from a friend this week on the “other side” of silence. Liz, who maintains a website of those suffering chronic pain, sent me an excerpt from a letter she had from a woman who believes she ought to speak only when her words meet Scriptural requirements—i.e., her words must always benefit someone. My initial response is why there aren’t more people like this living in California, but I know it’s a selfish thought. Liz’ correspondent quoted a verse from the New Testament, which the King James translators rendered: “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” As I pondered this odd preoccupation with a single Bible verse, I couldn’t help but connect it to Agatho’s silence. Agatho’s stone was to help him “learn” silence, but the books of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers attribute quite a few words to Agatho, wise and sometimes bold. His silence didn’t shut him up. His stone taught him there were times for silence and times for speech. His speech was powerful because he didn’t open his mouth to give utterance to his every passing thought. His silence taught him how to speak—and what to say.
Aristotle defines man as the animal who speaks. We speak, other animals don’t (regardless of how much it may sound like your dog is trying to). Since we all talk, even Liz’ friend, it’s what we have to say that matters. “Speech is the mirror of the soul,” said Publius Syrus 2100 years ago in Rome. “As a man speaks, so he is.” The consummate politician, Monsieur Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, a cynic if ever one lived, takes a contrary view: “Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.” Subtle, very French. With Bartlett’s Quotations in hand, we could amass an army of quotations about the use (and misuse) of speech, but I think this unlikely joining of Publius and Talleyrand is just what we need to consider how we speak as we walk the labyrinth, and what to suggest about Liz’ sincere and very serious friend.
Publius, Talleyrand, certainly Aristotle and Agatho all would agree speech has power. How we speak, what we say, can reflect our hard-to-see souls or hide them. In the Book of Genesis, at the very beginning of the Bible, we see something else very basic about words. God speaks and His words create. “Dixitque Deus ‘Fiat lux’ et facta est lux.” “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light." (When God speaks, all my instincts tell me He speaks in Latin.) Words are creative and when you and I speak, we create something. We can’t say “Fiat currus” and have an automobile appear, but without words, there would be no such things as automobiles. How did you feel the last time someone you love told you they loved you? How did you feel when someone you respected called you stupid? This is the power of speech. Words create and destroy, they wound and heal.
Most obviously, though, words communicate. They allow us to speak and listen to each other (your dog, through her whines and barks and the odd sounds she makes when she wakes you up at 2 AM, is communicating something, but because she can’t speak, you have to guess—and we don’t always guess aright!). Words express love and hate; passion and indifference. With them, we join God as creators. Speech is a gift, a sharing of the divine. There are times when we tread softly and silently along our labyrinthine path; but there are times we cry or laugh, times we speak to encourage, times we reach out because we don’t want to be alone. Sometimes we speak because the beauty that overwhelms us must be shared. Silence opens us to God; words open us to each other. Our walk through the twisting curves of the labyrinth makes plain we are made for both.
St Paul said something more about speech: “Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt…” Not bland, maybe a little spicy, and most emphatically alive.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I plucked Kwaidan, loaned by my pal Melissa and recommended as “some of the scariest stuff you’ll ever read.” In Japanese, Kwaidan means “weird tales” and that they are. The book is a collection of strange stories collected from 1000 years of Japanese story-telling by Lafcadio Hearn, an old favorite of mine. Hearn lived in New Orleans after the Civil War and wrote about the jazz of Jellyroll Morton, the birth of Creole restaurants and the demise of the steamboats. Then, unexpectedly, he chucked everything in 1890 and moved to Japan, where he remained for the rest of his life. He published Kwaidan in 1905, his own translations—with some notes to help his English readers—of tales of ghosts, goblins and spirits which intrude into the lives of the Japanese peasant and feudal warlord alike. It’s not the scariest book I ever read—that honor belongs to a book on 20th century American politics—but it is a book that allows its reader to step back into the soul of a vanished world. It’s much more like reading an unexpurgated version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales than it is a Stephen King horror book—but since I’ve never read one of King’s novels, it’s a one-sided comparison. The tales depict a world where people not only believe in tree spirits and flesh-eating goblins, they live in expectation of encountering them. There are beautiful fifteen-year old girls just about to marry whose sudden death reveals a mystery (most of the young women who die in these tales are fifteen—I don’t know what significance that holds); samurai who break their vows and suffer supernatural consequences; a stock character in many of these stories is a wandering Zen priest, who sometimes steps in to make things right, and sometimes, like the Pharisee in the parable, passes trouble by on the far side of the road. There’s an surprising story about a cruel samurai who outwits the ghost of a man he unjustly executed; another about a ghost who summons a blind bard to sing to the dead in a graveyard. In all seventeen stories in just 240 pages—if you pick up the book (you can buy a new copy on Amazon for about $5.00), plan to spend a few evenings venturing back to medieval Japan. Buy some good green tea to go with it.
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“I am a woman who enjoys herself very much; sometimes I lose, sometimes I win.”—Mata Hari
“Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.”—Johannes Kepler
“You are dunces. Do with me what you want. Even if you were to pull one vein after another out of my body, however, I would have nothing to admit.”—Katharina Kepler, when shown the instruments she could have been (but was not) tortured with
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”—President George Washington
“My door possesses numerous advantages over a hinged-door structure: it is perfectly noiseless, effectually prevents the entrance of wind, snow, rain or dust and it cannot be blown open by the wind . . . there is no possibility of collision, and yet persons can pass both in and out at the same time."— Theophilus Van Kannel (this is the only quote I could find; admittedly it’s hard to be moved by these words but remember, this man also invented a ride in an amusement park)
“Regimes may fall and fail, but I do not."—Talleyand
“Treason is a matter of dates."--Talleyrand
“I don't know much, but I know a little about a lot of things.”— Oliver Hardy
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