Iris: Piece of Mind

Shortly after reading Iris Murdoch's novel Jackson's Dilemma, I heard her husband John Bayley interviewed on NPR about his memoir.  Iris welcomed the reporter to their home with courteous detachment.  As we heard her shuffle off, Bayley told the reporter that he would continue to love the woman he lived with, and professed not to worry about the brilliant woman he'd married: "Wherever she's going, she has already arrived" is what I remember him saying.  I'd experienced my grandmother's dementia; her daughter's symptoms wouldn't show for another twelve years; but I was struck by Bayley's conception of dementia as a "place."

Making the movie Iris of his memoir just a year later, writer-director Richard Eyre made use of that idea to meld the love story of young Iris with the love of Bayley for Iris at her end.

Eyre's dilemma was that both stories he wanted to tell had foregone conclusions.  The moment that modest young Bayley (Hugh Bonneville) stops at a party to stare in awe at charismatic young Iris (Kate Winslett) , we know that somehow they're going to marry.  The moment regal elderly Iris (Judi Dench) fails to recall the Prime Minister's name, her young doctor tells us that dementia is going to win.

The key to bringing both stories to a satisfying close lay in the image from a brain scan. Elderly Bayley (Jim Broadbent) asks about a dark area that the doctor can't explain.  Bayley clings to the idea that there's a room in Iris's brain where her mind could still be alive, though "different."  To illustrate, Eyre takes us to the rocky shore where he pictures Iris sitting among hefty smooth stones, looking out at the waves, clutching a notebook.  Her friends hope she'll write, and, in a way, she does:  she rips out page after page, placing a stone on each one.  In flashbacks, we've heard the erudite Murdoch speaking of freedom and love for living beings, nature, even stones.  So this is a demonstration of another kind of expression.

In the parallel story, young Bayley, tortured by jealousy, needs to learn from Iris whether he has a place among the many "worlds" she inhabits and creates in her promiscuous, prolific life.


Thirty years before the events at the end of the movie, Murdoch wrote Bruno's Dream, concerning this very idea, that the world is in the invalid's mind even while he is in the world.  Read more in my appreciation of Iris Murdoch's novels, The Mind Plays Tricks.

[Portrait, 1986, by Tom Phillips.  TomPhillips.co.uk    The portrait is of real-life Iris with images from her fiction.]

See other entries in my "Dementia Diary."

Chris Thile: A Daring Home Companion

When mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile made his first appearances on public radio's long-running variety show Prairie Home Companion, he was still a teenager, the extroverted lead vocalist of the bluegrass trio Nickel Creek with Sara Watkins on fiddle and her brother Sean on guitar.  Thile told host Garrison Keillor how they would dare each other to make songs from random road signs.  For that, more than for any interest in bluegrass or Thile's virtuosity on mandolin, I started my collection of Chris Thile recordings.   

[PHOTO: Chris Thile at Zankel Hall, by Tina Fineberg for the New York Times. ]


Nearly twenty years later, when my collection has expanded beyond Nickel Creek to include solo albums, duets with classical and jazz artists, and genre-bending material with his band Punch Brothers, Chris Thile is still daring himself to try new things.

Taking on the role of host for Prairie Home Companion has been his biggest leap of faith. As I saw at Atlanta's Fox Theatre during Garrison Keillor's last weeks with the show, the audience was faithful in more ways than one (see my review).  For us, the show was as much ritual as entertainment, with familiar features and jokes that never failed (e.g. "Powder Milk Biscuits are pure-- mostly").  Keillor's blend of folksiness, Protestant in-jokes, and urbane irony was unique.  Besides, the appreciative audience had been tuning in to Keillor's live broadcasts since Thile was a toddler; teens among us didn't get it.  Could Thile bring in younger listeners without alienating Keillor's boomer base?

I'd say Thile was a brilliant choice.

First, he's a versatile musician. Chris Thile says that he homed in on the mandolin at age nine when his family went to a live music pizza parlor, because the mandolinist was the showiest guy on the stand.  By age twelve, the chubby little blonde mandolin virtuoso from California had a commercial recording (still available on CD).  Now he strikes boisterous dissonant chords, picks rapid-fire licks, plucks sweet melodies that fall like rain, and sometimes ruminates with sparse, dry staccato notes. Even when the mood is dark, there's a brightness and hope in the sound.  His wide-ranging voice matches the moods, whether crooning, hooting, moaning, or spitting out lyrics.

On the shows I've heard, Thile's effusive, good with upbeat patter, and natural-sounding in scripted sketches.  His musical guests trend younger and edgier, but Paul Simon and poet Billy Collins have also performed. Young comics get the slot that was always reserved for Keillor's tales from Lake Woebegone, and they work just fine.

But the most fun is listening to Thile taking musical chances.  He challenges himself to compose words and music for a Song of the Week that fits the time.  The ones I've heard have been, as Ellington loved to say, "beyond category."  For the show November 12, Thile walked as fine a line as Keillor ever did, addressing a song to his wife and little son that resonated with an audience worked up over the recent election:

But I don't wanna fight fire with fire
And I don't wanna preach to the choir
So whether you're laughing or crying
If you're doing your best to be kind
This land is as much yours as mine
As God is my witness
I made this for you
                       - "I Made This For You" by Chris Thile

He plays mandolin as easily as he speaks, quoting melodies of any composer he mentions, from Strauss (Johann and Ricard) to Dylan to Barber's Violin Concerto.  He and his band perform an audience request, unrehearsed, with the rules that no one on stage can have written the song or performed it.  So far as I've heard, taking a wide variety of requests, he and his cohort haven't crashed and burned yet. An improvised arrangement of "Blackbird" was memorable.

The biggest risk to the show's fans is that such a restless, creative guy won't be tied down to this regular gig for long.

Paterson, Movie and Poem

Director Jim Jarmusch, writing the screenplay for his film Paterson, surely was inspired by lines early in William Carlos Williams's book-length poem of the same name, the doctor-poet's effort to "reflect" his own mind through aspects of his hometown of Paterson, NJ.  Williams writes:

"Rigor of beauty is the quest.  But how will you find beauty when it is locked in the mind past all remonstrance?"

To make a start,
out of particulars
and make them general, rolling 
up the sum, by defective means --
Sniffing the trees, 
just another dog...    (Preface, Book I)

The movie follows the daily routine of a bus driver also named Paterson (Adam Driver) "rolling" through the streets,  gathering "particulars" of his town and home life, "[making] them general" in lines of poetry.   There is no plot, only "incidents" that vary his daily routine over a week's time, plus the weekend.  Every night, he walks to a bar with a sniffing, snorting English bulldog adored by his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani).

Where Williams begins his poem picturing the town Paterson as if it were a man lying asleep, Jarmusch begins each of seven days with a shot of the man Paterson in bed, just as his internal clock awakes him. 

Williams writes the gist of the movie early in Book I:

Say it! No ideas but in things.  Mr.
Paterson has gone away
to rest and write.  Inside the bus one sees
his thoughts sitting and standing. His
thoughts alight and scatter--  (Book I, p. 6)

The first "things" that Paterson transmutes into poetry are matches fingered idly while he crunches his cereal.  In voice-over, he drafts a poem, words also appearing on the screen.  The poem isn't much, at first, just a prosaic statement about "our" preferred brand of matches; but, as he walks to the bus station, makes his rounds, and takes a break for lunch, he revises the poem, until we can relate the matches, packed tightly in their little box, heads ready to burst into flame, with the poet himself, staid and gentle in his boxy little home, head preoccupied with love for his wife Laura.

Driving the bus, Paterson tunes in to conversations behind him.  Reflections in the bus window superimpose the sunny streets on the driver's face, his eyes focused ahead, with glances at passengers whose words enter his thoughts.  It's reminiscent of Williams's next stanza:

Who are these people (how complex
the mathematic) among whom I see myself
in the regularly ordered plateglass of
his thoughts, glimmering before shoes and bicycles?

