Financial prospects for the firm of Busboys & Poets, at 14th and V, in this ecomony, do not bode well.
Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase, $15, captures only, nothing more, per Walter Benjamin, the "memory of a particular book on a particular day in a particular bookshop."
Forty-two years ago, likewise, the Colonial Plaza incident (forced return, the double-album, Wheels of Fire, $8; similar to an abrupt no-rolls exit from Ronnies, Rte. 50, the Congress Inn across the road, first Florida pit-stop, in the pool, spotting low-flying planes angling for a landing to the southeast, a gargantuan tropical spider crawling on an arm) salvages revelatory wisps --
-- toward that expressed by Ludwig Wittenstein, per Adam Phillips, "to clarify the world as he finds it, his stress on [clear-sighted] representations;" to "just that understanding which consists in seeing connections," wanting "to understand what is going on in his family as opposed to the child who takes refuge in a fantasy life."
When fantasy isn't accessible - if it were, it would self-negate - connections are few and far between.
New Gods 4 is the key to all the Infinity Crisis; a distant # 30 elaborates Trinity.
Kenny Shopsin says "the way I choose to function is to pick an arbitrary goal, become totally involved in it, pursue it with vigor. And what happens in that pursuit is your life." --did you catch this is also the Baby Steps therapy practiced by Dr. Leo Marvin?
Just when you think there's nothing left to conjoin, Timothy Ryback, delving into Hitler's Private Library, reconstructs Bishop Hudal's diplomacy "to fracture the Nazi movement from within, to leach it of its anti-semetic toxins, to infuse it with Christian beneficience," (though, the filter propounded is only the racial, not the religious, anti-semetism, which remains, loss-leader-like, to enflame upon).
What's left around which to construct? -neither arrogance, rebellion, commercialism nor ideology.
Greensboro Public, unlikely avatar of revolution, offers A World of Possibilities, while here, oppressed, headlines in the local rag bemoan, "we know the Bookmobile's on borrowed time and want very much to transition to a different kind of service."
Greensboro, Yes!, One City One Book, "Imagine All the People Reading One Book."
A bright May morning in your hometown. Glorious flowerbeds frame ordered boulevards.
The Bookmobile's here!'
Attired in a crisp blue uniform, peaked cap, sharp lines of fruit salad medals denoting Winter/Hurricane Season campaigns (Camille!), arrayed above the left pocket, Richard Deacon warbles, strict, and kind, street after street, "Get Your Book Here!"
So-oder-so.
One way or another.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Friday, December 26, 2008
Text of a Sermon Delivered Third Sunday in Advent 2008
Whenever I'm called to substitute-preach, I search online for the Episcopal Lectionary schedule - and the correct weekly readings upon which to base the sermon.
Once I've found what I'm seeking, just to make certain, I call the church to verify I'm at the right place.
This time I nailed it.
Except for the Old Testament.
And the New.
Other than those, I did find the right Psalm on my own.
Be that as it may, in the Gospel reading today, we see priests who also want to verify something -- in this case, not the Lectionary, but what this strange character - this John the Baptist, is all about.
Why?
The easy answer is that, per usual, throughout all the Gospels, whether it was John or Jesus, when the priests came a'callin' it was that they thought their authority was threatened and then, every time, without fail, they made plans to do something about it.
Can you imagine, this time, how angry they must have been - on account of folks, instead of seeking them out in their official capacity, in their robes of office, were heading down to the river to be baptized by a man, who as Mark reported last week in his Gospel, wore a camel skin suit and ate bugs.
Now, at this time in Israel, those uninterested in protecting their own self-interest, were holding out for a hero - someone who promised change, someone who kept the promise too (not unlike what featured in our recent Presidential campaign).
But, at the same time people seek change, they tend to keep their distance, and remain skeptical, as an in-built protection against being disappointed, hurt, again, and again, and again.
I was reading an article the other day about a woman who set out to follow every piece of advice from Oprah for one year.
When she embarked on this mission, she intended to prove people couldn't really change their lives by following Oprah - that it was all a come-on to sell books, diet fads, and such...
At year's end, instead, she ended believing what Oprah could do - if you were open to it - and that was introduce a certain honesty about an unsatisfactory situation, and then instill a willingness to change it, if you'll take the initiative.
In other words, a person can know themselves better if they discard their cynicism, confront their doubts, and then move beyond to make those positive changes.
