Favored Ilium

αἳ γὰρ ὑπ᾽ ἠελίῳ τε καὶ οὐρανῷ ἀστερόεντι
ναιετάουσι πόληες ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων,
τάων μοι περὶ κῆρι τιέσκετο Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς ἐϋμμελίω Πριάμοιο.

For of the cities of the earth-walking men which dwell under the sun and under the starry heaven, of these was sacred Ilium most treasured to my heart, Priam and the spear-gifted people of Priam.

Reading Il 4, Matt 8, and Epist Cic. I've spent most of the day getting anxious about my recital tonight for no good reason (it's a very light program) and sorting old emails. J and I visit her parents in PA this weekend while she plays her concerto with the HSO--that being a legitimate reason to get nervous.

Reading

Currently reading Is 57, Matt 7, Epist Cic, Wright's New Testament and the People of God, and some Thomas Hardy short stories. There is something truly glorious is the Latin "promise" passages of Isaiah that I've never heard in the English. I've still no idea how it would run in Hebrew, but

quia haec dicit Excelsus et Sublimis habitans aeternitatem et sanctum nomen eius in excelso et in sancto habitans et cum contrito et humili spiritu ut vivificet spiritum humilium et vivificet cor contritorum

For the High and Lofty one says this, dwelling in eternity and whose name is holy, "In the hights and in holiness dwelling and with the contrite and lowly spirit that the lowly spirit might be made lively and the contrite heart made be made lively."

My past few posts have largely centered around the practice of Christian dialectic, partly resulting from a Bible Study passage in Matthew:

ἦλθον γὰρ διχάσαι ἄνθρωπον “κατὰ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ καὶ θυγατέρα κατὰ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτῆς καὶ νύμφην κατὰ τῆς πενθερᾶς αὐτῆς, καὶ ἐχθροὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου οἱ οἰκιακοὶ αὐτοῦ.

For I am come to turn a man "against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a bride against her mother in law, and a man's enemies [shall be] his own house."

This led to an interesting topic of whether it would be more accurate to regard ἐχθροὶ as what we mean by enemies, or whether the intended meaning would be "those with whom we are at enmity." The possibly mistaken application of "enemy" to the rest of the world has burnt many bridges, and at its worst has resulted in some very dirty warfare. If there's one thing the Christian civilization has insisted upon, we discussed, it was a fair fight when the fighting had to be done. Some principle of chivalrous dialectic ought to be developed in an unscrupulous age, and this has been recently on my mind. This Sunday we'll be traveling to J's home church, my highly-anticipated first week away from Cranford Presbyterian since I took the job. The pastor (a man for whom we have great respect, and not respectful enmity) always closes the Sunday service with an altar call, no matter what the focus of the service. This, to me, is the perfect example of a practice that ought to fall victim to a principle of chivalrous dialectic. Even in the brighter moments of Wesleyanism, the emotional altar-call has always seemed rather a cheap trick. It shows a lack of respect for both the hearer and for the message; for the hearer, because it presumes they lack the rational capacity to come in any state other than humiliation, and for the message, because it reduces the power of the good news to a cheap thrill, easily replicated by any well-timed swell of music. If anyone wishes to differ on this point (for it is a very controversial one, and what I've written here, as usual, seems much more the beginning of a discussion than the end of one) please post in the comments.

Omnipotence & Goodness

I recently watched an interview with a well-known American pastor wherein he was asked “Whether God is all powerful but doesn’t care about the people of Japan, or cares about the people of Japan and isn’t all powerful.” Sadly, the respondent first evaded a response, and then stumbled in giving one. His answer, apparently, was an acknowledgement of the apparent paradox without any further clarification. I would ask immediately for clarification of the terms “all-powerful” and “cares.” If all-powerful means what the Church has traditionally distinguished in saying Pater Omnipotens, then I would say there is no question at all; the omnipotence of God is an unquestioned essential attribute. If however, the interviewer is asking whether prefixing nonsense sentences with the phrase “God can” makes them less nonsense, I would answer that he mixing a semantic puzzle with a theological one. For example, debating the statement that “God can create square circles” is a different specimen of logic than the statement “God can create ex nihilo.” The latter is a real description of a real idea. The former is no more meaningful than saying “God can red jabberwocky please.” The question of God’s omnipotence in this world always really turns out to be a question of how much God chooses to limit is sovereignty. The Calvinists lacked the creativity to conceive of a world with free will. Apparently Dr. Kushner is unable to conceive of a world with anything but free will. The orthodox Christian, more sanely, recognizes that some states have a sovereign king but also a local legislature. It is impossible for us in any meaningful way to conceive of a world in which free will plays a real part without a sovereign God choosing, in some way, to withdraw some of his omnipotence. This does not mean that he is not omnipotent, but simply that He chose, as is His habit, to His creation meaningful.

