"Late Night" at the Edge of Edgy

Written by comedian Mindy Kaling, Late Night makes pointed jokes, if not plot points, about diversity hiring, white male privilege, #MeToo, "slut shaming," different shades of "feminism," and even depression.

[Photo: Late Night, directed by Nisha Ganatra]

Kaling plays "Molly Patel," an aspiring writer who joins the all - male staff of "Late Night with Katherine Newbury" just as the host learns her show will be canceled. Emma Thompson's "Newbury," fighting her way back to relevance, fires zingers in all directions -- at Molly, at the men, at the network's president -- with steely - eyed precision. This could be the set up for an edgy satire.

Instead, Kaling makes Late Night about the softening of Newbury's edges. Molly's ideas do shake - up the boys' club in the writers' room, with good results for Newbury's show, but Newbury fires Molly for leaving an all - night work session to do stand - up for a charity. Maybe sensing that she has just cut herself off from a source of renewal, Newbury impulsively quits the meeting to find the small St. Mark's theater where Molly emcees "Cancer isn't Funny." Newbury walks on as a surprise celebrity comedian, but a joke about "stupid" pop culture, her usual schtick, bombs. In close - up, Emma Thompson shows Newbury's terror -- of losing her audience, her touch, her career, her only purpose -- before the character finds words to express her terror, and those turn out to be funny. She makes a connection to the audience, re - connects to Molly, and comes back to her show re - energized.


There's a twin moment of truth for Newbury on the same stage. Those who sought to replace her, outmaneuvered, have exposed an affair she had with an employee, a much younger man, at the time when her husband Walter, older than she, was diagnosed with Parkinson's. Newbury has publicly avoided mentioning the scandal for a week, while her husband Walter (John Lithgow) has avoided her. That's the situation when we se her on her the set for her show, dressed in a pirate costume, rehearsing a frivolous comedy bit. Walter calls for a meeting at a neutral place. That turns out to be the St. Mark's theater (thank you, Susan, for noticing that marquee). Stripped down to unpretentious clothes, confronting each other on the stripped - down stage where she previously laid her fears bare, the two characters tell their truths to each other. The great actors Thompson and Lithgow make the intimate confrontation real.

Of course, the whole movie is moving towards a moment of maximum vulnerability on camera.

These three moments of truth in Kaling's script, a scaffold for one - liners and comic situations, also dramatize something besides the topics of diversity and sexism that we expected going into the movie: the deep satisfaction of comedy that comes from deep places.

The Joy of Proverbs

When Proverbs comes up in our Episcopal lectionary, I don't expect to smile. A lot of the book is a hard slog through warnings about bad consequences for bad behavior. But chapter 8 is about the joy of creation and the love of humanity.

Wisdom, personified as a woman, sets up seven pillars and sits in her throne at the city gate.  [Photo: Wisdom of God, 16th century icon, Russian]  She invites fools to dinner, that they may learn. And she relates her origin story:

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.... When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth...

I already enjoy this ancient world view, where all the lands of the world were one big disc "drawn" on a world - wide ocean under a solid sky, waters kept at bay like a horde of barbarians. Then Wisdom develops the idea of the Lord's marking out the foundations:

I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

This is a sweet passage, pretty obviously resonant with the awe - inspiring openings to Genesis ("...and the Spirit moved over the face of the deep...") and to the Gospel of John, "In the beginning was the Word." Our Church Fathers drew a distinct line between Wisdom, here "created at the beginning," and the Word identified with Christ in the Gospel. Our Nicene Creed underscores that line: "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ ... begotten, not made."

Even so, the apparent connection has been a sore spot ever since. At the web site Bible Researcher we can survey numerous modern scholars drawing distinctions between the figure of Wisdom and the "Logos" (translated as "Word"). They draw on 2000 years of commentary.

In the readings at Bible Researcher, I particularly enjoyed the observation that a word is not just the expression of an idea; words are the medium of an idea's conception. We also learn there that heretics who saw all created matter as evil tried to make "Wisdom" an intermediary between Creator and His material creation. Some of the passages seem to be treating Platonic ideas in some usages of "logos" as a kind of pollution of pure doctrine.

