Walking the Labyrinth-September 25, 2009-The Russian Orthodox today celebrate the feast of the Venerable Dosithea of Kiev, a female recluse who spent most of her life living in a monastery, her fellow monks believing her to be a man. As daughter of a Russian noble family, she was educated in a convent where her grandmother lived as a nun. When she returned home, her parents told her they had arranged her marriage; the young woman promptly ran away from home. They searched for her in numerous convents but it never occurred to them to look for her in a monastery. She lived as a recluse for more than thirty years in the famous Monastery of the Kievan Caves. Her spiritual counsel came to be valued by Russians, peasant and noble alike; from 1744 the Empress Elizabeth chose Dosithea (thinking she was the monk “Dositheus”) as her confessor and spiritual director. When she died in 1776, her brethren discovered “Dositheus” was actually “Dosithea.” From that time they began venerating her as a saint, undoubtedly for her piety—but perhaps also because they figured only a woman of great holiness could live cooped up with a bunch of men. 1066 was a difficult year in England from the get-go. On January 5, the holy but incompetent King Edward (called "the Confessor") died childless, leaving three men, all ambitious and each with an army at his disposal, claiming the throne. One, Harald Sigurdsson, nicknamed Harald Hardrada (“Harald the Stern”), was King of the Vikings in Norway. The second, Harold Godwinson, a powerful English nobleman who the dying Edward appointed protector of the throne, pushed his claim and bullied his way to the crown before Edward's body was cold. He was proclaimed King of England late in January. The third was William of Normandy (known to history as William “the Conqueror”—a hint as to how this whole thing ends). When word of Harold’s coronation spread, both Harald and William began assembling invasion fleets and armies. Hardrada was the first to sail for England, with more than 300 ships; he arrived in mid-September. The Vikings defeated a local militia shortly after coming to ground and Harald thought the country would be easy pickings; on the morning of September 25, though, his sleeping army was attacked by Harold Godwinson’s force, which had marched--fully armored--185 miles in less than four days. They attacked across Stamford Bridge as soon as they came on the scene. Most of the Vikings were unarmored and in the ensuing slaughter Hardrada and many of his nobles were killed. After the remainder surrendered, Harold allowed them to leave on their promise they would never again attack England. So great was the number of the dead that less than 20 of the original 300 ships returned to Norway. Harold’s victory was short-lived. While his men were recovering from the fight, word came that William of Normandy had landed in Pevensey with 7000 men. Marching 241 miles, the English met the Norman force on October 14. The Battle of Hastings, fought on what is now called Senlac (“Blood-lake”) Hill, saw the complete defeat of the English army (Harold died, shot through the eye with an arrow). It marks the end of “Anglo-Saxon” England and the beginning of a new language—which would give rise to Chaucer, Shakespeare and the King James Bible (and, in its distant future, episodes of “South Park”). Vasco Nunez de Balboa was the sort of conquistador who gave other conquistadors a bad name; the worst of a sorry lot. He was an unusually cruel man in an age of casual cruelty. We remember his name, to the extent we do, because history tells us he was the first white man to see the Pacific Ocean (it’s hard to say someone “discovered” the Pacific, but we can accurately say he went looking and found it). While pillaging and murdering the Indians of eastern Panama, Balboa heard of “the Other Sea” on the far side of the country, with beaches covered with golden sands (this story came to him, I have no doubt, from Indians who wanted him to do his “exploring” elsewhere). In search of gold, not the Pacific, Balboa with 190 Spaniards, a few native guides, and a pack of dogs began his journey across Panama. On September 25, from the top of a ridge of the Tumaco Mountains, they saw the ocean (they called it “the South Sea”). Hastening to the beach, they made the unhappy discovery the sands weren’t gold. Undeterred, Balboa waded out into the water, drew his sword and claimed “these waters and all adjacent lands” for the King of Spain. That’s a lot of water and a lot of land, too. Besides the King of Spain, few others were willing to accept the claim. When Balboa returned to the Atlantic side of Panama, he became embroiled in political disputes with authorities sent from Madrid. Balboa was more successful as conquistador than politician; he was found guilty of treason—one of a few crimes he hadn’t committed—and beheaded in 1519. His inept executioner had to strike three times before finally severing Balboa’s head. In 1690, the first newspaper was published in the American colonies. On September 25, Benjamin Harris of Boston issued Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick with the announcement it would be published once a month or oftener “if any glut of occurrences happen.” The Royal Governor of Massachusetts didn’t like what he read and four days later Harris was arrested, his press confiscated and copies of the Publick Occurrences were consigned to the flames—all, it seems, but one. It was sent to England, put in a royal archive and forgotten. In 1840 a clerk found it in a stack of old colonial documents. The only surviving copy of Publick Occurrences is now in the British Museum. Melville Bissell was born on September 25, 1843 (his last name is the giveaway). In the mid-1870’s, Melville and his wife Anna owned a crockery shop in Grand Rapids, Michigan. One evening an irritated Anna sat her husband down for a family discussion. She was tired of spending a couple of hours every day cleaning the clay powder and sawdust from the shop floor. He liked to tinker with things mechanical—couldn’t he come up with something to help her? Within a few days, he did—and today’s Bissell sweeper is almost unchanged from his original design. Anna thought the sweeper was fantastic. She not only used it herself, but began telling other people about it. Melville patented the Bissell Sweeper in 1876 and Anna insisted on taking charge of marketing it. She was a natural. They opened their first manufacturing plant in 1883 and Anna took the Bissell on the road, America’s first traveling saleswoman (Bissells in those days were $1.50). When Melville died unexpectedly a few years later, Anna stepped in as the first female CEO in America. Under her guidance, the company became a national brand, then an international one. When she died, her obituary was titled: “The Lady Who Swept the World.” On September 25, 1890, two events of note: Sequoia National Park was founded, and the Mormon Church reversed its teaching on polygamy. Fortunately for the Mormons, the President of the Church received a revelation that it was time for things to change shortly after Congress made plain Utah would not be admitted into the Union as long as the Church held its polygamous tenets. God evidently changed His mind and so did the Congress: Utah became the 45th State in 1896 (and, incidentally, the first State to grant women the right to vote). William Faulkner was born on September 25, 1897. He lived most of his life in Oxford, Mississippi, the setting (under the fictionalized name of “Jefferson”) for many of his novels and short stories. In his thirties, money lured Faulkner to Hollywood to crank out screenplays—he worked on twenty during his twelve years there (“To Have and To Have Not,” “The Big Sleep,” and “Drums Along the Mohawk” among them). As his reputation grew, he began to feel restive. While working on “The Big Sleep” with director Howard Hawks, Faukner complained he would write better at home than at the studio. Hawks told him that was fine, go write at home. A couple of days later, having heard nothing from Faulkner, Hawks went to his Hollywood home to find it empty. Faulkner had flown back “home” to Mississippi, where he finished the screenplay. On this day in 1956, Bobby Darrin topped America’s music charts with Mack the Knife. It won him a Grammy. Today is the 268th day of the year; 97 days remain till 2010. The ancient Roman calendar reckons today as ante diem VII Kalendas Octobri; devotees of the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece counted this as the third day of the celebration of the annual rites, when the sacred wheat was gathered. It is the seventh day of the Jewish High Holy Days—the Ten Days of Awe. The Congress of the United States has declared September National Prime Beef Month (I knew I could find something they’d done worthwhile in the last 200 years), while the Tolkien Society celebrates this week as Tolkien Week (September 22 was “Hobbit Day”) and the American Vegetarian Association has instituted Hug-a-Vegetarian Day—no doubt to counter the month-long, Congressionally-mandated celebration of meat-eating.
I LOVE CALENDARS AND what they tell us. I don’t mean what date it is, but what a calendar says about the people who use it. Our civil calendar, the Gregorian, has been around for more than 400 years, though it was adopted by Great Britain and her colonies (that means us) only in 1752; the Russians didn’t begin using it until the Tsar abdicated in 1917. Most cultures and religions have other calendars they continue to use, even if just for nostalgia’s sake (like Chinese New Year), alongside the Gregorian. Religious calendars point back to earlier times—the Christian Church, indicative of its unhappy division, has two Church years—the Western Church begins its new year on the first Sunday of Advent (4 Sundays before Christmas) while Eastern Christians mark the year from September 1st, following the use of the long-vanished Byzantine Empire. For those interested, the Orthodox Churches have a further—uh—difficulty—because some refuse to accept the Gregorian calendar as the “Pope’s calendar” and cling to the old calendar instituted by Julius Caesar, the so-called “Julian calendar.” It is confusing—and I’ve left a lot out—but fascinating, too. Lest that be not confusing enough, though, Jews and Muslims each have their own religious calendars, based not on the sun but on the cycles of the moon. That means, unlike Christmas which falls predictably every year, the dates of major Jewish and Islamic holidays vary from year to year. Today, while Christians—well, some Christians—celebrate the Feast of St Dosithea (she’s one of 24 saints on the Church’s calendar today), Jews are in the midst of the most sacred season on their calendar, those days commonly called the High Holy Days. This is the seventh of the Ten Days. These ten days, which begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Yom Kippur, are days of feasting and fasting. Rosh Hashanah (which literally means “head of the year”) is a two-day New Year celebration. According to some Talmudic scholars, God created Man on this day. But if Rosh Hashanah is celebrated by eating sweets and going to parties, the Ten Days focus on what is now a far less popular aspect of the holidays—repentance: sorrow for sin and a determination to turn from it.