In Scripture, we see the priests going out, like Oprah's doubter, to, as the Gospel says, "assess the authenticity" of this John the Baptist, this locust-eater garbed in animal skins, who's performing un-sanctioned baptisms.
Let's face it - are any of us sure, if we were seeking change, we'd be convinced it was for real upon first glance at John -- is this the person I'm supposed to entrust to change my life?
The other night, the Mrs. and I were watching a great holiday movie, Polar Express, the theme being there's this boy who wants to believe in Santa, but as he's growing up, he's becoming more and more skeptical about the whole thing --
Now, when I watched it, this time around, I noticed for example, in the town square at the North Pole where Santa hands out the first present, there were like a million elves there.
And I was thinking, if each elf took, maybe, 100 houses, and made presents just for those, then they might indeed be able to make all the Christmas presents in the world -- I got the calculator out - what about a million elves times X thousand, or ten thousand -- and I made these calculations the same way I do in the business world.
Even after I crunched those numbers satisfactorily, though, I still had nagging questions about the effectivness of Santa's overnight delivery service -- absolutely, postively? I mean we live on a dirt road where nobody will deliver overnight, anyway, and there's a lot more dirt roads in the world...
See, instead of learnng the same lesson the boy learned by the end of the movie, to simply believe, I was still being too practical about the whole thing.
Perhaps, as C.S. Lewis, once an atheist and skeptic, himself, wrote, if we just believe, plain and simple, we might end up, despite ourselves, surprised by joy.
To explain it another way, I can relate another experience along these lines I had where being too practical caused someone else not to believe.
A Miss Jones visited our homeless shelter from time to time. She wasn't actually homeless but living in a trailer. When she ran out of food, we'd take a trip to the supermarket to restock her shelves. For this, she was grateful and said many kind things about Christians and our ministry.
But Miss Jones also practiced a dangerous habit. Sometimes she would invite men, strangers, home, who, inevitably, after a few days, became abusive.
Then she would call and ask if I'd come over to toss them out.
Right.
Since evicting potentially dangerous felons from trailers wasn't specifically listed in the shelter job description, I'd suggest she call the police instead.
This disappointing advice turned her praise to scorn.
I certainly wasn't a John the Baptist to her anymore, pointing to Christ, and she told me all about it nothing spared.
Could I have done more? Maybe, probably - I don't know for sure - but I'll always feel guilty and hurt about the things she said.
In fact, it might have been her criticism that led, a week later, to doing something very uncharacteristic, and in violation of a very highly developed sense of self preservation and intolerance of pain, in others, but mostly myself, and that was to step between two arguing men, one of whom was holding a butcher knife, at the time.
I suppose I was trying to prove something - to Miss Jones, to myself, to others, maybe to God.
In John the Baptist's case, though, when he was challenged, you don't see false pride, or mock bravery, nor was it about proving something.
When he was challenged by the authorities, he said, plainly --
"No, I'm not the Messiah, or a Prophet, or anythng. I'm just a voice crying out in the wildnerness. I'm not the Light. I'm not even fit to tie the sandals of the Light. I'm only here to testify to the Light that's coming after."
It doesn't spell out how the priests reacted to John's reply. Some undoubtedly were relieved this potential threat to their authority admitted he wasn't the Messiah, and admitted even further, he wasn't much of anything at all, something we're not always prepared to accept about ourselves.
Maybe some of the priests were still nervous because he said, "You know it's not me but there is someone coming later that will rock your world."
There might even have been some people that day, quiet ones, dreamers, watching all this, who believed in John, sans skepticism, despite his appearance, and took away hope about the something exciting he said was coming after.
If we go back and read today's Old Testament passage from Isaiah, and accept it was written when the people of Israel were in exile in Babylon, so that, read in this way, it becomes about how to keep hope alive under very trying circumstances.
--that if you keep the faith, no matter what, then in God's time, broken hearts will be mended, ruined cities repaired, and the devastation of many generations healed.
In one translation, it reads there will be beauty for ashes -- and isn't that lovely in a resurrection-ish sort of way?
Today's readings are also not just about keeping hope alive - today's Psalm, 126, is about sustaining hope. This Psalm was written after the exiles came home to Jerusalem, which, indeed, fulfilled their initial hope -- but when they realized how much work it was going to be to actually repair the broken city, they became mighty discouraged. They lost hope it might ever be accomplished. And so what follows in Psalm 126 is a heartfelt plea to God for help.
Was the Israelites glass half full or half empty?
