Bible Friday comes on a Monday.

 Stomp and Circumstance 

from Glorianna Gruntman’s commentary on 2 Kings (in the Incoherent Series, forthcoming from Rantrage Press) —

Because ain’t we who we are? –

V. 1 Naaman, who commanded the army of the king of Syria, was in high favor with him; the king thought he was a “great man,” because God had made him victorious over Israel. A “mighty man of valor,” then, was Naaman, but he was also a leper.

     2 Now on one of their raids, the Syrians had captured and kidnapped a little maid of Israel; she served on Naaman’s wife.   3  One day she said to her, the little maid to Naaman’s wife, “You know, there is a prophet in Samaria that could cure your husband.” 

     4 When Naaman heard that, he went to the king and told him what his wife’s maid had told her.  5 And the king of Syria said, “Then, go there. I’ll send a letter to the king of Israel.” So Naaman went, after gathering together ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten festal garments to take with him.

      6 And he brought the letter of the king of Syria to the king of Israel, which read, “You know my commander, Naaman. I am sending him to you to have his leprosy cleansed.” 7 But when the king of Israel read the letter, he went on a tear, yelling at anyone that would listen: “Am I God that I can cure a man of leprosy?” On a tear: “This is just another way for the king of Syria to start something with me.” 

     8 Somehow Elisha the prophet heard about all of this, how the king of Israel had gone on a tear. And Elisha sent his own note to the king, suggesting that he was throwing a fit over nothing because wasn’t he (Elisha) a prophet of God? “Send the leper to me,” the note concluded.

     9 So with the king of Israel’s directions, Naaman came with all the pomp and circumstance and circumstance and pomp he had brought with him, and he stopped at the house of Elisha and waited for the prophet to come out. Only the prophet did not come out. 10 He sent his man with a note, “Do this. Go to the Jordan River and wash in it seven times, and you shall be clean.” 

     11 But Naaman yelled at the man, “Is this it? Surely he is coming out, the prophet. Surely he is going to call out to his God, he’s going to wave his hand over me; he’s going to cure me! 12 We have rivers in Damascus, the Abana and Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel. I could have washed in them.” And Naaman stomped away, and his pomp and his circumstance, his circumstance and his pomp, stomped away with him. 

Notes

v. 1.  leper. Hebrew מְצֹרָע-חַיִל, LXX λελεπρωμένος, being a leper. The Greek can be almost anything as long as it’s on something, so molds and fungus on clothes or athlete’s foot, boils, scabies, psoriasis, eczema, vitiligo on a person. It doesn’t mean Hansen’s disease, which wasn’t known at the time. Moreover, Naaman’s case couldn’t have been a severe one as he has access to the courts of the king of Syria and the king of Israel. So, it’s probably not even leprē but what Herodotus called leukē, the same malady that Miriam is struck with in Numbers 12, whiteness! For a full discussion, see Alphorn (1948).

     11.   Elisha the prophet. םהָאֱלֹהִי-ישׁאִ. So, literally, “man of God”; this is how Elisha thinks of himself. But except for the poor king of Israel, everyone in this story thinks highly of himself.

Commentary

The affable Sw­ēdëistic version of what in it is called, “Fourth Kingdoms” ends the Naaman story with verse 12 as the Miles Gloriosus Naaman goes stomp, stomp, stomping away, livid with rage - as if he could get any whiter. We probably don’t like that ending as instead of extolling God’s healing power (in the version of the story where he washes in the Jordan as Elisha recommends and becomes clean), it reminds us of what snotty-smug shits most of us are. Take in your imagination the role of each of the major characters: Naaman the general that can’t stand the boil on the back of his neck. His king that can’t wait to send a note to the king of Israel that will surely make him tremble. (It does!) Elisha, twice as good as that milksop Elijah - just ask him! (See 2 Kings 2 (especially vv. 23-24. where he proves what a tough guy he is). Only the servants have any humility at all. (We have to include King Joram in this category; he is a servant of the king of Syria as much as “the little maid” is a servant of Naaman’s wife.)

      Other than the servants, then, these are men that float above life; their God forbid they live in it as the rest of us do. (“their God,” because God must be on their side. How could HE not be?) They fly in private jets. They’re whisked from the airport to their suites in cavalcades of black Hummers with black windows. They eat in restaurants closed to cater to their parties. They move and they shake the world.      

