Merry Christmas!

Don't think for a moment that I would abandon a high Christology. Credo the Messiah was God with us, consubstantial with the Father, and let me never deny it. Only today, as we talk about that ineffable glory enfleshed in the weakest of vessels, a little infant, I would reflect on Jesus the man.

Today is the mass of Jesus, and it is precisely by looking at that man amidst the procession of church heroes, squarely between St. Ambrose and St. Stephen in the December calendar, that I am gladdened by the feast of his birth, and I understand the scriptural account of his coming. As I read the accounts of St. Matthew and St. Luke, the first light in which the man Jesus presented is as a prophet, prophesied by those prophets before him, coming out of the prophetic tradition, and then going as a prophet into the adult form where we know and meet him. We learn later that he should be our priest and savior and sacrifice; still later we learn he would be our King and God. But it is first in the echoes of Isaiah and strange foretellings of the days of Caesar Augustus that we meet our Lord as a child.

I usually hear one of two Christmas sermons. There is sometimes another sermon about the cross and forgiveness of sins, but I don't think that's a Christmas sermon. It's a Good Friday sermon that someone accidentally preaches in December, and I shall come back to it in a moment, for it's more telling than we might think. The first Christmas sermon, which is still special and instructive to all of us, is the portrait of the baby, and the staggering realization of what that baby means in a high Christology. I pass by that portrait this morning, not because I think it unimportant, but because it's best left to another voice. It's more suited to Grandfather's knee, and not your stiff and dour cousin. The second type of Christmas sermon probably comes from the narrative-deconstructing current of postmodernity, and is all about how dirty the stable and manger were, and how the little Jesus surely did not 'sleep in heavenly peace,' but wailed and fussed all through Christmas night, and therefore all of our old songs and nativity sets have it wrong. I don't know why we hear this sermon so often. Perhaps it comforts those many people in our time who feel, especially around the holidays, like they're losing some measure of control and sanity, and they are comforted by other dirty living rooms and screaming children. But again, I suspect that to the postmodern mind, it's simply more fun to knock things down that to try building and protecting anything complex.

On this feast of Christmas day, I raise a glass to the man Jesus. I marvel at the paradox of his incarnation, and I pause, as I should much more often, to think of his example and mighty deeds, especially, marvelous as they are, his deeds for me. And I then ask, now what? Should we preach Good Friday sermons on Christmas as well? If this baby were come only to be born sinless of a virgin and die an atoning death for sinners, why did his parents take him to the temple for circumcision, and not sacrifice? We know that Jesus meant to die when he entered Jerusalem thirty years later, but why were the thirty years necessary? What were they about? How, in other words, does the birth of Jesus lead, not only to his death and resurrection, but to his life?

This Christmas season and New Year, let us learn from our Lord what he meant as a prophet, when he began to describe a Kingdom of God that was coming into the world. Let us learn what he meant as a teacher, when he so resoundingly answered the lawyers and professors of his day. Let us understand who he was a priest, and how, in some way, we have been made members of his priesthood. Let us realize what it means to be citizens of the King, and what we must do to advance his rule while we await the King's return. Let us, as ever, remember he is our salvation, always an salvation lowly, from a baby in a stable to an executed criminal on a cross, that we should receive him in humility. And let us remember that this Christ-child is our hope, by his message, reign, atonement and resurrection, for us and for our people. Amen and Merry Christmas!

Friday Morning Reading

Christmas Break!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xam01uaj6Vg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfuUlZdUtbg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjBd8O5LtKg

While James and J are sleeping, I am reading Statius, who describes
Digna deae sedes, nitidis nec sordet ab astris...
...perspicui vivunt in marmore fontes.
nec servat natura vices: hic Sirius alget,
bruma tepet, versumque domus sibi temperat annum

A house worthy of the goddess, nor squalid after the shining stars...
...clear streams of water flow in marble.
Nor does nature serve in seasons, here the Summer is cool,
mid-winter is warm, and the house adjusts the turning year to itself.

...and Aquinas, who writes in the Summa Contra:
Caput 69, Quod Deus cognoscit infinita

ergo, frater iuvenior eius dixit ut cognoscit infinita plus unum.

The Story of the Birth of James

By no design or intent, our son was supposed to be born on 11-11-11. We were told many times by friends and relatives (and, as is the lot of the expectant couple, by loose acquaintances and strangers) that we ought not to expect the baby on the due date itself. First-born babies especially, we were cautioned, are notoriously unpredictable. We nodded along to this, then continued filling in our datebooks and calendar almost indifferently. A month before the due date, I thought myself the model of paternal responsibility. After all, I had turned down a gig on 11-11-11, and hadn't accepted any other work until the 14th! I presumed that while predicting childbirth wasn't an exact science (something along the lines of, say, predicting the weather or sports scores) our son would be born within a few days before or after his due date. And by "a few days," I meant "the day before or after." After all, he would be the firstborn child of two fastidiously punctual firstborns. How could he dare to be late?

I was more worried about a performance with the BPO on 11-8 than anything else, and once that was over I breathed an easy sigh of relief. 11-11-11 came and went, and we stayed at home. The weekend passed, and I returned to school uneasily on Monday, 11-13. On Tuesday, I began to be nervous. I'd been hired for a full philharmonics week at RPO, plus the attached Symphony 101 services on Friday and Sunday. J, who'd been home on maternity leave for a full week, was beginning to get restless. She said that she now understood what was meant by the baby "dropping."

She still hadn't experienced much in the way of contractions, pretended or otherwise, and we began to wonder if the due date was wrong. On Thursday night I played my first concert of the week, with my cellphone (turned down to silent) perched on my stand. One down, three to go. That night, I felt a tap on my arm. Groggy, and still half asleep, I rolled over to see that Julie was waking me up. As far as I can remember, the conversation went like this:

Julie: My contractions are every five minutes apart. What do you think?
Roy: Are you sure?
Julie: Yes, I've been timing them.
Roy: For how long?
Julie: At least since midnight.
Roy: Sorry, what time is it now?
Julie: It's about 2 AM. Do you think we should go to the hospital?
Roy: Has your water broken?
Julie: No, but sometimes that doesn't happen until later. What should we do?
Roy: Well, let's call in and see what they say.

Julie, who I should politely and impartially note was in the throes of labor, remembers the conversation like this:

Julie: My contractions are every five minutes apart. What do you think we should do?
Roy: What?
Julie: My contractions are every five minutes apart. What should we do?
Roy: What?
Julie: I'm having contractions every five minutes! What should we do?
Roy: I think we should go to the concert.
Julie: What? That's not what I asked! Should we call the doctor?
Roy: What time is it?
Julie: It's 2 AM.
Roy: How long?
Julie: 2 AM
Roy: How long have you been having contractions?
Julie: Since at least midnight. What should we do?
Roy: Your water hasn't broken?
Julie: No, sometimes that doesn't happen until later. Should we call?
Roy: <falls back asleep>

Clearly Julie does not remember this early morning adventure very clearly, but we do both remember that we eventually got up and called the on-call doctor. They asked us to come in, and by about 2:30 we were driving into Strong, hospital bag in tow. I don't think either of us really expected the baby would be arriving that night, but we wanted to be responsible. We had failed to be responsible parents earlier, and had never gotten around to visiting the hospital or taking the recommended tour. We did, however, find it without difficulty and get checked into triage.

Julie was measured (if you don't know, you don't want to know) and though her contractions were seeming more and more "real" she wasn't dilating at all. We waited around and attempted to stay awake for an hour or so, and then were sent home with compassionate smiles. No baby yet.

Thankfully, I didn't have LCS the following morning, but was able to sleep in for a 9:30 RPO rehearsal. I drove to Hochstein, parked, and sat down for rehearsal. What good would come from telling anyone about visiting the hospital the night before? We just needed to make it through another 72 hours, and then the baby could come anytime he wanted. At the rehearsal break, I checked my voicemail. Julie said it was going to happen today. Her contractions were still every five minutes apart, and they were much more intense. This time it was genuine. I reassured her I'd be home soon, and went to find the principal trumpeter. Awkwardly and apologetically, I told him I thought my wife was going into labor.

He conferenced with the personnel manager (who was also awaiting an imminent delivery from the principal bassoonist's wife) and they found another sub to put on call. I assured them that I would do everything in my power to make the concert, and they (wonderfully) assured me that family came first, and to look to my wife's interests. I drove home, picked up Julie, and drove again to the hospital and the triage room. We waited longer this time, but the news was the same. Julie was not dilating. This time we didn't linger for a second measurement, but just wanted to go home. We were both disappointed, and Julie was starting to be in considerable pain. A kind doctor wrote her a pain prescription, and we had it filled on the way home. It did some good for her, but our nerves were being worn thin.