Classic Judaism depicts God during these Ten Days, pondering the life of each person, the Book of Life open before Him. He examines each one of us and decides whether or not our name will be written for the upcoming year in His Book. Ten days of repentance, ten days to examine ourselves and turn from our sins. Yom Kippur, the last of the High Holy Days, is set aside for fasting and prayer. This is the day God writes in His Book so Jews greet each other on Yom Kippur with “Good Signing (in the Book of Life).”
Some Jews today are uncomfortable with the idea of sin (they aren’t the only ones!) and the Ten Days are sometimes diluted down to a time of reflection not on sin (which so many people, Jewish or not, don’t really believe in, anyway) but on self-improvement. One prominent rabbi says “We all have character flaws and bad habits we can turn from on Yom Kippur.” I won't digress on how 'sin’ has disappeared from our religious vocabulary (and even more from our religious consciousness) in only a few short decades, but without sin, there is no evil and without evil, no need of redemption. Now many today (including my good friend Andrew) will jump in here and say “Exactly! I don’t need redemption! I don’t want it. I didn’t ask for it and I can live quite happily without it!” (I think that’s an exact quote, isn’t it, Herr A?)
I would believe what my friend says if he knew everything. Problem is, none of us do. Saying “I don’t need redemption,” doesn’t make it true. If I have cancer and don’t know it, it’s gonna kill me just as dead. How many of our fellow citizens annually are shocked to learn they have incurable diseases? Ignorance of a fact is immaterial to the reality of its impact.
Forgive me if I draw on my experience. As a priest I have waited by the bedsides of at least a couple of hundred dying people. Forgive, too, this unseemly but apt metaphor. I often sit as a vulture, waiting for the right time to move in. Even after people have been told they’re dying, it usually takes time for the grim message to “sink in,” to move from the mind to the heart. It can be weeks or days or hours but the time will come. I’ve been with people who reacted stoically to the news of their impending death, only to have them later break down. I can usually pinpoint the moment it happens. There is often a physical change on a person’s face and in their carriage the second they realize “I’m going to die this afternoon.” For most of our lives we know the last day is coming, but when it arrives, when the distant fact becomes today’s reality, things change. People who think “I might die today” have a different mindset and (forgive me again) “heartset” than someone who knows “I will die today.” Perspectives change “in the twinkling of an eye” when we hear the trumpet sounding.
When I was a boy in Confirmation Class, one of the games the priest would play with us was “Stump the Priest.” We were encouraged to come up with questions that called into question what we’d been told in class. One day, we were sure we had him. Several of us talked about it beforehand, and agreed our question was unanswerable and we could pile objections on top of our unanswerable question when we forced the priest to admit he was indeed stumped. When the time came, the innocent little girl we’d chosen raised her hand. “Father, how about when a bad person—a really bad person, say, Hitler—is dying and they call a priest and confess their sins and get absolution. Does God let them into heaven even if they’re the world’s worst person?” The priest paused and I jumped in. “That's not fair.”
While he gave us a correct answer (you’ll have to ask me if you want to know what he said), it’s a good question. The answer that ultimately satisfies me, though, isn’t the one he gave. It’s one that unfolded before me, sitting at the bedsides of the dying, hearing not only their final confessions but also their deepest regrets. The physical change that comes over us when we really “know” we’re dying in the next half-hour or so is the dropping of our masks, the falling away of the persona we present to the world. It’s only then, when we have nothing to gain or hide, nothing to hope for or fear, that many of us are honest with ourselves for the first time in many years. Then our lives present themselves not merely as “character flaws and bad habits,” not as regrets for the road untaken, but as profound sorrows for the pain we’ve caused, the hopes we’ve squandered and the sins we’ve committed. It’s then that we become aware for our desperate need for redemption.
On the evening of the first day of Rosh Hashanah, there is a touching ceremony of “doing Taschlich.” The word in Hebrew means to “cast off,” or “throw away.” Participants take pieces of broken bread and throw them into a stream or some other rushing water, so they are carried away. The broken bread is symbolic of our sins. Some rabbis encourage their congregants to say their sins aloud as they throw them away. When I hear confessions, I encourage people to write their sins down so they’ll remember them when the time comes. While I didn’t know about Taschlich when I served as a parish priest, I did encourage something similar to it, less beautiful but still pointedly practical. I would tell people their sins are now forgiven, they no longer exist; and I’d encourage them to shred their list of sins and flush it down the toilet.
When we acknowledge the reality of sin, we can begin to grasp the meaning of redemption. Redemption doesn’t simply make things “okay” again. Redemption genuinely changes and transfigures us. It doesn’t restore, it lifts us to where we have not yet been. Having your name in the Book of Life doesn’t mean “Thank God I’ll live another year.”It’s a promise your life will have meaning, it will be enriching for you and those who share your life. That’s why we’re walking the Labyrinth. So to you, my fellow walkers, I say during these Ten Days of Awe: “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life."
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I pulled a book I’ve meant to read for four or five years, but put it off because I was judging it by its cover! Members of the Franciscan Order are supposed to read a biography of St Francis of Assisi every year—and so a note to my writing friends—there’s a steady market for you—and in a similar way, Texans are required—it’s in the genes, I think—to read a certain number of books about the Alamo during their lifetimes. It’s been a couple of years since I added to my quota, so this week I read The Alamo, by Lon Tinkle. He wrote this back in 1959, and my tattered paperback copy had a particularly amateurish illustration on the cover. A couple of years ago, when I was looking for a book to read on this topic, I chose a more respectable-looking hardback, The Alamo and the Texas War of Independence, September 30, 1835 to April 21, 1836. It was an uninteresting re-telling of well-known events and stories; it didn’t even have much to offer about the controversies surrounding Alamo mythology. Unlike many earlier Texas historians, Tinkle draws his account from the eyes of Mexican eyewitnesses—not the familiar accounts of Santa Ana’s generals but as much as possible from records of the Mexican foot soldiers and Mexicans living in San Antonio at the time of the battle (I was unaware, for example, that Santa Ana ordered the alcalde and citizens of San Antonio to collect and destroy the bodies of the defenders when the battle ended). It is impressively researched and documented but so well-written the research simply slips in unnoticed as part of the story. The greatest of Texas historians, J Frank Dobie (on whose histories I cut my teeth), concluded his review of Tinkle’s book: “I had to hold back my tears.” So did I. Don’t judge a book by its cover.