I am also curious to know what is meant by questioning God’s “care” for the people of Japan. I should state from the front that I do not suspect this destruction to be any measure of “judgement” upon the country other than lot given to each of us: to taste and succumb to Death. If God’s “care” consists of sparing us from Death, I would smile and answer that the answer to that is another paradox; that we shall endure it and rise from it; but there is no question about enduring it, whether that be at 5 or 85, whether it be from a tsunami or from cancer or in peaceful sleep. I, who have suffered extraordinarily little, perhaps have little right to speak about such things in the midst of the real grief which is being suffered. Yet I would state emphatically that God’s care for humanity has very seldom resembled some of the things that are really being mourned: the collapsed highways, the homes, and the dirt. This is a wild world that he gave us, and our efforts to tame it, while admirable, are not His. I suspect God’s care for us consists much more in waking us up to our real condition (by which a tsunami might be an effective tool) than in providing us with comfortable houses and impressive public works. The images being so glibly broadcast on television news are disturbing, but very few of them have to do with mourning our mortality; they are much more about mourning the mortality of our works. Does God care for the people of Japan? Certainly. Does he care for their beach houses? That is much harder to say. And there is certainly little to be said for His culpability in the danger visited them by their own construction of a bomb.

Finished Iliad 3 today, and currently reading Is. 56, Matt 7, Epist Liv, and A Mere Interlude. This will be a busy week for J and I, what with a recital of mine (pops Trumpet music) on Thurs, her Hanover Concerto performance on Sunday, and then RPO the following week for me. We hosted a friend of hers and her soon-to-be fiancé over the weekend with much good discussion but little rest. Congratulations to the RSC Chorale for a fine performance yesterday!

Poem from Lux

Bringing My Typewriter to School…Written during AP Language and Composition

My typewriter stays home, as a rule,

And does not accompany me to school,

But today I received a huge reaction

When I brought in my old contraption.

“What is that ridiculous machine?

It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen!

Observe the way it shifts and quakes

And the ‘clackety-clacks’ its keyboard makes!”

But what causes my vexation

Is the astonished congregation

Who wander out of hall and class

To surround me in a screaming mass.

“It must be wireless,” someone yells,

“What with all the knobs and bells!

What sort of service do you get

When you surf the internet?”

Who would think this dinosaur

Would cause such a mighty uproar?

And if my typewriter gets a laugh,

What will they think of my phonograph?”

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Any man with the power to rid a nation of snakes is a hero to me.

Reading Il 3, Cicero, Is 54, Matt 5, and Wives and Daughters.

Here is GKC on joy:

It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was (in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are worse than deadly; they are dead. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say “enlightened” they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while mediaevals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything — they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything — they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.
The mass of men have been forced to be gay about the little things, but sad about the big ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live. Yet, according to the apparent estate of man as seen by the pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity. This is what I call being born upside down. The sceptic may truly be said to be topsy-turvy; for his feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstacies, while his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man the heavens are actually below the earth. The explanation is simple; he is standing on his head; which is a very weak pedestal to stand on. But when he has found his feet again he knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man’s ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

Ubby-Dubby

I owe the teachers of the Elba Central School District an apology. I taught 2^nd grade there a few weeks ago, and, having run out of my other regular tricks for sustaining their attention and good behavior (spelling their names in Greek, shouting loudly, playing the trumpet loudly, then shouting loudly again), I resorted to teaching them ubby-dubby. Ubby-dubby (or turkey-talk) is a made up language that my in-laws (kindly) used to use to talk amongst themselves in my presence until I figured it out. Basically it works like this:

The World is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Becomes

Thoba Woborld obis toboo mobuch wobith obus; lobate oband soboon,

Gobettobing oband spobendobing, wobe lobay wobaste obour pobowrs;

Lobittoble wobee sobee obin Nobatobure thobat obis obours;

Wobee hobave gobivoben obour hobearts obawobay, oba sobordobid boboon!

