Pundits, Pollsters, and Jonathan Swift; Virginia Woolf and Jesus

October 30, 2015

Pundits, Pollsters, and Jonathan Swift; Virginia Woolf and Jesus

If you follow this blog at all, you’ll know that what The Ambiguities does is try to preserve . . . ambiguities, especially from those that try to explain them and, if not also explain them away, at least rub the shine off*: pundits, politicians, pollsters, and preachers; sociologists, psychologists, and scientismists; analysts, anal-ists, Laputans.

   Bill W., you asked me some time ago what I was trying to do with the blog, and all I could say then was “Read it.” Now, you can get off, if you must, with reading just the paragraph above.

Here is another story of Jesus,** particularly for my preacher friends about whom I have said more than once that they don’t know when to sit down (before they’ve rubbed all the shine off). This is an observation from below, not an accusation from on high.

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 * These are people that buy lottery tickets to scratch them.

** This Sunday’s gospel lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary, Mark 12:28-34.

For links to other stories from the TRV (Ted Riich Version) of the Hebrew, Baalist, and New Covenant Scriptures, click here.

Samuel Butler (the first), Virginia Woolf (the only), and Jesus (good old)

October 29, 2015

Samuel Butler (the first), Virginia Woolf (the only), and Jesus (good old)

From Samuel Butler’s Hudibras, on those Presbyterian divines that “beat with fist instead of stick” their “pulpit[s], drum[s] ecclesiastic,” whose brains outweighed their rage no more than “half a grain”:

. . . errant saints whom all men grant
To be the true church militant.
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery,
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks . . .

                                                                  

                                                             . . . those (preachers or politicians) that believe they can bludgeon those that disagree into agreement. Why so angry at the world, when it disagrees with us? Because God is.

Perhaps God is – spiteful, and angry at everyone that disagrees with me. Though, perhaps not. If Jesus of the parables (or “pabarles”) be the face of God, God is more bemused:

     “It is like this. A man had a brother whom he hated, but his brother did not hate him. Who has ears will hear.”

Here, then, the pabarle

October 24, 2015

Here, then, the pabarle*

Then he said, “It is like when a farmer sowed a field with weeds, and the weeds grew, more than the field could hold. And the harvest was great, for many years. Do you have ears? Then, listen.”

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 * With apologies to Bernard Brandon Scott, whose Hear Then the Parable” is the book on Jesus’ parables.

Muleheaded Francis

October 21, 2015
Muleheaded Francis 

In the background, imagine
Giotto's descendent Sinatra
singing "I did it my way!"

       In a battle of wills, it is not the strongest that prevails 
       but the most selfish. – Uncle Albert

As in the case of Francis of Assisi who wanted to be a religious more than his father wanted him to be a son.

 

Freedom's just another word

Untitled No. 229

Over on Go Around Back, melchior ball, "sports reporter" - Texas wipes the floor with inmates, 11-0.

Adulterated and Confused

October 5, 2015
Adulterated and Confused

For too many, the purposes of revelation are, in order, these: diversion; gratification; and moralizing. – Uncle Albert

 
I told Roz about the narrow preacher (See here.), and she decided she wanted to hear him. So this Sunday we went to his church. She liked him “all right,” she said. He was earnest, “but he has a sense of humor.” She’s right on both counts. “Preaching the word of God” is clearly a big, serious deal for this guy, but at least he knows he’s just “this guy.”

     He’s not a prophet or an oracle, but he has – it’s inevitable – his point of view, and that’s what he’s preaching. Preaching is explaining what he thinks this or that must mean. So, as I said then, he can’t just tell the story and sit down. No preacher can do that.

Here’s the story (from Mark 10):

     Jesus is teaching in Capernaum; then, all of a sudden, he’s in Judea, also teaching. And “the Pharisees” turn up with one of their “tests” about the law: Does Jesus know it? “Does THE LAW allow a man to divorce his wife?” they ask. Jesus answers the question with a question – he likes doing that, particularly with the Pharisees: “What does Moses say?”