Williams is writing here of shop windows, but I doubt it's coincidence that Jarmusch always gives us the shoes of these incidental characters, whether they're pre-teen boys, working men, or a couple of self-styled anarchists. The shoes, scuffed, or flirtatiously close, tell tales.  The people on the bus and in the bar where he goes every night are not so tough, virile, or smart as they encourage each other to think they are, so Adam Driver's "Paterson" smiles a lot.  As he does, we do: Driver is the straight man, and everyone else is a character, making just about every scene funny.  It can't be coincidence that Jarmusch works into the movie several references to Lou Costello, funny half of Depression-era comedy duo Abbott and Costello, native of Paterson.

Adam Driver's "Paterson" is the straight man to Golshifteh Farahani's "Laura."  While Paterson drafts poetry in a "secret" notebook during his breaks, Laura bounds from one artistic expression to another, brushing black and white stripes, circles, and waves on everything from  curtains to cupcakes, baking pie from incongruous ingredients, and taking up music on a whim, attracted to the black and white design on the guitar she saw advertised.  Paterson watches her in wonder and encourages her.

Jarmusch and Driver present the poet as considerate, not just in the sense of attentive and kind: Before Paterson responds to dialogue, Driver shows a moment of uncertainty when his character seems to be considering what the other needs to hear from him.  "I dreamed that we had twins," Laura whispers upon waking. "Would you like that?"  After a moment, he says, yes, "one for you and one for me."  It's just the right thing.

Our bus driver meets three poets during the course of the movie, all of them referring to Williams.  A rapper who works on his lines in a laundromat to the beat of the washer also says, "No idea but in things."  A girl with a "secret notebook" like the bus driver's own shares with him her poem "Water Falls," (a poem by the director that begins "Water falls through the air / like hair of a young girl..."), recalling the waterfalls of the town described so vividly in Williams's poem.  A devotee of William Carlos Williams leaves Paterson with a gift that serves as a kind of benediction for the work of a poet.

Naturally, Paterson recites for his wife William Carlos Williams's greatest hit, "This is just to say," touching and funny.

Poet Ron Padgett, personal friend to Jarmusch, composed four original poems for the movie.  He told the Poetry Foundation that he found his images from reading the script.  His work for this movie had to be substantial but also accessible at first hearing.  Between Jarmusch's visuals and Driver's interpretation, he scores.

Finding patterns is a part of the pleasure in poetry, music, and jokes. In this film, patterns abound: the daily routine, a proliferation of twins, Laura's mania for black-and-white, and big laughs set up through repetition.  In narrative art, we also have the pleasure of getting to know people.

That's the "mathematic": patterns + persons = Paterson.

References

Padgett, Ron. How to Be Perfect. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2007.

Williams, William Carlos. Paterson. Ed. Christopher MacGowan. New York: New Directions Paperback, 1995.

Mountaintop Experience: Mentor Formation Retreat

Susan and I returned yesterday from three days at the University of the South, Sewanee, near Chattanooga, TN, headquarters for Education for Ministry (EfM). We joined Bob from Florida, Steve from Asheville (moving soon to KY), and Ethel Ware from All Saints in Atlanta.  Our mentor Sissie Wile modeled ways to formulate an understanding of spirituality through experiences that engaged our imaginations with all four of EfM's sources: action, position, culture, and tradition.

[PHOTOS:  Top - Sissie's home, where we visited with her dog and cat on Saturday, before dinner.

Middle - A branch finding a way through a manufactured space was, for me, an image of Incarnation - the Creator's sharing in our struggles and pain.

 Below - A "mandala" collage of images that help me to define holy]

Our sessions together began and ended with worship from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer.  Hearing familiar texts phrased differently, we're aware of new angles to old sayings.  For instance, "The Lord be with you / And also with you" is re-stated as an affirmation for all:" The divine Spirit dwells in us. / Thanks be to God."

Before we'd even decided what we meant by spirituality or by related terms mystery, holiness, and the divine, Sissie had each of us choose a photograph from an array published by the Kaleidoscope Institute. I chose a view of an apartment building, ten rows and twelve columns of balconies defined by concrete slabs, iron rails, and glass doors. For me, there's a mystery in that each resident is an individual universe of experiences, pursuits, and hopes; yet even near neighbors may be unaware of each other. So much life is visible at a glance; how can anyone conceive of the fact that all the individuals on our planet are equally self-contained universes?

We also each selected one psalm among those identified by author Walter Brueggemann as psalms for seasons of orientation (8, 14,33, 37, 145, 131, 133), of disorientation (13, 25, 50, 74, 79, 81, 86, 137), or new orientation (30,34, 50, 74, 79, 81 86, 137), all connecting to EfM's  theme this year of new orientations in our "journeys in faith." 

I chose Psalm 124 ("If it had not been the Lord who was on our side...), feeling that my life has reoriented towards care for Mom, following my fifty-seven years of responsibility mostly to myself, my job, my own projects.  The Psalmist seems to be clutching to the knowledge that, "We held on through tough times before; God will be with us at the end of this time, too." 

Again, after sharing, we reflected on aspects of spirituality revealed by this effort.  What we saw was deep connections across time and culture between us and the psalmist; the experience of relating concrete reality to metaphors; the awareness that interior conclusions may not easily be identified as true or false. We agreed that psalms have different meanings for us at different times in our lives.

The most intense thirty minutes of the weekend, for me, were spent searching through magazines for images that spoke to my sense of what's holy, then fitting them into a circle -- to form a personal "mandala," an image of the universe, or the universal.  During that time, we all milled around the room, and I, for one, was nearly oblivious to others while I cut, rearranged, and pasted.  My own images include preparation of food - a holy activity when done lovingly to bring people together; a lovely tree at the edge of a lake, reminding me of days spent in such places reading, or, even more, riding my bike, occupied solely with the cycling and breathing, enjoying God's gifts; a bed, which I've come to see as a raft for a nightly journey through dreams, in which we find rest and meaning-making; the dog - for many of us, a veritable angel in life, example to us of unconditional love and life in the moment (see my article Dogs are Poetry); and the crossword puzzle, signifying for me horizontal existence in time intersecting with the vertical existence of mind, memory, and imagination (see my article Theology of Crosswords).

We also had assignments to design experiences in spirituality for each other.  Bob and Steve presented a combination of lectio divina with the movements of EfM's process of "theological reflection."  Ethel Ware sent us away to sketch or describe something that illustrates what we mean by "the divine." (I brought back a sketch of an open hand, palm up: able to reach out, able to hold, to let go, and vulnerable to rejection).  Susan and I sent everyone out at dusk to bring back images (perhaps on phone cameras) of intersections between what we call "nature" and the human-manufactured world.  In these, we looked for the Trinity:  images of the Creator's joy in creation; of the Incarnate Lord's sharing the pain of creation; and, of the Spirit that flows through all life like the wind.  We were inspired by the analogy in our RRG of a night hike by flashlight:  what we see by "light" of our manufactured world is limited, and we'll appreciate much more of the night life in a forest, once our senses become fully engaged for a walk in the dark.

For a short time before dinner, we accepted Sissie's invitation to her lovely home overlooking a bluff, with a view west across the valley.  Such a short time was still a powerful highlight, reminding us all of another holy quality of hospitality, by which patriarchs welcomed angels. 

Agatha Christie's "Five Little Pigs": Worst Title for Best Novel

[Photo collage of images from the BBC series Poirot, Y2K, Five Little Pigs. Screenplay Kevin Elyot; Director, Paul Unwin.]

"Texture" is the quality that I missed when I picked up some Agatha Christie after a couple years' work with Henry James.  It was like drinking Kool-Aid after Cognac.

But in Five Little Pigs, Christie layers her crime story.  The story concerns a grown daughter hiring Poirot to clear the reputation of her mother Caroline, executed seventeen years earlier for the murder of her artist husband Amyas.  Caroline supposedly poisoned Amyas in the act of painting a portrait of his young mistress, and offered little defense of herself at the trial.  Time itself adds layers to the story. Then the five suspects'  "written" accounts expand and color our view of the fatal event; observations on art and class clash; and we see the dynamics of family and old friends.

