On the fifth day of Christmas,

 On the fifth day of Christmas, 

someone sent to me an anonymous note, “Repent!” Otherwise I was surely going to hell if I had denied the Virgin Birth. Which I had not.

Back when I was still teaching Sunday School from time to time, a couple stopped me in the park. Or, they stopped in the park – I was sitting on a bench, waiting for Godot.Then, they were in front of me.
     The man said, “Vernon Josephs,” and he nodded at his wife: “Celeste.” And she said, “This is Ebeneezer,” indicating the dog, who sat down at the mention of his name.
     The man said, “We were in your Sunday School class, when was it Cel?”
     “It was last month. No, the month before, the 21st.”
     “Yes, and this bothered us,” Vernon said. And it was the business of the Virgin Birth, that I had denied it. Only I hadn’t. I am not sure what made them believe I had. Probably I had argued again that what we believed in was God, not Doctrine, and I had used the Virgin Birth as an example. I was constantly doing stupid, limp-brained shit like this because it bothered me that we did believe in Doctrine instead of in God, because God was a nuisance, not fitting in any drawer we had handy. Better, at least clearer, safer, to believe in the drawers themselves.
     In any case, I had bothered Vernon and Celeste. Being tolerant people, they decided to let it go – they would just go to Sunday School somewhere else. But then, when they saw me in the park, they thought they might say something. Perhaps, given the chance, I’d repent, and all would be well and every manner of thing would be well. (This, incidentally, is the kind of thing that mystics believe in because, again, God is too inconvenient.)

It was a warm day, but I was wearing a windbreaker, it wasn’t yet warm enough for me. Vernon and Celeste were in short sleeves and matching denim-blue ball caps with “Wheaton College” logos. Their eyes were blue though lighter than the caps, of course. And the dog’s leash – also blue. I thought afterward that blue was Mary’s color, and the color of hope. And my least favorite.
     Their point was how could we believe in God, especially that Christ was God if we didn't believe in the Virgin Birth?
     And I thought, “Don’t resist.” So, I nodded. “You're right, of course,” I said, meaning whatever they wanted it to mean. But they could see that I wasn’t agreeing. I was still the limp-brained heretic they knew I was and they wanted me to be. So Celeste said, “I know you’ll think about it,” though her tone suggested she was fairly certain I would not. And she and Vernon left, extremely satisfied.

 Did you know, dear reader, that Plato was also born of a virgin? So Diogenes Laertius informs us in Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Moreover, though Mary, mother of Jesus, was descended from a long line of priests, Plato’s mother Perictone, was descended from a god, Poseidon. And her son’s conception just came about; there was no intervention of the holy ghost – just boom!
     Which was also the case for Dreama Ridpath, a cheerleader from Radford that made the news when I was in third grade. Granted her son didn’t go on to preach the Sermon on the Mount or write The Republic. He did, however, play football at Virginia Tech before going on to a successful career selling insurance in Dublin. Successful but brief, he also died young.
     When I say that Dreama made the news, I mean the local news and maybe just the word-of-mouth news. If the story was in the county weekly, it wasn’t picked up by the Washington Post or the New York Times or even the Roanoke papers.
     Even locally, as I remember, nobody believed it, much less in it. On the other hand, I never read or heard later that it was disproved.
     It wasn’t disproved, it just disappeared. My point, if I have one, gentle reader, is this: How often does this kind of thing happen outside the Jerusalem-Athens axis and we never hear about it? More often than we think I am guessing. There is more than is dreamt of in our religions and philosophies.

A new The Ambiguities policy.
     Roz worries that I can wander out of the shallow end of the pool when I don’t know how to swim – she’s right, I don’t. So she thinks I should check out what I am going to post before I post it. I showed this, then, to Uncle Albert before I put it up here.
     “This is nuts,” he said.
     “Yes, I know,” I said. He was clearly thinking what I was thinking: “What made me think Vernon and Celeste had given up so easily.”
                                                                          12.29.21 

The best d---n Christmas Poem Ever

 The best d---n Christmas poem ever 

Don’t read this. Just listen. Why I thought it needed an introduction - the poem is so brief. But it doesn’t need anything; if it is short, it is also complete in itself, perfect. Adding to it only takes away. So don’t read this. Just listen.

Janet Lewis, “A Lullaby”

                                                                      12.23.21 
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* The text may be found here.

Backlash

 Galilee, Constantinople* 

 From our rector, Susan, the former Miss Virginia, a card in the mail. It begins, oddly, “Dear Ted (unwillingly exasperated),”

I do pluck my eyebrows, but I am also careful that they are not ‘perfectly plucked’ as you write. My appearance is important to me, it always has been. But it is not me. And it has no bearing on our not including your – may I say it? – odd Advent devotional in our this-year’s booklet. The decision wasn't mine alone, in any case. Ted, we do value you and your Uncle Albert even if you are not enrolled members of the parish, but sometimes I wonder how much you value us. Not to say God doesn’t have a sense of humor, but not everything is a joke. Think about that, will you?
                                                                                                     Susan+

The phone rings, the phone rings, and the phone rings. It’s Axel Sundstrøm.

     “Ted.”
     “Yes.”
     “It’s Axel.”
     “I can see that.”
     “I’m interested in why you submitted the devotional you published in your blog. For our Advent booklet, I mean. You aren't a member. You don't come to church.”
     “I thought ... No,” I stopped and started again. “"No, I don’t know.”
     “But you do know – or you know about – the hypostatic union?”
     “Yes. That’s when the LCA and the ALC joined to form the ELCA, right?”
     I could hear him shaking his head, I thought. Then, “I’ll call back,” he said.

