Deprepucation blues

January 31, 2013
Deprepucation blues

Luke 2:21-24 needs an exceptionally experienced, skillful, and paranoid exeisorcist (See "Definitions," January 8.), one that can find demons that may or may not be there – in the passage, in himself.

The circumcision demon:

          Why are the Jews lopping off the heads of their hammers? Because God told Abraham to do his. (Genesis 17:9ff.) God also told him to take the head off his son Isaac; but in the case of the boy God stayed Abraham’s hand, in the case of the buoy, not so much.

          Of course, if you can somehow convince others to be mean to their own ends  . . . .  See Genesis 34:13-29, the defeat of Hamar and Schechem and all of their house “on the third day, when they were quite sore” by just two of Dinah’s brothers, Simeon and Levi, who “took their swords and . . . killed them all.” (34:25)

The naming demon. 

          Like good Muslims, Mary and Joseph submit and name the boy ’Ihsou~v – what the angel said: “Don’t be afraid. Good news. You’re going to be pregnant, if you’re not already. It’s a boy, Jesus. That’s what you’re going to call him. The next David.” Every Jewish mother’s dream, “the next David.” 

          Mary does have one fair question: how? “You know I’m not sexually active. And if I were, I’d take precautions.”

          “One:” the angel says, “no matter;  and two: no precaution against this. Zeus and Danäe?”

            Mary remembers. One of her cousins had a reproduction of the Jan Gossaert painting in her bedroom. (We don’t have it on the blog, because my mother disapproves, but click here. It looks peaceful. Danäe looks lovely, both unrumpled and ecstatic.  “Okay,” Mary says.  And she submits. Nor in her unrumpled ecstasy does she forget the name.  And Joseph agrees, because the angel of God has said so.  “And at the end of eight days, when he was peritome’ed [pron. peri-tomayed], he was called Jesus.”

The purification-business demon. 

          This has to do with Levitical law.  (Leviticus 12:2-8)  But what does it have to do with Mary and Baby Jesus.  Mary was only “with” the Spirit.  She delivers The Airy Christ, according to the Proto-evangelium of James, without so much as the slightest tear.  He is all baby, no blood.  So there is no need for purification, to lop off (this time) the heads of pigeons.

          Then, why would any of them want to take part in the baptism.  (See January 9.)

Y

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Go-golly, how much?

January 29-30, 2010

Go-golly, how much?

“A garment is always a travesty.” – Leon Stilman in his afterword to Gogol’s The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories (1960).

 “The Overcoat.”  At least poor Akaky Akakievich returns as a ghost, if only for a matter of days – if only the rumor of a ghost.

 “Diary of a Madman.”  Talking lap dogs, fish speaking in hieroglyphics.

     “A dog is an extraordinary politician and notices everything, every step a human takes.” Moreover, he can disappear into the furniture and watch unseen, even in plain sight. Like a child.

“I need spiritual food and I am served these inanities.”  Who said that?  What if I need inanities and I have to eat – and most solemnly – spiritual food, having been in the kitchen and knowing what goes into the pot.

The friends you have as a child, when there are nothing but inanities (profound though they may be): why do those friendships “work”? come with so little friction?  It isn’t that you haven’t yet learned pretense – you begin learning that in the crib – but you reserve it for your relationships with adults.

     Then you become an adult. Or, you pretend you have.

It isn’t only pretense that makes us successful, however. It’s luck, and where luck fails trickery, and whether trickery fails (or succeeds) a forgiving conscience.

How forgiving?

     The earthquake in Haiti has at least expanded the radio’s attention from dollars and cents to dollars and destruction, though with due emphasis on the dollars and cents needed to fix the destruction. Don’t send food. Don’t send water. Don’t send medicine. Send dollars. Dollars!