Neither of us had slept properly for some time, and with the hubbub of the previous night we were both spent. The afternoon was spent in nervous puttering (I had called off of LCS, having thought I'd be in the hospital) and we waited for any changes in Julie's condition. Her pain medication did slightly slow the contractions, but that magical moment (the breaking of her water) still hadn't come. Early in the evening I called into the orchestra and told them I'd be at the concert. I came, I fretted, I played. Two concerts down, two to go. Still no baby.

On Saturday, 11-19, we wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Really we just wandered about our living room, and really it was just me wandering since Julie had hurt her back earlier in the week. She tried to nap while I paced and read, and we waited, waited, waited. We both started to think about the word "induce," but held off a little longer yet. Oliver was on call for me at Gates the next morning...but I had nothing to tell him. There was still a sub lined up for RPO, but nothing to report. The evening came, and I drove in (in some early snow) for the last Philharmonics concert. Three concerts down, one to go. Still no baby.

After another sleepless night, I drove into CPC on Sunday morning, and reported to my disappointed choir that there was still no news. I drove home, and found Julie exhausted on the couch downstairs. She had been, whatever the "type," in labor since Thursday night, and her contractions continued now as fiercely as ever. The date for induction had been set at Tue. 11-22 by our personal obstetrician, but we both knew that we couldn't wait that long. Whatever we would gain by waiting for labor's natural onset would be lost by the continuing toll of the contractions. If we waited any longer, she simply wouldn't have any stamina. We called the hospital, and they told us to come in at 4 PM. My last concert was at 2. I drove in, and as I'd done all week, played with my phone on my stand. It finished at 3 PM, and I had kept all of my foolish promises.

With the Bills being manhandled by the lowly Miami Dolphins on the radio, Julie and I drove into Strong. Having caught the nursing staff on a shift change, it was about 5 PM before we were checked into our birthing room and officially initiated. (I don't think it's official until you're wearing an uncomfortable plastic bracelet.) This, we told ourselves, was it. Our son was being born today. We let our parents know, and prepared to get things started.

The nurses set up a drip and (after fussing with the very expensive looking machines) gave Julie pitocin, the "inducement" drug. It worked. On the lowest possible setting, her contractions immediately increased in frequency, intensity, and duration. We were visited by staff members, (including an ultrasound technician who gave as an ever-so-brief glimpse of a face) and given vague assurances that we could speak to an anesthetist anytime we wished. We'd decided to play the anesthesia decision by ear, and I still think Julie could have delivered without any drugs if her labor had come on more quickly. Between her exhaustion, however, and the additional intensity of the pitocin-induced contractions, we decided to ask for an epidural.

Around 10 PM an anesthetist arrived. She spoke in a thick and menacing-sounding Russian accent, but gave us nothing but encouragement. The procedure was quick and easily done, and all of a sudden Julie was a new woman. My parents stopped by to visit us, and were even kind enough to bring me dinner. (From McDonald's the only place open at such a late hour...I was that hungry.) The epidural continued its magic, and Julie was convinced she might even be able to sleep for a bit. I agreed, and made myself as comfortable as I could in the "spouse chair" next to her bed.

Here again, our stories diverge. The next thing I remember is someone saying my name and telling me that I was missing my son being born. I was, at this point, quite sleep-deprived, and I apparently went down hard when I fell asleep. Julie had also fallen asleep, but apparently woke up around 2 or 2:30 AM, and without the slightest clue as to where I was. She was positioned away from the chair where I slept, and when she couldn't crane her neck back to where I was sleeping the in the darkened room, or elicit an answer to her calling my name into the dark, she presumed that I'd stepped out for some reason. Her contractions started up quite intensely again, and then she told her nurse it was time to push.

With me still asleep, doctors and students were assembled, and the pushing phase was begun. After fifteen minutes or so, Julie asked again where I was. A student asked, "is that this guy asleep in the chair." Julie instructed that I be woken up, which I was, and in considerable confusion. I immediately leapt to my feet and had the following thoughts:
-I think I'm dreaming...Julie's asleep with the epidural, and we're still just waiting for her to reach 10 cm.
-I don't know any of the people in this room
-My stomach is reminding me why I never eat fast food

Eventually I came into consciousness and realized what was happening. Julie proved to me over the next hour that everything that's ever been assumed about men being tougher than women is nonsense. She was a heroine, and while I was queasy and near-fainting at her knee, she was, incredibly, moving our child closer and closer to life. The doctors showed me his head, and confirmed that he was "sunny-side-up," which would complicate his delivery.

They gave wonderful encouragement to Julie while she was in the midst of pushes, but then promptly demonstrated that it wasn't to be trusted when the supervisor said "Push, Julie! He's almost here!" and then turned to a colleague and remarked "Okay, looks like that woman in 17 is about to deliver. I'll be back in a bit." Julie, however, outpaced their expectations. At the critical moment, only one other doctor and myself were in the room. The others were quickly called, and we saw that the baby was about to emerge.

If you don't know what an episiotomy is, please, do not attempt to find out. I saw that a doctor was about to inflict one upon my wife, and then was when my already unsettled stomach gave out. (Disclaimer: Not that that was anything compared to what Julie was going through) Someone saw me turn white and said "Sit down, Dad, get him out of the way." I remember sitting down and holding a bowl, and as soon as I did I heard a new sound, and then excitement. I stood up, and all of a sudden there was a human being there.

I was beyond amazed. He was a real person, and he was bleating, and looking up with wide open eyes. Julie was attempting to look at him, but couldn't see, and there were several people talking to me at once. I heard someone ask, "what's his name?"

I answered "his name is James" and realized that I was sobbing. There was a pair of scissors in my hand, and I cut his cord, and then his eyes met mine. His cries were just soft mews, and someone had put a cap on his full head of dark hair. He looked like us. I could see my eyes and Julie's ears, and the shape of my face. That a baby was coming had been my all-consuming thought for the past weeks, but I was somehow completely taken by surprise that he would be a person. I held him, and Julie held him, and we loved him. A child was born to us at 4:30 that morning, and his name is James.

LCS Devotions

To many or even most of you, what I’ve brought in to speak about may be so rudimentary that it is either boring or laughable. For me, this was a revelation which re-charted my worldview quite dramatically, but for you who discovered it long ago, or perhaps even had the good fortune of never needing to “learn” the lesson at all, having grown up in nutritious soil, what I have to say may be like going back to multiplication tables. Still, if there is any one of you who has not given contemplation to this thought—and it is certainly not a sin if you haven’t—I encourage you to work out the wondrous consequences.

The truth, previously hidden from me, to which I refer, is this—that this body, according to St. Paul, these very hands and this hair and these fingernails, is in some mysterious way, headed towards immortality. Again, this would seem too obvious to merit comment, but it is a resounding note indeed to someone who, all his life, has assumed that only his disembodied consciousness was eternal, to which the body was but a temporary husk.

This all began to boil when I undertook to answer the question “What was it exactly that the first apostles brought to Asia Minor and the Mediterranean when they announced the euangelion for the very first time?” How would any of you choose to summarize the Christian gospel to those who have never even heard of it? Would you start with the Creator God, as Genesis does? Or the Ten Commandments, the natural law imprinted on the heart of humankind? Perhaps Yaweh’s dramatic actions on behalf of Israel? The foretelling and incarnation of Jesus? His moral teachings? It is certainly typical of modern evangelists to start with the actions on the cross, especially as they concern our atonement theology. All of these threads are found in the kerygma of the first apostles, but there is one idea super-eminent, to which these truths are but supporting points; important structural pieces to the central fact which the apostles made their theme to the Gentiles: The Resurrected Christ. When Paul entered the agora, before he discoursed on propitiation or justification, he announced that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead. I Corinthians 15:3-4 says “for I entrusted to you in the foremost, even what I received, that the Messiah died for the sake of our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.”

It is fitting here to open I Corinthians 15, Paul’s defense of and treatise on the Christian resurrection doctrines. It is often quite correctly said that the Jewish hope of the 1^st century, while widely expecting a Messiah, did not expect one that would mildly dismiss their revolutionary hopes by ordering them to “render unto Caesar.” It is similarly true that the Jewish hope of the 1^st century, while expecting, at least among the Pharisees, some sort of universal resurrection of the dead, did not anticipate the Messiah to be slain, and then, before the general resurrection, raised himself. This is why Paul calls him the aparche, the first-portion of the general resurrection. “For since through a man, Death, even through a man, the resurrection of the dead. For just as in Adam all died, thus even in the Messiah all will be made alive.” Jesus is therefore the archetype to which we look for our own hope, and the means by which that hope will be realized.

