Another bad idea

 Another bad idea 

from Rantrage Press, the 2020 Psalm-a-Day Calendar (evangelical edition). Print run 500; sold 7:

 Ah, well.

12.30.19

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 * A list of selections from Rantrage Press biblical commentaries (the Incoherent Series) with links may be found here.

Final Advent

 Final Advent   

Saturday I asked Roz, “Do you want to go to church? It’s the last Sunday in Advent,” I said.

     “What about Albert?” she asked.

     “No,” I said. “Arsenal’s got a new manager, I can’t remember his name — he was at Manchester City.”

     “Mikel Arteta,” Roz said. “Hair!” She made an exploding noise. “Is it real, do you think?”

     I took it instead as a rhetorical question. “He said, Uncle Albert, that if he went to church, he might be tempted to pray for the Arsenal Football Club. Not something he wanted to find himself doing.”

     “I’ll think about it,” Roz said.

Then she read in the paper that her friend, the Narrow Man, was preaching again at the little Presbyterian Church near Red Spring, the church our State Senator goes to.*

 “Do you remember where we’re going?” I asked Roz. She was driving.

     “I think so,” she said. “I’m pretty sure. It looks right.”

The Psalm was 80, or parts of it: how we’re weeping because, though we’ve never turned away from him, God is allowing our neighbors to mock us. But surely he will send “the man of [his] right hand,” and he will give us life. The Old Testament lesson was the passage in Isaiah where God speaks to Ahaz whether Ahaz wants to listen or not. A sign is coming: a young woman will bear a son, called Immanuel, “God with.” And God will be with — with Ahaz and Israel —; and their enemies shall fail. In the Epistle lesson, Paul explains to the Romans that the Son of God has already come and died and been raised that they may have faith.

     We sang three hymns: “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus”; “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” (and ransom captive Ĭ-ĭ-ĭs-ra-el); and “Joy to the World,” because he has come as both the Prophet and the Apostle said. The singing was much better than the last time we were there. There were about 40 in the congregation, almost enough voice to overcome the jangly piano.

The gospel lesson came from Matthew, but it was not the lesson for the day, which is about how Joseph finds out that Mary is pregnant, and he isn’t sure what to do: it’s not his child. Then, an angel comes to him in a dream: he should marry her, call the boy Jesus; he is the Immanuel the Prophet talked about.

     That was the gospel for the day, what was printed in the bulletin:

                                    Gospel Lesson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew 1:18-25

But it wasn’t what the Narrow Man read. He read instead: 6:19-24 from the Sermon on the Mount:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon.”

“That’s God with a capital-G and Mammon with a capital- M,” the Narrow Man concluded.

    

“This is my last Sunday with you,” he went on, “my last sermon.” “Of the year,” I thought at first. But he said it again, “My last sermon.”

     “Over a hundred years ago, someone said that Civilization, with a capital-C, had become money, and this money would become the enemy against which Christianity would fight its last great battle.

     “If the last, then it must lose, right? And so it did. He was right. Today, before anything else, whatever we profess, we are Capitalists.

     “I’m not going to cite sixteen examples,” the Narrow Man said. “Just look around you, ‘everywhere you go.’” — he sang the phrase from the Perry Como hit.**

Speaking of hair: Meredith Willson in 1961

Toys in every store.
A pair of hop-a-long boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of Barney and Ben.
Dolls that'll talk and will go for a walk

Is the hope of Janice and Jen.

“That was seventy years ago,” he said.

Now it’s phones that will talk and go for a walk.

Ferragamo boots, electric scooters that scoot.

It’s gift cards full of money to spend.

 “Everywhere you go.

     “Two more shopping days!” he said. “Two. Amen. And amen.”

He stopped. He took a drink of water. “That’s it,” he said. He took another drink.

     “What I have taken part in the last three and more decades is one of those skirmishes that take place after the armistice has been signed but the news that the war is over hasn’t reached every corner of the field. I’m burnt by the sun. My cap is long gone. My coat is in shreds. My skin is in tatters. It’s dark by five o’clock. And it’s cold before it’s dark.

