My childhood friend Lance Miller sent me this today via Facebook:
I thought about you the other day. I visited the Reagan Library in Simi Valley last week and I saw a jar of jelly beans. I was reminded of 6th grade when you imitated Reagan by offering jelly beans to all of us. You probably don't remember.
I used to purchase soundtracks pretty regularly. I own an odd and incoherent mix. It is an area of my collection which needs beefing up.
My most recent soundtrack purchase was the Ken Burns documentary The West. I've never seen the film, but I purchased the cd during my Western Oklahoma trip in 2007 and listen to it when I'm traveling in the West.
The only other one of these albums with a story is the Mr. Holland's Opus. I saw that film with Jason Kirksey and we left the theatre and went to the cd story in the mall to buy the cd. The only time I ever did that.
Oh, the Talented Mr. Ripley soundtrack is because at the time I didn't own any jazz and thought that would be a way to start.
John Updike wrote:
The self's responsibility . . . is to achieve rapport if not rapture with the giant, cosmic other: to appreciate, let's say, the walk back from the mailbox."
From the local NBC affiliate:
More than 60 campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club and left to wonder if their race was the reason.
"I heard this lady, she was like, 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?' She's like, 'I'm scared they might do something to my child,'" said camper Dymire Baylor.
The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers' first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.
"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."
The next day the club told the camp director that the camp's membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.
"I said, 'The parents don't want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,'" camp director Aetha Wright said.
Campers remain unsure why they're no longer welcome.
"They just kicked us out. And we were about to go. Had our swim things and everything," said camper Simer Burwell.
The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded.
"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.
While the parents await an apology, the camp is scrambling to find a new place for the kids to beat the summer heat.
Can you believe the portion I bolded?
But we will argue that Kern is harming Oklahoma’s economic development efforts and that her credibility as a legislator is so eroded that even her home district constituents must be looking at her performance askance. . . . [Read more, because there are many choice tidbits]
McNamara living to age 93 is a strange thing. The man was the architect of so much evil, though I believe he also did some good, particularly in the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was interesting listening to his mea culpa's over the last two decades, and important for the United State to hear, though I do not think that he was heard by the people that needed to hear him. And, so, in the long run, his legacy is not the mea culpas but the imperial policies that he helped to craft.
Now this is how the internet can be so amazing. Now the entire surviving manuscript of the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest surviving bound copy of the Bible, is on-line where anyone can study it. Look at it here.
That surprised me. Read the interesting report on our population at the Oklahoma Policy Institute's blog.
''Profit is useful if it serves as a means toward an end,'' he wrote. ''Once profit becomes the exclusive goal, if it is produced by improper means and without the common good as its ultimate end, it risks destroying wealth and creating poverty.''
from his new encyclical
By Bob Herbert in the NYTimes:
Robert McNamara, Lyndon Johnson’s icy-veined, cold-visaged and rigidly intellectual point man for a war that sent thousands upon thousands of people (most of them young) to their utterly pointless deaths, has died at the ripe old age of 93.
To Build a Swing
by Hafiz
You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare--
Don't mix them!
You have all the genius
To build a swing in your backyard
For God.
That sounds
Like a hell of a lot more fun.
Let's start laughing, drawing blueprints,
Gathering our talented friends.
I will help you
With my divine lyre and drum.
Hafiz
Will sing a thousand words
You can take into your hands,
Like golden saws,
Silver hammers,
Polished teakwood,
Strong silk rope.
You carry all the ingredients
To turn your existence into joy,
Mix them, mix
Them!
When I Am Weak, Then I Am Strong
II Corinthians 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13
by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones
Cathedral of Hope – Oklahoma City
5 July 2009
One of the great characters in our literature is King Lear, as conceived by William Shakespeare in his great tragi-comic play.
Lear decides he wants to retire from ruling and hand his kingdom over to his daughters. He wants them to demonstrate their love and reverence for him, and thus a trap is set. His daughter Cordelia, who really does love her father, refuses to faun over him. But her two sisters, Goneril and Regan, who do not love their father but who will sacrifice anything to their own personal ambitions, are willing to say and do anything to win their father's prize. And so Lear banishes Cordelia and divides his kingdom between Goneril and Regan. What follows is madness and tragedy.
