Dear Friends,
There will be no posts on Labyrinthus until Easter Week. I'm writing a daily Lenten meditation at http://theoasis-peregrinus.blogspot.com/
Drop by and take a look!
Pax,
Greg Wilcox+
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
A Rhyme for the Beginning of Lent
A Rhyme for the Beginning of Lent
by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Is this a Fast, to keep the larder leane?
and cleane from fat of Veales and Sheep?
Is it to quit the dish of Flesh, yet still
to fill the platter high with fish?
Is it to fast an houre or rag’d go,
or show a down cast look, and sour?
No: ‘tis a fast, to dole thy sheaf of wheat
and meat unto the hungry soule.
It is to fast from strife, from old debate
and hate:
to circumcise thy life.
To shew a heart grief-rent; to starve thy sin,
not Bin
and that’s to keep thy Lent.
by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Is this a Fast, to keep the larder leane?
and cleane from fat of Veales and Sheep?
Is it to quit the dish of Flesh, yet still
to fill the platter high with fish?
Is it to fast an houre or rag’d go,
or show a down cast look, and sour?
No: ‘tis a fast, to dole thy sheaf of wheat
and meat unto the hungry soule.
It is to fast from strife, from old debate
and hate:
to circumcise thy life.
To shew a heart grief-rent; to starve thy sin,
not Bin
and that’s to keep thy Lent.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Dogmas Secular and Sacred
Walking the Labyrinth-February 12, 2010—Few things provide me more fun and fascination than perusing an antique Martyrology. Martyrologies are collections of the lives of the saints, written to preserve the stories of those whose feasts are celebrated on the calendar of the Church year. The oldest surviving collections go back to the fourth century. The writing is stylized, and follows predictable patterns, but there are those occasional delights that jump from the page straight to the heart. Today is one such for me. St Luden was a medieval pilgrim, the son of a minor Scottish nobleman, who lived at the end of the twelfth century. He resolved to travel to Jerusalem to pray for his family and friends at the Holy Places, setting out in 1198, when he was 24 years old. Two years later he arrived at Jerusalem; he visited the Holy Sepulchre, walked the Via Dolorosa, bathed in the Jordan River, and prayed at the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Along the way, the young man kept a diary of his travels, thoughts and prayers. After almost a year in the Holy Land, he left for Scotland during the summer of 1201. Luden never returned home. While traveling through the Alsace border of eastern France, he got sick outside the small village of Nordhouse. On February 12, 1202, he sat under a nearby tree and died. When villagers approached him he had a large pouch at his side; they carried him to the parish priest who opened the pouch and found Luden’s diary. It began “I am Luden, the son of Hildebod, a Lord of Scotland. I have become a pilgrim for the love of God.” His diary revealed a profound piety and the local people began to speak of Luden as a saint. A chapel was built in his honor on the site his body was discovered; it was enlarged to a church in 1492, when his remains were formally enshrined in a tomb. The Ludenkirche is still there today. No big miracles, no great accomplishments in Luden’s life, but piety put to practice, walking the path of a pilgrim. For me at least, clumsily walking my labyrinthine path, Luden isn’t a bad saint to remember. He died on his route (as each of us will), but he arrived at his Goal.
Some people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two such unfortunates, joined only by today’s date and a mutuality of distresses, are Zahir ad-Din Toghtekin and Lorenzo Cardinal Campeggio. Toghtekin (known as “Dodeghin” in the French chronicles of the Crusades) by some accounts began his life as a Turkish slave about 1060. He rose through the ranks of the military and in 1092 came to the attention of the emir of Damascus, who put him in charge of his army. Toghtekin, though, had set his sights higher than mere military rank. Over the next several years, through scheming, bribery and murder, he made himself Lord of Damascus, marrying his predecessor’s widow. Before the end of the year his troubles began. The Great Army of Godfrey de Boullion, the leader of the First Crusade, appeared, unexpectedly, before the walls of Antioch. Toghtekin, who hadn’t even known there was such a thing as a Crusade, sent some men to drive them off. When they didn’t return, Toghtekin led a force of 500 against the invaders only to discover Godfrey was at the head of an army of 40,000. This was the first in a whole series of Very Unwelcome Events. For the next 31 years of his life, Toghtekin fought a losing war against the Crusaders, and when he wasn’t fighting them, he had to put down rebellions by his own vassals. In 1103, the Crusaders took Homs, in 1106 they captured Tripoli, a few years later Tyre fell. His empire crumbled around him. After the loss of the great commercial center of Tiberias in 1113, he made peace with the “Franks,” signing a treaty with Baldwin I, the King of Jerusalem and allying with the Crusaders against his fellow Muslims. He repented within a year and joined an army to drive out the Crusaders, but it was resoundingly defeated. Toghtekin participated in three more campaigns against the Franks but lost each one. He died on February 12, 1128, the treasury of Damascus depleted and his name in disrepute across Islam. Sometimes, it’s just better to “bloom where you are planted.”
Lorenzo Campeggio was born in Milan on February 12, 1471. He came from a well-to-do family, not noble but prosperous. In 1500 he took his doctorate in canon and civil law from the University of Bologna and immediately married. After his wife died giving birth to their sixth child in 1509, Pope Julius II (who in my mind will always look and sound like Rex Harrison in “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” rather than the old bearded man of Raphael’s portrait) convinced him to take up the life ecclesiastical. He quickly rose through the hierarchy, sent as papal legate to the Emperor Maximilian I in 1510, created Bishop of Feltre in 1512, in 1513 appointed papal legate to Milan. Pope Leo X made him a cardinal in 1517 and Maximilian immediately named him Cardinal-Protector of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1518 he was made papal legate to England, where he clashed with Cardinal Wolsey, jealous of the much-titled new arrival. In January, 1523 he was named Cardinal-Protector of England and the next year Bishop of Salisbury. Late the same year, the pope made him Bishop of Bologna. With his many positions, endowments and benefices, Campeggio was one of the best-connected (not to say richest) men in Europe. “What goes up,” the adage says, “must come down.” In 1527, when troops allied to Emperor Charles V sacked Rome (it’s always smart to pay the people with guns) Campeggio was left in charge of the city as the pope fled. The cardinal saw his estates destroyed, his fortune seized by the mob, his family scattered. In the midst of the disaster, King Henry VIII decided he could wait no longer to marry Anne Boleyn, and ordered Campeggio to return to England and see to it. Ever the diplomat, Campeggio tried to delay a decision, hoping one or more of the parties would die—or at least—change their mind. He stalled for three years, until an angry Henry took matters into his own hands (to see how successfully it all came out, look up “General Synod, Church of England” in this week’s newspapers). Campeggio returned to Rome, his policies in shambles—Henry had kicked him out of England, revoked his titles and—in what would become a Henrician habit—confiscated his incomes. He found both pope and emperor in a forgiving mood. The emperor gave him a nice castle in Germany and the pope made him Bishop of Huerca in Spain, Candia in Cyprus (he never had to visit either one) and he was given the income of Majorca—his son having been named bishop of the island but still too young to act in the office. Campeggio died quietly at home during the summer of 1538, his fortune re-established by both church and state. Both his sons, two of his brothers and one of his nephews became bishops of wealthy dioceses, thanks to his influence. In spite of the pious priests and reverend clergy you may know, Religion Can Pay.
Lady Jane Grey, “the Nine Day’s Queen,” was beheaded at the age of 16 on February 12, 1554. She never quite understood why.
The Reverend Doctor Cotton Mather, American Puritan and apologist for the Salem Witch Trials, was born on February 12, 1663. As a boy he attended Boston Latin School—where Meg teaches today!—and, following family tradition, he, like his father and grandfather before, became a Puritan clergyman. He was a prolific author (he wrote more than 400 books and pamphlets in his 65 years), who, in addition to worrying about witches, experimented with the hybridization of plants and was one of the first Americans to have his family inoculated against smallpox. Though Cotton wrote some very long books (the only one really read anymore is his Wonders of the Invisible World, written in 1693, wherein he describes and defends the Salem Trials), most people of his day knew him from what were then known as “Execution-Sermons.” These were short pamphlets recounting in lurid detail the crimes of those people executed—usually for murder—in Puritan New England. They were best-sellers in their day and Cotton mastered the form. Mather re-published a collection of his favorite Execution-Sermons in 1699 under the title Pillars of Salt. In 2008, The Library of America reprinted the entirety of Pillars of Salt in its retrospective two centuries of American True Crime writing. Cotton Mather—the literary progenitor of Dashiell Hammett?
On February 12, 1797, Franz Joseph Haydn, court composer for the noble Esterhazy family, introduced what he hoped would become the National Hymn of Austria. He’d lived for five years in England and was impressed with the English “national song”—“God Save the King.” Wanting to produce something similar for Austria, he wrote a tune for the words Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser (“God Save Emperor Francis”) for the birthday of Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It is sometimes called the Kaiserhymne (“Emperor's Hymn”), though the name of the tune in most English-speaking hymnals is “Austria.” The English hymn opens with the words “Glorious Things of thee are spoken, Zion, City of our God.” The tune was also used, long after Haydn’s death, by German poet Hoffmann von Fallersleben in his Das Lied der Deutschen (1841). The opening words are “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" and despite its tinny use in Germany during the 1930’s, it remains the German National Anthem today.
On February 12, 1809, two births of immense consequence for the century took place. In Hodgenville, Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, future President of the United States was born in a log cabin; the same day, in Shrewsbury, England, in the mansion of Richard Darwin, his wife Susanna gave birth to their fifth child, Charles. In 1859 that same Charles published On the Origin of Species. There isn’t a lot I can tell you about either of these men you don’t already know—but I bet you didn’t know this: last year, on the bi-centennial of their natal day, Google designed a special logo to run on all its web-pages, celebrating Darwin Day (of which more later). They received so many complaints about the perceived slight to the Great Emancipator the logo came down and, if you look at today’s Google logo, you’ll find no sign of either nativity. Incidentally, Newsweek Magazine ran a special cover (see the illustration up and to the right) and story that day about the two men, asking which was more influential (Lincoln won). Letters over the next few weeks, however, indicated that many readers—or at least, lookers—thought the story was about which of the two could “take down” the other in a wrestling match. Now there's a historical question. Unsurprisingly, Abe won that one, too.
On February 12, 1878, Frederick W. Thayer, captain of the Harvard University Baseball Club, patented the baseball catcher’s mask. Later, he became a dentist. I know those two things have to be related.
On February 12, 1915, Lorne Greene (that’s Ben Cartwright to you and me) was born in Ottowa, Ontario to Russian Jewish immigrants (in those days he was Lyon Hyman Green). While studying chemical engineering, he took a job at the university radio station and enjoyed it so much he left school for a job with the Canadian Broadcasting Company. He was nicknamed “The Voice of Canada” by the mid-1930’s, but in the early days of World War II, as he delivered the somber news day after day, Canadians took to calling him “The Voice of Doom.” The Bonanza television program turned him into an icon of the Old West (I remember going to rodeos in my youth and seeing “Ben” and “Hoss” and “Little Joe” taking a quick ride around the ring, waving them hats, their pistols a-blazin’, and then later appearing to sign autographs. Don’t know where any of those old signed pictures are nowadays). Later in life, after Bonanza was off the air, Lorne recorded ten albums between 1960 through 1966—including Bonanza Ponderosa Party Time and Welcome to the Ponderosa. They make painful listening today—as they must have then to the impartial listener. Still, True Believers gave ole Ben six weeks at the top of America’s music charts in 1964 with “Ringo.” It tells the story of a lawman of the Old West and an outlaw named Ringo (loosely based on Johnny Ringo). Sometime, somebody in Hollywood, needs to tell actors that just because they can make money acting in front of a camera, that doesn't necessarily mean they are qualified to sing behind a microphone. Nor, for that matter, does it make them intelligent commentators on American politics.
Today is the 43rd day of the year. 322 days are left in 2010 (are you used to writing “2010” yet?). The ancient Romans dated today as ante diem idus Februarius. For Coptic Christians today is Amshir 5, 1726, the Coptic Martyrology lists "saints Anba Bishay of the Akhmim Monastery, and Anba Abanub, known as the owner of the Golden Fan." I have no idea what the “golden fan” is or was, but I’m determined to find out. When I do, I’ll let you in on it. The Congress of the United States has declared February 12 “National Jello Day” (hm-that’s not so inappropriate, when you think about it), and a number of groups across the globe—though not the U S Congress—have named today “Darwin Day.” I don’t have a thing against Darwin’s theories qua theories, except that many adherents seem to believe those who would question their unquestionable certainties are dangerous throwbacks to a Neanderthal past. Scientific inquiry ends where federal dollars begin.
Lent is upon us, and soon. Monday is “Clean Monday” in the Orthodox Churches, the first day of their Lenten observances. This coming Wednesday is “Ash Wednesday,” when Lent begins for Western Christians. Between now and then lies Shrove Tuesday, commonly called (by those who don’t know about Tuesday Shriving) Mardi Gras—Fat Tuesday. I hope your Tuesday is fun—I’m having pancakes and sausages to eat, watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and having a nice cup o’ bourbon—and your Wednesday is holy—I’m off to confession, laying aside my beloved Cicero for forty days and forty nights and wrasslin’ through the Gospel of Mark in Greek (with a fat lexicon by my side). Happy fasting.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Many thanks to Steve Mitchell, who suggested I change the format of the first part of Labyrinthus so as to make it easier to read. Breaking the single run-on paragraph up, he suggested, makes each topic easier—and the whole more pleasant—to read. This week’s emails tell me several of you agree. Just don’t think I change easily. It took Steve, Barry, Tanya and Beata seven years—the time it took Jacob to labor for Rachel—before I’d agree to use a computer at all!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I’ll say, right off the bat, I’m a believer in dogma. For years I taught Dogmatic Theology: I taught it, believed it, and liked it. Still do.
Dogma, the noun, dogmatic, the adjective, dogmatically, the adverb are negative words in our current vocabulary. They connote close-mindedness, ignorance and a self-satisfied, self-contained view of the world. A dogmatic person, by this account, suffers from an inability to distinguish between established facts and personal opinions. I’ve known a lot of people who fit this mold. Some are Christians, some atheists, some Jews, some Muslims, some are scientists: any religion—or lack of it, any point of view—can be forced into the mold.
Dogma wasn’t originally a bad word. It comes to us from the ancient Greeks and at first it meant “things so obviously true everybody accepts them,” and so a dogmatic statement would be something like: “the sky is blue” or “justice is better than injustice.” This actually is where Socrates got his start, where philosophy, as we know it, began. Socrates didn’t necessarily deny the daily dogmas of Greek life, but he did ask questions about them. “If justice is better than injustice,” he might ask, “how is it better? What do we mean when we say ‘justice?’ ” In its earliest form, then, dogma simply meant “the truths we all accept.” It wasn’t a particularly religious word.
Over time, dogma came to mean those particular tenets which distinguished one school of philosophy from another. What did a follower of Plato believe as distinct from a disciple of Epicurus? Those distinctions came to be called dogmas, “distinguishing opinions.” If you look up “dogma” in most dictionaries, that’s how it defines the word. Dogmas are the characteristic beliefs of one group or another. We’ve refined the word a bit since, and some of us (me included) distinguish between “dogmas”—“essential beliefs”—and “doctrines”—those beliefs which flow from dogmas. That’s best left to another discussion in another place. We can say that dogmas are “core beliefs.”
The important word here is “belief.”
When I tell you I believe something, I mean more than “I guess this might be so.” I mean, “this is true.” All of us have had the unpleasant discovery of realizing something we believed to be so wasn’t so. Sometimes we shrug it off, sometimes it brings us to a personal crisis. We don’t stop “believing” things when that happens, because “believing” is an essential part of us. I go to bed believing I’ll wake up in the morning, though someday I won’t. I believe the merchant will take my cash as good for my purchases (though someday he may not!); I believe the waitress will understand my language when I give her my order, it’s safe to believe my hair color will still be gray next week. These basic beliefs, these daily dogmas, help us move through our lives with order and continuity.
But, in the tradition of our western culture, dogma does imply more. It has become a religious word.