For myself, thinking not as a fashioner of doctrine, but as a writer trying to connect to my readers on the levels of thought and emotion, the passage in John clearly shows that the gospel writer was drawing on images already acceptable to his readers to express the early church's understanding of Jesus. He alludes not only to Genesis, Proverbs (and similar writings later set apart in the Apocrypha); and Plato's philosophy familiar to all educated people along the Mediterranean. I wonder if parsing John as lawyers would pick apart a statute isn't a case of missing the forest for the trees? Genesis, John, and this portion of Proverbs communicate to our hearts the awesome power and joy of the Creator.

"Rocketman": Every Lyric Tells the Story

The film Rocketman traces the rise of a shy singer - songwriter, born Reginald Dwight, from small clubs in England to vast American arenas he packs a few years later as the glam - rock phenom Elton John, to his crash in an orgy of cocaine, alcohol, and acrimonious break ups. The story, familiar as the myth of that original rocket man Icarus (who also wore feathers), is made fresh and resonant by the clever integration of dialogue with dance, fabulous settings, and the resonant lyrics of Elton John's collaborator, Bernie Taupin.

[Photo collage: Elton John's face on sheet music for "Your Song" 1970; and EJ on The Muppet Show, 1977, photo by David Dagley.]

Characters' singing Taupin's lyrics to each other also makes this a musical, an art form anathema to so many Americans that Paramount calls it a "fantasy." I embrace the "M" word. A year after I saw Elton John's 1973 concert in Atlanta's Braves Stadium, I fell in love with diamond - sharp dramatic lyrics of Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim (see what I learned from him, 10/31/2015).

Bernie Taupin's work in comparison seemed rough - hewn, even careless. For example, inchoate ideas in "Your Song" hang awkwardly - "If I was a sculptor / But then again, no..." - and halt -- "Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean / Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen" -- while "words" and "world" end the chorus as if Taupin intends them to rhyme. "The sun has been quite kind" to the writer, but "It's for people like you / that keep it turned on."  Is the sun like a person, or like a light bulb?  Is it God who keeps it turned on, for people like you?  And what's happening during rainy days and night time?  Taupin mangled his idea, here..

But now that I've seen Rocketman, and I've had Taupin's lyrics with EJ's music replaying in my head for a week, I'm re-evaluating.

Get about as oiled as a diesel train
Gonna set this dance alight
'Cause Saturday night's the night I like
Saturday night's alright alright alright.
 - Bernie Taupin, "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" (1973)

Taupin "always has been a very cinematic storyteller in his lyrics," Elton John told Terry Gross in 2013. "There's a visual. So as soon as I look at the lyrics, visually, I can see what's going on." (Elton John interview on Fresh Air) Rocketman proves EJ's point.

The movie's writer Lee Hall and director Dexter Fletcher teach us early on how the songs will tell the story. We see a glittery Satan stalk into a group therapy session and, defensively, arrogantly, introduce himself as Elton John (Taron Egerton), addicted to you - name - it: drugs, alcohol, food, sex, and shopping. No sooner does Elton begin to tell about his childhood than his own five - year - old self (Matthew Illesley) leads him to his old neighborhood where everyone dances to "The Bitch is Back." The musical number instantly clarifies his family's social milieu and time, while the lyric states the salient fact of young Reggie Dwight's life, that his mother never wants him around, and never wanted him at all.


Like any classic Broadway show, there's an "I want" song. Reggie in his early teens (Kit Connor), his mother, his father, and his grandmother all take lines of a lyric "I Want Love," Taupin's 2002 collaboration with Elton John. This is what I first loved in Sondheim's Broadway musicals: the characters' expressions of different feelings layer on top of each other, building to a unified statement, the thesis for the movie. Young Reggie sings, "I want love," the mother adds, "But it's impossible." The icy father, a veteran of the recent war, who will bolt from the family as soon as he can, sings,

A man like me is dead in places
Other men feel liberated
I can't love...
 - "I Want Love" (2001)

Only Reggie's grandmother Ivy (Gemma Jones) encourages his musical talent, and soon the middle - school Reggie (Kit Connor) is breaking out of classical piano music into rock and roll with "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting." Taupin's lyrics have a cocky, exuberant, rough feel; but they're polished and thoughtful, too. "Oiled," "diesel" and "set[ting] the dance alight" all tie in with combustion; the internal rhymes and assonance of  night, alight, I, like and alright, sounding on accented beats propel the lyric, music just underscoring what Taupin had crafted.

