The parable of the prophet and the stick

to listen, click here

 The parable of the prophet and the stick 

Is the kingdom of God like this?

the prophet and his stick
in better days

The people-lost-in-the-wilderness complained to their prophet that they had no water to drink. And the prophet went aside and spoke to the God of the Wilderness, of the Air, the Earth, and the Sky, “The people have no water, and they are complaining: ‘We must find a way home, or we will die, and our children and our animals with us,’ they say.

     “They are getting ready to stone me,” the prophet said.

And the God of the Wilderness said to the prophet, “Take this stick” - and there was a stick. “Take it and the people to the rock at Horeb,” the God of the Wilderness said, “and cry out to the rock, and water will come out of it, enough for the people and their children and their animals as long as they are in the wilderness.”

     And so it was. The prophet cried out to the rock and struck it with the stick, and there was water. And the people and their children and their animals drank.

Seasons came and went, and the people lost in the wilderness were found, but their prophet was not, for he had not only cried out to the rock, he had struck it.

Those who have ears, let them hear.  

 08.29.17

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 * From Numbers 20 (TRV). For links to other stories from the TRV (Ted Riich Version), 

   click here. 

"but I could be wrong"

 “but i could be wrong”   

part two, of two (For part one, click here.)

In the VII. chapter of his delightfully wicked portrait of Cardinal Manning, Strachey journeys with the Cardinal to Rome. It is 1870. “The temporal Power of the Pope had now almost vanished,” Strachey writes; “but, as his worldly dominions steadily diminished, the spiritual pretensions of the Holy Father no less steadily increased,” to culminate in “the tremendous doctrine” of Papal Infallibility. Then, “let the modern world do its worst!”

     Not all in or of Rome agreed with Infallibility, whatever they thought of the modern world of 1870.  “Newman was more than usually upset; Monseigneur Dupanloup was disgusted; and Dr. Döllinger prepared himself for resistance.” But they were certainly a minority, even if there were acknowledged “stumbling blocks.” Strachey cites one logical difficulty from the fourteenth century. “The following case arose.”

John XXII. asserted in his bull “Cum inter nonnullos” that the doctrine of the poverty of Christ was heretical. Now, according to the light of reason, one of two things must follow from this—either John XXII. was himself a heretic or he was no Pope. For his predecessor, Nicholas III., had asserted in his bull “Exiit qui seminat” that the doctrine of the poverty of Christ was the true doctrine, the denial of which was heresy. Thus if John XXII. was right Nicholas III. was a heretic, and in that case Nicholas’s nominations of Cardinals were void, and the conclave which elected John was illegal; so that John was no Pope, his nominations of Cardinals were void, and the whole Papal succession vitiated. On the other hand, if John was wrong—well, he was a heretic; and the same inconvenient results followed. And, in either case, what becomes of Papal Infallibility?

Strachey does add, however, that “such crude and fundamental questions as these were not likely to trouble the Council.” They didn’t trouble the Pope.

      Cardinal Manning was convinced in any case. If the Pio Nono felt he was infallible, as he assured all he did, who was the Cardinal to disagree? So he flew to Rome to support his Holy Father. And, heavens, “the whole world seemed to be gathered there.”

Her streets were filled with crowned heads and Princes of the Church, great ladies and great theologians, artists and friars, diplomats and newspaper reporters. Seven hundred bishops were there, from all the corners of Christendom, and in all the varieties of ecclesiastical magnificence—in falling lace and sweeping purple and flowing violet veils. Zouaves stood in the colonnade of St. Peter’s, and Papal troops were on the Quirinal. Cardinals passed, hatted and robed, in their enormous carriages of state, like mysterious painted idols. Then there was a sudden hush: the crowd grew thicker and expectation filled the air. Yes! it was he! He was coming! The Holy Father! But first there appeared, mounted on a white mule and clothed in a magenta mantle, a grave dignitary bearing aloft a silver cross. The golden coach followed, drawn by six horses gorgeously caparisoned, and within the smiling white-haired Pio Nono, scattering his benedictions, while the multitude fell upon its knees as one man.