     “Ted.”
     “Yes.”
     “It’s Axel.”
     “I can see that. Calling back,” I said.
     “The hypostatic union,” he repeated.
     “Yes.”
     “Two natures in one being.”
     “Yes.”
     “The incarnate Christ is both fully God and fully man.”
     “Yes.”
     “You get that!?”
     “Yes.” Pause. “Sort of.” Pause. “Assuming anyone does.” Another pause. “But let’s say I do. That doesn’t mean that the God, who is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth, right? Let me start again: It should mean that the God revealed in Jesus of Nazareth is not an Almighty Asshole at the end.”
     Silence.
     “That's my point,” I said.
     I could hear him shaking his head again. Then, “I’m going to have to call you back,” he said.

     “Ted.”
     “Yes.”
     “It’s Axel again.”
     “I can see that. Calling back again again,” I said.
     “Yes. Sorry. I’m not sure that we're using the right categories. Let’s start over, okay?”
     “No, please. Let’s not. I am still going to say that at the end of it all, the Judge is going to have to lighten up and be more like the Rabbi, if he, Jesus of Nazareth, really is the revelation. One God, right?”
     “Yes. And I get what you’re saying, but ... ” Pause.
     “Listen,” I said. “I’m going to have to call you back.”

                                                                               12.21.2021
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*To the tune of “Istanbul, Constantinople.”

Advent Devotions

  A Lower Room 

Imagine this in your church’s Advent devotional book (because it’s not in mine – raising a lovely, perfectly plucked eyebrow, Miss Virginia rejected it. And Axel, apparently preferring orthodoxy to friendship, didn’t want it for Grace Lutheran’s either.)

Advent Schizophrenia

Read Malachi 3:1-3*

 

​We are never more in the dark than in Advent. We are awaiting the incarnation, God’s taking human form in the infant Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph, a schoolgirl and the carpenter from Galilee. But while we wait, we celebrate the Christ that will judge the whole damn (damned) world, the awful Cosmic Christ of the little apocalypses and Patmos John’s great big one. So, which do we follow? Are we all in with our own salvation and our Almighty Salvator's ruling the world with fire and the sword? Or, are we following the humble one that was born in a manger? Which? 

     Because it can’t be both. Even the Redeemer of all cannot reconcile illogic.

 12.15.21 

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* If you can’t be bothered to look it up, here it is:

 See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness.

 

This is nuts.

 “This is nuts.” 

“This is nuts, you know that, right?” Uncle Albert is looking over my shoulder at what you will see below. “It’s one thing, your dead sister.” He’s talking about Moira from whom I get letters from time to time. “But who is this guy?” he says.
     “Stephen,” I say.
     “I can see that.”
     “He has something to do, I’m not sure what, with the salvation of my soul.”
     “I didn’t think anyone but Jesus had anything to do with that.”
     “Jesus has helpers, apparently.”
     “I know, the Blessed Virgin, but who else?”
     “Why, this Stephen. Anyway, I hear from him from time to time as well.” I mean as well as Moira. I hear from Stephen as well.
     “You need to talk to Feight about this,” Uncle Albert says, Dr. Feight, my psychiatrist, whom I continue to see twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, albeit for the last year and a half by Zoom.
     “He writes in red?” Uncle Albert says.
     “Yes,” I say. “I don’t know why.”

Dear Dr. Faux-Theologian Riich,
     You are not as powerless as you would have yourself believe though the power you have is not yours. It is not in you, but it could work through you if you were not in the Enemy’s grip. Free yourself!
     Okay, yes! You are powerless to free yourself, only Christ can set you free. And you cannot make Christ set you free.  But if you are not open to the possibility then how can he act?
     Okay, yes!  He does act independently of you and your openness, and his Grace is irresistible: When he chooses to act, your sorry ass will not be able to stop him.  For you are a miserable sinner and without the grace of God, you remain miserable from before you were born – into sin! – until you die – also in sin!
     For what power you have is in your weakness. Your power is having no power before Divine Grace. But there is this difficulty: you need to get in the way of it. Like you would a truck. You can’t get hit by a semi lying on the couch in your pajamas into the middle of the morning! Still drinking coffee and watching your cat watch for birds. Which she cannot catch just by staring out the window. She must get out: you see the analogy.
     Okay, right! I can’t explain this to you because it is inexplicable. And maybe you can’t do anything because it is God’s to do and not yours. But you need to get off your (same) sorry ass anyway. Miserable sinner that you may be, you don’t have to wallow in your misery!
                                                                                                         STEPHEN+
ssnm*

In order that this not be completely nuts, I don’t tell Uncle Albert, I imagine that the heavenly censors are overseen by Jesus, who circulates among them and who smiles when he sees what Stephen has written me. “Ah,” he says. He has Stephen’s letter, sent up the chain of command, in hand. He stops by the censor’s desk to talk with him about it. “Ah,” he says again, “you are angry, and it is a righteous anger. The man – he means me – is a fool as well as a sinner – a miserable fool. But do you think his contemplating an illogical theological tenet is going to bring him out of it?” He speaks to Stephen in Stephen’s language, the thorny polysyllables of Reformed theology.
     “No, sire. I guess not,” Stephen replies.
     “Okay, right.” Jesus answers. “Then, let’s put the letter in the files. Make a copy, and put the original in your file and the copy in your friend’s. But let’s not send it. At least, let’s not send it now. Maybe another time.
     “In the meantime – after you’ve made the copy and done the filing and taken the afternoon off – and tomorrow; yes, and the day after, too: take some time off. After that, write something along the lines that I love him, like the man born blind, not the scribes and Pharisees that interrogate him. Write him that I love him like the scribes and Pharisees that interrogate the man born blind, as much as the man himself. Okay?
     And he passes on – he seems to melt away – before Stephen can say what is on the tip of his tongue, “What the hell does that mean?”

 12.06.21 

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 * scriptum sed non missum  (written but not sent)