My gift is my song
And this one's for you.
  - "Your Song" (music by Elton John, lyric by Bernie Taupin, 1969)

A recording company's agent hands a packet to the newly - named Elton John, containing lyrics by another aspiring songwriter, Bernie Taupin. The meeting of Elton and Bernie (Jamie Bell) at a cafe is awkward, each of them shy, each looking for affirmation from the other, and each admiring the work of the other. They bond over their love of country - western music. In a memorable moment, Elton comes close to kissing Bernie, who says, "I love you -- but not that way."


Despite all the dancing and glitter, my favorite scene in the movie takes place in the Dwights' lower - middle - class home, where Elton and Bernie work on songs. Bernie goes upstairs for a shave while Elton, below, tries to make something of the lyric for "Your Song." At the piano, Egerton as Elton tries out a chord and a falling bass line. There's a surprise, a half step fall where we expect a whole step; upstairs, Bernie pauses. Soon, Bell as Taupin stands at the entrance to the parlor, smiling in disbelief, happy as a creative artist can be to hear his words gain new life through music.


Now I see those halts and changes of direction in "Your Song," not as a sign of Taupin's limitations, but his artful authenticity, his taking on the persona of a shy, tongue - tied songwriter. Of course, the scene also serves as a statement of the characters' appreciation and gratitude for each other.

[Photo: Jamie Bell as Bernie Taupin, Taron Egerton as Elton John. Inset: the real Taupin and John, ca. 1970.]

Get back, Honky Cat
Livin' in the city ain't where it's at
It's like tryin' to find gold in a silver mine
It's like tryin' to drink whiskey
Oh, from a bottle of wine
 - "Honky Cat"(1972)

Taupin's lyric for "Honky Cat" tells the pair's story: they come from the "woods" to L.A. Elton John wants love, but he tries to get it from promiscuous sex and boozy parties -- like tryin' to find gold in a silver mine.

What do you think you'll do then?
I bet that'll shoot down your plane.
It'll take you a couple of vodka and tonics
To set you on your feet again.
 - "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" (1973)

In "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" a couple of years later, Taupin imagines how the same persona from "Honky Cat" retreats from the high city life. It's a dramatic high point when these words are sung by the Taupin character as he walks out on Elton John. The images in Taupin's lyric are in character for a country boy, referring to "the dogs of society" that "howl," hunting, and "mongrels sniffing the ground." Director Fletcher borrows the song's other images for scenes here, of vodka, and of shooting down a plane.

I'm not the man they think I am at home
Oh no no no, I'm a rocket man
Rocket man burnin' out his fuse up here alone
 - "Rocket Man" (1972)

When Elton John's fuse burns out, the music that plays is "Rocket Man." In musical fantasy sequences, we see Elton John shoot into the sky like a rocket, and also sink to the bottom of a pool where his childhood self sits in his little glass helmet, scowling in judgement at his adult self.

The Dwight family and Elton John's child self reappear at the therapy session for a cathartic confrontation. The man literally at last embraces the child. Naturally, he rides out the movie on an apt lyric by Bernie Taupin,

Don't you know I'm still standing
better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor,
feeling like a little kid - "I'm Still Standing" (1983)

"A Man for All Seasons" at Atlanta's Shakespeare Tavern

A head of state -- promiscuous, volatile, insecure about his legitimacy -- lashes out in frustration at a public official famous for by - the - book integrity, who stays silent rather than exonerate the strongman of shady dealings by which he secured power.

That's Robert Bolt's drama A Man for All Seasons, one of three plays set in the reign of Henry VIII being presented as "The Tudor Repertory" by Atlanta's Shakespeare Tavern. Bolt focuses on Sir Thomas More, devout and scrupulous legal adviser to the King, who declined to endorse the King's assertion of authority over England's church and claim of legitimacy for both his second marriage and for any heir produced thereby.  The play premiered in an England still recovering from World War II, when audiences would see relevance in the story of an autocrat.

[Photo: The Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern has just finished producing the Bard's complete works for the second time since the company started 28 years ago. The show Saturday June 8, served with dinner, was a Christmas present from my friend Suzanne. Thank you, Suzanne!]