You add the sound ob sound in every syllable, and it makes people’s names and classroom instructions sound really funny, especially if you are a 2^nd grader. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then they kept asking for it (and attempting poor imitations of it) all afternoon. When I let them out for the afternoon they all wished me, “bobye, Mobistober Smobith!” and I said “bobye, oburchobins!” When I returned to teach another class later that week I was hailed in the hallway (in bad ubby-dubby) by the class in passing. I noticed that their regular teacher’s glance wasn’t particularly friendly. Today I returned to teach music, and a completely different 1^st grade class met me with excited faces at the door as “the teacher that taught Ms. F—‘s class hobby-wobby!” The language has apparently spread throughout the classes of the school, and the staff are combating it at every turn!

Oboops.

Poems from Lux

My rooster is King of the coop,
He rules his fine poultry troupe,
With a dignified air
And authoritive stare
He struts all about in the poop.

My cats are interesting creatures.
They all have malignant features
When the door opens wide,
They all run inside,
And I kick them back out on their keisters.

I have four chickens and two ducks
Tow make quacks and four make clucks
I love them all dearly,
As the cats see clearly,
And they all think that it sucks.

Shakespeare at St. Vivian's

Last Saturday we celebrated the much anticipated Shakespeare party at St. Vivian’s, complete with an Elizabethan feast and a full reading of Midsummer Night’s Dream. All this Smith siblings were in attendance and several guests, including Blessed Mother, the honors girls, and the most natural Bottom that ever might open a script. The food (prepared jointly by Kylie, J, and B. Mother) was exquisite: turkey and chicken drumsticks, lentil soup, Yorkshire pudding, homemade bread with butter and quince jam, apple pies, cookies, cheeses, spiced juice, and wine. We drew parts at random (I was Theseus) and read the play in just under two and a half hours, perhaps even less if Baby H hadn’t been toddling from plate to plate begging for leftovers. (She spent the night with us Friday.) I was struck by several items during the reading of the play:

-The whole of act five flows much better when being read aloud with different voice than when being read privately

-My brothers and sister all possess a knack for reading aloud; I don’t know how much of it is their stage training (which I missed out on completely) or natural dramatic timing, but they switch from role to role with great ease.

-If I were to ever publish an edition of Shakespeare I would make sure to include a pronunciation guide for the classical references. Accent and pronunciation were quite good on all the English words, even from those with little reading experience; but the Roman gods tripped everyone up.

-Vaward? I still haven’t any idea how to say it or what it means.

-This sort of reading reminds me of what I think chamber music used to be like. There is a definite showcase of skill and “performance,” but one is completely comfortable in the company as well. It still feels closer to the family dinner table than to the recital hall.

Today reading Cicero, Il 3, Is 52, Matt 5, and Wives and Daughters. At CPC yesterday the sermon topic was the Lord’s Prayer; the poor Presbyterians couldn’t even get beyond Our Father, which they attempted to turn into something more egalitarian. Today I am teaching middle school flute students with telephone assistance from J; I never did learn my trill fingerings.

A toast to Shakespeare night!

On Running After One's Hat

I think it is a sufficiently blustery day to post this GKC article. Reading Il 3, Cicero, Is 51, Matt 4, and Wives and Daughters.

I feel an almost savage envy on hearing that London has been flooded in my absence, while I am in the mere country. My own Battersea has been, I understand, particularly favoured as a meeting of the waters. Battersea was already, as I need hardly say, the most beautiful of human localities. Now that it has the additional splendour of great sheets of water, there must be something quite incomparable in the landscape (or waterscape) of my own romantic town. Battersea must be a vision of Venice. The boat that brought the meat from the butcher's must have shot along those lanes of rippling silver with the strange smoothness of the gondola. The greengrocer who brought cabbages to the corner of the Latchmere Road must have leant upon the oar with the unearthly grace of the gondolier. There is nothing so perfectly poetical as an island; and when a district is flooded it becomes an archipelago.