For Miss Jones, who I was speaking about earlier, there isn't even a glass to ponder - nor a dining room table, central heat, air conditioning, electricity, windows ... she might as well be in exile in Babylon since she lives far from anything with which we are familiar in our world.
Unlike the Israelites, she didn't go to God for help - she came up with her own survival plan.
Around mid-summer, she would take actions to conceive, and once she knew she was pregnant, she'd place an ad in the paper offering her unborn child for adoption to a family who'd take her in for the winter. Once Spring came, after giving birth, she'd return to the trailer.
I'm told she did this three times.
I was in the hospital room, one year, when she was in bed, the baby was in the basinet, and the adoptive parents were in the room ... hovering ... nervously... waiting to take the baby away.
For my part, it was extremely awkward, in the room that night, but for Miss Jones, it was simply another way she'd found to survive.
I've found, surprisingly, it's the same whenever there's a pregnant woman in a homeless shelter.
If you examine everything practically, then you think, you must think, this is a fine mess - how will she feed another child if she already has 3 or 4 or 5. Where will she live? How in the world can this work out?
But you find, sometimes, life isn't always about practicalities -- that when a woman gives birth in a shelter, it mystically transforms what's usually a dreary bleak place into a house of joy -- there's suddenly a Light, even in a shelter, like there was in a stable, that comes into the world, just like John the Baptist said it would.
I came across a marvelous passage in a novel the other day -
"When Tomas was born, he was very pre-mature. He weighed in at less than 3 lbs. I saw what I can only call a soul caught in that almost transparent body. I have never before been so close to such palpable evidence of the Spirit - Tomas - in his clear plastic womb, barely bigger than a hand."
To see a soul -- how cool is that?
There's one other tale out there that's my favorite Christmas story of all - it's Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - and in that story one of things you read is how much of Scrooge's meanness derives from his hatred of Fred, his nephew, because his sister died giving Fred life.
No matter what we may think of Miss Jones' survival strategy, or women who give birth in shelters, or the circumstances of Fred's birth, we know one thing for sure - at the end of the day there's a blessed child in the world created in God's image, soul intact, carrying unlimited potential.
When these babies cry, those born in shelters, or in stables lain in mangers, babies that are despised for the sins of their parents, or because they are poor, or feared because they pose a threat to the authorities, or because the circumstances of their births are not what we expect --
then their unlikely births and survival, against the odds, testify to an unquenchable spirit - a Holy Spirit - which bids us serve, by challenging us to hold fast to what is good, to recognize blessings no matter where they come from or how they came to be, and to give thanks to the Creator no matter the circumstances --
lest we turn otherwise from God because our skepticism, disbelief, or need to preserve our worldly authority, depletes our soul so much we are unable to be surprised by joy.
Who are the John the Baptists in your life who point to Christ and make it easy to believe?
I can tell you a few of mine, here, this Christmas eve --
R, who rose from a sick-bed, to bring a meat loaf to the shelter when it was our time to serve, years ago;
J, a creator, like her Creator, of beautiful things;
K, our vicar and shepherd, through good times and bad, her's and our's;
A, the passionate advocate for political justice;
J, a sister who scolds her brother much, but still stands by him no matter what;
My bride, for marrying a man who believes in Santa, and has his head in the clouds more than his feet on the ground;
Perhaps, greatest of all, A, D, and beautiful godson, O, who carry our Light, our Spirit, forward with hope and promise.
All of these, all of you, in this congregation, here tonight, are my John the Baptists.
Like John, you aren't the Messiah, but you point to Christ all year long.
But, especially, at this time of year, in Advent, when all of us together believe the most amazing, strange, wonderful, miraculous true story - that a Light, a Star in the Eastern sky, the Son of God, a Savior, descends and is made man, and is lain in a manger Christmas morning.
Amen
Once I've found what I'm seeking, just to make certain, I call the church to verify I'm at the right place.
This time I nailed it.
Except for the Old Testament.
And the New.
Other than those, I did find the right Psalm on my own.
Be that as it may, in the Gospel reading today, we see priests who also want to verify something -- in this case, not the Lectionary, but what this strange character - this John the Baptist, is all about.
Why?
The easy answer is that, per usual, throughout all the Gospels, whether it was John or Jesus, when the priests came a'callin' it was that they thought their authority was threatened and then, every time, without fail, they made plans to do something about it.
Can you imagine, this time, how angry they must have been - on account of folks, instead of seeking them out in their official capacity, in their robes of office, were heading down to the river to be baptized by a man, who as Mark reported last week in his Gospel, wore a camel skin suit and ate bugs.