     “I leave the field, limping on a sprained ankle I don’t know how I came by. I would like to think I have fought well, though that has meant for me that I have aimed away from the enemy, hoping I would injure no one. So maybe I fought not so well after all because the enemy — the vile enemy — has won. And any who thinks Christianity has been bloody and narrow-minded: beware of the Capitalism still to come. We (Christians) may well end up remembered as the children of light, however dark you now our reign.

     “I’m putting down my weapon. I’m out of powder.

     “I’m not sure where I’m going as I wander off the field. Somewhere I’ll be welcome, I hope: a home for backward-thinking, battle-scarred eccentrics — may there be such a thing — and somewhere Mammon is somehow kept somewhat at bay.

     “Thank you for letting me preach here on the fourth Sunday of the last four months. Thank you for listening to the garblings of an old man. So, as the philosopher Joseph — another Joseph, not the favored son of Jacob or the one that married Mary — as the philosopher Joseph was fond of saying, “There it is.”

He announced the last hymn. We sang. He “recessed” on the last verse.

He rules the earth with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of his righteousness
and wonders of his love

He greeted the people at the door. None tried to avoid him. They wished him every one a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. “You, too,” he said to each. “The best Christmas ever,” he said to Roz and me, “and the most joyous New Year.”

     Wrapped in our anoraks, we stood by our car in the parking lot until the last car but ours and two others had gone. The preacher came out with his robe over one arm and another man that locked the door behind them. They shook hands at the bottom of the steps. The man got in his truck, a Dodge Ram 3500 shining black, and the preacher got in his car, a colorless old Toyota Corolla. And they drove off, the roaring truck and then the stuttering car. The preacher stuck his hand out the window and waved at us, still standing there.

Roz cranked the engine, and we started home.

     “Do you know who said that?” Roz asked, because it’s the kind of thing I would know was her implication, “about money and faith.”

     “Balzac,” I said as if I did know. And I thought I did though I wasn’t sure how. I’m never quite sure how I know what I know, so I’m never quite sure either that I’m right, that I do know what I think I do.

We stopped for hotdogs on the way, but Roz didn’t eat all hers because she wasn’t hungry. She said, “ You know I was worried about him before. I’m really worried about him now.”

     “Especially since he’s probably right,” I said.

     “Yes,” she said. “He is.”

  12.24.19

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 * About that church, here. More about “the Narrow Man, here.

** written by Meredith Willson, of The Music Man fame. Click here.

Picture credit: By stage company promo dept. - Stage program for The Unsinkable Molly Brown, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41907162

Politics as usual

 Politics as usual 

Nils Sundstrøm came by Saturday morning. He does from time to time. (See here.) He doesn’t phone to say he’s coming; he doesn’t email, he doesn’t text. There’s a knock on the front door: Nils with something in his hand. It doesn’t matter that you’re trying to watch Chelsea lose to Bournemouth (a good result).

     What he has in his hand is a piece of paper. He’s taking it out of his jacket pocket as he steps through the door. He unfolds it. He hands it to you. “Read this,” he says.

     “Sit down,” I say. He does. 
     He watches my face as I read. If he could be in two places at once, he would stand behind me, too, and read over my shoulder. It’s a letter to the editor. It makes a case for being as mean to the president and his allies as the president is mean to everyone else. Because he’s a bully. Bullies are cowards. The only way to fight bullies is by . . . bullying them. This is all in the letter. Let's get back to the playground, it suggests. Call names. They don't have to be true, they don't have to make sense, they shouldn't be subtle; they should be angry, they should be cruel, they should belittle. For example:

Dumbledon

Prevaricator in Chief
Fatty McFathead

Pencianna

Kellyandlestick
Loony-tunes Lindsay
Sticky-fingered Steve
Boo Boo Barr
Micky Mouse Mulvaney
Elaine Mitchwife
Snake McConnell

“Snake?” I ask.

     “Because I couldn't think of anything lower,” Nils says. “They wouldn’t publish it,” he adds.

Pencianna by mel ball

     I arch my eyebrows, pretending surprise.

     “You should,” he says.

     I shake my head. I’m not saying “no”; I’m wondering what the point is: What’s Nils’ point? “No one will read it,” I do say.

     “I would,” Nils says.

     “And six others. Tops. So what?”

“So what" is, according to Nils, that I am always writing about religion, which “means nothing these days. Nothing!” Nils says. 
     And I never write about politics, “which defines us,” Nils says. “He is practically shouting at this point, but he’s always practically shouting.