     Did you hear about the Lehman Brothers executive that gave his entire six-burglazillion-dollar bonus to Haitian relief?  Of course not! You did hear, though, that Hollywood raised 4.4 bogusillion in exchange for only several hours of face time on several outlets around the globe (meaning the northwestern quadrasphere).

Here’s the epigraph in context:

     “ ‘They receive you according to your clothes, they see you off according to your wits,’ says a Russian proverb. Arkady never had wits, but for one day in his life he had decent clothes and was received accordingly . . . . But is not a garment also a disguise? Is it not deceit to be received according to your clothes, not according to what you really are? Arkady in his new overcoat had no more wit, or virtue, than in the older one. He was welcomed and feted thanks to a travesty. But a garment is always a travesty, and one has to wear a garment. A man dies of exposure if he chooses not to wear one and to be undisguised, to be himself.”

travesty. [from Fr. travesty pp. of travestir, to disguise; It. travestire, from L. trans, over, and vestire, to dress] so “disguised by dress so as to be ridiculous; burlesqued.

                 n. 1. a burlesque treatment, imitation, or translation for purposes of ridicule.
    2. a crude and ridiculous representation; a ludicrous distortion. Wall Street. Hollywood. The radio.

W

Pie in the sky

January 28, 2009

Pie in the sky

"'Hope is the thing with feathers'; present joy is the kid with the slingshot." - Anonymous

When the radio isn’t about money, it’s about another aspect of the future, weather or political strategy. What will the markets do? or the western wind? What will happen – especially in terms of public opinion – if the president . . . ?

       Who knows? Only the radio . . . and the TV and wherever else pundits gather; for not even the gods gathered on Olympus can be certain. At least that's the way the conversation I have Horace’s tu ne quaesieris turns out. This is A. S. Kline’s translation. (For his renderings of the odes in Greek meters, click here.) 

Leuconöe, don’t ask, we never know what fate the gods [will] grant us,

That is, if the gods grant our fates and are not subjects of Fate themselves, if Fortuna has not always been their queen as well.  Don't ask what fate the gods will grant us,

whether your fate or mine, don’t waste your time on Babylonian,

futile calculations . . .

 

As if you could calculate what will happen next, given time enough and fine enough instruments.  How can you, if the gods themselves don’t know for certain.

                                                                            Babylonian,

futile calculations.  How much better to suffer what happens,

whatever it may be or may not be, for nothing may happen, the world may end first.

                                                                   better to suffer what happens,

whether Jupiter gives us more winters or this is the last one,
. . . .
Be wise, and mix the wine, since time is short . . . .

  

Short for any of us, even for all of us.  “Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away” and its daughters – like the dinosaurs and dodos.

Be wise, and mix the wine . . . limit that far-reaching hope.

Far-reaching or over-reaching?  Hope always overreaches, it tries to overtake us and to take over the now and to make us live somewhere – or somewhen – else we cannot know.  Hope is like nostalgia, only worse.  Instead of errant memories it peddles arrant fantasy.

The envious moment is flying now, now, while we’re speaking:

Seize the day, place in the hours that are coming as little faith as you can.

Seize the day. Drink in the air, drink the wine, grab a hand. As for tomorrow, place in it "as little faith as you can" - none, if you dare. It has no smell, no taste, no touch at all.

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Now and then

January 27, 2014

Now and then

The first Richard Wilbur poem I remember coming across – now many years ago – was “A Late Aubade” – in Lawrence Perrine and Thomas Arp’s Sound and Sense (8th edition, p. 52). There’s a definition in their “Glossary of Poetic Terms.” An aubade is “a poem about dawn; a morning love song; or a poem about lovers parting at dawn.” Or, in this case, a poem about not parting even by noon. What I immediately liked about “A Late Aubade” was its sense of the conditional, what could be or could be or could be but is not.