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“I beg your Majesty to send us no lawyers here (in the New World); they are bad in themselves and a source only of trouble for others.”—Vasco Nunez de Balboa in a letter to King Ferdinand of Spain
“I don't want to be able to see the audience.”—Bobby Darrin
“Without blood, without tears, there is no glory.”—General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna
“A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.”—William Faulkner
Friday, September 25, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
"Judge Not"-Dont' Worry. He Didn't Really Mean It
Walking the Labyrinth—September 18, 2009—St Zosimas was an old man who lived in the badlands of Cilicia (south-eastern Turkey) about 1700 years ago. A medieval chronicle tells us “he lived a hermit’s life, a friend to the beasts and wild animals in that barren region.” Zosimas left the big city of Tarsus (St Paul’s hometown), his biographer says, “preferring the wilderness and a life of prayer and solitude to the entrapments of the city.” One day a hunting party rode up to Zosimas’ cottage and stopped to refresh themselves by his well. While they watered their mounts, the hunters asked why the old man lived so far from civilization. “I am a Christian,” he answered, “and seek a quiet life. The Emperor’s persecution of Christians makes that difficult. I fled here, where, with the animals as my only companions, I seek God in peace.” Imagine Zosimas’ surprise to learn the Emperor Diocletian, who had instigated the latest anti-Christian laws, was his questioner. The emperor told the hermit to renounce his faith and he would be left in peace, but Zosimas refused (if he’d agreed, of course, neither his name nor his story would have come down to us). Zosimas was beaten but held firm to his belief. The medieval chronicle tells of a friendly lion who came to Zosimas’ rescue and frightened the emperor and his party away, but if it’s true, it was too little, too late. Zosimas died of his wounds. His feast day is today, on Christian calendars worldwide. Two hundred years before the Emperor Diocletian rode up to Zosimas’ hermitage, another Roman emperor, Domitian, was assassinated on this date. Domitian, whose favorite pastime was killing flies in the imperial palace (according to the Roman historian Suetonius), was so loathed by all who knew him that even his wife joined the conspiracy. He was stabbed to death in his bedroom by a diverse group of household servants, soldiers on the palace staff and petty politicians. For several hours, while Domitian’s body lay on the bedroom floor, a succession of prominent Roman politicians made their way there and kicked or otherwise abused the corpse, proving the raw courage of politicians hasn’t changed in 2,000 years. On September 18, 1714, Georg Ludwig von Braunschweig und Lüneburg, Prince-Elector of Hanover, disembarked at Greenwich, England. Two days later this German nobleman was crowned “George I, King of Great Britain, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc,” at Westminster Abbey. Though fluent in German and French, with a passing knowledge of Latin, Italian and Dutch, George spoke no English. Members of the current House of Windsor are his descendants (the family changed their name at the height of anti-German feeling during World War I). On the same date, 63 years after German George set foot in Greenwich, British troops loyal to his grandson, George III, were poised outside Philadelphia, the seat of the American Continental Congress then in rebellion. They had defeated and outflanked General Washington’s shrinking army and the city lay open before them. On the night of September 18, 1777, while Congressional delegates and the well-to-do fled the city, the Liberty Bell was wrapped in sacking coated with hay and manure and placed into the wagon of militia private John Jacob Mickley. Taking back roads and cutting across private property, Mickley and his companions drove the bell to Allentown, 60 miles outside Philadelphia. At Zion Reformed Church, with the help of the pastor, they pulled up the floorboards and hid the bell. Nine months later, when the British left Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell was returned, all cleaned up, to the city. Charles Lewis Tiffany and Teddy Young opened the doors of a “stationery and fancy goods emporium" in the lower floor of a private residence on Broadway in New York City on this day in 1837. When Young left the company in 1853, it simply became known as “Tiffany’s.” From the start the shop carried unusual items: Chinese goods, Japanese paper mache, terra cotta ware, umbrellas, fans, fine stationery and pottery. In 1843, Young traveled through Europe on a purchasing tour and acquired a large amount of “false diamond jewelry.” It proved popular and sold well, but many customers regretted the shop had no genuine diamonds to offer. Tiffany remembered. He made a tour of Europe a few years later, during the French Revolution of 1848, and found many aristocrats anxious to exchange heirloom jewels for quick cash. Tiffany invested all the company funds in the gems he was offered and returned to the United States with Marie Antoinette's bejeweled girdle and a chest full of other pieces that once belonged to the French crown. He encouraged the press in their frenzied coverage of an unveiling of his new treasures and New York papers dubbed Tiffany the “King of Diamonds." “Tiffany Studios” founded by Charles’ son Louis Comfort Tiffany in 1885, had no association with his father’s firm. The first issue of The New York Times made its appearance on September 18, 1851. The newspaper was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond, the second chairman of the Republican National Committee, and a banker, George Jones. It was initially called the New-York Daily Times and sold for one cent a copy. Today it sells for $1.50 and has a circulation of just over 1,000,000 copies daily, trailing only USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. You can find old issues of the NYT for sale online: for $10.00 you can buy a 1969 copy of the paper about the first lunar landing (as if it really happened, Melissa!), $20.00 buys a paper announcing President Obama’s election, $30.00 will get you a copy of the paper the day after the September 11, 2001 attack, $40.00 will buy you a copy of the “Gray Lady” with the headline “Nixon Resigns,” for $45.00 you can purchase a copy of the Times printed after the Assassination of President John F Kennedy, $50.00 will buy you a copy of the paper on the day Nazi Germany surrendered. And for $85.00 you can get a copy, still fresh, of the New York Times for Thursday, June 25, 2009 “Michael Jackson Dies at 50.” On this day in 1905, two birthdays: Émilie Claudette Chauchoin was born in Paris. Hundreds of miles away, in Stockholm, Louisa Gustafsson was born. Both would later move to California and change their names— Émilie Chauchoin to Claudette Colbert and Louisa Gustafsson to Greta Garbo. Today is the 261st day of the year, 104 days remain till 2010. On the calendar of the ancient Romans today is reckoned ante diem XIV Kalendas October, the closing day of the Ludi Romani. On this day in 1952, the most popular song in America was “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” by Hank Williams. On September 18, 1981, France officially discontinued the use of the guillotine. Once again, leading our country with resolve and daring, the United States Congress has declared today both National Play-Doh Day and National Chocolate Day: take your choice.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE an Old Style Anti-federalist like me to be unsurprised at the continuing deterioration of the Republic. I thought the nadir of our times had come during the inept presidency of George Bush, but now those days seem almost halcyon. Invective poisons our national discourse everywhere from politics to sports to faith—even education, a topic once uncontroversial, simmers and snaps with turmoil. During the last presidential campaign, candidate Obama said we need to learn how to “disagree without being disagreeable,” but the pronouncements from the White House show little desire to lower the temperature of what now passes for "debate." A lot of people are angry and they get even angrier if you don’t get angry, too.
I’ve always liked the metaphor of the American Melting Pot. I know it’s not a popular one nowadays. Some of us are suspicious of foreigners “coming in to change things” while others worry my particular ethnicity/race/religion/sexual proclivity/social group isn’t sufficiently recognized, appreciated and acknowledged by everybody else. As I suggested in last week’s Labyrinthus, at its old core America is (was?) less a geography than an identity. We are the people who embrace freedom as an inalienable right. The government didn’t (and doesn’t) give it to us—we have it—with apologies to my atheistical friends—from God. Freedom doesn’t mean I can do whatever I want. Medieval philosophers (on the whole wiser than their modern counterparts) called unrestricted freedom by another word—“license”—meaning almost the opposite of what most people take the word to mean today. They understood “license” to mean something like “action without responsibility.” That isn’t freedom. Like it or not (and many won’t), freedom is bound inextricably with morality.Freedom insists I have a God-given right to do what I think I should, but it demands that I recognize the same holds true for every other person. America is an experiment—a 250 year old one—as to whether men and women can live together with that right. Our current inability to face real issues, our tendency to attack one another rather than attack our problems, suggests a dim future for the experiment.
What is a Walker in the Labyrinth to make of it? We cannot ignore it; God put us on the path and He means for us to walk it, if stumblingly. I'll make just an observation or two. In our daily strife—national, familial, personal—you’ll note a recurring tendency. We don’t disagree just about what we think is right or wrong. More viscerally, arguments are built on assumptions about the people we disagree with. Logic doesn’t allow us to disagree about facts—not accurate ones—but we can disagree about the meaning of facts and their importance. That’s not where anger resides. Anger and hatred linger in our confident belief that we know each other’s intentions and that our opponent’s intentions are certainly bad and probably evil.
Jesus said, “Judge not…” and we’ve been assiduously disregarding His words for the past 2,000 years. I choose the collective pronoun purposely here—I judge. Only in the last few years have I come to see how easily and often I judge, and how it’s damaged relationships I cherish. "But we all judge! It’s part of how our minds work!” (That’s me talking—protesting to God because it seems we have an impossible task—we've been given a brain and then told to ignore it when it works.) There are places in Scripture—even in the Gospels—even in the words of Jesus—that seem to say otherwise; where Jesus seems to contradict Himself. Some of His words seem to imply that some form of judgment is necessary. I don’t dispute it, though I do think the matter is more complex than it seems. I prefer for now though, to take His words at face value. To “judge” is not simply to observe facts—to judge is to interpret—to say what something means. It doesn’t simply say, “I see what you’re doing and I disagree with it” it goes further and says “and I know why you are doing it and what you mean by it. I know what your intentions are.”
But we don’t. Or perhaps more accurately, we can do little more than scratch the surface of another’s intention and here’s why: you and I barely know why we do what we do! We don’t know the myriad of things at work in the cobweb corners of our own souls. Even in the highest of human acts—love (agape)—our actions are a confusing mixture of motivations, many having nothing to do with the object of our affection. St Catherine of Siena, one of the boasts of our fallen nature, said that even the love a soul has for God is usually based on what she calls “mercenary love.” St Paul cried out “I don’t even know why I do what I do!” What underlies your love of the things you love or hate of the things you hate? With such limited self-knowledge (if we’re honest enough to admit it), how do we judge the inner workings of others? Joe Wilson, yelled out “You lie!” to President Obama. He didn’t say “Your facts are wrong.” To lie is to intentionally deceive, not make a mistake or exercise poor judgment. The words go not to facts but to character, to inner motivation. Congressman Wilson is as incapable of knowing the President's inner motive as are you and I. Similarly, when ex-President Carter claimed that Wilson’s words or the motivations of the President’s opponents are racially-based, he’s just guessing--and a thousand preconceived notions, faulty memories and unexamined feelings lie somewhere underneath that guess, unseen and unknown. Back and forth it goes: facts and truths have long ago been driven from our discourse.