In fact, dogma can describe something intensely personal and liberating. When a Jew recites the Sh’ma, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” when a Christian says the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord…” and when a Muslim intones the shahadah, “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet,” all are speaking dogmatically. Each is saying “this I believe.” We are grounding ourselves in the reality of God, in His presence and Grace. This is no mere intellectual assent. It is prayer at its most fundamental level. We will disagree about the contents of these dogmatic statements: neither Jew nor Christian will accept the Muslim’s claims about Mohammed and both Jew and Muslim will reject the Trinitarian faith enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed (some “who profess and call themselves Christians” reject it too). Dogma lies at the heart of any religious belief. Without dogma you can still have a religion, but it will be entirely self-centered and ultimately self-absorbed (“I’m not very religious but I’m a very spiritual person” is another way of saying “I decide what’s true or false, right or wrong, good or bad, for me.” Try that line on the sufferers of Buchenwald).
I’m not a scientist or a climatologist. I have no empirical data to tell me whether the claims made by those who make dire predictions about “global warming” are true or not (I suspect though, some people this week may have thoughts of their own as they shovel their driveways or contemplate their snow-shrouded patio furniture). It's worth noting that a growing number of news organizations are carrying stories about the doctoring or suppression of any evidence that calls those New Dogmas into question. There’s an old Latin phrase worth remembering: Cui Bono? “Who benefits?” Detectives consider “who benefits” when they look at a crime, as do judges and lawyers and sometimes even reporters. We have it in the back of our minds when something happens we don’t like. We may not say. “Hmm-‘cui bono?’ ” But we do think “what are they getting out of that?” Perhaps the old phrase can even be applied to scientists.
When I was young, I was taught the basics of Darwin’s theory of evolution. I accepted it. I had the good fortune to have pastors and teachers who saw no conflict between scientific and religious truth. Evolution, as I understand it, makes sense to me. God can create using whatever methodologies and tools He wants (St Augustine’s famous phrase, “God still creates, He still redeems, He still sanctifies!” doesn’t seem too out-of-place in this context). If Darwin is correct—or as I imagine is more likely—partially correct, good for him and good for us. If he’s completely wrong, and all things sprung into immediate and full existence as many “creationists” seem to insist, that’s great too. One way or another, we were called into being. However, Dogmatic Darwinians not only demand that I assent to Darwin’s evolutionary theory but require me further to renounce the superstitious shackles of religion (look at any one of the many “Darwin Day” sites on the internet). Darwin didn’t seem to think that necessarily followed, but in our day, scientific dogma carries a political clout the Inquisition might envy. Scientists who question the many conclusions of Global Warming—shown at least sometimes to be nothing more than speculations, as in the case of the Not-Quite-Dead-Yet Himalayan glaciers—are refused seating at conferences or tenure in universities—hmm—cui bono? Is it a victory for Science—or for scientists seeking for more global warming research dollars? I dunno, I’m not a scientist but a lot of this scrambling around of researchers lately looks like something other than a dispassionate interest in facts.
Dogma is not about scientific facts but religious belief. Every time somebody trots out the latest research on the Shroud of Turin, I—inwardly at least—roll my eyes. Whether it’s a clever medieval forgery or a genuine relic of Christ’s Resurrection makes no difference to my belief in what happened on the first Easter Day. Science will not make me pray more, sin less or love my neighbor as myself. That’s not its job. The Church 500 years ago learned to its chagrin that throwing Galileo in the calaboose didn’t affect the movement of the planets. Dogma tells us who we are; science tells us where we are (or, in Galileo’s elegant phrase, “The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go”). Both things are good and important. When one trespasses into the expertise of the other—nobody benefits.
One of the reasons so many “people of faith” question evolution, global warming or the latest scientific orthodoxy is that some scientists-or people who are called scientists—speak with an increasingly dogmatic tone. It’s not simply that evolution seems best to match the world as it appears, but if we understand it properly, we can-and should-jettison any notion of God as a stale leftover from our Dark Past. It’s okay to question the most intimate details about a life of faith—(I was particularly irritated when I read several years back that somebody somewhere had done research on whether or not prayer “worked” by having one set of sick people prayed for while leaving a controlled set “unprayed” for) but evidently many of today's "scientists" don't want the details of their research examined too closely. Some of them expect us to accept what they tell us on faith-the same faith they mock if it's attached to religion.
“Faith” St Paul said, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
We chaff at the dogmatic claims of scientists not because they are about science but precisely because they are not. When they speak dogmatically they are intruding in the courtyard of faith. And why? Because dogma is religious, and-to speak bluntly-they are propounding a new religion, even if they don’t know it. Their new dogma replaces the God Who speaks to the individual hearts of men and women with impersonal forces which we can harness and ultimately control. The ancient Greeks knew better. One of their words—even older than dogma—is hubris, "over-reaching pride."
I’m a believer in dogma, but it matters very much which dogmas you believe.
Some people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two such unfortunates, joined only by today’s date and a mutuality of distresses, are Zahir ad-Din Toghtekin and Lorenzo Cardinal Campeggio. Toghtekin (known as “Dodeghin” in the French chronicles of the Crusades) by some accounts began his life as a Turkish slave about 1060. He rose through the ranks of the military and in 1092 came to the attention of the emir of Damascus, who put him in charge of his army. Toghtekin, though, had set his sights higher than mere military rank. Over the next several years, through scheming, bribery and murder, he made himself Lord of Damascus, marrying his predecessor’s widow. Before the end of the year his troubles began. The Great Army of Godfrey de Boullion, the leader of the First Crusade, appeared, unexpectedly, before the walls of Antioch. Toghtekin, who hadn’t even known there was such a thing as a Crusade, sent some men to drive them off. When they didn’t return, Toghtekin led a force of 500 against the invaders only to discover Godfrey was at the head of an army of 40,000. This was the first in a whole series of Very Unwelcome Events. For the next 31 years of his life, Toghtekin fought a losing war against the Crusaders, and when he wasn’t fighting them, he had to put down rebellions by his own vassals. In 1103, the Crusaders took Homs, in 1106 they captured Tripoli, a few years later Tyre fell. His empire crumbled around him. After the loss of the great commercial center of Tiberias in 1113, he made peace with the “Franks,” signing a treaty with Baldwin I, the King of Jerusalem and allying with the Crusaders against his fellow Muslims. He repented within a year and joined an army to drive out the Crusaders, but it was resoundingly defeated. Toghtekin participated in three more campaigns against the Franks but lost each one. He died on February 12, 1128, the treasury of Damascus depleted and his name in disrepute across Islam. Sometimes, it’s just better to “bloom where you are planted.”
Lorenzo Campeggio was born in Milan on February 12, 1471. He came from a well-to-do family, not noble but prosperous. In 1500 he took his doctorate in canon and civil law from the University of Bologna and immediately married. After his wife died giving birth to their sixth child in 1509, Pope Julius II (who in my mind will always look and sound like Rex Harrison in “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” rather than the old bearded man of Raphael’s portrait) convinced him to take up the life ecclesiastical. He quickly rose through the hierarchy, sent as papal legate to the Emperor Maximilian I in 1510, created Bishop of Feltre in 1512, in 1513 appointed papal legate to Milan. Pope Leo X made him a cardinal in 1517 and Maximilian immediately named him Cardinal-Protector of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1518 he was made papal legate to England, where he clashed with Cardinal Wolsey, jealous of the much-titled new arrival. In January, 1523 he was named Cardinal-Protector of England and the next year Bishop of Salisbury. Late the same year, the pope made him Bishop of Bologna. With his many positions, endowments and benefices, Campeggio was one of the best-connected (not to say richest) men in Europe. “What goes up,” the adage says, “must come down.” In 1527, when troops allied to Emperor Charles V sacked Rome (it’s always smart to pay the people with guns) Campeggio was left in charge of the city as the pope fled. The cardinal saw his estates destroyed, his fortune seized by the mob, his family scattered. In the midst of the disaster, King Henry VIII decided he could wait no longer to marry Anne Boleyn, and ordered Campeggio to return to England and see to it. Ever the diplomat, Campeggio tried to delay a decision, hoping one or more of the parties would die—or at least—change their mind. He stalled for three years, until an angry Henry took matters into his own hands (to see how successfully it all came out, look up “General Synod, Church of England” in this week’s newspapers). Campeggio returned to Rome, his policies in shambles—Henry had kicked him out of England, revoked his titles and—in what would become a Henrician habit—confiscated his incomes. He found both pope and emperor in a forgiving mood. The emperor gave him a nice castle in Germany and the pope made him Bishop of Huerca in Spain, Candia in Cyprus (he never had to visit either one) and he was given the income of Majorca—his son having been named bishop of the island but still too young to act in the office. Campeggio died quietly at home during the summer of 1538, his fortune re-established by both church and state. Both his sons, two of his brothers and one of his nephews became bishops of wealthy dioceses, thanks to his influence. In spite of the pious priests and reverend clergy you may know, Religion Can Pay.
Lady Jane Grey, “the Nine Day’s Queen,” was beheaded at the age of 16 on February 12, 1554. She never quite understood why.
The Reverend Doctor Cotton Mather, American Puritan and apologist for the Salem Witch Trials, was born on February 12, 1663. As a boy he attended Boston Latin School—where Meg teaches today!—and, following family tradition, he, like his father and grandfather before, became a Puritan clergyman. He was a prolific author (he wrote more than 400 books and pamphlets in his 65 years), who, in addition to worrying about witches, experimented with the hybridization of plants and was one of the first Americans to have his family inoculated against smallpox. Though Cotton wrote some very long books (the only one really read anymore is his Wonders of the Invisible World, written in 1693, wherein he describes and defends the Salem Trials), most people of his day knew him from what were then known as “Execution-Sermons.” These were short pamphlets recounting in lurid detail the crimes of those people executed—usually for murder—in Puritan New England. They were best-sellers in their day and Cotton mastered the form. Mather re-published a collection of his favorite Execution-Sermons in 1699 under the title Pillars of Salt. In 2008, The Library of America reprinted the entirety of Pillars of Salt in its retrospective two centuries of American True Crime writing. Cotton Mather—the literary progenitor of Dashiell Hammett?
On February 12, 1797, Franz Joseph Haydn, court composer for the noble Esterhazy family, introduced what he hoped would become the National Hymn of Austria. He’d lived for five years in England and was impressed with the English “national song”—“God Save the King.” Wanting to produce something similar for Austria, he wrote a tune for the words Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser (“God Save Emperor Francis”) for the birthday of Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. It is sometimes called the Kaiserhymne (“Emperor's Hymn”), though the name of the tune in most English-speaking hymnals is “Austria.” The English hymn opens with the words “Glorious Things of thee are spoken, Zion, City of our God.” The tune was also used, long after Haydn’s death, by German poet Hoffmann von Fallersleben in his Das Lied der Deutschen (1841). The opening words are “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" and despite its tinny use in Germany during the 1930’s, it remains the German National Anthem today.
On February 12, 1809, two births of immense consequence for the century took place. In Hodgenville, Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln, future President of the United States was born in a log cabin; the same day, in Shrewsbury, England, in the mansion of Richard Darwin, his wife Susanna gave birth to their fifth child, Charles. In 1859 that same Charles published On the Origin of Species. There isn’t a lot I can tell you about either of these men you don’t already know—but I bet you didn’t know this: last year, on the bi-centennial of their natal day, Google designed a special logo to run on all its web-pages, celebrating Darwin Day (of which more later). They received so many complaints about the perceived slight to the Great Emancipator the logo came down and, if you look at today’s Google logo, you’ll find no sign of either nativity. Incidentally, Newsweek Magazine ran a special cover (see the illustration up and to the right) and story that day about the two men, asking which was more influential (Lincoln won). Letters over the next few weeks, however, indicated that many readers—or at least, lookers—thought the story was about which of the two could “take down” the other in a wrestling match. Now there's a historical question. Unsurprisingly, Abe won that one, too.
On February 12, 1878, Frederick W. Thayer, captain of the Harvard University Baseball Club, patented the baseball catcher’s mask. Later, he became a dentist. I know those two things have to be related.
On February 12, 1915, Lorne Greene (that’s Ben Cartwright to you and me) was born in Ottowa, Ontario to Russian Jewish immigrants (in those days he was Lyon Hyman Green). While studying chemical engineering, he took a job at the university radio station and enjoyed it so much he left school for a job with the Canadian Broadcasting Company. He was nicknamed “The Voice of Canada” by the mid-1930’s, but in the early days of World War II, as he delivered the somber news day after day, Canadians took to calling him “The Voice of Doom.” The Bonanza television program turned him into an icon of the Old West (I remember going to rodeos in my youth and seeing “Ben” and “Hoss” and “Little Joe” taking a quick ride around the ring, waving them hats, their pistols a-blazin’, and then later appearing to sign autographs. Don’t know where any of those old signed pictures are nowadays). Later in life, after Bonanza was off the air, Lorne recorded ten albums between 1960 through 1966—including Bonanza Ponderosa Party Time and Welcome to the Ponderosa. They make painful listening today—as they must have then to the impartial listener. Still, True Believers gave ole Ben six weeks at the top of America’s music charts in 1964 with “Ringo.” It tells the story of a lawman of the Old West and an outlaw named Ringo (loosely based on Johnny Ringo). Sometime, somebody in Hollywood, needs to tell actors that just because they can make money acting in front of a camera, that doesn't necessarily mean they are qualified to sing behind a microphone. Nor, for that matter, does it make them intelligent commentators on American politics.
Today is the 43rd day of the year. 322 days are left in 2010 (are you used to writing “2010” yet?). The ancient Romans dated today as ante diem idus Februarius. For Coptic Christians today is Amshir 5, 1726, the Coptic Martyrology lists "saints Anba Bishay of the Akhmim Monastery, and Anba Abanub, known as the owner of the Golden Fan." I have no idea what the “golden fan” is or was, but I’m determined to find out. When I do, I’ll let you in on it. The Congress of the United States has declared February 12 “National Jello Day” (hm-that’s not so inappropriate, when you think about it), and a number of groups across the globe—though not the U S Congress—have named today “Darwin Day.” I don’t have a thing against Darwin’s theories qua theories, except that many adherents seem to believe those who would question their unquestionable certainties are dangerous throwbacks to a Neanderthal past. Scientific inquiry ends where federal dollars begin.
Lent is upon us, and soon. Monday is “Clean Monday” in the Orthodox Churches, the first day of their Lenten observances. This coming Wednesday is “Ash Wednesday,” when Lent begins for Western Christians. Between now and then lies Shrove Tuesday, commonly called (by those who don’t know about Tuesday Shriving) Mardi Gras—Fat Tuesday. I hope your Tuesday is fun—I’m having pancakes and sausages to eat, watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and having a nice cup o’ bourbon—and your Wednesday is holy—I’m off to confession, laying aside my beloved Cicero for forty days and forty nights and wrasslin’ through the Gospel of Mark in Greek (with a fat lexicon by my side). Happy fasting.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Many thanks to Steve Mitchell, who suggested I change the format of the first part of Labyrinthus so as to make it easier to read. Breaking the single run-on paragraph up, he suggested, makes each topic easier—and the whole more pleasant—to read. This week’s emails tell me several of you agree. Just don’t think I change easily. It took Steve, Barry, Tanya and Beata seven years—the time it took Jacob to labor for Rachel—before I’d agree to use a computer at all!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I’ll say, right off the bat, I’m a believer in dogma. For years I taught Dogmatic Theology: I taught it, believed it, and liked it. Still do.
Dogma, the noun, dogmatic, the adjective, dogmatically, the adverb are negative words in our current vocabulary. They connote close-mindedness, ignorance and a self-satisfied, self-contained view of the world. A dogmatic person, by this account, suffers from an inability to distinguish between established facts and personal opinions. I’ve known a lot of people who fit this mold. Some are Christians, some atheists, some Jews, some Muslims, some are scientists: any religion—or lack of it, any point of view—can be forced into the mold.
Dogma wasn’t originally a bad word. It comes to us from the ancient Greeks and at first it meant “things so obviously true everybody accepts them,” and so a dogmatic statement would be something like: “the sky is blue” or “justice is better than injustice.” This actually is where Socrates got his start, where philosophy, as we know it, began. Socrates didn’t necessarily deny the daily dogmas of Greek life, but he did ask questions about them. “If justice is better than injustice,” he might ask, “how is it better? What do we mean when we say ‘justice?’ ” In its earliest form, then, dogma simply meant “the truths we all accept.” It wasn’t a particularly religious word.
Over time, dogma came to mean those particular tenets which distinguished one school of philosophy from another. What did a follower of Plato believe as distinct from a disciple of Epicurus? Those distinctions came to be called dogmas, “distinguishing opinions.” If you look up “dogma” in most dictionaries, that’s how it defines the word. Dogmas are the characteristic beliefs of one group or another. We’ve refined the word a bit since, and some of us (me included) distinguish between “dogmas”—“essential beliefs”—and “doctrines”—those beliefs which flow from dogmas. That’s best left to another discussion in another place. We can say that dogmas are “core beliefs.”