          Hope depends on the conditional. The future is always subjunctive, speaking of conditions contrary to fact. It is completely unreliable, a will-o’-the-wisp. All the future holds certainly is death. May that not come too soon. So Horace in the Odes, I.4:

        Pale death kicks indifferently against the door of the poor man’s hut

             and the king’s tower gate.  O dear Sestus,

        life is too short to depend on far-off hope.^*

And I.9:

        Be wise, pour the wine, trim long hope

           for time is short.  As we speak, envious time runs away.

        Seize the day, put no faith in what may come.^#

This is, I'm afraid, far from the party line in my party, where St. Paul chairs the convention. Here hope is one of the three great virtues: faith, hope, and charity. Things aren't always getting better, because death is moot and all that matter is the Judgment Day, when we will be caught up in the air to join the faithful while our enemies will sink like stones through the lake of fire into the dark sulfurous depths of Hell. Then, from our place of eternal reward, we can look down on them in their eternal suffering.  What more could we hope for?

Perhaps this, that she will stay a little longer.  Here and now!

W

^*Pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
     regumque turris. O beate Sesti,
  uitae summa breuis spem nos uetat inchoare longam. 

^#. . . sapias, uina liques et spatio breui
     spem longam reseces. Dum loquimur, fugerit inuida
  aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Self-defense

January 23, 2010

Self-defense

Everyone knows you don’t just disappear. (See previous post.) You build walls, immure yourself, debar distractions, repel invaders.  You arm yourself against projectiles, ladders, rams, tunnels. You tactic tactics, become vigilant.

          The Cynics foreswore tactics for a grand strategy: Have no city to fortify. “Foxes have their holes, birds of the air their nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.”  Own nothing you cannot walk away from or walk away with. (Live out of your ph/ra.)

          Hard to do when you have to work for a living. In any case, walls nor wandering can deflect the powers of the air. For that you must believe in a greater power. And here is why people stay drunk for years; it’s a distraction to overwhelm all other distractions. Don’t walk. Run! Don’t run. Swim! Don’t swim. Drown! – it worked for the Gadarene swine.

Y

Richard Wilbur:

Matthew VIII, 28 ff.

Rabbi, we Gadarenes

Are not ascetics; we are fond of wealth and possessions.

Love, as you call it, we obviate by means

Of the planned release of aggressions.

We have deep faith in prosperity.

Soon, it is hoped, we will reach our full potential.

In the light of our gross product, the practice of charity

Is palpably inessential.

It is true that we go insane;

That for no good reason we are possessed by devils;

That we suffer, despite the amenities which obtain

At all but the lowest levels.

We shall not, however, resign

Our trust in the high-heaped table and the full trough.

If you cannot cure us without destroying our swine,

We had rather you shoved off.

© Richard Wilbur. Collected Poems 1943-2004. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt (2004). Originally published in Walking to Sleep: New Poems and Translations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World (1969).

W

Flies in the ointment and out

January 22, 2010
Flies in the ointment and out

Y

I’ve lived all my life around narcissists – my Aunt Martha in whose house I spent a considerable amount of childhood time foremost among them, though not her husband, Uncle Darrow or his sister, my mother, who were with me, however, only minor moons orbiting Aunt Martha's planet. Uncle Darrow:  a medium, soft man with (maybe) a high school education, he possessed one remarkable faculty, almost unfailing hand-eye coordination, so that anything anyone could show him he could do. As a result he was never out of work: plastering, papering, putting on roofs, playing golf for other people’s money. His sister, my mother, also had one extraordinary gift, a heart so keen she knew what others were feeling before they did.  It served her in great-good stead with Aunt Martha; Mom was already elsewhere when her sister-in-law lost all patience with her. But alas, poor Mom, it was the only way she could defend herself - disappear.

 W

Song of Myself ishness

January 21, 2010

Song of Myself

ishness

Desipientiae: Vol. 1, Art. 33. Most of us regard the rest of us as implements. It isn’t a sin any of us wishes to confess. We see it clearly in others,* but we don’t stop to ponder how we became immune.