      So, let the world shake with their stomping. They have every right to stomp away, like Naaman, whiter than white. If there are conditions on their being cured, they don’t need to be, dammit!

09.30.19

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** Note: Glorianna Gruntman grew up in the Sw­ēdëistic Episcopalian tradition. Her mother was suffragan bishop of the Synod of Oregon. She is the twin sister of Gregorius Gruntman, whose commentary on Judges is also available from Rantrage Press. Links to passages from other Rantrage commentaries may be found here.

The fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Part II)

continued from here

 The fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Part II) 

Uncle Albert’s surprise for me - I should say his self-serving surprise: He has subscribed to the NBC Sports Gold Premier League Pass and, with Roz’s connivance* - Can you tell I’m unhappy with this? - arranged for one of his friend Maggie’s friends to install it on our TV. That way he’ll never miss an Arsenal game though I’ll miss today’s much-looked-forward-to Chelsea-Liverpool match while he and I are watching Arsenal-Aston Villa because no more than you can serve both God and Mammon can you watch two matches at the same time. (There are laws of physics as well as truths of religion.)

I admit that the Arsenal match is worth watching.

Uncle Albert and a happy Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang
(drawing - and sunglasses - by m ball)

     Aston Villa gets a shot on goal on its first attack of the game in the fourth minute - Trézeguét to McGinn, who looks dangerous throughout the first third of the first half, getting a second good shot on goal in the eleventh minute before scoring easily in the twentieth - the Villa midfielder is all alone after running straight through Arsenal’s absent defense for across from El Ghazi. In the meantime (in the eleventh minute) Arsenal’s Ainsley Maitland-Niles has gotten his first^† yellow card for tripping El Ghazi from behind.

     Less than twenty minutes (after McGinn’s goal), Maitland-Niles gets his second yellow card and (injury added to insult) hops off the field, assisted by a “physio.” Arsenal will play the remaining 50-plus minutes down a man. Still, the Gunners manage to score, finally! on a penalty kick after defender Björn Engels pulls Guendouzi down inside the penalty area. It’s Nicolas Pépé’s first Premier League goal, cracked straight down the middle as Villa keeper Tom Heaton dives to his left.

     McGinn almost scores again two minutes after that and less than a minute later the whiffle-ball Arsenal defense simply let Jack Grealish go until at the end he skips around Sokratis and slides the ball into Wesley for a tap-in. 2-1.

     Then, Aston Villa seem to go into defensive mode. It works for a while, but Calum Chambers (substituted for Saka on the left at the half) scores in the eightieth minute. Guendouzi hits a well-placed cross into the box at the six-yard line only half-cleared by Villa. Of all the bodies in the box Chambers gets to the loose ball first, poking it into the top corner of the net with the outside of his right boot.

     The final goal comes when Engels makes a second costly error, pulling Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang down just outside the penalty area. And Aubameyang scores, pushing more than pulling the free-kick around the Villa wall and past Heaton who seems never to have seen it.

     And there’s enough noise to wake Uncle Albert, asleep since before Wesley’s goal for Villa. So, he sees the replay. His eyes open with an audible click like a ventriloquiest dummy's. It occurs to me that his boxy tweed jacket, his vest and his tie, look like something Jerry Mahoney might wear. And the 96-year-old's creases that fall from the corners of his mouth toward his chin, they look like Jerry Mahoney, too. His eyes pop open.

     But he’s heard the whole thing. He was never sleeping, not at all, only resting his eyes.

In other news, Liverpool beats Chelsea 2-1, and Greta Thunberg reveals that Arnold Schwarzenegger offered to lend her an electric car.

09.26.19

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 * Collusion might be a better word. Connivance - which my dictionary defines as “willingness to secretly allow or be involved in wrongdoing” comes ultimately from the Latin conniventia, from connivere ‘shut the eyes (to).’ Everyone’s eyes but mine, I would contend,** were wide open.

  ^† Foreshadowing!

** The better word might be whine, Roz says.

The fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

 The fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Part I) 

The evening before, Uncle Albert calls. He apologizes: he needs a ride to church. There’s something in it for me if I will take him, and I don’t have to come forward for the Eucharist - he can get there without my help. The lessons are, he tells me, as follows: Amos 8:4-7 and Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; and Luke 16:1-13 - in case I want to read ahead.