What can we know about our own hope? The accounts of his early appearances are certainly stranger than fiction. The Lord’s body and countenance were changed, but also recognizable. He passed through doors and over long distances in the manner of a ghost, but it is clearly recorded, in each account, that his body carried on normal functions. It could touch, be touched, and eat a piece of fish. N.T. Wright, the Anglican theologian, has suggested calling this state “transphysical”—the body which is a human body, but no longer subject to death, corruption, or apparently, some of physical laws which otherwise govern us. Our hope is our own body, but changed. Paul says “it is sown in corruption, but raised in incorruption, sown in dishonor, but raised in glory, sown in weakness, raised in might, sown a soulish body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a soulish body, there is even a spiritual, and thus it is written the first man Adam became unto a living soul, the last Adam unto a life-making spirit.”

I have neither the time nor the expertise to give a full analysis of this passage, but I ought to say that there have been some very bad mistranslations of this passage, given precedent by a liberty in the KJV for psuchikon as “natural” instead of “soulish” which has led to some confusion on what sort of hope we have. Neither was the psuche, in Paul’s language, an eternal consciousness which was merely housed in the body before its release at death, but it was rather the animating principle of a man’s “natural” and “supernatural” existence. What Paul says in these few verses is not “through Adam we exist in bodies, through Christ we will exist without bodies in heaven.” If so, he would contradict 41 preceding verses on the importance of the resurrection! Paul says through Adam we are creatures whose existence is “animated” by our own souls now…through Christ, we will be made alive by being “animated” by God’s Spirit.

What then, are we able to take from this? First, we ought to rethink our future hope, especially as it’s expressed in our hymnody. We are neither “going to a golden shore,” “escaping this world of woe” or “going to the blessed land.” A great deal of our talk about “getting to heaven” has to be rethought and reinterpreted through the resurrection of the body. It would be much more to St. Paul’s point to suggest that heaven is coming to this flesh, this hair, these kneecaps.

Secondly, we shouldn’t give any ground to the Platonic dualism in which the body/matter is evil, and the spirit is good. There are some passages in John’s writings that lean towards this, but his indictment of the flesh, or sarx, never goes so far as to say that it is irredeemable. In other words, we mustn’t think that the Messiah came only to save our souls…he came to save our lives, body and soul, and we don’t help ourselves by attempting to scapegoat the one and sever ourselves. This world, this whole cosmos, is promised a redemption/resurrection as well, and there is likewise no place in Christian political theory for writing the whole thing of as a doomed venture headed for destruction. Whatever destruction does come, there is a revivification to be had afterwards.

And lastly, the doctrine of the resurrection gives enormous dignity to what you and I are doing. You see, if the extent of our future hope is to simply exist as disembodied vapors of personality (and I realize I’m considerably underselling the reality that, even in this theory, we would be vapors in the presence of God’s throne) there would be very little point to whatever we do on this physical earth. St. Paul would suggest we ought to be pitied above all men, if there be no resurrection. D.L. Moody, laboring under this mistake, once suggested that he was aboard a sinking vessel and his task was to get as many souls into lifeboats as he could. But what if we were not only to save souls, but to salvage the ship itself? And, to extend the analogy, what if the repaired ship might some day come into harbor? If the dead are raised, let us write symphonies, let us teach children about the Pythagorean Theorem, let us read Herodotus and build universities. “Where then, O Death, is your victory, and where is your sting? But thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Gig, Gigere, Gigi, Gigatum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nYa1jc5u_s

It's gig season! I'm out the door in a few minutes to an RPO Phils rehearsal, followed by wrap-ups of our run-out shows later this week, and then a week of Holiday Pops, shows for two different brass quintets, Christmas Eve services, school concerts, and did I mention I played a Messiah in Buffalo? It's great, but I miss J and the baby, not to mention the other people (mostly brothers and sisters) who I'm not seeing as much as I'd like.

...continued after gigging...

There was finally a break! Yesterday we took James out to meet Uncle Lux for the first time (also meeting his Great-Grandparents Dudley) and had dinner with the Blessed Mother and Father. Here are some of the scatteratti going on in the Smith household:

-M Laine is becoming a more and more polished artist. I watched her yesterday add watercolor to exquisitely drawn greeting cards (done freehand, no less!) and marveled at her skill.

-I'm in the mood, at a very unlikely time, for a Great Clean. I want to clean my desk at school, my choir room, our whole house (except maybe the bathroom) and both of our cars. Whence comes this impulse? I ought to act on it before it passes, but I don't know when I'll have the time.

-This  is the most interesting political idea I've heard in quite some time. Perhaps some credit to Neil Postman is order, for pointing out the discrepancy?

-I'm under constant temptation to provoke my coworkers at LCS by using the term X-Mas instead of Christmas, just to see what they'll do. It really is convenient shorthand.

-I read Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition, which is probably the first American political book I've read since the Education of Henry Adams. It was excellent, especially the essays on the Founding Fathers, William Jennings Bryan, and Herbert Hoover.

-This site and this site have become daily pleasures.

-Many thanks to Pax, who filled in for me at CPC so I could play a Rutter Gloria with the RPO brass at a church in Greece.

-I gave a short devotional at LCS last Wednesday, to be published shortly...

Dad at Work

Today begins a new season in the Smith house, when Dad (that, all of a sudden, is me) goes to work, and J stays home with the baby. There won't be as much time for writing anymore. Our bedtime has moved from 10:30 to 8, and there is a little boy to play with once I'm home. Here, however, are some of the literary/musical highlights from the past weeks.

Reading Iliad 8, Bede, and Aquinas, Euripides, Luke, Juvenal finished re-reading some Virgil; in English, read the Jane Eyre, the CS Lewis Letters Vol. 3, Tender is the Night, A Passage to India, and The Book Thief and currently reading The Help.

Played Roberto Sierra's Sinfonia No. 4 on an RPO program with Bolero, and also lucked into playing the attached Symphony 101. I believe it's been so long since I've blogged that I would need to include the Mahler 2 program on that list (top 3 performances I've ever been a part of) as well as an unsuccessful trip down to Charlotte.

Currently thinking and arguing about: The meaning of Romans as it pertains to a completed or continuing Jewish hope, Hebrew construct chains, Christian education, the diminution of Advent in the liturgical calendar, and how one goes about raising a child.

My best find on the internet in quite some time:
http://ephemeris.alcuinus.net/index.php
http://yle.fi/radio1/tiede/nuntii_latini/

I have the following list of literary projects, and wonder which should come first. Thoughts?
-A written account of the final days of J's pregnancy, through James' birth and first few days
-A typed prospectus for a popular book on Authority to send to Christian publishers
-A typed prospectus of a translation of the 3rd Harry Potter book into Latin to send to Bloomsbury
-A humorous pseudo-academic work on Paliurnus, the first trumpeter killed by the gods
-A conspiracy theory alleging that William McKinley's assassination at the Pan-American exposition was the beginning of an effort to keep the seat of federal power from relocation to Buffalo, culminating in the sabotage of Buffalo sports teams
-A beginning guide to poetic meter and pronunciation
-The Pile of Dirt (a children's book)

Raised Right by Alisa Harris

If I could chat with Alisa Harris, I'd ask her why she chose to subtitle her book "How I Untangled My Faith from Politics." The process she describes doesn't sound like an untangling as much as it does a reconciliation. She doesn't throw Christianity in the trash when she learns about the poor, but learns the true meaning of Matthew's gospel. She doesn't put her Bible on the shelf when she learns how corrupt politicians can be, but rather becomes as "shrewd as a snake." Still, she insists on delineating her faith (a socially conservative Pentecostalism) as something provincial and outgrown while only thinking about the Faith, the timeless and universal truth of which her parents were a variation, in doubtful language.

Alisa's story is a common one; she grew up buying into the unthinking fundamentalism of her church and friends, believing her little congregation privy to all truth. She traveled, and realized the world was a bigger place than she had originally suspected. Her story is printable largely because of the stringency of her particular background--a simplified version of Christianity with all the peripheral and minor doctrines magnified to distortion--and because of her ardent and over-susceptible childhood, which she paints as rather tragicomic.

I'm still not sure why the book, in the end, was necessary. Alisa becomes a Democrat, which is a perfectly normal and reasonable thing to do; but it doesn't sound like her decision was a reasoned one. She records no arguments or debates; she unveils no revelations. She simply finds the world big, weeps a bit, and then, apologetically, votes for Obama. She finds that the litmus tests of homosexuality and abortion are insufficient to keep her voting red; but says anything about homosexuality or abortion beyond "I once was much more sure about these issues." It's fine to doubt, and indeed, better to doubt honestly than to be stupidly sure. But did young Christians need another book of heartfelt doubts? I believe Ms. Harris to be a talented writer. Perhaps in her next book we'll hear some development on these doubts as she makes her way through the wide world.

