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| Confucius in Galilee, c. 30 CE |
According to Chuang Tzu
According to Chuang Tzu, Chang Chi inquired of Confucius, “Wang Tai has only one foot. Why does he have so many followers, as many as you?” Confucius replied, “Jesus said,‘ If your right foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better to limp into the Kingdom of Heaven on one foot than to run around on the earth like a chicken with its head cut off.’”
11.29.21
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| Makes your head hurt! |
You would
think that the major metropolitan dailies would require their pundits to take
at least a beginning course in logic. You know, so they wouldn’t arrive
at a conclusion that disproved their premise or wrote a next sentence that
contradicted the previous one. Clearly, that’s not the case. Not even The
Wall Street Journal, which you’d imagine would be most concerned. Clearly, that’s not the case. Not
even The Wall Street Journal, which I’d imagine would be most concerned.
I don’t read the Journal often,
but Axel has a subscription that a member of his congregation got for him, and
he’ll deliver a section from time to time, with an article highlighted he
thinks I’d like to read. There’s one on the Premier League, “Premier League’s
Three-Way Race” in the November 1 issue. It’s on page A14. On the opposite page,
A25 – is an opinion piece, “Nine Theories of Progressive Power” by Andy Kessler,
who has a degree in engineering from Cornell.
He wonders
what progressives’ end game is. Why are they dishing out the shit they’re dishing
out? He has nine theories, if his title is correct, but they boil down to
these: they are buying votes to stay in power – power is, after all, addictive,
not to mention it pays: Did you know Bernie Sanders owns three homes?
But it doesn’t really matter, their
end game. The solution is to limit progressives’ power. Then:
While they twist themselves into pretzels trying to solve poverty and inequality, let the marketplace of ideas and entrepreneurs flourish. That already works.
We know that, right? – because there is no poverty or inequality.
11.24.21
Ren and Stmp-yi
Why did I do that, make the drive for no one there? I don’t know but not because I am kind, I
hope, or not out of what Chuang Tzu (Zhuang Zhou) calls “benevolence” (ren), which he pairs with “righteousness”
(yi),
both of which tend to do far more harm than good. Because they are ways –
unnatural ways – of judgment, of getting in between where people are and where they are going, because we
can’t stay out of their business.
I may be wrong about this, about
what Chuang Tzu intends; but this does seem true to me: One of the great – if not
greatest – unkindnesses is meddling. Which is what you do when you think
you know someone else better than he or she knows him or herself. You become
righteous because you know what’s best for them; then you become benevolent because,
dammit, you need to do something about it.
That’s it. I love the way in Tom
Jones Fielding spins these “essay chapters” out, but sweet as I may be, I lack his amiable gas.
11.20.21
Lost Cause
Nils was saying to Miss Virginia.
“What are you writing,” Roz said,
looking over my shoulder.
I gestured at the screen. “I was
going to add,” I said, “‘For me? You wouldn’t do that ... for me?’ Is that too
much?”
“Yes.” she said. “It is. Besides, None of it is remotely true.”
“Well,” I said. Not “Well, ...” as
if I were going to go on from there. I just said, “Well.” (period)
“It’s a lie,” Roz said. “As far as you
know, Nils and your stunning rector have never
met.”
“All writing is a lie,” I say
(present tense because I am always saying this). “As soon as you put the third
word behind the second, you have departed from the truth.”
“‘Departed from the truth,’” she
said. “What a mouthful. Look at me.” And she shook her head.
I am in sitting in Uncle Albert’s
chair. Roz is standing behind me. “I wasn’t going to put it up,” I say, looking
at her. “I wasn’t going to publish it,” looking away. She leans over and puts her cheek on top
of my head; she rests it there for several seconds. She smells like herself, wonderful. She stands up again.
“You really don’t like Nils!”
she said. “Do you?”
“I try to,” I say. “Besides, you don’t
really like him either.”
“He’s not my favorite human being,
but I don’t dislike him. I think you do. Why?”
“I was reading an op-ed in the Times today. It was about ‘woke’,”
I said. “It said something like ‘you don’t like “woke” — you’ve made the word
the butt of bad jokes — because you want to stay asleep.’ You meaning we
troglodytes that still read Scripture instead of the Times as
Scripture.”
“Hmmm,” Roz said.
