Four from Uncle Albert

 Four from Uncle Albert, 

Henry James by Sargent
La Rochefoucauld is trying to convince
him that brevity is the soul of wit.

. . . who continues to work on sentences after the manner of his hero La Rochefoucauld.

 “Unsuccessfully,” he would add.

Piety and grace do not go hand-in-hand.

Suspicion will always outrun proof.

“The gods are just” - one of those things we can’t not believe even when we know it’s untrue.

We can’t face the misery we inflict on others. If we did, we’d be as miserable as we’ve made them.*

09.26.18

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 * Coming soon, a complete list of Uncle Albert’s maxims on such matters as on avoiding hypocrisy, buying votes, chronic bowel obstruction, meanness and narcissism, those without secrets, and having the wrong numbers.

Law and Gospel

 Law and Gospel 

Huffing out his cheeks, “This is what I’ve been thinking,” Axel* said. “They love the Law, the Pharisees - and their descendants - because they fear the Gospel.

     “I don’t mean Paul’s gospel, which would only tie them in different knots, bind them with different ties - the ones that begin with ‘but.’ ‘Grace is absolutely, absolutely free, but . . . ’ It’s not Paul’s gospel that we fear but Jesus’, because it excludes no one.” He paused as if he didn’t want to go on; but he did. “Or excludes only the hypocrites. And it excludes them only as long as they don’t admit it.

     “All this is in Camus,” he said.

     “There’s no way to avoid being a hypocrite,” I said, “but to stay in bed and don’t answer the phone.

     “Don’t give anyone any advice ever,” I said.

09.20.18

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 * Axel Sundstrøm, my Lutheran pastor friend. Here’s about him.

a farable of Jesop: two wolves and a sheep and some friends

  A farable of Jesop 

“two wolves and a sheep and some friends”

 Two wolves invited a sheep to a party. “Will I be the only sheep there?” the sheep asked. “Oh, no!” said one wolf. “Indeed, no,” said the other. “Bring as many friends as you’d like.”
                                                           09.19.18 

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An online reproduction of the 1887 edition Jesop's Farables, translated from the Latin and edited by G. F. Murray - and with my brief afterward - is available here!

Politics

 Politics 

This morning I told Dr. Feight that I had decided - on principle - to disregard the political opinions of anyone born before 1956, by which time, according to what I’d read, the last of the “leading-edge baby boomers” had come into the world. I was going to include my own opinions because, though I was born in 1957, my brain is unusually addled, as he knew. (Addled like an egg, smelly, dying.) Besides, it is time, I told him . . . it is past time, I told him, for all boomers - leading-edge, middle, and late - to let go. Much less the generation before mine, whatever they’re called - they should have let go ten years ago. “The next generations can hardly do worse if our lunatic president and lily-livered senate is our legacy,” I said. Then, it occurred to me: they're not our legacy. “We have met the enemy, and they is us ourselves.” I said that, too.

     He said, “Mmmm.”

20018 Topps

I don’t usually talk about politics with him. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever talked about politics with him before. And I don’t know what precipitated this outburst that lasted, however, only the length of that first paragraph.

     After he said, “Mmmm,” I changed the subject. “How ’bout those Nats?” I said, knowing they were barely over .500, not to mention their season had only a dozen games left - they have effectively given up. Then: “That means I’m changing the subject,” I said.

     But he asked me then if I wanted to read the Woodward book. He was finished with his copy, he said.

     I said, “No.

     “But, thank you,” I said.

I stopped then. I thought about the weather, how damp and greasy and gob-gray it had been - for how long? It was hard to say, time having disappeared in the spittle-mist. I didn’t want to talk about the weather. Then, before I knew:

     “I’m also not listening to ideologues,” I said. I’m not listening to anyone not willing to change his mind. Or hers.”

     “Who’s left?” Dr. Feight asked.

     “Michael Gerson,” I said. “Maybe. Jennifer Rubin. David Brooks. Maybe.”

     “How old are they, do you know?” he asked.* I didn’t.

“I see that our time is almost up,” I said. “Let’s call it a day.”

     “Mmmm,” Dr. Feight said. “What time do you think it is?”

09.17.18

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 * Gerson is 54, Rubin 56, Brooks 57. Dr. Feight is around in there. About him, see here.

Badda Bing, Badda Boom!

 Badda Bing, Badda Boom! 

from Bakker Thornhill’s commentary on Joshua (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press,* 2018, p. 116) —

X. 1 When Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and wiped it off the map, burned it down to every dog and cat as an offering to The Lord - as he had done to Jericho, and how, duly terrified, the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel,  2 he, Adoni-zedek, was himself afraid  - Gibeon was a city, much bigger than Ai, and well-armed. 