I don’t want to read ahead, but I do anyway - in my battered Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha that “Sam” Samuelson left behind brand new when he dropped out of school halfway through freshman year. It has his bookplate in it: a candle with a steady flame, Ex Libris above, his name below: Lemuel R. Samuelson.

     In Sam’s Bible, the Psalmist is praising God from the rising of the sun to its setting because He “raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” The Prophet is yelling at the rich because they’re keeping the Lord from doing that. The Apostle is urging prayers for kings. And in the Gospel, Jesus tells a parable that in itself makes a certain amount of sense; then he elaborates in a way that makes no sense at all.

* * * * *

  

Picking up Uncle Albert is no simple matter these days. But that’s not to say that it’s onerous. It’s only a matter of getting him down the steps from his rooming house, steadying him as he gets into the car, pulling him out of the car, and getting him up the stairs into the church. And listening to him on the ride! He’s excited about the sermon he is certain our rector, the former Miss Virginia,* will preach on the Gospel lesson. 

     Particularly, what’s she going to say about Jesus’ saying that God could hardly entrust “true riches” to those that can’t manage their money? What does he mean by that, “managing their money,” if they’re supposed to despise it? For, he quotes, “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

     “Mammon,” he starts in as I am trying to decide whether or not to run the light at the corner of Division and Crowder, so that I lose track of what he’s saying, but as we’re sliding through the intersection between yellow and red, there’s something about Milton, “the least elected Spirit that fell,” or something like that, “bent down,” something, something.**

     I nod, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

Then, Susan chooses not to preach from the Gospel but from Timothy because (she says anyway) “kings and those in high places” need our prayers if we are going to live quietly and peaceably, able to search for the truth, which we shall surely find if we give ourselves to the mediator that gave himself as a ransom for us all.

     “What a bunch of pious nonsense!” Uncle Albert says. “I thought better of her.”

     I ask him if that means that he no longer does.

     “We can get to your place in time for the kick-off of the West Ham - Man United match,” he says, “if you don’t dawdle.”

     “Then,” he says, “I have a surprise for you.”

     And I say, “Yes. You said. I remember.”

09.24.19

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 * Our rector, Susan, the former Miss Virginia appears in these posts.

** The illustration by Louis Le Breton from Colin de Plancy’s Dictonnaire Infernal. (Click on the image to see the page.) The image is in the public domain.

More false sayings of Jesus

 Two more false sayings  

from Farah See’s commentary on The Gospel of Thomas and Other Sayings of Jesus (in the Incoherent series, published by Rantrage Press, 2012, p. 228 - from the section “Falsely Attributed” which begins) –

In the following pages are sayings falsely attributed to Jesus. He could not have said them, much as someone might have wished he had. I confine myself to sayings attested to in the fourth century and earlier. Otherwise, to paraphrase the last verse in John’s gospel, the world could not contain all the books I would have to write.

* * * * *

 

The following are from a late second-century Greek manuscript, sometimes called “Three Sayings,” though only two survive. The Greek is poor, but it is clear what it says.

     ma&karioi  u(min  oi(  ptwxoi&, o#ti  eu)rh&sete  plou=ton.
          ou)ai  oi(  plousi&&oi, pa&lnai  oi(  a)pwlolo&i.

     Blessed are the poor, for they shall find riches.

          Woe to the rich, for they are lost already.

     mh\  a)posterei=te  xarh=nai, ou)x  a)mo&sei  toi=v  maqhtai=v  mou=.

     Do not refuse to be glad, for it is unbecoming for my followers.

Commentary

The first of the sayings combines a blessing and a woe from Luke 6 (verses 20 and 24) and creates a play on words. It’s important that the source is Luke, not Matthew. The saying has nothing to do with either the “poor in spirit” or, for example, “the rich in imagination.” The poor will be rich someday. They will have cash in their pockets and assets in the bank. The rich have no someday at all; they’ve had their day already. While the source makes us doubt Jesus said this, he certainly might have said something very like it.

     The second saying - who knows where it comes from? But whoever concocted it clearly had difficulty with the Puritans, Sourpusses, and Sad Sacks in the Body. And why shouldn’t he¹ have? Doesn’t Luke 15:32 say that it is “fitting to be glad,” even “to make merry,” when one that was dead is made alive? To say that the sayings in this section are falsely attributed to Jesus is not to say that they are not true in themselves.

 _______________

 ¹ Or she.