Neolithic Man

by Charoltte Perkins Gilman

There was once a Neolithic Man,
An enterprising wight,
Who made his chopping implements
Unusually bright.
Unusually clever he,
Unusually brave,
And he drew delightful Mammoths
On the borders of his cave.
 
To his Neolithic neighbors,
Who were startled and surprised,
Said he, "My friends, in course of time,
We shall be civilized!
We are going to live in cities!
We are going to fight in wars!
We are going to eat three times a day
Without the natural cause!
We are going to turn life upside down
About a thing called gold!
We are going to want the earth, and take
As much as we can hold!
We are going to wear great piles of stuff
Outside our proper skins!
We are going to have diseases!
And Accomplishments!!  And Sins!!!" 
 
Then they all rose up in fury
Against their boastful friend,
For prehistoric patience
Cometh quickly to an end.
Said one, "This is chimerical!
Utopian!  Absurd!"
Said another, "What a stupid life!
Too dull, upon my word!"
Cried all, "Before such things can come,
You idiotic child,
You must alter Human Nature!"
And they all sat back and smiled.
Thought they, "An answer to that last
It will be hard to find!"
It was a clinching argument
To the Neolithic Mind!

An Email

Sent to several friends regarding this column:

http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html

This was an interesting read. I'm writing straight from my notes here instead of organizing a true written response, so please be patient if it comes a little scattered.

First, I'd like some more clarity on what Green means by "not a place" but still "real experienced conditions." Does he mean, then, that heaven and hell are states of mind detached without any physical conditions? (i.e. in eternity we are disembodied, and our minds/consciousnesses are the only conduits of perception) This will lead quickly back to talk of the resurrection of the dead, which I didn't find much developed in this article, but in the way I understand heaven and hell, is the central fact. I can entertain the notion that hell is more a state of mind than a plotted place on a map, but whether its experienced with or without the body (i.e. whole person) is very important to distinguish.

Second, I think that Green overplays his hand very badly on two points. First, that the Western Christian imagery of hell-as-a-place was nowhere to be found before the Great Schism, and second, that the biblical language supports his pet theory that hell is within the presence of God. More on these later as well.

He's probably right that Sheol ought to be transliterated. That's about as much as I'm able to say, with my very little Hebrew, about translations in the O.T. He's certainly right about the Greek view of Hades paralleling that of the old Jews; Hades/Sheol is the abode of the ghosts of both the righteous and the wicked, but these ghosts are not whole people. They are echoes of the men, while (as it says in the Iliad) the men themselves lie in their graves. This is all quite different than the Platonic notion that the body is merely a temporary home of the real person, the leaving of which will provide a higher, more spiritual existence. To nearly all ancient people there wasn't really a life-after-death to speak of. With time, the Greek view became more nuanced. The particularly wicked had punishments imagined for them in Hades, and something like Elysium (still in the same "locality") was imagined for the blessed. The Platonic philosophers talked about the soul as the seat of existence, and believed it to be immortal, while other schools dabbled in something like re-incarnation. (You see this in Virgil, which I blogged about here.) And of course, as was often the case in Greco-Roman religion, none of these contradictions really bothered anyone. There was a comfortable jumble of possibilities in Hades, and no one really had anything staked on it. Life (except for a very few, like Socrates) was only really had in the body, and what came afterwards was a number of varied, but ultimately inconsequential possibilities.

In Jewish thought, hints of resurrection creep in by the late psalms and minor prophets, and there is a full blown expectation of it (though it wasn't the center of their religious hopes) by the time of the Maccabean uprising. Indeed, it was the subject of their dying words as they were executed in the temple. It's fairly well established that by N.T. times, the Pharisees and Essenes represented religious interests whose defining dogmas concerned the resurrection. For the Jews of Jesus' time, Hades was still the abode of the righteous and the wicked after death, but it was a stopping-house before a bodily resurrection. (And when I say Jews, I should note that there was pluriformity in Israel as well, although not to the extent of the rest of the Hellenistic world)

So, then for the Old Testament. Again, I can't speak for his specific accusations about bad translation and word study, but I think he's generally on the right track in his representation of the Jewish/Hellenistic interplay. I would make, in transitioning to the New Testament, one observation about Gehenna: no one seems to be able to mention the word (which appears in Hebrew and transliterated Greek) without the obligatory explanation about how it was Jerusalem's burning garbage heap, therefore the association with fire, therefore hellfire, etc. I can't find any evidence of this "fact" before the 19th century. It isn't present in the scriptures, the early church fathers, or any of the rabbinical literature I've read. I wonder if, like the bell attached to the high priest's ankles when he entered the Holy of Holies, or the low gate in Jerusalem that was called the Eye of the Needle, it's actually a Christian urban legend, something that might've come from the 19th century version of Wikipedia. All three of these "facts" would make sense given their context and clarify a confusion, but without seeing any real historical evidence for them, I think we have to leave them as theories. (If anyone has any solid historical evidence, please let me know, and I'll be happy to be corrected)

What then, do we know about fiery Gehenna? It might have actually been a burning rubbish-heap, or perhaps "going to Gehenna," like "going to Timbuktu" might have meant exactly what one would think it means from it's N.T. context. (Not going to the place per se, but to a separate, excluded place of eternal torment.)

I don't know how much we can take from the Lazarus parable. I strongly suspect that it tells us only that a locative heaven and hell were used as a story-telling device (like we use St. Peter at the pearly gates as a joke-telling device) and is not Jesus' systematic exposition of his views on the subject. Also, I'd like to know which passage in the Retractions of Augustine he's talking about. I don't remember anything about this, and don't have a copy at hand.

Onto some Greek...I make no claims to be anything other than barely competent, but I can spot a quack when I see one. Mr. Green is either overreaching his capabilities, or was taught very poorly. The preposition apo, in all dialects of Greek, means "from"/"away from," or "by means of." (It matches the Latin preposition ab/a almost exactly) Just this morning in reading Luke I translated verses saying "full of many people from (apo) all Judea and Jerusalem and the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, they came to hear him and to be healed from (apo) their sicknesses. The passage from II Thess. could be read with a sense of apo instrumentally (the word from, with it's locative/instrumental vagueness would be the closest match) but to change it to the meaning of kata or dia (because of, on account of ) is to take a very bold liberty with the text. It's an interesting theory, but it's far from the closed case he makes it out to be. Calvin might be able to clarify this further if he has his Wallace Grammar nearby, which I do not.

Similarly, all of his talk about Tartarus is misrepresenting. Tartarus, in Homer, is just lower hell. Yes, it is the home of the banished Titans, but it is also the abode of Sisyphus and Tantalus. It's the seat of Tisiphone...it is Hell, if ever there was a Hell with a capital H. (I wrote about it in the Aeneid here).

In addition to his interesting but hardly conclusive theories about God as fire, Green does his worst work talking about energeia. Yes, energeia sounds like energy, and the two words do have common relatives. But translators are absolutely right to translate the word the way they do; it is most often the verb ergo (work, accomplish) with the preposition en tacked on. The Holy Spirit energei is the Holy Spirit working in us, and that, not some kind of electrical force, would have been the most accurate connotation. All of his talk about the energies of God is a retrojection of 20th/21st century language on texts that had no clue about them.

All of these language discussions don't really come together into anything more profound than "there appears to be variegated language in the New and Old Testaments about hell." This is not new information. The leap from all which is discussed before to Green's own theory rests entirely on the syllogism: God loves all unconditionally; Unconditional love couldn't possibly lead to separated eternal torment; Therefore God would not torment anyone eternally. Now, I probably wouldn't choose the word unconditionally here. God's love is unconditional, but in the same sense that his justice and his holiness are unconditional. If God is the great First Mover, he doesn't require "conditions" to fully be any of the essential qualities of his person. So in that sense, yes, God loves unconditionally. But does it mean that God will disregard all acts of choice, righteousness, wickedness, virtue, vice, and circumstance in his dealings with mankind, both corporately and person to person? I don't think there's any evidence that's true.