I've read recently that Christie was a faithful Anglican, something I never would have suspected; but I do see in her novel that sin is its own punishment, where Poirot observes that the guilty party died with the victim. (Cf. my article What Mr. Suchet Saw: Christ in Agatha Christie. )

The title has nothing to do with the story beyond the number of suspects.  Yes, Poirot thinks, "This one had roast beef," but damned if I can figure out what that and other references to the nursery rhyme have to do with any character.

The memoir Poirot and Me by actor David Suchet put me onto this novel. He calls it one of Christie's best, and tells how the intensity of the actors in supporting parts "upped" his "game" in the role he had played several seasons by then.

The video production misses the themes of art, obsession, and modernist morality so prevalent in the novel, but it uses montages to make more clear than the novel does how tight-knit are the friendships and family ties.

Having read the novel and now seen the dramatization, I'm a fan.  But any title -- even the abstraction "Murder in Retrospect" used for the first American printing -- would be preferable.

Considering the art theme and the solution, it might be called, "Framed."

[Photo:  A moment of truth for the characters, and also for actors Rachael Stirling ("Caroline Crale") and Aidan Gillen ("Amyas Crale"):  Knowing the end of the story, we can read back into their faces exactly what was happening at the site of the murder.]

Short Comedies for Middle School

With just eight one-hour rehearsals and some scrambling to polish lines backstage, a cast of self-directed middle schoolers just pulled off fine performances of short plays that kept us laughing, adults even more than the kids.

Eighth graders chose, cast, and directed the plays. They earned the privilege by accumulating over 100 hours of quality involvement in my after-school "W.arts (Walker Arts)" Drama Team.  I paid at most $80 for scripts and royalties to any of these plays.

First up tonight was John Wooten's "The Role of Della" available from Playscripts.com. The woman sitting at the desk in the audition room puts a hopeful young actress through an ordeal involving insults, Spanish accent, Spanish accent mixed with Southern. and mime.  We have a happy resolution, and then a surprise ending.  The biggest laugh came when the audience "got it."  Eighth grader Sarah Culling chose the play and directed 8th Grader Evie Blauvelt as the actress and 6th grader Sabine Surkan in the other role.  Sarah played the role of the woman who enters near the end.

Katrin Surkan directed "Inside the Department of the Exterior" by Philip Hall, also from Playscripts.com.  A guy (played by director Katrin Surkan) needs a new mailbox; the woman at the government office (Gillian Stoltz) requires official forms to be letter-perfect.  As botched form after botched form gets ripped in pieces and thrown in the garbage, each grows frustrated with the other.  It was a tour de force for the bureaucrat, who spoke absurd bureaucratese with unrelenting clarity and earnestness.

"Family Meeting" by Dan Zolidis was directed by Brooke Baughan.  Her younger actors (6th graders all:  Isabela White as the daughter, Sophie Dietz the mom, Ronan Ezell the father) turned in wonderful performances in a play set in some absurd universe where parents can trade their daughter in for Sven the Foreign Exchange Student.  "We love you, dear," Mom says, "but, after a certain amount of time, we expect results."  Brooke got her cast to exaggerate their movements to great comic effect; it didn't seem too much. The play, from YouthPlays.com, was least expensive, most convenient.

Tanya Dadlani directed a play of her own, a play within a play within a  play:  She portrayed the student director of a script about a Mom who sets straight her daughter who wants to marry rich like Cinderella:  All wasn't happily ever after, after all.  Then, the cast rebelled, "because no punishment can be worse than being in this play."  Tanya called it "Breaking the Glass Slipper," and it got laughs in all the places she expected.

Slaying Goliath

A slender theology book called Slaying Your Goliaths by John Ohmer came in the mail from the Forward Day by Day movement as a thank-you for my donations.  First on Ohmer's list of "modern-day Goliaths" is "caregiver burden," and I felt this was probably a book for me.  Ohmer explores the story of David as we do in the Education for Ministry program (EfM), using it for a conversation between the story and contemporary experiences.  Below, I'll list a few highlights from what emerges.

But First: A Comprehensive Theology, Wholeness with God?

But first, I'll highlight some ideas from an essay about "comprehensive theology" provided by the folks who design curriculum for EfM at University of the South, Sewanee.  Titled "Living into Wholeness," it's a piece of a curriculum focused all year on the "journey" into "theosis" (participation in God), no author listed.  While I'd picture a "comprehensive theology" as an enclosure made by laying "bricks" of doctrine that must stay in place for the wall to hold, this author says, no, it's just a provisional construct, made with an open mind (120).

The essay's premise, drawing on recent developments in biology and physics, is that there's a "wholeness" to things that pre-exists the things. This is at once an appealing idea, and I think undemonstrable.  Instead, I'd restate it in the terms used by dramatist Dr. John Clum when he taught me at Duke about characters in drama and life: "Our characters don't change; our characters are revealed."
  
The essay seems to imagine a moment when union with God achieves wholeness.  Poet Christian Wiman in My Bright Abyss seems to me closer to the truth when he writes that there is never going to be a point of arrival.  Ours is not a faith in achievement of some static, whole, perfect sameness, he writes; it's a faith in change itself.
  
Where the essay does apply to my life today is in description of "conversation."  "Argument," the essay says, is a tool of analysis, but "does not necessarily lead to wisdom."  In contrast, "conversation" involves the "willingness to restrain oneself" and acceptance that conversation "moves in directions we cannot fully anticipate."  Those convinced of their rightness and brilliance "pronounce rather than converse" (EfM Reading and Reflection Guide, Year, D, 119)
 
Heresy always has its grain of truth, it's "just not true enough."  Rather than condemning positions that are alien to us, the author recommends asking, "What question does this heresy answer for those who believe it?"  I can imagine using this when I deal with those of political affections different from mine. 
  
A good example of looking for the questions behind a position is the author's list of questions that arose from the Episcopal Church's ordination of women.  The statement "only males can be priests" raises questions about "the nature of priesthood; the meanings of gender and sexuality; how the past is remembered; what the authority of scripture is; what makes a sacrament valid; and how truth is discerned" (121).
  
The author observes that "consistency" in our positions is not just an intellectual quality; as any EfM alumnus knows, any life story of coming to one faith from another involves the heart as much as the mind, and we must acknowledge this to move forward.

 Our mission, according to the catechism in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, is "to restore all people to unity with God and with each other in Christ"

Goliaths

Now, the Goliath book draws many lessons from analogies between David's story and our lives. The author was rector of a prosperous parish before he was called to a once-huge congregation that split over the gay bishop, fought in court to retain its property, and now has a growing congregation that struggles to pay for maintain it.  Each chapter forward in the story of David also gives us, in text set apart by a shaded background, an illustrative chapter in the story of the author's experience in that church.

Ohmer's analysis of the story breaks down into lessons that need only be listed to suggest applications to life.   Goliath was more than a threat; his taunts demoralized the Jews.  Young David put aside the armor borrowed from King Saul (58).  Enemy-based leadership is a quick fix, but vision-based leadership lasts (60-61).  David chose his own "five smooth stones."  David had confidence in the true God (78).

Ohmer digresses on the subject of false gods Work, Money, and Religion, telling a fun parable about how we idolize work.  It's an American who encounters a humble fisherman.  The business maven proposes that the fisherman go beyond his daily routine of fishing a bit in the morning, napping with his wife at mid-day, and playing music at night with friends.  He lays out a plan to build a fishing empire that would take years of 60 hour work-weeks and net the fisherman a tidy sum.  "Then what?" asks the fisherman.  Then, the American concludes, the fisherman could relax, fishing a bit in the morning, napping with his wife at mid-day, and playing music at night with friends (80).

About idolatry of religion, Ohmer cites Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah.  He tells of a buddy who lit a candle to help himself get centered during his private morning prayer, then grew choosy about what kind of candle, and whether to use a lighter or match -- until he saw that he had begun to worship the candle (86).  