Now, at this time in Israel, those uninterested in protecting their own self-interest, were holding out for a hero - someone who promised change, someone who kept the promise too (not unlike what featured in our recent Presidential campaign).
But, at the same time people seek change, they tend to keep their distance, and remain skeptical, as an in-built protection against being disappointed, hurt, again, and again, and again.
I was reading an article the other day about a woman who set out to follow every piece of advice from Oprah for one year.
When she embarked on this mission, she intended to prove people couldn't really change their lives by following Oprah - that it was all a come-on to sell books, diet fads, and such...
At year's end, instead, she ended believing what Oprah could do - if you were open to it - and that was introduce a certain honesty about an unsatisfactory situation, and then instill a willingness to change it, if you'll take the initiative.
In other words, a person can know themselves better if they discard their cynicism, confront their doubts, and then move beyond to make those positive changes.
In Scripture, we see the priests going out, like Oprah's doubter, to, as the Gospel says, "assess the authenticity" of this John the Baptist, this locust-eater garbed in animal skins, who's performing un-sanctioned baptisms.
Let's face it - are any of us sure, if we were seeking change, we'd be convinced it was for real upon first glance at John -- is this the person I'm supposed to entrust to change my life?
The other night, the Mrs. and I were watching a great holiday movie, Polar Express, the theme being there's this boy who wants to believe in Santa, but as he's growing up, he's becoming more and more skeptical about the whole thing --
Now, when I watched it, this time around, I noticed for example, in the town square at the North Pole where Santa hands out the first present, there were like a million elves there.
And I was thinking, if each elf took, maybe, 100 houses, and made presents just for those, then they might indeed be able to make all the Christmas presents in the world -- I got the calculator out - what about a million elves times X thousand, or ten thousand -- and I made these calculations the same way I do in the business world.
Even after I crunched those numbers satisfactorily, though, I still had nagging questions about the effectivness of Santa's overnight delivery service -- absolutely, postively? I mean we live on a dirt road where nobody will deliver overnight, anyway, and there's a lot more dirt roads in the world...
See, instead of learnng the same lesson the boy learned by the end of the movie, to simply believe, I was still being too practical about the whole thing.
Perhaps, as C.S. Lewis, once an atheist and skeptic, himself, wrote, if we just believe, plain and simple, we might end up, despite ourselves, surprised by joy.
To explain it another way, I can relate another experience along these lines I had where being too practical caused someone else not to believe.
A Miss Jones visited our homeless shelter from time to time. She wasn't actually homeless but living in a trailer. When she ran out of food, we'd take a trip to the supermarket to restock her shelves. For this, she was grateful and said many kind things about Christians and our ministry.
But Miss Jones also practiced a dangerous habit. Sometimes she would invite men, strangers, home, who, inevitably, after a few days, became abusive.
Then she would call and ask if I'd come over to toss them out.
Right.
Since evicting potentially dangerous felons from trailers wasn't specifically listed in the shelter job description, I'd suggest she call the police instead.
This disappointing advice turned her praise to scorn.
I certainly wasn't a John the Baptist to her anymore, pointing to Christ, and she told me all about it nothing spared.
Could I have done more? Maybe, probably - I don't know for sure - but I'll always feel guilty and hurt about the things she said.
In fact, it might have been her criticism that led, a week later, to doing something very uncharacteristic, and in violation of a very highly developed sense of self preservation and intolerance of pain, in others, but mostly myself, and that was to step between two arguing men, one of whom was holding a butcher knife, at the time.
I suppose I was trying to prove something - to Miss Jones, to myself, to others, maybe to God.
In John the Baptist's case, though, when he was challenged, you don't see false pride, or mock bravery, nor was it about proving something.
When he was challenged by the authorities, he said, plainly --
"No, I'm not the Messiah, or a Prophet, or anythng. I'm just a voice crying out in the wildnerness. I'm not the Light. I'm not even fit to tie the sandals of the Light. I'm only here to testify to the Light that's coming after."
It doesn't spell out how the priests reacted to John's reply. Some undoubtedly were relieved this potential threat to their authority admitted he wasn't the Messiah, and admitted even further, he wasn't much of anything at all, something we're not always prepared to accept about ourselves.
Maybe some of the priests were still nervous because he said, "You know it's not me but there is someone coming later that will rock your world."