From one of my favorite books, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers:
Once a brother committed some sin and the monks gathered to judge him. Father Moses the Ethiopian at first refused to go join them, but when they insisted, he filled an old, leaky basket with sand and carried it into the assembly on his back. When the brethren asked him what he was doing, he said "My sins run out behind me, and I do not even see them, and here I come to judge my brother."
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I drew a book for pleasure, and it’s been unadulterated. I briefly recounted O Henry’s life in last week’s Labyrinthus and afterward realized how long it’s been since I actually read any of his short stories. I’ve made up for that this week and will continue on (I got a book with 837 pages of ‘em) well into next week. Most of these I’ve never read but will now always remember: “The Shamrock and the Palm,” “A Madison Square Arabian Night,” “The Foreign Policy of Company 99,” “The Girl and the Graft.” No insightful review this week, my friends. I want to close my computer and pick up the heavy book beside my bed-table. The Collected Stories of O. Henry has 212 of his more than 600 tales. My copy was published by Avenel Books; you can find a decent copy on Amazon for about $5-6.
If you can’t think of a gift for someone, I can’t imagine a better one.
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“How often is it the interest of four or five ministers to combine together to deceive their sovereign! Secluded from mankind by his exalted dignity, the truth is concealed from his knowledge; he can see only with their eyes, he hears nothing but their misrepresentations. He confers the most important offices upon vice and weakness, and disgraces the most virtuous and deserving among his subjects. By such infamous arts the best and wisest princes are sold to the venal corruption of their courtiers."—the Emperor Diocletian
“Emperors are necessarily the most wretched of men since only their assassination can convince the public that the conspiracies against their lives are real.”—the Emperor Domitian, two days before his assassination
“Lente festina”—“Hasten slowly”—Suetonius
“Life would be wonderful if we only knew what to do with it.”—Greta Garbo
“I know what's best for me; after all I have been in the Claudette Colbert business longer than anybody.”—Claudette Colbert
YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE an Old Style Anti-federalist like me to be unsurprised at the continuing deterioration of the Republic. I thought the nadir of our times had come during the inept presidency of George Bush, but now those days seem almost halcyon. Invective poisons our national discourse everywhere from politics to sports to faith—even education, a topic once uncontroversial, simmers and snaps with turmoil. During the last presidential campaign, candidate Obama said we need to learn how to “disagree without being disagreeable,” but the pronouncements from the White House show little desire to lower the temperature of what now passes for "debate." A lot of people are angry and they get even angrier if you don’t get angry, too.
I’ve always liked the metaphor of the American Melting Pot. I know it’s not a popular one nowadays. Some of us are suspicious of foreigners “coming in to change things” while others worry my particular ethnicity/race/religion/sexual proclivity/social group isn’t sufficiently recognized, appreciated and acknowledged by everybody else. As I suggested in last week’s Labyrinthus, at its old core America is (was?) less a geography than an identity. We are the people who embrace freedom as an inalienable right. The government didn’t (and doesn’t) give it to us—we have it—with apologies to my atheistical friends—from God. Freedom doesn’t mean I can do whatever I want. Medieval philosophers (on the whole wiser than their modern counterparts) called unrestricted freedom by another word—“license”—meaning almost the opposite of what most people take the word to mean today. They understood “license” to mean something like “action without responsibility.” That isn’t freedom. Like it or not (and many won’t), freedom is bound inextricably with morality.Freedom insists I have a God-given right to do what I think I should, but it demands that I recognize the same holds true for every other person. America is an experiment—a 250 year old one—as to whether men and women can live together with that right. Our current inability to face real issues, our tendency to attack one another rather than attack our problems, suggests a dim future for the experiment.
What is a Walker in the Labyrinth to make of it? We cannot ignore it; God put us on the path and He means for us to walk it, if stumblingly. I'll make just an observation or two. In our daily strife—national, familial, personal—you’ll note a recurring tendency. We don’t disagree just about what we think is right or wrong. More viscerally, arguments are built on assumptions about the people we disagree with. Logic doesn’t allow us to disagree about facts—not accurate ones—but we can disagree about the meaning of facts and their importance. That’s not where anger resides. Anger and hatred linger in our confident belief that we know each other’s intentions and that our opponent’s intentions are certainly bad and probably evil.
Jesus said, “Judge not…” and we’ve been assiduously disregarding His words for the past 2,000 years. I choose the collective pronoun purposely here—I judge. Only in the last few years have I come to see how easily and often I judge, and how it’s damaged relationships I cherish. "But we all judge! It’s part of how our minds work!” (That’s me talking—protesting to God because it seems we have an impossible task—we've been given a brain and then told to ignore it when it works.) There are places in Scripture—even in the Gospels—even in the words of Jesus—that seem to say otherwise; where Jesus seems to contradict Himself. Some of His words seem to imply that some form of judgment is necessary. I don’t dispute it, though I do think the matter is more complex than it seems. I prefer for now though, to take His words at face value. To “judge” is not simply to observe facts—to judge is to interpret—to say what something means. It doesn’t simply say, “I see what you’re doing and I disagree with it” it goes further and says “and I know why you are doing it and what you mean by it. I know what your intentions are.”
But we don’t. Or perhaps more accurately, we can do little more than scratch the surface of another’s intention and here’s why: you and I barely know why we do what we do! We don’t know the myriad of things at work in the cobweb corners of our own souls. Even in the highest of human acts—love (agape)—our actions are a confusing mixture of motivations, many having nothing to do with the object of our affection. St Catherine of Siena, one of the boasts of our fallen nature, said that even the love a soul has for God is usually based on what she calls “mercenary love.” St Paul cried out “I don’t even know why I do what I do!” What underlies your love of the things you love or hate of the things you hate? With such limited self-knowledge (if we’re honest enough to admit it), how do we judge the inner workings of others? Joe Wilson, yelled out “You lie!” to President Obama. He didn’t say “Your facts are wrong.” To lie is to intentionally deceive, not make a mistake or exercise poor judgment. The words go not to facts but to character, to inner motivation. Congressman Wilson is as incapable of knowing the President's inner motive as are you and I. Similarly, when ex-President Carter claimed that Wilson’s words or the motivations of the President’s opponents are racially-based, he’s just guessing--and a thousand preconceived notions, faulty memories and unexamined feelings lie somewhere underneath that guess, unseen and unknown. Back and forth it goes: facts and truths have long ago been driven from our discourse.
From one of my favorite books, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers:
Once a brother committed some sin and the monks gathered to judge him. Father Moses the Ethiopian at first refused to go join them, but when they insisted, he filled an old, leaky basket with sand and carried it into the assembly on his back. When the brethren asked him what he was doing, he said "My sins run out behind me, and I do not even see them, and here I come to judge my brother."
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I drew a book for pleasure, and it’s been unadulterated. I briefly recounted O Henry’s life in last week’s Labyrinthus and afterward realized how long it’s been since I actually read any of his short stories. I’ve made up for that this week and will continue on (I got a book with 837 pages of ‘em) well into next week. Most of these I’ve never read but will now always remember: “The Shamrock and the Palm,” “A Madison Square Arabian Night,” “The Foreign Policy of Company 99,” “The Girl and the Graft.” No insightful review this week, my friends. I want to close my computer and pick up the heavy book beside my bed-table. The Collected Stories of O. Henry has 212 of his more than 600 tales. My copy was published by Avenel Books; you can find a decent copy on Amazon for about $5-6.
If you can’t think of a gift for someone, I can’t imagine a better one.