Some consider such romantic views of flood or fire slightly lacking in reality. But really this romantic view of such inconveniences is quite as practical as the other. The true optimist who sees in such things an opportunity for enjoyment is quite as logical and much more sensible than the ordinary "Indignant Ratepayer" who sees in them an opportunity for grumbling. Real pain, as in the case of being burnt at Smithfield or having a toothache, is a positive thing; it can be supported, but scarcely enjoyed. But, after all, our toothaches are the exception, and as for being burnt at Smithfield, it only happens to us at the very longest intervals. And most of the inconveniences that make men swear or women cry are really sentimental or imaginative inconveniences - things altogether of the mind. For instance, we often hear grown-up people complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little boys' habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen. Their meditations may be full of rich and fruitful things. Many of the most purple hours of my life have been passed at Clapham Junction, which is now, I suppose, under water. I have been there in many moods so fixed and mystical that the water might well have come up to my waist before I noticed it particularly. But in the case of all such annoyances, as I have said, everything depends upon the emotional point of view. You can safely apply the test to almost every one of the things that are currently talked of as the typical nuisance of daily life.

For instance, there is a current impression that it is unpleasant to have to run after one's hat. Why should it be unpleasant to the well-ordered and pious mind? Not merely because it is running, and running exhausts one. The same people run much faster in games and sports. The same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting; little leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat. There is an idea that it is humiliating to run after one's hat; and when people say it is humiliating they mean that it is comic. It certainly is comic; but man is a very comic creature, and most of the things he does are comic - eating, for instance. And the most comic things of all are exactly the things that are most worth doing - such as making love. A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife.

Now a man could, if he felt rightly in the matter, run after his hat with the manliest ardour and the most sacred joy. He might regard himself as a jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal, for certainly no animal could be wilder. In fact, I am inclined to believe that hat-hunting on windy days will be the sport of the upper classes in the future. There will be a meet of ladies and gentlemen on some high ground on a gusty morning. They will be told that the professional attendants have started a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or whatever be the technical term. Notice that this employment will in the fullest degree combine sport with humanitarianism. The hunters would feel that they were not inflicting pain. Nay, they would feel that they were inflicting pleasure, rich, almost riotous pleasure, upon the people who were looking on. When last I saw an old gentleman running after his hat in Hyde Park, I told him that a heart so benevolent as his ought to be filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much unaffected pleasure his every gesture and bodily attitude were at that moment giving to the crowd.

The same principle can be applied to every other typical domestic worry. A gentleman trying to get a fly out of the milk or a piece of cork out of his glass of wine often imagines himself to be irritated. Let him think for a moment of the patience of anglers sitting by dark pools, and let his soul be immediately irradiated with gratification and repose. Again, I have known some people of very modern views driven by their distress to the use of theological terms to which they attached no doctrinal significance, merely because a drawer was jammed tight and they could not pull it out. A friend of mine was particularly afflicted in this way. Every day his drawer was jammed, and every day in consequence it was something else that rhymes to it. But I pointed out to him that this sense of wrong was really subjective and relative; it rested entirely upon the assumption that the drawer could, should, and would come out easily. "But if," I said, "you picture to yourself that you are pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, the struggle will become merely exciting and not exasperating. Imagine that you are tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine that you are roping up a fellow-creature out of an Alpine crevass. Imagine even that you are a boy again and engaged in a tug-of-war between French and English." Shortly after saying this I left him; but I have no doubt at all that my words bore the best possible fruit. I have no doubt that every day of his life he hangs on to the handle of that drawer with a flushed face and eyes bright with battle, uttering encouraging shouts to himself, and seeming to hear all round him the roar of an applauding ring.

So I do not think that it is altogether fanciful or incredible to suppose that even the floods in London may be accepted and enjoyed poetically. Nothing beyond inconvenience seems really to have been caused by them; and inconvenience, as I have said, is only one aspect, and that the most unimaginative and accidental aspect of a really romantic situation. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. The water that girdled the houses and shops of London must, if anything, have only increased their previous witchery and wonder. For as the Roman Catholic priest in the story said: "Wine is good with everything except water," and on a similar principle, water is good with everything except wine.