The multitude may have been falling upon its knees. Amen. But theologians were involved. And the Council was 700 strong - and weak, and in between. They seem to agree on one thing, or they did not.

Now every one—or nearly every one—was ready to limit the Papal Infallibility to pronouncements ex cathedrâ—that is to say, to those made by the Pope in his capacity of Universal Doctor; but this only served to raise the ulterior, the portentous, and indeed the really crucial question—to which of the Papal pronouncements ex cathedrâ did Infallibility adhere?

Where theologians wish to be involved, there will be committees, and where there are committees, time must slow. All views must be consulted even if eventually the Council would come to believe that the definition of his Infallibility which Pio Nono had himself already issued, proprio motu was correct. That is, the Pope, when he speaks ex cathedrâ, is possessed of “that infallibility with which the Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals.” And, so be it! Strachey goes on,

Thus it became a dogma of faith that a Papal definition regarding faith or morals is infallible; but beyond that both the Holy Father and the Council maintained a judicious reserve. . . . How was it to be determined, for instance, which particular Papal decisions did in fact come within the scope of the definition? Who was to decide what was or was not a matter of faith or morals? Or precisely when the Roman Pontiff was speaking ex cathedrâ? . . . . 

Grave theologians continue to deliberate, but Pio Nono had no, nor would he brook any, doubts.

“In duty to our supreme pastoral office,” proclaimed the Sovereign Pontiff, “by the bowels of Christ we earnestly entreat all Christ’s faithful people, and we also command them by the authority of God and our Saviour, that they study and labour to expel and eliminate errors and display the light of the purest faith.” Well might the faithful study and labour to such ends! For, [if] the offence remained ambiguous, there was no ambiguity about the penalty. One hair’s breadth from the unknown path of truth, one shadow of impurity in the mysterious light of faith—and [the offender would] be anathema! anathema! anathema!

O. Cromwell's press conference
on the 145th anniversary of
the First Vatican Council

Let us pause to take a breath, wondering who could come to rescue any who happened to fall asleep, who failed to listen, who crossed the line or went into an alleyway to escape the noise of the Papal parade. Strachey tries to give us hope, but by contradiction:

When the framers of such edicts called upon the bowels of Christ to justify them, might they not have done well to have paused a little, and to have called to mind the counsel of another sovereign ruler, though a heretic—Oliver Cromwell? “Bethink ye, bethink ye, in the bowels of Christ, that ye may be mistaken!”    (Italics mine.)

And are we not back to the beginning and my friend Gaspar’s complaint and suggestion, his complaint against all pontification that allows no disagreement and his suggestion: Couldn’t the pontificators end their diatribes not with Anathema, amen. but with Sed mea culpa, “but I could be wrong”?

Silly lad. Foolish question.

08.28.17

"but I could be wrong"

 “but i could be wrong”  

part one, of two

In the earliest days of The Ambiguities (02.24.14), I wrote:

My friend Gas [Gaspar Stephens] thinks the five most underutilized words in the English language are those making up the phrase, “But I could be wrong.” I think he’s right because − Lions or Christians − we’re all looking at the world through a dark, dark glass. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

     Someone from Boston, New York, or Washington will try.

Gaspar Stephens
sewing doubt

In a recent email, Gas wrote, that lately he has been “freighted with the notion, more poignant than usual, that we’re all wrong about everything. It’s not so much . . .

. . . in the sense we mistake one “fact” for another, but we're all incurable Procrusteans, stretching, hacking, forcing what we know into places that don't fit or remaking the places to fit what we know. I know you and I have beat this dead horse flat. Still, I grow increasingly aware that no one has fuck for a clue about anything.

With regard to politics, I'm sick of the left and the right and most of the center. I don't pretend to understand - I really don't - but I can see through the dark glass well enough to recognize that the warp and weft of everything is way more frayed than we think and that the kazillions of loose threads wander off into places much too far away and way too dark for us to see. Yet, everywhere I turn, there's somebody - to be clear not everybody - but there's somebody in my line of vision and, worse, within earshot that knows. It doesn't matter if he’s on CNN, she’s at a faculty meeting, he’s that guy two stools down at the bar, or she’s the Uber driver who brought me here: somebody fucking KNOWs for damn sure what's going on. (So, this much is certain: humility is not at this moment in vogue.)