Roz comes down the stairs, dressed for work. “Hi, Nils,” she says. “I thought it must be you.” She is trying not to laugh. To her credit, she’s successful.

     “I think there’s still coffee,” she says to me, as she pulls on her long coat. “I’m afraid I have to run in for an hour or so.” She buttons the coat, turns up the collar.

     “There may be some stale doughnuts, too,” she says: “Not bad though if you put them in the microwave.”

     Somewhere in there, Nils barks, “Hi, Roz,” but he’s paying no attention, he doesn’t look up from the paper I’m still holding in my hand. And she’s glad she’s just passing through. I wish I were passing through though I also want to see what Nils is going to say next. I want to see: I’d like to be a fly on the ceiling able to see the words with my thousand eyes, not have to listen to them with my one good ear.

Roz leaves. “Ta, ta, boys,” she says at the door and closes it behind her.

    Still not looking up, Nils waves at the closed door. Then, he does look up, at me. “Politics!” he says. It’s an imperative.

     “But I don’t know anything about politics,” I say.

     He opens his mouth - he’s going to say I don’t know anything about religion either, but that doesn’t stop me. But he doesn’t say it. He raises both his hands, waving me off. He points to the letter.

     “Just do me a favor,” he says. He wants it out there where people can see it. “I’ll let them know,” he says.

“What the hell,” I think. Then I say it: “What the hell,” meaning something like, “Okay, you win.”

     “Get your friend to draw a picture,” he says.

     I nod.

He says, shortly: “Thanks!” Then, after a moment, he says, “No. I mean it: Thanks!” And he gets up, zips his windbreaker. It doesn’t seem much against the cold.

     “You can’t be warm enough,” I say.

     “Fine,” he says. “Get back to your game.” He gets up. I walk with him to the door. “But you’ll get on this soon, right?”

     I nod. Shut the door.

Today I finally get around to it.

12.17.19

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 * More on Nils, see here.

Critics

 Critics 

i

A farable after the manner of Jesop*

A dog, a cat, and a donkey determined to undertake a journey together. They would leave at sunrise and head west. They would turn to the southeast when the sun got low enough it was in their eyes. In three days, they would arrive at wherever they were going, and there they would build a house. Then, the night before they were to set out, the cat refused to take his part. But, he said, he would still write a critical history of the journey and the settlement. It did not matter that he did not go. It was the idea of the thing that was important.

ii

Tony and Hank**

Henry and Etta James

James wrote of Trollope that he wrote too much, about the stuff of the everyday. He gets caught up in particulars, and he can’t get beyond them. “Mr. Trollope’s devotion to little things, inveterate, self-sufficient as it is, begets upon the reader the very disagreeable impression that not only no imagination was required for the work before  him, but that a man of imagination could not possibly have written it.” But there was worse: somehow this was pleasing to the reader. Perhaps that was because Trollope far too good a companion. Certainly, he accompanied. He was too, too present in the novels, reminding his readers that they were both, author and reader, involved in a work of fiction. Or so James. Trollope kept breaking in on the illusion of reality. Finally, he shattered it.

     Yet, are we ever, in a James novel - are we ever under the slightest illusion that we are in the presence of anything real, not a too, too carefully crafted fiction? We are in the British Museum walking around and peering at the figures painted under the glaze on the urn. We are never among the laughing, panting merrymakers themselves.

iii

The rule of three

In a world like that - like Trollope’s (lacking imagination) - it may well not apply.

     Nor here.

 12.13.19 

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 *An online reproduction of the 1887 edition of Jesop’s Farables (with an afterword by Ted Riich) are available here.
**There’s an excellent review here.

French FriesDay

 French FriesDay  

The usual Friday, with variations.

     I picked up Uncle Albert at 10:45. And he went with me to my appointment with Dr. Feight to read the magazines. (See here.) I asked Dr. Feight if he had read Choderlos de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons. “I don’t think you pronounce the s’s,” he said, “ʃɔdɛʁlo də laklo.”

     “Yes,” I said. “Sorry.”

     “Why?” he asked.

     “I just wondered,” I said.

Bright’s

Afterwards, instead of going home for soup egg-salad sandwiches, Uncle Albert and I met Nils and Axel Sundstrøm for lunch at Bright’s Dairy-Rite. Hamburgers and French fries.