One of the significant characters in King Lear appears only briefly on stage. That is the Fool, the court jester. The Fool has an esteemed place within our culture. Jesters, fools, and clowns played important roles in European courts, where free speech was limited. Often they could openly criticize the monarch through the use of humour, satire, and irony. The idea was that the fool was "touched" in some way. Meaning they were a little crazy, a little mad. Tradition said it was because they were touched by God. But sometimes the fool may have been the only sane person, as he is presented in Shakespeare's King Lear.
The Fool realizes Lear's mistake in surrendering his kingdom to Goneril and Regan and banishing Cordelia. He tries to warn the King, who is too blinded by his stubbornness and pride to grasp what he is being told. The Fool bemoans his situation of knowing the truth and not being heard,
I had rather be any
kind o' thing than a fool
he says.
Almost immediately after that utterance Goneril reappears to begin what will become her reign of terror against her father. Upon her appearance the Fool says to the King,
I am better than thou art now; I am a fool,
thou art nothing.
The popular religious writer Frederick Buechner has written on the religious significance of this play and in particular the character of the Fool. Citing St. Paul in the first letter to the church at Corinth, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise," Buechner then writes of Shakespeare's King Lear:
Not only are the foolish wise in his play and the wise foolish, just as the weak are strong in it and the strong weak, but what seems to be nothing [Cordelia's love] . . . turns out to be something of surpassing importance . . . . It is almost possible to think of Shakespeare as having written the entire play as a gloss on St. Paul, adding to it such other paradoxes of his own, as that it is the sane who are mad and the mad sane, just as it is also the blind who see and the seeing who are blind.
What is madness and what is sanity? What is rational and what is irrational? What is true love and what is merely dissembling speech and action? What is foolish and what is truth?
These questions can be interestingly relevant for us. For example, this week some of our state legislators engaged in a little political theatre with their "Proclamation of Morality." They used a handful of quotes from the Founding Fathers in order to support their idea of a Christian evangelical nation. At best these quotes are taken out of context, and some of them, research has demonstrated, do not appear anywhere in the known writings of the person to which they are attributed. To distort history in the service of a "Proclamation of Morality" is something one could expect from a Shakespearean villain, or comedian.
I think you have to love irony if you are going to live in the State of Oklahoma, because our public life is filled with it.
Paul himself engages in some of it here in our lectionary text from II Corinthians, part of what scholars call "the fool's speech."
Paul is boasting. And in the process he is making a fool of himself. It's intentional. He wants the Corinthinas to think he's a fool. He wants them to laugh and mock him.
You see, Paul has been deeply hurt by his critics in Corinth, these "super-apostles" who have been boasting of their knowledge and experience and greater ability. Compared with them, he appears weak and cowardly. Some of Paul's rhetoric in chapters ten to thirteen is troubling. He has been so deeply hurt that in places he lashes out at the Corinthians and even demonizes his opponents, calling them "false apostles" and comparing them to Satan.
His pain, disappointment, and anger are evident, but he tries to cover them up by using humour to break the tension. That's an old tried and true method that I'm sure many of you use, I know I sure do.
And so the humour Paul uses is what is called "fool's speech." Paul decides to go along with his critics--he too is going to boast. But the kind of boasting he is doing is intentionally exaggerating and playing it over-the-top. In 11:23:
Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman—I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters . . .
And he keeps going on.
You see, Paul's playing a character. He's kind of like Ralph Cramden, the great Jackie Gleason character in the Honeymooners. Ralph, you'll remember, was so poor that there weren't curtains on the kitchen window. Yet Ralph had such an oversized sense of entitlement and his own glory that he'd puff out his chest and bellow. Imagine Ralph Cramden reading this section of II Corinthians and you get the kind of humour that Paul was using. And in another way it is like Ralph, in that Paul too is using the boasting to cover up his own hurt and insecurities.
Did you notice something else about that list of boasts? They aren't the sorts of things that one would normally boast about. Oh, the caught up into Paradise might be, but the stoning, beatings, shipwrecks, etc. aren't the sorts of things anyone but a masochist would boast about. In fact, if Paul's opponents are boasting about their courage, their strength, their brilliance, then Paul boasting about his weakness and suffering will only reinforce his opponents, right?