     Let me add: I do still “believe” in science. I do think there are some (few) things of which we are rightly sure, but the implications of those things remain wildly uncertain.

“Has humility ever been in vogue?” I start my reply. I stop. The glass through which I see is especially dark, so not only do not know the answer to my question, I am not sure I know what the question means. 
    But you may be interested to see who asked, “But could you be wrong?” long before Gaspar did. Stay tuned for that story, which will come to you next time by way of Lytton Strachey’s delightful Eminent Victorians, which I am finally reading again for the first time.

08.25.17

Dear Ted

 Dear Ted 

Dear Ted: My ex and I were talking about . . . . - Just thinking

Just thinking? No, not thinking at all: you’re pretty much nuts, aren’t you - but so are we all. The best thing, if you don’t know what to do, is live and let live.  Leave complete madness to the tellers of tales, proclamations of vengeance to the prophets, and passive-aggressive grace to God.

Dear Ted: My mother-in-law thinks that we ought to. . . . - In a stew

In a stew? You surely are. You’re pretty much nuts, aren’t you - but so are we all. The best thing, if you don’t know what to do, is live and let live. Leave complete madness to the tellers of tales, proclamations of vengeance to the prophets, and passive-aggressive grace God.

* * * *

For:

     The kingdom of God - is it like this? (“The Parable of the Prophet and the Tree” To listen, click here.)

A prophet of God turned a people from their evil ways, and God changed his mind about the disaster he had said he would bring upon their city, the catastrophe that the prophet promised them if they did not repent. And the prophet, who hated the people he’d been sent to, became angry and began yelling at God, saying, “I knew you were going to do this. It’s why I asked you not to send me.” He said much more not to be repeated. And the prophet took to his bed, hoping to die.

     But he found he had not given up hope for destruction, so he went out of the city, where he could watch it: Maybe God would change his mind again, and the people he hated would be destroyed after all. He sat in the shade of a tree, growing from a mustard seed. He watched.

He watched until nightfall, and nothing happened. And at dawn the next morning, he looked again, but nothing had happened to the evil city. The tree though, that had given him shade and cover to sleep under, was groaning and shrinking, and it kept shrinking until it was nothing but a stick in the ground.

     As the sun grew in the sky, the tree shrunk into the ground. And by noon the sun beat down on the prophet, still angry that it didn’t beat down - and burn! - the city. And the prophet said to God, “I wish I were dead.”

     “Because of the tree?” God asked.

     “Chuck the tree!” the prophet said, only he didn’t say “chuck.” And he added, “Chuck the Ninevites, and chuck you!”

And the stick that had been the tree that had grown from the mustard seed began to swell.

Is the kingdom of God like this?

09.22.17

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For more parables and podge-hodge from the Ted Riich version, see here.

"The day after tomorrow," he said.

 “The day after tomorrow,” he said.  

That afternoon (after we’d discussed “freedom is a breakfastfood” in the morning) - that afternoon, Uncle Albert said, “I think we’ll head home day after tomorrow.” And I said, “Fine,” as nonchalantly as I could since I was surprised since I’d thought he’d come home to Paradise to die, however long that took. But, as I’ve said, he hadn’t. He never intended to die in Paradise. He just wanted to go there via New York City and northern New York State and Ottawa. Then, he'd come back here, which was, is, now “home,” it seems.

     I said then, too, that it saddened me to think he was going home, to Paradise, to die. But when he said, “I think we’ll head home day after tomorrow,” meaning here, it not only surprised but it frightened me. I thought, “He’s going to die underfoot.”

We aren’t, I understand this, always in control of our thoughts. Or ever. And we can’t unthink anything we’ve thought though we can forget it - unless it’s horribly mean. Then, we can forget it for a while - and maybe another while and maybe another even long while. But then, it remembers us and decides to stop back for a visit. So, I was surprised and frightened, and I thought what I thought; then, I was pissed I’d thought it and couldn’t do anything about it. There it was, and it would be back.

     In short, it was a typical day in Paradise.

And the day after the next day in Paradise, we drove the 925 miles home.