Dramatis Personae: J

There is a great philosophical truth revealed in the the exercise of trying to describe one's spouse. The nearer one is to something (or someone) the harder it is to say anything meaningful about them. To put it another way, the person nearest to you is the one you know least about; they are at the very least the person you’ve forgotten the most about. I am currently in the terrible position of having resolved to write about my wife, and of course have no idea where to start. Any historical sketch of her (and only her) would have to start with a careful weeding out of me. There is a similar dilemma in talking about religion. The average layperson understands much too little about Christian doctrine, and a little too much about the experience of living Christianity. His description of it (as an abstract idea) is inseparable from his own experience of it. His experience of it may be a fascinating subject, but it is a different question, just as a character sketch of J is a subtly different thing than a sketch of J and myself. Or consider the problem musically; it isn’t tongue-pierced teenagers who can’t hear classical music, but classical musicians. If the trumpets sound the final glories of Beethoven 5, the teenagers, no matter how many holes they have in their ears, will at least hear it with fresh ears. It is the bassoons and the trumpets that will miss out, for the bassoons are wincing under the sound shield. They are too close to the trumpets to the understand them. And the trumpets, of course, are carefully listening to intonation and watching the conductor so as to utterly ignore both and play as loudly as possible. Classical musicians are far too concerned with squeaky reeds and changes in the union contract to hear classical music; that is the audience’s job. Similarly, husbands are often too immersed the accidents (medieval usage) of married life to actually understand their spouse; they only knew who she was before they got to know her.

I’m either long winded or failing to make my point, so consider this another way: if I were to leave tomorrow to be a missionary to Africa, I could send you a meaningful first glance of tribal life there. Being a stranger there, I would marvel at their diet, their strange customs of greeting, and reddish color of their huts. I could tell you they eat goats, they wear goatskin, and the village doesn’t smell great. In four years (about the length of time I’ve been married, thus effectively living as a foreigner in the strange world of the feminine) of living in Africa, I would have lost all the novelties of the new culture. If someone asked me “how’s it going” (that impossible question) the sorts of things that would spring to my mind would be my lost sandal, or perhaps a particularly memorable meal, or how much sleep I was getting. The red huts would be as common as red bricks, the goats as familiar as coats, and the smell (regrettably) as familiar, if not as pleasant, as Tide detergent. With my own life being intertwined with that of the tribespeople, any meaningful description would need to be drawn out of me. The problem of talking about one’s spouse is not only seeing the big picture, but seeing the big picture as if for the first time; the problem of seeing her freshly. With J, a fresh look is like being rolled under a great wave of goodness.

She is the daughter of two music teachers. She started piano nearly before she was out of diapers, and as was the case in most of her childhood endeavors, was precocious. She had a strong appetite for books throughout her entire childhood, and was homeschooled. (She is proud to this day that no one can “tell the difference”) She was unusually shy of adults as a small child, and unusually conversant with them as a teenager. She played softball and followed gymnastics and ice-skating religiously. She has always been on the closest of terms with her two brothers, both younger and both fond of her. Outwardly, she is the model of sense, self-control and politeness; although she’s never shown it to more than a handful of her most intimate friends, she is inwardly a pure romantic. She is, in other words, the quintessential 19^th century literary heroine: sensible, measured, and patient. I suspect, given her family background and personality, that she would have made an excellent governess. In this age, however, she was a music education major, and qualified to major it two instruments, eventually choosing the flute. She rarely enters into debate voluntarily, but speaks formidably well and writes even better. She yearned for friends her entire childhood and found them at RWC. Her relationships with her college friends defined and completed her nearly as much as her marriage. Her marriage, unfortunately, is a sad and beautiful tale wherein a lovely maiden (for she is excessively pretty, though she would never comport herself deliberately for that compliment) marries the first boy that touches her heart at a far too young age (twenty-two) without ever pausing to consider her career or whether she is sufficiently “experienced.” (Whatever the modern usage of that word means.) Surprisingly enough, she still seems rather pleased about the arrangement.

Reading 4/9

Reading today Is 51, Matt 4, Cicero, Pliny, Il 3, and Wives and Daughters. Today is Ash Wednesday, which means an extra service at CPC; we are performing Mozart's Laudate Dominum from the Vesperae Solemnes, which I've been waiting to do since I took the job in September. Preparations are also underway for Shakespeare at St. Vivian's. I picked up wine, cheese, and drumsticks today, and I've been informed that Bottom's ass-head, once though lost, has been recovered.

Laudate Dominum omnes gentes

Laudate eum, omnes populi

Quoniam confirmata est

Super nos misericordia eius,

Et veritas Domini manet in aeternum.

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto.

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper.

Et in saecula saeculorum.

Amen.

 

Praise the Lord all ye nations,

Praise ye him, all peoples

For his mercy over us

Is made sure

And the truth of the Lord remains forever

Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit

As it was in the beginning, even now, and shall be

Even in ages of ages.