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“How often is it the interest of four or five ministers to combine together to deceive their sovereign! Secluded from mankind by his exalted dignity, the truth is concealed from his knowledge; he can see only with their eyes, he hears nothing but their misrepresentations. He confers the most important offices upon vice and weakness, and disgraces the most virtuous and deserving among his subjects. By such infamous arts the best and wisest princes are sold to the venal corruption of their courtiers."—the Emperor Diocletian
“Emperors are necessarily the most wretched of men since only their assassination can convince the public that the conspiracies against their lives are real.”—the Emperor Domitian, two days before his assassination
“Lente festina”—“Hasten slowly”—Suetonius
“Life would be wonderful if we only knew what to do with it.”—Greta Garbo
“I know what's best for me; after all I have been in the Claudette Colbert business longer than anybody.”—Claudette Colbert
Friday, September 11, 2009
America on September 11, 2001
Walking the Labyrinth—September 11, 2009—Egyptian Christians, called Copts, today keep the feast day of St Paphnutius, a monk who lived in the desert 1600 years ago. During the anti-Christian persecutions under the Egyptian governor Maximin Daia, every priest and monk was to have his right eye burned out and his left leg broken. Why the governor chose these bi-lateral mutilations is unknown, but after Paphnutius was subjected to these penalties, he was sent to work in the copper mines of Sinai. Most prisoners there died within two years, but Paphnutius was accustomed to living in the desert, and not only survived but recovered full use of his mutilated leg. When the persecutions ceased, Paphnutius returned to his monastic life (in the desert—how different could it have been?). He was later made a bishop and attended the Oecumenical Council of Nicaea called by Constantine the Great in 325. A chronicler said that when the Emperor met the pious bishop, he kissed the burnt flesh where Paphnutius’ eye had been. In 1297, the Scottish warlord William Wallace (yes, whose story Braveheart supposedly tells) led a Scottish army to defeat English royal forces at the Battle of Stirling Bridge. The battle didn’t take place on Stirling Field (as the movie suggests) but around the bridge spanning the river. The narrow bridge allowed only two horsemen abreast to cross at a time; when the Scots beat back the initial attack of the English cavalry, the horsemen tried to retreat back over the bridge, crushing the soldiers trying to come to their aid. Pandaemonium reigned. The only survivors of the retreat were those who managed to throw off their armor and swim the Stirling. The leader of the English army, the portly Hugh de Cressingham, was among the slain. Braveheart showed a version of the battle but omitted the aftermath: Wallace found de Cressingham’s body, had it flayed and cured, and made a baldric (a belt slung over one shoulder) for his sword out of the fat Englishman’s skin-probably a bit much even for a Mel Gibson movie. On September 11, 1766, the third Earl of Darnley, John Bligh, married Vicountess Mary Stoute. For eighty years, the Blighs had represented County Meath in the Irish Parliament. The third Earl served in both the Irish and English parliaments for fifty years and more. Mid-way through his political career, most of his parliamentary colleagues recognized that the Earl was mentally—"uncertain"—about himself. He took to claiming he was a teapot, and referred to his various body parts as if this were so (his head was his “dome,” his arms “handles,” etc.). He fathered seven children, though he sometimes publicly worried that if he wasn’t careful in propagating them, his “spout” would come off! No one seemed too concerned about all this and the Earl's political career continued unaffected for another quarter-century till his death. William Sydney Porter, better known to us by his pen name “O Henry,” was born today in 1862. His short stories (“Gift of the Magi,” “The Ransom of Red Chief,” “The Cop and the Anthem” are among the more than 600 he wrote) are noted for their wit, warmth and clever endings. Porter’s life is as interesting as any of his stories. As a young man he worked first as a pharmacist then a draftsman, bank teller and journalist. He wrote his short stories for pleasure. In 1887, Porter eloped with his sweetheart (who had tuberculosis) and got a job working for the Texas General Land Office. His stories won him a popular readership and he was hired by a magazine in Houston; the couple began to prosper. While they were settling into their new home, Porter was indicted for embezzlement—the Austin bank he'd worked in was audited and his bookkeeping figures repeatedly came up short. Porter fled (not a good sign), first to New Orleans and then to Honduras. He continued to write short stories even then (writing about Honduras, he coined the phrase “banana republic”) but came back to Texas when he was informed his wife was dying. She did die shortly after his return and Porter sunk into depression; he quit writing and refused to participate in his legal defense. He served three years of a five year sentence (he began writing in prison, now under his famous nom de plume) and, on his release, moved to New York City. He poured himself into his writing: over the next five years he published 381 stories. During that time he drank himself into cirrhosis of the liver, which killed America’s great story-teller in two short years. On this day in 1875, the world’s first Comic strip appeared in the Daily Graphic, a New York City newspaper. “Professor Tigwissel’s Burglar Alarm” was seventeen panels long and drawn by Livingston Hopkins, the Graphic’s political cartoonist. It was not well-received and regular "cartoon strips" would have to wait ten more years before they found an audience. James G. Cutler, a former Mayor of Rochester, New York, patented the mail chute on September 11, 1883. He installed the first one a few months later in the Elwood Building in Rochester. It was a success and the Post Office commissioned two more in New York City office buildings. In 1905, Post Office regulations allowed Cutler’s Letter Boxes “in all office buildings of more than five stories and in hotels taller than five stories and in apartment houses with more than 50 residential apartments.” Further regulations required that they “be of metal, distinctly marked ‘U.S. Letter Box,' with a door which must open on hinges on one side, the bottom of the door not less than 2'6" above the floor." Bureaucratic writing has the same ring at all times and in all places. For twenty years Cutler was the only producer of Letter Boxes in the United States; the company is now headquartered in Torrance, California. The “Miss America Pageant” was first broadcast on television today in 1954. Lee Meriwether was crowned Miss America by a panel of judges that included Grace Kelly; that night, for the first time, Americans heard Bert Parks sing “There She Is, Miss America.” Twenty-five years later Parks was fired from the staff after polls showed he was considered “old-fashioned” and programmers feared he would lose the pageant viewers. The years before Parks’ dismissal, the pageant drew 80 million viewers; in 2008, 3.1 million Americans tuned in. Evidently, Parks wasn't the only problem. Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev died of a heart attack on September 11, 1971. He was 77. Khrushchev, who led the Communist Party in the Soviet Union from the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, was removed from power in October of 1964 and forcibly retired. He was given a large home in Moscow, a splendid villa (dacha) in the Russian countryside and a monthly pension of about $15,000. When his opponents in the Politburo felt more secure, they took away his Moscow home and replaced it with a modest apartment, he was moved out of his dacha and his pension was reduced. An angry Khrushchev began writing his memoirs, but was told he wouldn’t be allowed to publish them. Shortly before his death, Khrushchev managed to smuggle his memoirs out of the Soviet Union with the help of connections in the free world. The Party denied him a State Burial. On the ancient Roman calendar, today is reckoned as ante diem III Idus Septembri and the eighth day of the Ludi Romani. This is the 254th day of the year, 111 days remain, leaving only 83 shopping days till Christmas. Johnny Mercer topped America’s music charts today back in 1945 with On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe; and the Congress of the United States of America has not only named September National Mold Awareness Month but also National Piano Month, while, not to be outdone, the United Nations (or Oprah Winfrey? Or both?) has declared September International Self-Improvement Month. I’m gonna pull out my old keyboard and play “Claire de Lune.”
On September 11, 2001, nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.
IT’S EIGHT YEARS SINCE we watched in collective horror the events of September 11, 2009. At 6.30 that morning I was asleep and one of my parishioners called me and told me to turn on the news. My eyes had barely focused on the television screen, when, on the large monitor behind the newscasters, I saw what I later would learn was a second plane fly into the Twin Towers. I know your memories are just as vivid. For the next few hours we all watched together as the story, one event after another, tumbled into our living rooms. Terrified people ran away from the scene of the attack in any and every direction; men and women, trapped in the flames with no possibility of rescue, threw themselves from the 110 story buildings in despair; the Pentagon burned; the national government began to close down; planes seemed to be missing and crashing everywhere and airports all across the nation closed their doors and cancelled their flights. I remember thinking “how long can we simply close everything down?” We went into shock. But briefly. Before any of us knew the extent of what was happening, Americans everywhere began to act. We called each other, got in touch with those we know and loved. We checked our resources and shared what we had. We heard about, and our hearts burned with admiration of, the reckless courage of firemen and policemen and rescue workers who flung themselves into burning buildings and collapsing hallways to pluck the helpless to safety. Through the confusion of the day, we gleaned the details of the 40 passengers aboard Flight 93, who died rather than allow the aircraft to be used to kill more people. In the midst of chaos and reeling in shock, our national character forced its way up through the twisted steel and concrete rubble.
We’ve done it before, time and again. At starving Jamestown, on the bridge at Concord, and in the steaming hall of the Philadelphia State House in July of 1776 (later re-named Independence Hall) we as a people showed our resolve; in the iron words of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, the steel tracks of the first railroads, and the endless rows of Conestoga wagons heading west, we pushed with determination; in the frenzied Secession Winter of 1860; on the bloody fields of Antietam, and by the star-spangled maps of the Underground Railroad we fought forward, not knowing how the struggle would end but with a vision we were willing to die for. Earthquakes, fires and floods have stopped us until we figured out what to do; the Black Days of October, 1929, crushed our economy but we trudged on; four years after the oily smoke from the sinking Arizona blotted the Hawaiian sky, the Day of Infamy gave way to the unconditional surrender of the Emperor of Japan. We as a nation have survived missiles in Cuba, murdered (and lying) Presidents and 53 Americans held hostage in Iran for a year and a half.
There is much to regret in the 233 years of our history—much suffering and injustice and many tears. But there is much to be proud of. Our founding documents, the Declaration and Constitution, were written by old, dead, white men. It’s popular to demonize them nowadays. But their vision, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” is a staggering claim of human freedom. Not for white men but the old English notion of Everyman—all of us. As a nation we have often failed to live up to that which we insist is true. But we’ve never given up the vision. That vision isn’t meant to favor one race or creed, but it embraces everyone who loves freedom. That love of freedom, that brash, bull-in-a-china shop spirit that comes from the mixing of dour Puritans and Southern belles and Mountain Men and Sacajaweas, that often acts first and thinks second, is what was at work in us on September 11. That spirit pushed its way out from the ruins of Twin Towers and the smoke of the Pentagon and shines amidst the wreckage on a field in rural Pennsylvania. September 11, 2001 is part of our heritage; it’s a day of which we should be proud. It’s not so much about what others did to us, but who we found ourselves, once again, to be.