The play is a drawing - room comedy in medieval drag, at least until Henry's fixer Thomas Cromwell turns the screws on More and his family. It's witty banter among More and his family; battles of wit between More and the King's agents. Actor Jeff Watkins, President of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company, plays "More" as a man who listens intently to others, considering the merits of what someone says -- before exposing inconsistency or hypocrisy with an incisive remark. Daughter Margaret (Kirstin Calvert), educated by her father, gives as good as she gets in this way; not so his wife Alice (Janet Metzger), exasperated by her husband's subtle reasoning, insistent on securing their family. Margaret's beau "Will Roper" (David Sterrit) makes himself More's comic foil, ardent for his true faith -- even as his faith shifts from one brand of Protestant to another, to another, to another.

It's in argument with Roper that More speaks his most striking and eloquent statement. Roper has accused More of making an idol of the law, supposing that he'd give the Devil himself benefit of legal protection. Roper declares that he himself would cut down every law of man to get at the Devil. More responds...

And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned around on you--where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast--man's laws, not God's--and if you cut them down...d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

Bolt's More gives his life for his God, but, unlike Roper, he doesn't presume to think that he and God are of one mind.


By the play's end, every other character is an agent of the king, for self - advancement, or self - preservation. Director J. Tony Brown takes the role of Cardinal Wolsey, lord of the church, more lord than church, desperate to appease both King and Pope. Doug Kaye plays the Duke of Norfolk as an avuncular and hearty best friend who shows agony, then grim determination to save himself, as he shifts allegiances from Thomas to Henry. Glenn Lorandeau as "Richard Rich" gets a laugh from the audience each time he climbs another rung of the social ladder, first groveling in clothes of a poor scholar, finally strutting in the finery of a peer. As the king himself, Troy Willis is charming and funny, as he veers between false modesty and self - aggrandizement, apology and attack, friendship and death threat.


When Cromwell throws More in prison, the humor stops. As Cromwell, actor Charlie T. Thomas takes evident glee playing both good cop and bad cop, sometimes purring, sometimes roaring, manipulating others throughout the play. After years of pressure fail to wrest cooperation from More, Cromwell resorts to out - and - out false testimony to convict him as a traitor. In the dungeon, More tells his wife Alice his worst fear, that she won't understand why he made his stand. As Alice, Metzger was unwavering, anguished, and stern: "I don't understand!" Watkins, as More, fell apart. The actors, in their raw emotion, made this hard to watch.


One character stands in a special relationship to the audience, "The Common Man." He breaks the fourth wall to introduce characters and to explain historical background. Simply changing hats, he changes the scene, serving variously as butler, boatman, publican, and jailer. Played by understudy Andrew Houchins, he's an affable rogue, pleading ignorance to the characters while he winks to us, putting out his palm for payment every chance he gets.


We all know that More is beheaded at the end, and it's no surprise that The Common Man wields the axe. Of course, there's a blackout when the blade swings down. History tells us that the executioner will then say, as he does in this play, "Behold, the head of a traitor!" I cringed, expecting to see a cheesy facsimile of the head of Jeff Watkins. Spoiler alert: What we saw in the spotlight was the head of The Common Man, looking like he's just been caught red - handed. How is he a "traitor?" His affable compliance makes him complicit. He turns nasty, warning us to recognize him whenever we see him again.


The play's resonance to current events around the world makes it a play for all seasons.

Theology Before Breakfast: Forward Day by Day, Feb-Apr 2019

Coffee brewing, I feed the dog, birds, and squirrels, and then set out the Prayer Book, Bible, and the latest issue of Forward Day by Day for a morning service of prayer and readings. Forward lists the daily scripture readings and a short meditation on a line from the scriptures. Pages that strike me as fresh ideas or timely reminders go into this blog. [See what struck me in years of FDxD on my Episcopalian page.]

February's meditations were penned by Jon Jordan; Mary W. Cox supplied meditations for March; and April's meditations came from Glenise Robinson - Como. Because I'd been reading books and articles in 2018 that refer to "conversations" among authors of Biblical writings, I was struck by ways that the winter issue, and the Scripture readings themselves, demonstrated that idea.

FebruaryJon Jordan points out a "conversation" within a single passage, Galatians 6:2,5. Paul tells Christians to "bear one another's burdens," but then admonishes them, "all must carry their loads." "Which is it?" asks Jordan, speculating that we must take good care of our own burdens in order to help others with theirs.

