I Think We Must Try

On Independence Avenue two days after the Inaugruation, a wind-swept nun garbed in fluttering black and white habit steps off a bus to direct anti-choice foot traffic.

A week later, Josef Ratzinger un-excommunicates Bishop Richard Williamson, a Holocaust denier.

When the Faun is kidnapped, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Susan says, "I don't want to go further and I wish we'd never come. But I think we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever his-name-is."

--afterwards, the 214th Council of the Diocese of Virginia meets to consider:

R4a - Integrity of Committed Relationships (1) a response pastoral; (2) an affirmation of the integrity of committed Christian relationships;

R5 - a Blessing of the Union of Same-Gender Couples;

R6 - an Inclusiveness in Ordained Ministry.

For some, it was as if, per Busiek's Trinity 34, "the tactics of the struggle are simple. Reality is convulsing gouting out chaos rifts as it tries to stablize itself. We can hold out until reality can be prepared - reset to what it should be."

For others, the injustice inherent upon the restoration of stability is no longer acceptable in the name of tactics.

If your Spotsyltuckian would have been sufficiently brave to approach the mike, he might have said:

"As a member of a continuing church, our stability has been rent asundered yet our church life is not centered upon resolution of the property issues. The pain of separation has left deep scars yet we are grown to be the change categorized by the three resolutions even if not consecrated to practice the rites. I have no doubt if the progress inherent in R5 and R6 had been brought to the floor, they would have passed, just as the four amendments to dissolve or weaken R4a, were defeated one by one. Left only by the symbolic upon which to vote, the symbolic becomes the single thread of progress. It's passage looms larger than it's effect, but leaving nothing else, it becomes worthy of passage. Our struggle as a small parish is as nothing compared to our glbt brethren who face injustice, persecution and violence, but our experience is respected and honored by the passage of R4a."

Amidst the parliamentary, the Spirit dwells:

--in a courtesty resolution noting the passing of Harry Raab, a Virginia gentleman, whose gracious presence lifted many an ordinary Stewardship campaign;

--in the sweet melodius air of 'One Bread, One Body,' and 'Oh, let the Son of God enfold you;'

--in the mutual recognition, of the Archbishop of Wales, to the delights of a chilly horse-back ride upon Snowdonia followed by a pint of Mackesons in the warm pub below.

Laura Miller says, "many adults view growing up as a kind of tragedy whose casualties include innocence and the capacity for whole-hearted make-believe."

It would be easy at this stage for the Spotsyltuckian in retirement to retreat behind a warren of stacked books at Standhill House to gaze in wonder upon the tracks in the snow.

--but as hard it is to go a step further, we must try to do something for Mr. Whatever-his-name-is.

Farewell to all Stat

The link to Protoball in a SABR email depicts baseball at Allens Pasture, Richmond, 1884.

A deeper view of the pastoral landscape reveals William (Billy) Nash, b. 1865, d. 1929 (cremated), playing '84-'98; managing April 96 - September 96; as ump in '01, ejecting three.

--a large story buried under small facts.

The 2008 Baseball Research Journal features, Clutch Hitting, on the Jamesian Mapping the Fog controversy; no less than four statisticians-cum-authors.

Whether clutch hitting exists or not is fascinating.

-- a story become small buried under large facts.

Then there is Batting Stance Guy, a man of extensive research, yet, the essence of our national past-time, glorious goof, is not lost in calculation.

Laura Linney says she preps hard exploring every angle, then throws it away, to act. It's still there. To stream research alive is at the heart of creativity, despite every story requiring a structual Hitchcockian McGuffin.

C.J.'s story of woe doesn't gain electrical bill assistance at the food pantry this week since he doesn't possess a cut-off notice.

Monthly meetings of a non-profit Board are monopolized by a budget review. This causes the eviction of a family at Christmas for non-payment of rent. It also precedes the sale of the house after the realization there's no way for a finance-driven non-profit to be a landlord.

For the first two weeks confronting a national disaster, when Government is otherwise baffled, stats tell the story. When the iconic Brainiac 5 (Final Crisis 6) proclaims, "I calculate we have exactly 72.4 seconds before time breaks down and this sentence becomes meaningless," it informs those same two weeks, after which, spin overtook the reality of math.

If you pledge the same and your income declines, is the end result a 10% tithe?

Aussie journalist, Richard Flanagan writes, "in the end, politics is not about focus groups and numbers, it is about the power of stories," to which Clive James responds, "though politics is indeed concerned with more than numbers, it can't do without them."

The story powering the Inaugruation is the performance of Pete Seeger knowing this investiture is the culmination of a life's work validating our generation's vision despite decades of factual investigative journalism to the contrary.

Carl Jung points out whenever we encounter an accident that changes our lives, we encounter God.

Buckner encounters Mookie. Mitch encounters Carter. Schultz encounters the Mick.