There might even have been some people that day, quiet ones, dreamers, watching all this, who believed in John, sans skepticism, despite his appearance, and took away hope about the something exciting he said was coming after.
If we go back and read today's Old Testament passage from Isaiah, and accept it was written when the people of Israel were in exile in Babylon, so that, read in this way, it becomes about how to keep hope alive under very trying circumstances.
--that if you keep the faith, no matter what, then in God's time, broken hearts will be mended, ruined cities repaired, and the devastation of many generations healed.
In one translation, it reads there will be beauty for ashes -- and isn't that lovely in a resurrection-ish sort of way?
Today's readings are also not just about keeping hope alive - today's Psalm, 126, is about sustaining hope. This Psalm was written after the exiles came home to Jerusalem, which, indeed, fulfilled their initial hope -- but when they realized how much work it was going to be to actually repair the broken city, they became mighty discouraged. They lost hope it might ever be accomplished. And so what follows in Psalm 126 is a heartfelt plea to God for help.
Was the Israelites glass half full or half empty?
For Miss Jones, who I was speaking about earlier, there isn't even a glass to ponder - nor a dining room table, central heat, air conditioning, electricity, windows ... she might as well be in exile in Babylon since she lives far from anything with which we are familiar in our world.
Unlike the Israelites, she didn't go to God for help - she came up with her own survival plan.
Around mid-summer, she would take actions to conceive, and once she knew she was pregnant, she'd place an ad in the paper offering her unborn child for adoption to a family who'd take her in for the winter. Once Spring came, after giving birth, she'd return to the trailer.
I'm told she did this three times.
I was in the hospital room, one year, when she was in bed, the baby was in the basinet, and the adoptive parents were in the room ... hovering ... nervously... waiting to take the baby away.
For my part, it was extremely awkward, in the room that night, but for Miss Jones, it was simply another way she'd found to survive.
I've found, surprisingly, it's the same whenever there's a pregnant woman in a homeless shelter.
If you examine everything practically, then you think, you must think, this is a fine mess - how will she feed another child if she already has 3 or 4 or 5. Where will she live? How in the world can this work out?
But you find, sometimes, life isn't always about practicalities -- that when a woman gives birth in a shelter, it mystically transforms what's usually a dreary bleak place into a house of joy -- there's suddenly a Light, even in a shelter, like there was in a stable, that comes into the world, just like John the Baptist said it would.
I came across a marvelous passage in a novel the other day -
"When Tomas was born, he was very pre-mature. He weighed in at less than 3 lbs. I saw what I can only call a soul caught in that almost transparent body. I have never before been so close to such palpable evidence of the Spirit - Tomas - in his clear plastic womb, barely bigger than a hand."
To see a soul -- how cool is that?
There's one other tale out there that's my favorite Christmas story of all - it's Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - and in that story one of things you read is how much of Scrooge's meanness derives from his hatred of Fred, his nephew, because his sister died giving Fred life.
No matter what we may think of Miss Jones' survival strategy, or women who give birth in shelters, or the circumstances of Fred's birth, we know one thing for sure - at the end of the day there's a blessed child in the world created in God's image, soul intact, carrying unlimited potential.
When these babies cry, those born in shelters, or in stables lain in mangers, babies that are despised for the sins of their parents, or because they are poor, or feared because they pose a threat to the authorities, or because the circumstances of their births are not what we expect --
then their unlikely births and survival, against the odds, testify to an unquenchable spirit - a Holy Spirit - which bids us serve, by challenging us to hold fast to what is good, to recognize blessings no matter where they come from or how they came to be, and to give thanks to the Creator no matter the circumstances --
lest we turn otherwise from God because our skepticism, disbelief, or need to preserve our worldly authority, depletes our soul so much we are unable to be surprised by joy.
Who are the John the Baptists in your life who point to Christ and make it easy to believe?
I can tell you a few of mine, here, this Christmas eve --
R, who rose from a sick-bed, to bring a meat loaf to the shelter when it was our time to serve, years ago;
J, a creator, like her Creator, of beautiful things;
K, our vicar and shepherd, through good times and bad, her's and our's;
A, the passionate advocate for political justice;
J, a sister who scolds her brother much, but still stands by him no matter what;
My bride, for marrying a man who believes in Santa, and has his head in the clouds more than his feet on the ground;
Perhaps, greatest of all, A, D, and beautiful godson, O, who carry our Light, our Spirit, forward with hope and promise.
All of these, all of you, in this congregation, here tonight, are my John the Baptists.