The important word here is “belief.”
When I tell you I believe something, I mean more than “I guess this might be so.” I mean, “this is true.” All of us have had the unpleasant discovery of realizing something we believed to be so wasn’t so. Sometimes we shrug it off, sometimes it brings us to a personal crisis. We don’t stop “believing” things when that happens, because “believing” is an essential part of us. I go to bed believing I’ll wake up in the morning, though someday I won’t. I believe the merchant will take my cash as good for my purchases (though someday he may not!); I believe the waitress will understand my language when I give her my order, it’s safe to believe my hair color will still be gray next week. These basic beliefs, these daily dogmas, help us move through our lives with order and continuity.
But, in the tradition of our western culture, dogma does imply more. It has become a religious word.
In fact, dogma can describe something intensely personal and liberating. When a Jew recites the Sh’ma, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” when a Christian says the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord…” and when a Muslim intones the shahadah, “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet,” all are speaking dogmatically. Each is saying “this I believe.” We are grounding ourselves in the reality of God, in His presence and Grace. This is no mere intellectual assent. It is prayer at its most fundamental level. We will disagree about the contents of these dogmatic statements: neither Jew nor Christian will accept the Muslim’s claims about Mohammed and both Jew and Muslim will reject the Trinitarian faith enshrined in the Apostles’ Creed (some “who profess and call themselves Christians” reject it too). Dogma lies at the heart of any religious belief. Without dogma you can still have a religion, but it will be entirely self-centered and ultimately self-absorbed (“I’m not very religious but I’m a very spiritual person” is another way of saying “I decide what’s true or false, right or wrong, good or bad, for me.” Try that line on the sufferers of Buchenwald).
I’m not a scientist or a climatologist. I have no empirical data to tell me whether the claims made by those who make dire predictions about “global warming” are true or not (I suspect though, some people this week may have thoughts of their own as they shovel their driveways or contemplate their snow-shrouded patio furniture). It's worth noting that a growing number of news organizations are carrying stories about the doctoring or suppression of any evidence that calls those New Dogmas into question. There’s an old Latin phrase worth remembering: Cui Bono? “Who benefits?” Detectives consider “who benefits” when they look at a crime, as do judges and lawyers and sometimes even reporters. We have it in the back of our minds when something happens we don’t like. We may not say. “Hmm-‘cui bono?’ ” But we do think “what are they getting out of that?” Perhaps the old phrase can even be applied to scientists.
When I was young, I was taught the basics of Darwin’s theory of evolution. I accepted it. I had the good fortune to have pastors and teachers who saw no conflict between scientific and religious truth. Evolution, as I understand it, makes sense to me. God can create using whatever methodologies and tools He wants (St Augustine’s famous phrase, “God still creates, He still redeems, He still sanctifies!” doesn’t seem too out-of-place in this context). If Darwin is correct—or as I imagine is more likely—partially correct, good for him and good for us. If he’s completely wrong, and all things sprung into immediate and full existence as many “creationists” seem to insist, that’s great too. One way or another, we were called into being. However, Dogmatic Darwinians not only demand that I assent to Darwin’s evolutionary theory but require me further to renounce the superstitious shackles of religion (look at any one of the many “Darwin Day” sites on the internet). Darwin didn’t seem to think that necessarily followed, but in our day, scientific dogma carries a political clout the Inquisition might envy. Scientists who question the many conclusions of Global Warming—shown at least sometimes to be nothing more than speculations, as in the case of the Not-Quite-Dead-Yet Himalayan glaciers—are refused seating at conferences or tenure in universities—hmm—cui bono? Is it a victory for Science—or for scientists seeking for more global warming research dollars? I dunno, I’m not a scientist but a lot of this scrambling around of researchers lately looks like something other than a dispassionate interest in facts.
Dogma is not about scientific facts but religious belief. Every time somebody trots out the latest research on the Shroud of Turin, I—inwardly at least—roll my eyes. Whether it’s a clever medieval forgery or a genuine relic of Christ’s Resurrection makes no difference to my belief in what happened on the first Easter Day. Science will not make me pray more, sin less or love my neighbor as myself. That’s not its job. The Church 500 years ago learned to its chagrin that throwing Galileo in the calaboose didn’t affect the movement of the planets. Dogma tells us who we are; science tells us where we are (or, in Galileo’s elegant phrase, “The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go”). Both things are good and important. When one trespasses into the expertise of the other—nobody benefits.
One of the reasons so many “people of faith” question evolution, global warming or the latest scientific orthodoxy is that some scientists-or people who are called scientists—speak with an increasingly dogmatic tone. It’s not simply that evolution seems best to match the world as it appears, but if we understand it properly, we can-and should-jettison any notion of God as a stale leftover from our Dark Past. It’s okay to question the most intimate details about a life of faith—(I was particularly irritated when I read several years back that somebody somewhere had done research on whether or not prayer “worked” by having one set of sick people prayed for while leaving a controlled set “unprayed” for) but evidently many of today's "scientists" don't want the details of their research examined too closely. Some of them expect us to accept what they tell us on faith-the same faith they mock if it's attached to religion.
“Faith” St Paul said, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
We chaff at the dogmatic claims of scientists not because they are about science but precisely because they are not. When they speak dogmatically they are intruding in the courtyard of faith. And why? Because dogma is religious, and-to speak bluntly-they are propounding a new religion, even if they don’t know it. Their new dogma replaces the God Who speaks to the individual hearts of men and women with impersonal forces which we can harness and ultimately control. The ancient Greeks knew better. One of their words—even older than dogma—is hubris, "over-reaching pride."
I’m a believer in dogma, but it matters very much which dogmas you believe.
Friday, February 05, 2010
Love To Hate
Walking the Labyrinth-February 5, 2010—On February 5, 1597, twenty six people walked to the crest of Nishizaka Hill outside Nagasaki and were crucified. Six were Franciscan friars who led them in hymns as they climbed the hill. Paul Miki, a Japanese Jesuit, preached a sermon about forgiveness to the crowds from his cross. Among the twenty-six were three boys, eleven and twelve and thirteen, several old men, and a collection of artisans, cooks, and clerks. Fifty years earlier, St Francis Xavier first brought Christianity to Japan and his missionary efforts met with much success. Within six years, almost 60,000 Japanese had been baptized. The Shogun Oda Nobunaga welcomed the presence of the foreigners (he used the new religion to offset the immense power of Buddhist priests), but the suspicions of his successor were aroused as the new Japanese Christians took “new, strange and foreign names” at baptism (often, since the Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries were either Spanish or Portuguese, the saints’ names were Spanish or Portuguese); sometimes the new converts adopted European-style dress and manners. Christianity came to be seen as “unJapanese,” the new converts as potential spies. Spurred by these fears and the complaints of Buddhist clergy , the Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi outlawed Christianity, destroyed the churches and monasteries throughout the country, and arrested the Twenty-Six, most of whom were associated with Paul Miki, the eloquent Japanese Jesuit. They were marched from Kyoto to Nagasaki (about 560 miles) in the snow and crucified on their arrival (Nagasaki was the center of Christian activity in Japan; the Shogun hoped to make a spectacle of the converts but failed. As the Twenty-Six hung from their crosses, several in the crowd presented themselves to the presiding samurai and confessed their faith—they died in prison when the Shogun decided public spectacles didn’t always turn out as one might wish). The conversions didn’t cease. By 1600, almost 300,000 Japanese had turned to the new faith. Over the next thirty years, three vigorous periods of persecution resulted in the deaths of about 40,000 people. In 1629, the government, knowing many Japanese Christians continued to practice the illegal religion secretly, instituted the fumie or “treading.” Since Nagasaki was the Christian center of Japan, it became the site of an annual ceremony at which every adult in Nagasaki was required to participate. Carved images of the Crucifixion of Jesus and depictions of the Blessed Virgin Mary holding her Child were placed on the ground, long lines formed, and everyone was ordered to step on the icons. Those who refused were arrested, when they refused a second time they were thrown into the Mount Unzen volcano. Between 1629 and 1856, when fumie was discontinued due to the arrival of Commodore Perry, more than 300 Japanese were tossed into the depths of the volcano. Since the faith had been outlawed more than two hundred years before Perry’s arrival, foreigners showed much curiosity but held little hope of finding “secret Christians” in Japan. In 1865, however, priests of the Foreign Mission Society found more than 20,000 Japanese still “keeping the faith.” Many had Christian symbols hidden in their homes. Chief among them: images of Jesus, pictures of the Virgin Mary, and depictions of the Twenty-Six Martyrs of February 5.
Marcus Porcius Cato, Roman statesman, orator, and—most rare—an uncorrupt politician, committed suicide on this day in 46 BC. Serious-minded from his youth, Cato was reared in a wealthy and politically influential home. The great men of Roman politics in the last generation of the Republic, before Julius Caesar came to power and his nephew Augustus rose to the Imperium, were frequent callers at his parents’ home. Many a politician remarked at how uncomfortable the boy’s questioning made them. One, in a letter to friends, wrote “Young Marcus had the temerity to ask me why I and so many other senators did what seemed to benefit only ourselves and not the people of Rome!” The Roman dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, liked to talk with young Cato when visiting with his parents. Sulla told his friends how the young Cato one day brought the conversation to an abrupt and embarrassed silence. The boy asked the dictator why he ordered his political opponents put to death. Before Sulla could respond, Cato asked “Don’t you expect someone will kill you one day in just the same way?” (It takes a man secure in his power to tell such a story on himself. As a matter of fact, Sulla died an old man at home, of liver failure. He had been a drinker of some repute for most of his life.) When the slaves revolted under Spartacus, Cato volunteered for the army—by the time he was 26 he commanded a legion. His men noted two things about their commander: his strict adherence to army regulations and his willingness to share their burdens. When the army built a road or erected a stockade, Cato worked alongside his men, eating the same rations and sleeping in a common soldier’s tent. His men protested when he announced to them his commission had expired and he would be returning to Rome—as a reward for their devotion, he gave them a long speech about “the importance of duty.” He took up the study of philosophy, but his friends got him elected to office (as quaestor, responsible for overseeing public expenditures). One of his first acts was to bring corruption charges against his predecessor in office. He allied himself with Cicero and the conservatives in the Senate. His reputation as a speaker and party advocate grew; eventually, it brought him into conflict with Julius Caesar, who he believed wanted to make himself king. His increasingly harsh speeches against Caesar, often made while Caesar sat in the same room, accused the general of plotting to overthrow the Republic. When Civil War did break out between the warring factions of Great Men (Caesar and Pompey, both of whom wanted to rule), Cato foretold the end of the Republic. When Caesar emerged victorious from the wars, he publicly stated he would pardon those who opposed him. At the news, Cato told friends to reconcile with Caesar if they could, but he would “not live in a world where the Republic was a memory.” Neither would he allow Caesar to pardon him. He went to his villa in Utica determined to commit suicide. The Roman historian Plutarch says Cato wanted to kill himself with his own sword, but failed because of an injured hand. “Cato did not immediately die of the wound; but struggling, fell off the bed…making such a noise that the servants heard it and came running…when his son and all his friends came into the chamber, seeing him in a pool of his own blood, a great part of his bowels out of his body, but himself still alive and able to look at them, they all stood in horror. The physician went to him, and would have put in his bowels, which were not pierced, and sewed up the wound; but Cato, recovering himself, and understanding the intention, thrust away the physician, plucked out his own bowels, and tearing open the wound, immediately expired.” Caesar told his friends “I grudge that man his death.” Over the centuries, Cato became the symbol of the incorruptible politician and the man of fixed principles. In 1712, Joseph Addison, the British playwright, published Cato: A Tragedy, recounting the last few days of the old Roman’s life. It may have been the most influential play of the century. With themes opposing liberty and tyranny, republicanism and monarchy, logic and emotion, it was frequently performed in the American colonies as well as in Great Britain. George Washington said it was his favorite drama and saw it repeatedly; he is said to have read it aloud to his officers during the harsh winter at Valley Forge. Cato was the man many of our Founding Fathers hoped to be. In Washington today, ethical conflicts are usually handled by hiring a publicist (once you’ve been found out), and letting everyone know that since God has already forgiven you, the electorate should, too.
On February 5, 1848, Belle Starr was born. She had the reputation of being a famous outlaw in the Old West, but Belle, it turns out, was mostly a girl who liked to date—and sometimes marry—Bad Boys. She was given a classical education in a private academy for young women and was an accomplished pianist. When the Union army attacked their home town of Carthage, Missouri, during the War Between the States, her father, a judge, packed up the family and moved to Texas. That’s where things started to go bad. Shortly thereafter she eloped with a man she’d had a crush on as a young girl; unfortunately he was wanted for murder in Arkansas. Two years into their marriage, she gave birth to a daughter—whose father was not her husband. He was one of her husband’s “business associates,” Cole Younger, of the notorious Younger Gang. She told Cole she was carrying his child and he immediately had to leave town. So did her husband: the law was after him. He went to California to escape, but, as so many others have found, Texas was irresistible. Shortly after returning to the Lone Star State, he was killed during a stagecoach robbery. In 1878, while still officially in mourning for her husband, Belle married another member of the Younger Gang, but left him after three weeks. The next year she married Sam Starr, a Cherokee who lived in what is now Oklahoma (then, Indian Territory). The pair set up a lucrative business near the Arkansas border fencing stolen goods, especially horses and bootleg whiskey. Sam was killed by a sheriff in a classic Western shoot-out; Belle moved on. Over the next couple of years, she took on a series of lovers with colorful names: Jack Spaniard, Jim French and Blue Duck, the notorious Indian outlaw. In order to keep title to her residence on Indian land, she married a relative of Sam Starr fifteen years her junior. By this time she was famous. National Police Gazette publisher, Richard K. Fox published a whole series of dime novels with Belle as the “Starr.” Belle began dressing and acting the part portrayed in Fox’s books: she wore a black velvet riding habit and a plumed hat, carried two pistols, and strapped cartridge belts across her hips. She made money posing for photographs and autographing Fox’s dime novels. He wrote a long novel, Bella Starr, the Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James, in 1889. Finally things were going her way. On February 3, 1889, two days before her 41st birthday, the Bandit Queen was riding home after “visiting” a friend. She was shot from her saddle by an unknown bushwacker, who came to her body and emptied his gun into it. No one was ever convicted, but the sheriff investigating said, “Almost everybody who knew her is a legitimate suspect. Nobody really liked her much, even her childrens [sic].” Someone, it’s unknown who, paid for her tombstone. On it is carved a horse and these words: “Shed not for her the bitter tear, Nor give the heart to vain regret, 'Tis but the casket that lies here, The gem that fills it sparkles yet.” One of those many guys she knew along the way evidently wasn’t all bad.
Marcel Proust, the French novelist and playwright, was sensitive about criticism. If he read something critical of his work in the newspaper, he often sent the critic a challenge to meet him for a duel. Only once was he taken up on it. On February 5, 1897, Proust met Jean Lorrain in the “dueling woods” outside Paris. The men had originally agreed to meet at 9 AM, but Proust, a notoriously late sleeper, sent word he would come at 3 PM instead—“No respectable man is up and busy at nine in the morning,” he wrote. Fortunately for French literature, both men were poor marksmen. Shots went wild, the requirements of honor were met, and Proust went to the theater that evening.
About 2 AM, on the morning of February 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber was flying a simulated bombing mission out of Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. It was carrying a hydrogen bomb. Suddenly, in the black of the night, something collided with the bomber. It was a “F-86” fighter, part of the same simulation. The fighter dropped into the sea, but the pilot of the bomber remained in the air, although the plane was badly damaged and in danger of falling from the sky. The captain’s mind raced. What would happen if he crashed on land with a hydrogen bomb? He was given permission to jettison the bomb over water. The crew waited nervously as it fell from the plane into the darkness. The only thing they could definitely say is there was no explosion. The pilot landed the crippled plane at Hunter Army Air Field outside Savannah, Georgia, and the search for the bomb, a 7,600 pound Mark 15 explosive, began immediately. More than 100 missions were launched between February 6 and April 15, before the Navy announced they couldn’t find it. “It is believed to be embedded in silt, between two and five meters deep” (that’s 5-15 feet for most of us) “at the bottom of Wassaw Sound.” It’s still there. The Air Force disclosed the bomb’s loss late in 1958. At that time, an Air Force spokesman said there was no significant danger because, “although it contains 400 pounds (180 kg) of conventional high explosives and highly enriched uranium, the bomb's nuclear capsule, used to initiate the nuclear reaction, was removed prior to flight.” In 1966, though, Assistant Secretary of Defense W.J. Howard said otherwise when subpoenaed by Congress to testify about the incident. When asked about the claim that it was relatively safe, Howard contradicted earlier statements about the bomb’s safety. “It is a complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule," he told the committee. “There is legitimate cause for concern.” After a 2004 study, the Air Force determined "It is prudent to leave the bomb covered in mud at the bottom of the sea floor rather than disturb it and risk the potential of detonation or contamination." As the highway signs say in Texas whenever you pass a group of maintenance workers along the road, here are “Your Tax Dollars at Work.”