Sometimes the best you may achieve is via negativa, therefore, A-Rod proves the existence of clutch hitting.

Vendor No. 2

You could not find a better definition of the Speed Force theorem than Joe Kelly's (JLA 82) "infinite realm of velocity that feeds all motion in the universe: lumbering pirouette of planets; ricochet tango of sub-atomic particles; the racing of the human heart for love and fear - from this source springs all of the Flash's power."

In opposition, Philip K. Dick's Kipple Theory states all are naturally subject to entropy, clutter, disorder. For example, stricken by lyme disease, Clarence retires, succumbing to a critical dismishment of energy.

Atrocitus taunts the bound Sinestro (GL 36) "you believe fear to be the most powerful force in the universe? Fear is inaction. Fear is hiding away. Rage is action."

To which Sinestro sneers, "rage is uncontrollable."

We've spoken previously of balance: Russell Kirk adds, "for an order to live, both permanence and progress are necesary."

How?

Andrew O'Hagen describes Arthur Miller as "a sort-of-Marxist committed primarily to self-discovery and the ousting of Fascism."

Beyond politics, per se, we note, prior to an action, GL swears an Oath.

Sister Eileen prays the hours.

In contrast to Kelly, Dick, and Atrocitus, according to the Junction Model, discovered by Advanced Sedentary Physics (ASP) pioneer, Joseph P. Carson, elements naturally reside at rest, neither speeding forth, nor falling victim to entropy, thereby enabling the reinterpretatation of ancient journeys in managable dimensions, as follows:

James Madison, on his way to Princeton, in 1769, riding 30 to 40 miles a day, from Orange, to Fredericksburg, crossing the Rappahannock, and Aquia Creek, through Quantico, Dumfries, Colchester, over the Occoquan, by Stafford Court House, through Dumfries, past Pohick, to Georgetown and beyond.

The same irreducible principle applies in regards to tracing the route of Jackson-in-the-Valley utilizing contemporary Virginia road maps.

Passing the corner of Independence & 12th daily after work, a shortcut crosses a flower vendor luring commuters in need of a bouquet.

After Vendor No. 1, with whom I'd become familiar was arrested, I'd grown fond of Vendor No. 2.

When I told him, Tuesday, I would not be passing this way again, he began to tell long tales of retirement and how selling flowers passes the time.

I wanted to learn more but had to catch my train.

New Scrubs

In response to why the first two new episodes were 'serious,' creator Bill Lawrence replies, "I thought we got a little silly. In order for the finale to actually mean anything, the show has to be borderline real for people to give a s--t."

--one heckuva slipperly borderline, alright.

Bee Wilson tells, in the original 1880 story by Collodi, how when Cricket advises Pinocchio he'll never come to any good unless he buckles down and gets a job, the puppet grabs a wooden mallet and flings it so hard that "with his last breath, Cricket cried cree-cree-cree and then died on the spot, stuck to the wall."

Yipes.

Wouldn't you rather go, as Wilson continues, to where "becoming a real boy means being restored to the safe world of children in Gepetto's house rather than taking up responsibility and growing up as Pinocchio does at the end of Collodi's book?"

Or how about straddling both?

When we donned our Crackerjacks, standing in ranks for inspection, it was then that individualities surfaced rather than personalities categorized by fashion.

Dickens straddles as the young Scrooge exclaims while breaking up with Alice, "this is the even-handed dealing of the world. There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth."

Episcopalians straddle the Divine through liturgy enervated by the Holy Spirit.

Kurt Busiek's Morgaine strides in the opposite direction finally elaborating the overarching Trinity strategy, in 31, as "the Chaos Rifts are a manifestation of the world falling apart, because there is no real order, no real structure. It wants something - anything - to establish a hierarchy of rules, of command, of natural order. If we do that - through our dark arcana, our Pantheon, establishing our domain over reality - then we rule all. It's that simple."

--and what constituted in reality, the 'German idea of freedom,' - Freiheiten, per Jurgen Kocka, meaning the "freedom of corporate entities, self-administered towns, self-regulating guilds, aristocratic estates, and rulers of small territories, which is not antithetical to authorities but was compatible with subordination to them and with strong statist traditions."

---as if America evolved as a bureaucratic confederation of states under an Emperor lacking a mitigating national mythos of classic individualist republicanism.

John Ralston Saul concedes, in Voltaire's Bastards, "Marxism became the dreamlike answer to a real need in Western society but any one of a handful of other dreams might have done just as well. Walt Disney's, for example, riding in the front lines of mythology, converted America to a vision of itself in which the citizen is a viewer, the beliefs are cinematic assertions, and the leaders are character actors."

Exactly.

Magic Kingdom: Hall of Presidents.

--the slippery benign borderline which JD and I are driving over forwards and backwards all the time.