09.20.17

more cummings

 more cummings 

Not the next morning but the morning after that, Uncle Albert asked, “What did you think of that one about freedom?”

     Not sure what he meant, I shrugged. He added, “That poem by cummings, ‘as freedom is a breakfastfood.’” “Oh,” I said. “Read it again,” he ordered.

     I did.

 Click here.

“What do you think about it?”

Click to enlarge.

     I said, “I don’t know.”

     He gave me that look, that sniff.

     “None of these things is going to happen,” I said. “The false premise proves the false conclusion.”

     “Spoken by a true logic-chopper.”

     “What does that mean?”

     “What I choose it to mean,” he said, “as the Philosopher* says.”

     I tried to give him the look, the sniff. I’m not very good at it, but I got a reaction. Surprisingly.

     “‘So seduced by logic, that everything must be seen through it.’”

    I couldn’t disagree, so I said: “But that doesn’t make what I said wrong. Freedom isn’t a breakfast food, truth can’t live with right and wrong, molehills can’t be made from mountains, so being will never pay the rent of seem any more than water will encourage flame.

     “And so forth, I said.”

     “Go on,” he looked at me.

     “Hat racks will never become peach trees and the impure will never find all things pure any more than children will sting hornets and the hornets run crying to their mothers. Robins will always welcome spring and tomorrow will always be too late.”

     “And the last verse?” Uncle Albert asked.

     “I don’t know,” I said. “You tell me.”

     “Well,” he said, “breasts are breasts.”

08.19.17

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* the Philosopher (crying, “over my dead body.”)

Later that night

 Later that night 

When we got back to Uncle Albert’s after we’d eaten the whitefish chowder, he asked me if I would do him a favor. I started to say, “Depends,” but he didn’t let me finish.

     “I know,” he said. “Depends on what it is.”

     “Yes.”

     “Would you read to me?”

     “What?” Not in the sense of “what do you want me” to read, more like “say what?” But he ignored the tone, or he pretended to.

     “There are some poems I want to hear in someone’s voice other than my own,” he said.

e e cummings

They were “just a few, three or four, maybe five” by e e cummings. It didn’t matter that I had a cold and was a little hoarse, he wanted to hear them in another voice, however cracked and sore; he wanted to hear them without seeing them.

     So I read him, as well as I could - they are hard to read: “next to of course god america i”; “i sing of Olaf glad and big”; “as freedom is a breakfast food”; and “anyone lived in a little how town,” though before I did, I asked, “Just read them? You don’t want to talk about them, I hope.”

     “No,” he said. “Just read them first.”

     “Then what? Then talk about them?”

     “What’s with you?” he asked. “You can talk about poems. I’ve heard you.”

     “Not often,” I said, “if that’s true. When?” (Meaning, “When did you hear me?)

     “Just read them,” he said. “We’ll see.”

[You may hear here.]

Then, after: “No,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about them. Just read the last two again.”

08.14.17

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Links to the poems are here:

        https://allpoetry.com/next-to-of-course-god-america-i

        https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/i-sing-olaf-glad-and-big

        https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52946/as-freedom-is-a-breakfastfood

        https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/anyone-lived-pretty-how-town

Roz goes home.

 Roz goes home. 

Roz and I were back on the road the next day but only after we had slept late and had a late breakfast with Uncle Albert, and then only as far as Kinross, or Chippewa County International Airport, on the long, broad runways of old Kincheloe Air Force Base, which was deactivated in 1977. Her flight home took her to Detroit, then to LaGuardia, then Roanoke, where her hippie-parented friend Blue was going to pick her up if she remembered.

     “She’ll remember,” Roz said. “Anyway, she has a cell phone now. She sold a bunch of pots.”

     “Or pot,” I said.

     “Unfair,” Roz said.

     “Yes, I know,” I said. “‘She’s very talented.’”

     “She is.”

whitefish chowder

Everything was on schedule, and I was back to Uncle Albert’s by five.

     Then, we went to get some whitefish chowder. We go to the same place every time I come to visit. And we have the same waitress, “Lou,” who tells me the same story every time we come, though first I have to ask the size of Paradise. Usually, I ask Uncle Albert, when I see her coming to get our order.