     “Moses said a man could write out divorce papers and serve them, and his wife has to go.”

     Jesus: “Moses wrote that into the law because you couldn’t do what God wanted for you: that a man and woman marry and become one. One. This is what God wants for you all – to be one; but you can’t do it, so Moses gives you a way to pull away, back into two.”

     Later, in private, the disciples press the point, as if they’ve become the Pharisees; and Jesus says something no one – no one I know anyway – has ever liked much. “A man divorces his wife. If he marries another, he is committing adultery. Same thing: if a woman divorces her husband and she marries someone else, she’s committing adultery.”

But how?

     The narrow man had an explanation for this, how plausible I don’t know. Something like this: Divorce pulls apart (“puts asunder”) what God wants to be together. Jesus is talking about what happens then; there are consequences! No break can never be clean, nor complete. Neither, in this case – neither ex-husband nor ex-wife can start from scratch. “Adultery” describes this ragged situation, where someone has left behind something he knows he shouldn’t have left behind and can’t have left completely behind. Where someone has pulled out of something she knows she shouldn’t have pulled out and can’t pull out of completely. The narrow man’s idea was that “adultery” describes this ragged situation and any ragged situation where relationships are broken.

The story in the gospel goes on. After this conversation with the disciples, Jesus goes back out to the people. And they are bringing their children to him to bless them. And the disciples try to stop it. The preacher didn’t try to explain why they would do that; but we know it upsets Jesus, who says, Get out of the damn way. Let them come on. For they, meaning the children, show us what God wants and how we’ll need to be if we want to be part of it.”

That’s where the story ends, whatever it means. I don’t know. I don’t think Mark knows. The preacher didn’t either, but he told a story of his own childhood. It involved a tree and a rock (but no clouds). I lost track. When I asked, Roz, she said she did, too, but the tree was an oak.

   Oh, well. Probably better not to know. With stories about Jesus, better to go home confused. That’s the point: there isn’t one you can nail down, however big your hammer.

I shot an arrow in the air.

October 1, 2015

I shot an arrow in the air. 

Morning well started but still in bed, rain sheeting against the windows, I read again Montaigne’s “The Soul Expends Its Passions Upon False Objects Where the True Are Wanting”:  If we don’t have anything else to lash out at, or don’t know what to lash out at, we’ll beat our fists against the air.  Montaigne quotes Lucan:

                             Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densa

                                    Occurant sylvae, spation diffuses inani.

[So the wind, unless its might comes up against thick wood,

will lose its force, diffused in empty space.]

Montaigne goes on

Montaigne prepares for Joaquin.

So it seems that the soul, being transported and discomposed, turns its violence upon itself, if not supplied with something to oppose it, and therefore always requires an object at which to aim and on which to act.  Plutarch says of those who are delighted with little dogs and monkeys, that the amorous part that is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge and create one false and frivolous.  And we see that the soul, in its passions, inclines rather to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical subject, even contrary to its own belief, than not to have something to work upon.

If we have no one or no thing to blame, we find something to attack – physically.  We tear our hair out, literally.  “’Tis a common practice.”  But to what avail?  “The philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king, who by handsful pulled his hair off his head for sorrow, ‘Does this man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?’”

          Or, God is a convenient scapegoat.  Montaigne cites two examples:

I remember there was a story current, when I was a boy, that one of our neighboring kings  [probably Alfonso XI of Castile] having received a blow from the hand of God, swore he would be revenged, and in order to do it, made proclamation that for ten years to come no one should pray to Him, or so much as mention Him throughout his dominions . . . .

Augustus Caesar, having been tossed with a tempest at sea, fell to defying Neptune, and in the pomp of the Circensian games, to be revenged, deposed his statue from the place it had amongst the deities.

Apparently, one can’t simply ignore it, and it will go away on its own.