Psalm 80 asks a question, "How long will You be angry, O Lord?" One answer comes in the assigned reading from Isaiah 58.1-12: When "you share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house... then you shall call and the Lord shall answer." Subsequent readings resonated with Isaiah: from Dt. 10.18-19, the command to deliver "justice" for widows, orphans, sojourners (i.e., refugees, immigrants), specifically by feeding and clothing them. Galatians 6.18 admonishes Christians to "do good to all, and especially to those who are of the household of faith." Then, there's Jesus telling the rich young man to sell everything and give it away to the poor (Mark 10.21). Jordan points out that, in the eyes of most people in most places of this planet, he and all Americans are that rich young man.

Jordan shares insights about the power of what we say to others, and even to ourselves. Opposing the familiar adage about sticks, stones, and names, he cites Psalm 69.22, "Reproach has broken my heart." Reproach, he writes, can last a lifetime. Jordan recommends reading and praying the Psalms regularly, as they reflect the experience of trying to live faithfully in a broken world. Reading Luke 6.36, "Be merciful as your Father is merciful," Jordan is reminded how his childhood was shaped in part by his own father's offhand remark that no one in his family was ever good at sports. Jordan's half - hearted efforts reflected his father's doubts. Similarly, if we believe that God is out to get us, Jordan writes, then we will reflect that belief to others; but if we believe in the mercy of our heavenly Father, we'll give a break to others, and to ourselves.

MarchThere's a dialogue set up between Mary W. Cox's meditation for March 1 and Jordan's final meditation the previous day. Cox admits that her "heart sinks" when she reads, "Be perfect...as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5.48). "Perfect?" she writes." Me?" The previous day, Jordan responds to the harsh saying about cutting off a limb that causes one to sin (Mt 5.30). These harsh sayings are in dialogue with the Epistle for February 28, 2 Cor. 3.18, about the "veil" that Moses wore to cover the glow he got from meeting God face to face: "we all, with unveiled face... are being changed into [Christ's] likeness from one degree of glory to another...." Cox finds a different translation of the verse in the New English Bible: "There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father's goodness knows no bounds."

Still on March 1, Cox writes about a line in the day's gospel, Matthew 5.44, "Love your enemies." It's in dialogue with the psalm appointed for the day, 140, an angry imprecation of God's vengeance on enemies: Cox reminds us that "to be perfect" means more than not breaking rules. She says that Jesus makes clear here, and in the Beatitudes, that the Ten Commandments were "just a starting point."

Responding to John 4.38, "I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor," Cox observes, "Life is a group project." Family, friends, and mentors have moved us forward; and we have done the same for others. This is a simple thought, and self - evident to me; but our political rhetoric in America often tells us that only the weak and indolent need collective support. Responding to Psalm 95.7, "We are the sheep of His hand," Cox suggests that none of us are so self - reliant as "our culture promotes."

AprilGlenise Robinson - Como explores Jeremiah's metaphor of the potter and his clay (Jer. 18.6): "We are all works in progress." She draws a similar lesson from Jer. 31.33, about God's revising us, over - writing our hearts as pages. But to accept that we are works in progress is not an excuse for failing to get on with necessary changes.

For the rest of the month, what struck me most were her challenges to us, called "Moving Forward."

Moving ForwardAs co - mentor for the class Education for Ministry (see our class blog), I'm often looking for questions that evoke action or reflection. We use these as ways to "check in" with each other at the start of a session, and sometimes as a call to action after we reflect theologically on something in our lives. These FDxD writings pose challenges at the end of each meditation under the name, "Moving Forward." Here are a few that struck me:

• Responding to Mt. 5.30, Jordan asks, "Are there any 'right hands' you need to examine in your life today?"
• Jesus asks the crippled man if he wants to be made well (John 5.6), and Cox wonders if the man had grown comfortable with weakness and self-pity. She asks us, "What would being made well look like in your life? Do you want to be made well?"
  
• Responding to Psalm 136, a history of God's goodness to Israel, Cox challenges us to try writing a personal psalm - history of God's goodness in our own lives. Our EfM group did this, each of us writing a thanksgiving for something early, middle, and recent in our lives.
  
• Observing how Jesus withdraws to mountains to be by himself (John 6.15), writer Glenise Robinson - Como asks, "How do you follow Jesus's example of rest and retreat?"
  
• If we are all works in progress, like the clay to the potter in Jeremiah 18.6, how is God re-working you right now?
  
• We "groan inwardly" with Creation; Robinson - Como asks, "What's a pet peeve of yours, and what does it teach you about your own faith?"
  