God grant that we can find that to be so in these troublous days.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK, though just barely, comes a book from my friend Dolores the Chef Extraordinaire. She loaned me a copy of The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. I haven’t seen the movie, though I will. But good as it no doubt is (with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson it could be nothing else), I can say with certainty it cannot successfully convey the subtleties of this book. Ishiguro was reared in England and received all his education there; he understands the English character and it comes through as in invites us into the inner world of Stevens, the butler who narrates his life in the book. It’s a life spent in pursuit of "dignity" and consequently, loneliness; a life of "loyalty" given to the service those who he fails to see are undeserving. When Lord Darlington, his employer, expresses admiration for and quietly gives support to Hitler and Mussolini in the decade before the war, Stevens reflects “many of Lord Darlington’s words will seem today rather odd—even, at times, unattractive…however, if a butler is to be of any worth to anything or anybody in life, there must surely come a time when he ceases his searching; a time when he says to himself: ‘This employer embodies all that I find noble and admirable. I will hereafter devote myself to serving him.’ This is loyalty intelligently bestowed.” It was hard for me—with no single Anglophilic bone—to put this book down. It shows a profound understanding of what it means to be English and a deeper understanding yet of the tragedy repeated in so many lives, when we deny life’s deepest joys so we can be maintain the illusions we most cherish-those about ourselves.
QUOTES FORM THE PRINCIPALS:
“Every man dies, but not every man truly lives.”—William Wallace (yes, it was in Braveheart but it’s one of the movie’s few authentic quotes)
“Inject a few raisins into the tasteless dough of existence.”—William Sydney Porter (O Henry)
“For my money, Julie [Newmar] was the best Catwoman.”-Lee Meriwether
“They’re winners, everyone!”—Bert Parks
“If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.”—Nikita Khrushchev
On September 11, 2001, nineteen Al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights.
IT’S EIGHT YEARS SINCE we watched in collective horror the events of September 11, 2009. At 6.30 that morning I was asleep and one of my parishioners called me and told me to turn on the news. My eyes had barely focused on the television screen, when, on the large monitor behind the newscasters, I saw what I later would learn was a second plane fly into the Twin Towers. I know your memories are just as vivid. For the next few hours we all watched together as the story, one event after another, tumbled into our living rooms. Terrified people ran away from the scene of the attack in any and every direction; men and women, trapped in the flames with no possibility of rescue, threw themselves from the 110 story buildings in despair; the Pentagon burned; the national government began to close down; planes seemed to be missing and crashing everywhere and airports all across the nation closed their doors and cancelled their flights. I remember thinking “how long can we simply close everything down?” We went into shock. But briefly. Before any of us knew the extent of what was happening, Americans everywhere began to act. We called each other, got in touch with those we know and loved. We checked our resources and shared what we had. We heard about, and our hearts burned with admiration of, the reckless courage of firemen and policemen and rescue workers who flung themselves into burning buildings and collapsing hallways to pluck the helpless to safety. Through the confusion of the day, we gleaned the details of the 40 passengers aboard Flight 93, who died rather than allow the aircraft to be used to kill more people. In the midst of chaos and reeling in shock, our national character forced its way up through the twisted steel and concrete rubble.
We’ve done it before, time and again. At starving Jamestown, on the bridge at Concord, and in the steaming hall of the Philadelphia State House in July of 1776 (later re-named Independence Hall) we as a people showed our resolve; in the iron words of Webster, Clay and Calhoun, the steel tracks of the first railroads, and the endless rows of Conestoga wagons heading west, we pushed with determination; in the frenzied Secession Winter of 1860; on the bloody fields of Antietam, and by the star-spangled maps of the Underground Railroad we fought forward, not knowing how the struggle would end but with a vision we were willing to die for. Earthquakes, fires and floods have stopped us until we figured out what to do; the Black Days of October, 1929, crushed our economy but we trudged on; four years after the oily smoke from the sinking Arizona blotted the Hawaiian sky, the Day of Infamy gave way to the unconditional surrender of the Emperor of Japan. We as a nation have survived missiles in Cuba, murdered (and lying) Presidents and 53 Americans held hostage in Iran for a year and a half.
There is much to regret in the 233 years of our history—much suffering and injustice and many tears. But there is much to be proud of. Our founding documents, the Declaration and Constitution, were written by old, dead, white men. It’s popular to demonize them nowadays. But their vision, that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” is a staggering claim of human freedom. Not for white men but the old English notion of Everyman—all of us. As a nation we have often failed to live up to that which we insist is true. But we’ve never given up the vision. That vision isn’t meant to favor one race or creed, but it embraces everyone who loves freedom. That love of freedom, that brash, bull-in-a-china shop spirit that comes from the mixing of dour Puritans and Southern belles and Mountain Men and Sacajaweas, that often acts first and thinks second, is what was at work in us on September 11. That spirit pushed its way out from the ruins of Twin Towers and the smoke of the Pentagon and shines amidst the wreckage on a field in rural Pennsylvania. September 11, 2001 is part of our heritage; it’s a day of which we should be proud. It’s not so much about what others did to us, but who we found ourselves, once again, to be.
God grant that we can find that to be so in these troublous days.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK, though just barely, comes a book from my friend Dolores the Chef Extraordinaire. She loaned me a copy of The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. I haven’t seen the movie, though I will. But good as it no doubt is (with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson it could be nothing else), I can say with certainty it cannot successfully convey the subtleties of this book. Ishiguro was reared in England and received all his education there; he understands the English character and it comes through as in invites us into the inner world of Stevens, the butler who narrates his life in the book. It’s a life spent in pursuit of "dignity" and consequently, loneliness; a life of "loyalty" given to the service those who he fails to see are undeserving. When Lord Darlington, his employer, expresses admiration for and quietly gives support to Hitler and Mussolini in the decade before the war, Stevens reflects “many of Lord Darlington’s words will seem today rather odd—even, at times, unattractive…however, if a butler is to be of any worth to anything or anybody in life, there must surely come a time when he ceases his searching; a time when he says to himself: ‘This employer embodies all that I find noble and admirable. I will hereafter devote myself to serving him.’ This is loyalty intelligently bestowed.” It was hard for me—with no single Anglophilic bone—to put this book down. It shows a profound understanding of what it means to be English and a deeper understanding yet of the tragedy repeated in so many lives, when we deny life’s deepest joys so we can be maintain the illusions we most cherish-those about ourselves.