09.22.19

For links to other excerpts from both this and Rantrage Press commentaries (Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Ecclesiastes, Revelation, et al.), click here.

Another farable of Jesop

Jesop as “Gumbo the Elephant Boy”

(before the tragic death of the circus)

an interlude before . . . *

 A farable of Jesop 

“the elephant and the donkey, or mistakes will be made”

An elephant and a donkey agreed to be friends since they both ate straw, and they agreed to live together and share. But as they lived together, the elephant became fatter and fatter and soon consumed more and more of the straw. And the donkey became lighter and lighter until he began to fade away. Indeed, he began to look like straw.

09.18.19

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 * “E.R (part II) when we will discover what happens to the scattered parts of the “Old Assyrian” after his friends gather them up in buckets to carry them to the emergency room. After a time. (Links will be provided.) About Jesop with links to other farables, click here.

 

The Farables (online reproduction of the 1887 edition with an afterword by Ted Riich) is available here.

 

E.R. (part 1)

 E.R. (part 1) 

Among the events leading up to the visit in question. (Taking place “At the Black Whale in Ashkelon” - an English rendering of the song by von Scheffel below.) 

                                          Altassyrisch

               — Victor von Scheffel

Im Schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon

Da trank ein Mann drei Tag’,

Bis dass er steif wie ein Besenstiel

Am Marmortische lag.

Im Schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon

Da sprach der Wirt: «Halt an!

Der trinkt von meinem Dattelsaft

Mehr als er zahlen kann.»

Im Schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon

Da bracht’ der Kellner Schar

In Keilschrift auf sechs Ziegelstein

Dem Gast die Rechnung dar.

Im Schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon

Da sprach der Gast: «O weh!

Mein bares Geld ging alles drauf

Im Lamm zu Nineveh!»

Im Schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon

Da schlug die Uhr halb vier,

Da warf der Hausknecht aus Nubierland

Den Fremden vor die Tür.

Im Schwarzen Walfisch zu Askalon

Wird kein Prophet geehrt,

Und der vergnügt dort leben will,

Zahlt bar, was er verzehrt.

R von Scheffel (by Anton von Werner), L Cuneiform (by Anon von Unbekannt)

Old Assyrian

At The Black Whale in Ashkelon,

A man drunk for three days,

Half-dead on a marble table,

Stiff as a broomstick lay.

At The Black Whale in Ashkelon,

The innkeeper, yelled out, “Hey!

He’s drunk more of my date wine

Than he can possibly pay.”

At The Black Whale in Ashkelon,

The wait-staff came in a swarm,

Brought the guest engraved on six tablets

His check in cuneiform.

At The Black Whale in Ashkelon,

The guest said then, “Oh, damn!

I have had cash since Nineveh;

It all went at The Lamb.”

At The Black Whale in Ashkelon,

The clock sounded half-four,

As the bouncer from Nubia threw

The stranger out the door.

At The Black Whale in Ashkelon,

No prophet dare presume.

Who wants to live a snug life there

Will pay cash for what he consumes.

09.16.19

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 * von Scheffel (1826-1886) is known almost entirely for his student drinking songs, collected under the motto, Gaudeamus (Let’s be merry!). It could be worse; he could have been Swinburne. 

The reader's patience is appreciated. Parts II and III are forthcoming. This century! (Links will be provided.)

Punch and Judith

Nahum the Prophet and Johanna of Patmos

 Punch and Judith. 

Some time ago, when I sick, when I couldn’t hardly read or write - or even see - I got this link from Gaspar Stephens. He wanted to know what I thought about it. So he said. But I think he was trying to make me feel better the way people sometimes do when they ask other people, who seem to be scraping bottom, their opinion about something or other. Maybe we want to hear what the person has to say, and maybe we don’t; but we ask because we think somehow it may help them, and we ought to. Help the sad sacks, that is.

     I don’t know if the link is still good, but the central thesis of the Psychology Today essay Pamela B. Paresky, Ph.D., is, as I understand it, this:

How do we - especially how severely do we - punish people that have made mistakes? (The example offered is [conservative] Parkland High School shooting survivor Kyle Kashuv’s acceptance then his rejection by Harvard for racist and anti-Semitic remarks made by (the Jewish) Kashuv, when he was sixteen and for which he had apologized and offered to make amends in whatever way he could.)  In an article in Vox, Zack Beauchamp suggests that those who find the punishment too severe are the “conservatives,” who see racism as a personal failing one can outgrow, whereas those that agree with it lean “liberal or left,” seeing racism as a structural problem and Kashuv as less of “a kid who made youthful mistakes and more like a young man who’s trying to escape responsibility for his actions.”