Like John, you aren't the Messiah, but you point to Christ all year long.
But, especially, at this time of year, in Advent, when all of us together believe the most amazing, strange, wonderful, miraculous true story - that a Light, a Star in the Eastern sky, the Son of God, a Savior, descends and is made man, and is lain in a manger Christmas morning.
Amen
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Half-measures
Despite a radical prostatectomy, any claim to survivor falls short.
One surgical procedure, no chemo nor radiation, cancer done.
Attendence at Oxford for a week makes not a scholar. Five years of Reserves duty forges no warrior. A youth group leader isn't a dad.
Von Stauffenberg activates Valkyrie only after Germany is losing.
At Terezin, Goebbel's films depict four concert orchestras. Beauty for ashes survives, regardless, in 50+ pieces collected by the late Joza Karas including the opera Brundibar which portrays a sibling's attempt to buy milk in the face of an evil organ grinder.
A music review in the NY Times relates "Benjamin Britten composed the hauntingly powerful song cycle Holy Sonnets of John Donne in 1945 after visting German concentration camps and performing for Holocaust survivors with Yedhudi Menuhin."
Deep cries out to deep.
Not always.
C.S. Lewis reveals the life-changing experience of reading Beatrix Potter. The Joy animating the Surprise derives from pagan-medieval myth. The Spock-sort joy Tolkien knew after Rings morphed from the invention of a language.
Fundys, here, excel in ways progressives fall short, for to acknowledge the dangers of occult, grants fantastic power to Spiritual Warfare.
The sermon delivered this third Sunday of Advent past, aboard the Polar Express, investigates the precise moment Jesus realized He was Son of God.
Behaviorialists might argue it could not have been before age four since a tot's cognitive capacity does not yet allow for thoughts beyond self.
Terrible two's: God?
Joseph howling, "Look what Your Son did!"
Came the day He walked upon the waters of the ritual bath.
'Whoa'
Mary and Joseph humanize, instill, per Aunt May, Ma, Pa Kent.
Realizes 'with great powers comes great responsibility.'
Considers a uniform.
On the fifth floor of the hospital, an old nurse wears a cap out of date amongst cool green scrubs. A colleague said last week the beloved envelope making machine reminds her of the Chocolate Factory.
I wheel survivors out, each act, a full measure.
One surgical procedure, no chemo nor radiation, cancer done.
Attendence at Oxford for a week makes not a scholar. Five years of Reserves duty forges no warrior. A youth group leader isn't a dad.
Von Stauffenberg activates Valkyrie only after Germany is losing.
At Terezin, Goebbel's films depict four concert orchestras. Beauty for ashes survives, regardless, in 50+ pieces collected by the late Joza Karas including the opera Brundibar which portrays a sibling's attempt to buy milk in the face of an evil organ grinder.
A music review in the NY Times relates "Benjamin Britten composed the hauntingly powerful song cycle Holy Sonnets of John Donne in 1945 after visting German concentration camps and performing for Holocaust survivors with Yedhudi Menuhin."
Deep cries out to deep.
Not always.
C.S. Lewis reveals the life-changing experience of reading Beatrix Potter. The Joy animating the Surprise derives from pagan-medieval myth. The Spock-sort joy Tolkien knew after Rings morphed from the invention of a language.
Fundys, here, excel in ways progressives fall short, for to acknowledge the dangers of occult, grants fantastic power to Spiritual Warfare.
The sermon delivered this third Sunday of Advent past, aboard the Polar Express, investigates the precise moment Jesus realized He was Son of God.
Behaviorialists might argue it could not have been before age four since a tot's cognitive capacity does not yet allow for thoughts beyond self.
Terrible two's: God?
Joseph howling, "Look what Your Son did!"
Came the day He walked upon the waters of the ritual bath.
'Whoa'
Mary and Joseph humanize, instill, per Aunt May, Ma, Pa Kent.
Realizes 'with great powers comes great responsibility.'
Considers a uniform.
On the fifth floor of the hospital, an old nurse wears a cap out of date amongst cool green scrubs. A colleague said last week the beloved envelope making machine reminds her of the Chocolate Factory.
I wheel survivors out, each act, a full measure.
Friday, December 19, 2008
The Demise of Bobby Short and Joe
I pronounced the guilt upon Aracely, which had earlier lain on me, for transforming acts of mercy into selfishness.
Why?
No political dimension.