For example, in chapter 11, verses 32 and 33 he tells the story of his escape from Damascus, being let over the wall to escape his pursuers. Now, when I was told this story as a kid in Sunday school it was oddly enough told as a story of bravery and cunning. But that is exactly the opposite of what Paul means by using it here. Paul knows that the audience hearing this story will think that he was a coward. Calvin Roetzel, in his commentary, writes, "Thus, we might imagine that the image of the runaway Paul sharpens the irony of the contrast with the 'braggart warrior.'"
In boasting about things that people would not normally boast about, Paul's goal is to get the Corinthians to laugh and mock to the point that they realize that boasting itself is a ridiculous activity and no sign of apostleship.
And then Paul makes another rhetorical turn,
So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
Paul acted like a fool to expose the Corinthians own foolishness. But just like the Fool in King Lear, Paul's "foolishness" is really the truth. It is so often the clown who ends up saying the really profound thing. Think Gracie Allen this time. Her innocent foolishness initially deceives the audience, who ultimately recognize the wisdom she embodies.
Paul is saying that if you really live like Jesus, then people will think you are a fool. Why, because Jesus' power was revealed on the cross, in giving of himself for others. That is why Paul lists all those moments of suffering on behalf of the gospel, because it is those which bring him into solidarity with Jesus. The "power of Christ" dwells in him precisely because of his weakness.
This idea of the "Fool for Christ" has been taken to its extreme in the Russian Orthodox Church where a number of saints have earned the title "Fool for Christ" or yurodivi in Russian. In the Russian Orthodox Church yurodivies hold an esteemed place. Wikipedia describes the role thus:
The yurodivy is a Holy Fool, one who acts intentionally foolish in the eyes of men. He or she often goes around half-naked, is homeless, speaks in riddles, is believed to be clairvoyant and a prophet, and may occasionally be disruptive and challenging to the point of seeming immorality (though always to make a point).
The most famous of the yurodivies is St. Basil. Basil was born around the year 1468 to serfs, the lowest social class in Czarist Russia. At the age of sixteen Basil became an ascetic. He would go around naked, weighed down with chains. Many miracles and prophecies are reported of him, including sparing Moscow from invasion and stopping a disastrous fire in the city of Novgorod. He was known to directly challenge the czar, who was none other than Ivan the Terrible, someone not known for enduring criticism. The Czar is supposed to have recognized that Basil, because of his foolishness in the eyes of humankind, was, in fact, a holy man. And so Ivan would not defy Basil. When Basil died at 88 years of age, the Czar himself was one of the pall bearers. And today that beautiful church which sits in Moscow's Red Square, one of the most recognizable buildings in the world, commemorates St. Basil, this fool-for-Christ.
But there are less extreme examples. This week David Disbrow and I were at the DBA annual pool party (which seems to always provide a sermon illustration). We got into a conversation with one of the other members about the current economic crisis. He was upset about the bailouts of companies and the use of "his money" for those who had been greedy. I pointed out that this individualistic attitude is precisely what led to the economic crisis to begin with and even though none of us might like the bailouts, we have to change our understanding and get away from thinking individualistically about what is ours and instead think about community and society and that we all rise and fall together. When I said that the highest expression of humanity was to give of yourself on behalf of others, particularly others who did not deserve it, he looked at me like I was a fool.
For indeed I am, because if we live as Jesus has called us to live, then we live in a such a way that often we will look foolish to others. But there is a deep theological reason for why we must live differently—the world is messed up! And only by living radically differently can we return to God's will for creation.
In tonight's Gospel Jesus sends out his followers in pairs in order to evangelize throughout Galilee. He tells them to "take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics."
The historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan transformed my thinking of the early Jesus movement because of his treatment of this very passage. He writes that because they take nothing with them, these disciples must start new every morning, by connecting intimately with people. These disciples are not sent out to cities, to large arenas, but are sent to homes. To peasant homes most likely. He writes, "They share a miracle and a Kingdom, and they receive in return a table and a house." Their very survival rests upon the hospitality of the people they meet. Therefore they must meet the peasant they encounter not as a braggart or glory-seeker, but with the humility that comes from begging for one's meal and a roof over one's head.
The early Jesus movement rejected all forms of status and instead offered a common table where everyone could come together as equals.
And this is made all the more poignant here in Mark 6 where the chapter opens with Nazareth dismissing Jesus because he is the bastard. No hospitality has been afforded Jesus, but he does not become bitter, instead he offers in return for his suffering a radical hospitality.