      3 So Adoni-zedek king of Jerusalem sent messages to Hoham king of Hebron, to Piram king of Jarmuth, to Japhia king of Lachish, and to Debir king of Eglon:  4 “We need to get together. And maybe we should storm Gibeon, for they are throwing in with Joshua and with his band of . . .” Band of what he left unsaid.  5 But the five kings of the Amorites - the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon - knew what he meant and they assembled their troops and joined him, Adoni-zedek, against Gibeon.

      6 So the leaders of Gibeon sent a message to Joshua, who was camped at Gilgal, saying, “We have an agreement, right? We need your help. Now! All the kings of the Amorites are coming against us.” 

      7 And Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all his band.  8 And the Lord went, too, saying to Joshua, “No fear. They are yours. Not a man of them will be standing when you and I are done with them.”

      9 Joshua and his men then marched off with light hearts; with light hearts they marched through the dark night; they attacked suddenly at dawn.  10 And the Lord attacked with them, so that the armies of the kings were thrown into a panic and ran helter-skelter chased by Joshua’s troops up to Beth-horon and even as far as Azekah and Makkedah.  11 And even as they were running away from Joshua, the Lord was pelting them with huge stones, killing them wholesale. More died, it has been said, because of the stones the Lord threw at them from heaven than because of the swords in the hands of Joshua and his troops.

      12 Still,  some lived, so in front of all his men Joshua shouted to the Lord:

Sun! Stand still where you are over Gibeon,

   Moon, where you are over the Valley of Aijalon.”

13 And the Lord heard, “Make the sun stand still.” And he did. The sun stood still, the moon didn’t rise until vengeance was complete, and destruction was total.  14 So, it is written in the Book of Jashar, that there was never a day like that day before; and surely there has never been one since, when the Lord listened to the man [Joshua], and the sun stopped until the day was over for everyone that followed Adoni-zedek and the others.

      15 Then Joshua could go home to Gilgal.

Commentary

Okay! We’re in the middle of things here. We’ve just seen how the treaty with the Gibeonites came about, the deceit of those Hivite dastards, moldy bread and burst wineskins and worn-out shoes - yeah, right! - yet the people of Israel kept the treaty because they had sworn by the name of the Lord. (Still, they cursed them, so they would always be slaves.) And we’re about to find out what is going to happen to the five blustery kings of the Amorites, the villains of this piece, smelling like rotten meat. But in the middle, this.

     The five kings, Adoni-zedek of Jerusalem, Hoham of Hebron, Piram of Jarmuth, Japhia of Lachish, and Debir of Eglon, decide to attack Gibeon, and Gibeon invokes the ethically slimy (on the Gibeonites’ part) but (but on the part of the people of Israel) theologically binding treaty. They send a message to Gilgal, where Joshua is, saying they are under attack, doesn’t he need to help? Not that he wants to, but while he is shaking his head, the Lord speaks to him in the language of the “the ban” (חֵרֶם), of slaughter, utter destruction, language Joshua - let’s face it - loves: “Don’t be afraid. By the time you and I are done with these men and their men, there will be nothing left of them. (For why there should be nothing left of them, see the Notes and Commentary on 5:13-18 and chapter 6, passim.)

     Together, they devise a plan. Joshua force-marches his army through the night, and they come upon the unsuspecting kings before morning, throwing them into a panic, so they are mown down or flee. That is, they try to flee: they’re not going to get away from Joshua and God. The Latter is particularly resourceful, as you would expect, filling, one after the other, all six of his hands with huge stones and pelting them down on those trying to run away, as the forces of Joshua rush to catch up.

     It appears they are not going to and that some of the nasty Hivites may escape. But Joshua cries out to the Sun and the Moon to stop. And, according to the Book of Jashar (See notes.), they do. The day is not going to end until Joshua can cut down every last soldier in every last squadron of the armies of Adoni-zedek, Hoham, Piram, Japhia, and Debir. Only then will he go back to Gilgal and catch forty winks before going back out to take on the kings themselves. Ah, what’s in store for them?!

Notes

      x. 1.  Ai. Pronounced in English, for reasons I haven’t been able to discover, ay-eye, as in the invitation, “Ay eye got some beer.

         2.  “And the smoke went up like the smoke from a kiln.” (Ex 19:18).

       5.  Jarmuth. Fabianski’s arguments to the contrary, there is no evidence that the family of Ashley Foy’s ice-dancing partner, Nathan Jarmuth, the one she ditched for Benjamin Blum in 2005, has any connection with the land.

        6.   the leaders of Gibeon. Shameless!

      10.  thrown into a panic. Divine passive. The subject here is God, who almost literally, “throws them into a threshing machine.” This is, after all, “holy war.” Adoni-zedek and his cohorts will know the meaning of “war is hell”; but for Joshua it is bliss.