QUOTES FORM THE PRINCIPALS:
“Every man dies, but not every man truly lives.”—William Wallace (yes, it was in Braveheart but it’s one of the movie’s few authentic quotes)
“Inject a few raisins into the tasteless dough of existence.”—William Sydney Porter (O Henry)
“For my money, Julie [Newmar] was the best Catwoman.”-Lee Meriwether
“They’re winners, everyone!”—Bert Parks
“If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf.”—Nikita Khrushchev
Friday, September 04, 2009
Plain Ordinary Everyday Grace
Walking the Labyrinth—September4, 2009—The Greek Orthodox Church today celebrates the feast of the Venerable Anthimos the Blind, who died in 1782. As a child he lost his vision during a smallpox epidemic, but one day at Mass he recovered sight in one eye. He worked with his father as a ship’s mate for some years afterward, but eventually went blind again. He retired to a monastery and took vows, but spent all his time in church praying that God would restore his eyesight. His fixation on the topic was evidently an irritant not only to his fellow monks, but became tedious even to the heavenly hosts: Anthimos told his monastic brethren that during prayer, two angels appeared to him and escorted him to St Mary, the Mother of God. Anthimos was delighted by the heavenly vision, happier yet that his prayers had been heard and his sight was to be restored. He was in for a bit of a shock. The Queen of Heaven addressed Anthimos sharply, telling him his prayers were self-centered, and he would not be getting his sight back. “Your continual prayer that your sight be restored,” she chided him, “is profiting you nothing.” Anthimos took this heavenly kick in the teeth to heart, left the confines of the monastery, and began preaching that people should have faith in God despite their difficulties. Over the years, he became renowned for his spiritual insight and his prayers for the healing of others—especially for those who were blind—seemed to have a special efficacy. September 4, 476 AD is the date historians say the Roman Empire officially came to an end. On that day a German chieftain, Odoacer, told a Roman teenager, the recently-anointed Romulus Augustulus (“little Augustus”) that he couldn’t be emperor anymore. Odoacer took to calling himself the “King of Italy” and sent Romulus, who was evidently a bit simple-minded (no doubt why he was appointed in the first place), to live in a country villa with his aunt. According to medieval chroniclers, Augustulus finished his life quite happily as a keeper of chickens. More than 1,000 years later, in 1554, Friar Cornelio da Montalcino, a Franciscan who’d studied the Hebrew Bible with a rabbi living in Rome, renounced Christianity and converted to Judaism. September 4 of that year, officers of the Inquisition took the former friar in chains to the Campo dei Fiori (“Field of Flowers”) and burned him alive. It was an effective lesson: no Roman Catholic priest is known to have converted to Judaism for the next 350 years. On this day in 1682, Edmond Halley first saw the comet which now bears his name. Halley isn’t famous for seeing it. Millions before him did that. The comet was called after him because Halley figured out (twenty-five years later) that the comet he’d seen in his youth was the same one that had been recorded by astronomers in 1456, 1531, and 1607, and has a 76 year orbit. He correctly predicted it’s reappearance in 1758. That year, as astronomers across Europe noted its presence in the pre-Christmas sky, the comet was given Halley’s name. Mark Twain was born on November 30, 1835, while the comet was making a scheduled appearance. In his biography, he said, “I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It's coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it.” Twain died the day following the comet's reappearance. On September 4, 1781, the provisional governor of Alta California, Felipe de Neve, came into the Bahia de las Fumas (“the Valley of Smokes”) with 44 settlers and decided that they would erect a settlement. They named it El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles, finding the area called that on a map made by Gaspar de Portola, a Spanish army captain who’d traveled the valley 15 years earlier. Over the years, of course, the village of our Lady of the Angels has grown to a city of 9,862,049 and shortened its name to Los Angeles. A look outside any window in the city shows that it is still accurate to call it the Valley of Smokes. Today in 1886, Geronimo rode into Skeleton Canyon, 30 miles outside Douglas, Arizona, and surrendered to the commander of the United States 4th Cavalry, General George Crook. He had eluded the cavalry for ten months, but that summer was one of the hottest ever recorded in Arizona, with temperatures every day topping 120 degrees. The streams dried up and the desert grasses withered. Army posts set atop the tall Arizona mesas tracked Geronimo's movements by telescope. When the chief was told the cavalry had been ordered to pursue him even into Mexico, he lost heart and asked General Crook for a parley. After his surrender he (and, ironically, the Indian scouts who’d helped track him) went as a prisoner to Pensacola, Florida and from thence to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he was reunited with his family. Geronimo became an American celebrity, and learned the promotional ways of the Whites: he made a fortune selling photographs of himself, appearing at events across the country—they erected a special pavilion for him at the St Louis World’s Fair. In 1905, he rode with Teddy Roosevelt in his inaugural parade. He died and was buried in 1909 at Fort Sill, but he’s back in the news today. Earlier this year, Geronimo’s descendants filed a suit against the Yale secret society of the Skull and Bones, claiming that six members of the society, while serving in the United States Army in 1918, stole Geronimo’s skull from his grave. The story is being widely dismissed (his body was—and presumably still is—buried under a large pyramid of cement and Arizona stones in the middle of a military graveyard), but some have linked this allegation with the Illuminati (are you paying attention, Melissa?) and the Roswell Cover-up. The first full moon in September’s sky is called the Grain Moon in central Europe, the Wine Moon around the Mediterranean and the Apple Moon by the ancient Romans; the Celts called it the Fat Moon, for the coming harvest. This is the 247th day of the year, 118 remain in 2009. On the old Roman calendar today is pridie Nonas Septembri, the beginning of the Ludi Romani, the Roman Games. It was the major festival of the Roman year, kept in honor of Jupiter. The fifteen-day celebration centered on horse and chariot races, boxing contests, and gladiatorial fights. The Ludi was unlike the Olympic Games of Greece. The Romans who thronged the Circus Maximus (which seated 250,000) were less interested in athletic prowess than combat sports. Thousands died in the annual contests; their families were invited to take consolation from the laurel crown awarded by the City for display on the tomb of the dead athlete. The United States Congress has had food on its mind in Septembers past: this is National Chicken Month, National Mushroom Month, and National Rice Month. Put them together and you have the basics of a patriotic meal. Next time you're tempted to criticize our Congress remember how many things like this they do for us.
I CAN WALK. A commonplace, but as I’ve been either in the hospital or a wheelchair for most of the past three years, I'm still boasting about it. Walking is exhilarating and for the past two weeks, I've been walking every night. I have to wear a big, 25 pound plasticene boot to do it, but that’s a small inconvenience when weighed against the joys of ambulation! I circumambulate Park Ferman every night from 8.30 till 9.30. I listen to the surf crash on the rocks below the beach wall, watch the moon wax each night (from the sliver of Shakespeare’s "horned moon" two weeks ago to the Fat Celtic circle now in the sky as I write); I give space to the raccoons as they bumble away at my approach and avert my eyes from the young lovers trying to hide in the shadows as I pass. I am walking again—and while I walk, I meditate. Not a formal “meditation”—which for me requires a book—but a mediation nonetheless. The word meditation comes to us via Latin—as do so many other good things!—and its old Latin root means “to measure.” I don’t count my nightly steps but I do “measure” and “meditate” on what I see and hear as I walk. What I measure and meditate on as I walk—a dead bird, a plastic cup, a pile of leaves, the moan of a distant buoy—measures something about me and the world I inhabit and the others I inhabit it with.
When I was young, my grandmother once told me I was “extraordinarily ordinary.” I didn’t know what she meant at the time, but I remembered her words. Despite how those words sound, I knew she meant something good by them. Later in life I asked her to explain them. At first, she was surprised I remembered, but she said, “I said that because you are ordinary and everyday but in the most extraordinary ways.” That wasn’t too illuminating, but as I’ve discussed with you before, words have creative power. Her words did for me. They were a gift. I came to understand that I am utterly ordinary but that the ordinary is capable of discovering extraordinary things. Even the most gifted of us is more ordinary than not. We each have the capacity to discover how extraordinary is the world in which we live and the extraordinary characters with whom we share it. Earlier this week, I saw Dr Jack Kevorkian interviewed on television—not once, but twice (I guess he’s written a book). You may recall that he is nicknamed “Doctor Death” (of which he is quite proud), so-called from helping some people kill themselves. He told the interviewer that, all things considered, he wished he’d never been born. His life hasn’t been worth all the trouble he’s had to go through. He said other stuff too, some intentionally provocative, reminding me of a spoiled teenage boy or an arrogant politician—one appointed, not elected, to office. Of course he decried the evils and duplicities of religion and boldly declared his atheism—such things are de rigeur for scientific heroes today. He was a sage spokesman for the Brave World he hopes is coming until—until—the interviewer asked him if he was going to kill himself. Doctor Death became indignant at the question. “Why should I?” he demanded. “You said you didn’t feel life was worth living,” came the answer. The interview didn’t last much longer.
The majority of us who say we don’t want to keep living don’t quite want to die. Why? Pain is bad and suffering is worse, but we cling to life. We cling tenaciously because in spite of the pain and suffering and tedium which can preoccupy us (if we want them to) we still catch glimpses of beauty and uncover fountains of grace, even if we don’t know what it is we’ve found. Dr Death may regret his on-going suffering, but he evidently likes the taste of buttered popcorn or the sound of a barking seal. Though he wishes he'd never been born, he doesn't want to check out just yet. He's waiting for something good. He may not know what, and he might not agree that he's waiting, but that's why he's grasping at life with the tips of his fingernails. I love the glories of a Solemn High Midnight Mass on Christmas, but the unexpected poke of my dog’s cold nose on my bare arm, because she wants me to quit reading and pet her, brings no less delight. My grandmother was right: I find the ordinary to be extraordinary, and brimming to overflow with grace. It’s meant to be that way for each of us, extraordinary or not. Those of us walking in faith, no matter how dim our faith and halting our steps, need to meditate as we walk. We need to measure and weigh the lives we’re living and, as much as we can, measure ourselves. That which gives value to our lives isn’t to be found in the clashing cymbals or bursting cannonades of an 1812 Overture; it’s in the quiet, the ordinary, the humdrum: that’s where we discover grace most often. It’s always there. I can measure it as I walk. So can you.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I pulled Round Up the Usual Suspects, about the making of the movie Casablanca. Casablanca is one of my favorites with a generous handful of the most memorable movie quotes in the history of film-making. “Round up the usual suspects,” “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “I’m shocked, shocked to learn gambling is going on here!” and of course, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.” I’m sure you know the most famous “quote,” “Play it again, Sam” never actually appears in the movie, though a couple of lines come close. I could fill pages with great lines from this movie, most from the pens of Julius and Philip Epstein, the twin brothers who wrote screenplays for Warner Brothers. These two took an unproduced play, Everyone Comes to Rick’s, and turned it into Casablanca. This book tells how a hundred unforeseen accidents and scores of unlikely people came together to make one of the best movies yet. The author, from a family long-associated with Warner Brothers, drew her information from studio archives and interviews with many of those involved in the production. She gives us the background leading up to the filming (Warner Brothers bought Everyone Comes to Rick’s the day after Pearl Harbor) and brief biographies with some eyebrow-raising asides of the major players on either side of the camera : Paul Henreid, who played the leader of the Czech Underground, was the son of an Austrian nobleman looking for a role that would establish him as anti-Nazi; Ingrid Bergman, who, for the sake of each picture, “psyched herself up” to fall in love with her leading men, in this case, took an instant dislike to Bogart and he reciprocated. “I kissed him, but I never knew him,” she said later of her co-star. Michael Curtiz, the director, was a recently-immigrated Hungarian whose English was not good (his son said of him: “He spoke five languages, all of them poorly.”). Max Steiner, the music director, hated “As Time Goes By,” and wanted to replace it with a composition of his own. The role the censors played takes up a whole chapter, and another is given over to the movie’s production difficulties as one of the first wartime movies made under new government-imposed restrictions on materials—wood, paint, silk, celluloid, even nails. Every new chapter tells of fresh problems which make the success of the picture increasingly dubious. In the end, the author says, it succeeded because of something she says is much missing in Hollywood today—professionalism. I can’t speak to that; I’m just glad it got made. This is the story of how that happened. Round Up the Usual Suspects was published in 1992 by Hyperion Press; the author is Aljean Harmetz. You can find it on Amazon for about $2.50 or $20.00 at your favorite bookstore under its new title: The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II. While you’re at it, pick up the movie!
