Rewriting the Scriptures

 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.”

 

11.14.21

Play resumes.

 Play resumes. 

“What can materialists/monists do with myth, even metaphor,” – is Axel [continuing from here] proposing a tongue twister? – “but, ultimately, dismiss them. That is what they do: Explain them, then explain them away!”
     I don’t know, so I say, “I don’t know.” And I stop listening. I can’t help it. I can’t stop myself from stopping listening.
     I can hear, but it is as if Axel is speaking a language with no English cognates and sentences that don’t start at their beginnings or stop at their ends. I can hear, and I can see from his face and the way his hands twitch and rest, raise themselves to his chest, to his face, and return themselves to the desk – I can hear and see something of what he is going on about, but “in a mirror dimly,” as The Apostle says. It is like a dumb show, an art form I’ve never been able to appreciate, with sound; but the sound is a music I don’t appreciate either. Imagine a clumsy ballet to poorly-conceived metal. (I know, I need to expand my horizons.)

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

Opinions about religion

 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.

“Where was Mr. Virginia?” Uncle Albert asked in the car on the way home to watch Arsenal and Watford. 
     “They split up. You didn’t you know that?”

     “How would I?”
     “It was in the newsletter.”
     “It was what? Never mind. I don’t read the newsletter unless you print it out for me. Which you don’t.”
     “Apparently, he ran off with another woman.”
     “And that was in the newsletter,” he said sarcastically.
     “Yes, as a matter of fact, it was. Chaia Chevapravadumrong. She’s Thai.”
     “Say that again?
     “She’s Thai,” I said.

 11.08.21 

_______________
  * This Gaspar thread begins here. “Analytic Philosopher” is by our epigrammatist there, R. S. Dietrich.

Bookwork Orange

 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.

Axel gets up from behind the vast desk; he lumbers to the nearest window and hoists it open. “And their eyes were opened ... ,” he says. “Luke 24.” The air is disturbed like the waters in John 5. And the desk, and the books shiver and rearrange themselves. New titles appear in odd places, an orange-spined book by Patricia Churchland among the commentaries on John, another orange book, Slotterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reasoning next to The Institutes. Every other book seems to be orange or turning orange, and the papers that were on the desk hover trembling a few inches above it.
     It’s an illusion, I know. (You are no more a fan of magical realism than I am, are you, dear reader?) 

 “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 

Time Out!

 Time Out!
or Jesus’ warning to creedal Christianity

“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:

Summer 2002                                                 
August 2nd. The weather hot.
In southwest Atlanta, Paul Kemp shot,
and another man, Dermone Baker.
In northwest Atlanta, Gary Tucker.
And on King Drive, Stanley Moore.
On Moreland outside a convenience store,
a man without a name shot, dead.
August 2nd. The weather hot;
pollution index red. 

 

Summer 1652, to Robert Herrick                     
In thee no one is shot, except by Cupid's bow,
none laid low.

 11.03.21 

_______________
Gaspar Stephens is our resident faux neurophilosopher. The epigrams are by R. S. Dietrich. Dick Vitale was invited to become resident culture critic but pleaded a prior commitment.

What I did today.

 What I did today. 

“What did you do today?” Roz said, coming into the kitchen even before she took her coat off to see what I was doing today about supper.
     “I talked to Nils,” I said.
     “I thought you talked to him yesterday.”
     “I did, but I needed to talk to him again.”
     “Where's Albert?” Roz said. “He’s not in his chair.”
     “I don’t know.”
     “My God, Ted!” Roz said. And I went to look for him while she went to take her coat off.

He wasn’t that far. He was in the bathroom, listening to us wonder where he was. No, he didn’t need any help getting up and back to his chair, please close the door, he said.
     “He’s in the bathroom,” I told Roz when she came back to lift the lid on the borscht I was doing for supper. “We have sour cream?” she half-asked and half-declared. And I nodded.
     “So, you talked to Nils,” she said. “And you were going to tell me why.” Actually, I wasn’t.

 Excursus. Notice she didn’t ask why! She decided I was going to tell her.
     When I was six, or thereabouts I promised myself – if you can promise yourself anything when you are six, and I couldn’t have been any older – I promised that I would never ask anyone why they did something because that was the worst thing adults did, especially Aunt Martha, who we were living with at the time.
     I’d something I shouldn’t have apparently, and she would ask me why – or she would accuse me why – and I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know. And she would look at me and say, “I thought so!” Then, blowing out her breath, “Well, God forgive you,” in a voice carrying some doubt. Which ended the conversation that wasn’t because I hadn’t added a word to it.
     So, Roz doesn’t ask why though she will assume that I will get around to saying why because by now, some years older than six, I should know. And sometimes I do.