Amen.

Animal Farm

I spent Monday and today reading Animal Farm to sleepy looking 9^th graders at the local high school, and attempting to explain the parallels in Soviet history. I worked with another teacher, and she handed out the following journal topic:

Mr. Jones uses violence to goad the animals, and the animals use violence in revolt; are the animals justified in using violence? Is violence ever justifiable in for a good cause?

She then laid out her instructions and asked them to write whether they believed “an eye for an eye” was ever right, which seems to me to be an entirely separate discussion. The old principle of an eye for an eye (which German scholars now tell us the Hebrew people borrowed from Hammurabi) was a legal, and not a moral verse. Neither Moses nor Hammurabi ever stated that boundaries ought to be defended and kings succeeded by poking out eyes. (German scholars now tell us that the Hebrews borrowed the concept of “eyes,” and possibly other organs, from the ancient epic of Gilgamesh) They only stated that if someone did lose an eye, the law demanded that the responsible party suffer the same penalty. Confusing these two dilemmas (which are both interesting discussions) is like asking “Under what circumstances is Imperialism a just practice? Does this mean that Imperialist nations must pay their fines by cashier’s check?”

As regards the general justice of violence, I’m inclined to ask for more specific terms. Physical violence is the type being asked about, but the entrenched pacifist needs to consider verbal and psychological violence as well. This blog, for example, uses the English language forcibly. Whether or not anyone reads it, I do enjoy saying strong words for the same reason I enjoy drinking strong drinks: it is invigorating. This blog is the literary equivalent of throwing rocks at glass bottles back in the woods. It helps my aim, but I mostly like the noise. All of us know I’m sure, the perpetrators of psychological violence. They ask uncomfortable questions and use their body language to confound, trip, and flabbergast us without ever raising a fist or saying a word. The skilled dialectician may never work physical harm upon a living soul, but between his verbal and psychological force he crumbles those around him. This world is, despite our best efforts, still a wilderness in many respects. But is it ever permissible to practice violence upon another creature bearing the imago Dei? If so, I think it must be done by the rules of the West. As abominable as war might be, it can be and has been conducted with honor. The Judeo-Christian world is worth preserving from whatever would assail it on the outside, and the Judeo-Christian ethic of war is the means to that end; to spare woman and child, to prefer conservation to waste and plunder, and to practice chivalry to enemy and ally. To prefer mercy, to practice the art of arms, and to respect the duces and the patria; these qualities exemplify the man who might justly defend himself with physical violence.

Reading today some Byron, Il 3, Cicero, Pliny, Is 50, Matt 2, and Wives and Daughters. Here is Gaskell on the Gibson’s cook: “The cook did not like the trouble of late dinners; and being a Methodist, she objected on religious grounds to trying any of Mrs. Gibson’s new recipes for French dishes.

Rob Bell

I’m not sure how accurate this article is, seeing as how it concerns a book which has not yet been published, but Universalism for Rob Bell would not be a surprise. In fact, it would very nearly be a relief to see him come at last to his destination. Universalism is neither new nor untenable, but only unreasonable. It was the logical conclusion to 19^th century Liberalism and the surprising conclusion to 18^th century Puritanism. In both instances it was the most humane resolution to a quandary arising from magnification of one Christian doctrine over and at the expense of the others. Liberalism gorged upon the kindness of God (which they would call Love) until they no longer understood the justice of God, and were compelled to cut out the passages of the Bible which didn’t sound as pleasant as the Sermon on the Mount. The Puritans gorged upon the Bible alone, until they’d forgotten than any other Christians had ever read it. When they discovered that scriptures about the Trinity were scarce, they (perhaps more humanely than other alternatives) became liberals and never bothered to reading the Bible again.