This is the 36th day of 2010. 329 days remain in the year. The ancient Romans (Cato and Caesar) called this the nonae Februarius. The month was sacred to the goddess Februa, mother of Mars, and goddess of passion. Her name is derived from the Latin word febris, the “fever” of love. St Valentine, a third century priest in Rome, had the misfortune of being martyred this “feverish” month and his name is now synonymous with saccharine poetry printed on overpriced cards. February is also congressionally-mandated as “Potato Lover’s Month” and “National Return the Grocery Cart Month.” “Marijuana Awareness Month,” also in February, is not sponsored by Congress, but by a (pardon me) “grassroots” organization, Students for Sensible Drug Policy—the other campaign of the SSD, in case you’re wondering, seeks to lower the legal age for drinking. International Hoof Care Week ends today; February 5th is National Weatherman’s Day (shouldn’t that be “Weatherperson?”) and American Bubble Gum Day. In Finland, today is Runeberg Day. Johan Ludvig Runeberg (who died in 1877) is still called “the national poet of Finland.” An essential part of the day’s celebration calls for the ingestion of Runeberg's Tart, a Finnish pastry seasoned with almonds, rum and raspberry jam, circled with a ring of sugar. According to legend, Runeberg enjoyed the tarts so much he insisted on having one served every day with his breakfast. In Finland they are available from New Year’s Day until Runeberg's birthday on February 5. Popular legend says Runeberg's wife, Fredrika, created the tart. Her recipe book from the 1850s has the recipe. “See You Later, Alligator” by Bill Haley & His Comets topped America’s music charts today in 1956.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Pardon me, while I fulminate. I will be brief. Earlier this week, before I wrote about the Martyrs of Japan, I was reading some news story or other on the internet and came across a mention of “Islamic martyrs,” that is to say, suicide bombers. I am a man who loves words in their richness and subtlety—and I reckon you are, too, if you’re still reading these pages after all these months.
I don’t doubt the “sincerity” of a suicide bomber (no one doubted Hitler’s sincerity either—it’s an overvalued quality in my mind), but I most emphatically dispute calling a suicidal killer a “martyr.” You can call someone who kills others for his beliefs many things, but “martyr” is a misnomer. A “martyr,” in a definition hallowed by 2000 years of continual use, is a person who gives up their life as a “witness” for what they believe. The word comes from classical Greek; originally it was a legal term. The martyros was the “witness,” the person who stood before the jury and told them what he knew to be so. Jews and Christians in the Greco-Roman world, adapted the Greek word to mean those persons who took a stand for their beliefs, regardless of the personal consequences. Islam itself is heir of this tradition; the noble sect of the Sufis have long endured persecution for thier faith, not returning evil for evil. Only in the last 15 years or so has this word come to include the insidious notion that other people might bear the consequences of the martyr’s belief. This novel and unhappy adaptation corrupts the meaning of the word; once noble in its context, in our day the Jewish or Christian martyr and Islamic jihadi have been made equals. They are not. If a Christian were to do the horrific deeds now sadly commonplace in strife-torn Iraq or Afghanistan, no one—lest of all Christians—would call him a martyr. He would be classified as mentally unbalanced. The Martyrs of Japan prayed for their killers from their crosses—wishing them well, hoping for their salvation. Only in this modern era, where murdering unborn babies by the bushel-load every day is given the euphonious epithet “pro-choice,” is such an abuse of the language possible. Unless we…okay, okay, I'm becoming unbrief. Here endeth the Lesson.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Unless you are in the habit of telling yourself the truth, what I’ve got to say will be shocking. If you know how to peel away your veneer, though, you’ll recognize the truth of it: we like to hate. If we give ourselves enough room, we love to hate. We each have our own view of the world we carry around with us, and regardless of complex we like to imagine that is, or how subtle is our thought, as far as most of us are concerned, some people wear black hats and some white ones. The guys sporting gray Stetsons are simply ones we haven’t pegged yet.
We do this as a matter of course, all of us—it’s “Us” versus “Them.” Each generation has its own set of “Us-es” and “Thems.” How we group ourselves—racially, religiously, ethnically, sexually, economically, politically or culturally—endures from generation to generation. You are an “Us” to some people, a “They” to others, and as people come into your life you will classify them and they will classify you. To your momma, you are one of “Us.” To your “ex,” you are one of “Them” (the IRS has been “Them” to everybody at least since Bible times). Our enemies let us know who our friends are, and vice versa (the old Arab proverb runs “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”). Having friends and enemies, heroes and villains, helps us “divvy up” the world.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this sitting guru-like on a mountain top, dispensing wisdom. I’m observing myself. This is what I do. As the Roman poet said (albeit in a different context), “I love and I hate.” What I notice, though, is my losses usually outweigh my gains when I do this. I am a Catholic. If I hate those who are not—Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, or Episcop—well, I don’t want to go overboard with this!—I’m the loser. Hating diminishes my ability to understand, to discover anew that God is limitless—His Grace flows like rivers regardless of how I want to dam it up and define what He is allowed to do. I am an old-line conservative, a “States-rights” type so outdated the only description that will do is an “anti-federalist” of the Patrick Henry school. All my political compatriots died out by 1820! But I live in a world of leftist Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists and Neo-conservatives—to mention but a dizzying few!—and if I refuse to listen to anyone except my fellow True Believers, I’ll be conducting monologues till the cows come home (which, here outside Seguin, is about 7.30 PM). I love baroque music. Nothing can set my spirit soaring as quickly as a chorus by Handel or Vivaldi’s Magnificat. My friend Whitten tries to get me to appreciate the music of “my” generation: the Beatles—and, what is it Whitten calls it?—“the music of the ‘British invasion,’ ” (which, as far as I’m concerned, happened in during the War of 1812) the-uh-let’s see-Rolling Stones—and I know there are others but since I don’t care about the ones I mentioned, the rest are beyond irrelevant to me. But I also love early American folk music, the music of the 1700’s and 18oo’s. That led me to discover classical Zydeco, the bayou music of the Cajuns. I can’t dance (“don’t ask me”), but that music is as much fun as a Bach cantata! Every now and then, though, I’ll hear a little something and be told “It’s a Beatles’ tune.” Not bad—when properly orchestrated.
I used to have a parishioner who hated white people—at least, that what he’d say (he wasn’t white himself). He’d come into my office once or twice a year and go on a long tirade about how white people are responsible for most of the suffering of the world in general and of his life in particular. I never argued with him, I just listened. After forty-five minutes or so, his head of steam gone, he’d look over at me and smile. More than once he concluded “And you are white, too, you son-of-a bitch” (over my many years as a priest, that’s one of the lesser accusations I’ve heard). He had suffered much in his life, had made a lot of compromises for his success, and he needed a safe place to vent his anger and hatred. He was a good man: he came to Mass almost every Sunday and Day of Obligation till he died, he was generous in with his time and money, and helped many young people to climb the ladder in Hollywood. But he was not a happy man. He endured life, he didn’t enjoy it. His walk through the Labyrinth, I am convinced, took him to his Goal. But it was a joyless walk in many ways, despite his success.
Hatred doesn’t necessarily condemn us, but it certainly stunts us. It doesn’t put any obstacles in the way of the person I hate, but it does prevent me from seeing goodness in unexpected places.
Over the years, I’ve been involved in many quarrels, ecclesiastical and otherwise. I expect to be in more before I’m shuttled into purgatory where the music of Elvis Presley will be piped in just for me, and I’ll be forced to listen to interminable readings by self-satisfied French existentialists. But at some point God gave me an underserved grace. While I can get angry—and cold-hearted—in the midst of a fight—I don’t hate. My mind continually clings to the notion that my opponent believes he is right, and is fighting me based on that belief. That doesn’t make me give up the fight, but it does help me to reconcile easily. I don’t carry around hatred. Grudges blind me and rob me of the chance to bind up wounds—my own and others’. It also, I’ve discovered over the years, helps me enjoy arguments, quarrels and disagreements more, not thinking about the reason my fellow combatant has taken up cudgels. He believes he’s right. So do I—most of the time.
Every hatred can be addressed if we bring an Eternal Perspective to it. Walking the Labyrinth of your life patiently and steadily, asking for signs of Grace and taking them when offered, remembering that every person you know is walking a Labyrinth of their own—the lady who seems to encourage her poodle to use your lawn, rather than her own, and the jihadist who wants to kill your grandchild. We are called on to support the good, correct the erring and fight the evil as it appears in each of our lives.
I love to hate. It comes naturally to an experienced sinner like me. But it’s a misplaced love—or lust, like the endless pit of desire an alcoholic has for his liquor. It has not, does not and never will satisfy. “Love your enemies,” the Lord Jesus said. I don’t want to. That doesn’t mean I can’t. Loving them doesn’t mean I approve. It does mean I can understand.
If we choose love—and genuine love is a choice—Grace will transform enemies, but at a radical cost, a cost we might not want to pay. Why is the Kingdom of God slow in coming? Because we don’t really want it to arrive. For just a moment, dare to consider the possibilities if we did.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
Marcus Porcius Cato-“I would not be beholden to a tyrant, even for acts of kindness. For it is but usurpation in him to save, as by right, the lives of men over whom he has no place to reign.”
St Paul Miki-“As I come to this supreme moment of my life, I am sure none of you would suppose I want to deceive you. And so I tell you plainly, my religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do this most gladly.” (from his sermon while on the cross)
Joseph Addison-“Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is a private station.” (from Addison’s Cato: A Tragedy)
Belle Starr-“I’m a woman who has seen a lot of living.”
Marcus Porcius Cato, Roman statesman, orator, and—most rare—an uncorrupt politician, committed suicide on this day in 46 BC. Serious-minded from his youth, Cato was reared in a wealthy and politically influential home. The great men of Roman politics in the last generation of the Republic, before Julius Caesar came to power and his nephew Augustus rose to the Imperium, were frequent callers at his parents’ home. Many a politician remarked at how uncomfortable the boy’s questioning made them. One, in a letter to friends, wrote “Young Marcus had the temerity to ask me why I and so many other senators did what seemed to benefit only ourselves and not the people of Rome!” The Roman dictator, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, liked to talk with young Cato when visiting with his parents. Sulla told his friends how the young Cato one day brought the conversation to an abrupt and embarrassed silence. The boy asked the dictator why he ordered his political opponents put to death. Before Sulla could respond, Cato asked “Don’t you expect someone will kill you one day in just the same way?” (It takes a man secure in his power to tell such a story on himself. As a matter of fact, Sulla died an old man at home, of liver failure. He had been a drinker of some repute for most of his life.) When the slaves revolted under Spartacus, Cato volunteered for the army—by the time he was 26 he commanded a legion. His men noted two things about their commander: his strict adherence to army regulations and his willingness to share their burdens. When the army built a road or erected a stockade, Cato worked alongside his men, eating the same rations and sleeping in a common soldier’s tent. His men protested when he announced to them his commission had expired and he would be returning to Rome—as a reward for their devotion, he gave them a long speech about “the importance of duty.” He took up the study of philosophy, but his friends got him elected to office (as quaestor, responsible for overseeing public expenditures). One of his first acts was to bring corruption charges against his predecessor in office. He allied himself with Cicero and the conservatives in the Senate. His reputation as a speaker and party advocate grew; eventually, it brought him into conflict with Julius Caesar, who he believed wanted to make himself king. His increasingly harsh speeches against Caesar, often made while Caesar sat in the same room, accused the general of plotting to overthrow the Republic. When Civil War did break out between the warring factions of Great Men (Caesar and Pompey, both of whom wanted to rule), Cato foretold the end of the Republic. When Caesar emerged victorious from the wars, he publicly stated he would pardon those who opposed him. At the news, Cato told friends to reconcile with Caesar if they could, but he would “not live in a world where the Republic was a memory.” Neither would he allow Caesar to pardon him. He went to his villa in Utica determined to commit suicide. The Roman historian Plutarch says Cato wanted to kill himself with his own sword, but failed because of an injured hand. “Cato did not immediately die of the wound; but struggling, fell off the bed…making such a noise that the servants heard it and came running…when his son and all his friends came into the chamber, seeing him in a pool of his own blood, a great part of his bowels out of his body, but himself still alive and able to look at them, they all stood in horror. The physician went to him, and would have put in his bowels, which were not pierced, and sewed up the wound; but Cato, recovering himself, and understanding the intention, thrust away the physician, plucked out his own bowels, and tearing open the wound, immediately expired.” Caesar told his friends “I grudge that man his death.” Over the centuries, Cato became the symbol of the incorruptible politician and the man of fixed principles. In 1712, Joseph Addison, the British playwright, published Cato: A Tragedy, recounting the last few days of the old Roman’s life. It may have been the most influential play of the century. With themes opposing liberty and tyranny, republicanism and monarchy, logic and emotion, it was frequently performed in the American colonies as well as in Great Britain. George Washington said it was his favorite drama and saw it repeatedly; he is said to have read it aloud to his officers during the harsh winter at Valley Forge. Cato was the man many of our Founding Fathers hoped to be. In Washington today, ethical conflicts are usually handled by hiring a publicist (once you’ve been found out), and letting everyone know that since God has already forgiven you, the electorate should, too.
On February 5, 1848, Belle Starr was born. She had the reputation of being a famous outlaw in the Old West, but Belle, it turns out, was mostly a girl who liked to date—and sometimes marry—Bad Boys. She was given a classical education in a private academy for young women and was an accomplished pianist. When the Union army attacked their home town of Carthage, Missouri, during the War Between the States, her father, a judge, packed up the family and moved to Texas. That’s where things started to go bad. Shortly thereafter she eloped with a man she’d had a crush on as a young girl; unfortunately he was wanted for murder in Arkansas. Two years into their marriage, she gave birth to a daughter—whose father was not her husband. He was one of her husband’s “business associates,” Cole Younger, of the notorious Younger Gang. She told Cole she was carrying his child and he immediately had to leave town. So did her husband: the law was after him. He went to California to escape, but, as so many others have found, Texas was irresistible. Shortly after returning to the Lone Star State, he was killed during a stagecoach robbery. In 1878, while still officially in mourning for her husband, Belle married another member of the Younger Gang, but left him after three weeks. The next year she married Sam Starr, a Cherokee who lived in what is now Oklahoma (then, Indian Territory). The pair set up a lucrative business near the Arkansas border fencing stolen goods, especially horses and bootleg whiskey. Sam was killed by a sheriff in a classic Western shoot-out; Belle moved on. Over the next couple of years, she took on a series of lovers with colorful names: Jack Spaniard, Jim French and Blue Duck, the notorious Indian outlaw. In order to keep title to her residence on Indian land, she married a relative of Sam Starr fifteen years her junior. By this time she was famous. National Police Gazette publisher, Richard K. Fox published a whole series of dime novels with Belle as the “Starr.” Belle began dressing and acting the part portrayed in Fox’s books: she wore a black velvet riding habit and a plumed hat, carried two pistols, and strapped cartridge belts across her hips. She made money posing for photographs and autographing Fox’s dime novels. He wrote a long novel, Bella Starr, the Bandit Queen, or the Female Jesse James, in 1889. Finally things were going her way. On February 3, 1889, two days before her 41st birthday, the Bandit Queen was riding home after “visiting” a friend. She was shot from her saddle by an unknown bushwacker, who came to her body and emptied his gun into it. No one was ever convicted, but the sheriff investigating said, “Almost everybody who knew her is a legitimate suspect. Nobody really liked her much, even her childrens [sic].” Someone, it’s unknown who, paid for her tombstone. On it is carved a horse and these words: “Shed not for her the bitter tear, Nor give the heart to vain regret, 'Tis but the casket that lies here, The gem that fills it sparkles yet.” One of those many guys she knew along the way evidently wasn’t all bad.