¿Ya nos estamos divertiendo?*

 “Because when we talked yesterday, I lied to him,” I said.
     “What?” I think she did start to ask “why,” but she ended up exclaiming, “Whuh-uht!” And then to cover herself she lifted the lid on the borscht again and looked into it as if she could see whether there was, or wasn’t, enough salt in it.
     “I told him you didn’t want to talk to him when you weren’t home to talk at all.”
     “Oh,” she said, reaching for the pepper. “Well, that’s okay. I probably didn’t.”

Sadly, it isn’t hers to say, “Okay.” No one can forgive but the one you have injured and God himself. The priests, for example. They are like the scribes of the pharisees, Aunt Martha once said. The bishops and the cardinals are like the pharisees themselves, and the pope is like either the chief priest or the devil, depending. Anyway none of them can forgive.

10.31.21

_______________
*Philip IV as Zippy the Pinhead, Halloween 1621. 400th anniversary souvenir fan. Graphic by m ball with apologies to Diego Velázquez and Bill Griffith.

Everyone's a critic

continued from here
Another quarter heard from 

or everyone’s a critic

Dear Ted,
     Your friend has the epigram half right, the crushing of a thought, event, or feeling into as few syllables as possible. But He doesn’t get the other half, I don’t think, making the thought, event, or feeling painfully clear (as painful as brain freeze and not unlike it). I write because you asked.
     While I’m at it: What are you doing to poor Nils? Granted, he is something of a blowhard, a Cives Gloriosus, still you don’t mislead people, at least not intentionally! That’s not who you are! Is it? At least in your blog, though you are genuinely confused about nearly everything, you are also thoroughly honest; you do not dissemble, and you are never mean?
     Have I been reading you wrong?
                                                            Yes or no? – Trudy

 I hate it, the telephone. (I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.) I answer it when I feel I have no other choice. But I don’t call anyone.
     Today though, I call Nils.

“Bueno,” he says. He’s learning Spanish. “Eduardo,” he says before I can answer. He can see me – or he can see my name – on his screen.
     “Si! Para continuar in Inglés, oprima el dos,” I say, and I push two, and it boops. “I need to talk to you,” I say, “in Inglés.”
     “Are you going to vote? Did you decide to vote, then?”
     “No,” I say. “Still no.” I wait, but he doesn’t interrupt. It’s gray outside – it’s going to rain – and it’s gray in the kitchen because the sun is behind the clouds on the other side of the house.
     “But I misled you,” I say. Again, I wait. No interruption. The kitchen is the usual mid-morning mess: Roz has piled her breakfast dishes and Uncle Albert’s breakfast dishes in the sink. Mine are still on the table. It’s my job to clean everybody’s up – to scrape them, to rinse them, to put them in the dishwasher. To wash out the sink and to mop down the counters.

     “I told you,” I start. “Wait a minute,” I interrupt myself. “Sorry,” I say. I can hear Uncle Albert stomping around on his three legs upstairs. “Uncle Albert,” I say to Nils. “Maybe I should call you back.” Uncle Albert’s going to call me at any minute to help him down the stairs. That’s what I hear.
     “Okay,” Nils says.

 “Ted!” Uncle Albert calling me. And I go up, and we negotiate the stairs down, and we get him in his chair in front of the television – with his computer on the swivel table on one side of him. And I bring him a cup of Russian tea for the electrical-heating-gadget on the table on the other side. And he has the remotes. And he’s dialed in one of the music channels

and he’s listening to Johnny Griffith and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, “Tin Tin Deo,” then something by Buddy Rich. And he’s talking to his computer in French, an email to je ne sais pas qui.

I call Nils back. And he answers, “Bueno.”
     And I say, “Yo. Lo siento. I told you Roz didn’t want to talk to you, but in fact Roz wasn’t here.”
     “Oh.” And he waits, and I wait, too. Then: “Why did you do that?”
     I say, “I don’t know. It seemed a good idea at the time.” Maybe he’ll let it drop, I’m thinking, because beyond that I have no explanation. Like Eve in the Garden: being “Queen of the Universe,” wise as The Creator – it seemed a good idea at the time. Maybe he’ll let it drop.
     But he won’t.
     “Okay,” he says, but I can hear that it’s not.

 10.30.21