Jesus, according to Ohmer, was hardly the peaceful teacher we imagine.  Read any gospel straight through, he says, and a different Jesus emerges:

Time after time, Jesus deliberately provokes the scribes and pharisees, and when he has a chance to back down, instead of retreating, he deliberately increases the stakes (85).

I had to pause reading this, because it sounded so much like our current President.  I suppose the wise and the foolish alike may benefit from the same tactics.

Read in one sitting, the hallmark of the gospels is not ... about healing the sick, feeding the crowds, or teaching the disciples.  It is rather the proclamation that the kingdom of God is at hand, a topsy-turvy, radical reorienting of the world and the world's priorities [around Love, the] central priority of God.

The Episcopal Church faces the "Goliath" in a public perception that we do not honor the authority of Scripture.  Ohmer lays out some "smooth" stones to counter that perception, such as the observation that the Bible is a potpourri of literature, not to be read as a book, and the conclusion that "our faith is not in the Bible but in God ... to whom the Bible points (69)."

So, facing my current Goliath of "caregiver burden," I can think of ways to apply the metaphor.  Don't let the words get under my skin; remember, every time I face the anger, that she has been brought back to peace and affection many times before; and keep eyes not on the enemy dementia, but on a vision of gratitude for what Mom has meant my whole life, and of moving gradually towards the point that Iris Murdoch's husband described her as having "arrived" at the "place she was going."

See other entries in my "Dementia Diary."

Frank Boggs at 90: Gospel Singer, Choral Director, Teacher

In 1977, for a concert at the Atlanta Civic Center, Frank sang “You Make Me Feel So Young” to his Westminster Ensemble -- me included, seventeen years old. Forty years later, I’m grateful for the occasion of his birthday celebration to return the compliment.

You seem to be so young,
So deep in voice and strong in lung,
And when you’re waving your baton,
You spur your chorus on – “like gangbusters!”

You still can have a blast
With anecdotes from ages past.
Sometimes you’re known to drop some names
Of stars, and queens, and dames.

Years go by
You still have a lot to give
Teaching and learning always,
That’s how you live:
Inquisitive!

You seem to be so young
With all these friends you live among,
with flings to be flung,
and many more songs to be sung!

And Frank, you’re like Methuselah:
It doesn’t matter how old you are,
‘cause your spirit stays so young!

composed by Josef Myrow, with lyrics written by Mack Gordon
parody by Scott Smoot to celebrate the 90th birthday of Frank Boggs, teacher and friend, January 2017

Good News about the Gospel of Biff:Lamb by Christopher Moore

Here's the pitch: "The Gospel according to Biff, Christ's childhood pal."  We instantly can see the whole thing, and we can also think: Life of Brian - been there, done that. Besides, everyone already knows the ending.

That's the risk Christopher Moore takes when he makes that pitch the subtitle of his 2002 novel Lamb. The good news is that Moore has spun a comic adventure better than what we imagine.

Because the Gospels skip from the manger to the wedding at Cana, there's a thirty-year gap in Jesus's life story to fill with boyhood pranks, teenage adventures, and gags regarding angels and miracles.  So teenage Levi known as "Biff" and Jesus called "Joshua," the more Jewish version of his name, go out one night with stone cutter's tools to circumcise a tremendous statue of Apollo.  Later, Biff does some serious research into "knowing a woman" giving a play-by-play report to his celibate buddy in the next room.  Some bad puns have page-long set ups, like the Hindu joke ("holy cow") and the one about a non-violent form of martial arts developed by Joshua (Jew-do).  Reading a list of descriptive names for six delectable concubines, you may overlook the one that comes from a Chinese take-out menu.  My favorite scene depicts teenage Joshua in a crowded bazaar, jostling everyone he meets, leaving in his wake people cured of cancer, mental illness, and stinky feet.

The set up for the whole novel is a gag, when a hunky dumb-blond angel resurrects Biff to write this new gospel.  They hole up in a Manhattan hotel.  Biff tries to escape while the angel gets hooked on pizza and pro wrestling.

But in the tradition of Huckleberry Finn, Moore sends his youthful adventurers to some dark places.  Moore imagines hitherto unimaginable poverty and describes violence with such blood-smeared and bone-crunching detail that the comedy comes to an end, at least for awhile.  Worst is the massacre inflicted by fanatical devotees of Kali on families so far down in India's social structure that they accept the sacrifice of their children as their due.

The tone can shift, but the bond of love between the narrator, Joshua, and their girl Maggie (a.k.a. Mary Magdalene) never wavers.  She is a memorable character, way more mature at twelve than either of the guys, believable and vital whether the story bends towards comedy or tragedy.

Moore doesn't sidestep the serious question that Biff poses to his pal the Messiah: "How can you drive out the Romans without killing?"  Seeking answers from the three Wise Men of the East, Joshua picks up his answer a bit at a time.  Violence in self-defense causes Joshua to scream "Stop this!" (139).  Joshua earns the insight that freedom isn't something bestowed; it's internal (228).  (I recognize an insight developed by Martin Luther King's mentor Howard Thurman, described in my blogpost Jesus and the Disinherited).  Joshua learns from a Buddhist priest, but learns more from his encounter with the Yeti, who "loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words ....Love is not something you think about" (253).  Joshua takes back to Israel a message of the Holy Spirit in all of us, and the religious authorities are threatened.  Biff observes, "These legalists had worked hard to find their place in power; they weren't interested in change" (355).

Since I read Lamb last week, I have to admit that Moore's images and tone come to mind during my daily readings of Scripture.  I now appreciate the social subtext of doctrinal differences between the working-class Pharisees and Sadducees born to their exalted priesthood.  Moore's imagining of an ancient city brings Jesus's world to life better than any movie has done.

After a rollicking adventure along the Silk Road, Moore has to bring us to Holy Week.  Moore tries to keep the story fresh, and he throws in some more jokes.  But there's not much he can do, as each chapter is a day closer to a painful ending.

What about the Resurrection, you ask?  Frederick Buechner once called the Gospel a "comedy" because of its unlikely, joyous conclusion.  Moore follows a different logic to an ending that satisfies.

Page references from the Harper Perennial reissue, 2004.

Photo with Mom: A Safety Deposit for Emotions

Twenty minutes before I took this photo, Mom called from the front office of her new assisted living residence very unhappy.  She needed me to get over there right away. 

When I arrived, she was sitting with her buddy Bill, watching TV, tossing the ball with her beloved Sassy, and surprised to see me.  "I love it here," she said, "but let me look around at the notes I've written.  Maybe I'll find what I was upset about."  We laughed about that, and talked seriously about how you can't feel connected to people in the residence if you forget all your time with them.  She said seriously, "There's nothing you or I can do about that."  Some rolling around with the dog followed, and she told Bill about me, "He's a good boy." 

Let me deposit that moment here in my bank of feelings, to save for the next rain storm.

See other entries in my "Dementia Diary."

Snow Days with Dog: How Happy Can You Get?

And, How can you get happy?

Little snow, but a sheet of black ice stranded Mia and me with nothing to entertain ourselves but a book, this screen, and her favorite toys.  As I learned from her, what else does anyone need?

Mia teaches me every day that it's the promise and the pursuit that are most rewarding.  She leaps and prances to her toy, throwing back at me a come-hither look over her tail.  The whole body wags.  She growls, tenses, and jumps at my hands, offering me a sporting chance to grab the toy out of her mouth.  When I catch it, I pull her around furniture, up in the air, across the carpet, until it's time to let her win.  She runs off to chew awhile, but soon comes back for another round. On a walk outside, she'll sometimes spring straight up, all four legs suspended in air, to look me full in the eyes. I'm so excited, this is so great, thank you!

Hard to believe it now, but there'll be a time when she can't do these things.  I'll want to remember the whites at the outer rim of her eyes that are looking back at me; the prance, the pounce, the pursuit from room to room; the contented yawn and stretch when the game is over; the quivery anticipation when she sits and stays a couple yards from the food bowl, looking at me for the signal to dig in.