Marcel Proust, the French novelist and playwright, was sensitive about criticism. If he read something critical of his work in the newspaper, he often sent the critic a challenge to meet him for a duel. Only once was he taken up on it. On February 5, 1897, Proust met Jean Lorrain in the “dueling woods” outside Paris. The men had originally agreed to meet at 9 AM, but Proust, a notoriously late sleeper, sent word he would come at 3 PM instead—“No respectable man is up and busy at nine in the morning,” he wrote. Fortunately for French literature, both men were poor marksmen. Shots went wild, the requirements of honor were met, and Proust went to the theater that evening.
About 2 AM, on the morning of February 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber was flying a simulated bombing mission out of Homestead Air Force Base in Florida. It was carrying a hydrogen bomb. Suddenly, in the black of the night, something collided with the bomber. It was a “F-86” fighter, part of the same simulation. The fighter dropped into the sea, but the pilot of the bomber remained in the air, although the plane was badly damaged and in danger of falling from the sky. The captain’s mind raced. What would happen if he crashed on land with a hydrogen bomb? He was given permission to jettison the bomb over water. The crew waited nervously as it fell from the plane into the darkness. The only thing they could definitely say is there was no explosion. The pilot landed the crippled plane at Hunter Army Air Field outside Savannah, Georgia, and the search for the bomb, a 7,600 pound Mark 15 explosive, began immediately. More than 100 missions were launched between February 6 and April 15, before the Navy announced they couldn’t find it. “It is believed to be embedded in silt, between two and five meters deep” (that’s 5-15 feet for most of us) “at the bottom of Wassaw Sound.” It’s still there. The Air Force disclosed the bomb’s loss late in 1958. At that time, an Air Force spokesman said there was no significant danger because, “although it contains 400 pounds (180 kg) of conventional high explosives and highly enriched uranium, the bomb's nuclear capsule, used to initiate the nuclear reaction, was removed prior to flight.” In 1966, though, Assistant Secretary of Defense W.J. Howard said otherwise when subpoenaed by Congress to testify about the incident. When asked about the claim that it was relatively safe, Howard contradicted earlier statements about the bomb’s safety. “It is a complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule," he told the committee. “There is legitimate cause for concern.” After a 2004 study, the Air Force determined "It is prudent to leave the bomb covered in mud at the bottom of the sea floor rather than disturb it and risk the potential of detonation or contamination." As the highway signs say in Texas whenever you pass a group of maintenance workers along the road, here are “Your Tax Dollars at Work.”
This is the 36th day of 2010. 329 days remain in the year. The ancient Romans (Cato and Caesar) called this the nonae Februarius. The month was sacred to the goddess Februa, mother of Mars, and goddess of passion. Her name is derived from the Latin word febris, the “fever” of love. St Valentine, a third century priest in Rome, had the misfortune of being martyred this “feverish” month and his name is now synonymous with saccharine poetry printed on overpriced cards. February is also congressionally-mandated as “Potato Lover’s Month” and “National Return the Grocery Cart Month.” “Marijuana Awareness Month,” also in February, is not sponsored by Congress, but by a (pardon me) “grassroots” organization, Students for Sensible Drug Policy—the other campaign of the SSD, in case you’re wondering, seeks to lower the legal age for drinking. International Hoof Care Week ends today; February 5th is National Weatherman’s Day (shouldn’t that be “Weatherperson?”) and American Bubble Gum Day. In Finland, today is Runeberg Day. Johan Ludvig Runeberg (who died in 1877) is still called “the national poet of Finland.” An essential part of the day’s celebration calls for the ingestion of Runeberg's Tart, a Finnish pastry seasoned with almonds, rum and raspberry jam, circled with a ring of sugar. According to legend, Runeberg enjoyed the tarts so much he insisted on having one served every day with his breakfast. In Finland they are available from New Year’s Day until Runeberg's birthday on February 5. Popular legend says Runeberg's wife, Fredrika, created the tart. Her recipe book from the 1850s has the recipe. “See You Later, Alligator” by Bill Haley & His Comets topped America’s music charts today in 1956.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Pardon me, while I fulminate. I will be brief. Earlier this week, before I wrote about the Martyrs of Japan, I was reading some news story or other on the internet and came across a mention of “Islamic martyrs,” that is to say, suicide bombers. I am a man who loves words in their richness and subtlety—and I reckon you are, too, if you’re still reading these pages after all these months.
I don’t doubt the “sincerity” of a suicide bomber (no one doubted Hitler’s sincerity either—it’s an overvalued quality in my mind), but I most emphatically dispute calling a suicidal killer a “martyr.” You can call someone who kills others for his beliefs many things, but “martyr” is a misnomer. A “martyr,” in a definition hallowed by 2000 years of continual use, is a person who gives up their life as a “witness” for what they believe. The word comes from classical Greek; originally it was a legal term. The martyros was the “witness,” the person who stood before the jury and told them what he knew to be so. Jews and Christians in the Greco-Roman world, adapted the Greek word to mean those persons who took a stand for their beliefs, regardless of the personal consequences. Islam itself is heir of this tradition; the noble sect of the Sufis have long endured persecution for thier faith, not returning evil for evil. Only in the last 15 years or so has this word come to include the insidious notion that other people might bear the consequences of the martyr’s belief. This novel and unhappy adaptation corrupts the meaning of the word; once noble in its context, in our day the Jewish or Christian martyr and Islamic jihadi have been made equals. They are not. If a Christian were to do the horrific deeds now sadly commonplace in strife-torn Iraq or Afghanistan, no one—lest of all Christians—would call him a martyr. He would be classified as mentally unbalanced. The Martyrs of Japan prayed for their killers from their crosses—wishing them well, hoping for their salvation. Only in this modern era, where murdering unborn babies by the bushel-load every day is given the euphonious epithet “pro-choice,” is such an abuse of the language possible. Unless we…okay, okay, I'm becoming unbrief. Here endeth the Lesson.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Unless you are in the habit of telling yourself the truth, what I’ve got to say will be shocking. If you know how to peel away your veneer, though, you’ll recognize the truth of it: we like to hate. If we give ourselves enough room, we love to hate. We each have our own view of the world we carry around with us, and regardless of complex we like to imagine that is, or how subtle is our thought, as far as most of us are concerned, some people wear black hats and some white ones. The guys sporting gray Stetsons are simply ones we haven’t pegged yet.
We do this as a matter of course, all of us—it’s “Us” versus “Them.” Each generation has its own set of “Us-es” and “Thems.” How we group ourselves—racially, religiously, ethnically, sexually, economically, politically or culturally—endures from generation to generation. You are an “Us” to some people, a “They” to others, and as people come into your life you will classify them and they will classify you. To your momma, you are one of “Us.” To your “ex,” you are one of “Them” (the IRS has been “Them” to everybody at least since Bible times). Our enemies let us know who our friends are, and vice versa (the old Arab proverb runs “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”). Having friends and enemies, heroes and villains, helps us “divvy up” the world.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this sitting guru-like on a mountain top, dispensing wisdom. I’m observing myself. This is what I do. As the Roman poet said (albeit in a different context), “I love and I hate.” What I notice, though, is my losses usually outweigh my gains when I do this. I am a Catholic. If I hate those who are not—Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, or Episcop—well, I don’t want to go overboard with this!—I’m the loser. Hating diminishes my ability to understand, to discover anew that God is limitless—His Grace flows like rivers regardless of how I want to dam it up and define what He is allowed to do. I am an old-line conservative, a “States-rights” type so outdated the only description that will do is an “anti-federalist” of the Patrick Henry school. All my political compatriots died out by 1820! But I live in a world of leftist Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists and Neo-conservatives—to mention but a dizzying few!—and if I refuse to listen to anyone except my fellow True Believers, I’ll be conducting monologues till the cows come home (which, here outside Seguin, is about 7.30 PM). I love baroque music. Nothing can set my spirit soaring as quickly as a chorus by Handel or Vivaldi’s Magnificat. My friend Whitten tries to get me to appreciate the music of “my” generation: the Beatles—and, what is it Whitten calls it?—“the music of the ‘British invasion,’ ” (which, as far as I’m concerned, happened in during the War of 1812) the-uh-let’s see-Rolling Stones—and I know there are others but since I don’t care about the ones I mentioned, the rest are beyond irrelevant to me. But I also love early American folk music, the music of the 1700’s and 18oo’s. That led me to discover classical Zydeco, the bayou music of the Cajuns. I can’t dance (“don’t ask me”), but that music is as much fun as a Bach cantata! Every now and then, though, I’ll hear a little something and be told “It’s a Beatles’ tune.” Not bad—when properly orchestrated.
I used to have a parishioner who hated white people—at least, that what he’d say (he wasn’t white himself). He’d come into my office once or twice a year and go on a long tirade about how white people are responsible for most of the suffering of the world in general and of his life in particular. I never argued with him, I just listened. After forty-five minutes or so, his head of steam gone, he’d look over at me and smile. More than once he concluded “And you are white, too, you son-of-a bitch” (over my many years as a priest, that’s one of the lesser accusations I’ve heard). He had suffered much in his life, had made a lot of compromises for his success, and he needed a safe place to vent his anger and hatred. He was a good man: he came to Mass almost every Sunday and Day of Obligation till he died, he was generous in with his time and money, and helped many young people to climb the ladder in Hollywood. But he was not a happy man. He endured life, he didn’t enjoy it. His walk through the Labyrinth, I am convinced, took him to his Goal. But it was a joyless walk in many ways, despite his success.
Hatred doesn’t necessarily condemn us, but it certainly stunts us. It doesn’t put any obstacles in the way of the person I hate, but it does prevent me from seeing goodness in unexpected places.
Over the years, I’ve been involved in many quarrels, ecclesiastical and otherwise. I expect to be in more before I’m shuttled into purgatory where the music of Elvis Presley will be piped in just for me, and I’ll be forced to listen to interminable readings by self-satisfied French existentialists. But at some point God gave me an underserved grace. While I can get angry—and cold-hearted—in the midst of a fight—I don’t hate. My mind continually clings to the notion that my opponent believes he is right, and is fighting me based on that belief. That doesn’t make me give up the fight, but it does help me to reconcile easily. I don’t carry around hatred. Grudges blind me and rob me of the chance to bind up wounds—my own and others’. It also, I’ve discovered over the years, helps me enjoy arguments, quarrels and disagreements more, not thinking about the reason my fellow combatant has taken up cudgels. He believes he’s right. So do I—most of the time.
Every hatred can be addressed if we bring an Eternal Perspective to it. Walking the Labyrinth of your life patiently and steadily, asking for signs of Grace and taking them when offered, remembering that every person you know is walking a Labyrinth of their own—the lady who seems to encourage her poodle to use your lawn, rather than her own, and the jihadist who wants to kill your grandchild. We are called on to support the good, correct the erring and fight the evil as it appears in each of our lives.
I love to hate. It comes naturally to an experienced sinner like me. But it’s a misplaced love—or lust, like the endless pit of desire an alcoholic has for his liquor. It has not, does not and never will satisfy. “Love your enemies,” the Lord Jesus said. I don’t want to. That doesn’t mean I can’t. Loving them doesn’t mean I approve. It does mean I can understand.
If we choose love—and genuine love is a choice—Grace will transform enemies, but at a radical cost, a cost we might not want to pay. Why is the Kingdom of God slow in coming? Because we don’t really want it to arrive. For just a moment, dare to consider the possibilities if we did.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
Marcus Porcius Cato-“I would not be beholden to a tyrant, even for acts of kindness. For it is but usurpation in him to save, as by right, the lives of men over whom he has no place to reign.”
St Paul Miki-“As I come to this supreme moment of my life, I am sure none of you would suppose I want to deceive you. And so I tell you plainly, my religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do this most gladly.” (from his sermon while on the cross)
Joseph Addison-“Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is a private station.” (from Addison’s Cato: A Tragedy)
Belle Starr-“I’m a woman who has seen a lot of living.”
Friday, January 29, 2010
Me, Myself and I
Walking the Labyrinth—January 29, 2010— Far down the list of saints on the Church Calendar today (after the archbishops and bishops, like St Caesarius or St Sabinian and martyrs like Sts Papias and Maurinus) is St Blath. Not an archbishop or bishop, not even a priest, St Blath (pronounced “Blah”) was—still is, for that matter—a woman. She was not a queen or princess but for many years a scullery maid, then a cook for St Brigit’s convent on the plains of Cill-Dara (Kildare). And what a cook! Her stews and pastries became the stuff of legend, but her renown came from her hospitality. There are stories of her miraculously feeding hundreds of hungry people from a single stew-pot, but these tell us more about her character than her cookware. No person, says her medieval biography, “left except his belly was filled with good food and his heart warmed by kind words.” All of us can be kind and generous now and then. For St Blath it was a way of life, feeding both body and soul of those in need. Not much more is known of her, but those things tell us enough to assure us she’s rightly enrolled with the Saints. Her symbols, quite properly, are a spoon, a kettle—and a small Irish flower called the Common Shepherd’s Purse. Few have lived such a roller-coaster life as Thomas “these are the times that try men’s souls” Paine, the pamphleteer of the American Revolution. Born on January 29, 1737 in Thetford, England, he was the son of a corset-maker. He apprenticed to his father's trade while a boy, but ran away to sea, looking for adventure. Finding a sailor’s life and the salt-sea air less than salubrious, he returned before long to his apprenticeship. In 1759, he married and set up his own corset shop. Within a year, his business was bankrupt and his new wife dead. Paine then turned to government work, finding a position as a tax-assessor, but after a few years was dismissed for “neglect of duty.” He returned to corset-making but also applied for ordination as a priest in the Church of England (the fact that he was uncertain as to whether he believed in God proved a hindrance, although he wouldn’t have been the first—or last—clergyman to compromise his agnosticism for ecclesiastical promotion—remember the famous Vicar of Bray). When his application was rejected, Paine moved to London and became a schoolteacher, shortly thereafter marrying his landlord’s daughter. With money from his father-in-law, he set up a tobacco shop. The old man also helped Paine get back his old job with the tax-assessor’s office. Before too long, however, he’d been fired again (for the same reason); his tobacco shop likewise failed. To avoid debtor’s prison, Paine boarded a ship to Boston, armed with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin (he never saw or communicated with his wife again). Paine stepped off the ship on November 30, 1774, to find America in turmoil. The colonies were buzzing with talk of revolution. With the help of his letter from Franklin, Paine soon secured the editorship of a Philadelphia newspaper. From the start he advocated breaking America’s ties with England, and his writing proved popular. The newspaper flourished; Tom Paine had found a niche at last. He published his immensely popular Common Sense early in 1776—it sold 100,000 copies, an almost unheard of number at that time—one in twenty Americans bought it, many more read it (or had it read to them). His stream of pamphlets bolstered the war effort through the darkest days of the Revolution. He made a fortune writing against the policies of Great Britain, but Paine surprised everyone by returning to England after the Revolution. There, he embroiled himself in controversies political and religious. He supported the unpopular French Revolution (with his pamphlet The Rights of Man) and traveled to France to see it firsthand. Though he spoke no French, his fame in America preceded him: he was given citizenship in the new Republic and elected to the National Assembly. But Paine was out of his depth: in the volatile world of revolutionary France, making friends with some unknowingly made him enemies with others. Before he knew it, he was imprisoned by orders of Robespierre himself and scheduled for a visit to “Madame Guillotine.” By an odd series of flukes, Paine's cell was overlooked when they filled the tumbrel the day of his appointment; before his execution could be re-scheduled, Robespierre himself fell victim to the French “national razor.” Paine was released. At that point, France would have lost its charm for most of us but not Tom Paine. He stayed on through the first years of Napoleon, quite taken with the future Emperor. When he actually got to known the Corsican, disillusionment did set in, and Paine wrote “he is the completest charlatan that ever existed." Shortly thereafter—very shortly thereafter when his remarks were published, he decided it was time to leave France for good. Returning to America, Paine immediately began a one-sided feud with George Washington, who, he believed, hadn’t done enough to rescue him from French prison. In that prison, Paine had written the longest of his books, The Age of Reason, an attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. Like his earlier books, it was a best-seller; unlike his other works, it won for him an almost universal loathing in both America and England. Vilified by most of its readers, the book soured Paine’s reputation as quickly as his Common Sense had earlier won him acclaim. He was referred to as a “lily-livered cynical rogue", a "loathsome reptile", and a host of epithets even today’s newspapers wouldn’t print. He died quietly, alone, and widely disliked, seven years later; only six people attended his funeral. His obituary, in the New York Citizen, read: “He lived long, did some good and much harm." His bones were disinterred by a later admirer—and have disappeared. On January 29, 1845, Edgar Allen Poe published “The Raven” in the New York Evening Mirror. He wrote it under the pen-name “Quarels”and for it was paid $9.00. The editor of the Mirror later declared the poem was “unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent imaginative lift... It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it.” Not everyone agreed. After reading the poem Ralph Waldo Emerson said “I see nothing in it” (over the years his dislike of Poe’s writing only increased; Emerson’s nickname for him was “The Jingle Man”). Last year was the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth. Not only was he celebrated by a U S postage stamp (well, okay, so was Donald Duck), but “The Raven” is the most anthologized poem in books of American poetry. The Mystery Writer’s Guild of America dubbed its highest award “The Edgar,” and every year on the anniversary of Poe’s death (October 7) for more than half a century, hundreds of devotees stage a night-time gathering at the grave of “The Master” to watch an unknown figure leave three red roses and a half-finished or (depending on your point of view) half-unfinished bottle of cognac on his tombstone. Quite "Poe-etic." He would have loved the gesture. On January 29, 1880, the only actor to ever do justice to Charles Dickens’ immortal character, Wilkins Micawber, was born. William Claude Dukenfield (known to us as W C Fields) began his stage career as a juggler on vaudeville while in his late teens. By then he’d already worked as an oyster-shucker and clothing salesman. Flo Ziegfeld hired him for his famous “Follies” and from there he went to Hollywood in 1925. Fields, who loved Dickens, often said playing Micawber in David Copperfield was the highlight of his career. MGM wanted him to play the Wizard in their 1939 production of The Wizard of Oz and offered him $75,000 for the role. He turned it down, demanding “$100,000 or nothing.” It never occurred to MGM to ask him to do it for nothing, so the role went to Frank Morgan. Fields, an atheist, used to call Christmas Day “the worst day of the year.” Los Angeles newspapers didn’t miss the irony when he died on December 25, 1946. Edward Lear, the author of The Owl and the Pussycat, lover of limericks and writer of preposterous prose, died on January 29, 1888 at his Italian villa. He never married, although he had a life-long love for a family friend, Gussie Bethel (over the years, he proposed to her 46 times! but she never accepted). Late in life, due to poor-health, he settled in Italy. During his final illness, he was visited by English friends who discretely inquired after his health. Playful to the end, Lear confided in fake cockney “T’is the cook ‘ere what done me in.” He said the man had a reputation as the worst cook for miles around. “Why then, sir, do you employ him?” asked one of his guests. “No one else will give him work!” Lear replied. All his other accomplishments, literary and artistic, aside, Lear deserves a place among the pantheon of English poets for seven words from The Owl and the Pussycat I will always remember: “which they ate with a runcible spoon.” In Baltimore, on January 29, 1956, H L Mencken, "the Sage of Baltimore," died. He was an American journalist, American critic and lover of our language. His classic work, The American Language, is as fresh, readable—and enjoyable—today as when it was written. It’s one of those rare books that you can open anywhere and read with sheer pleasure. After the book’s publication, Mencken received a stream of letters from Americans sharing bits and pieces of regional linguistic peculiarities, many of which he researched and included in later Supplements to his book. One of these letters came from a woman who earned her living as a “stripper.” She told Mencken she wished there was some “more dignified word” for her profession, and asked if he knew of one. He responded that up till the time of her letter, no other word existed, but now one did. “Madam, from this day on you are now an ‘ecdysiast,’ that is to say ‘one who sheds.’ ” Henry Louis Mencken is buried in Baltimore's Loudon Park Cemetery. His epitaph reads: “If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner, and wink your eye at some homely girl." Oprah Winfrey was born in Kosciusko, Michigan on this day in 1954. She is the host of a television program. This is the 29th day of the year; 336 days remain in 2010. On the Roman calendar today is ante diem iii kalendas Februarias; it is generally believed the Greek dramatist Sophocles died on this day in 405 BC, at ninety-one. He choked on some grapes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In her lifetime, Greta Garbo was often quoted as saying “I want to be alone” (or, with an accent) “I vant to be alone.” At one point she corrected a reporter, “I never said ‘I want to be alone.’ I said 'I want to be let alone.' All the difference in the world lies between the two.” While she lived as a recluse, Garbo had close and intimate friends. She didn’t want to be alone alone.
