Subplot

  Subplot 

I had an email from Gaspar Stephens: “What do you believe in (believe into, pisteuei=n ei)v) these days? I find it hard to tell.”
     “You mean besides Jesus?” I wrote back.
     “Yes, let’s say besides Jesus.” And he went on:

If you can, tell me what is real (as it can be), and what is delusional. Assuming you can make that distinction though, I assume that most of our religious belief is self-delusion. But is that a bad thing? Delusion can be beneficial; there are times when it is not, clearly: we meet a bear in the woods, and we think we can take him on mano a mano (mano a pata?). But let us say we are sane and not courting death. We delude ourselves. We don't think of death as inevitable. We put off thinking about it. We even construct a belief that will allow us to put off ever thinking about it, life after death. And so we go from day to day and from the next day to the next. and so forth.
     Do you know Tyler Cowen? Economist. Occasionally, I listen to his podcast. And I listened to him recently on Honestly, Bari Weiss’s thing. You listen to that now and then, right? Did you catch that interview? If you didn’t, listen in. Or go back and listen again to the last fifteen minutes or so. Toward the end of the interview, Bari asks Cowen why he thinks the culture and its institutions seem to be imploding. And a primary reason, he says, is our decreasing detachment from religion. She then asks him about his own faith, and he identifies himself as a non-believer, but one who believes that Western culture has benefited enormously from religion and is foolish to throw it all away. (I was reminded of what you wrote about Graham Greene as a Catholic agnostic.)
     Cowen is right. I think. What religion brings at its best, a constant sense of mystery, tends to keep the mind humble.  Yes, there are a lot of pompous asses in the church, more than any institution deserves but no more, I am pretty sure, than any other institution on average. But for all that (or all of them), I think you see Christianity, for example, generating more humility than arrogance. Most, because they are still on this side or they are in the middle of or they have just pulled themselves up on the other side of the Slough of Despond, most, believing they are standing before God, don’t have to be told to be humble; they don’t have to be told to wonder. They do without being told.
     Maybe I am off the point I began with. Still, tell me what you think.

I wrote back:

I tend to agree. Even if religion is only a subplot, offering light relief, the relief comments so trenchantly on the plot, the play cannot be understood without the light it sheds. Greene, yes, I learned a few weeks ago at my book group, called himself “a Catholic agnostic,” which, as one of us ventured, is quite different from calling oneself an agnostic Catholic. Yes, too, your friend, Tyler, seems to be onto the same thing: we should hold religion to be of crucial importance even if we cannot believe its story is true in any literal sense. Any kind of belief, even sincere attempt at belief — maybe even insincere attempt at belief — can keep us humble, whatever temptations come our way. Today, for example, as in my faux “confession” I enumerate the so-called deadly sins, seven of the many-many characters in the busy-busy subplot, I am aware of how many of them lead away from humility. Pride, of course, but also anger, greed, gluttony, lust, and sloth (if only because it doesn’t care one way or the other). I’m not sure envy leads anywhere. And I continue to think it is the saddest of the sins for that reason. Wherever they begin, the other sins (even sloth when we nod off) can take us out of ourselves, but envy begins in us and will not come out to take us anywhere at all.
     Maybe I’m wrong. I know that for me just this kind of exercise (shuffling through the sins as through index cards) — this exercise, however abbreviated, even facile, convinces me that Tyler Cowen has a point. Ways to think about ourselves, what we do and who we are, ways that have a long history of leading us to humility — we shouldn’t throw them away; we shouldn’t carelessly, ignorantly let them go. Despite all the pompous asses in the church, who tempt us to.

 

 04.29.22 

The Monday after Low Sunday

 The Monday after Low Sunday 
being the first Sunday of Easter, only low because attendance
is low because the regular pastor is taking the Sunday off.

Evening. I am sitting with Axel on the porch of the cabin he has rented in Doubthat State Park. Supper over, the dishes done. I am his guest for cigars, drinks, quiet conversation, then to spend the night. But I don’t like cigars, not even the sweet-smelling wooden-tipped ones rolled for children, so I have brought a pack of cigarettes, Gauloises. The drink is akvavit, which I don’t much like either, though this that Axel has with fennel and/or anise scratching at its sides, is the more palatable the more we drink.
     Axel is talking about church the day before — because I asked him. Yes, though he was off, he went. And the sermon was . . . , and he stops. The light is blurry, day become night but with a little day left in it. Something is whirring and something else burping: insects and frogs, I imagine, who have no idea. Axel coughs as if a bit of cigar or spirit had gone down the wrong way. He coughs again.
     “There are people that you just don’t like, right? And people that don’t like you. There’s nothing either of you can do about it. They can’t help it. You can’t help it with them.”
     “Yes. Right.”