I'm sure people thought that he and his followers were fools. But if they paid enough attention, they soon realized that these were no fools. These folk had a truth and power that others only dreamed of.
True foolishness would be to accept this world the way it is. God has something better in store. May we be like St. Paul then and boast all the more gladly in our weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in us; for whenever we are weak, then we are strong.
Okay, I posted some Grand Rapids photos in the travel photo album to the left. I didn't include anything from Synod, just from my walks around town.
I read this D. H. Lawrence poem the other day and thought it was magnificent, particularly the closing stanzas:
Tortoise Shout
by D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
I thought he was dumb,
I said he was dumb,
Yet I've heard him cry.
First faint scream,
Out of life's unfathomable dawn,
Far off, so far, like a madness, under the horizon's dawning rim,
Far, far off, far scream.
Tortoise in extremis.
Why were we crucified into sex?
Why were we not left rounded off, and finished in ourselves,
As we began,
As he certainly began, so perfectly alone?
A far, was-it-audible scream,
Or did it sound on the plasm direct?
Worse than the cry of the new-born,
A scream,
A yell,
A shout,
A pæan,
A death-agony,
A birth-cry,
A submission,
All tiny, tiny, far away, reptile under the first dawn.
War-cry, triumph, acute-delight, death-scream reptilian,
Why was the veil torn?
The silken shriek of the soul's torn membrane?
The male soul's membrane
Torn with a shriek half music, half horror.
Crucifixion.
Male tortoise, cleaving behind the hovel-wall of that dense female,
Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching out of the shell
In tortoise-nakedness,
Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, spread-eagle over her house-roof,
And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved beneath her walls,
Reaching and gripping tense, more reaching anguish in uttermost tension
Till suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh!
Opening its clenched face from his outstretched neck
And giving that fragile yell, that scream,
Super-audible,
From his pink, cleft, old-man's mouth,
Giving up the ghost,
Or screaming in Pentecost, receiving the ghost.
His scream, and his moment's subsidence,
The moment of eternal silence,
Yet unreleased, and after the moment, the sudden, startling jerk of coition, and at once
The inexpressible faint yell —
And so on, till the last plasm of my body was melted back
To the primeval rudiments of life, and the secret.
So he tups, and screams
Time after time that frail, torn scream
After each jerk, the longish interval,
The tortoise eternity,
Agelong, reptilian persistence,
Heart-throb, slow heart-throb, persistent for the next spasm.
I remember, when I was a boy,
I heard the scream of a frog, which was caught with his foot in the mouth of an up-starting snake;
I remember when I first heard bull-frogs break into sound in the spring;
I remember hearing a wild goose out of the throat of night
Cry loudly, beyond the lake of waters;
I remember the first time, out of a bush in the darkness, a nightingale's piercing cries and gurgles startled the depths of my soul;
I remember the scream of a rabbit as I went through a wood at midnight;
I remember the heifer in her heat, blorting and blorting through the hours, persistent and irrepressible;
I remember my first terror hearing the howl of weird, amorous cats;
I remember the scream of a terrified, injured horse, the sheet-lightning
And running away from the sound of a woman in labor, something like an owl whooing,
And listening inwardly to the first bleat of a lamb,
The first wail of an infant,
And my mother singing to herself,
And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to death,
The first elements of foreign speech
On wild dark lips.
And more than all these,
And less than all these,
This last,
Strange, faint coition yell
Of the male tortoise at extremity,
Tiny from under the very edge of the farthest far-off horizon of life.
The cross,
The wheel on which our silence first is broken,
Sex, which breaks up our integrity, our single inviolability, our deep silence
Tearing a cry from us.
Sex, which breaks us into voice, sets us calling across the deeps, calling, calling for the complement,
Singing, and calling, and singing again, being answered, having found.
Torn, to become whole again, after long seeking for what is lost,
The same cry from the tortoise as from Christ, the Osiris-cry of abandonment,
That which is whole, torn asunder,
That which is in part, finding its whole again throughout the universe.
Various Artists - Soundtracks: The Talented Mr. Ripley: Music from the Motion Picture Score
John Williams: Schindler's List: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Various Artists: Mr. Holland's Opus: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Trevor Jones: The Last Of The Mohicans: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
John Williams: Jurassic Park: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Various Artists: I Am Sam - Music From and Inspired By the Motion Picture
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