In the Garden of Eden, God placed Adam in the midst of a spectacular creation, but He knew the hibiscus and pomegranates and chimpanzees wouldn’t satisfy Adam’s longing for companionship. Though God made Adam intending to be friends with him, the Lord knew he needed someone like himself, a human being, to be close to. “It is not good for man to be alone” the Lord said, and he made a woman to be with him. There’s an interesting inquiry to be made about why God didn’t just make a duplicate of Adam—another man—to be with him. Sexual implications and all, it hints at a host of fascinating topics. But that’s for another time. Today it’s the nature of solitude—“aloneness”—I want to explore with you. We are created with a need—even a craving—for companionship: it’s built into our genes. When we don’t get it, strange things happen to our psyches. All that being said and acknowledged, there is another side to the coin. We also need to be alone.
John Donne, the priest and poet, wrote truly “No man is an island…we are part of the main…” Our common humanity binds us. But it is also true, as the Burial Office of the Book of Common Prayer says, “We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out…” We come into the world alone; surrounded by family and friends, we grow. As we begin to grow and discover the world into which we’ve come, we soon discover that, while we are “part of the main,” a human being in a sea of humanity, we are alone. We’re distinct from others. My thoughts and experiences, my feelings and fears and hopes, my joys and sorrows—these are a part of me (many people mistakenly think they are me, as if I’m simply the sum of all that’s happened to me). This “self” I can share with others. I can tell them my thoughts and feelings and fears and they can do the same with me (careful, though; when we do this we discover we’re not as unique as we thought!). But, regardless of popular psychology and what passes for “spirituality” nowadays, we are not the sum total of our experiences. In fact, these things are not a “part” of us at all. The experiences of our lives are the things which happen to us. Without doubt, they have an impact on us. But they are not us. You and I are not merely “data receptors” or “experience processors.” Men and women, souls and bodies, we are made in the image of God.
We are “part of the main,” Donne reminds us. None of us is, despite another modern heresy, self-sufficient. I cannot know everything. Even things I think I know, I discover with uncomfortable frequency, I forget! “It is certain we can carry nothing out” is disconcertingly true!
If we’re not our experiences and thoughts and feelings, what are we? What does it mean that we have souls?
There is that which is you. Not how you feel or what you think, not your memories of Christmases past or hopes for winning lotteries in the future—but you. It is here that you and I are created equal. My soul and yours and everybody’s is that of us which IS us. We can damage it—that’s what sin is—or we can nurture it—that’s what Grace does—but make no mistake—your soul is you. And while we are “part of the main,” here, we are also alone. That’s the scary part of solitude—it’s the “aloneness” we fear. We don’t know who we are, and for the most part, as fascinating as each of us believes ourselves to be, we don’t want to know.
Many people get the creeps when they think about monks and nuns living in silence (like the Trappists) or in solitude (like the hermits). A frequent observation is “that’s not natural.” It’s a true observation, if by natural we mean “what most of us do.” I’ll be frank. I’ve lived in monasteries where some observed silence and others lived as hermits. Sometimes they did so because they had psychological problems. Some of us (not all in convents) simply retreat inside and never come back out. Some of us are silent and solitary because God calls us to that life. All of us are called to silence and solitude sometimes, and even if we choose to ignore the call, we need it. We need a time to be alone, to let our transitory concerns fade, to find a better, longer, deeper perspective. You have a soul—it is your greatest, most precious possession—more important than your savings account, better even than a library of the greatest books (uh-I’m pretty sure that’s true). We need time to tend our souls. It won’t just happen by itself, because you "want" it to, or because you "wish" you had time for that kind of thing. Among the many heresies of our day, one of the most widespread is the notion that God is like an indulgent grandfather—a jolly, pushover of a guy—Who knows we’re really busy, worrying about paying bills and making sure the kids get to basketball practice and taking the dog to the vet. If we do have souls, if anything about them really matters, God will take care of them. He’s just that kind of a guy. He worries about our bank balance just as much as we do. Television preachers tell us so.
You know, God just might take up the slack. But we will have missed the reason we were called to live. He might not toss us into a lake of unquenchable fire. We might simply come to the end of our lives wondering why we had to spend so much time in the car.
I remember a song, sung by (I think) Peggy Lee, sometime in my past. I didn’t like it then, I don’t now—but it does seem cogent. A plaintive, uninspiring and insipid song, the refrain asks “Is that all there is?” It may be the song piped into the hallway leading to hell. Hell may not be pitchforks and devils in red leotards but might very well turn out to be dull, uninteresting sameness; gray, colorless shadows forever and ever and ever. If our eyes aren’t opened here on earth to Beauty and Goodness and Grace, seeing it Unveiled might be too much for our puny, unexercised souls to bear. Hell, eternal separation from Unspeakable Beauty, might turn out to be a mercy to such souls.
Unless we cultivate our souls, unless we can make time to be alone, we’ll find, too late, we’ve squandered the greatest gift God gave us—ourselves! In time I’ll forget—or misremember—my experiences, my fears will fade, my goals will lose their potency—only I will remain. But if you and I have walked the Labyrinth with open eyes and attuned ears, looking for (and knowing we’ll find) Beauty and Goodness and Grace at almost every step, solitude holds no terrors for us. It is one of the needful steps to Joy.
Garbo was right. None of us wants to be alone—but unless we can learn to embrace solitude, alone is what we very well just may be.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FROM MY BOOKSTACK:
Don’t be shocked, but this week I read a book about Texas. Texas politics. It’s non-fiction, so it strains credibility much more than a novel would. More, it’s about Texas politics were I grew up—in Duval County.
The Fall of the Duke of Duval tells the multi-generational story of the Parr family. For a hundred years, the Parrs controlled the governmental machinery of several counties in south Texas, but their base was in the towns of Duval County. They unashamedly and quite openly rigged elections, dispensed favors and punished the uncooperative. The county tax office was their treasury; the Sheriff’s office their own hired enforcers. County maintenance employees worked the Parr estates first and in their spare time kept county roads in repair. If anybody from “outside,” like a reporter from Houston, started asking too many questions, they’d be shot dead on the street (by four policemen, acquitted in a county court trial when they claimed they’d fired in “self-defense”).
The Parr story is the story of a political machine and how it worked. When I was a boy, both my grandmother and great-grandmother taught in the Duval County School District. I heard their accounts time and again when I was young. Come election time, a Parr appointee would meet with all the employees of the school district and tell them who and how to vote. There was no secret ballot—in some cases, the ballots were even pre-marked. I remember asking my grandmother—not a woman easily intimidated—if she did what they told her to. She said “Yes, of course I did.” I was disappointed. It wasn’t until years later I realized she did it to make sure I had food to eat and clothes to wear. Duval County came briefly to national prominence during the election of 1948. Lyndon Johnson was running for the US Senate and the race was “tight as a Texas tick.” Johnson called George Parr, the second Duke of Duval, and asked for help. When the votes were in, Lyndon lost by only a few votes statewide—until some of Duke George’s ole boys found Box 13—somebody “overlooked it,” they claimed—and all 200 votes were for Lyndon. For a generation of Texans, Lyndon Johnson was nicknamed “Landslide Lyndon.”
The book was written by one of the lawyers that eventually brought down the third Duke and saw to the partial dismantling of his fiefdom. He details the Parr story with a lawyer’s precision—and sometimes too much detail. Not surprisingly, the Parrs weren’t brought down for the murders they sponsored, the frauds they committed, the voters they intimidated over the years or the graft they dispensed. Like Al Capone, it was the tax man who got them in the end. There, the story bogs down. But the first half of the book, where the author is telling a story of the Rise and Fall of the Dukes, it makes fascinating reading. Fiction could never be so fantastical.
The Fall of the Duke of Duval was written by John E Clark, published by the Eakin Press in 1995. Hardcover copies are selling on Amazon right now for about $4.00.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
Thomas Paine-“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
Edgar Allen Poe-“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
Edward Lear-“ They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.”
W C Fields-“ I'm free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.”
“Drown in a vat of whiskey? O Death, where is thy sting?”
“Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.”
H L Mencken-“ A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he’s married.”
“Every government is against liberty.”
Oprah Winfrey-“Is that camera on me?” [attributed]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In her lifetime, Greta Garbo was often quoted as saying “I want to be alone” (or, with an accent) “I vant to be alone.” At one point she corrected a reporter, “I never said ‘I want to be alone.’ I said 'I want to be let alone.' All the difference in the world lies between the two.” While she lived as a recluse, Garbo had close and intimate friends. She didn’t want to be alone alone.
In the Garden of Eden, God placed Adam in the midst of a spectacular creation, but He knew the hibiscus and pomegranates and chimpanzees wouldn’t satisfy Adam’s longing for companionship. Though God made Adam intending to be friends with him, the Lord knew he needed someone like himself, a human being, to be close to. “It is not good for man to be alone” the Lord said, and he made a woman to be with him. There’s an interesting inquiry to be made about why God didn’t just make a duplicate of Adam—another man—to be with him. Sexual implications and all, it hints at a host of fascinating topics. But that’s for another time. Today it’s the nature of solitude—“aloneness”—I want to explore with you. We are created with a need—even a craving—for companionship: it’s built into our genes. When we don’t get it, strange things happen to our psyches. All that being said and acknowledged, there is another side to the coin. We also need to be alone.
John Donne, the priest and poet, wrote truly “No man is an island…we are part of the main…” Our common humanity binds us. But it is also true, as the Burial Office of the Book of Common Prayer says, “We brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out…” We come into the world alone; surrounded by family and friends, we grow. As we begin to grow and discover the world into which we’ve come, we soon discover that, while we are “part of the main,” a human being in a sea of humanity, we are alone. We’re distinct from others. My thoughts and experiences, my feelings and fears and hopes, my joys and sorrows—these are a part of me (many people mistakenly think they are me, as if I’m simply the sum of all that’s happened to me). This “self” I can share with others. I can tell them my thoughts and feelings and fears and they can do the same with me (careful, though; when we do this we discover we’re not as unique as we thought!). But, regardless of popular psychology and what passes for “spirituality” nowadays, we are not the sum total of our experiences. In fact, these things are not a “part” of us at all. The experiences of our lives are the things which happen to us. Without doubt, they have an impact on us. But they are not us. You and I are not merely “data receptors” or “experience processors.” Men and women, souls and bodies, we are made in the image of God.
We are “part of the main,” Donne reminds us. None of us is, despite another modern heresy, self-sufficient. I cannot know everything. Even things I think I know, I discover with uncomfortable frequency, I forget! “It is certain we can carry nothing out” is disconcertingly true!
If we’re not our experiences and thoughts and feelings, what are we? What does it mean that we have souls?
There is that which is you. Not how you feel or what you think, not your memories of Christmases past or hopes for winning lotteries in the future—but you. It is here that you and I are created equal. My soul and yours and everybody’s is that of us which IS us. We can damage it—that’s what sin is—or we can nurture it—that’s what Grace does—but make no mistake—your soul is you. And while we are “part of the main,” here, we are also alone. That’s the scary part of solitude—it’s the “aloneness” we fear. We don’t know who we are, and for the most part, as fascinating as each of us believes ourselves to be, we don’t want to know.
Many people get the creeps when they think about monks and nuns living in silence (like the Trappists) or in solitude (like the hermits). A frequent observation is “that’s not natural.” It’s a true observation, if by natural we mean “what most of us do.” I’ll be frank. I’ve lived in monasteries where some observed silence and others lived as hermits. Sometimes they did so because they had psychological problems. Some of us (not all in convents) simply retreat inside and never come back out. Some of us are silent and solitary because God calls us to that life. All of us are called to silence and solitude sometimes, and even if we choose to ignore the call, we need it. We need a time to be alone, to let our transitory concerns fade, to find a better, longer, deeper perspective. You have a soul—it is your greatest, most precious possession—more important than your savings account, better even than a library of the greatest books (uh-I’m pretty sure that’s true). We need time to tend our souls. It won’t just happen by itself, because you "want" it to, or because you "wish" you had time for that kind of thing. Among the many heresies of our day, one of the most widespread is the notion that God is like an indulgent grandfather—a jolly, pushover of a guy—Who knows we’re really busy, worrying about paying bills and making sure the kids get to basketball practice and taking the dog to the vet. If we do have souls, if anything about them really matters, God will take care of them. He’s just that kind of a guy. He worries about our bank balance just as much as we do. Television preachers tell us so.