• Responding to 1 Cor. 1.27, "God chose what is foolish in the world...," Robinson - Como asks, "What weakness in you has God used for good?"
  
• Responding to Ps. 116.1, "I love the Lord.... because he has inclined his ear to me whenever I called upon him," Robinson - Comor challenges all introverts, "Offer a friend or family member thirty minutes of your undivided attention today."
• Challenge: Commit to memory Romans 8.38-39, "Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers...will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Art Takes Us Out: Summer Exhibits by Atlanta's High Museum

Art offers two great gifts of emotion -- the emotion of recognition and the emotion of escape. Both take us out of the boundaries of self. - Duncan Phillips (1886 - 1966)

[Photo: Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, ca. 1922]

Wednesday, with mild summer weather, my friend Susan and I took a day trip to Atlanta's premier art museum. The High brought us, in the main exhibit hall, European art from the collection of Duncan Phillips, heir to fortune earned in steel, and art collector. These were mostly works I've never seen, by European artists I've admired for decades. Phillips's evocative juxtapositions and his appreciative commentary offered a road "out of the boundaries of self" for my friend Susan and me.

[Photo: At the exhibition's entrance, an enlargement of Degas's Dancers at the Barre, its most familiar image, clearly invited viewers to make a selfie, I thought. Susan wasn't so sure.]

The first pieces we see in the exhibit show the way Phillips worked. Two still life paintings side by side, from different centuries, generate conversation about what they share and how they differ. Nearby, we see different artists' roads, landscapes, and seascapes.


One vision of dancers in a studio took me out of myself; another did not. "The Spanish Ballet" by Edouard Manet (1862) faithfully records dancers' poses and colorful costumes with variety and detail, no more interesting than nice porcelain figures under glass. Next to it, Dance Rehearsal (1876) by Edgar Degas, draws us into a studio where ballerinas stretch, learn steps, chatter, or brood. The dancers glow with soft light reflected from floor - to - ceiling windows; details are lost in shadow, faces are averted, backs are turned to us: it feels like we walked in.


The Road to Vetheuil (1879) by Claude Monet and a view of a village street under snow by Alfred Sisley (1879) both have that same quality of drawing us into the frame. I sense what the air itself must be like; I can enter imaginatively into the villages beyond the curve of the road.


Phillips' comment that Van Gogh reveals his love and his faith in a painting of workmen making repairs to a village street made me wonder what Phillips was seeing. Susan and I speculated that simply dignifying common laborers at work expressed a love of humanity; she also pointed out how trees in the foreground, whose thick trunks break the street scene into panels, seem in their upper branches to swirl like tongues of flame, merging with the rooftops and the sky itself: a Pentecost - informed vision of Spirit bringing unity to the world?


The next couple of rooms were a challenge to me, as they were to Phillips, whose words on the wall declare

I am attracted to qualities of contemporary art precisely because they thrill me with refreshing differences from any qualities I have cherished before. - Duncan Phillips

In these rooms, Klee's hieroglyphics were fun, as were still lives by Braque in which he generated energy by friction, different angles on objects rubbing up against each other like pieces of a collage.

Most of all in these rooms, Susan and I enjoyed some works by Pierre Bonnard. Evidently, he has a fascination with windows and frames. There was a striking scene of greenery outside a window, viewed from inside a red room. In another scene, where there was no wall or window, Bonnard created one from overhanging branches.


We also viewed two other exhibits. Photography by Clarence John Laughlin dwelt on subjects and treatments that we associate with Gothic Southern fiction -- abandoned antebellum buildings, ghostly shadows, twisted forest. I was a bit uneasy, there, carrying with me what I'd heard a commentator say on NPR's program 1 - A, that "plantation" has always been a euphemism for "armed labor camp," and that we should no more have happy tours and wedding receptions at a plantation than we would have one at Auschwitz.


At the other exhibit, "Of Origins and Belonging, Drawn from Atlanta," we were intrigued by large-scale images of black men and women in active poses, over which were superimposed white curves and lines like unfamiliar symbols. I was struck most of all by a series of large pen - and - ink portraits of Latin American immigrants to Atlanta, drawn on some translucent material, through which we see layers of words -- their life stories, newspaper articles, other images.

[Photo: One of the series by Yehimi Cambron, born San Antonio Villalongin, Mexico, 1992, a DACA recipient working in Atlanta.]