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| Margaret Mitchell and Ernest Dowson Hollywood, 1939 |
“I wanted comment on it, put up a comment on the article, that, actually,
we poor, deluded, sleeping, drowning in our Gone with the Wind dreams don’t
dislike ‘woke’ if it means ‘awakened’ but it’s become a synonym for ‘arrogant.’ And we
didn’t make it that.”
“Gone with the Wind,” Roz said. “I read somewhere that it’s a
line from a poem. Did you know that?”
“Yes, by Dowson,” I said, and I put
down the laptop and went off to find it because I couldn’t remember which poem.
“Yes, you would,” Roz said after me.
“Just the kind of think you'd know. You don’t have to find the book, you know,” she called. She meant I
could have googled it. But I was already on the stairs.
It was, I thought, in the one, the poem, with the refrain
I
have been true to thee, Cynara
In my fashion.
But I couldn’t remember which
one that was, one of those with a long title in Latin.*
_______________
I had a letter a few days ago from my sister Moira. She writes a lot about how little people truly understand each other, even when we want to, even when we are desperate to do so.
There
are things, you know, that you both understand and don’t understand at the same
time. You feel them achingly clear, but you can’t explain them. No matter how
much you want to. You don’t have the language for it, however good a writer or
talker you are.
It’s as if you and I met for a day – we weren’t
brother and sister, and we didn’t know each other. It’s as if we fell in love that
day, but you spoke Hungarian and I spoke French, and we didn’t speak any other
languages. And the day came to an end, and we were going to meet the next day,
but we didn’t. Then, what we “knew” would be like that, feelings that we
understood in some part of us, but neither of us could explain. What we knew about
each other especially: We’d know it, but we couldn’t say it.
This isn’t true for the woke. They don’t have to speak your language to understand you. They don’t even have to have met you to know what you’ve been thinking, you simple-minded shit. What does it matter, you’re not going to get with the program anyway? Forget it. You’re a lost cause.
11.17.21
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* You can read the poem, “Non sum qualis eram
bonae sub regno Cynarae,” and
listen to it here. It was the first of several episodes of “Love in the Time of
Cholera,” another of my great ideas undone by my greater inability to keep at
anything.
The graphic is by mel ball.
Decaf Jesus
In our version of Hebrews 10, Jesus reprimands the footstool makers that would decide who his enemies are that they may be made into a footstool for his feet. He reprimands, but is he angry?
Rewriting the Scriptures
... because we all do it, whether we admit it or not
This morning the lector reads one
thing, but our ears interrupt and we hear something else, in this case
something more.
She reads, “From Hebrews, chapter
10”:
He sat down at the right hand of God, and since then he has been waiting until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.
But while she reads on, our ears hear the waiting end. He cannot do it:
And he reprimanded the would-be footstool makers, “Who are you to call these my enemies?” And he said to these, “Untangle yourselves. Your sins are forgiven.” And when he heard the footstool makers murmur, he said to them, “Your sins are forgiven as well. Untangle yourselves, all of you and throw neither others nor yourselves at the feet of anyone, but come sup with me.”
Play resumes.
He stops. “Ted,” he says. “You’re not listening.”
“No, I am,” I lie. “You’re right ...
“ ... as far as I see what you’re saying, you must be right.” I turn the lie back into truth. Such as truth is, disheveled, bedraggled, grimy, sockless in ill-fitting shoes.
11.09.21
Entr’acte: Opinions about religion
Analytic
Philosopher
Another
thought came to him.
Brain clenched, he tore it limb from limb.
Opinions
about religion are exactly and only that, opinions. There is nothing about
religion that isn’t opinion, since nothing religious can be proved. This is
Gaspar again – at least my take on Gaspar.* But, to go on,
There are hard (hard-headed but also
hard-hearted) opinions, and there are opinions like mine, soft as cheese. When he
characterizes me that way, “soft as cheese,” Gaspar has Camembert not Swiss in
mind.
“I hope he isn’t converting you,” Roz says. “Faith
is important to you.
“It may be odd and addled,” she
says. “Still.”
“I’m okay,” I say.