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.”—Geronimo
“The buffalo is all gone, and an Indian can't catch enough jack rabbits to subsist himself and his family, and then, there aren't enough jack rabbits to catch. What are they to do? What would any of us do?”—General George Crook
“You're basing your laws and your whole outlook on natural life on mythology. It won't work. That's why you have all these problems in the world. Name them: India, Pakistan, Ireland. Name them-all these problems. They're all religious problems.”—Jack Kevorkian
“I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history.”—Humphrey Bogart
“I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart.”—Ingrid Bergman
I CAN WALK. A commonplace, but as I’ve been either in the hospital or a wheelchair for most of the past three years, I'm still boasting about it. Walking is exhilarating and for the past two weeks, I've been walking every night. I have to wear a big, 25 pound plasticene boot to do it, but that’s a small inconvenience when weighed against the joys of ambulation! I circumambulate Park Ferman every night from 8.30 till 9.30. I listen to the surf crash on the rocks below the beach wall, watch the moon wax each night (from the sliver of Shakespeare’s "horned moon" two weeks ago to the Fat Celtic circle now in the sky as I write); I give space to the raccoons as they bumble away at my approach and avert my eyes from the young lovers trying to hide in the shadows as I pass. I am walking again—and while I walk, I meditate. Not a formal “meditation”—which for me requires a book—but a mediation nonetheless. The word meditation comes to us via Latin—as do so many other good things!—and its old Latin root means “to measure.” I don’t count my nightly steps but I do “measure” and “meditate” on what I see and hear as I walk. What I measure and meditate on as I walk—a dead bird, a plastic cup, a pile of leaves, the moan of a distant buoy—measures something about me and the world I inhabit and the others I inhabit it with.
When I was young, my grandmother once told me I was “extraordinarily ordinary.” I didn’t know what she meant at the time, but I remembered her words. Despite how those words sound, I knew she meant something good by them. Later in life I asked her to explain them. At first, she was surprised I remembered, but she said, “I said that because you are ordinary and everyday but in the most extraordinary ways.” That wasn’t too illuminating, but as I’ve discussed with you before, words have creative power. Her words did for me. They were a gift. I came to understand that I am utterly ordinary but that the ordinary is capable of discovering extraordinary things. Even the most gifted of us is more ordinary than not. We each have the capacity to discover how extraordinary is the world in which we live and the extraordinary characters with whom we share it. Earlier this week, I saw Dr Jack Kevorkian interviewed on television—not once, but twice (I guess he’s written a book). You may recall that he is nicknamed “Doctor Death” (of which he is quite proud), so-called from helping some people kill themselves. He told the interviewer that, all things considered, he wished he’d never been born. His life hasn’t been worth all the trouble he’s had to go through. He said other stuff too, some intentionally provocative, reminding me of a spoiled teenage boy or an arrogant politician—one appointed, not elected, to office. Of course he decried the evils and duplicities of religion and boldly declared his atheism—such things are de rigeur for scientific heroes today. He was a sage spokesman for the Brave World he hopes is coming until—until—the interviewer asked him if he was going to kill himself. Doctor Death became indignant at the question. “Why should I?” he demanded. “You said you didn’t feel life was worth living,” came the answer. The interview didn’t last much longer.
The majority of us who say we don’t want to keep living don’t quite want to die. Why? Pain is bad and suffering is worse, but we cling to life. We cling tenaciously because in spite of the pain and suffering and tedium which can preoccupy us (if we want them to) we still catch glimpses of beauty and uncover fountains of grace, even if we don’t know what it is we’ve found. Dr Death may regret his on-going suffering, but he evidently likes the taste of buttered popcorn or the sound of a barking seal. Though he wishes he'd never been born, he doesn't want to check out just yet. He's waiting for something good. He may not know what, and he might not agree that he's waiting, but that's why he's grasping at life with the tips of his fingernails. I love the glories of a Solemn High Midnight Mass on Christmas, but the unexpected poke of my dog’s cold nose on my bare arm, because she wants me to quit reading and pet her, brings no less delight. My grandmother was right: I find the ordinary to be extraordinary, and brimming to overflow with grace. It’s meant to be that way for each of us, extraordinary or not. Those of us walking in faith, no matter how dim our faith and halting our steps, need to meditate as we walk. We need to measure and weigh the lives we’re living and, as much as we can, measure ourselves. That which gives value to our lives isn’t to be found in the clashing cymbals or bursting cannonades of an 1812 Overture; it’s in the quiet, the ordinary, the humdrum: that’s where we discover grace most often. It’s always there. I can measure it as I walk. So can you.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I pulled Round Up the Usual Suspects, about the making of the movie Casablanca. Casablanca is one of my favorites with a generous handful of the most memorable movie quotes in the history of film-making. “Round up the usual suspects,” “Here’s looking at you, kid,” “I’m shocked, shocked to learn gambling is going on here!” and of course, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.” I’m sure you know the most famous “quote,” “Play it again, Sam” never actually appears in the movie, though a couple of lines come close. I could fill pages with great lines from this movie, most from the pens of Julius and Philip Epstein, the twin brothers who wrote screenplays for Warner Brothers. These two took an unproduced play, Everyone Comes to Rick’s, and turned it into Casablanca. This book tells how a hundred unforeseen accidents and scores of unlikely people came together to make one of the best movies yet. The author, from a family long-associated with Warner Brothers, drew her information from studio archives and interviews with many of those involved in the production. She gives us the background leading up to the filming (Warner Brothers bought Everyone Comes to Rick’s the day after Pearl Harbor) and brief biographies with some eyebrow-raising asides of the major players on either side of the camera : Paul Henreid, who played the leader of the Czech Underground, was the son of an Austrian nobleman looking for a role that would establish him as anti-Nazi; Ingrid Bergman, who, for the sake of each picture, “psyched herself up” to fall in love with her leading men, in this case, took an instant dislike to Bogart and he reciprocated. “I kissed him, but I never knew him,” she said later of her co-star. Michael Curtiz, the director, was a recently-immigrated Hungarian whose English was not good (his son said of him: “He spoke five languages, all of them poorly.”). Max Steiner, the music director, hated “As Time Goes By,” and wanted to replace it with a composition of his own. The role the censors played takes up a whole chapter, and another is given over to the movie’s production difficulties as one of the first wartime movies made under new government-imposed restrictions on materials—wood, paint, silk, celluloid, even nails. Every new chapter tells of fresh problems which make the success of the picture increasingly dubious. In the end, the author says, it succeeded because of something she says is much missing in Hollywood today—professionalism. I can’t speak to that; I’m just glad it got made. This is the story of how that happened. Round Up the Usual Suspects was published in 1992 by Hyperion Press; the author is Aljean Harmetz. You can find it on Amazon for about $2.50 or $20.00 at your favorite bookstore under its new title: The Making of Casablanca: Bogart, Bergman, and World War II. While you’re at it, pick up the movie!
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
“I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures.”—Geronimo
“The buffalo is all gone, and an Indian can't catch enough jack rabbits to subsist himself and his family, and then, there aren't enough jack rabbits to catch. What are they to do? What would any of us do?”—General George Crook
“You're basing your laws and your whole outlook on natural life on mythology. It won't work. That's why you have all these problems in the world. Name them: India, Pakistan, Ireland. Name them-all these problems. They're all religious problems.”—Jack Kevorkian
“I made more lousy pictures than any actor in history.”—Humphrey Bogart
“I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart.”—Ingrid Bergman
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