You know, God just might take up the slack. But we will have missed the reason we were called to live. He might not toss us into a lake of unquenchable fire. We might simply come to the end of our lives wondering why we had to spend so much time in the car.
I remember a song, sung by (I think) Peggy Lee, sometime in my past. I didn’t like it then, I don’t now—but it does seem cogent. A plaintive, uninspiring and insipid song, the refrain asks “Is that all there is?” It may be the song piped into the hallway leading to hell. Hell may not be pitchforks and devils in red leotards but might very well turn out to be dull, uninteresting sameness; gray, colorless shadows forever and ever and ever. If our eyes aren’t opened here on earth to Beauty and Goodness and Grace, seeing it Unveiled might be too much for our puny, unexercised souls to bear. Hell, eternal separation from Unspeakable Beauty, might turn out to be a mercy to such souls.
Unless we cultivate our souls, unless we can make time to be alone, we’ll find, too late, we’ve squandered the greatest gift God gave us—ourselves! In time I’ll forget—or misremember—my experiences, my fears will fade, my goals will lose their potency—only I will remain. But if you and I have walked the Labyrinth with open eyes and attuned ears, looking for (and knowing we’ll find) Beauty and Goodness and Grace at almost every step, solitude holds no terrors for us. It is one of the needful steps to Joy.
Garbo was right. None of us wants to be alone—but unless we can learn to embrace solitude, alone is what we very well just may be.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FROM MY BOOKSTACK:
Don’t be shocked, but this week I read a book about Texas. Texas politics. It’s non-fiction, so it strains credibility much more than a novel would. More, it’s about Texas politics were I grew up—in Duval County.
The Fall of the Duke of Duval tells the multi-generational story of the Parr family. For a hundred years, the Parrs controlled the governmental machinery of several counties in south Texas, but their base was in the towns of Duval County. They unashamedly and quite openly rigged elections, dispensed favors and punished the uncooperative. The county tax office was their treasury; the Sheriff’s office their own hired enforcers. County maintenance employees worked the Parr estates first and in their spare time kept county roads in repair. If anybody from “outside,” like a reporter from Houston, started asking too many questions, they’d be shot dead on the street (by four policemen, acquitted in a county court trial when they claimed they’d fired in “self-defense”).
The Parr story is the story of a political machine and how it worked. When I was a boy, both my grandmother and great-grandmother taught in the Duval County School District. I heard their accounts time and again when I was young. Come election time, a Parr appointee would meet with all the employees of the school district and tell them who and how to vote. There was no secret ballot—in some cases, the ballots were even pre-marked. I remember asking my grandmother—not a woman easily intimidated—if she did what they told her to. She said “Yes, of course I did.” I was disappointed. It wasn’t until years later I realized she did it to make sure I had food to eat and clothes to wear. Duval County came briefly to national prominence during the election of 1948. Lyndon Johnson was running for the US Senate and the race was “tight as a Texas tick.” Johnson called George Parr, the second Duke of Duval, and asked for help. When the votes were in, Lyndon lost by only a few votes statewide—until some of Duke George’s ole boys found Box 13—somebody “overlooked it,” they claimed—and all 200 votes were for Lyndon. For a generation of Texans, Lyndon Johnson was nicknamed “Landslide Lyndon.”
The book was written by one of the lawyers that eventually brought down the third Duke and saw to the partial dismantling of his fiefdom. He details the Parr story with a lawyer’s precision—and sometimes too much detail. Not surprisingly, the Parrs weren’t brought down for the murders they sponsored, the frauds they committed, the voters they intimidated over the years or the graft they dispensed. Like Al Capone, it was the tax man who got them in the end. There, the story bogs down. But the first half of the book, where the author is telling a story of the Rise and Fall of the Dukes, it makes fascinating reading. Fiction could never be so fantastical.
The Fall of the Duke of Duval was written by John E Clark, published by the Eakin Press in 1995. Hardcover copies are selling on Amazon right now for about $4.00.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
QUOTES OF THE PRINCIPALS:
Thomas Paine-“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
“Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”
Edgar Allen Poe-“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.”
Edward Lear-“ They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon.”
W C Fields-“ I'm free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.”
“Drown in a vat of whiskey? O Death, where is thy sting?”
“Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.”
H L Mencken-“ A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he’s married.”
“Every government is against liberty.”
Oprah Winfrey-“Is that camera on me?” [attributed]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Friday, January 22, 2010
In Paradisium...
Walking the Labyrinth-January 22, 2010-The old martyrologies (catalogues of saints and martyrs) of the Church list no less than four St Vincents today: Vincent of Saragossa, who died about AD 304; Vincent of Nice and his brother, Onontius, who were killed in 305; Vincent of Digne, a bishop of North Africa who went to his heavenly rest in 380; and Vincent of Pellotti, who died in 1850. While the story of each of these is fascinating (in the school-records of young Vincent of Pellotti, who later earned a doctorate in theology and taught in a Roman college, his teacher recorded “he’s a bit of a block-head”—so there is always hope!), St Vincent of Saragossa is the one who attracts most attention. He was a deacon in Spain when the Emperor Dacian instituted a general persecution of Christianity in AD 303. That year 18 Spanish Christians were killed for their faith. When St Vincent, along with his bishop and several priests were arrested the following year, no one doubted their fate (at the time, it was a capital crime simply to be a clergyman). Vincent’s bishop, Valerius, had a speech impediment and chose Vincent to speak for them at their trial. The bishop was exiled but Vincent, as the spokesman, was singled out for torture, hoping to get him to renounce his faith. Vincent was stretched on a rack (dislocating his joints), hung on a hook, and burned on a large grill. Nothing broke him, so his jailers tossed him in a dungeon, the floor of which was covered with broken pottery shards. He unnerved them by singing hymns. A sympathetic jailer allowed some Christians to come and tend to Vincent, but too late. He died in prison. A hundred years later St Augustine of Hippo said Vincent’s fame “extended everywhere in the Empire; everywhere the name of Jesus was known.” Given the various tortures the saint endured (and I didn’t mention them all), he is patron to all sorts and conditions of men. Bakers (for being “cooked”), roofers and pottery-makers (for the broken shards), sailors (-uh-), schoolgirls (?). Because his feast falls late in January, he was also invoked by medieval vintners against seasonal frosts damaging to burgundy wine. Having never tasted a burgundy I like, I’m not sure how efficacious this practice is. On January 22, 1561, Sir Francis Bacon was born in London. He rose to be Lord Chancellor of England under King James I (of Bible fame). Some people (the same type who believe in the multi-tentacled Illuminati), believe he was the true author of Shakespeare’s plays. Whether or not the Bard was merely Bacon’s amanuensis, it is certainly true that, from his youth, Bacon loved Things Scientific. While some of his experiments were typical alchemical ones—looking to transmute lead into gold—his interests ran from astronomy to zoology. On April 1, 1626 (not an inappropriate day, given what followed), Bacon was traveling with a friend through Highgate, then a rural section of London. The two were discussing Bacon’s theory that ice could be used as a preservative for meat (it was a cold, snowy day). He was convinced ice could preserve meat indefinitely and to prove the point, had their carriage stop at the next farm they came to. Bacon’s companion recounts: “We went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate hill, bought a fowl, and made the woman exenterate it for our use" (I was ignorant of the word ‘extenterate’ until I read this account—it means to ‘eviscerate’). Bacon then took the plucked and gutted chicken outside, dug around in the snow and stuffed the bird. He then packed it in snow and wrapped his icy bundle in sacking. Unwisely, he decided to hold the big ball of ice in his lap till he got home. Shortly afterward he came down with chills. For reasons inexplicable, his doctor put him into a bed with damp sheets. Chill turned to pneumonia and after three days a priest read the Last Rites of the Church of England over his shivering body. His final letter, poignant if not quite Shakespearean, told a friend that he died a martyr for science. You remember the old adage, “Those who will not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.” Neither the “DotCom” collapse of the 1990’s nor our current crumbling economy are New and Unprecedented Events. Today, January 22, 1720, the South Sea Bubble burst and rocked England’s financial and political establishment to the core. I won’t recount the details, but suffice to say they involved inflated claims for stocks fed by investment bankers, aided by politicians who received “loans” and a populace eager to “flip” stocks to make a quick bag o’ shillings. Stocks in the South Sea Company rose in one year from 100 to over 1000 pounds. When the dividends came due and it was revealed the Company could not pay, values dropped overnight, fortunes were lost, businessmen committed suicide and members of the government went to jail (Sir Isaac Newton lost the equivalent of $3,000,000.00 and for the rest of his life refused to discuss it; the composer George Frederic Handel—of Messiah fame-however, made an immense fortune from the fiasco—he “bought low” at the beginning of the craze and “sold high,” divesting himself of his stocks only weeks before the Bubble burst). Sub sole nihil novi est, quoth the Preacher. James Shields was sworn in as the newly-elected Senator from Missouri on January 22, 1879. Though this was undoubtedly a red-letter day in his life, it hardly seems worth a mention except for the fact that twenty years earlier he had served as Senator from Minnesota and ten years before that he went to Washington as a Senator from Illinois. He's the only man to hold that record. He's also the only man who ever challenged Abraham Lincoln to a duel. In 1842, Shields was the State Auditor for Illinois. Some unpopular rulings on his part resulted in his vilification in the press and among those who attacked him was the future Great Emancipator. Lincoln turned his famous wit on Shields in a series of letters to local newspapers and made him look the fool. Shields angrily demanded an apology, Lincoln refused, and a challenge to a duel resulted. Lincoln was mortified, but as an up-and-coming public figure, he couldn’t refuse without being accused of cowardice—never good for an aspiring politician. Both men had a following and news of the duel quickly spread. Since dueling was illegal in Illinois, an island on the Missouri River (where dueling was not illegal) was chosen as the spot. As the challenged party, Lincoln had the choice of weapons. He was convinced that firing pistols one at the other might result in serious injuries, so he set out to make the whole thing as ludicrous as possible. Rather than guns, he chose “Cavalry Broadswords of the largest size.” Lincoln was 6’4”, with the nickname “the Railsplitter.” Shields was a foot shorter and had a slight build. Lincoln added several other stipulations which increased the absurdity of the affair, but Shields accepted them all. When the two met for their duel, hundreds of people crowded the Illinois shore to watch the outcome. Once the pair with their seconds and attendants disembarked, the heavy swords were produced. While Shields tried to wield his, Lincoln made a point of cutting down tree limbs with ease. Form required the seconds to make a final attempt at reconciliation before the combat began. After a moment, Shields agreed to take back his challenge if Lincoln would apologize. Lincoln did, everyone shook hands and took their boats back to Illinois. That night, the two men appeared together at a “post-duel” party. Six years later, Lincoln supported Shields in his run for the US Senate. One hundred and nine years ago today, Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, died in her sleep at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She was crowned Queen on July 20, 1837 and reigned till her death, more than 63 years (she still has 6 years on Queen Elizabeth II). The last year of her life her health steadily declined and by December 16, doctors entertained little hope of her survival. Bulletins were issued several times a day for a week before she finally died: England held its breath. Finally the morning edition of the London Times carried the announcement: “All day long, the Angel of Death has been hovering over Osborne House. One could almost hear the beating of his wings, but at half-past six, those wings were folded and the Queen was at rest.” England went into official mourning for three months. On January 22, 1907, Richard Strauss’ opera “Salome” (based on the play by Oscar Wilde) debuted at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. The performance was so shocking to patrons (with the sensual “Dance of the Seven Veils” and Salome’s declaration of her love for St John the Baptist made as she caressed his severed head) that it was immediately banned; it wasn’t performed again until 1934. Some Americans—not ones usually associated with the opera—became familiar with the music because it was a favorite of “strip-tease” artists in burlesque theaters through the 1920’s! President Harry Truman signed a directive on January 22, 1946, creating the Central Intelligence Agency. Not to be outdone, on January 22, 1964, the Wisconsin Dairy Association created the Largest Piece of Cheese in the history of the world. Steve’s Cheese Factory, in Denmark, Wisconsin, produced the 34, 591 pound block of cheese for the State of Wisconsin’s entry to the 1964 World’s Fair. The cheddar block measured fourteen and a half feet long and five and a half feet high. A special glass-walled truck was built for the display. After the Fair ended, people were invited to consume as much of the cheese as they could, and they did. The refrigerated truck and all the nifty signs were returned to Wisconsin and a debate ensued about what to do with the stuff. Today, if you go to Neillsville, Wisconsin (population 2,600), you can find the Refrigerated Cheese Truck on display, together with a styrofoam replica of the World’s Largest Cheese and, to introduce you to the display, the city erected the World’s Largest fiberglass Cow, Chatty Belle. Chatty has a voice box which is supposed to tell visitors about the Cheese, but it broke in 2002 and, by visitors’ accounts since, has yet to be repaired (it’s part of the collapse of our National Infrastructure you hear about). Chatty, who herself is sixteen feet to the shoulders and twenty feet long, would tell you if she could that 170,000 quarts of milk from 16,000 Wisconsin cows went into making the Cheese. This is the 22nd day of the 2010; 343 days remain in the year. On the ancient Roman calendar, today is ante diem xi kalendas Februarias (literally, “eleven days before the first of February”—not the easiest way of keeping track of dates. There have been some improvements in 2000 years!). Finally, on January 22, 1951, the future Jefe de Cuba, Fidel Castro, a talented left-handed pitcher, was cut from the roster during a winter league tryout game for the Washington Senators. What if…?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There are two Wal-Marts within easy distance of where I live. I never shopped at a Wal-Mart before, but I’ve been to both stores several times now since returning to the Lone Star State. The lay-out is different, but similar. I can find what I want now easily in either one, which, no doubt, is the intention. Clustered around the Wal-Marts are other places to buy things, equally similar—a MacDonald’s, a Taco Bell, a store selling fried chicken, a Texaco and a few strip malls within a block or so. The two areas look as if they were both drawn from the same architectural plan. If you drive around Los Angeles, California, Manassas, Virginia, Denver, Colorado or Seguin, Texas, you’ll see an identical urban landscape. We can find what we want easily, which, no doubt, is the intention. There are still places we can go in Los Angeles and Manassas and Denver and Seguin that are peculiar to the place—the white-and-black lighthouse sitting out by itself at the entrance to the Los Angeles harbor, the battle-scarred stone bridge at Manassas, the eerie Richthofen Castle in Denver, or the World’s Largest Pecan outside the Courthouse in Seguin—these are remnants of our past. How much, though, are they part of our future?
This past year, I wasn’t the only American who moved from one place to another. Forty-eight million others did the same in 2009. According to the Census Bureau, the “average” American changes residences twelve times from cradle to grave (not counting either of those). We are the most “mobile” people in history—with the possible exception of the nomads—and an argument could be made that our culture is “nomadic.” This mobility can bring new opportunities, new experiences, new people and new promises into our lives. We can make more money and "broaden our horizons." But we do so at a cost. That’s what I’ve been pondering of late.
Last week, I wrote about Fr Karas and the Coptic monastery outside Barstow. The Coptic (Egyptian Christian) community here in the United States is growing. My good friend Fr Robert Sanchez and I-both of us students of Liturgies Ancient and Modern-began attending a Coptic church in Los Angeles about a year and a half ago, initially from liturgical curiosity. As we got to know the people, though, our interest shifted from the academic to the personal. How does a group of Arabic-speaking Christians, a minority persecuted in their homeland, adjust to life in Los Angeles? The city, which officially prides itself in its cultural and racial diversity (but is racked with cultural and racial divides), must seem a continual contradiction. Will the Copts (a close-knit community in Egypt ghettoized by the Muslim government) lose their identity here? How will their faith, which reaches back to the first centuries of Christianity, survive in a secular society—indifference to religion is not religious intolerance. As I came to know the Copts, I came to admire and love them. These Egyptian Christians, often mistaken for Muslims because of their looks and language—and thus disdained by many in their new homeland for being un-American—are enthusiastic about their new country and certain of their Faith. I confess to paternalistic feelings about them. But what does any of this have to do with Wal-Marts and cookie-cutter neighborhoods?