Rob Bell is the best thinker in modern liberal Christendom, and now preaches a religion which in all essential qualities no longer resembles Christianity. For if there is no great risk, no great battle, no great problem upon which the whole plot is staked, “all is meaningless.” The original sin in the garden means nothing if there be no penalty for it, whether than sin be historical or symbolic. And what of the Incarnation? Cur Deus homo si poenam non esset? Why the God-man if there be no penalty? And even if he were just a moral teacher, what would it matter if a moral life shares the same end as a wicked one? The Universalism of Rob Bell, old as it is, consists of several entirely modern errors; First, it consists of a conception of the Deity as primarily kindness, when in fact every other age has only approached him with fear and trembling. (See Otto’s Idea of the Holy, or Mr. Beaver’s keen observation that “only a fool would approach Aslan without his knees knocking.”) Second, it consists of a skepticism regarding miracles, which is also unique to our age. This is, I believe what he gets after in Velvet Elvis when he questions the possible doctrinal trouble of the Virgin Birth. It is not so much a problem to Mr. Bell that Christianity might have inflexible dogmas as that these dogmas (most uncomfortably) credit the supernatural. C.S. Lewis’ study on the propriety and probability of miracles is too brilliant to imitate or summarize, but I would add that the modern skepticism about them is an unnatural state of affairs. It is a learned behavior to disbelieve in Elfland; we all were frightened of monsters in our closets at some point, and we were closer to the truth then. Third, it believes the foolishness that we might somehow all be “one,” as if that were possible in any desirable or meaningful way. It is the love of simplicity, of the simple answer, that the Universalist and the madman love. Rob Bell is an intelligent man, caring, sincere, and damnably wrong. He understands correctly that American Evangelical Christianity is backwards, provincial, and petty. But he has expanded himself the wrong way. He has tried to make himself broad minded, and has only broadened into modernism. What he ought to do is to make himself taller; for a tall man is now what is needed, a man tall enough to see the ages behind us while keeping his own feet under him.

Currently reading Il 3, Is 49, Matt 2, and Cicero. Finished How to Watch TV News and Aen 6 over the weekend.

Fresh Perspective

A busy day so far, reading Il 3, Aen 6, Rev 21, and Midsummer Night's Dream. After weeks of procrastination I finally entered my Lenten Amen into Finale Notation software, thereby making it legible. (But unfortunately, not improving its quality) I remembered more of the keyboard shortcuts than I expected...many of my undergraduate hours were spent in the Cox Hall computer lab typing music. I had lunch with J, and made progress in planning Shakespeare at St. Vivian's. I was struck by CSL's comments on poetry that the Personal Heresy was dangerous inasmuch as it emptied quotidian things of their natural strangeness and splendor. Lines like "hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds Is, as in mockery, set." ought not to exalt Shakespeare, but to exalt and vivify the scene unfolding right outside the window of my study. Old Winter is doing battle with the first forces of spring under the pine and maple in our front yard, and the first muddy advances of the resurrection to come mock his weakening grip. This line "Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of darkness do devour it up." is spine-tingling. If there is any image that might retain its spiritual power even into this dark age, it is the lightning bolt; perhaps this is why The Thunderer was the head of the Pantheons.

J and Liquefaction

Reading Il 3, Aen 6, Is 47, Rev 21, and The Personal Heresy, which is brilliant. I would love to have out the same argument regarding 20th C. Classical Music! I always wondered if my particular admiration for Herrick's verses were legitimate, and Lewis uses my favorite poem (liquefaction) as one of his first examples.


Whenas in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes.
Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see
That brave vibration each way free;
Oh, how that glittering taketh me!

Yesterday I was teaching English with another teacher, and she attempted to tell the class that "this" was the indirect object in the sentence "George bakes this cake for his mother."

Fallacy (or Madness) of Simplicity

But I touch rapidly and reluctantly on these examples, because they
exemplify a much wider question of this interminable way of talking.
It consists of talking as if the moral problem of man were
perfectly simple, as everyone knows it is not; and then depreciating
attempts to solve it by quoting long technical words, and talking
about senseless ceremonies without enquiring about their sense.
In other words, it is exactly as if somebody were to say about
the science of medicine:  "All I ask is Health; what could be simpler
than the beautiful gift of Health?  Why not be content to enjoy
for ever the glow of youth and the fresh enjoyment of being fit?
Why study dry and dismal sciences of anatomy and physiology;
why enquire about the whereabouts of obscure organs of the human body?
Why pedantically distinguish between what is labelled a poison
and what is labelled an antidote, when it is so simple to
enjoy Health?  Why worry with a minute exactitude about the number
of drops of laudanum or the strength of a dose of chloral, when it
is so nice to be healthy?  Away with your priestly apparatus of
stethoscopes and clinical thermometers; with your ritualistic mummery
of feeling pulses, putting out tongues, examining teeth, and the rest!
The god Esculapius came on earth solely to inform us that Life
is on the whole preferable to Death; and this thought will console
many dying persons unattended by doctors."