But, this is not a matter of left and right, Paresky argues. It is an apocalyptic view that cuts across the political divide: “it is not only people on the political right who find it difficult to support” such a harsh punishment. There are many on the left as well. For “it is an apocalyptic view, not a liberal one, that rejects redemption and forgiveness in favor of condemnation and excommunication.” It is an apocalyptic perspective, not a liberal one, that sees the world as needing to be destroyed and replaced rather than improved upon, possibly even perfected. It is an apocalyptic paradigm  that wants to rid itself those it judges irredeemable, especially that seeks “deliverance through ahistorical means; without the help of morally polluted historical figures,” that would, if it could, do “without any of history’s contaminated tools.” Italics mine. Rah retribution. F**k forgiveness.

     Paresky holds up “prophetic culture” as an alternative to apocalyptic, seeking “deliverance through historical persons” working in history, flawed but wanting to do good.

my folder, or one of them

“I don’t know what I think,” I got back to Gaspar at the time. Then I gave it (the link) to Roz, who made a paper copy of the essay and put it in a folder she’d also made for me, “For Later.”

     I looked at the essay again this morning. It seemed to me a good enough explanation of why the pure hate the impure (andnot necessarily vice versa). The problem with apocalypticists is that they are certain that anyone that has the least stain on her record or merest spot on his soul must be completely impure. At the same time, they fail to see any stains on their own records or souls - or, far more commonly, they think of these stains as virtues: they got smudged or blood-spattered in the struggle for Right.

     But I wondered how much of the Prophets Paresky had read, for the essay neglects to say that, on a scale of 1 to 10, the prophets are only slightly less self-righteous than those that are certain - or wish devoutly - that the end is near (9.667’s maybe as opposed 9.944’s).*

     And the rest of us are only slightly less self-righteous than they are.

But I could be wrong. As Roz says sometimes, “We both grew up Presbyterian, what do we know?” Only she knows more now; she was less infected.

09.12.19

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 * I once met an 8.56. He was almost half as kind as the Mr. Rogers character on TV, not to mention almost twice as believable. And he sold cars.

Forbes Field

 Forbes Field after Forbes Field was gone

This is a usual morning. We eat our spare breakfast, toast and coffee; and Roz, having gotten up early to shower, wash and dry her hair, and dress for work, leaves for the day. I won’t see her again until supper time.

      I take the half cup of coffee I haven’t drunk and the half cup left in the pot and pour them over ice, a generous splash of half-and-half, and another teaspoon of sugar into a tall glass - iced coffee. I counteract the effects of the caffeine with a valium. I police the kitchen: scrape our dishes, rinse out the coffee cups, and put them into the dishwasher; I wipe down the table and the counter.

     That’s all the order I have to my morning though I am encouraged to keep all things in order. But what does “things” mean? It’s hard to know: So many expressions intended to be helpful are only vague.

     I try to read. I read the newspaper, I read Nathanael West, and I read and re-read Tristram Shandy and the first sixteen pages of Finnegan’s Wake. I try to write and make only these largely vacuous letters to the ether. At the same time, I am supposed to be staying in the here and now - another piece of good, vague advice. What does it mean? Don’t tumble into the past; don’t stumble into the future; don’t bumble into the mist that surrounds and seems both to shroud and to point the way into madness.

Ken Tekulve pitching to no one :
Forbes Field in the fog under the lights and out of time.

     But all is mist, as the Preacher says: “Mist of mist, all is mist.” You cannot see it and you cannot see through it. And the air is full of its tiny droplets, none the same, each with its own distinctive smell: If you could distinguish the smell, you’d know where that prick of damp came from, the past or future, here or there - whether it blew down from Ohio or up from Georgia; but you can’t distinguish. Soon though you can’t read or write either; in the damp, the pages begin to curl at the corners, then they curl at the edges, finally, the letters begin to sprawl and blur. (It doesn’t matter if you’re reading and writing on paper, or if you’re scanning and typing on a screen.)