* * * * *
Yesterday. Uncle Albert and I went to St. Jude’s for the first time since February of 2020. It was the first eight o’clock Rite One service since March of 2020. Miss Virginia presided, or she celebrated, pushing the cup high into the air, after preaching the raising of Lazarus, whom Jesus called out then said, “Unwrap him and let him go free.” We can only assume they did because there he is left, arms bound, feet bound, head wrapped in a napkin.
The psalm was 24, the first reading I ever did in public, loudly because I was nervous because it was my first time but also because I wanted everyone to hear. And instead of “the
Lord mighty in battle,” I yelped out, “the Lord mighty and batty.” Then, I blushed, I’m sure, but I carried on if not so powerfully. I didn’t go back to correct myself.
Later, much later, carrying on generally even less powerfully, I wondered if I hadn’t been right, at least partly. If God came in Jesus of Nazareth, he had decided not to be mighty; but the strategy was certainly batty.*
Miss Virginia held high the cup, and we celebrated the eucharist with the usual celluloid wafer and watered-down wine, except the priest and a deacon stood at the bottom of the steps to the chancel. She handed each a wafer, and he handed us a plastic cup he had poured from the main cup, and we tried to eat and drink as we walked to the tray we were supposed to put our cups down on. It was awkward for Uncle Albert because he had a cane, too, so he was walking on three legs juggling two things into his mouth and trying to get them to go down his gullet as he walked three-legged.
He muttered about it afterward. “I’ll sit out next time,” he said. “Or, we can just sit toward the back and leave after the homily,” I said.
11.08.21
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* This Gaspar thread begins here. “Analytic Philosopher” is by our epigrammatist there, R. S. Dietrich.
Bookwork Orange
I haven’t seen Axel in some time – I haven’t talked to him in a month – but yesterday he emailed
to ask if we might meet. He is twice vaccinated and boostered. And I am vaccinated,
too, also twice. I emailed back, “Yes,” and he asked if I’d be willing to meet
him in his study at Grace Lutheran. Also, could I bring a bag lunch – and one
for him, too? He would provide drinks, what would I like?
I said, “Pepsi,” and he thought he
could do that.
He wants to talk about Gaspar-Stephens-and-Jesus, what-do-I-think? I seldom think at all anymore, I say.
His office looks exactly as it did the last time I was there, more than two years ago. Exactly: not a book added or subtracted from the shelves, not a book shifted from one place to another, not a paper on the mammoth desk disturbed. It tastes like the same air, only thickened by not having moved in 25 months. I’m having trouble chewing my egg-salad sandwich; it is turning to bits in my mouth without getting mushier – the thick air is turning my saliva to petroleum jelly. I begin to choke.
“I think he has a point,” Axel says after he has sat back down with a sigh, after he has taken a bit of sandwich, chewed it to bits, and swallowed it, after he has sucked in a slurp of Pepsi and gargled it down. He’s talking about Gaspar. “He has a point, but it may not be the point he thinks he has,” Axel says.
“I agree,” I say, not because I do, but maybe agreement will end the conversation before it begins. I don’t really think it will, but the thought comes to me – the hope comes to me.
But agreement never ends a conversation with Axel.
11.06.21
“Get a T.O., baby!” – Dick Vitale
“What if ... ” This is my friend Gaspar Stephens contempontificating: “What if this is what he was saying in effect, Jesus. He’s talking to the scribes of the Pharisees: ‘I'm not saying you’re completely wrong, but the religion you are proposing – are practicing (or trying to) – is completely maladaptive, if not now then soon. If you’re going to live in the world that is coming, you are going to have to loosen up.’
“To put it more modernly, ‘This shit is just not gonna fly,’ Jesus is saying in the parables. And I’m saying that madmen (and madwomen) – nihilists, Trotskyists, Romanians, secular (gasp!) Jews – arguing in cafés (but not around seminar tables) – are closer followers of Jesus than creedal Christians. Creeds are about drawing unnecessary lines inside the field of play. Pushing, shouting, and laughing, ignoring those lines, kicking up the chalk and kicking over the traces, telling lies make for something much closer to what Jesus preached possible. Argument about – having everything up in the air – is closer to freedom. Six hundred and however many statutes and ordinances don’t set you free. And only with freedom comes the possibility of grace.”
“If they have love?” I said.
“You are the softest piece of cheese,” Gaspar said. “But okay. Yes. If they have love. If they are human.”
* * * * *
Two epigrams:
