Failing Uncle Fred

Yesterday, I wrote about a novel, whose hero, a scholar in 1930s England, in the grip of unbearable depression sought for a cause to lose himself in--romantic love, scholarship, religion, and, as a final desperate throw, the idea that Germany under Hitler could rejuvenate a seemingly decadent society. But, as I noted, even the fictional Roy Calvert was appalled and revolted by anti-semitism. All too many English people, like Oswald Mosley and his followers, lacked that decency, but the fictional Roy Calvert, and the man he was based in part on, did. Both the fiction and the real man gave their lives fighting the evil of Nazism.

And before we get all superior about Mosley, let me remind you of our own home-grown version. Including at least one American hero gone bad.

So today, amidst chaos and violence spurred by a march of Americans who embrace the teachings of Nazism and its American counterpart, I thought of a very different hero: My Uncle Fred.

No, not P.G. Wodehouse's fictional character Uncle Fred. An Uncle Fred you've never heard about except for from me every Veteran's Day.

Uncle Fred was the widower who first dated and then married my long-widowed grandmother--the spirited, talented, singer who had recreated herself as a Mexican singer when her opera career went bust in the Great Depression, later marrying my grandfather, whom I never met because of his early death. But I was at my grandmother's wedding to Uncle Fred, and didn't even need a TARDIS.

I mention this because Uncle Fred fought in World War II, and was among those American soldiers who discovered the ultimate Nazi horror. He helped liberate a concentration camp, caring for the victims of what I can only think of as one of the two worst systematic and thought out evils perpetuated by humankind--the Holocaust, rivaled only by the chattel slave system.

He didn't talk about it much--you had to pry it out of him, and even then needed a good lever, like when I used a family history project I was assigned in my senior year of high school to get him to open up. (My sister, whom he adored, didn't need such tools).

No "Greatest Generation" for Uncle Fred; he looked to the future, to build upon what he and his generation had to face, and to make a better world. Despite an appalling family tragedy, he never lost that faith. He was gentle as only a man who has seen too much cruelty can be. He loved my grandmother, her children and grandchildren as if we were his own. He followed a spiritual path, and devoted himself to service. He believed that the world could and should be better. If you called him a hero, he'd smile sadly and shake his head.

Three decades after Uncle Fred's death, itself 40 years after the war in which he served, what we have long called The Good War because of the sheer monstrousness our Nation opposed, Americans are marching on behalf of both of those systematic and carefully worked out evils.

We can say many things about today's events, and, as we learn more, no doubt we will. Free speech and its limits will be discussed, the wisdom (or lack thereof) of tolerance of the intolerant, what it means that there are among us some who see in Hitler's seizure of power a model for the future, instead of what it is, a nightmare from the past.

Today, I see a Nation and its children who are failing my Uncle Fred. And not just mine, but all the men and women who put their lives on the line in that struggle against, as T.H. White called it, "the ancient brutal dream of Attila the Hun."

No Day But Today

Some years ago, when I was still properly considered a young lawyer, I was in the elevator on the way up to the office. A colleague in entertainment law was in the elevator with me, clearly deeply upset. When I asked what was wrong, she told me that her friend Jonathan Larson had died, shortly before his new show, which she was sure would have put him on the map, was to open.

Rent opened despite Larson's death. I didn't see it.

Pity, that. It had something very important to say to me, though I wasn't ready to hear it.

Somewhat later--not very long, really--an old friend told me that a date had fallen through and he had theater tickets. He proposed an exchange: I'd buy dinner, the tickets were on him. I agreed, and we saw Rent. The message had been delivered.

As I was internalizing it, I turned for some light reading to a novel a very different old friend had recommended to me, a novel by Lawrence Block, that carried the same message in a very different form.

That was more than twenty years ago.

***

Looking for something else online this evening (hint: Anglocat in the TARDIS is due to resume), I stumbled on the video of "No Day But Today" which brought those days back to me, and one more, that reminded me of a smaller, but very happy memory.

***

On New Years Eve at the turn of the millennium, I was at an apartment overlooking Times Square owned by one of seven guys I roomed with in college, several of whom were there--I don't talk about these gents enough, but they have meant a great deal to me, even though I don't see them often. They helped me grow up.

Anyway, around 11:00, Times Square was full, and my host gestured out to his balcony.

"You want Mark?" He asked.

"You're Roger," I answered.

We went out and serenaded the crowd with a song we each implicitly trusted the other to know, and which fit the night perfectly. Here it is done by the originals, albeit years later:



Thanks, Jonathan.

Thanks, Larry.

Still here--no day but today.

Old Friends, Old Haunts

DogEars Books, June 2017
(Photo by Anglocat)

A long time ago, before a cataclysm that ended brought me to the much happier life I enjoy today, I lived in upstate New York, in a rural town where the 19th Century farmhouse I called home stood on 47 acres, and our nearest neighbor was a working farm, with a gorgeous gothic pile which I called The Marsten House.

The house was about a half hour from Bennington, Vt., and on the way there I had found the most wonderful little book store, Dog Ears Books on Route 7 in Hoosick, New York. How to describe the store? Well, here's Alan Bisbort in the The Albany Times-Union:

Hoosick Falls is the first stop on our tour, a relatively straight shot northeast of Albany on SR 7. Here you can find the venerable DogEars Books, half a mile east of the lone traffic signal on SR 7 (which is at the junction of SR 22). It’s a converted barn set off from the brick residence where owners Jeffrey and Sylvia Waite live. As you enter, classical music plays unobtrusively and Mr. Waite, usually, sits off to the side reading just as unobtrusively, while the many loyal customers browse. If you’ve come for long quiet pokes through piles of volumes, you are in the right place. DogEars Books comprises two levels and sections are clearly designated and kept in a sort of rough order. Many books are older and, because the barn is not exactly climate controlled, the barn has a not unpleasant smell of old wood pulp. The stock of approximately 30,000 volumes is shelved floor to ceiling, and the overflow from the shelves creates tottering piles that you must navigate as you browse (Lord help you if you want the book on the bottom of the pile). The only ornamentation is an interesting, oval-shaped stained glass window upstairs above the front entrance to the shop. In the wintry months, an old-fashioned wood-burning stove in the middle of the room keeps the place toasty. Attached to the front of the barn is a cellar full of bargain paperbacks, many of which have seen better days although patient perusing can yield a few treasures. Opens Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Nowadays, I split my time between Albany and New York City. I get the best of both cities this way, but there's no denying it makes life more stochastic and solitary than would be ideal. This weekend, I had to stay upstate, so I'm without my weekly fix of St. Barts and without the company of la Caterina (who is coming up for a week starting Thursday, so yay!). As the afternoon drew on, and I had time, I drove for the first time in nearly a decade to Dog Ears.

It was just as I remember it, and Jeffrey Waite, the proprietor, time a little more graven on his features than when last we met, peered at me. His eyes snapped after about half a minute and he placed me.

"I've got the that Trollope Society set of his novels in 40-odd volumes," he said casually. Then he smiled. "I recognize you now."

So, once again, and long after I thought I would never have the chance, I got to dive through the treasures of Aladdin's Cave.

***

The thing about Dog Ears, and Jeffrey, is that his tastes are eclectic and deep. He evaluated my theological purchases, saying of long-time favorite W.R. Inge (whose Freedom, Love, and Truth I found), "He's all right." Pause. "That's to say, he's mostly harmless." He warned me off a theologically unsound cleric as an "early Norman Vincent Peale." We chatted, he discounted some books for me, and $100 later, I walked off with some fine books on liturgy, theology, a nice Wodehouse first edition, and a crisp, clean first of Wilson's Patriotic Gore. The chapter on Holmes alone is worth the price. Best of all was just being there again, chatting books with Jeffrey. Long may he reign.

***

On my way back, instinct took me out of the way to drive by my once and former home. Sadly derelict, but not defeated--it looks like new windows have been installed--I turned in to the once familiar driveway, and approached.

Bits of broken wood, shredded tires and other detritus littered the forecourt. The paint was faded more than when I had owned it. I felt a creepy frisson; the places where we were unhappy, deeply so, carry associations that never entirely fade.

Nonetheless, I hope the old place finds a proper steward; it's too beautiful to be let to go to ruin. As I drove away from that symbol of a dark and unhappy time, I could only hope that the renewal and hope that transfigured my own life since could encircle the stage on which that unhappy drama played.

Oh, as usual, dear....

A story in two parts:

1. Back in Kate Bush's heyday, I dated an avid fan, who sought to bowl me over with "Wuthering Heights."



'Myes.

2. Hadn't thought about the song since, but after a colleague at a conference vowed that any workout would be improved by listening to The Puppini Sisters, I tried an album of theirs off Apple Music.

Song no. 6:



It's rare for a song to make me laugh aloud, while actually admiring the artistry.

Their cover of I Will Survive was every bit as enjoyable, if you are, like me, a person of peculiar tastes.

Apple Music has their entire catalogue, I'm pleased to report.

Here's Mud in Your Eye: A Sermon on John 9:1-41, March 26, 2017

A little daub of mud. A river bank. Simple elements, nothing organically and lovingly curated, no experimental procedure. Just some mud spread over the eyes, and washed away.

And a world of darkness dies, replaced by one blazing with light and new clarity.

Today’s gospel reading reminds me a little bit of the old Sherlock Holmes story, “Silver Blaze.” That’s the one in which Holmes, asked by the regular police for a clue to who could have crept into the stable, and stolen the valuable horse who was the favorite to win the Derby, takes pity on him, and tells him to pay attention to the “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” The police detective is confused. “The dog did nothing in the night-time,” he says.

“That was the curious incident,” Holmes answers him.

In “Silver Blaze,” the dog did nothing because he knew the culprit—it was his owner, the horse’s trainer. So of course he didn’t bark. Holmes solves the mystery based on the absence of what would normally be expected.

I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but there’s a curious incident in this story of a miraculous healing by Jesus. And that’s just how little Jesus figures in the story. The absence of Jesus for most of the story is exactly contrary to what we expect. Jesus sweeps dramatically into the life of the blind man, heals him, and leaves. Now, normally when that happens, we may get a sentence or two wrapping up the miracle and go on, and then return to Jesus and the apostles on their way.

Not this time.

Jesus heals the man, and leaves the scene.

For what I think is the only time in any of the four Gospels, we spend an extended time learning what happens in the wake of one of Jesus’s healings. We learn what happens to the person healed and to the community he was a part of. So I’m going to fill you in on part of the story that didn’t make it into the reading today, because it’s illuminating.

After Jesus leaves the scene, we follow the now-healed man, washing the mud from his eyes, and regaining his sight. As he leaves the river, his neighbors and those who had seen him begging are astonished—they debate whether this is the same helpless man they have walked by day in and day out.

He confirms that he is, and, when asked how he regained his sight, answers simply, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, 'Go to Siloam and wash.' Then I went and washed and received my sight.”

Simple, straightforward answer from a man who has been helpless since his birth. They take him to the local religious authorities—the Pharisees here. When the Pharisees hear the story, they immediately discredit Jesus as a sinner, saying “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath." Not all of them—a few defend Jesus on the ground that a sinner could not do such a thing.

So, at this point the Pharisees try to prove that the man in front of them is not the blind beggar, but someone pretending to be him. That fails, because his parents identify him, and they finally turn to the newly sighted man, who has already told his story twice, but doesn’t tell it a third time. Instead, he turns the tables on the Pharisees. He asks them “Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”

Note the “also.” He’s reaffirming his earlier statement that Jesus is a prophet, and by implication rejecting the Pharisees’ claim that Jesus is a sinner. He’s also putting the Pharisees at his own social and spiritual level—which to them is an insult.

They insult him, and then say “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”

And, with a mock-innocence that shows that this man is neither simple nor helpless, he shreds their position:

"Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. “

He then delivers judgment: “If this man were not from God,” he says, no doubt in his mind, “he could do nothing.”

They bluster, they denounce, they drive him out. Because this man, blind from birth, helpless until that very day, has beaten them on their own terms. He has reasoned better than they have, and has shown a far deeper understanding of the law and of the nature of God.

The Pharisees manage to bully his parents, and try to bully him, but the once blind man is having none of it. His manner goes from being respectful and non-committal when they start questioning him, to openly mocking the Pharisees. Whatever he was like when his world was dark, he has come home to his full self as a disciple of Jesus.

But unlike the Twelve, who more often than not need guidance, or explanations, the man once blind becomes a maverick who trounces the intellectual elite by his greater understanding and his accepting heart.

In the Gospels, that role usually falls to Jesus. Here, the newly healed man plays the part Jesus normally plays, and plays it as successfully as Jesus usually does.

He fills the gap left by Jesus’s departure.

Jesus hears about all this and seeks him out. When Jesus identifies himself as “the Son of Man,” and asks him if he believes, the man answers simply, “Lord, I believe.” And Jesus reaffirms that the man once blind now sees clearly, and that the teachers of the law are themselves blind.

The presence of God in our lives can be paradoxical that way. We look for the moment of transcendence, what Maslow called the “peak experience.” But this story doesn’t involve anything like that. Jesus acts through the mundane elements of earth and water, and unleashes the dammed-up potential of one human being. No special effects, no transfiguration in this story.

Just clay and spittle, and river water.

Through the mundane, through the ordinary, God brings healing. A coming to one’s true self, and not only a recovery of sight, but finding one’s own true voice.

As we’re rounding third base in Lent, I’ve found my more heroic plans have not exactly panned out. I haven’t prayed the traditional office from the Breviary, with its eight daily offices throughout the day. The stack of theological classics on my night-table has not been read. I haven’t exercised every day.

But my less spectacular plans, well, they’re holding up better. The Daily Office from the Prayer Book and I continue to jog along, and I find myself thinking before I speak, at home and at work.

And maybe for me--and I offer it to you, if it’s helpful--maybe I don’t need the special effects. Maybe we can make do with the mundane, and save the special effects for some other time.

The early Christians called themselves followers of the Way—you can see it as early as in the Acts of the Apostles. A modest name, but one that captures something that we might lose if we expect to become paragons by an act of will in Lent. A way of life needs to be with us in all seasons, something that we sustain while it sustains us. Maybe like the man whose sight is restored, we don’t need the special effects. We’re here together, a community, and we are hearing the stories, reflecting on what we can take away from them. We’re aligning ourselves with God in prayer and waiting to celebrate the return of God in human form, in the resurrected Christ.

In a time where hate and division are working their evil throughout the world, even in our city, in this very building we are reaching out to the stranger, the hungry, the woman who needs a place to sleep.

You know what that sounds like to me?

Clay and spittle and river water.

Loftus and the Gateway Drug

The thing about Doctor in the House, in any of its various forms, is that the students/young doctors Waring, Stuart-Clark, Collier, and Upton (who disappeared, alas!) were out to subvert the old institution, St. Swithin's, but St. Swithin's was hardly undefended.

It had Loftus.

That's Professor Sir Geoffrey Loftus to you (and me, and just about everybody else).

What made the show work was that the Establishment was not represented by a futile, misery-making traditionalist (that role fell to Richard O'Sullivan's Lawrence Bingham, memorably dragged away from a rugby match for bad sportsmanship by a crowd chanting "Bingham for the pond! Bingham for the pond!" until they threw him--yes, in the pond.)

No, Loftus was funny, snide, in control, and very rarely caught on the back foot. (Except by his wife, the redoubtable Lady Loftus, played by Joan Benham as a superannuated Gainsborough Girl whose slightly faded good looks masked the ironist within; she and Ernest Clark, who played Loftus, crackled together.) A formidable foe. And sometimes an unexpected ally--though seldom an outright friend.

I remember the show fondly, more fondly than it deserves, frankly, because of how good the cast was, and how much fun they were having. It was my first experience of farce, my first Brit Com. And so it began opening a whole new world to a Long Island school kid. Sarcasm and irony became my drug of choice, and Doctor in the House led me to better things--Butterflies, To the Manor Born, and, eventually, P.G. Wodehouse and his novels and stories.