After our visit to the High, Susan and I took the MARTA train to Decatur for lunch outside Cafe Alsace, where I found an impressionistic - style painting of the restaurant itself, dated 2004.

Medieval Challenges to Modern Mindset

At special evening worship services last week, notions from 1500 years ago have challenged my settled views on individualism and the veneration of Mary. St. James Episcopal Church, Marietta, GA, celebrated the Ascension of Jesus on Thursday evening, May 30, and the Visitation of Mary on Friday evening, May 31.


In the sermon about Mary's visit to her cousin Elisabeth, our visiting priest The Reverend Melanie Rowell remembered her evangelical family's scorn for veneration of Mary, and she quoted article XXII of the Episcopal Church's Articles of Religion (1801) "The Romish Doctrine concerning ... Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God" (BCP 868). But a Roman Catholic boyfriend opened her to another way of looking at Mary. First, the young woman was obedient and accepting of God in a way that few of us could be, despite her doubts. When Elisabeth greets her as "Mother of our Lord," Mary deflects the attention to God: "My soul magnifies the Lord." While veneration of Mary may seem like a relic of Medieval hierarchical thinking -- i.e., Mary was an intermediary to the Throne of Heaven -- Mary can still offer way for us to appreciate God from another angle.


For Ascension Day, the previous evening, The Reverend Daron Vroon admitted that he himself has had trouble understanding why we should care about this feast day tucked away, always on a Thursday, 40 days after Easter. So Jesus waves good - bye, his work done, and he'll see us later: Fr. Daron asked, what's to celebrate about his going away? One answer lies in understanding a medieval concept of humanity as being created in "the image of God."


To the Medieval mind, we humans are not individuals, but different persons within one nature, a concept I've heard only in relation to the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct "persons" and yet One God. Protestant and American, I've not heard this challenge to individuality before, but it's right there in article IX of the Articles of Faith, "Of Original or Birth - Sin" (869), presented as emphatically not an inheritance from Adam's fall "as the Pelagians do vainly talk," but a "corruption of the Nature of every man ... engendered in the offspring of Adam." I suppose Articles might be revised to say, "Corruption is in the DNA of our species."


According to Fr. Daron, the Incarnation of Jesus regenerated our "nature," undoing that corruption. Very early in Church history, Leo the Great preached the same concept on Ascension Day (Sermon 73). On that day, Leo preached,

...the Nature of mankind went up, to pass above the angels’ ranks and to rise beyond the archangels’ heights, and to have Its uplifting limited by no elevation until, received to sit with the Eternal Father, It should be associated on the throne with His glory, to Whose Nature It was united in the Son. [So] Christ’s Ascension is our uplifting....

I know from reading (and loving) other Medieval authors that they saw an open border between physical object and moral imagination. Fr. Daron assured us, however, that the idea that we humans are linked through Christ's nature is "not metaphorical, but metaphysical."

I've been thinking about my long - unquestioned acceptance of American "rugged individualism" because of religious writings that cast doubt on that outlook, and an opposing article by George Will, a conservative I've long admired, in which he decries liberal assaults on individualism. I'll have to keep thinking and blogging about this.

Blog reflections of Related interest
• "Ascension Day: Up to Us" (05/13/2017)
• "Jesus Ascended: Then What?"(06/05/2014)
• "The Annunciation [a painting] by Tanner Awakens Advent Thoughts" (12/06/2014)

Mia Doesn't Even Know She's Sick

This morning, from the Vet's office, I texted Susan, friend to me and to my dog Mia: "Tumor now blocking kidneys; kidney failure will be her end. More chemo in four weeks."

A kind woman at the vet's, seeing the tears in my eyes, reassured me that the dog is lovely and happy. Susan, walking with us this afternoon, reminded me that Mia doesn't even know she's sick, and every moment with her is precious.


I've written about her before, with photos. See "Mia's Anima, a Dog's Soul" (10/31/2015). One of my most popular posts is about a time when she was away at boot camp, learning how to be less of a demon dog around other canines, "Dogless Days of August" (08/03/2016)

[Susan took this photo during a walk, shortly after Mia, excited by a deer,  had shoved her paw through a window. This would be early in our lives together, around 2015.]

[Photo: Susan appreciates Mia, while Mia scans the cemetery for squirrels and other dogs.]