[Photos, clockwise from top left:  At attention next to me on the divan, Mia scans the front yard for Jack the Cat.  Under the table, Mia enjoys seeing me watch her chewing the "Flappy" toy.  At my feet here where I stand at a lectern typing, Mia is warm and content.]

The Power of Liturgy: I've Heard it All Before

Habit is Heaven's redress; God gives us habit in place of happiness.
- Pushkin, from Eugene Onegin

At church several weeks ago, a lively discussion took off from an observation by George Bernard Shaw: "If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!"  Our discussion of repetition in life ranged through Scripture, Buddhism, and cultural touchstones (including Groundhog Day).  One of us spoke of "just going through the motions" of faith as a dry, habitual, tedious exercise, something to be avoided.  We were led eventually to a consideration of ritual as an agent of change: even just going through the motions can change us.

Since then, every source seems to have something to add to that question, Is it a good thing or bad to be "just going through the motions?"  Fr. Roger Allen preached Christmas Eve to people who don't usually show up at church, who had so much else they could've done that night, concluding, "You're here because you expect something to happen." But that "something" needs time to develop, in a habit of worship.  Our Bishop-emeritus J. Neil Alexander, now Dean of the School of Theology at University of the South, Sewanee, wrote in a newsletter of the sinking feeling we all have these days of never being "done" with the "busy-ness" of our lives, so he's grateful to stop it all for Morning Prayer, Eucharist, and Evening prayer, time-outs that remind us how we're on God's time.

Just this past Sunday, Fr. Daron Vroon concluded his sermon with a plug for repeating the ancient Jesus prayer thousands of times a day, telling us how he says it while driving or changing a diaper: "Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."  (Later, he announced a pop quiz, but a quiet train at our RR crossing blew its horn just as we were to recite.)

I can attest to that Jesus Prayer.  My recent blog posts cover stressful situations when, driving in traffic, I have tried snapping the radio off to pray it. The words fit the ancient Kyrie chant, so I now find myself humming that chant as I hurry through the hallways at school. By repetition, the tune has become the prayer, making me re-mindful of the Big Picture.

Another source gives ample reason for increasing the "motions" we "go through" in the Book of Common Prayer.  Inwardly Digest: The Prayer Book as a Guide to a Spiritual Life, a bestseller of the Forward Movement of Cincinnati, is by lay scholar Derek Olsen (blog StBedeProductions.com ). A runner, Olsen likens the habits of devotions by day, by week, and by season, to an athlete's training.  A singular "high" or "surge" is never the point, but to "invest ourselves in a pattern of living" (14).  He warns against the vanity of worshiping for the purpose of self-edification, though.  Ephesians, admonishing us to share "the same mind... that was in Jesus Christ," gives us the point of all this exercise. Olsen adds, "Christian spirituality isn't just about you.  Rather, your spiritual success is tied to everyone else around you... building the body of Christ" (15).

Olsen's gung-ho writing about the Lectionary spurred me now to read all the selections for each day, even multiple Psalms.  He quotes Athanasius, who observed that other Scripture teaches us about law, about the Saviour's coming, about kings and prophets; "but in the Psalms, besides all of these things, you learn about yourself... [about] the movements of your soul, all its changes, its ups and downs, its failures and recoveries" (209).

Perhaps because of this focus on liturgy, my take-away from Cynthia Crysdale's Transformed Lives: Making Sense of Atonement Today (Seabury Books, New York, 2016) comes down to this: the habits of our lives constitute "salvation," not a one-time vicarious sacrifice of the Son to satisfy the righteous wrath of the Father.  She puts aside Scripture's incompatible metaphors intended for different audiences (summary p. 65) and builds on St. Anselm's conclusion that "the essence of salvation -- what in philosophical terms we would call its formal cause -- lies not in the death itself" but in Christ's willingness to live in a way that would get him killed, the "unearned gift of obedience, not the death per se" saving us (78-9).  Because evil lives on, "Christ continues to die and rise over and over again."  How does that save us?  "Embracing that story and willingly offering ourselves to it can indeed become part of the salvation of the world" (90). Crysdale surveys western intellectual history to get us to a point where she says (long story short) that theology, like science, lies "not in abstractions, but in lived religious transformation" (122), which suggests to me, again, habits of worship, habits of interactions with others, habits encouraging us to be upstanders willing to give for the needs we see in our communities.

As I drafted this article, I ran into three more angles on the message that salvation lies in the habits of liturgy during my morning readings in Scripture and Forward Day By Day. First, Hebrews 11, telling of heroes in the Hebrew Scriptures, speaks of faith in terms of slogging on through daily work or journeys, repetitive and unrewarded actions done with the assurance that it adds up to something or gets somewhere.  This reminds me of something I read in Richard Rolheiser's book Sacred Fire, where he cites John of the Cross's advice to cloistered believers who've lost their initial enthusiasm for the routine of devotions. Rolheiser likens time spent with worship to time a grown child spends with his aged mother; the routine may seem tedious, even unpleasant (I write from experience, now), but the time builds relationship that can weather sudden storms.  (See my reflection "Beyond Growing Up.")

The commentary this month in Forward is by Sallie Schisler, ordained at 60.  Writing about how she needed time to accept the soldier called "father" who entered her life when she was two, she tells how we can become comfortable enough to call God "Abba" through "worship, prayer, study, and meditation" (1/1/2017).  When an usher at her church told a homeless man, "Sir, you've already received," the man said loudly, "But I'm still hungry!"  Schiller concludes, "Without meaning to, [this man] and God taught me that everyone who comes to the table will be ultimately satisfied -- whether it takes one trip or a thousand" (1/2/2017).

To me, it all adds up to affirmation of going through the motions.

Bells Resonate in The Nine Tailors

The cause of death in Dorothy L. Sayers's detective novel The Nine Tailors (1934), not revealed until late in the novel, is so horrible to contemplate, that it exerts gravity over the whole story.

Until then, it's a cheerful fish-out-of-water comedy.  Car trouble strands urbane Lord Peter Wimsey among rustic folk of Fenchurch St. Paul on New Year's Eve, where he has no choice but to enjoy the hospitality of affable, addled rector Venables, and to participate in a festive ringing of the church's nine bells.  When a body turns up, Sayers gives the investigation a light touch. The inquest is presented comically, as we infer answers from ellipses between the officious examiner's questions (80).  Locals complain how "eddication" has made everything "mysterious" with "fillin' up forms" (98). A chamber pot, referred to with delicate obliqueness as a "bedroom utensil," concealed the necklace that inspired the original sin in this plot (115).

Levi Stahl, in the blog "Ivebeenreadinglately" acknowledges that the detection part of the story could have been handled in thirty pages, but, "Wimsey likes these people and their odd rural interests--and so do we, so neither of us is in a hurry to be shed of them. His having a mystery to solve gives us both an excuse to stick around for a while."


Sayers makes a game of integrating the action with the uniquely English tradition of "ringing changes" on church bells. Change ringers follow intricate patterns to ensure that no sequence of tones will repeat until all permutations have been sounded.  Sayers uses those patterns to create a secret message. She uses ringers' jargon for her chapters' titles, with amusing double-entendres, such as "Mr. Gotobed Is Called Wrong with a Double," and "Emily Turns Bunter from Behind."   A line from ancient ringer's manuals or Scripture often seems to have inspired the action of a chapter.  For example, the epigraph to the chapter "Lord Peter Dodges with Mr. Blundell and Passes Him" explains how "retrograde motion" is involved in "the hunt," which describes both a ringing pattern and a witness's filling in the back story to the crime.  Another epigraph quoting from I Kings about the space between cherubim and "costly stones" above (219), hints to us where Lord Peter will find an important clue.

(I wonder if Sayers's titles make sense as sequential moves in an actual peal?  If so, this would be a meta-fictional coup akin to the actual chess game that Lewis Carroll plays chapter by chapter in Alice Through the Looking-Glass.)

