Reading Isn't Fundamentalist

I note this week two studies. The first, as reported by AP writer Anick Jesdanum, shows, "young adults are the heaviest users of public libraries despite the ease with which they can access a wealth of information over the Internet from the comfort of their homes."

The second, as displayed in "unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters," by Kinnaman and Lyons, shows, "40 percent of Americans aged between sixteen and twenty-nine are outside Christianity and that, what's more, they have an overwhelming negative perception of it: 87% find it judgmental; 85% hypocritical; 78% old fashioned; 70% insensitive to others."

Any connection between well-read youth and a disinclination towards narrow-minded thinking? It tends to confirm what I've thought true over the past half-decade of American cultural struggle; that the struggle within our Episcopal Church is primarily generational; lines drawn amongst party factions are split between members born in the 1930's-'40's, and those born in the 50's; the former stubbornly insisting upon a facade of a familial normalcy and institutional Christendom despite all evidence to the contrary of the conflicting realities that lie beneath; confronted by the latter's unwillingness to act as if such certainty ever existed.

Was it in Fist Full of Dollars that Clint Eastwood built a store-front town, and called it Hell, to fool outlaws bent on revenge? I note this week a scene, straight out of such Westerns, where a former Episcopal bishop, with a marked resemblance to Sidney Greenstreet, displaying a Jack Elam-attitude, bursts into an Episcopal church, bodyguards at his side, to terrorize the inhabitants, kill the sheriff or fire a priest, whose only crimes were duty and loyalty. Maybe if the parishioners had advance warning the Bishop was coming, they could've constructed a movie set church, to likewise divert Bishop Greenstreet-Elam, when he rode into town, bent on mayhem, that dusty Sunday morning.

Jesdanun entitled his article, "Libraries still relevant." I note this week when Tony Blair converted to Roman Catholicism, it created neither the scandal nor the soul searching such a move certainly would have as late as the 1940's in Britain. This time around, nobody much cared; it wasn't particularly relevant to anyone.

Stretching the Christmas holiday, for all it's worth, into two weeks away from the office, and although lying outside the supposed aged demographic of usual users, I proved Jesdanum otherwise correct, on library relevance, spending hours yesterday at the University and public libraries, arriving home with a stack of books so heavy, it took two trips from the car to carry them all in.

Atop prominent positions in the tall stack were tales of occupied France and its aftermath: The Enigma of Admiral Darlan, They Speak for a Nation - Letters from France, published in 1941, and The Trial of Marshal Petain, reflecting a continued personal interest upon the relevance of how people act, ethically or not, under serious pressure, when confronted by life-and-death realities.

Another pile represents voices from the oppressor nation, in this case, particularly, Hjalmar Schacht. In the quaintly titled "Confessions of the Old Wizard" I'm assuming before I read it, that Schact, from his peripheral position, as an economist and banker, might purport to offer self-justifying insight into how those not in charge, yet necessary to the operation (bureaucrats like myself), might choose either to promote efficiency, or throw a cog into the machine, or do both, at the same time.

Similarly to how the generation born after 1980 inspires hope for the future through their transcendence of the prejudices that came before, the last set of books are borne of a desire to create something new - as reflected in Louis Diat's French Cooking for Americans, not perhaps uncoincidentally published in 1946, the same year France arose with fresh hope, freed from the Occupation. Maybe, as the young grow to supersede the faults of the old, it's time to reinvent and improve myself, and in doing so, contribute to the preservation of the gentle arts of humanity, saluting things of the spirit that are eternally relevant; that stand, intrinsically, indeed, whimsically and charmingly, against the ideologies of oppressors and their inevitably obsolete fundamentalism, no matter the stripe. It was not for nothing, Goering muttered, 'whenever anyone mentions culture, I grab my gun.'

Whereas you must always begin with some technical grounding, all great creative efforts, need rely on instinct. I recall guitarist Carlos Santana saying he thought of brushing his daughter's hair while he played Perhaps that ephemerel touch of grace was and is present for Fred Astaire when he danced, Groucho when he quipped, and Ken Griffey, Jr., when he swings.

Annie Lamott's description of driving in a rainstorm and peering through a tiny spot in the windshield to see a little bit of the road ahead is apt in this way. In his eulogy for the late Oscar Peterson, Nat Hentoff alludes to it by writing, "Only when it was absolutely necessary, would he go on stage before a concert to check out the piano, because doing so might lead to preconditioned ideas, and they can in turn interfere with the creative process so essential to a creative jazz concert."

In all this half-century of life, I've only felt 'it' a tantalizingly few times. That day on the tennis court when, for one half-hour, I practiced serves that were perfect. Or the flowing stream-of-consciousness that fuelled a writing session which may have been as remotely close to the genius of Kerouac and Hunter Thompson I'll ever approach. When there is no pre-conditioned intransigence to defend, and all you have to start forging ahead is the briefest trace of an idea, then cooking, writing, indeed, living, transforms into a series of surprising adventures, full of unexpected possibilities, twists and turns, revelations and realizations. In their wake, lies, somehow, a mystical antidote to irrelevance.