            Beth-horon and even as far as Azekah and Makkedah. That is, all over the damn place. Beth-horon is modern-day Beit ‘Ur, both the upper town (Beit ‘Ur el-Faqa), about five miles northwest of Gibeon and the lower town (Beit ‘Ur et-Tahta) about two miles farther on. Azekah is modern Tel Zakariyeh about 17 miles south of that. Makkedah is actually off the modern map.

      14.  Book of Jashar. סֵפֶר הַיׇֺּשָר. a sourcebook for the one or more of the writers and editors of Joshua. For the credits, flip to the end of this book, copy the link into your browser, and they will scroll.

      15. home to Gilgal. The LXX leaves this out, probably because it doesn’t make sense that Joshua would go all the way back there and then come all the way back to deal with Adoni-zedek, Hoham et al. But modern scholars have questioned its assumption that any of this makes sense. See, e.g., Orestis Karnezis’ essay in the Journal of Misinterpretation, op cit.

    

09.13.18

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  * Links to passages exegeted in this and other volumes from Rantrage Press’s Incoherent Series, may be found here.

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho

 Joshua fit the battle of Jericho 

from the Introduction to Bakker Thornhill’s commentary on Joshua (the latest in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2018, p. 4) —

 

 The Story So Far

Of all the people in all the world, God chose the sons and daughters of Abraham - and of Abraham’s son Isaac and of Isaac’s son - Jacob to be his people. And their enemies in the area that extended from the River Jordan to the Sea were his enemies, and none of the rest of the world mattered, not Asia or the Asians, not Africa south of the Sahara or those that lived there, not the continents across the Greater Sea, not the Mayans, not the Incans, not the Aztecs, nor any of the other tribes of the Americas, certainly not Europe, not the pale-skinned Europeans running brightly-painted, half-naked through their cold forests - none of these were of any account to God. They could tell their own stories, but they weren’t part of His story: he chose Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and their sons and daughters forever to tell that.

     The story began with Abraham to whom God appeared, saying, “Leave this place behind. I’ll show you a better.” And Abraham did. True, things would go wrong, and Jacob and his sons and daughters would end up somewhere else until Moses rescued them. But Moses had married a Kenite woman, so he could only rescue God’s people, he could not lead them, into this better place. Under his leadership, then, they wandered for 40 years until Joshua led them into “the Promised Land.”

     Inconveniently, there were people already living there: the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, among others. These needed to be cleared away - completely! So Joshua went to work on that. . . .

09.11.18

Thursday morning at eleven-something.

 Thursday morning at eleven-something.

“That’s what I wanted to know,” I told Uncle Albert as if it were. [The morning begins here.]

And I picked him up to go with me to see Dr. Feight, who said toward the end of our session: “Albert seems to be doing better.”

     I said, “Maybe.”

     He said, “What are you reading lately?” - an odd question, I thought, not something Dr. Feight asks, and not one I had a good answer to.

     I said, “Not much. I don’t read much lately. The news. According to my sources.”

     “That’s it?”

     “Just about.”

     “What do you do instead? I’ve always thought of you as a great reader.”

     “Once, maybe,” I said. “I sit a lot. I write letters I don’t send.”

     “To the newspapers?”

     “No, to people. I write to you sometimes. I write to friends, some alive and some dead.”

     “Do you get letters back? - from the dead, I mean.”

     “Sometimes,” I said. “Usually.”

     “Mmmm,” he said, meaning go on. So, I said:

Orwell by m ball

     “The only thing of any worth I’ve read recently was the essay by George Orwell on Tolstoy and Shakespeare, ‘Lear, Tolstoy and a Fool,’ I think was the title.”

     “Yes?”

     “I liked it, but I didn’t like it. I’m afraid I’m becoming more of a Tolstoy and less of a Shakespeare. Not that I’m either.”

     “Meaning?”

     “You know the essay, right?” I said because he would; and he nodded. “I want the world to be simpler, to conform to my notions of it, to reward me for right-thinking, even if my right-thinking goes against it, the world. Then, I don’t enjoy messes, or messiness, as I once did.” I waited for a minute, maybe two. He didn’t say anything more.

“I wish I did,” I said. Then, the session was over.

09.08.18

Thursday morning at nine-o-five

 Thursday morning at nine-o-five. 

“What do you think?” Maggie said.

     I didn’t know what I thought. So, again, I waited.

     “I think you should call him,” she said. “Like I said. You should.” [See previous post.]

I didn’t think that, that I should. Or, I didn’t want to think that. But I called.

     “Yes?” Uncle Albert’s voice said.

     “Ted,” I said.

     “I know. What?”

     I hesitated, long enough to think about waiting him out, long enough to know it wasn’t going to work. I said, “Am I picking you up?”