For all the humor and playfulness, The Nine Tailors also expresses what's dear in the Anglican Church to Sayers, a rector's daughter, who also published essays on the faith.  The rector Venables, forgetful, chatty, and fussy about the aesthetics of the church (48), nonetheless shows genuine concern for the soul of the unidentified victim. He drops what he's doing to administer last rites to one of the church's benefactors, but also to the dying infant of a poor mother.  Sayers goes into considerable detail to show Venables pulling the community together when a major flood is imminent.

Through Lord Peter's internal monolog, Sayers also comments upon the "genius" of the burial liturgy and upon the faith that motivated anonymous artisans who built the church and carved its cherubs (102).  She lavishes vivid description on the beauty of the countryside in spring (55) before she goes on rather too long to describe the flower guild's work at the altar (57).


Not just a plot device, the bells mean something for Sayers.  In her preface, she compares the "uproar of the internal combustion engine and the wailing of the jazz band" unfavorably to church bells, "the one loud noise that is made to the glory of God."  She waxes poetic describing the bells "rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes" (29).  She demonstrates how the bells have served their community broadcasting important messages.  For instance, the "tailor" bells ring nine times to signify the death of a man in the parish - "Nine tailors make a man" (60) - followed by the ringing of his age, informing folks for miles around which parishioner has passed; and the bells alert surrounding towns to floodwaters' approach.

In a memorable passage, when Lord Peter visits the belfry alone, Sayers gives us strong, unironic prose to give us a sense that the bells, even in stillness, resonate as if alive and waiting.

There he stood for a moment, gazing up into [the bells'] mouths.... Presently their hooded silence oppressed him.  A vague vertigo seized him.  He felt as though they were slowly collapsing together and coming down upon him.  Spell-bound, he spoke their names:  Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul.  A soft and whispering echo seemed to start from the walls and die stealthily among the beams.  Suddenly he shouted in a great voice: "Tailor Paul!" and he must somehow have hit upon a harmonic of the scale, for a faint brazen note answered him, remote and menacing, from overhead.  (200)

He, and we, are spooked. But, when justice is served, and atonement made, we sense in this place a Holy Ghost.

Sources

Page references come from the Harbrace Paperbound Edition, 1962, that I first read in 1979 [pictured]

Before writing this post, I read other bloggers' comments about The Nine Tailors.  Both were perceptive and helpful:
http://ivebeenreadinglately.blogspot.com/2008/03/nine-notes-on-dorothy-l-sayers-and-nine.html
and
https://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/the-nine-tailors-by-dorothy-l-sayers/

Moving Mom: "Worrying, You Suffer Twice"

She's lost her "independent living" apartment,  300 pounds of books, 200 pounds of kitchenware, 100 pounds of 1970s - era clothing, two massive analog TV sets, and two rooms of furniture that are now stashed in my basement.  But she hasn't lost her sense of humor:  on Day Three of her move to assisted living, I found a Post-It on the door to her apartment warning, "No radio, No TV, Enter @ own risk!"

[Top Photo: Just inside the apartment door is the bronze portrait of her by Julia Knight that I commissioned for her and Dad on her 70th birthday and their 50th anniversary.  That's Sassy's leash around the base, and the "emergency call" pendant.  I reminded her that she's supposed to wear it around her neck at all times.  "Well, look: it is around my neck."]

The move was Mom's idea, as "independent living" had come to mean, for her, insecurity when the office staff went home, and isolation. She liked the promise of "assisted living" that staff would be on her hall 24/7, that someone would respond if she touched "0" on her phone, and that her buddy Bill was also relocating to a room just four doors down the hall.

But once the decision was made, she second-guessed herself.  Just about every day in December, she has needed reassurance from my brother Todd and me that this is the right move.  When she got that, she went back to being indomitable and funny.


I doubted the move myself on our D-Day, when a process I'd estimated at three hours dragged on to eleven.  Todd drove 200 miles to be there.  We took her to breakfast at 8:00, spent time with her and Sassy at my place, and went back to see if the new apartment was ready.   Not even close.  Todd stayed with her while the movers tried to stuff the contents of two bedrooms, two bathrooms, three closets and a kitchen into a one-bedroom apartment with sitting room and "kitchenette."

Worrying about all that, I found that a couple hours' physical therapy for acute arthritis was a relief.  When I got back to Mom's residence, I handled some paperwork and payments.  Todd stayed with Mom for her first dinner at the new place, while I went back home to pick up my dog before the kennel closed for the long weekend, in time to receive leftover possessions in my basement.   Movers left around 7:30.

I woke at midnight, worrying if she was able to sleep the first night in her apartment, worrying if she had towels, her coffee maker, her cosmetics -- worrying how distraught she would be if these things weren't around.  So I spent the next three-to-four hours sorting boxes, garment bags, and furniture, so that I could get her anything she wanted whenever she asked.  [Photo:  My basement, before I started sorting, and after.]

But that morning, she had already settled into routine.  The friendly assistant, who'd looked in on her every hour of the night, reported that she'd slept well, though she was a little cranky when administered her daily pills. Mom greeted me as if no big change had happened, and all was right with the world when I stocked her small refrigerator with the necessities:  yogurt, apples, and Pinot Grigio.  We had our Saturday breakfast, our usual walk around the cemetery, and some time to organize stuff in a few remaining boxes.  What she didn't see, she didn't miss.

So, all that worry, nearly a month of sleeplessness, got me nothing.

The worry did drive me to seek distraction at the multiplex, where I enjoyed J.K.Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, with its very appealing characters, both human and digital, inhabiting Rowling's meticulously wrought alternate reality of Manhattan haunted by magical forces in 1926.

Unexpectedly, I got some great advice, too, delivered by Eddie Redmayne as the geeky but kindly hero "Newt Scamander":  "My philosophy is that worrying, you suffer twice."

Let that be my new motto.

[Photo:  Sassy never lost her sense of humor, either, as we shuttled her around from apartment, to a walk in the park, to my home, and to the new apartment.]

 [Photo: Mom visited my home to see what I decorated instead of a tree.  That's the "rough draft" in clay of the bronze portrait.]

[Photo: Mom at breakfast on the first morning after the move.]



See other entries in my "Dementia Diary."

La La Land Honors Traditions, with Affection

Original movie musicals were most popular in the 1950s, at the same time that classic jazz was at its peak of popularity.  In La La Land, writer/director Damien Chazelle honors both traditions.  The movie is his answer to a question posed by a synth-jazz musician "Keith" (John Legend) to acoustic jazz purist "Seb" (Ryan Gosling):  "How are you gonna be a revolutionary if you're such a traditionalist?"

Part of the answer lies in relating the tradition to the audience's experience.  Seb draws Emma Stone's "Mia" into understanding what he loves about jazz by relating it to the dramas that she loves, likening it to friends engaged in lively conversation.  The director draws his millennial audience into the idea that the world can be musical by panning through an L.A. traffic jam, driver after driver jamming to his or her own soundtrack from car music systems. It's not much of a stretch when frustrated drivers emerge from their cars to merge in a song-and-dance number that animates the interstate as far as the camera can see.  Other dances and songs start from characters' movements and dialogue; after a dance duet ends, Gosling naturally does a little soft-shoe as he walks away alone.

Those of a certain age will recognize the sound-stage setting from Singing in the Rain, the dance duet in a darkened park from The Band Wagon, and an art-inspired dreamscape from An American in Paris.  The story, in fact, is boiler-plate, familiar from iterations of A Star is Born and the recent Last Five Years: "Mia" dreams of acting; "Sebastian," dreams of playing piano in a jazz club of his own; they support each other until the divergence of their two careers threatens the relationship.  (See my reflection on The Last Five Years.)

But Chazelle puts a contemporary spin on those traditions.  It's not just the cell phones, the fashions, and the occasional four-letter word; it's also playing with time, wrapping different strands of the story around a single incident, so that we come at it from different perspectives (another element shared with The Last Five Years).  Composer Justin Hurwitz, with lyricists Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, aims at a sweet spot between the kind of "specific" songs that fit the moment and the more generalized imagery of pop songs - focused on dreams,stars, and how everyone is looking for love*.

