Sorry, sorry, sorry 2.

 Sorry, sorry, sorry 2. 
This “chapter” begins here.

Bel is like a Brewer’s sparrow, small and nervous, colorless and easy to overlook. But Brewer’ses are, nonetheless. They exist – to one another, to other sparrows; they have a place they take up, if modestly, in the world, a place that belongs to no other. Another email. _________________________________________________________________________________________

Isabel Monk                                                                                                  WED, MAY 31 6:30AM ó : 6
to Ted (crabbiolio@gmail.com)

I won’t take up much of your time, but I sense you are as interested in this as I am.
      I called to ask Axel about humility “as a virtue.” He admitted that it wasn’t a matter he’d given much thought to. He’d brooded over it but without thinking about it. Could he get back to me?
     If he would, I said, but I wasn’t sure (that he would), so I went by the church the next day; and I did manage to get by Lucy.* (Does she look like Justin Hawkins to you, too? Do you know who that is?)
     He had several piles of books on his desk. Is that what that huge desk is for, piles of books? And he had some open, big like concordances and dictionaries and encyclopedias. And looking into them, like a sorcerer into books of charms, he said something like this. (Imagine his voice, the way he hesitates so he won’t sound too glib – it’s a kind of humility in itself. Disobedient to the Sermon on the Mount, he is always hiding his light under a bushel. (And I’ve always liked him for that.) (But sorry, I’m rattling on!)) 

 He said: This is not me; it’s (and he spread his hands) my sources.
      In the Old Testament, humility has to do with social status. There are the humble, the lowly that the LORD will raise up, while the rich and the powerful (and arrogant) will be sent away empty. This isn’t everywhere, but it’s there. And the logical conclusion is that the king that is coming will not be like Solomon in all his glory; he will be like the servant in Isaiah’s songs; he will enter Jerusalem, riding not on a great white horse but a donkey, as Zechariah has it.
     He looked up out of his books. Okay so far? he said. And then he looked down again. No, he said. No. That sounds patronizing, doesn’t it? Of course, you get it. Nils [link/ put links in footnote?] used to preach that way, perfectly good sermons, but he was always stopping to ask, You see what I’m getting at, right? And he’d say whatever it was again. He got that from our father. He was the same way, always thinking what he was thinking was too smart to be understood.
     (I didn’t need to put that in, sorry! I am always getting off-track, especially when it comes to Axel.) (When I write, I mean: I get off-track. When I paint, I am always concise.) 

In the New Testament, Axel said, looking back up at me and back down again, gesturing again at the books to show it wasn’t him but his sources. Or, he said, that’s the way the New Testament reads it. The Messiah will not come in power but in weakness, not in arrogance but in humility. He will not conquer but be crucified. Having emptied himself, he will be humble, meaning immediately “obedient unto death,” but also meaning gentle. And his followers should be the same. Of course …. He looked up again: I’m going off-script, he said.
     Of course, we shall have to get them organized – the followers of Jesus. And that means some must have authority over others – and signs of authority. And you can’t run a church without funds, so while some may choose poverty – they may be humble in that Old Testament sense – the rich …. We have to figure out a way for them to be humble, too. So, it can be an attitude, humility; it doesn’t have to be a way of life.
      Eventually …. (This is still Axel, or my rendering of Axel.) Eventually, the original meaning, poor, will for all intents and purposes disappear. Traces of it will hold on in the liturgy; and it holds on in the phrase, “humble beginnings.” But humble beginnings always come to a glorious, rich, powerful, famous ending, don’t they? You may have had a good start and followed Jesus, or become like him, who had no roof over his head. But why would you do that when instead you could become Croesus or Caesar or Rockefeller or Carnegie and build a church almost as big as your house?
     Sorry! Axel said. He pretended to look in his books again, but he was just taking a breath. I’m preaching, aren’t I? Well, sorry, I’m not done. Whatever our start, we are all humbled at the last by death, though it is also true that some of us are buried in Potter’s Field and some of us lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
     Read again the parable of Dives and Lazarus. We’re back where we started, Axel said. 

And Isabel says, That’s enough. Sorry, sorry, sorry, for chewing on again. Thanks for reading this if you did.

                                                                         05.26.23

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  * About Bel and about Lucy and about Nils. Brewer’s sparrow.