     “Why wouldn’t you be?”

     “I don’t know,” I said, pants on fire.

“You’re lying,” Uncle Albert said. “Maggie called and told you I fell.”

     This time I did wait. I watched the second hand on the kitchen clock. It went past the six and just past the seven. I thought, “The coffee smell has already gone out of the room,” thinking of it as an actor in a stage play. [Exit Coffee Smell, stage left.]”

     “She told me,” Uncle Albert said.

     “Good for her,” I said, “but she told me not to. Tell you," I said.

     “Unless you asked,” I added. And I went right on because I didn’t want to hear what he was going to say next. “You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Am I picking you up?”

     “I hope so,” Uncle Albert said. “There should be a new issue of Les Inrocks.” It’s a magazine Dr. Feight subscribes to for Uncle Albert to read while he’s waiting for me. It covers pop culture. It is pop culture.

     “Okay,” I said. “That’s what I wanted to know,” I said, as if it were.

continued . . .

09.08.18

Thursday morning at nine.

 Thursday morning at nine. 

Nine o’clock this morning: The phone rings. Maggie Paul’s voice: “Hi.”

     “Hi.”

     “Your uncle - Albert - said not to call you.”

     “But you did.”

     “Yes.” I waited. “Are you coming by to pick him up this morning?” Maggie’s voice said. “He says you usually come a little after 10:30.”

     “Yes,” I said.

     “He goes with you to your appointment, and then the two of you get lunch.”

     “He told you that?”

     “Yes.” Her voice sounded as if it wanted to be officious; she, however, did not. I waited again. “It’s okay,” Maggie said. “But I think you ought to call him this morning. Maybe he shouldn’t go, and maybe he wouldn’t if you called.” Which meant what?

     “Meaning what?” I said.

     She waited, so I waited. Then she said: “He fell last night, I’m not supposed to tell you. And he couldn’t get up, so he called me. On the phone; he didn’t want to bother anyone else by yelling or something.”

     “And you could get him up?”

     She swallowed a laugh. “How much do you think he weighs?” she asked. I shrugged; that is, I cleared my voice. “And how much do you think I weigh?” she asked.

     “I don’t know,” I said. “Either.”

Uncle Albert is small, maybe five-and-a-half feet tall. It’s an advantage when he falls: he doesn’t have far to go. Another advantage according to him, he learned in school, part of “calisthenics” in those days, he maintains - he learned how to fall, so that he never gets hurt.

     He hasn’t so far, if he’s fallen. I assume he has because we’ve all fallen, from the clumsiest to the most graceful of us. Besides, why would he talk about learning how if he hadn’t had occasion to practice what he’d learned? Still, I can only assume he has fallen because this is the first time I’ve heard about it. This, I imagine, is because before he’s always gotten up without help. That’s another thing he learned, though not at school but from a French physician friend. Every day from the time you turn seventy, at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon, you should get down on the floor and get back up again, for practice and to keep up your strength.

Maggie, on the other hand, is pretty big. It’s not a word, “big,” you should use to describe a woman, Roz says; but I don’t know another. I could say she’s stout, and she is, but in the sense of strong not portly; but I don’t think “stout” is any better word than “big.” Maybe robust? In any case, if I imagine the circumstances, I can see her getting Uncle Albert back on his feet - with one yank.

“Is he okay?” I asked her.

     “Sort of,” she said. Hesitated. “No,” she said, “he is. Really. And maybe the best thing for him is to go with you, as usual, to move around - I’m just not sure.”

     I wasn’t sure either, so I waited. “I’m just not sure,” she said again, “but I thought if you called him, he could decide.

     “Only don’t say I called you,” she said. “Though don’t lie if he asks.

     “What do you think?” she said.

     I didn’t know what I thought. So, again, I waited.

     “I think you should call him,” she said. “Like I said. You should.”

continued . . .

09.06.18

Another parable

Another parable* 

I continue to hear the stories from Scripture as parables. For aren’t all the stories finally about “the kingdom of God,” what God is going to do when God gets around to doing it, sometimes now, sometimes later, and sometimes already? Don’t they all begin really as Jesus’ parables do, “The kingdom of God - it’s like this, isn’t it?”

     In today’s lesson, from the book of Joshua, it’s like fire and hail.

Who have ears, my children, let them hear.

The parable of the why the sun stood still.
Listen:

So, maybe it doesn't always quite work. The theory is tested by its practice, at least at Strictly Home-made Studios. But:
     Due out this month is Bakker Thornhill’s latest work on Joshua, another in the Incoherent Commentary Series from Rantrage Press. Coming soon, an excerpt from the introduction and his take on the passage.

09.04.19

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 * Links to other stories from the TRV (the Ted Riich Version).Ted mangles other stories from the Bible.