Here are the two things we know for sure from the New Testament: 1) There will be a resurrection of the dead. (1 Cor. 15 for an explicit account of this) and 2) Everyone will appear before the bema seat of Jesus. (A judge's bench) (Rom 14:10, 2 Cor. 5:10). We don't know what the judgement of Jesus will be, and we don't know who will get what. We should, if we have any decency, pray regularly for universal mercy. Wouldn't it seem wonderful to us if all was forgiven everyone? It may even be hard for us to imagine how a God whose essence is love could do anything otherwise, but consider our circumstances: We live in an age in which the principal measure of a person's life-story is success or failure in romantic love. (Try to imagine any novel without this as the driving theme if you don't believe me; now try to imagine inserting that theme into any ancient text.) Couple that with our profound ignorance of fear and evil. When was the last time any of us were truly afraid? We do, I believe, all remember some moment of real fear, perhaps being alone outside in the dark, or hearing footsteps downstairs that shouldn't have been there. Yet most of the time we eat safe, sanitized food, and we can drive out darkness with electric lights, stave off the cold with gas heating, and lock our sturdy doors to the conditions of most of historical humanity. And despite our wish to ignore it, there is evil. Indeed, if we let down our puffery and pride for half a moment and look honestly at how we've cheated and deceived, we can acknowledge how each of us really are split ourselves, not to mention the corporate (oppression by a group of people) or natural (tsunamis, hurricanes) evils. And thus we stand, an age living in denial of danger or evil, and overly enamored with shallow meanings of "love." Is it any surprise that we should be discomfited by the idea of real danger in the beyond, or of a containment of evil?

Again, let us pray for universal mercy. But let's not think that just because we don't like the idea of hell that we can erase it from our theology, just as we've done to the angels. (Another topic that was vague in the scriptures, over-played in the Middle Ages, and now written of as superstition today.) It's in thinking about the angels that I almost would subscribe to Green's theory, that the presence of God (see, by the way, Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, on the terror of the numinous is a searing pain to the mortal eye and mind. Anytime an angel enters the pages of scripture, his first words must be Fear Not...they certainly inspire fear! Yet does this mean that hell is the experience of our own poor choices? It is just as likely it means that the Holy, even when it comes in peace, is a terror...so what about when it comes in judgement?

Here's an interesting idea of what Hell might actually look like from N.T. Wright: Our distinguishing characteristic as living organisms is our partly divine heritage. We are animals, like mammals in most outward respects, but partly descended from the gods. We are, being made, in imago Dei, bearers of a divine likeness. The principal effect of sin (original and otherwise) is a defacing of that image. In fact, the further one is given into sin, the less Divine and more animal he becomes; the more he begins to bear the image of the idol he worships, be that lust, greed, or sloth. Wright suggests that Hell might be the final removal of the divine image...a giving over unto animal nature, to be tormented forever by being subjected to their own idolatry. (Like in Narnia, when the beasts that are given speech revert back to being just dumb beasts.) I like the reasoning behind this idea, though of course it's just a theory and no more absolutely proven than Green's...but isn't it curious that they move in such opposite directions? That one is the removal of the divine and the other is it's nearer presence?

The curious thing about this whole recent muddle over hell (and I still haven't read Rob Bell's book...is there anyone who has a copy?) is that it isn't nearly as controversial or interesting as the muddle we should be having over heaven. There may or may not be human souls in hell following the end of all things, but there certainly won't be human souls in heaven...the astounding truth of the resurrection of the dead is that heaven is coming here.

Ken Robinson on Education

I'm terribly concerned that I might be interested in education after all. This is disturbing for me, an avowed professional musician who teaches grade school "just to pay the bills." I'm afraid that if I start participating in the conversation, I'll have compromised my position aloof. If I'm particularly careless I might accidentally stay late or start having conversations with the other faculty members. This has all been prompted by watching this video, a presentation by Sir Ken Robinson on education at a TED conference several years ago. I appreciate Mr. Robinson on several levels. Trivially, he has a charming accent. He speaks with a cadence at the end of his statements that you never hear in American English; it's very engaging. He is also to be highly commended for his use of language, especially on his chosen topic. When was the last time you heard or read someone on the subject of education and you didn't start counting cliches? Contrast Mr. Robinson's thoughts with this recent address by President Obama. The White House address is full of meaningless teacher-babble like "modernizing our schools," "teaching to the test," "out-educate us today, out-compete us tomorrow." Mr. Robinson, on the other hand, doesn't employ a single word without an evocative meaning and value.

Enough, however, about style; the substance of what he says is the really critical part, and here we find ourselves in agreement on several points. First, the world is changing around us, and the instrument of education is our only real hope to keep that change somewhat under control. The technical advances of the past 150 years (I begin with the telegraph) have radically changed the way in which people live in the world. We are presently hurling headlong toward whatever changes the next year of technical advances may bring, without any notion of what those changes will be, and without any realistic opportunity, should we desire it, of putting brakes on the progress. In fact, the world seems only to be changing faster. These changes do not only touch our use of machines. Our political and religious discourse have been funneled through new media, and accordingly reshaped. Sex, after birth control, is changed. Our ideas of privacy and identity are being reshaped. We are deluged with information, images, and ideas. How will anyone learn to make sense of it unless through education? Mr. Robinson argues that education only adds to these problems by "educating children out of their creative capacity."

Mr. Robinson urges us to leave off the practice of stigmatizing "wrong" responses. It is in every child's willingness to be wrong, he says, wherein lies their capacity to be creative; a capacity that we cure them of. He says this comes from an obsession with only one organ of the child's body, and one side of it; a particular set of correct answers to be known and stored in the brain.

Here I would make my contribution to the great conversation Mr. Robinson has started: There is little chance for art if we aren't willing to set boundaries, and little chance for preserving our Western history if we aren't willing to observe what CSL calls the Tao. As regards creativity, it must be observed that most of the great triumphs of the arts have come from strict requirements about form. There are, of course, in most great works (and artists) alterations or progressions of form, but still a fundamental mastery of loyalty to a pre-determined pattern. Mozart was brilliantly creative, but Leopold corrected his mistakes. When Mozart learned composition, he wasn't given a blank sheet of manuscript paper and told to be original; he was given a cantus firmus and told to harmonize it without writing parallel 5ths or crossing voices. John Cage has thrown away the cantus firmus and the rules of counterpoint to liberate his "creativity" and is left still only with the blank paper. The same is true of dance and the visual arts. A child's creative capacity in dance may be a splendid thing, but at some point she must learn the difference between a foxtrot and a gavotte if she wishes to create anything really original; and that means that she can't do the gavotte steps during the foxtrot, or vice-versa.

The parallel truth to the importance of forms in the arts is the truth of form in education. Mr. Robinson advocates that the arts be given equal status with literacy and math. (On an aside, it grieves me to think that "literacy" has somehow become something other than one of the arts...shouldn't it be called the art of letters?) This is a very democratic idea, but I don't think it's quite right, and Mr. Robinson's own example illustrates my point. He has a laugh at college professors for living only in their heads, and leaving their bodies off as some sort of necessary casement for their brain. This is, of course, both humorous and true. But it is also true that the head is the head. If there must be a head (in the authoritative sense), the head ought to be the head of the body. This doesn't mean that there's only a head, or that all the other parts must be headlike, but a head is important in a pre-eminent way, and in a way that fingers or belly buttons are not. Now, what are the things that a child ought to learn in school in order to be a healthy human being in the Western world? If the question were being asked of a child in some African tribe, where there were no radios or books, but a complex system of drumming that was used to communicate, entertain, organize, and inspire, we would say that the child must learn drumming. Even if he wouldn't be a great drummer himself, it would be absolutely vital that he understood what the drums meant; otherwise, how could he participate in his own society? The great storehouses of Western society is our literature. (Using the term in the broadest sense...one might almost say, our literacy). We have other repositories as well; we have classical music, the visual artistic tradition, the ability for rational thinking, and any number of contributing cultural traditions, but it is in light of this fact that the literary arts really do merit their primacy in our education. Our use of mathematics is closely tied to our value for rational thinking (what some call "abstracting") but mathematics has, in my opinion, overstepped its bounds in importance.

My words are not intended to be final words, especially in my own thinking. This talk is a continuing talk, and one that may not have fixed answers at the end. Perhaps in five years we shall have to scrap all the conclusions anyway. But in this grand talk, let's hope for more people who talk like Ken Robinson.

The Business of Soaking

Musicians don't really get days off. They work, by default, during the evenings and weekends. This means that when you attempt to work during the day and be a musician, you don't really ever have "time off." You work during the morning and afternoon, then you teach and perform in the evening. On weekends, you perform some more. On Sundays, you perform in church. And then it's Monday again! Fortunately, this Monday is a holiday, and I don't ever recall being so happy for one. Though I do still have to teach some lessons tonight--and thereby miss Canadian Thanksgiving at home--I've had a perfect day off.

The sad business about working so much is that it really leaves you very little time to get any work done. I've wanted to clean our nursery for some time now, and finally started the project today. I practiced for an upcoming audition, and caught up with some clerical household business. But fear not--I did "relax" as well. I spent a good hour sitting under the tree in our yard reading Cymbeline, as well as reading the Aeneid aloud. There's even a bottle of wine waiting for the end of lessons tonight.

Highlights from the weekend include moving Calvus and Beka into another apartment (to their mild frustration) and chatting with S about college plans. The lowlight was the first marching band parade of the year, which was a disaster. Our marching band

Didn't quite measure up to the others

Not to mention how much I loathe marching band music/culture in general...