The exceptional song,  Hurwitz's favorite, is "Audition," a hint of what could have lifted this movie from pleasant homage to be a stronger, more "revolutionary" updating of the tradition.   Hurwitz cites Emma Stone's live - in - studio performance for why he loves it, as the song is specific to the character and the situation in the way he consciously avoided elsewhere (see his interview with Lambe).  "Mia's" future career is on the line when she is asked to simply "tell us a story."  Unsure what to say, she lights up when she begins to sing her aunt's story of an impulsive leap into the Seine in winter, and she grows in confidence as she adds to the story.

Chazelle missed an opportunity to create a musical scene even stronger than "Audition" when Seb, flying in from out of town, surprises Mia with dinner by candlelight.  It starts as a romantic, happy occasion, but dissolves into rancor over Mia's complaint that Seb is away so much, and his protest (totally justified, I think) that he has been away providing for her.  This scene is the dramatic heart of the movie, and, if Chazelle, Hurwitz et. al. had reached beyond the MGM tradition to what has developed on Broadway in Sondheim and in The Last Five Years,  this, too, could have been a musical number to integrate the musical style with the dramatic story.

Still, it's clear that the creators of this movie and their stars love what they're doing, They have fun.  There's no other excuse to build a song-and-dance number for Mia and her roommates' preparations to party.  No one could expect Gosling and Stone to measure up to Astaire or Charisse in their dancing, but they move with spirit, precision, and apparent ease, while the camera does most of the dancing for them - swirling around from above, or taking the dancers in silhouette across a starry sky.  The dramatic scenes are as real as they can be, even when Stone plays her character playing another character for an audition: it's a remarkable demonstration of the actor's craft.

Besides, the two characters are so appealing that we want their romance to succeed. For the same reason, we want the movie to succeed.

And so it does.

*(Stephen Sondheim, meticulous tailor of songs to situations, explains how rock 'n' roll's displacement of show tunes from the top 40 freed Broadway composers of the pressure to write "hits".  See my article about his conversation with pianist Marian MacPartland.) 

Source

Lambe, Stacy. "Exclusive: La La Land Composer on How Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone Influenced the Award-Winning Music."  ET Online.  December 12, 2016.

Rejoice in the Lamb, Christopher Smart's Cat, and My Dog

Christmas Eve, finding no script at the lectern where I stood to lead the Prayers of the People, I improvised to fill the blank in the Prayer Book's petition, "I ask your thanksgiving for ___."   For my dog Mia came to mind before I resorted to phrases more appropriate to the occasion.

That first thought shows how my personal faith was shaped by composer Benjamin Britten's choral cantata Rejoice in the Lamb (1943), setting portions from Christopher Smart's book-length poem Jubilate Agno (ca. 1760).  I first heard it at age 16, when I was emerging from scornful teenage atheism.  Through decades of Bible study, theology books, services and sermons, my inner principle for discerning among doctrines, unconscious before now, has always been, "Does it go with Smart?"

My favorite portion begins:

For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.

Britten gives these lines to a boy soprano, the voice written to sound in rapt wonderment over the organ's impression of a cat's capricious movements, darting about, stretching, and circling a string of rapid notes "seven times round".

Smart begins every line the same way, purposefully invoking Biblical poetry. About Jeoffry, he continues:

For he knows that God is his Saviour.
For God has blessed him in the variety of his movements.

So Smart suggests by these lines, and others that follow, that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are present and active in all of creation, and that salvation can happen apart from Creeds or Sacraments of the Church. In my evangelical phase, I'd have derided that as borderline pantheism, or "sloppy agape"; but my bedrock experience told me that Smart is right, and all the judgmental doctrines I'd accepted from teen Bible studies smashed to pieces on Smart's view.  Yes, he was put away for religious mania, calling to people in the street to kneel in prayer with him, but, as Dr. Johnson remarked, "I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as anyone else" (quoted in Karina Williamson, "Christopher Smart," at PoetryFoundation.org).

Now, on the matter of God and pets, I find little in scripture.  Cats don't turn up in the Bible, to my knowledge, aside from some lions and tigers.  Dogs, when I find them, skulk around unpleasant things -- Jezebel's gruesome death, prophecies of doom, and Jesus's harsh response to the Samaritan woman (but see my reflection Jesus and Dogs).

C. S. Lewis once responded seriously to the question, "Do our pets go to Heaven?"  It's been thirty-five years since I read his essays in God in the Dock, but I recall the gist of his answer as, "I can't say for sure, but I cannot imagine a Heaven without them." Amen.

Writing these thoughts in bed on Christmas morning, Mia beside me asleep, lightly kicking me with her back paws in pursuit of some dream squirrel, I re-read Smart's line, "For there is nothing sweeter than [Jeoffry's] peace when at rest."  I appropriate Smart's feline thanksgiving for my dog Mia, pictured in many moods at left:  "For I am possessed of a cat, surpassing in beauty from whom I take occasion to bless Almighty God."

You may be interested in my earlier reflections connecting dog with God: Blessing of the Animals (Oct. 11, 2014), and, Dogs are Poetry (January 4, 2010).

Forward Day by Day: Gospel for Educators

[image:  The parable of laborers in the vineyard, from a book published by early blogger Desiderius Erasmus, 1536] 

Following the daily scripture readings in the Book of Common Prayer, I read commentary from the quarterly booklet Forward Day By Day.  Written by Richelle Thompson, managing editor of Forward, the short meditations for November were particularly well-crafted, and sometimes seemed to be aimed directly at this Middle School teacher.

Here are highlights that might be collectively called A Gospel for Educators: The Bible on...

 
...grading:  Thompson writes, "Even as a child I felt badly for the good son" whose prodigal brother seems to get the attention.  Considering his story along with the parable of the vineyard laborers who receive the same wage whether they worked ten hours or one, teaches Thompson "that our idea of fair is perhaps not God's."  Instead, she concludes, "The question is not whether I deserve more than another, but whether I receive what I need."   (reading of 11/10)   When a colleague mocked the coach who gave everyone a trophy, and, by extension, any teacher whose kids get mostly A's, I should have reminded him that "trophy" comes from Greek for "nourishment".  A school where most kids are starved, or losers, isn't a school where I'd want to teach. I tell my kids they all earn credit (from Latin, trust) for completing their work on time, the best they can do, however many drafts that may take; grades (from Latin, step) that place one student's work above another's are of value to gatekeepers only.

...teen angst:  "Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness" (James 1.19-20).  James wrote to ancient churches, but Thompson applies the lesson to those dealing with "the whiplash emotions of teens," too.  We must listen well before we react to our "challenging, independent and precious teens," for their sake, and for the sake of our own spiritual growth. (reading of 11/11).

... developmental psychology:  Paul writes, "Like a master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it" (1 Corinthians 3.10).  Thompson had always focused on Jesus as the right foundation, but this time followed Paul's thought to its conclusion, where he pictures others building on the foundation with "gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw," each life like "a giant parfait, with different layers being built by and with different people."  This reminds her "that our work is part of something bigger, our ministry a piece of the whole."  (reading of 11/22)  For this middle school teacher, it's a reminder that little Johnny may not "get" what his classmates all seem to understand; if I only prepare the foundation for him to get it in a later grade level, I've done well, and he's done well.