Before lunch I am drenched. For lunch, I have a dish of cereal. Sometimes there are bananas or blueberries. Sometimes, in these afternoons of late summer / early fall, there are baseball games on TV.

09.10.19

Bible Friday: the grimmer brother

 The grimmer brother

from Scott Bradwardine’s commentary on Obadiah (in the Incoherent series, Obadiah, Nahum, and Habakkuk by Bradwardine and Krab Drukte published by Rantrage Press, 2019, p. i)* –

INTRODUCTION

“The wages of forgiveness are resentment that can last many lifetimes.” So says the sage, Samba. This may be particularly true between brothers.

     Anyone reading this will know the rough outlines of the Jacob and Esau story,¹ how the conflict between the brothers began in the womb and despite the elder’s best efforts lasted generations.

    The twins begin when Isaac marries Rebekah and takes her “into the tent of Sarah his [dead] mother”; it is “comfort,” he finds, “after his mother’s death.” (He was, after all, 40 years old when he finally married.) Sometime later they (Isaac and Rebekah) had twins, destined according to what Yahweh tells the mother because they are already fighting in her womb - destined to be two nations, divided. Esau is born red; Jacob rides into the world hanging onto his brother’s heel.

     They grow up active and quiet, straightforward and deceitful. Jacob connives to rob Esau of his birthright and blessing, either by trading on his hunger (for a bowl of soup) or pretending to be the older brother when Isaac sends for him to give his fatherly blessing. Rebekah assists, for she loves her younger son more than her older. She cooks goat for game and clothes the smooth-skinned Jacob with the goat’s skin so he’ll feel like Esau under his blind father’s hands.

     When Isaac is not convinced, Jacob ceases to merely deceive and lies directly, “I am Esau, your firstborn. Eat what I have brought you and bless me. Now.” Isaac hesitates, but finally, he is taken in. And, apparently, he has only one blessing to give. For the fond Esau gets only a curse though it is leavened with the promise that he will “break [his brother’s] yoke from his neck” someday.

     Man of action, Esau decides that day he will break his brother’s neck will be the next, but Jacob runs away in the night.

     He stays away as long as he can, but he must come back eventually. That means he must confront his brother, still older, still stronger, still right. But he (Jacob) can send ambassadors: “I’m a rich man now, I could be of use to you. Don’t hurt me.” The ambassadors return with the news that Esau is coming to meet Jacob.

     Then, Jacob can send presents ahead of the meeting - perhaps they will mollify Esau. And he (Jacob) can put a buffer between himself and his brother: he sends his wives and his children ahead while he loiters safely (cowardly) behind.

    But Esau runs straight through it all, straight to his brother. And he forgives him. Esau forgives Jacob; he forgives him all. As a result, Jacob takes up the land of their father Isaac. And Esau goes off to Seir, that is, Edom.

So many years later, when the Babylonians come to take Isaac’s land from Jacob’s descendants, and Esau’s progenies decide to stay home, for what can they do if they throw in with their “brothers”? What will happen to them but that they will be destroyed as well? In any case, won’t “Jacob” weasel his way out as he always has? So Esau chooses expediency; surely Jacob will understand - and forgive!

     Not a chance in hell. And we enter the world of the prophet Obadiah, who has no doubt that for its perfidy, the house of Esau will be punished - decimated! The house of Jacob will become “a fire” and the house of Esau “stubble.” Jacob’s holocaust will consume Esau; not one will survive.

     The Lord says so. What a Guy!

_______________

¹The story of the brothers is found in Genesis 24, 25, 27, 32, and 33.

09.06.19

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 * Links to passages from other Rantrage Press commentaries are here.

Arsenal 2, Tottenham 2, Kristen Lavransdatter 3

 Arsenal 2, Tottenham 2, Kristen Lavransdatter 3 

Sunday morning I went to pick up Uncle Albert for the Arsenal Tottenham match. He’s a long-time Arsenal supporter.

    Had he been to church? I asked. “No,” he said. “How would I get there now if you’re not taking me?”

    “But I am taking you,” I said, “when you let me know you need a ride.

    “I thought Maggie Something was taking you, not the woman in your house but Roz’s friend - that Maggie.” (See here.)

    "She comes when I call,” Uncle Albert says, “but I don’t like calling her.”

    “Why not?”

    He shrugged.

    “Well, call me then,” I said though I didn’t want to. I wanted him to call Maggie.