Calvus and I read Merchant of Venice recently, and I've also been reading a Lewis Mumford book, a biography of Lorenzo di Medici, Faerie Queene, and Luke, Virgil, Homer, Aquinas, Bede, and Euripides.

Average Joe by Troy Meeder

Troy Meeder's book Average Joe is an unwelcome review. I do not delight in criticizing his work, and in many ways, I think it harmless. As an autobiography, or even as an apologia for his life, it does no ill. As a Christian document, it is dreadful. Average Joe is intended as a defense of the working-class man, a man who may not have received what he expected from career or fortune, but who remains faithful to his God and family nonetheless. Mr. Meeder recounts his own experiences of failure and wisened hindsight to affirm such men. He mistakenly counts the biblical heroes among them. Whoever King David was, he was by no means an "average Joe." Nor was Paul, nor Jesus. This would be near to suggesting that Mozart was an "average composer" who, by his sheer grit and American spirit, wrote some darned-good symphonies. It is either a gross historical error or a complete redefinition of the word "average."

I wondered, as I began to read this book, whether I might find anything approaching Horace's exhortation to the Golden Mean; satisfaction by balance. Mr. Meeder is, regrettably, uninterested in balance. (He denounces compromise) In fact, I don't believe Mr. Meeder writes with any intention other than defending himself. He may not be wrong to do so--he seems, from his own portrait, at least, an honest and sincere man--but it is not wisdom to be commended to others. At various points Mr. Meeder assures the "average" man that the future is all foreintentioned by a loving God. Only a few chapters later, he insists that the whole problem boils down to our choices. His description of the spiritual life is inseparable from his experience of the California outdoors. He describes and petitions God in the pseudoromantic language of the modern praise chorus. He is unashamedly anti-intellectual (taking time for several incursions against lawyers, the educated, and those that would frequent "metrosexual coffee shops") and asserts the great fundamentalist arrogance: My ignorance is as enlightening as your knowledge. I believe, at root, this is the thesis of his whole book: My mediocrity is as satisfying as your accomplishment.

The book contains very little in the way of instruction for the "average Joe" initiate. Meeder's spiritual counsel only touches on sin management, with the remedy of "try harder" urged in various ways. At his worst, he appears to be advocating his experience as the destination of all Christians: What we all really need is to be middle-class Republican American evangelicals. Many of these types are my dearest friends, but most of them sense that they aren't the climax of Christendom. I'm afraid that Mr. Meeder thinks he is, or at least his purified version. He looks at Paul and David, and sees cowboys! Mr. Meeder may wish his life to be read in the Ford truck commercial voice, but he ought not suggest it be used for the Bible.

Orwell and a Hard Decision

A few weeks ago I found an Orwell novel at the local used bookstore called Keep the Aspidistra Flying. It was my last summer novel before the school year started, and it was, as is always the case with Orwell, a provocative book. It tells the story of Gordon Comstock, a poet who has declared a personal war on Money. Living in England after the first World War, he is disgusted by the servitude of all around him to the endless and pointless task of earning more money. He is pressed reluctantly through school towards employable skills, and then coerced into finding a "good job"--something that will preserve the appearance of middle-class respectability. This unspoken pressure to be respectable is personified by the aspidistra, an ugly and useless plant kept in most middle class windows at the time. It can survive with little water or light, and scarcely anything--even burning it with half smoked cigarettes--seems to be able to kill it. Gordon finds ready employment in the advertising industry, where he has an unwelcome talent for writing slogans. He despises his vapid co-workers, the artless job, and the waste of his real literary talent. He is allured by some small successes in his poetic work to quit the advertising firm and devote himself fully to real literature, taking a menial job as a bookseller to support himself. He finds in doing so that his creative and personal vitality is sapped by lack of money; he doesn't have money to eat, smoke, have a cup of tea, or even take his girlfriend (Rosemary) for a train ride in the country. Constantly feeling the pressure of family and the ubiquitous aspidistra to take a "good job," he maintains his principled stand and works when he can to become a real poet, tortured by days when success seems imminent, followed by days of utter despair at his failure. Broke, indebted, and friendless, he learns that Rosemary is pregnant with his child. With London Pleasures (his unfinished magnum opus) in his pocket, he reluctantly takes the hateful job that will cost him his literary future but will provide for Rosemary and his unborn child.


"He was aware of a lumpish weight in his inner pocket. It was the manuscript of London Pleasures. He took it out and had a look at it under the street lamp. A great wad of paper, soiled and tattered, with that peculiar, nasty, grimed-at-the-edges look of papers which have been a long time in one's pocket. About four hundred lines in all. The sole fruit of his exile, a two years' fetus which would never be born. Well, he had finished with all that. Poetry! Poetry, indeed! In 1935!
What should he do with the manuscript? Best thing, shove it down the w.c. But he was a long way from home and had not the necessary penny. He halted by the iron grating of a drain. In the window of the nearest house an aspidistra, a striped one, peeped between the yellow lace curtains. He unrolled a page of London Pleasures. In the middle of the labyrinthine scrawlings a line caught his eye. Momentary regret stabbed him. After all, parts of it weren't half bad! If only it could ever be finished! It seemed such a shame to shy it way after all the work he had done on it. Save it, perhaps? Keep it by him and finish it secretly in his spare time? Even now it might come to something. 
No, no! Keep your parole. Either surrender or don't surrender. 
He doubled up the manuscript and stuffed it between the bars of the drain. It fell with a plop into the water below.
Vicisti, O aspidistra!"

A little over two weeks ago I was offered a fellowship with the New World Symphony Orchestra in Miami, FL. For the past ten years I have studied to be an orchestral trumpet player. I have practiced every day, I have attended six years of school, and I have taken more auditions than I can count. At times I've been among the last few standing at the finals. At times I've not even advanced beyond the first round.
My wife has waited patiently for me win an audition. She has endured daily hours of the same excerpts for years, listened to my inevitable vomiting the night before an audition, consoled me in the aftermath, and sacrificed much financial and personal stability that could be had by the same zealous pursuit of a career teaching music in the public schools.
The process of our decision was complicated and wretched. It came to us unsought, and with either choice would come much grieving. The orchestra, which is a musical academy functioning as a full-time performing orchestra, was only able to offer us dormitory-style housing in the company of twentysomethings. Accepting the fellowship would require us to leave friends and family in Rochester. It would mean the sacrifice of our professional inroads in the NY area. It would mean that our son would only see his uncles and grandparents over holidays. It would have no guarantee of a job or income at the end of the three and a half year program. It would mean the sacrifice of my uninteresting but hard-to-find teaching job at LCS.
I couldn't abide the thought of not going. Every former orchestra member and professional connection recommended the program with high praise. Those who knew us personally and our situation told us not to go. None envied the task of making the decision. Should we voluntarily turn down a won audition? Should we bring an infant to a cramped dormitory in Miami?
During and after I shrunk from the counsel of Christians. They simplified the decision to a choice between family or career values. They insinuated that God had purposed this, as some sort of test. They promised great rewards if I chose the right answer on the test. They are people I love and respect. And they (unwittingly) painted our God as a vivisectionist, directing me along ten years of work only to be forced to kill with my own hands the long-awaited issue. Yet perhaps it is time to rethink a God I would prefer be distant and, on my terms, benevolent.

ὃν γὰρ ἀγαπᾷ Κύριος παιδεύει,
     μαστιγοῖ δὲ πάντα υἱὸν ὃν παραδέχεται.

For the Lord loves he who he rears, and chastises every son he recieves.

I do not know why the events of the past few weeks have come. Was I committing some sort of career idolatry that needed to be punished? I still don't have an answer. I do know that there are two things I find untenable. One is to stop taking orchestra auditions, if there is, somewhere, a chair in an orchestra where I can play Brahms and Bach for a living. The second, and more important, is to compromise how I love my wife. It would have been dishonor to compel her to Florida, although, I think, she would have gone. It is dishonor now for me to sulk and hold it against her, as I have selfishly done for the past few days. No more--it was already a marvel and a wonder that I should have the privilege to be married to her. I will forget it no longer.