     “I keep forgetting,” I say, a little louder than I need to. “How big is Paradise?”

     “Oh, I can tell you that,” Lou says. “It’s exactly 432. I mean the population. Four hundred thirty-two exactly. Every day.”

     “Never changes?” I ask.

     “No, never changes.” She hits the pause button, then: “Cause every time a woman gets pregnant a man leaves.”

     *Ba dum tss* And all three of us laugh because the joke is always funny.

The chowder is always good.

09.13.17

Griffins

 Griffins 

August 1137, 2014

Another random entry from “a work in progress,” Gaspar Stephens’ Neo Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman Mythology (long in progress but still listed as forthcoming from Balthazar & Melchior Stephens Press).  For previous entries from the Neo Encyclopedia featured in The Ambiguities, see 08.33.14, 08.59.14, 08.1023.14, and 08.1031.14.

Griffin (or gryphon)  [Gk. gru&fwn,  L. gryphus). Creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion, and the head, wings, and foretalons of an eagle. According to Spiff & Randall (Dictionary of Greek and Babylonian Amorous Biography, 1957), the griffin came about not as one might expect from the union of the king of the birds of the air and a lioness or the king of the beasts with an eagless, but was hatched from a golden egg of a brew of lion and eagle res perturbationis collected by the Pan, Mende&lov (L. Mendelus). How the creatures continued - and continue, if they do - is unknown. What is known is that, like many of the gods, griffins mated with human beings, producing a number of notable children, including the only two-time Heisman Trophy winner, Archie Griffin. Also the Irish race walker, Colin Griffin; the American conspiracy theorist, Des Griffin, and the American conspiracy, Kathy Griffin; French poet Francis Vielé-Griffin; Richard Griffin of the 19th-century Scots publishing house; and Victor William Griffin, the Quapaw chief and peyote Roadman.* Griffins themselves are, however, aside from their appearance, not at all notable. According to Yvon Cormier’s exhausting Bestiary (2001), the first griffins were charged with protecting a trove of gold hidden under the snow in Hyperborea from the one-eyed Arimapsi (See Figure 8.) and failed. Later, a flock was sent to India to mine gold but found none. After these failures, griffins became seldom seen. The last sighting in the United States was February 26, 1960, near Chicago.

09.10.17

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   * Merv Griffin’s father was a stockbroker. [Ed. note]

Nescio

 Nescio 

Sudbury to the Soo, Ontario is a little over 300 kilometers, which is right around 190 miles for those of you that are left-handed. There’s construction leading up to and on the bridge - or there was when we got there; and we got a little lost but not so far we weren’t found. And we were readmitted to the lower-48.

     We stopped at the Chippewa County Sherriff’s Office in the Soo, Michigan. Uncle Albert walked in on Roz’s arm. I was instructed to stay with the car. They were gone about twenty minutes. When I raised my eyebrows to ask what it was all about - nothing, no reaction from either of them. So, I don’t know.

There’s a lot I don’t know about: cricket, the Philippines, heavy metals mining, mysticism or the mechanics of urination, Iranian cinema, baking, constrictors, philately, hematology or Orthodox liturgy, fishing in the Baltic, the samba, or shoe manufacturing, among many others.

     Moreover, I’m one of the few people I know - I may be the only one - that doesn’t know what impels people to do what they do, become law enforcement officers for instance, or florists. And I don’t know why Uncle Albert and Roz went into the Chippewa County Sherriff’s Office in Sault Ste. Marie. And I don’t know why they didn’t tell me why.

     I know this. It was 63.7 miles from there to Uncle Albert’s place across the road from Lake Superior in Paradise.* We got there at 4:12 pm (EDT). Later we went out to eat whitefish.
 

09.09.17

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 * according to the Escalade

   Gafieira Samba steps by Paulo Scardine - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org

Leaving Sudbury

 Leaving Sudbury 

We left Sudbury mid-morning. The downtown inn Uncle Albert arranged for us served him breakfast in bed. We ate with our hosts, a petite Vietnamese woman and her very large Danish spouse. We ate very well - an old-fashioned English breakfast: soft-scrambled eggs, sausage, black pudding, bacon, mushrooms, baked beans, hash browns, grilled tomato. Then, we wandered out to look for what we could find of Sudbury’s downtown murals.