Uncle Albert with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

Tottenham jumped out in front against the run of play, which was all Arsenal until Christian Eriksen tipped in a pass from Lamela from Son on a break.

    Through the flat screen, Stanford Bridge glows green as Ireland, but there are no Irishmen on the field. Damn few British. Arsenal starts one German, three Frenchmen, a Brazilian, a Greek, an Albanian from Switzerland, a Bosnian, Uruguayan, an Ivorian, and only one from the UK, Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Tottenham does have three British starters, Harrys Kane and Winks and Danny Rose; otherwise, there is the Frenchman in goal and one more in midfield, two Dutchmen, a Columbian, an Argentinian, a Korean, and a Dane.

    (The Korean) Son and (the Dane) Eriksen, Tottenham’s two best players in Uncle Albert’s and my opinions, were both on their games. Arsenal’s keeper, the usually mediocre Bernd Leno, robbed Son in the 17th minute and Eriksen in the 37th. By now, Tottenham was flying, and Son (again) managed to pick up a foul in the box on Granit Xhaka. Harry Kane put the penalty kick into the side netting. And Arlo White went apeshit. White, otherwise a good announcer, is a tremendous Harry Kane fan. Besotted.

    Arsenal got back into it just before the half. After Tottenham’s keeper, the sometimes brilliant, sometimes dull Hugo Lloris, made a good save on Pepe, Lacazette, playing in the middle of the front line between Pepe and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, pushed one by on a pass from the former. In the 46th minute, so that Arsenal went in at half-time only one down.

    The Gunners started the second half much as they had the first, dominating play. Lloris made another nice save on Guendouzi ten minutes in. Three minutes later Kane hit the inside of the post on a Tottenham counter. How could he miss? Arlo White couldn’t get over it. The post must have moved.

    Lloris made two more good saves on Danny Ceballos, who had replaced Lucas Torreira in the midfield, and on Guendouzi, who shortly slipped Aubameyang through for the tying score.

    And that was it though Arsenal continued to dominate. They scored a third goal, but it was called back because Kolasinac was offside.

    That was it. The game ended in a draw. Arsenal is in 5th place and Tottenham in (God forbid! - but thank him nonetheless) 9th.

* * * * *

At the half, I’d asked Uncle Albert if he’d really met Sigrid Undset. Of course, he hadn’t he said. “I’m not that old,” he said. “A fig-newton of your friend Ball’s imagination,” he said. (See here.)

     The teams were coming out from their locker rooms. “I’ll tell you all the Sigrid Undset, I know after it’s over, Uncle Albert said, from The Cross. That’s the last volume of the three that make up Kristin Lavransdatter.

Uncle Albert has this phenomenal memory for quotations, from the Bible, from French poetry and drama, from American lit from Hawthorne through Twain, from the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, from pretty damn anywhere. Now he was quoting Kristen. It’s the way she is, Kristen, he was saying. This is toward the end but before she leaves on her pilgrimage, he thinks. (I haven’t gotten there. “What pilgrimage?” I say. “Sorry,” he says.) Then: “Kristen is about to turn truly religious, but she’ll never be able to, no matter how much the author needs it for her plot.” Then, he quoted:

Kristin praying on the cover
of her third book.

     “‘Surely she had never asked God for anything except that he should let her have her will. And for the most part, she got it. Now here she was sitting with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had not been allowed to follow her will all the way to the end.’ Something like that,” Uncle Albert said.

Yesterday, I finally came to the quote. Uncle Albert may be right about the plot, but he was wrong about the quote. It lacked the second negative. Here’s how it reads in my book, Tina Nunally’s translation: “Surely she [Kristin] had never asked God for anything except that he should let her have her will. And every time she had been granted what she asked for - for the most part. Now here she sat with a contrite heart - not because she had sinned against God but because she was unhappy that she had been allowed to follow her [own] will to the road’s end.”

     So, he’s almost dead wrong about the quote, but he might be righter about Kristin than Undset is. I think he’s right about most of us: Surely she/he/you/I have never asked anything except that God would let us have our will. And now as we’re getting a little older, closer to the end, we’re unhappy that God may intervene, we might not get to follow our own way to the end.

     I don't have to belabor the point, gentle reader, launch into a long explanation. You are perceptive. You understand. You know: Damned if we won’t keep trying, in every prayer pointing out to God what he ought to be doing. Pay attention, dammit!

09.04.19