     We did not. We are not. We seldom distinguish others from ourselves any more than a nursing infant perceives its mother is a separate being. When we do distinguish (briefly), we see our others as so many brooms in their broom closets, pots and pans on their hooks, pens in their holders, pencils in their drawers. We wish the flies would stay in their ointment.

*Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. – Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary.

W

Ezra's Picnic

January 20, 2010

Picnic

In Nehemiah 8, the people call on Ezra to get up on the platform they have built.  “Read to us the Law,” they plead.  Ezra does and the Levites interpret.  The people weep for their sins.  And with the tears they shed the demons that have invaded them and impelled them and prevented them.  Ezra says, then, “Now , that is done.  Sit down, have a meal.  The Levites echo: “Now, that is done.  Sit down, have a meal.” 

     Let’s say it’s New Orleans instead of Jerusalem.  And two wander away from the crowd, an aging boy and his aging girl.  They get in their car and they drive to City Park, where they sit down on a bench with a quarter of a muffuletta apiece and a can of Coke to share.  An gargantuan angel with gold-rimmed teeth in red shorts and a u-shirt arrives in an SUV.  He has his children with him, a boy and a girl both slim as dust.  They’ve come to feed the birds; he brings them every day.  And the birds begin to gather around the black Escalade as if it were a statue of St. Francis. 

     The old boy and the old girl watch for some minutes, then get in their car to head somewhere else.  And look, there he is lumbering after them, huge black legs poured into his white socks and bedroom slippers.  He holds something up in his enormous hand, the forgetful girl’s purse.  The muffuletta man stops the car.  And the angel chuffs up and hands the purse through the passenger window.  The passenger smiles and says, “Thank you.”  He grins in reply, taps the window frame with both hands “you’re welcome,” walks back to his kids feeding the birds.

Stacking the Deck

January 17, 2014

Speaking of cards

The surrealist invented their own deck, also with four suits, Love represented by a flame, Dream represented by a black star, Revolution by a wheel, and Knowledge by a lock. Instead of King, Queen, and Jack, the face cards become Genius, Siren, and Magus representing various historical figures. Thus, in the suit of Flame, the Genius is Baudelaire, the Siren is the Portuguese Nun, and the Magus Novalis. The suits Star, Wheel, and Lock are as follows:

		Genius		Siren		Magus
Star		Lautréamont		Alice		Freud
Wheel		de Sade		Lamiel		Pancho Villa
Lock		Hegel		Hélène Smith		Paracelcus

The examples below are from A Book of Surrealist Games, compiled by Alastair Brotchie and edited by Mel Gooding.

Y

Speaking of cards 2

Assignment for Monday: Read Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock.  Come prepared to divide into groups of three and play Ombre.

W

52 Jokers

January 16, 2014

Cards on the table

Do it, Ted.  Lay your cards on the table. 

     Fair enough.  But imagine 52 jokers.  Play poker with that.

 W

Break Your Neck

January 14, 2009

Promises, Promises

Up early, reading First Samuel for no other reason than it makes my mother happy to know I have a Bible on my bedside table.

            By “happy” I mean something like “content” or “at peace.”

The story (skipping lightly through the Vacation Bible School stuff everyone remembers):

            A man has two wives. One of them has children, the other does not. The other (Hannah) prays in the temple, a bargain: God, if you give me a son, I’ll give him back to you. Over and over again, rocking back and forth. The priest, Eli, thinks she’s drunk. She convinces him she’s not. He says, “Then, God answer your prayer.”

            She gets pregnant with Samuel. When he’s three, she gives him up to Eli to serve in the temple, then she goes home to have more sons.

            Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are a mess. Find a way a priest can screw up, they screw up.  Their sins are “great in the sight of the LORD.” Samuel on the other hand is a good lad, and one night God speaks to him – this is a rare thing in those days. Among other things, God tells Samuel that Eli’s sons are through, nothing anyone can do will ever get their sins forgiven.