O aspidsitra, invicti erimus.

vosmet ipsos temptate si estis in fide

What are we to conclude? In every act of faith, there are two elements at work. First there is the formula, the conceptual complex containing the truth to which we assent. This presents itself to our mind like any other intentional knowledge: in the form of a judgement. But it does not enlighten the mind in the same way as ordinary knowledge. On the natural plane, a conceptual judgement illuminates the mind by the clear evidence which is contains. In an act of faith, the conceptual content of the proposition throws no light, of, itself, upon the understanding. The difference between belief and unbelief is not measured by our power to grasp the meaning of the articles of faith. A man may acquire a profound technical knowledge of the theology of the Holy Trinity and never believe in the Trinity. Another who has no grasp of the dogmatic problems involved in the mystery may believe it. He is the one to whom God has made Himself "present." He is the one who is "saved." He is the one who can be raised to contemplation. Hence in every act of faith there is a second and more important element: an objective and supernatural light, penetrating the depths of the soul and communicating to it the real content of truth which cannot be fully grasped in the terms of the credible proposition.
Each of these two elements is absolutely necessary for an act of living faith, because there is an intimate relation between them. If the articles of faith were merely an occasion for the infusion of supernatural light, then it would not matter what God proposed to us for our belief. One concept would serve as well as another. But this would mean that the intentional content of our creed would be without value or meaning. Any creed could do as well. Hold anything you like! If you are sincere, God will infuse light into you, and you will know Him. But the God Who is Wisdom would not uselessly reveal a whole body of truths that had, in the end, no objective value. He Who is Truth would not complacently put His grace at the disposal of all, on the sole condition that they be ready to adhere to falsity on His account!
The relation between the conceptual content of faith and the infused light by which God actually gives us His Truth lies in this: that the truth is actually contained, in a hidden manner, in the articles of faith themselves. And it is by the light of faith that we find the truth in those articles.

Upcoming

I have much to write about, and at present neither the leisure nor perspective to do so. I hope to make some time soon.

I'm currently reading Thomas Merton's Ascent to Truth, a sort of introduction to the work's of St. John of he Cross. Calvus and I (later with Beka) started reading All's Well that End's Well earlier in the week, and are attempting to make our readings a weekly event. M Laine, meanwhile, has put together a reading of The Importance of Being Earnest this weekend.

I owe great thanks to J's brother Tim, who returned our quickly aging Neon with several thousands dollars of work done substantially discounted. Our siblings have been extraordinarily kind to us lately, as have been, among many others, our pastor and his wife.

Meanwhile, it's time for more reading. Every pair of fingernail shears we own seems to have disappeared. I've now cramped my fingers beyond writing any more, and it isn't any easier to type. Bother.

More to come.

Education Reading

Having taken a position at Lima Christian School for the coming year (yay! health insurance) I am doing my due diligence reading books about education philosophy. Doing this lets me 1) ponder my purposes as a teacher 2) avoid my due diligence reading on the childbirth process, which makes me squeamish whenever I think about it. I've checked out a couple of Neil Postman books about education and will probably re-read Abolition of Man. Any recommendations on the subject (of education, not childbirth) are welcome in the comments section.

I'm also currently reading Les Miserables, Livy, Iliad 6, I Corinthians, the Summa Contra, Bede, and the Apologia. I've been working on a blog about the parketos clause in Matthew 5 for over a week, and am officially stalled out. My trumpet practicing is also feeling a bit stalled out. Any recommendations are welcome in the comments section.

We enjoyed a visit with J's parents over the weekend. They, with her grandparents, bought us a crib. It is now assembled in the nursery, next to some children's books I picked up yesterday with M. We found Curious George, some Richard Scarry books, Hop on Pop, and the Velveteen Rabbit. There are many more to go! J and I came up with these others which we would like to find:

The Poky Little Puppy, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, The Mitten, Frog and Toad, Oliver Pig, Morris the Moose, The Story of Ping, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, The Little Red Hen, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Freight Train, Are You My Mother, Go Dogs Go, Harold and the Purple Crayon, Blueberries for Sal, the rest of the Seuss works, Where the Wild Things Are, Pierre and the other Sendak books...

Any necessary additions (pre reading age) please list in the comments!

Road to Wigan Pier, Part 2

Orwell’s accusation of post-war England, a society not greatly different than our own, is sobering.

But it is no use saying that people like the Brookers are just disgusting and trying to put them out of mind. For they exist in tens and hundreds of thousands; they are one of the characteristic by-products of the modern world. You cannot disregard them if you accept the civilization that produced them.

He continues in the second part of Road to Wigan Pier, and mutatis mutandis, again chills the blood of any American reader:

The same streak of soggy half-baked insincerity runs through all ‘advanced’ opinion. Take the question of imperialism, for instance. Every left-wing ‘intellectual’ is, as a matter of course, an anti-imperialist. He claims to be outside the empire-racket as automatically and self-righteously as he claims to be outside the class-racket. Even the right-wing ‘intellectual’, who is not definitely in revolt against British imperialism, pretends to regard it with a sort of amused detachment. It is so easy to be witty about the British Empire. The White Man's Burden and ‘Rule, Britannia’ and Kipling's novels and Anglo-Indian bores — who could even mention such things without a snigger? And is there any cultured person who has not at least once in his life made a joke about that old Indian havildar who said that if the British left India there would not be a rupee or a virgin left between Peshawar and Delhi (or wherever it was)? That is the attitude of the typical left-winger towards imperialism, and a thoroughly flabby, boneless attitude it is. For in the last resort, the only important question is. Do you want the British Empire to hold together or do you want it to disintegrate? And at the bottom of his heart no Englishman, least of all the kind of person who is witty about Anglo-Indian colonels, does want it to disintegrate. For, apart from any other consideration, the high standard of life we enjoy in England depends upon our keeping a tight hold on the Empire, particularly the tropical portions of it such as India and Africa. Under the capitalist system, in order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation — an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream. The alternative is to throw the Empire overboard and reduce England to a cold and unimportant little island where we should all have to work very hard and live mainly on herrings and potatoes. That is the very last thing that any left-winger wants. Yet the left-winger continues to feel that he has no moral responsibility for imperialism. He is perfectly ready to accept the products of Empire and to save his soul by sneering at the people who hold the Empire together.

I should like to think even among the “detached right-wingers” there is a more appropriate sobriety regarding the Imperium Americana; perhaps we are only more naïve. Yet as regards third-world debt, political autonomy, and international safety, we have recapitulated the passive attitudes Orwell here criticizes. What, then, is to be done? Orwell says,

And all the while everyone who uses his brain knows that Socialism, as a world-system and wholeheartedly applied, is a way out. It would at least ensure our getting enough to eat even if it deprived us of everything else. Indeed, from one point of view, Socialism is such elementary common sense that I am sometimes amazed that it has not established itself already. The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system.

He provides us, however, with his own rebuttal while answering an objection to socialists.

For instance, I have here a prospectus from another summer school which states its terms per week and then asks me to say ‘whether my diet is ordinary or vegetarian’. They take it for granted, you see, that it is necessary to ask this question. This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people. And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food-crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcass; that is, a person but of touch with common humanity.

For if indeed, “the world is a raft sailing through space”—and that image is the real shock of his argument—then we probably could, indeed, make some revolution that would ensure fair distribution of the raft’s resources. But as he says, it would cut us off from human society to achieve that hope; or to put it another way, enacting socialism in the present day would require us to sacrifice that “common humanity” which would be the only worthwhile end of socialism…for it certainly can’t be “adding five years to various carcasses.”

This is the argument that refutes Wigan Pier. There is yet, contained within that paragraph, the revelation of a deeper misunderstanding. Is the world a raft sailing through space? The whole pragmatism of the socialist scheme rests on the assumption that the visible world is “all there is,” and any ideas about how to make it better must start from that common assumption. The Christian idea, which, despite resistance from entrenched American/Capitalist interests, would probably resemble socialism fairly closely in its full working-out, takes a very different first premise than “sailing on a raft through space.”

Even among those poor souls which believe some Platonic heaven awaits disembodied souls (to be transported there by rapture) there remains the confession that defeats secular socialism: Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. Contained within that one sentence are the two truths that the secular socialist could not succeed without: Original Sin, and Mercy. To design some political scheme for men which does not recognize these two character truths is as misguided as building a terrarium for fish. It is, no matter how well engineered, a failure to grasp what a man is. Orwell, understanding imperfectly that there remained yet some shortcoming, proposed a direction by which his ideas might (had they survived) met the Kingdom halfway to the water: to abandon the blind secularist allegiance to progress and seek justice.

The question of Kingdom politics deserves, sometime later, its own entry; especially as to how Original Sin makes a difference, or to put it another way, What is a Man? For now I feel obliged to paste the Orwell quotes that weren’t vital to the topic at hand, but are too well-written to be omitted entirely. I’ve found, to my perpetual frustration, that I can’t write about political subjects without falling into stale rhetoric. Road to Wigan Pier is worth reading just to hear these subjects discussed intelligently, even if you don’t agree with the point.