“The sermon yesterday,” Axel says. “It was good. The passage was John 20: Jesus appears to the ten, or so they say but Thomas doesn’t quite believe them. Then, he appears to the ten and Thomas, whom he challenges to put his finger into his hand and side and see”
     “Yes,” I said.
     “The scenes are the same in both appearances. He doesn’t chastise the disciples for running away. He doesn’t chastise Thomas. He is tender with all of them ‘Peace!’ he says. And all is peace. In the second, he breathes on them and gives them the Holy Spirit. In John’s hands, Pentecost isn’t Pentecostal at all. It’s very Lutheran.”
     “Yes.”
     “As was the sermon,” Axel went on. Then, he stopped again. Pulled at his cigar, sipped at his drink. “It was very much the sermon I would have preached myself, very much the sermon I have preached on that passage, only better. Good! A good solid . . . ,” he trailed off. I waited.
     “Only there are people . . . ” he trailed off again. And I picked it up,
     “Only there are people you don’t like, and there is nothing either of you can do about it.”
     He waved his cigar in a circle above his head, meaning yes.

“I don’t like thinking about that,” Axel said. “It doesn’t matter so much for some, for you for instance — at least not practically, not professionally since you no longer have a profession. But it matters for me because I am usually the one in the pulpit. And . . .” He slowed down, and
     I interrupted: “You hadn’t thought of this before?”
     “No. I should have. How difficult it is for people to separate the message from the messenger.”

The insects and the frogs were getting blurrier. “But there’s not just that,” Axel said out of the night. “Jesus,” he said, halfway between the name and a curse. “I am thinking, ‘It’s not just the cross that is a stumbling block; it could be Jesus himself.’
     “If he is truly human, as we say, there are going to be people that don’t like him. Not his fault but not their fault either. There is something about the way he walks or ducks his head before speaking, or the way he smells, the soap he uses, something about the shape of his mouth or his nose and his mouth together, about the way he uses his hands, or you just don’t know why. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Did God think of that?”

“Do we know what God is thinking?” I asked.
     “I wouldn’t have expected such pious bullshit from you,” Axel said.
     “The smoke,” I said, “and the ‘wine,’” I hesitated, “and the company.”

 04.21.22 

Laundry Thursday

  Laundry Thursday      continued from here and here

It’s a funny thing about metaphors – they never really follow through.
— Graham Greene, A Burnt-out Case

“I read what you wrote yesterday. Or was it the day before?” Axel was on the phone. He sounded as if he might be catching cold. “You’re being melodramatic.”
     “Maybe so,” I said. “I am not appreciating metaphor right now. It doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to. Especially if we load it too full.”
     “I see,” he said, though I don’t think he did.

“Today I am writing about scapegoats,” I said, “speaking of melodrama.”
     “I look forward to reading it,” Axel said, though I don’t think he did. “"You’ll be all right (?),” he added, half statement, half question.
     “I think so. Eventually.”
     “Good. Call me if you need anything.” He meant that.

So, scapegoat theology: Does it work?
     We lambs load our sins onto one goat and send him out into the desert to die, imaging that our sins will die with him. But we wake up six days later, and we are no different from what we were six days before. The goat may or may not be dead — we do not go out into the desert to check. But our sins have come back as healthy as ever — as if they had killed the goat and eaten the sacrifice and grown fat. Superbia, Invidia, Acedia, Ira, Tristitia, Avaritia, Fornicatio, and Gula (Gulaque), the whole damn gang.
      They ride into town, six-shooters blazing. Our hearts skip a beat. We don’t know if we’re afraid or aroused. Or relieved — life is back to nasty normal.

 04.21.22 

Tuesday after Easter

  Tuesday after Easter             continued from here

“She’s right?” Uncle Albert is almost sure of it. He is agreeing with Roz’s summary of the Easter Sunday sermon though she didn’t go to church any more than he did.
     “As far as I remember,” I say. But she doesn’t catch the sadness of Resurrection Day — not that the sermon did either. God works on the level of the stars; He creates myth as he does the lights of the night sky: by His word alone. According to which His Son dies — he is killed! — on Friday; and He raises Him on Sunday. But on the level of earth and even air: How many die — how many are killed! — on Friday? And one is raised.
     It takes a day or two for that sadness, that lack of faith, to penetrate, but by Tuesday I am wondering how Easter works below the firmament? Truly? Christ is risen indeed, but what about the rest of us?