            And nothing does. They’re killed by the Philistines, and when Eli hears of it he falls off his chair, now old and fat,  and breaks his neck. So ends the house of Eli the priest.

           

11:40 pm.  By “at peace” I mean “not rushed,” “not harried.” Time to pursue tangents, to slip away to take a leak without looking over your shoulder.

            By “at peace” I also mean “free,” especially to think in the wrong direction, to make a mistake, even a horrendous mistake, and be forgiven. “I’ll love you forever, she says, “until someone better comes along, or someone less likely to make mistakes.” 

            “You and your descendants will be my priests," God says to Aaron and his sons. "You have my word on it, and my word is ‘forever’” (Exodus 28:1, 43). Does God add under his breath “until such time as . . .”? Or, does God just give up on his “perpetual statute” when the going gets sticky, when priests get stinky like H and P?

            And if God can give up on this promise when things don't go as hoped, then, Mother dear, what of God's promise to me?  – so grace turns out to be conditional and forgiveness a not-so-funny joke. I'm only free as long as I don't make a bad mistake.

I can’t stop thinking about work. There must exist somewhere a group of people you could have a real, long-term conversation with. “This,” you could say, “is what is bothering me." “I can see that,” they could reply. “You’re wrong, of course, but I can see it.” I could be. I don’t need to be right all the time. “But you can see it, what I’m saying?” And they'd nod, “Yes.” “That’s good,” you'd say. “That’s really good. I appreciate it. Thanks. I mean it. Thanks. Really.”          

            You’re babbling because you do mean it, but you don’t believe it. Soon, because they’ve been at this all their lives and you’re among them for a season . . . soon they’re talking behind your back. They don’t mean any harm. They just wanted to figure you out, put you in the right box. There are plenty of boxes around, too, but not the right one. “Well, hell, if I’m gonna build a new box . . .” X says.  “No, no. You shouldn’t oughtta have to,” Y is indignant. And Z agrees with him: “Sometimes folks gotta make compromises.” By “folks” he means other folks.

            So, you compromise. Go along to get along. (Yes, Mother.) But the conversation is over. Words that could chase around thoughts like free-range chickens around their yard end up in coops deader than alive in foul prisons.

            Every time I pass a truck stacked with those birds in their wooden cells, I promise I’ll never eat chicken again. I do have some in the freezer, though, I can’t let go to waste. But never again after that.

W

                    Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle

                       quam mihi, no si se Iuppiter ipse petat.

                   Dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti

                       in vento et rapida scriber oportet aqua.

Car Escapes on Foot

January 13, 2009

Black day at Bad Rock

Afternoon. Doctor’s office. Sounds of gagging, snorting up snot, country music.  It matches the wide-plank wooden floors, cane-seat chairs, kleenex boxes safe in red-white-pink knit cozies on the oak end-tables.  The woe-man singer – her heart is bleeding.

Evening.  Home from work, more work under my arm.  Heat up the last of the borscht, finish Saturday’s acrostic.  Point, click and I’m watching Law & Order, The Mentalist.  Law.  Order, however mystically achieved. Winners win and losers go to jail.  I go to bed still steaming because I overheard X and Y: B and I are paid entirely too much. Plus, I jump around too much.  Can’t I talk a straight line? Announce the whatever, illustrate, restate, give a practical application. “Jemus, skip the big words.  What’d he say yesterday?” “’Dystrophic?’”  “Jemus.”

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Desipientiae

January 10, 2014

Aspects of my religious confusion[1]

Desipientiae: Vol. 1, Art. 36. 

I pray for the dead; it does them no harm.  I pray for the living for the same reason.

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[1] religious confusion [definition] s theology

Jordanian Fire

January 9, 2011

John, Jesus, a dove, God

I think of myself as a believer, though not by anyone else’s standards.  Too easily confused; too easy with confusion.  This week it’s Matthew’s gospel - this story of Jesus’ baptism by John, in which John, Matthew, and God all cite Scripture.  God cites Scripture!