At the request of the editor of a Catholic magazine, Fr Sanchez and I began research for a series of articles on Copts living in the United States. He was curious about some of the same questions we raised. As our research continued, further questions came up. Some I’ve asked myself for a long time. Most basically, “What does it mean to be ‘from’ somewhere?” I’ve moved at least twenty-four times—twice the average—and my life’s not quite over yet (although I pray my movings are). Anyone unfortunate enough to ask me “Where are you from?” won’t get a simple answer! In a sense, my Coptic friends are pilgrims, walking a complex labyrinth of their own. They’ve come to America in search of more than a job, and they bring more than a little of their homeland with them. If you ask them where they’re from, you’ll get a fascinating assortment of answers. Miriam, a mother of three boys all born here, told me emphatically “I am from here! I am not an Egyptian. I am an American and my sons are American!” but in a more quiet discussion she revealed her fears about America. “My boys love the church, but they love video games, too. They watch too much TV.”She clung to her youngest son and said, “My older boys like girls and it’s too soon.” She sounds like an American mom. Joseph is an older man. In Egypt he wanted to go to the university but was blocked time and again because of his religion. He immigrated in his mid-thirties, went to UCLA and is now a successful electrical engineer. “In America I achieved my dream,” he told me, “but I love Egypt. To achieve my dream I had to give up my home.” His life is torn; Joseph, unlike Miriam, is a hyphenated American. Ask where they are “from” and you’ll get two very different answers.
Ask where I’m “from” and I’ll tell you “Texas”—and even name a specific place in the Great State, although thus far I’ve lived more of my life in California than here. Being “from” a place is important. It defines us, sometimes more than we know, often more than we’re willing to admit. Fr Davis, my old curate, used to excuse some of the things I’d say by telling people “He can’t help it. He’s from Texas.” He didn’t just mean “Fr Wilcox was born somewhere else,” but “he’s from a provincial backwater where his attitudes are not only acceptable, but the unfortunate norm.” Most of us have a sort of “pride of place,” Texans famously so, but even people from Oklahoma don’t usually try to conceal their natal origins (well, maybe that’s not the best example—I’m pretty sure there are some Oklahomans who pretend they’re from Texas). Californians boast “California is a State of Mind,” believing others admire them for that. Being “from” somewhere matters. It tells me something about who I am.
We are more and more a nation of restless nomads, with cell phones fixed in our ears and the internet clipped to our pockets; a people on the go. We shop the same stores coast to coast, eat the same food from Virginia Beach to Long Beach and listen to the same music, watch the same television and are fed the same news in Altoona and Azusa. Where are we from? What does it matter?
If it doesn’t matter where I’m from, if one place is pretty much like another, if everything looks the same, sounds the same, tastes the same, smells the same, then every place pretty much IS the same: no place is special. No place is home. When we become disconnected from our past, all that matters is what’s right here, right now. The world loses its wonder—it becomes not a symphony of Creation but just stuff to look at. The world ceases to be a sacrament of God’s presence and becomes just the place I am right now. Without a place to be “from” we aren’t just disconnected from our past; we become disconnected from ourselves, “a stranger in a strange land.”
We each need to be “from” somewhere—not necessarily where we’re born—but we need a special place, a place we are connected to. Our walk in the labyrinth of this life has to start “from” somewhere. If we are a nation of nomads, if we don’t know where we’re from, how can we know where we’re going? “New Age” wisdom (i.e., what you hear on Oprah and read in fortune cookies) tells us “It’s the Journey that Matters, Not the Goal.” There is some truth to that—some of the winning lotto numbers on the back of your fortune cookie are correct, just not now and not for you. We know the Journey is important. What God does with us (maybe sometimes “to” us) along the Way is essential to each of us being who we are and who He wants us to be. But we are not homeless on our Walk: we started somewhere, and are intended to end up Somewhere Else.
After the Mass for the Dead is ended, as the body is carried from the church for burial, one of the most beautiful of chants is sung, the In Paradisium: “May the angels lead you into Paradise, may the martyrs receive you in your coming, and may they guide you into the holy city, Jerusalem. May the chorus of angels receive you and may you, with Lazarus once poor, have eternal rest.”
If you know where you’re “from,” you’ll have a better chance of getting where you want to go (even if you have to shop at Wal-Mart along the way).
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FROM MY BOOKSTACK: Whenever I see Minister Farrakhan is going to be on C-SPAN, I make an effort to watch. I will never forget the-uh-speech he delivered at the Million Man March. Till I go for my purgatorial wire-brushing, I will remember how mesmerized I was by that bizarre locution. With his first real national audience, he wandered off into numerological, Masonic and historical fantasies that would have strained the credulity of any member of the Flat Earth Society . He has, on occasion, spoken with force and conviction and sometimes truth. But that day too many of his hidden cards fell on the table. I do enjoy watching him speak. Not so Jesse Jackson. His attempts to convey education by alliteration not only fail to convince but even fail to entertain. He’s boring. He’s the Angry Black Man who wants you to know he’s angry, but if you give his organization some money, he’ll find someone else to be angry at (his model has been successful for a couple of other national black figures, too). When I see Jackson glowering on the TV, I change the channel. But there’s a new man of late, Michael Eric Dyson. Unlike Jesse, he’s genuinely educated and undoubtedly bright. Unlike Minister Farrakhan, he knows some whites will actually listen to what he says. A lot of his work is directed their way. Like Jesse, he knows how to be the Angry Black Man; like Minister Farrakhan, he speaks with force and conviction and sometimes truth. So when I was in a used bookstore two weeks ago and saw The Michael Eric Dyson Reader in the discount book bin, I couldn’t resist.
The book is a series of essays (500 pages of ‘em), running the gamut from “When You’re a Credit to Your Race, the Bill Will Come Due: O J Simpson and Our Trial by Fire” to “It’s Not What You Know, It’s How You Show It: Black Public Intellectuals.” I will admit there are several of the essays I’ve not read, a few, like “Michael Jackson’s Postmodern Spirituality,” which I almost certainly never will. Like those I’ve mentioned, and others I’ve not, Professor Dyson is a Professional Black Man. By that I mean being a black man is his profession, his distinction. That isn’t to say his has nothing to offer, but to get to his underlying thought, you have to wade through his asides, his anger, his frustration. For those who want to grapple with the racial problems of America today, it’s worth doing. For better or worse, his will be the face and voice of many black Americans for the next generation. Understanding his thought may not bring us much closer to healing the pain of the past and the divides of the present, but it will show us something of the limits that healing will be allowed to go for the next generation.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
QUOTES FROM THE PRINCIPALS:
Sir Francis Bacon-“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
Queen Victoria-“I don't dislike babies, though I think very young ones rather disgusting.”
Harry Truman-“ Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.”
Jesse Jackson-“ I cast my bread on the waters long ago. Now it's time for you to send it back to me - toasted and buttered on both sides.”
Chatty Belle-“Hi, so nice to see you. My name is Chatty Belle. What's your name? Well, nice to meet you. Did you know I’m the world's largest talking cow? I'm 16 feet high at the shoulders and 20 feet long, seven times as large as the average Holstein."
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There are two Wal-Marts within easy distance of where I live. I never shopped at a Wal-Mart before, but I’ve been to both stores several times now since returning to the Lone Star State. The lay-out is different, but similar. I can find what I want now easily in either one, which, no doubt, is the intention. Clustered around the Wal-Marts are other places to buy things, equally similar—a MacDonald’s, a Taco Bell, a store selling fried chicken, a Texaco and a few strip malls within a block or so. The two areas look as if they were both drawn from the same architectural plan. If you drive around Los Angeles, California, Manassas, Virginia, Denver, Colorado or Seguin, Texas, you’ll see an identical urban landscape. We can find what we want easily, which, no doubt, is the intention. There are still places we can go in Los Angeles and Manassas and Denver and Seguin that are peculiar to the place—the white-and-black lighthouse sitting out by itself at the entrance to the Los Angeles harbor, the battle-scarred stone bridge at Manassas, the eerie Richthofen Castle in Denver, or the World’s Largest Pecan outside the Courthouse in Seguin—these are remnants of our past. How much, though, are they part of our future?
This past year, I wasn’t the only American who moved from one place to another. Forty-eight million others did the same in 2009. According to the Census Bureau, the “average” American changes residences twelve times from cradle to grave (not counting either of those). We are the most “mobile” people in history—with the possible exception of the nomads—and an argument could be made that our culture is “nomadic.” This mobility can bring new opportunities, new experiences, new people and new promises into our lives. We can make more money and "broaden our horizons." But we do so at a cost. That’s what I’ve been pondering of late.
Last week, I wrote about Fr Karas and the Coptic monastery outside Barstow. The Coptic (Egyptian Christian) community here in the United States is growing. My good friend Fr Robert Sanchez and I-both of us students of Liturgies Ancient and Modern-began attending a Coptic church in Los Angeles about a year and a half ago, initially from liturgical curiosity. As we got to know the people, though, our interest shifted from the academic to the personal. How does a group of Arabic-speaking Christians, a minority persecuted in their homeland, adjust to life in Los Angeles? The city, which officially prides itself in its cultural and racial diversity (but is racked with cultural and racial divides), must seem a continual contradiction. Will the Copts (a close-knit community in Egypt ghettoized by the Muslim government) lose their identity here? How will their faith, which reaches back to the first centuries of Christianity, survive in a secular society—indifference to religion is not religious intolerance. As I came to know the Copts, I came to admire and love them. These Egyptian Christians, often mistaken for Muslims because of their looks and language—and thus disdained by many in their new homeland for being un-American—are enthusiastic about their new country and certain of their Faith. I confess to paternalistic feelings about them. But what does any of this have to do with Wal-Marts and cookie-cutter neighborhoods?
At the request of the editor of a Catholic magazine, Fr Sanchez and I began research for a series of articles on Copts living in the United States. He was curious about some of the same questions we raised. As our research continued, further questions came up. Some I’ve asked myself for a long time. Most basically, “What does it mean to be ‘from’ somewhere?” I’ve moved at least twenty-four times—twice the average—and my life’s not quite over yet (although I pray my movings are). Anyone unfortunate enough to ask me “Where are you from?” won’t get a simple answer! In a sense, my Coptic friends are pilgrims, walking a complex labyrinth of their own. They’ve come to America in search of more than a job, and they bring more than a little of their homeland with them. If you ask them where they’re from, you’ll get a fascinating assortment of answers. Miriam, a mother of three boys all born here, told me emphatically “I am from here! I am not an Egyptian. I am an American and my sons are American!” but in a more quiet discussion she revealed her fears about America. “My boys love the church, but they love video games, too. They watch too much TV.”She clung to her youngest son and said, “My older boys like girls and it’s too soon.” She sounds like an American mom. Joseph is an older man. In Egypt he wanted to go to the university but was blocked time and again because of his religion. He immigrated in his mid-thirties, went to UCLA and is now a successful electrical engineer. “In America I achieved my dream,” he told me, “but I love Egypt. To achieve my dream I had to give up my home.” His life is torn; Joseph, unlike Miriam, is a hyphenated American. Ask where they are “from” and you’ll get two very different answers.
Ask where I’m “from” and I’ll tell you “Texas”—and even name a specific place in the Great State, although thus far I’ve lived more of my life in California than here. Being “from” a place is important. It defines us, sometimes more than we know, often more than we’re willing to admit. Fr Davis, my old curate, used to excuse some of the things I’d say by telling people “He can’t help it. He’s from Texas.” He didn’t just mean “Fr Wilcox was born somewhere else,” but “he’s from a provincial backwater where his attitudes are not only acceptable, but the unfortunate norm.” Most of us have a sort of “pride of place,” Texans famously so, but even people from Oklahoma don’t usually try to conceal their natal origins (well, maybe that’s not the best example—I’m pretty sure there are some Oklahomans who pretend they’re from Texas). Californians boast “California is a State of Mind,” believing others admire them for that. Being “from” somewhere matters. It tells me something about who I am.
We are more and more a nation of restless nomads, with cell phones fixed in our ears and the internet clipped to our pockets; a people on the go. We shop the same stores coast to coast, eat the same food from Virginia Beach to Long Beach and listen to the same music, watch the same television and are fed the same news in Altoona and Azusa. Where are we from? What does it matter?
If it doesn’t matter where I’m from, if one place is pretty much like another, if everything looks the same, sounds the same, tastes the same, smells the same, then every place pretty much IS the same: no place is special. No place is home. When we become disconnected from our past, all that matters is what’s right here, right now. The world loses its wonder—it becomes not a symphony of Creation but just stuff to look at. The world ceases to be a sacrament of God’s presence and becomes just the place I am right now. Without a place to be “from” we aren’t just disconnected from our past; we become disconnected from ourselves, “a stranger in a strange land.”
We each need to be “from” somewhere—not necessarily where we’re born—but we need a special place, a place we are connected to. Our walk in the labyrinth of this life has to start “from” somewhere. If we are a nation of nomads, if we don’t know where we’re from, how can we know where we’re going? “New Age” wisdom (i.e., what you hear on Oprah and read in fortune cookies) tells us “It’s the Journey that Matters, Not the Goal.” There is some truth to that—some of the winning lotto numbers on the back of your fortune cookie are correct, just not now and not for you. We know the Journey is important. What God does with us (maybe sometimes “to” us) along the Way is essential to each of us being who we are and who He wants us to be. But we are not homeless on our Walk: we started somewhere, and are intended to end up Somewhere Else.
After the Mass for the Dead is ended, as the body is carried from the church for burial, one of the most beautiful of chants is sung, the In Paradisium: “May the angels lead you into Paradise, may the martyrs receive you in your coming, and may they guide you into the holy city, Jerusalem. May the chorus of angels receive you and may you, with Lazarus once poor, have eternal rest.”
If you know where you’re “from,” you’ll have a better chance of getting where you want to go (even if you have to shop at Wal-Mart along the way).
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FROM MY BOOKSTACK: Whenever I see Minister Farrakhan is going to be on C-SPAN, I make an effort to watch. I will never forget the-uh-speech he delivered at the Million Man March. Till I go for my purgatorial wire-brushing, I will remember how mesmerized I was by that bizarre locution. With his first real national audience, he wandered off into numerological, Masonic and historical fantasies that would have strained the credulity of any member of the Flat Earth Society . He has, on occasion, spoken with force and conviction and sometimes truth. But that day too many of his hidden cards fell on the table. I do enjoy watching him speak. Not so Jesse Jackson. His attempts to convey education by alliteration not only fail to convince but even fail to entertain. He’s boring. He’s the Angry Black Man who wants you to know he’s angry, but if you give his organization some money, he’ll find someone else to be angry at (his model has been successful for a couple of other national black figures, too). When I see Jackson glowering on the TV, I change the channel. But there’s a new man of late, Michael Eric Dyson. Unlike Jesse, he’s genuinely educated and undoubtedly bright. Unlike Minister Farrakhan, he knows some whites will actually listen to what he says. A lot of his work is directed their way. Like Jesse, he knows how to be the Angry Black Man; like Minister Farrakhan, he speaks with force and conviction and sometimes truth. So when I was in a used bookstore two weeks ago and saw The Michael Eric Dyson Reader in the discount book bin, I couldn’t resist.
The book is a series of essays (500 pages of ‘em), running the gamut from “When You’re a Credit to Your Race, the Bill Will Come Due: O J Simpson and Our Trial by Fire” to “It’s Not What You Know, It’s How You Show It: Black Public Intellectuals.” I will admit there are several of the essays I’ve not read, a few, like “Michael Jackson’s Postmodern Spirituality,” which I almost certainly never will. Like those I’ve mentioned, and others I’ve not, Professor Dyson is a Professional Black Man. By that I mean being a black man is his profession, his distinction. That isn’t to say his has nothing to offer, but to get to his underlying thought, you have to wade through his asides, his anger, his frustration. For those who want to grapple with the racial problems of America today, it’s worth doing. For better or worse, his will be the face and voice of many black Americans for the next generation. Understanding his thought may not bring us much closer to healing the pain of the past and the divides of the present, but it will show us something of the limits that healing will be allowed to go for the next generation.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
QUOTES FROM THE PRINCIPALS:
Sir Francis Bacon-“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
Queen Victoria-“I don't dislike babies, though I think very young ones rather disgusting.”
Harry Truman-“ Always be sincere, even if you don't mean it.”
Jesse Jackson-“ I cast my bread on the waters long ago. Now it's time for you to send it back to me - toasted and buttered on both sides.”
Chatty Belle-“Hi, so nice to see you. My name is Chatty Belle. What's your name? Well, nice to meet you. Did you know I’m the world's largest talking cow? I'm 16 feet high at the shoulders and 20 feet long, seven times as large as the average Holstein."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