All because I fell in love with the sarcastic jibe, well placed.

After all, if Loftus was all right with it, how bad could it be?

Written From the Right?

Over at Lawyers, Guns & Money, the eternal debate of "is there any good conservative popular culture" has re-ignited. Stretching to find examples of any, the commenters have posited Yes, Minister and House of Cards (UK original). To be frank, as fans of both, I think neither fits the bill.

In both Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, Nigel Hawthorne's Platonic ideal of the obstructive civil servant, Sir Humphrey Appleby, is a quintessential cynic (see above), while the semi-competent (he fluctuates) is never identified as a member of a political party, although he is clearly leftward of Sir Humphrey. In both series, neither political party nor the Civil Service comes off well. This is not unlike The Thick of It (a spiritual descendant of Yes, Minister), in which both parties are satirized with equal vigor, and everybody is pretty deeply flawed. (Mind you, the store is considerably more gentle in Yes, Minister.) The system is the target, not one side or the other.

House of Cards is conservative, in its origins. But those origins stem from Tory-on-Tory political violence:

Before he began writing, Dobbs was a Conservative party backroom boy, scurrying up the chain of command from speechwriter to special adviser to chief of staff. He was serving as the latter when, on the eve of the 1987 election, he fell out spectacularly with his then boss, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He was soon kicked into the political long grass, which was when he found time to write fiction.

“It all started because Maggie Thatcher beat me up and was actually rather cruel to me,” he says, looking softly out onto the Thames from a sunny spot on the Lords Terrace. “I don’t complain about that – politics is rough and tough. But it caused me great unhappiness for a while . . . [Despite] the fact that she could be absolutely horrid to me, I still regard her as being probably the greatest peacetime prime minister in the 20th century.”

It was on the day known as Wobble Thursday, exactly a week before polling day in ‘87. Thatcher was convinced she was losing the election (spoiler: she wasn’t), and “she took out all her pain and anger and frustration on me, when in fact I was perhaps the most innocent person in the room at the time”, says Dobbs with a sweet smile.

Soon after, the bruised former chief of staff found himself on holiday with his wife, sitting on the beach and scrawling two letters onto a piece of paper: “F U” – his soon to be protagonist’s initials, and a none-too-cryptic two fingers up at the page.

Dobbs now denies that the book was a revenge novel--but the picture he paints of his fellow Tories is darker than even most liberals would imagine. Also, to be frank, Dobbs's book ain't a patch on Andrew Davies's adaptations (and in fact Davies has offhandedly junked key components of Dobbs's plotting, rather hilariously transforming not one but two fatal defeats for FU into triumphs, leaving Dobbs in rather an awkward place in writing the sequels), and Davies self-identifies as a liberal.

For what it's worth, though I am emphatically not a conservative, I think there is good conservative popular fiction. It's never the stuff one thinks of, though, no more than is good liberal popular fiction. That's because fiction written to a thesis is almost always tendentious. It suffers from "try too hard" syndrome, whatever the political slant. But R.F. Delderfield's views are gently conservative, and those views inform his work. But he has a broad enough view of the world that non-conservatives can read his writings without feeling attacked. So, for example, To Serve Them All My Days may have a firebrand socialist minder's son as its protagonist, but his integration into a traditional boarding school as its Headmaster is its story arc. "Pow-Wow" never recants his socialist views, but they become less important to him than the well being of the local community of which he is the steward.

Likewise Simon Raven spreads the satire fairly evenly--he has Labour white hats as well as Tories, though the narrator's asides are pretty consistently conservative--sometimes acidly so. Likewise Susan Howatch's theology trends traditionalist in nature, though, like her fictional mystic Jonathan Darrow, I suspect that she is beyond party affiliation. Another favorite of mine, George MacDonald Fraser, was a crusty old Tory long before he was old. So I think it's fair to acknowledge that there is first rate writing from conservatives. I just don't see either House of Cards or Yes, Minister as fitting that category.

However, most of my examples are from a time of greater consensus. And this brings me back to my earlier point: Tendentious novels usually are less well done than those where character (or plot) drive the storyline. Ideological purity is bad for art. I would suggest that much American conservative writing in the last few years has been just that--ideological, and thus mostly bad art. The current conservative movement's sense of being contra mundum is just not good for the muse, unless held in check, any more than is a liberal sense of grievance. In Phineas at Bay, Sir William McScuttle, was a sincere effort to try to depict a 19th Century Social Darwinist, but, because I didn't spend as much time with him, lacked enough roundness to be entirely successful. (I think I did considerably better with Tories Savrola Vavasour and Frank Greystock).

Conservative art tends to not work because it's conservative before it's art.

"My Baker Street Boys": Magical Realism & Sherlock Holmes

"I know you two. And if I'm gone, I know what you could become, because I know who you really are: a junky who solves crimes to get high, and the doctor who never came home from the war. Will you listen to me? Who you really are, it doesn't matter. It's all about the legend, the stories, the adventures. There is a last refuge for the desperate, the unloved, the persecuted. There is a final court of appeal for everyone. When life gets too strange, too impossible, too frightening, there is always one last hope. When all else fails, there are two men sitting arguing in a scruffy flat like they've always been there, and they always will. The best and wisest men I have ever known, the Baker Street boys, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson."

**********

We begin with Vincent Starrett:

221B

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game's afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears—
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

***

From The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes: "But there can be no grave for Sherlock Holmes or Watson … Shall they not always live on Baker Street? Are they not there this instant, as one writes? … Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea-coal flames upon the hearth, and Holmes and Watson take their well-won ease … So they still live for all that love them well: in a romantic chamber of the heart: in a nostalgic country of the mind: where it is always 1895."

That's one thread of the closing montage's narration given to the deceased Mary Watson (Amanda Abbington). The other part--Mary's loving characterization of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson as "the best and wisest men I have ever known"--is an expansion of Watson's epitaph of Holmes from Doyle's own The Final Problem.

So we end with a commingling of Doyle's own words with the insight from one of the first great fans, and reach an endpoint. It'd be tempting to reduce that ending to ""Print the legend," but that'd be facile and false. No, it's an acknowledgement that we, as Mary tells us, need the legend, need Sherlock Holmes. Even now, in 2017.

The thing to remember about both Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss is that they are both writers, first and foremost. And geeks, too. Gatiss has written 8 novels and a biography of James Whale; Moffat has written sitcoms, science fiction teleplays and series, and comics. In all of his writing, Moffat has explored the lies we tell ourselves and others, and the importance of what Strindberg called the "life lie."

A common complaint regarding this last (I think) season of Sherlock is put best by Sophie Gilbert in the Atlantic, who wrote that "season four’s three episodes have doubled down, focusing largely on the tribulations of the show’s main characters and nodding only occasionally at intriguing puzzles."

Except that's never been what drove Sherlock, either Conan Doyle's character or Moffat & Gatiss's revival. Conan Doyle started with a brilliant, compelling teacher, and dropped him into came fiction. But unlike Agatha Christie and her peers, Arthur Conan Doyle had a very limited interest in mysteries, and none in "playing the game" with the reader. Take Doyle's "The Final Problem" itself. There is no mystery or puzzle to solve at all; Holmes tells Watson about the "Napoleon of Crime," informs his friend that he must flee while the police wrap up the case, the two head for the Continent, and Watson is lured away, only to discover that Holmes has killed and been killed by Moriarty. That's it. The whole point of the story is to put Holmes in a no-win scenario, and give him a death worthy of Skarp-hedin. It's about the sensation, the legend, as Mary says, not the mystery. This is more common in the Holmes canon than you might think. Of the 12 stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, three--"A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Speckled Band," and "the Five Orange Pips" come with the antagonist pre-identified--Irene Adler and Dr. Grimebsy Roylott--are identified by the client, and Holmes knows the Ku Klux Klan is the antagonist from the eponymous orange pips. There is no mystery. In at least two of the other stories--"The Man with the Twisted Lip" and "The Beryl Coronet," the mystery is wafer thin, placed for the character beats, and to let Holmes show off. In "The Blue Carbuncle," the main point is to have a Christmas story in which Holmes "compounds a felony" by showing mercy. That's half of one of what are widely considered to be the two best Holmes books.

And you can't complain about Moffat and Gatiss adding action sequences at 221B (The Empty House, anyone?), or at Sherringford, for that matter, unless you want to explain how they're ridiculous, while Holmes and Watson involved in a nighttime boat chase, their guns blazing away at a pigmy whose blowing curare tipped darts out of a blow pipe at them.

You heard me. A sodding blow pipe, with curare tipped darts. That's not an "intriguing puzzle," it's next door to Dr. Evil.

What there is instead is magical reason, a universe in which the extraordinary can break into the ordinary, and Holmes, a rationalistic wizard, alone (well, other than Mycroft. And Irene Adler) can interpret the signs and make sense of it all. The impossible plot twists (pro tip: If you want to kill the woman in the adjoining bedroom, probably sending a snake into the ventilation shaft is not the most efficient plan. Nor is sending a luminescent dog out onto the moors the best way to kill that healthy young baronet.

In Doyle's "Final Problem" and "Scandal in Bohemia," the emotional reality of Holmes's valiant end and his . . . whatever he feels for Irene are the main point. they're arc stories, moving Holmes beyond where we first meet him.

And that's what Moffat and Gatiss go for. The mythological moment. The emotional logic, not the real mundane world of cause and effect. What can force Mycroft to show his love for his brother, and compel Sherlock to deduce it? What can make Sherlock into the good man Greg Lestrade thought he might one day be? Euros; the East Wind, that's what.

I'm not urging you to like it if you don't. Just understand, the link between Doyle and his modern day successors is straighter and more solid than so-called purists might like to admit.

I'll miss Sherlock, if this is indeed goodbye.

Still, over 4 seasons, two talented writers and two talented actors (with able support from an excellent supporting cast) got to play with the legend to see if its mythic qualities could work in our pixel-driven world.

More often than not, they pulled it off.

If it be forever, fare thee well, Sherlock!

Worn Out?

"For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest."

So Lord Byron wrote, and, apparently, The NYT thinks that Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah has outworn its welcome:

Few people noticed “Hallelujah” when Mr. Cohen released the track — part hymn, part love song — on Side 2 of his 1984 album “Various Positions,” but over the next few years, it caught the attention of artists like Bob Dylan (who played it live) and the former Velvet Underground member John Cale, who attempted his own version on the tribute album “I’m Your Fan.” In 1994, Jeff Buckley included an impassioned version on his LP “Grace,” which has become the cover that is most often imitated.

The song has since become a contemporary standard, performed everywhere from subway stops to synagogues, where its melody is often transposed onto the lyrics of the Sabbath liturgical song “Lecha Dodi.” Bono, Bon Jovi, Willie Nelson, Paramore and Celine Dion have all recorded it.

But “Hallelujah” is most familiar from film and TV, where it has soundtracked dozens of deaths and breakups, and been belted in too many singing competitions to count. Because it telegraphs emotion — both mournful and hopeful — and involves some vocal acrobatics, it has become shorthand for Big Emotional Moment and employed by performers looking to stamp themselves with authenticity.

The Times then gives several examples, only one of which I was familiar with:



Now, here's where I got lucky: this was the first time I'd heard "Hallelujah" and the first and last time I saw it used in media. Luckily, I only watch a few TV shows (seriously, I'm just binge-watching Game of Thrones now, though I'd read the novels years ago), and other than The West Wing, none of them used to. So "Hallelujah" has not yet bee worn out for me yet. *Not listening to pop radio means I can still enjoy Hotel California (yeah, yeah, whatevs. Have you heard the motets of Lassus? Don't judge...)

Anyway, "Hallelujah." Cohen's song is complex enough and storied enough that a pretty good book has been written about it. As wrote a few years back, the song morphs from version to version--at least when Cohen performs it; most covers follow the pattern set by John Cale and Jeff Buckley.

But look at the structure: First, we have a verse introducing the story of David, singing before the Lord--but with a bitter edge. Then, the story of David and Bathsheba--"You saw her bathing on the roof/Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you." And, just to complicate matters more, the story blends with that of Samson and Delilah--"she tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair". Bathsheba may have a verse herself--"I've seen your flag on the marble arch/but love is not a victory march," sometimes feels like a wry observation from a woman whose preferences were not, shall we say, consulted.

The other verses, in counterpart, speak of the bitterness of betrayal, the seeming meaninglessness life and love itself ("maybe there's a God above/but all I've ever learned from love/is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you"") can present at times, and our own crippling inability to "only connect." And throughout, the narrator refuses to accept the stereotype of an easy festal shout of "Hallellujah!" Life hurts, bucko. You may give that shout--but not easily, not without the experience of desolation that the spiritual life doesn't immunize us from.

The biblical references frame the song--in some versions they follow each other, in others not. They invoke Scripture but not in a simple re-telling--the scriptural story goes back and forth with a narrator who (as the verses quoted above shows, and ) is pretty jaundiced about life, and, as this and other verses show, about love--sacred at times (the "Holy Dove was moving too"and yet so transitory. But then what a finish--in the versions that use it:

I've done my best,
it wasn't much.
I couldn't feel
so I learned to touch.
I've told the truth,
I didn't come here just to fool you
And though it seems it all went wrong,
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue but Hallellujah

George Herbert has gotta love that. Seriously, beat this as a theological rumination--it's a testament of a soul battered, not broken, hurt by life but choosing to love, and appearing before the Great Mystery with truth and a kind of hell-busted joy.

But what to do if, after decades of overuse, Cohen's most famous song has lost its evocative richness for you? Try his back catalogue. And not just the older masterpieces, like "Everybody Knows," or "Anthem," or the heartbreaking "Alexandra Leaving" (that one tears at me more than any other song he's written; I literally can't listen to it again). Try "Amen"(2012) on for size:

"It's Only With the Heart that One Can See Clearly. What's Essential is Invisible to the Eye."-- The Fox: Gene Wilder (1933-2016)

Today's news that Gene Wilder has died hits home:

Gene Wilder, who established himself as one of America’s foremost comic actors with his delightfully neurotic performances in three films directed by Mel Brooks; his eccentric star turn in the family classic “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”; and his winning chemistry with Richard Pryor in the box-office smash “Stir Crazy,” died on Sunday night at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 83.

Eric Weissmann, who was Mr. Wilder’s lawyer for many years, confirmed the death. A nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, said that the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

Mr. Wilder’s rule for comedy was simple: Don’t try to make it funny; try to make it real. “I’m an actor, not a clown,” he said more than once.

With his haunted blue eyes and an empathy born of his own history of psychic distress, he aspired to touch audiences much as Charlie Chaplin had. The Chaplin film “City Lights,” he said, had “made the biggest impression on me as an actor; it was funny, then sad, then both at the same time.”

And that was the brilliance of the man. He inhabited his characters as fully as if they had been written by Shakespeare. His vulnerability to their sorrows, their fears, and their hopes (there's a reason why some Nietzsche thought hope was the last and greatest evil in Pandora's Box), brought a dimension of complexity to his roles, that adds the meat to his films, however uproarious they are.

When I was about 10 or 11, our parents took my sister and me to see Young Frankenstein. It's one of those golden movies of my childhood that is evergreen and forever altered who I am, like Lester's "Musketeers Diptych" (yes, I know about the third one, but it's not at the same level).

That's not because of Mel Brooks's rapid-fire gags (which are great, don't get me wrong--if there's a funnier movie, I have not seen it). It's Gene.

Wilder plays Frederick Frankenstein (that's pronounced Frah-nkenstein) as a genius surgeon who is haunted by the obloquy of his grandfather's infamous madness (nobody believes in the Monster, of course). When he creates his own Monster, though, he slowly goes from comic terror of "the Creature" to compassion, finally risking his life to save it.

And the sincerity of the performance works; stripped to its essence, remove the most obvious schtick, and you have a worthy successor to James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

There's a line I half remember from the liner notes to High Anxiety: Mel Brooks' Greatest Hits, I think written by composer John Morris, in which he says that the parody and the purity of his score were meant to work in counterpart, the lush violin anchoring the "spooky house" cues:



That's a great analogy to how Wilder plays the part. How he played all his parts. Willy Wonka can be bloody scary, all rage and venom (albeit funny at the same time), only because he's so real underneath:



In The Last Hurrah, the dying Frank Skeffington asks his absurdly loyal, clueless aide "Ditto" the question: How do you thank a man for a million laughs? That's my question tonight, but only in part; laughter is the least of what I owe Gene Wilder.

Requiescat in pace.

Penny Dreadful: Pleasures of the Post-Text

As the author myself of a post-text, I can appreciate the pleasures of revamping and re-interpreting an established classic. When done well, it opens up new vistas on the established work, and new insights into why it speaks to the reader or viewer.

Penny Dreadful has, in its forst two seasons, gleefully subverted a series of iconic tales, and has woven them together. It's a melange, but one that works more often than not.

It's principal source, of course, is Dracula. Set a few years before the action of that novel, with only a fleeting appearance by Van Helsing, and an utter subversion of Stoker's Mina Harker, the core of the show is in Mina's life;go friend, and betrayer, Vanessa Ives. Near the center is Sir Malcolm Murray, Mina's father, Vanessa's father-figure. The rest of the characters--Victor Frankenstein and his creation, ripped from their Georgian origins, Dorian Grey, Ethan Chandler (well, not really), and various friends and foes, circle around Eva Green's Vanessa.

What makes Penny Dreadful work is its patience; the show takes a very slow burn approach. Ethan's identity is revealed very gradually, Dracula is offstage for two full seasons, and Dr. Seward has just arrived. The characters are developed in long, slow story lines (enlivened by periodic outbursts of gore and violence--not for the little ones!) And what should be a bloody mess holds together, because in the action sequences, the characters remain themselves.

Also, the full commitment of the extraordinary cast makes the program. Eva Green's Vanessa is beautiful, yes, but harrowed. Her smile is rare, and often wry. The producers and Green have no compunction about deglamorizing Vanessa--indeed though there is nudity, with Vanessa it is never prurient--she is vulnerable, not desirable in those scenes. And Billie Piper, who I quite liked as Rose Tyler, has upped her game dramatically. In season 2 and 3, she goes from vulnerable to genuinely frightening, without losing the complexity of her character.



Rory Kinnear has found a way of making Frankenstein's Monster at once more human and more ruthless than any prior incarnation.

By mashing these monsters together, has John Logan taught us anything?

Yes; the monsters are us. Or, perhaps, we are they. The "heroes" are battling their own dark sides, the monsters are striving to enjoy their humanity. Only at the extremes are the demarcations clear.



Why do we love to be afraid?

because it allows us to "other" that in ourselves which we fear, and then, hesitantly, to accept it.

Not As the World Gives: A Sermon on John 14:23-29

(Delivered at St. Bartholomew's Church, NYC, May 1, 2016

“I do not give to you as the world gives.”

Well, there’s the problem right there, isn’t it?

We like how the world gives. When it gives, at any rate.

Because comfort, money, distractions—you know I could write this sermon on a phone while watching a cat video?—yeah, we’re basically ok with how the world gives.

After all, the world is falling over itself to give us what we want.

Not so much what we need, but what we want, as long as we can afford to pay.

I know what some of you are thinking—is this going to be one of those dreary sermons where everything that’s fun is held up as a sin. And the devil, to steal a line from Bernard Shaw, gets to have all the passions as well as all the good tunes?
 
No.

I’m not going to suggest you scatter ashes all over your brunch so that the taste of your food doesn’t distract you from the contemplation of God.

That would be St. Francis.

And I’m not going to suggest that you should agonize at length over whether your pleasure in enjoying that brunch is sinful, because it doesn’t serve the purpose of preserving your health, it’s simply gratuitous. That’d be St. Augustine, and he was a great example of the reformed rake who may be much more decent than he was in his unreformed days, but is nowhere near as much fun.

No, I’m not going there. But here’s where I’d like to go: When Jesus says he doesn’t give as the world gives, he means that the gifts of God are not conditional.

What we build up, what we are given by the society in which we live, the careers we pursue, those gifts are conditional. Lose a job, and a whole cherished way of life can be stripped from us. Homes, relationships, status—all of these can be lost, because they’re never really ours.

 
But what is really ours, then?

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says it’s peace—“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.”

It might help focus our attention on what he’s giving us if we remember where we are in the Gospel. You and I may be six weeks into Easter season, but Jesus is at the Last Supper. He’s washed the feet of his disciples, he’s looking ahead to Judas’s betrayal, and Peter’s, and he’s saying that right there, right then, he is giving them peace.

So, really not as the world gives. Not power, not possessions, not status, not conditional. Something that will get the disciples through the ordeal of the morning, and strengthen them for their journey as an Easter People.

Peace.

Peace doesn’t mean quiet here, or ease. But it’s hard to define what it does mean. The peace of God, which, according to Paul, surpasses all understanding, isn’t going to be captured in a single homily.

 
But we can begin to see aspects of Jesus’s gift of peace by watching its effects gift in the lives of the apostles.

Peter and the other apostles weren’t exactly profiles in courage prior to the Crucifixion. When the guards came to take Jesus, they ran away and hid; Peter denied knowing him. Thomas refused to believe the testimony of his sisters and brothers in God that they had seen him.

In their different ways, the Twelve were paralyzed by fear.

But after their encounters with the risen Christ, these unimpressive, deeply frightened disciples all went out and taught openly, defying the authorities. And they did it calmly, good naturedly even—not making scenes, but sharing their truth with all who would listen.

Not afraid anymore, and not with bravado—the false courage that hides fear. They knew who they were, and were going about their Father’s business.

And that self-knowledge and that calm certainty that their following Jesus was the most meaningful thing they could do freed them to communicate that self knowledge and self-acceptance to others—to Steven, the first deacons, even to Paul, who persecuted them until the discovery of his own best self knocked him to the ground. It was the very people he had persecuted who helped him to come to terms with the revolution in his own soul.

 
They were at peace.

But that peace isn’t that of the world—they weren’t accepted by society, they weren’t rich and respected, they weren’t popular with the Establishment.

What they were is themselves.

In his Confessions, St, Augustine writes, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.”

When St. Augustine wrote those words he was describing his own experience. This was a man who had tried living for pleasure, tried living a life of the intellect, tried living for others.

None of it worked.

He even tried the life of a religious believer. He’d joined the sect of the Manichees, who believed that the world was divided between the Light—which represented the life of the spirit—and the Dark, which represented the life of the flesh. It was a subtle faith, for educated people. The religious life structured around a parable of guilt over the desires of the flesh.

Which, as someone who was brought up a Long Island Catholic, sounds like old times to me.

 
But Augustine couldn’t function in that atmosphere. He couldn’t flourish in a faith that required him to embrace only part of himself. And when he learned more about the Christian faith, more about the incarnated God, something in the idea that God could be with us, could be like us, could be one of us, spoke to him with a truth that the subtleties of the Manicheans could not.

That’s because Christ promised integration, not division of the Self.

So many faiths ask us to abandon who we are, to conform to some external standard that has been imposed on us. Be a good consumer, a good employee, a good Democrat, a good Republican, a good Christian—

 
--oh, yes, the Church can sometimes try to divide us between the Light and the Dark, and keep only the Light. Think of the Prosperity Gospel. Think of anytime the Church or a church has stoked up anger against the other, and let us off the hook, while we cherish our own righteous indignation. We’re being invited to take one facet of ourselves as defining our whole self, and defining that Light against the Other, who is cast as the Dark.

Nice and easy. Christianity on the cheap. I’m OK because you’re not ok. Or I’m ok, because I’m not you.

But what drew Augustine in, why Augustine matters nearly 1600 years after his death, was that he lived today’s Gospel. He was restless with his life—which was a pretty good one, by most standards—until he found himself in God. He found peace, the peace Jesus left with the disciples.

How can we find that peace?
 
We can begin by not confusing the parts of our lives with the whole. Don’t let the roles we play in various parts of our lives become a mask to hide under. Recognize that there is more to each of us than our jobs, our careers, ourhobbies.

Do you feel restless, dissatisfied?

Good. “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless, until they can find rest in you.” If your heart is restless, you’re on the path.

So be patient with yourself. If we’re told to love our neighbors as ourselves, we’d better have some love for ourselves. And that means patience.

Finally, don’t be surprised if you find yourself impelled to do something different from what you’ve done before. Ten years ago, having just turned 40, I felt myself tugged towards ordained ministry. Here I am now.

As mid-life crises go, it’s been pretty good.

 
Because the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, is trying to teach you something. She’s not pleading on your behalf to some hostile judge or jury. You’re the one she’s arguing with, pleading with sometimes. You’re the one she’s trying to help lead to integration, to wholeness.

If you let her, the Advocate will lead you to “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” [1]

And in so doing, lead you to the Peace of Christ, which is not given as the world gives, but can be yours no matter where you are in life.

May the peace of the Lord be with you.

Amen.


_____________________

[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC at pp. 118-119.

A Forgotten Influence

In writing Phineas at Bay, I tried to give credit to (most of) the influences and references I included in the book. (In fact, the Author's Note, titled "For Those Who Who Enjoy Peering Behind the Curtain,"runs 12 pages.) But there's one I signally failed to credit, largely because I'd forgotten how it moved me.

In "Behind the Curtain" I note that I based the feelings of my young heroine Clarissa Riley, prior to her wedding, on those of Eleanor Roosevelt before her wedding to Franklin. In particular, I was struck by her framing of the ideal of love around Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Woman's Shortcomings".

I'd forgotten, though, the extent to which that poem, used as a framing device in the television films Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years, fretted at me. Even more than in the biographies, the film hearkens back again and again to Browning's poem, holding out an ideal of love that is--dare I say it? Yes, I rather think I do--an ideal of love that is quite simply impossible to live up to.

I was reminded of that when I re-viewed one of the TV films for the first time in oh, well over a decade.

So here is my answer to Mrs. Browning's poem as used in those films. For the non-initiate, Phineas Finn's first wife Mary Flood Jones dies in childbirth at the beginning of Phones Redux (1874). Plantagenet Palliser, Duke of Omnium, becomes a widower at the beginning of The Duke's Children (1880).

****

Now that the day itself had begun, Clarissa felt keyed up, but not exactly anxious. Excited, that was the word. Early on in her engagement, she had been fearful that she had plunged too quickly, leaped before sufficient looking. Words in her mother’s old copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning had driven her to her uncle’s study late one night for comfort. Finding him at his desk reviewing a brief, despite the lateness of the hour—had it been for Ifor, whom she was starting to think of as the brother she had always longed for, but never had? Perhaps—in any event, she had not hesitated to interrupt him.

Wordlessly, she had showed her uncle the passage:

Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear “For life, for death!” —
Oh, fear to call it loving!

Uncle Phineas had read the poem carefully through. He looked at her over his reading glasses, and said to Clarissa, “Mrs. Browning was a gifted poet, no doubt, but she puts things forcefully, simply, as poets often do. Look here, at the next stanza.” He pointed, and Clarissa read:

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past —
Oh, never call it loving!

Uncle Phineas had waited until she had looked up from the page, and said, in his gentlest voice, “My friend the Duke of Omnium did not die when the dream was past—and his love was not perfect or idyllic, but tempestuous, and with all the contrarieties and squalls of life. Yet he loved, and she loved, as truly as ever a couple did. Do not let Mrs. Browning frighten you, my dear.”

“Uncle Phineas, you were married once before, Mother told me.”

“Yes, Clarissa, I was.”

“Did you love my Aunt Mary?”

Phineas had then paused a moment. “When I first told her I did, I thought that was the case. I later came to realize that, although I cared for her, I did not love her as I could best love a woman, and I married her nonetheless. In doing so, I did us both a great injustice—she was a lovely girl, and could have found someone who would have loved her as she deserved.”

After a little while, Clarissa had asked, in a small voice, “Did she know?”

“I sincerely hope not, Clarissa. She died so soon, you see, that she may not have.” The pain in his voice startled her. “I lost not only Mary, but the son she bore me—he died only a few hours after his mother.”

“What was his name?” she asked.

“Malachi. After my father, your grandfather, my dear girl. How he would have loved you.”

She leaned up against him for a moment, and then murmured:

“So I should not let Mrs. Browning frighten me, then?”

“Do you love Savrola—in your heart, truly, as far as you know your heart?”

“Yes.”

“Then be at ease,” he had said, “and trust to your heart.”

In the months since, her feelings had become ever more clear, and ever stronger. Her love had been confirmed by a barrage of experiences—the suspenseful ordeal of viewing Ifor’s trial together, Savrola’s willingness to assist her uncle, and then later his assiduous care, not only for her, but for her uncle and for Aunt Marie when her uncle had been injured, his regular letters sent from the House when speeches were dull, enlivened by little drawings of the long-winded speakers, and of Savrola himself, as a little be-suited pig, snoozing in his seat. All these things had endeared him to her, and the terrible fear that she had undergone when his own life was endangered had taught her that her uncle had been right. She knew, on her wedding day, that she loved and was loved, and could acknowledge it without fear.

Her bath ready, Clarissa prepared to meet the day.

How to Mark a Birthday

I'm turning 50 this coming Sunday. What better way to celebrate than this:

9 am Eucharist in the Church
Sermon by the Rev. John Wirenius
St. Bart’s Singers lead our songs of praise and offer Thomson's “My shepherd will supply my need.”

10 am Sunday School and Youth Group, Community House

10:05 am The Forum, Café/Auditorium
Abrahamic Faiths Forum Series: An Exploration of Abraham and the Shared and Distinctive Traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Join Dr. Gary Dorrien, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics, for his presentation: " The Social Gospel in Modern Christianity," an insightful survey of our faith’s recent history.

11 am Choral Eucharist in the Church
Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Robert S. Dannals
St. Bartholomew’s Choir and the Boy and Girl Choristers will sing music of Bairstow, Britten, Dayson, Schubert, Taverner, and Willan.

12:30 pm EXPLORE, Vestry Room
What’s our “take” on the Bible? What are the Episcopal Church’s “hot-button” issues? How do Episcopalians handle differences? Join Bob Dannals, our Interim Rector, as we continue our class for newcomers and seekers.

5 pm Community Eucharist in the Chapel
An informal and intimate service, celebrated in our beautiful Chapel
Sermon by the Rev. John Wirenius

Beyond the fact that I'm preaching twice (!), there is the magnificent "My Shepherd Will Supply My Need" by Virgil Thomson, whose Four Saints in Three Acts I was introduced to via the memoirs of John Houseman, and at the forum Gary Dorrien, whose work informed my own "Swallowing the Camel: Biblical Fidelity, Same-Sex marriage, and the Love of Money (2014). I'm quite delighted to have the chance to hear Professor Dorrien speak.

I mean, seriously, when St. Barts gives birthday presents, they're pretty amazing.

Time's Winged Chariot

So, as we were waiting for the opening procession, a friend of mine at St Barts this morning told me that the 50th birthday (I had confessed to him that mine is a week off) was the hardest one for him. "Sixty's nothing," he assured me with a laugh, "and seventy's rather nice. The Psalmist's span, you've beaten it."

"No," he resumed, "Fifty's the bitch. Just old enough to feel your mortality, with none of the up sides. But in a week and a half--you'll feel all the pressure's off you."

I was comforted.

One of the acolytes, also a good friend, caught a snatch of the conversation.

"You're going to be 50?" she asked, clearly interested.

"Yes, that's right," I said.

"Oh, I thought you were much older than that," she replied.

If not actually disgruntled, I was far from being gruntled.

High Praise: The Trollope Jupiter on Phineas at Bay

I'm with Missy; isn't this review of Phineas at Bay by Mark Green brilliant:

Wirenius is avowedly a fan of Trollope but it is apparent from the earliest chapters that he is an able writer and so any fears on that head are allayed. He understands the demands of plot development, building tension and the importance of character which are the basic stock in trade of the writer of fiction.

If I might consider his characters first; it is important, where established characters from previous novels are resurrected that they should be recognisable from the Trollopian incarnations. Phineas Finn, as the principal character is the most important in this respect, but so too is his wife Marie – Madame Max from the Palliser series of novels. Here Wirenius succeeds for me. His Phineas would not be out of place in Trollope’s novels. He is older, certainly – the novel is set in the last decade of the 19th century – and perhaps wiser but, importantly for those who wish to see him rediscover his youthful energy and willingness to take on an unpopular cause, he is once more something of an outsider from the establishment. He is a member of the ruling Liberal party but not a member of Barrington Erle’s cabinet. His somewhat Quixotic decision to champion the cause of the Welsh miner Ifor Powlett-Jones is in keeping with this reinvigorated character.

Marie Finn is also recognisably the character Trollope created. Her wisdom and insight are intact as is her ability to see how people will react and match her actions to the needs of the case in a way that would be an example to her husband if he were not the man he is. I found their relationship described with greater frankness than the Victorian Trollope was able to commit to the page. It was a salutary reminder that this was a couple who were not only intellectually but physically drawn to one another

****

If I have a quibble with this book it is that, unlike Trollope, whose most villainous characters were always shown to have finer qualities that gave them a rounded humanity, we are presented with an obdurate antagonist with whom Phineas must grapple. The industrialist Sir William McScuttle is vindictive in his prosecution of Ifor Powlett-Jones and uses improper subterfuge to undermine Barrington Erle in pursuit of power and to continue a vendetta against Phineas. He is painted too black and lacks the redeeming features which Trollope gave even his meanest characters. In this, perhaps, the book reflects a modern requirement for a simplified unambiguous narrative to which Trollope was not subject or could, at least, choose to ignore.

That concern aside, I found the plots worked – inasmuch as the actions of the characters which drive the plots forward are “in character”. Jack Standish is impetuous like his father was before him. Lizzie Eustace schemes and always has a weather eye on the main chance to do what is best for Lizzie. If there is sometimes a lack of the sense of inevitability about how things will go wrong that is a hallmark of Trollope (no good ever came out of a young man signing bills!) there is never implausibility. I believed in the stories as they developed and wanted to follow the developments. As a result, even though it weighs in at 500 pages, the book is a page-turner. Indeed, I did not find it long. By Trollope’s standards, of course, it isn’t – a mere two volume novel.

Sorry to borrow so much--there's lots I didn't borrow, and the reader will, I think, find the whole review of interest--but it's music to my ears. Green has other notes of praise and blame, but the overall assessment has made my day.

I will say that I wrote Phineas at Bay without the benefit of the much more nuanced depiction of Plantagenet Palliser
afforded by the finally released edition of The Duke's Children, having before me only the severely cut version published in Trollope's own lifetime. While I think my characterization of Palliser is consistent with Trollope's, I agree that the unabridged version could have led me to go deeper into his psyche. I also acknowledge that Sir William McScuttle has little to say for himself--not nothing, mind you; he's a practitioner of realpolitik who genuinely believes he's surrounded by hypocrites, and, having clawed his own way up the social ladder, is quite afraid of plummeting back down. I admit though, that he's less fully developed than he could have been. (Though I'm quite pleased with how Rev. Emilius and Lady Eustace came out, as my villains go.)

Still, how can I not be pleased with Green's conclusion:

Is it a worthy continuation of Trollope’s political novels? Does it provide Phineas with the third outing which John McCourt believes his character calls out for? I think the answer to both questions is “yes”. Wirenius has done his research on the issues which his book touches upon and his understanding of the characters he has borrowed from Trollope (I cannot speak to the borrowings from other writers which also feature as amusing asides) is evident. He has, therefore, satisfied my test of paying sufficient respect to his original source. And he has produced a story which moves quickly, more quickly than Trollope might have had it, and entertains. His writing style is clearly modern and if at times he attributes to his hero slightly anachronistic views that are ahead of his time (and out of sync with what Trollope might have given him), then I, for one, most definitely can forgive him.

What author could not be happy to read that?

Easter, 2016

My first Easter since my ordination, and several challenges.

First, the Easter Vigil. Despite a shocking cough, barely held at bay by (I believe) a formula originally designed as a colic draught for horses, I sang the introit, carrying the Paschal Candle. In the dark, mind you, following the Thurifier, reading the Gospel--which I of course censed properly, with a satisfying clank of chain against thurible (between Deacon Denise LaVetty and Fr. Sam Cross, there's no way I'm ever messing that up again!).

At the end of the vigil, la Caterina proposed a quick trip to Katz's Deli, which I haven't visited in some years, and, yes, my friend who maintains that it has the finest pastrami available is right. Combined with matzah ball soup, cole slaw, and celery soda (no, really), it was an unwise feast for so late at night, but delicious.

Up far too soon, coughing like Alan Swann after a late night, but another horse-draught put me right (Siegfried Farnon's prescription, I rather think).

Easter Day services? More familiar territory, but handling "Big Bertha" at the altar (a heavy silver pitcher like a prop out of The Pallisers from which the Duke of Omnium's guests would get their wine) was tricky; coaxing the wine into the chalice from her without any spillage? Divine intervention. Huge crowds, fantastic music (the sample above is from last year; I do not appear in the video--if one exists from this year, I'll post upon finding.)


So many people--dear friends, friendly acquaintances, strangers, tourists--even an old high school friend popping up out of the blue. All wonderful, but with the church filled to bursting, we we're beginning to wonder if the 9 am service would be done in time for the 11 am service to start. (We call this a luxury problem.)


We go out on a hymn, as my field placement pastor used to say, and then the incomparable Widor Toccata as played by the inimitable Bill Trafka.

My first Triduum as clergy (!) is completed. All in a mad rush of friendship, good words well spoken, brilliant music seasoned with the scent of incense and a little deli.

What more could I ask?

“I Wonder What They Meant?” A Sermon on Luke 13: 1-9

(Delivered at St. Bartholomew’s Church February 28, 2016)

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Well, this Gospel is a fire and brimstone sermon in the making, right?

You know those Galileans whose blood Herod mixed with their sacrifices? Not especially bad people. Sorry. We’re not off the hook.

Hey, those 18 people in Jerusalem, who were crushed when the tower of Siloam fell on them?

Nope, not evildoers. Not especially, anyway.

Just plain folks, you could say.

And unless you repent—well, it could happen to you. In fact, strike the could. It will happen to you. Because we’re all going to die, one day.

Feeling good yet?

Didn’t think so.

This is one of the famous “hard sayings” of Jesus. It’s hard because it’s flinty, tough minded, unpleasant. It’s hard because it’s hard to bear. It’s hard because we don’t recognize the Jesus we love in this story.

This sounds like John the Baptist in one of his less friendly moods. It sounds very punitive. Very judge-y. Where’s that “friend of sinners” when we need him?

But then Jesus moves into the parable, so relief is at hand, we think. So the fig tree is, once again, barren. That’s three years in a row! And the owner tells the gardener to cut it down. It’s a waste of soil.

But the Gardener intercedes for the tree—“Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

Well, that’s a relief. Stay of execution. I was feeling nervous there—hey wait a second. The Gardener is only asking for one last chance. One last chance for the tree to show its value, to become a good useful tree. And if not—cut it down.

Jesus’s parable and response to the bad news about his fellow Galileans is to call his listeners to repent.

Now think about that for a second. Jesus has just been told about an atrocity—the Galileans weren’t just killed; their blood was used to profane the altar, making their religious sacrifices a kind of human sacrifice—the very kind of sacrifice the Hebrew Scriptures condemn the worship of Moloch and the Baals for. It was an atrocity in a holy place.

The closest modern parallel I can think of is the shooting in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last June, in Charleston South Carolina.

And in the wake of this atrocity, Jesus calls his listeners—friends and maybe even family members of the victims—to repent.

I had to wrestle with this Gospel, I admit it. And when something bubbled up from my subconscious, it was a question, from an old Leonard Cohen song, of all things. Here’s the question:

When they said,

Repent.