            You know the story, and if you don’t you can look it up (3:1-17).  If you can’t look it up, click here.  Key “Matthew 3:1-17” into the search box.  Choose from 181 versions in 71 languages; ignore everything else on the page.

John has come to the Jordan River preaching repentance, and the people are coming from everywhere to hear him, “Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan,” coming to be washed in the river, “confessing their sins.”  John has come to the Jordan himself because “Isaiah ’twas foretold it,” so the evangelist tells us, but Isaiah seems to omit that people would rush to the river after him, to hear him shame them in the basest terms: “You dead-wood about to be chopped up for kindling, you nest of vipers about to be smoked out of your holes to writhe in the flames.”   They don’t take the warning; they run out to his rankle as to see a burning-down house.  They can’t get too close to the fire.

            Then, it comes.  Jesus, the fire himself; or at least the one with pitchfork in his hand, to gather up the ashes, bone, dung and throw it into the devil’s hopper.  So says John, who will afterward be sorely disappointed.  (See chapter 11.)  So they have come, Jerusalem and all Judea and the region beyond the length of the Jordan River, even as far as Galilee.  Even Jesus comes to see John and to be baptized by him.

            “John would have prevented it,” Matthew says, because Jesus is greater than he is.  (Not because Jesus doesn’t need to be baptized.  Nowhere does Matthew say that; nowhere does Matthew say that Jesus was without sin to confess.  Matthew does say he came to forgive sins.  He is the Messiah, son of David.)

            But this Jesus is not only (if also not literally) a son of David but the son of God.  So the heavens must open and the spirit-dove descend (the Spirit-dove [1] ), and God Godself announce, “This is my beloved Son.”  God is citing Scripture, so my books tell me, but also mixing it up – Isaiah again, and the Psalms.  Not necessarily mixing it up in the sense of confusing it but mixing it up like a boxer: one . . . two – a left jab from the Psalms . . . a right cross from Isaiah.  The reader is punch-drunk until the dove comes in with the smelling salts to clear his head.  And he comes to but dazed by this idea that God is sampling Scripture rather than the reverse.

            Jesus demurs, saying to the hesitant John, No, let it go forward.  “Let it be so for now; for thus it is fitting for all righteousness.”  Whatever that means(?), it mollifies John.  “All righteousness” is a term he’d like to think he’s a part of.  They go down into the water, and John washes Jesus in the Jordan. 

            Jesus springs up and runs out of the water (3:16a).  He rushes into the opening heavens, the warm wind from the wings of the dove, the . . . voice: “This is my beloved Son.”  The voice of God citing the psalms and the prophet.  So now, who can doubt?  No one, for everyone is there, Jerusalem and all Judea.  Who can doubt? But they do.  The voice of God, even waving his Bible, is only as convincing as the prophets’.

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[1] Note that “dove” is lower case. See Thomas Aquinas’ explanation of how it is that God is incarnate in man but not in bird: Summa theologica I, Q. 43, Art. 36; - Whether It Is Fitting for the Holy Ghost to Be Sent Visibly.  Reply to Objection 1: “The Son assumed the visible creature, wherein He appeared unto the unity of His person, so that whatever can be said of that creature can be said of the Son of God . . . .  But the Holy Ghost did not assume the visible creature, in which He appeared, into the unity of His person; so that what is said of it cannot be predicated of Him.”  .  Pigeons, of course, have a different story.

Exorcising

January 8, 2014

Four Definitions / Two Poems

Preachers do it, those you see in churches and those you see on television; scholars do it, too.  Reading the Scripture (a definition of terms):

exegesis – getting the sense out of something (usually Scripture)

eisegesis – putting your own sense back in

exorcism – getting the demons out of something, anything at all

eisorcism – putting your own back in

Perform these actions in the right combination and you’ll have the Bible you wanted all along.