 04.18.22 

Monday after Easter

 Monday after Easter 

Uncle Albert doesn’t go to church on Easter Sunday. Too many hypocrites in one place, he says. He prefers the smaller number we have on a regular Sunday. But he wanted to know what the sermon was about.
     I shrugged. “I lost track,” I said. “Sorry.”
     “Christ has risen, spring is sprung, love is all,” Roz said. “Butterflies,” her fingers fluttering.

                                                                                  04.18.22 

Harry, Englandman

 Harry, Englandman 
Dateline: April 9, Emirates Stadium

I wonder if Uncle Albert is ill. “I’d almost as soon watch Southampton-Chelsea,” he said as I was helping him down the stairs.
     He naps — we both nap — through the first 25 minutes of Arsenal v. Brighton Hove Albion; yet he wakes up to see the Trossard goal from Mwepu slapped hard past Aaron Ramsdale. He groans deeply enough that I say, “What?” He gestures at the flatscreen, groans again, weakly, and recloses his eyes.
     At the other end, the header from Gabriel to Martinelli and his header into the goal goes to VAR, which allows Uncle Albert, awake again, to launch his usual plaint that games are meant to be played on the field of play, there! in real time, not somewhere else in freeze frame. He frets; then, when the call is finally made, he adds, “There’s four minutes out of my life but also, more to the point, out of a game whose brilliance is that the action is continuous, dagnabbit.”
     “Ideally,” I say. 
     “If you want out of time and you want ‘ideal,’ you can watch The damn Masters,” he says, “Isn’t that today?” He actually says “damn.”*

But back at the Emirates, Mwepu makes the run, picks the ball off the floor in a neat half-volley from the long, lovely Lewis Dunk pass, side-footing it into the corner. He is Enock, Mwepu is, named, Uncle Albert and I decide, not after the son of Cain but the son of Jared, the father of Methuselah.**
     Too late, Arsenal tries to come back: there are two off the crossbar, by Ødegaard and by Enketia; then, there’s the long, lucky strike by Ødegaard . But 1-2 is little better than 0-3 (the loss to Crystal Palace). Uncle Albert asks if he can have his lunch in the kitchen. Usually, I bring it to him in his chair.
     “Don’t you want to watch Aston Villa - Tottenham?” I ask.
     “And hear how the world revolves around Harry Kane’s anus?”
     “You’re assuming Arlo White has the call.”
     “Who else? It’s Tottenham. It’s the ‘The Englandman,’*** Harry Kane. And Roz said she’d read to me after lunch. Her French is quite good you know.”
     “She doesn’t understand half of what she is reading,” I say.
     “Few of us do,” Uncle Albert replied.

  

                                                                04.04.22      
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 * Because he reprehends The Masters almost as much as I do. My take on that event, see here. Add that no “major” should be played on the same course year after year. Golf is truly a game of horses for courses. Six of Jack Nicklaus’s 18 majors were Masters wins as have been five of Tiger's 15. Take those away, and Nicklaus is only one major ahead of Walter Hagen, who never played at Augusta, indeed played when there were only three majors; and Tiger is one behind. Four of Arnold Palmer’s seven majors are Masters as are three of Sam Snead’s and Gary Player’s and two of Ben Hogan’s. Take those away, and of those “greatest players,” only Hogan has won more, even as many, majors as Lee Trevino, who never won at Augusta.   
 ** Enock is a variation of Enoch. This kind of esoteric bullshit speculation is available only here, at The Ambiguities.    
 *** As White insists on calling him. 

Harry, the Englandman
with apologies to Hans Holbein

  

The Tottenham match begins as Uncle Albert suspected. Son scores, Kane assisting by banking a pass off an Aston Villa defender directly into the Korean’s path: How could he miss? (It looked like a shot, the Englandman’s pass, but this is Harry Kane, remember.) Kane had no direct part in either of Son’s other two goals, but the Korean could hot have scored them had the Englandman not been on the field. The same for Kulusevski’s score.