Repent.

Repent.

I wonder what they meant?

But what does repentance mean? The term in the Gospel is metanoia, which translates as “to think differently after,” or “to change one’s mind”

That doesn’t get us very far, though. Does the Gospel reading help us any more? We don’t know how Jesus’s listeners reacted. We don’t know much about the murdered Galileans, cut down in a holy place, their deaths used to pollute something sacred.

But we have a glimpse into what Jesus may mean here from the reaction of the worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and their families: They forgave the young man, twisted with hate, whom they had welcomed into their spiritual home, and who betrayed their welcome, killing nine of their brothers and sisters.

The church community forgave him anyway.

What does repentance look like?

A lot like forgiveness, if you look closely.

Both require us to make the effort to see the people who have hurt us not just through the lens of the pain they’ve inflicted on us, or those we love. When we do that, we’re repenting, in a very real way. We’re re-thinking. Going past the anger, to see the situation in the round. Forgiveness is the mirror image of repentance—they both require us to look beyond ourselves.

But let’s not complicate it.

Repentance is just a fancy word for changing your mind. [1]

Let me give you an example—the one that caught my attention.

I once knew a woman who had a terminal diagnosis. Stage 4 cancer. She could have drowned in self-pity, or just let other people look after her. Instead, she took a long hard look at her life. And she realized that she’d hurt a lot of the people she loved. She’s been tough, critical, sometimes even cruel. So she got busy. She reached out to the people she had hurt, the friends she’d driven away, the children she’d made afraid of her.

She apologized. But even more, she made amends. She did her best to help each of the people she’d harmed to start healing from the damage she’d done. She repaired the damaged relationships in her life, to the best of her ability. And in doing so, she discovered a happiness that eluded her in health.

Repentance isn’t easy. It takes up 4 of the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. First, sober alcoholics make a searching and fearless moral inventory of themselves—that’s the Fourth Step.

Then—and here’s the first hard bit—then, comes admitting to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. That’s the Fifth Step.

By the way, the shocking part of the Fifth Step is that all the secrets we find so unspeakable—they’re always old news to your sponsor, or, if you try this in the sacrament of reconciliation, to the confessor. The harder it is for us to say, generally, the more used to it a confessor, a sponsor or a therapist is.

Then after coming to terms with ourselves, and laying it all before God, come the next hurdle. The Eighth Step requires alcoholics to make a list of all persons we had harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all. Not to actually make the amends yet—just to become willing.

The actual amends come in the Ninth Step. That’s making direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. So, when we can, without causing more damage to them or someone else, try to put right what went wrong—do so. When it can’t be done, pray for the person we’ve harmed, and do something concrete, maybe help someone in a similar situation. The Ninth Step can be humiliating, especially when those who have been harmed aren’t ready to forgive. But at the end of it, the burdens of the past are gone. If the relationship that was injured is still dead, at least there’s been an effort at closure and reconciliation. To end it well.

Now why did I take you through that?

Because it’s a blueprint—one of several—for repentance without self-hatred. Repentance isn’t about self-loathing; it’s about coming to terms with ourselves, strengths and weaknesses, and recognizing the shadow side of ourselves—and forgiving him or her. And then moving on.

And we all need to do it, because we’re none of us perfect. Every one of us can reach out today to someone we love but haven’t kept up with, or to repair a broken tie. Repentance means fixing little things as well as big; we don’t have to be the notorious sinner St. Augustine was, or St. Paul, who persecuted the Early Church, in order to correct the things that lie on our hearts.

Oh, no fire and brimstone yet. Well, we still have the threat of death, or of being cut down like the fig tree if it doesn’t turn it around. So God is still pretty scary, right?

Oh, come on. Of course we’re all going to die. Everyone is mortal, so we’re all going to die. That’s the very point Jesus is making. Bad things happen to good people. It doesn’t matter that those Galileans weren’t terrible sinners; they died anyway. Same thing with the people crushed in the tower collapse.

Jesus is rejecting a type of thinking called theodicy—the effort to get God off the hook for the problem of suffering. He’s rejecting the Psalmist’s contention that the good will live in and inherit the land, while the wicked will be swept away. He’s pointing out that life and death are mysteries, and the story doesn’t end in a satisfying way. If you treat it as a story, that is.

But it’s not a story. The end isn’t going to be aesthetically satisfying, with sweeping theme music. It’s just as likely to be a sudden surprise.

What Jesus is saying is that we none of us know how much time we have. Every day is a chance to take the steps toward reconciliation, and living in wholeness with those we love. And we don’t know how many of those chances we get.

So repent.

Repent.

Repent.

It just means changing your mind.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

****

[1] Yes, I ripped off Steven Moffat. Get over it.

Anglocat at Peace

Blog mascot Betty the Anglocat has taught me many lessons. And this morning, as she lay next to her old adversary Elspeth P. Kitten, I thought how lucky I am that these disparate animals who make up our herd of cats live in (relative) peace.

Later in the day, I reflected on what a gift the people we disagree with can often be to us. Oh, I know--we can get into shouting matches, flame wars, succumb to obsessive "comment wars" because someone is wrong on the internet. La C often uses this cartoon to call me out. And she's right to. Because sometimes they teach me things I need to know and even offer me comfort when I need it. The trick, I am slowly realizing is to shut up and listen. Not just hear, listen, and try to see why we disagree, and to disagree respectfully.

It doesn't mean caving. It means respecting the person with whom I disagree enough that I make the imaginative effort to see through his or her eyes, and to grasp their perspective emotionally, not just logically. It makes disagreeing much less disagreeable when I don't leap to the conclusion that disagree with me is clearly done in bad faith or lack of thought. (I know; I'm turning 50 this year--you think I'd have learned this sooner.)

Another example: I just this past week bought a devotional book that is privately published, kept in print as a labor of love. The person who curates this work is someone with whom I am at variance on several issues significant to us both. I wrote directly for a copy, and received an email that was warm and gracious. This person has enriched my life; if we had met in a different context, we might have seen each other as caricatures not people with much more in common than might otherwise be thought.

The same thing happened with a lawyer I worked with for nearly a decade; we liked each other so much that we assumed we were in political accords. When we found we weren't, we started to argue--until we didn't. Why jeopardize a friendship that was real, over ideology? (I'm normally good about doing that, but I think we were both so stunned that the other was not aligned with our politics that we thought convincing the other would be simple.)

So a heartfelt thank you for all who have disagreed with me over matters great and small, and still cared enough to keep me in your lives. I hope to make that easier in future.

Throwback, um, Friday.

Last night, among other things discussed at the New Year's Party hosted by my estimable Editor (who has a book out,by the bye) and her husband, a gourmet but even better, a great friend, we talked about Rent. When the play first premiered, I was working at a firm that, inter alia, did entertainment law, and one of the attorneys had been a friend of Jonathan Larson's, who was devastated by his death, so I heard about that loss from someone directly impacted before I had seen the play.

An old friend, from the firm I had been a summer associate at, and who had gone off to a better life as a court attorney, called me up, and invited me to join him--his date had become unavailable. So I bought dinner, and he provided the ticket, and Jonathan Larson pretty much blew me away, in a score and lyrics that raised some questions I had to answer for myself, while entertaining the hell out of me. I ended up seeing it twice more--another friend with spare tickets, and a third who wanted to see it but needed a theater buddy.

Why do I mention this show, and my possibly naive attachment to it?

Well, one of my banner New Year's Eves was when 1999 turned to 2000, when, after a magnificent feast at Platforma Churrascaria, only a block or two from an old college friend's apartment, where he and I and most of our old suite-mates met up again for NYE dinner and party, my old friend and I went out on the balcony and serenaded the crowd at full volume, with a favorite from Rent. My friend, by far the better singer, did Roger's part; I was passable as Mark. Here's the song we butchered:



The crowd was, to put it mildly, confused. But we had enjoyed ourselves.

Sometimes I think that I may resemble the remark C.P. Snow gives Charles March in The Sleep of Reason; I may be (I hope I am!) more decent as I grow older, but I suspect I'm nothing like as much fun.