On objections to Socialists:

Question a person of this type, and you will often get the semi-frivolous answer: “I don’t object to Socialism, but I do object to Socialists.” Logically it is a poor argument, but carries weight with many people. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

On what the crank-Socialists are really after: (And apparently librarians and elementary school teachers as well)

Sometimes I look at a Socialist — the intellectual, tract-writing type of Socialist, with his pullover, his fuzzy hair, and his Marxian quotation — and wonder what the devil his motive really is. It is often difficult to believe that it is a love of anybody, especially of the working class, from whom he is of all people the furthest removed. The underlying motive of many Socialists, I believe, is simply a hypertrophied sense of order. The present state of affairs offends them not because it causes misery, still less because it makes freedom impossible, but because it is untidy; what they desire, basically, is to reduce the world to something resembling a chessboard.

On the growing economic blight of the middle class, a phenomenon we may be observing in our own country:

It hardly needs pointing out that at this moment we are in a very serious mess, so serious that even the dullest-witted people find it difficult to remain unaware of it. We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive. For enormous blocks of the working class the conditions of life are such as I have described in the opening chapters of this book, and there is no chance of those conditions showing any fundamental improvement. The very best the English-working class can hope for is an occasional temporary decrease in unemployment when this or that industry is artificially stimulated by, for instance, rearmament. Even the middle classes, for the first time in their history, are feeling the pinch. They have not known actual hunger yet, but more and more of them find themselves floundering in a sort of deadly net of frustration in which it is harder and harder to persuade yourself that you are either happy, active, or useful. Even the lucky ones at the top, the real bourgeoisie, are haunted periodically by a consciousness of the miseries below, and still more by fears of the menacing future. And this is merely a preliminary stage, in a country still rich with the loot of a hundred years.

On everyone I ever went to school with at Northwestern:

Meanwhile one can observe on every side that dreary phenomenon, the middle-class person who is an ardent Socialist at twenty-five and a sniffish Conservative at thirty-five.

On how the poor view public education:

And again, take the working-class attitude towards 'education'. How different it is from ours, and how immensely sounder! Working people often have a vague reverence for learning in others, but where 'education' touches their own lives they see through it and reject it by a healthy instinct. The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned! He is a man when the other is still a baby. Ernest Pontifex, in Samuel Butler's Way of All Flesh, after he had had a few glimpses of real life, looked back on his public school and university education and found it a 'sickly, debilitating debauch'. There is much in middle-class life that looks sickly and debilitating when you see it from a working-class angle.

On the silent assent to coal; what may be parallel to our reliance on oil:

Watching coal-miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes people inhabit. Down there where coal is dug is a sort of world apart which one can quite easily go through life without ever hearing about. Probably majority of people would even prefer not to hear about it. Yet it is the absolutely necessary counterpart of our world above. Practically everything we do, from eating an ice to crossing the Atlantic, and from baking a loaf to writing a novel, involves the use of coal, directly or indirectly. For all the arts of peace coal is needed; if war breaks out it is needed all the more. In time of revolution the miner must go on working or the revolution must stop, for revolution as much as reaction needs coal. Whatever may be happening on the surface, the hacking and shoveling have got to continue without a pause, or at any rate without pausing for more than a few weeks at the most. In order that Hitler may march the goose-step, that the Pope may denounce Bolshevism, that the cricket crowds may assemble at Lords, that the poets may scratch one another's backs, coal has got to be forthcoming. But on the whole we are not aware of it; we all know that we 'must have coal', but we seldom or never remember what coal-getting involves. Here am I sitting writing in front of my comfortable coal fire. It is April but I still need a fire. Once a fortnight the coal cart drives up to the door and men in leather jerkins carry the coal indoors in stout sacks smelling of tar and shoot it clanking into the coal-hole under the stairs. It is only very rarely, when I make a definite mental-effort, that I connect this coal with that far-off labor in the mines. It is just 'coal'--something that I have got to have; black stuff that arrives mysteriously from nowhere in particular, like manna except that you have to pay for it. You could quite easily drive a car right across the north of England and never once remember that hundreds of feet below the road you are on the miners are hacking at the coal. Yet in a sense it is the miners who are driving your car forward. Their lamp-lit world down there is as necessary to the daylight world above as the root is to the flower.

Currently reading Iliad 5, Mark, Livy Book 2, the Summa Contra, Bede, the Apologia, Les Miserables, and the newest Dave Barry book (a gift from Pax).

7/22 to 8/1

J and I are back at our home in S—port after spending the past two weeks at H—n College. (Forgive me for using abbreviations throughout; I would hate to endanger our friendly relations with H—n College by making public remarks about how there is absolutely nothing to do there. We have also had a recent scare with internet privacy…more on that below.) I practiced and attempted to stay cool while J taught flute students and nearly got herself removed from the camp faculty for performing this piece. I traveled back to R—ster several times to premiere a new trumpet quintet by Wes N. with various section members, and then to play it again at the E—man Brass Symposium. (pictured below)

I also played twice with the BPO, with J and my parents and grandparents coming the second time. Both were outdoor concerts in parks, and the conditions couldn’t have been more beautiful. We played Raiders and also some boring numbers in which the strings had the melody (just kidding) and entertained the little children on their picnic blankets. With RPO done for the season, I probably have just one orchestral concert (over in S—cuse) left before next season.

J’s best friend Jessica returned from overseas this week, and we had a joyous reunion with her. She flew in from a trip through southern Europe with her sister after leaving her African school, and within two days of returning she had already been offered a position in C—lotte. (With an upcoming audition there, it’s not impossible that we might join her.) Unfortunately she’s returned with baggage from her travels. A man she’d only met in passing has contacted J two different ways by googling information on Jessica. We have been thrilled to say that she is already spoken for.

It has been a busy few weeks looking for work; I was called up last Tuesday for an interview at Catholic school, and as soon as I finished was asked to come down to an interview in L—a for a Christian school there. The Catholic school wouldn’t add much beyond what I’m already doing, but the L—a school would be a full-time job with benefits and the freedom to preserve my gigging empire. I had also been prepping for two military band auditions this week, but it looks as if (perhaps fortunately, as I wasn’t feeling particularly well-prepared for or excited about the prospect of either) they might not happen.

In the midst of all of this job uncertainty J and I had a great conversation…one that probably deserves its own blog entry. I’ve long bit my tongue while Christians around me referred to perceived “special providences” as visible acts of God. It is fitting for me to preface any commentary on the subject by declaring faith in a personal God who acts decisively and recognizably in human history. With that said, I strongly doubt that this God resembles a tribal totem, and ought to be held as the personal and immediate cause for every minute good and ill. As J and I have looked for jobs and health insurance, we’ve come to wonder whether 1) direct and immediate divine governance is the sole and immediate cause of my being employed or not being employed, or 2) being a creature with free will among other creatures with free will, the immediate causes of my employment or unemployment are largely effected by myself and those around me. To put it another way, am I unemployed because God isn’t involved, or because he is involved and wishes it so? The truly frightening possibility is 3) that God is personally and immediately involved in working purposes which have little to do with our material comfort and prosperity…purposes of sanctification, discipline, and kingdom-service which must be learned through lowliness and want. Perhaps we shouldn’t be wholly surprised at being told by our Lord, when we ask to be blessed, that he says Blessed are the poor. (I know this is removed from its context…)

I had been preparing for several military band auditions this week, but (as I’ll explain momentarily) it looks as if they won’t be happening. Monday morning I got up early to drive our Neon in for an oil change before taking it south for the first audition. J came into the kitchen as I was getting my coffee ready with the news that our Buick wasn’t starting. I did get the oil changed in the Neon, and learned of several other infirmities. The Buick is currently undergoing a fuel-pump replacement in the shop, and I am still in New York. Blessed are the poor. (I know this is removed from its context…)

Though I was disappointed not to see my in-laws, it was pleasant surprise to see J throughout the day and to spend my birthday (26!) evening with my family. At turning 26, I’m inclined to remark on how old I’m getting (it seems particularly surprising that I’m five years removed from 21) but I’ve promised myself not to start this until much later. I’m in the bloom of youth and will not complain. I was blanketed with good wishes on facebook, and reminded again of my wealth of friends. If you are a friend who reads this sentence and I haven’t spoken with you in awhile, please be patient. I probably have your name written down on a list of people I want to call or email once I’m done practicing. The best greeting of the day was from the Haydenbaby, who has apparently learned to how to pronounce my name and now says it into the phone. Our own baby is growing bigger and kicking harder…every time I see my niece she puts a grin on my face.

Unfortunately my birthday ended up with a rather unpleasant (details omitted) of sickness all night. I am convalescing today by blogging twice and reading Mark, Livy, Plato, Homer, Aquinas, and Wright. I’m not sure whether last night came from my weak stomach (probably the fault of my NU diet) or whether my body never adjusted to not having an audition the following morning. Either way, I am happy to be healthy again. And I am thankful: for restored health, for friends, for my son, for J, and for blessings over-brimming.