Clive James complains "in April '41, with a rampant Hitler already on the point of turning east, Thomas Mann's idea of a pertinent note in his diary was pudel gesund (the poodle is healthy).
Bob Marley could never only sing.
What, then, can we make of the New Yorker ad featuring Keith Richards pouting alongside a Louis Vuitton case?
Could it be, as the Baltimore (non-Gatesian) Creative Capitalism art collective, proposes, 'whereby things fall apart only to reemerge in new forms embolded by the failure of their ancestors, resurrecting discarded work that is unlikely to be appreciated in the culture industries of the academy?'
Frank Kermode conveys, a century later, how Loie Fuller could "penetrate the spectator's mind and awaken his imagination, revolutionizing a brand of aesthetics - the fire dance - her long dress spouting flame and rolling burning spirals twisting in a torrent of incandescent lava - her twirl buries the figure."
The altered state, and its implications, to achieve the same effect, seventy years on, is absent in the former, though forty years beyond even that, Cirque du Soleil recaptures the wistful Gallic mystique in Kooza.
Stephane Mallarme pronounces pure work requires the poet vanish from the utterance.
Joe died this week. I, of all people, the avatar of casuality, pointed out, he never left his desk sans sports coat. Bobby Short, the Porter crooner, the Admiral's caviar, ends his 36-year run, this year, at the elegant Cafe Carlyle.
Claiming history begins with us, we unintentionally killed Bobby Short, and Joe, rallying, instead, around Crosby's paean that we owed it to someone else.
Isadora Duncan reveals 'before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and iced champagne.'
Toni confided, Martha Graham, no longer able to walk, demanded she be carried in and out, unseen, before and after board meetings.
If they'd never danced at all, this is sufficient definition.
Al Alvarez wrote Elie Wiesel's works are beyond criticism.' Wiesel himself is determined to 'establish a principle that every manuscript should be published' regardless of readability.
A Baltimore City Paper letter this week, from an 'Afrocentric pro-choice Catholic progressive liberal to my bones,' concludes, everyone must have an input in saving humanity. If not a cosmic war will destroy all humans as the next great starry explosion from the heavens - the next great flood.
Not that there's anything wrong with that but better if she'd stopped after bones.
Why?
No political dimension.
Clive James complains "in April '41, with a rampant Hitler already on the point of turning east, Thomas Mann's idea of a pertinent note in his diary was pudel gesund (the poodle is healthy).
Bob Marley could never only sing.
What, then, can we make of the New Yorker ad featuring Keith Richards pouting alongside a Louis Vuitton case?
Could it be, as the Baltimore (non-Gatesian) Creative Capitalism art collective, proposes, 'whereby things fall apart only to reemerge in new forms embolded by the failure of their ancestors, resurrecting discarded work that is unlikely to be appreciated in the culture industries of the academy?'
Frank Kermode conveys, a century later, how Loie Fuller could "penetrate the spectator's mind and awaken his imagination, revolutionizing a brand of aesthetics - the fire dance - her long dress spouting flame and rolling burning spirals twisting in a torrent of incandescent lava - her twirl buries the figure."
The altered state, and its implications, to achieve the same effect, seventy years on, is absent in the former, though forty years beyond even that, Cirque du Soleil recaptures the wistful Gallic mystique in Kooza.
Stephane Mallarme pronounces pure work requires the poet vanish from the utterance.
Joe died this week. I, of all people, the avatar of casuality, pointed out, he never left his desk sans sports coat. Bobby Short, the Porter crooner, the Admiral's caviar, ends his 36-year run, this year, at the elegant Cafe Carlyle.
Claiming history begins with us, we unintentionally killed Bobby Short, and Joe, rallying, instead, around Crosby's paean that we owed it to someone else.
Isadora Duncan reveals 'before I was born my mother was in great agony of spirit and in a tragic situation. She could take no food except iced oysters and iced champagne.'
Toni confided, Martha Graham, no longer able to walk, demanded she be carried in and out, unseen, before and after board meetings.
If they'd never danced at all, this is sufficient definition.
Al Alvarez wrote Elie Wiesel's works are beyond criticism.' Wiesel himself is determined to 'establish a principle that every manuscript should be published' regardless of readability.
A Baltimore City Paper letter this week, from an 'Afrocentric pro-choice Catholic progressive liberal to my bones,' concludes, everyone must have an input in saving humanity. If not a cosmic war will destroy all humans as the next great starry explosion from the heavens - the next great flood.
Not that there's anything wrong with that but better if she'd stopped after bones.
