Don't you dare hide your love away.

In fact, dead wrong!

November 16, 2014
Hear then the parable 

This morning we heard that oddest of parables, the one in which the master goes on a journey; but first he calls his servants and entrusts his property to them: “to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.” Then, he goes away. When he returns, he finds that the servant to whom he gave five talents has made five talents more and the servant to whom he gave two talents has made two talents more. The servant that received one talent still has it. The master is surprised, disappointed, angry! I’ve never quite figured out why. 

          The only conclusion I’ve been able to come to is that the master really doesn’t know the abilities of his servants. Management expects an improbable result; and when labor can’t meet the expectation, it must be its fault.

         

In her wisdom, the preacher turned to the epistle lesson for her message.

u

Jupiter and other gods

November 14, 2014

impoo & bicbw*

It has been a while – more than eight months – since I have written about pundits. (See here.) That doesn’t mean that I have not been irritated by one or another of these self-importantos (or -importantas) between then and now. (Actually by several and often.) It’s good to discover not only that the problem is not a new one, but that I’m in good company in my dis-ease. In the first of the Barchester series, The Warden, Anthony Trollope waxes almost wroth (as wroth as this exceptionally sympathetic writer can be) on the matter of the Jupiter and its opinion maker, Tom Towers.

          It is Towers' foremost opinion that it is by men like him that cabinets and bishops should be guided; 
it is to men like him that “lords and commons” should take heed; by them “judges [should] be instructed 
in law, generals in strategy, admirals in naval tactics, and orange women in the management of their barrows.”

          It would be “well for [the rest of] us in our ignorance” if we confided all thought to them. Away with “useless talking, idle thinking, . . . profitless labour.” And away not only with my (puny) useless talking and idle thinking; away with the idle talking and useless thinking of those unfortunately in power. For: Parliament is wronger than right - “see how futile are their meetings" - and “our chief ministers” provide no real “guidance in  . . . difficulties.” So why look to them, when we can look to – and trust – “the writers of the Jupiter,” who see all and into all?

          “From the diggings of Australia to those of California, right round the habitable globe, [don’t they] know, watch, and chronicle” all and every manner of thing? “From a bishopric in New Zealand to an unfortunate director of a north-west passage,” aren’t they the best judges of capability?  “From the sewers of London to the Central Railway of India – from the palaces of St. Petersburg to the cabins of Connaught,” don’t they know best howarrangements should be made?  
          It would be mad to think otherwise.  Ask them.

Eight months ago, too, I changed the omega (w) with which I was ending each post to any other letter of the Greek (or Hebrew) alphabet, because, as I wrote then, the omega suggested I thought I might know what I was talking about, and, I wrote, “I never do really.  So . . . from now on, depending on how confident I am, I’ll end with the next to the last letter of the . . . alphabet (y), or the one before that (f), or . . .”  I ended that post with l.

           For a while, under the Greek (or Hebrew) letter that indicated “the end sort of but no conclusion,” I also added “bicbw,” the abbreviation for “because I could be wrong.” This I adapted from my friend Gaspar Stephens’ notion that “the five most underutilized words in the English language are those making up the phrase, ‘But I could be wrong.’”

          Likely I am wrong now, about Tom Towers and his ilk, about pundits, even if I think I know my own mind. I do know I haven’t seen bicbw at the end of any of the opinion columns in any of our own Jupiters (The Times; The Washington Post; The New York Review of Books; Slate; Salon; or the Daily Kos; et al). Nor have I seen impoo, the abbreviation for “in my opinion only,” at any beginnings.

          Of course, I don’t read every issue, so I could be wrong.

t

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*pronounced im-pooh and bic-bow

 

Anticyclone rolling stone / Preacher from the east

the apostopsicle

November 13, 2014*

Blinded by the light                                           (continued from the previous post)

 

We left Saul, longer than I intended, in almost suspended animation, captured along the road to Damascus by Zeno’s paradox, falling to his knees by halves. That he somehow escaped Zeno and got to Damascus we do know. Whether he went down onto his knees we don’t. (Those that doubt it have called the episode a “cloud of unbending.”)

          In Damascus, someone thrusts a pen into his hand. Then, as the scales fall from his eyes, he begins to write - or, if the scales do not fall, he begins then to talk. 

          The same that believe that though every knee should bow Saul’s did not, tend also to hold to the notion that he did not regain his sight, moreover that he never left Damascus but inspired like blind Homer he imagined the epic journeys of Paul the Apostle. And he (Saul) “wrote” (with the sharpened end of his tongue) both the story in Acts, chapters nine and following,  and the several letters bolstering that fiction, “to the Romans,” “to the Corinthians,” “to the Thessalonians,” “to the Galatians,” “to the Ephesians,” “to the Philippians,” and “to the Colossians”; also letters to Timothy and Titus , a note to Philemon, and in his old, old age, a windy prose poem now called “to the Hebrews.” 

          So while blind Saul (in the character of Paul) may have written of “sighs too deep for words,” he couldn't do without them. He could not stop speaking long enough to take a breath, much less to heave a sigh.

          But, however much he spoke, however rapidly, Zeno’s paradox continued to hold Saul, and he never got more than halfway. So, he wrote only of God’s solemn side. His story of Paul is one of contentious trials and dark imprisonments, of dangerous roads and stormy seas. There are few pranks – only when Eutychus pretends to fall asleep and then out the window. There are no sunny roads, travelers making the journey light with Canterbury tales. There are no calm seas for smooth sailing; and when the stern hero is spit up by the whale onto a beach of one of the Greek isles, there can be no time for him to stop to enjoy the sun and the sand and the salt air. In short, Saul is far too serious about far too many things.  He knows too much of Plato and has neglected Aristippos; he has read Aeschylus but not Aristophanes -

          or Hume. He is Saul and not David.

 m

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* Friday the thirteenth, she come on a Thursday this month.

Hume, David

my friend David

November 11, 2014

Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall.  

The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 9: Saul, breathing threats and murder against Jesus’ disciples, is on his way to Damascus with letters of marque and reprisal; if he finds anyone going the wrong Way, he can bring them bound to Jerusalem  As he approaches Damascus, he is surrounded suddenly by a light from heaven; he falls to his knees, but he never gets there. He doesn't get to Damascus; he doesn't even get to his knees, because in the light Zeno’s paradox has the effect of a physical law.

          If you live, as I do, in a Humean world in which the sun may not come up tomorrow, in which the laws of gravity and thermodynamics may be suspended the day after, in which there is no “politics as usual,” you have to hope you will learn to live lightly. That’s not easy, because aren’t you - at least I am (too much like that zealous prig Saul) - always on the edge of being far too serious about far too many things? So, at the least, you have to become ready to laugh at your own seriousness.  Not make fun of. Laugh at.
          Start here (advice to self): Praise the God of all things – who is more than the sum of the gods of all peoples. (The difference between the first and the second is approximately ∞ - 5.) Drink the wine of the region. And let its world be the world until you’re ready to move on - tomorrow, perhaps, if the sun rises, or the next day if the usual physical laws still apply.

d

(to be continued)