I apologize for the quality of the sound on what follows.  When you're uploading from an Underwood portable typewriter and a Bell & Howell 8mm camera . . . well, sometimes everything doesn't just click.

Missed a Spot!

January 6, 2009

Missed a Spot

                              

Begin again. At work, we confirm our pecking order for another year. We look again at the budget. We take one more “stab” at it. (The phrase comes from what  inexact science? . . . swordplay?. . . surgery? . . . mugging?)

On the radio: the girl-singer sings the old Nat King Cole song, “Funny how I’ve stopped loving you.” She doesn’t mean it:

Now that you're standing here,

            darling, I don't shed a tear.
This is just the rain in my eyes.

Funny, how I've stopped loving you.
And it’s funny I don't miss

            all the heaven in your kiss,
your touch. No I don't love you, not much.

She doesn’t mean it, she can’t mean it, because she's s stuck. But it is possible, to get unstuck. We fall in love, and we fall out of it. We can stop loving, I tell you, not only our lovers, our husbands, our wives but our brothers and sisters, our parents, our children.  We don’t want to admit it because it seems unnatural or unhuman.  

            Or, we don’t believe it, because whatever I tell you, it’s not really true – entirely, spotlessly clean. The habit is too strong and so much of it unconscious. Jingling the change in our pockets when we’re nervous, biting our fingernails, having a third whiskey-and-soda thinking it must be the second, lying in bed after the alarm goes off.  It’s ragged, rough, unfinished . . . like a bad shave, like Michael Finnegan’s whiskers

                        The wind blew them out,

                                    and they blew in again,

                        poor old Michael Finnegan.

                                   

Begin again

W

God Considers Adding Fourth Person

January 4, 2012
But Four Is Too Many!

Feeling better almost as soon as I call in sick – until I get up: I am sick, congested, I decide, from reading too much Céline too quickly. Gut filled with pus from tonsils to anus.

     Congestion isn’t always physical. “It’s just some little bug,” I say when I call, not adding “a spiritual one.” The Spirit fills, they say, but it doesn’t always lift.  It can’t always be weightless, when it weighs us down. Best those times to go back bed . . . and pull the covers over your head.

Who weighed down Jesus with The Spirit? It doesn’t look like he did it to himself. Ask: How often does he speak of to pneuma with a capital-t, capital-p, his very own words, well his words according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke – according to the translators? Answer: fifteen times, five in each gospel.  That’s not many.

     Still, you can be pretty sure God is Three, because two isn’t much of a number, just on-off, and change-the-station. Not enough knobs for theologians to play with.

Belated New Year’s Resolution: Read less French.

                                                                                         W

Falling Down Sleepy

January 2, 2008

Early to Rise

Early to bed, early to rise.  Stumble into the bathroom. Stumble back into bed. Turn on the radio.  Listen and doze as Republicans revise strategies, he-men in West Virginia pull small airplanes strapped to their backs, women in Arlington (Virginia and Texas) rise early to cut coupons.

            “The news is next”: the markets are up, or down. In either case, the “news” is about “the markets” – all the news is all about money always.

But you:

            Increase your emotional intelligence. Start with a list of what to watch for in yourself and others: pride, anger, greed, gluttony, lust, envy, sloth and their minions; joy, hope, love, faith, and theirs. The vices and the virtues and their various hangers-on, all looking for a hand-out.

Suddenly, it’s too late. The sun bleats against the fake-bamboo blinds. A leaf-blower (in January?) chokes and whinnies into life. The clock radio (and CD-player) blinks 8:12. Too late: barely time to get up, shower, try to uproot some of the various relentlessly sticky hederae growing into your scalp, out of your crotch and down one leg, to find matching socks, to trundle off to work arriving remotely on time.
           “Good afternoon!”  Sarcasm.  Someone whose mother didn't love him enough so doted on him instead.

W