     Our wandering took us along the alley by Memorial Park, where three women in green scrubs were leaning against a rail, gossiping, laughing, smoking cigarettes. The morning methadone line was beginning to form by the door opposite them, a bent wee man dragging his blanket like Linus, a narrow, narrow woman with a patch over her left eye, a man equally narrow, like a skeleton, with a skull tattooed over half his face. In the park, an older woman with more flesh than the entire line at the door pushed her grimly determined grandson on a swing.

     We found several of the murals. Roz likes this kind of public art - by artists that are not famous and never will be but without whom, she says, great art could not exist. You cannot winnow without chaff.

The little sign by Troy Lovegates’ grandmother’s heel says the mural is by Troy Lovegates (San Francisco, CA via Ottawa). Then there is this caption: “Over tea, Troy’s grandma told stories of little men that would come and dance for you but as you clapped they tricked you. Troy Lovegates (AKA Other) is a story-teller at heart with a nomadic spirit who’s work is inspired by people he’s met on his travels around the world.”

 Uncle Albert was dressed and ready to go by the time we returned.

     “I’ve been thinking about Truth,” he said, “while you’ve been wandering.”

     “That ‘T’ sounded capital,” Roz said. Uncle Albert nodded. 
     “Does anyone believe in capital-T truth anymore?” she asked. Uncle Albert nodded. “Here’s the way I see it,” he said just as she said, “Besides fundamentalists?”

     “Yes,” he said, “fundamentalists. And for them, the more inconvenient the Truth the better, as long as it’s more inconvenient for my neighbor than myself.”

     “Isn’t that true for all of us?” I asked as I helped him into the SUV.

09.04.17

_______________ 

 Yes, it does say “who’s.” For more murals, see http://uphere.com/murals/. Don’t feel left behind. The story of the journey - with interruptions by the inattentive narrator - begins here.

 

Panne d'essence

 Panne d’essence 

It didn’t take Dave long to discover that we were merely out of gas. How we had managed to ignore the numerous warning signals, however, he wouldn’t venture to say.

     He spoke to us in Jamaican-tinged English as he emptied the gas can he had attached to the side of his truck into our tank, then said, “Try startin' it. Wouldn’t hurt to pump the gas-pedal a couple of times first.

     “That should do it,” he said when the engine turned over.

Uncle Albert rolled down his window, beckoned him over, holding his wallet out the window because he was going to pay. He said, “Français?” Dave nodded, and Uncle Albert asked him en Francais if he knew La Rochefoucauld and went on to quote, Quelque prétexte que nous donnions à nos afflictions, ce n’est souvent que l’intérêt et la vanité qui les causent. [Loosely, “I don’t know how we ignored the warning signals either, but whatever our sorrows it is usually self-interest and vanity that cause them.”]

     Dave nodded again. He said, beginning in English, “The only one I know is this de mon grand-père : Le bonheur ou le malheur vont d’ordinaire à ceux qui ont le plus de l’un ou de l’autre.” [Good luck or bad luck usually seems to go to those that already have the most of the one or the other.]

     Then he said, after Uncle Albert had paid him, “That should take you to North Bay, but I’d stop ‘n’ fill up at the next station - it’s about six miles down the road.” Then, in a delicious mock-Southern drawl, he waved, “Y’all take keh, heah?”

We took care. It cost us just less than $115 (Canadian) to fill up. It was an Esso station.

09.02.17

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 This continues the story of “Hell-bent to Paradise” (and back) that begins here and continues since, with one or two interruptions, because I cannot walk in a straight line; and there is much yet to be told. Panne d’essence took place the twelfth day of the journey (the 17th of July) on which we spent the night in Sudbury. In the next episode (the next day), we'll cross the bridge at the Soo. Then, we’ll be in Paradise for a little less than a week; then we’ll be home again. See here. The circle completes itself, even if the ends don’t quite match up without erasing and making adjustments; it’s like a seven-year-old drew it.