... looking for potential in the difficult student:  Zacchaeus the tax collector, collaborating with the Roman oppressors and cheating his neighbors, is doing well for himself at the time Jesus enters Jerusalem, but, "Something inside of Zacchaeus makes him want more (the name Zacchaeus, after all, means pure)."  He climbs the tree, sees Jesus, takes the hint to invite the rabbi to dinner, donates half his wealth to the poor, and pays back fourfold what he stole.  "Meanwhile," Thompson imagines, "the neighborhood grumbles about Jesus' choice for dinner companion."  She adds this prayer: Lord, help us be more like Zacchaeus, curious and earnest, and keep us from being quick - to - judge and slow to see you in every face and every place.  Amen.  (reading of 11/23)

... looking for potential in the difficult student, part II:  Taking her cue from Luke 19:40, "the stones themselves would shout out," Thompson observes, "Stones play a starring role in some of the biggest stories of the Bible."  Examples include Moses' stone tablets, the tribes' stone altar at the Jordan, the cornerstone that the builders rejected, Peter "the rock," the "first stone" that nobody dared to cast at the woman, and the stone rolled away from Jesus' tomb.   In Luke, Jesus tells us "that what is hard can be made flesh, what is mute can cry out, and what is inanimate can become life."  Thompson asks, "If Jesus can do that with stones, what can he do with us?"  I only add, what, then, can we do with the hard, mute, listless kids who choose the back row in our classrooms?  Thompson ends with Ezekiel 36.26: "I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."  (reading of 11/25)

... accepting help:  Thompson turns around the familiar line from Psalm 102:1, "hide not your face from me in the day of my trouble."  We're the ones taught to hide our faces in times of trouble, to "pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps."  Thompson dismisses the bootstraps line as nonsense, giving Jesus' alternative to it:  "When we stop hiding our faces from the Lord in times of trouble, we can begin to embrace the weak as strong, the poor as mighty, and God as constant companion."  (reading of 11/18)

... teaching poetry:  Responding to a psalm about God's "holy mountain" from her Appalachian background, Thompson points us to great lines of poetry from scripture:

So many of the psalms use nature to describe our relationship with God - and God's relationship with us.  Listen to the poetry:   Mountains skip like rams and hills like young sheep (Psalm 114); rivers clap their hands, and hills ring out with joy (Psalm 98); the Lord makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us to still waters (Psalm 23).  Scripture seems to want us to feel the mountains in our blood, the wave of grain at our fingertips, the rush of an ocean's wave in our hearts.  God the creator of all invites us to be one with nature, to be faithful stewards of it, so that we might enter the gates of Zion from atop the holy mountain. (reading of 11/12) 

Rough Waters: A View from the Nave

The central part of the church, where worshipers face altar, clergy and choir, is called the "nave" for a reason:  related to the word "navy," the name describes the room's traditional ship-like shape, and implies that we are on a journey together.  The metaphor calls to mind the Gospel story of the apostles in a boat on a stormy lake, freaking out until Jesus calms the waters.

It's a good metaphor for the way I've felt since I woke up around 2:30 this morning, as if waters are shifting around me and I'm insufficient to deal with it all.  Just a quick list of things that worry me as this day begins:  Mom's fretting about a move she initiated that now appears to her my scheme to put her away; anxiety that I won't have thought through all the ins and outs of staging the next scene in the middle school musical before today's rehearsal; guilt that I succumbed to plates full of artichoke dip and sweets at a reception yesterday, gateway to devouring gift cookies before bed -- and that I'm up three pounds since yesterday at this time; shame to discover that I forgot to pay my credit card bill last month and so have a whopping balance now; disappointment that every other cabinet choice seems to be ones least likely to teach our Adolescent-in-Chief anything that he doesn't think that he already knows; cold weather; sore throat; and, to wrap it up, dread that a social visit to Mom planned for this evening will turn out to be a futile confrontation.

Okay, rough waters, Jesus asleep in the stern:  Thank you to Forward Day by Day for reminding me of this metaphor this morning.  I'll do what I can and have faith in Jesus for what I can't fix.

Framing Memories of Ed Calhoun

Even with reflections from the reception hall's chandeliers, this photograph is striking.  Edwin "Ed" Calhoun took the photo around twenty years ago at the finish line to the Peachtree Road Race, capturing this moment when a Marine in full gear completed a run that he'd dedicated to fallen comrades.

At a memorial service in the beautiful mountain chapel at Big Canoe, GA, the family's three heartfelt, lovingly crafted tributes to Ed, the "fun uncle" and father, dwelt on his voracious appetite for life as his motivation for capturing so much life on film, with his penchant for "framing" moments.

I've known him as jovial host to me and adoring spouse to the lady who brought me into the Walker School north of Atlanta. (Read my tribute to Nancy Calhoun, delivered at the time of her retirement.)  Ed's family agreed: while he doted on family, cultivated his friends, and made friends of strangers, his love for wife Nancy was his core, from age 16 on.  The preacher took the title of his tribute from what Ed said to Nancy after a rough patch in their lives together: "Thank you for not giving up on me."  And his family remembered Ed's answer whenever someone asked how long he had been married to Nancy:  "Not long enough."

Scott Johnson's Going Somewhere

Over chords on acoustic piano, songwriter / harmonica virtuoso Scott Albert Johnson sings as a young man looking up at stars in "a dark and ghostly screen," while his companion is "looking at the spaces in between" (from "Fragments").  Other numbers on his album Going Somewhere do drive hard to get somewhere fast -- the title song most of all -- but the lyrics focus on those "spaces in between," where characters long for connection.

When Johnson pivoted from his cosmopolitan post-Harvard life back to his Mississippi roots, he drafted a song on a napkin in an airport bar: "If I Only Knew the Words."  Ten years of re-writes later, it's eloquent about what's inexpressible in a relationship, punctuated by expressive harmonica solos.

Other songs dig into characters who feel alienated.  "Jailbird" is a rip-roaring rockabilly song for a man 30 years into his sentence, regretful but upbeat. In a cover of Peter Gabriel's "I Don't Remember," Johnson shifts his voice into high gear, an octave above his main vocal line, to intensify a political prisoner's protest that he's "got no memory of anything / absolutely anything at all."  Johnson's meditation on what it means for an artificial intelligence to be "Simply Human" is reinforced by a synthetic echo of Johnson's voice that overtakes the human sound even while the harmonica solo grows increasingly spirited: an aural image of the ghost in the machine.

Johnson rounds out the set with numbers that inspire foot-stomping and dancing (I've seen both at a Scott Johnson concert).  There's a cover of "Haunt My Dreams" by Brett Winston; Johnson's paean to unbridled appetite with a catchy hook, "Gimme - gimme, gimme - gimme - gimme all!"; and "A Bigger Gun," a honky-tonk romp with a killer piano solo and a political edge.

When I first knew Scott Johnson, he was playing guitar and learning piano; but when he went pro, Johnson chose the perfect instrument.  The harmonica fits in his pocket; it doesn't present any competition except from Stevie Wonder and that recluse with the Nobel; and it's ideally suited for his theme of longing for connection.  We hear a harmonica and think either of a musician at a backwoods juke joint playing on the bandstand apart from the roiling crowd, or one at a campfire, playing in the wilderness to the night sky.

Johnson's harmonica provides my favorite moment of the CD, at the tail end of "Jailbird." After the song's clever tag line and a sly melodic quote from a Beatles tune, Johnson adds a whimsical coda on harmonica.  What instrument can sound at once so lonely and so hopeful?

(See my reflection on Johnson's earlier recording Umbrella Man.)

Thanksgiving Ride

I drove back to Mississippi to celebrate Jason's recent birthday, his 39th, with a 39-mile bike ride.  We started riding when he was in 8th grade and I was his teacher.  Seven years later, a month before my 39th birthday, he helped drive my furniture in a rented truck to Georgia, as I relocated close to where my family lived - Mom, Dad, brother Todd and his wife and children, sister Kim and her husband, Aunt Harriet and my grandmother Mamaw.

This week, the drive on I-20 for Thanksgiving triggered memories of making that same trip during my 17 years in Mississippi.  Gone are Dad, Aunt Harriet, Mamaw; Todd and his family moved years ago to south Georgia. It's just me and Mom, with Kim and her husband far enough south of Atlanta to be isolated.

Here's the view on Thanksgiving Day, 4/5 of the way around the Ross Barnett Reservoir on bike, a ride I used to do with Jason in the early 1990s.  I remember riding it alone one Sunday morning: faster than now, I could finish in time to shower, eat, and make choir practice.

No need to belabor the metaphors of life's cycles and life's road. For where I've been, for what -- and whom -- I've still got, I'm giving thanks.