 

A disappointing Monday

  continued from here

 A disappointing Monday at Selhurst Park 

This afternoon, both* came over to watch the Arsenal match with Uncle Albert. Or, they came to watch Uncle Albert watch the Arsenal match; they were playing Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.
     He watches like a cat. He’ll doze off for a few seconds or minutes or ten minutes, then he’ll wake up and grab at the action like a hacky sack at the end of an elastic band. He must hear the flow and smell the ebb of the action behind his closed eyes they always pop open just as something is about to happen.
    So they see the foul on Zaha, the Conor Gallagher free kick, and from Joachim Andersen’s head to Mateta’s past Ramsdale. They see Agnew pass it past Ramsdale after a superb long pass by Andersen (again). They see Lacazette’s pop-up, the only decent Arsenal chance of the half and Ramsdale's save on Mateta (again). And this is only the first half.

Paul at ‘Chains’ in Ephesus*: “Pick up! Pick up!!”

Both Axel and Nils come to watch Albert watch, but Nils also comes to see if he can wind him up. He asks about yesterday’s service, particularly about Melancthon Philips. “Did you really call him a ‘fruitcake’ That’s not terribly woke, is it?”
     “Let’s say I only meant that his damp, dense brain was full of candied fruit and nuts,” Uncle Albert said. “I might have called him a fornifreculating fruitcake had it not been a Sunday. He was babbling on about feet in the most lurid way. Sometimes, they are just feet, for heaven’s sake.”
     “Not in Boaz’s case,” Nils said. “And ... ”
     “No, not in Boaz’s case,” Uncle Albert agreed. “Did he mention Boaz?” he turned to me. “I wasn’t always paying attention.”
     “Not to my knowledge,” I said, who had also been woolgathering.*

In the kitchen, while Albert and Axel were watching Rebecca Lowe, Nils tried to wind me up. “If you’re going to counsel your uncle on Paul’s ‘straining’ perhaps you should consult the Incoherent commentary on passage.” He doesn’t believe the series exists [links].
     “I would,” I said, “but the Philippians volume isn’t out yet.”

                                                                04.04.22      
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 * Uncle Albert holds, “with Tierney and Smith-Rowe,” he says, that Philippians was written not at Rome — or at Caesarea — but at Ephesus.  On the origins of woolgathering, see here.

A disappointing Sunday

 A disappointing Sunday at St. Jude’s 

So: this was the passage —

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

This was our preacher because this Sunday Miss Virginia was AWOL again. According to his website —

And this was Uncle Albert in the car on our way home —

“I’m no theologian, but.” He stops.
     “But what?” I’m supposed to say, but I’m driving.
     “But,” Uncle Albert goes on unprompted, “what the hell was he talking about?”
     “Feet,” I said. “Jesus’s feet.”
     “What?”
     “Mary was washing Jesus’s feet because she didn’t want Judas getting hold of her three hundred denarii.”
     “I’m not talking about the preacher, what he said. Who was listening to that fruitcake? I am talking about The Apostle. And why wasn’t he, instead of that smarmy passage from John? He’s a Lutheran, isn’t he?”
     I knew he was talking about the preacher and not the gospel writer, why wasn’t the preacher talking about Paul? But I said anyway, “John? A Lutheran? I would hardly think so.”
     “Very funny,” Uncle Albert said. “The preacher. He’s a Lutheran; so why wasn't he talking about The Apostle. John!” He blew a raspberry. “Somebody needs to explain this byzantine illogic. That was the Lutherans’ calling, I thought.”  By “this byzantine illogic,” he meant Paul’s. But let him explain, Uncle Albert:
     “I don’t know how he gets away with it. He believes we are saved by grace once for all, right: ‘There is no condemnation to them that walk in Christ Jesus’ so not ‘height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in him,’ Romans, right?” He must be right, so I nod.
     “But, saved by grace once for all, he, The Almighty Apostle, must ‘press on to make it his own,’ this grace even if ‘Christ Jesus has already made me his own,’ he says. No, wait, forget that. He, Paul, still has to press on – let me say it again – he has to press on, ‘straining forward toward the goal for the prize,’ which he is going to make his own. And, I take it, we should best do likewise.
     “Because, apparently, Christ’s dying for us is not enough without we imitate Paul in pressing on, straining on, and taking the prize. Which has already been given to us!
     “In short, ‘Christ without Paul is not enough.’ – Philippians 4.”
     I don’t have any great love for Paul; still, I was going to say, “I don’t think that is what he is saying.” But instead, as we turned the corner, I said, “We’re home.”

This morning, I called and asked Axel if he knew Melancthon Philips. He said he didn’t. “I’m not sure he exists,” Axel said. “I mean, it sounds made up, doesn’t it?”
     “Well, someone exists,” I said. “We saw him.”

I called and asked Nils. He said, “He’s a fraud, isn’t he? Episcopalians will believe anything.”

                                                                       04.04.22