Friday, December 5, 2008
How Roy Keeps His Dignity
When we visit the dump it's an adventure.
Mid way along the 20-mile trek, I informed the Mrs. we didn't need to check in at as we had been doing.
Past the gate, turning right, heading directly to the dumpsters, meant, as we discovered, travelling the wrong way down a one-way street.
The inevitable hullbaloo attracted the attention of the man in the shack.
Sheepish, plastered grins, exposed, we drove into range of his magisterial presence.
I blamed it on the wife.
As we giggled nervously, Roy peered into the distance, searching, in vain, for a runaway steer on a vast lonesome prarie.
Was it the same for our Dumpenfuerher, as it was, for Hitler's father, a retired petty bureaucrat, in Mailer's The Castle in the Forest, who "under it all was the heavy disappointment that he had not arrived at any of the powers and distinctions to which his intelligence should have entitled him."
Or for me, nearing retirement, wheeling patients in and out of the hospital, like other elders in our community who have time on their hands.
Are all vestiges of ambition (never burning in any event) now gone?
Might the wheeling man, old and past it, be dismissed, pitied, envied, by amibtion-ascendent doctors passing in the long corridors?
David Rothkopf wrote in Superclass that Thomas Friedman is a member of "a global elite of 6000 who have the ability to influence millions of lives."
That's out.
Evelyn Waugh contends, "it is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice - all the odious qualities - which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew his work until he has made something that gratifies his pride, envy and greed."
No money to be made here...obviously.
Neither jealously nor envy are in play.
It's not of pride to create that which resembles the original thought.
Unfulfilled closure makes for uneasiness - a desire, Frank Kermode claims, "to satisfy an appetite for endings, marking off the period between two ticks, calling, even hearing, the second one as tock..."
Gifts, once possessed, were second-hand, manipulating mechanical skills of others.
There is no tock to the tick.
Spiritual Gifts inventory results recorded last Sunday indicate change.
Where hospitality was once foremost, during am era defined by shelter management, this has ebbed, replaced by 'mercy,' indicating, wheeling patients, indeed, conforms to the 2008 inner-Spotsy model.
Roy's wistful, desperate, landfall in an imaginary prarie tells much of how moving beyond what you are secures ambition-transcendence.
Mid way along the 20-mile trek, I informed the Mrs. we didn't need to check in at as we had been doing.
Past the gate, turning right, heading directly to the dumpsters, meant, as we discovered, travelling the wrong way down a one-way street.
The inevitable hullbaloo attracted the attention of the man in the shack.
Sheepish, plastered grins, exposed, we drove into range of his magisterial presence.
I blamed it on the wife.
As we giggled nervously, Roy peered into the distance, searching, in vain, for a runaway steer on a vast lonesome prarie.
Was it the same for our Dumpenfuerher, as it was, for Hitler's father, a retired petty bureaucrat, in Mailer's The Castle in the Forest, who "under it all was the heavy disappointment that he had not arrived at any of the powers and distinctions to which his intelligence should have entitled him."
Or for me, nearing retirement, wheeling patients in and out of the hospital, like other elders in our community who have time on their hands.
Are all vestiges of ambition (never burning in any event) now gone?
Might the wheeling man, old and past it, be dismissed, pitied, envied, by amibtion-ascendent doctors passing in the long corridors?
David Rothkopf wrote in Superclass that Thomas Friedman is a member of "a global elite of 6000 who have the ability to influence millions of lives."
That's out.
Evelyn Waugh contends, "it is often pride, emulation, avarice, malice - all the odious qualities - which drive a man to complete, elaborate, refine, destroy, renew his work until he has made something that gratifies his pride, envy and greed."
No money to be made here...obviously.
Neither jealously nor envy are in play.
It's not of pride to create that which resembles the original thought.
Unfulfilled closure makes for uneasiness - a desire, Frank Kermode claims, "to satisfy an appetite for endings, marking off the period between two ticks, calling, even hearing, the second one as tock..."
Gifts, once possessed, were second-hand, manipulating mechanical skills of others.
There is no tock to the tick.
Spiritual Gifts inventory results recorded last Sunday indicate change.
Where hospitality was once foremost, during am era defined by shelter management, this has ebbed, replaced by 'mercy,' indicating, wheeling patients, indeed, conforms to the 2008 inner-Spotsy model.
Roy's wistful, desperate, landfall in an imaginary prarie tells much of how moving beyond what you are secures ambition-transcendence.
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