     The tables at Bright’s are Formica. The air smells of hot oil, soft ice cream, and mustard.

“I hear ‘Trumpet’ Magnusson was in town,” Nils said.* “Still celebrating his humility, is he?” We’ve all ordered hamburgers and fries. We’ve all ordered Pepsis, except for Nils, who was drinking water.

     “That’s how he got his nickname,” Nils said. They’d been in college together, Magnusson like Nils and Axel headed for Seminary and the Lutheran pastorate until after a junior year abroad in Stockholm, he spent the (following) summer in Salisbury, “studying the Sarum rite,” according to Nils. “So he left for the higher calling of a higher church.”

     Nils took a bite of his hamburger. “What a prig,” he said, mouth half-full. “And at such a young age. Pedant! Prig!! Pompous pinchfart!!!”

     Uncle Albert wanted to know what that meant. “Don’t pull your punches,” he said to Nils. He emphasized the p’s in “pull” and “punches.” Nils took the bait.

     “More interested in rite than religion,” Nils said, rolling the r’s. “More interested in the sound of his own voice than either.”

     “We’ve all been young,” Uncle Albert said.

Axel didn’t say anything. I didn’t either. We ate our burgers and our fries and sipped our Pepsis.

     “You tell me,” Nils said. Because we’d heard him two Sundays ago.

     I looked at Uncle Albert, who seemed to be considering the question. I shook my head. Uncle Albert picked up a fry, pointed it at Nils, and put it in his mouth.

     Bright’s plays fifties and sixties. Sam Cooke is whining that he “ain’t got nobody.”

12.08.19

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 * Our preacher for Christ the King Sunday. See here.

Stramash

 Stramash* 

photo by David Hablützel

The din is only in one ear. Popping, pushing, fuming, seething in a foreign tongue, as of bees arguing a case to the queen, all shouting, yelling, shrieking at once.

     “Not really voices, then,” I tell Dr. Feight. “I’m not hearing voices.” Meaning like a crazy person.

     “Hmmm,” he says.

     “Yet,” I add - to myself.

Still, I’m optimistic. I’ve heard voices - the clamor has become voices - only once before. And they were speaking in tongues. Or one was speaking in tongues, and another was interpreting, just as the Apostle prescribes. But: what the interpreter said made little more sense than the speaker’s babble. Fractured sentences: “Did residential you know? Any visit required. Visible guidelines from to be reviewed. Go now.” Like that. Monotonic.

     “Male or female?” the doctor I saw then, cigarette-smelling, anxious yellow smile, asked. “I don’t know,” I told him. “A child, I think. ‘Take up and read.’”

     “What?” he asked.

That was three years ago. About this time of year.

     Since then, the bees have come to argue from time to time, shouting over one another, besieging the poor queen; but no words that I could discern. So, no voices. And only in one ear, the left. If I can keep you on my right, I can hear what you are saying. Or, if I can keep you in front of me, I can see it.

     You’d never know anything was wrong. And it’s not wrong really. It's not voices.

12.04.19

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 * “Scottish term describing a moment of disorder involving several individuals. usually occurring at taxi ranks, q's at the brew office or in the six yard box moments before every goal scored by Glasgow Rangers.” - https://www.urbandictionary.com/

1-A

 1-A 

Yesterday, we went to church, Uncle Albert and I. The First Sunday of Advent, which meant there was yet another candle lit, with more to come.

Our rector Susan, the former Miss Virginia,* stared at the back of her envelope. She writes her sermons on the back of envelopes. Then she put it aside. Then she said that the candle is a sign light is coming into the darkness. The same old uninspired schist: “As the days grow shorter,” etc.

As the days grow shorter, more candles will be lit. It’s a sign so don’t expect it to be logical. But there’s a comfort in it.

     I suppose. When I get up in the morning these days, I walk through the house, turning on lights. Wasteful. I know it: I am using more than my share of the world’s energy; I’m befouling the atmosphere. I’m also trying to stay sane.

     Relatively so.

We get home, Uncle Albert and I, in time to watch Arsenal scratch out a tie with Norwich City. Only Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang seems to be getting any joy out of Arsenal football these dark days. He scores both the Gunners’ goals.

12.02.19

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 * See here.