still nothing...

   Have another list of words on me.

guide
mountainside
pride
betide
tide
stride
wide
slide
eventide
bestride
elide
plied
replied
side
died
cried
collide
decried
allied 
un-tried
lied
ride
bide
abide
hide
decide
beside
reside
un-tied
belied

i want to write a poem...

     ...but I've got nothing. So, for my own amusement, I offer these words. Don't say I never give you anything.

fair
lair
their
there
bare
dare
care
hair
hare
fare
affair
pair
pare
pear
swear
rare 
mare
eclair

meet
seat
meat
fleet
greet
sleet
eat
peat
beet
pleat
bleat
cleat
sweet
Pete
heat
feet
feat

weed
feed
seed
mede
lead
need
peed
read
keyed

cant
chant
plant
rant

arose
shows
grows
knows
nose
flows
pose
hose
toes
woes
slows
rows
crows

twain
slain
main
pain
bane
pane
wane
crane
cane
lane
swain
refrain
rain
grain
deign 
feign
complain
reign

post
most
coast
roast
toast
host

lost
cost
crossed
tossed
glossed
flossed
bossed

boss
moss
floss
gloss
toss
cross
loss
lacrosse
albatross

cussed
nonplussed

notes from a commonplace book...

     'We face even more directly the problem that was widely discussed throughout the fifty years before Keats was born and so throughout his lifetime: where are the Homers and Shakespeares, the "greater genres" - the epic and dramatic tragedy - or at least reasonable equivalents? How much of this is to be explained by the modern premium on originality - by the vivid awareness of what the great art of the past has achieved, and by the poet's or artist's embarrassment before that rich amplitude? The pressure of this anxiety and the variety of reactions to it constitute one of the great unexplored factors in the history of the arts since 1750. And in no major poet, near the beginning of the modern era, is this problem met more directly than it is in Keats. The question of the way in which Keats was somehow able, after the age of twenty-two, to confront this dilemma, and to transcend it, has fascinated every major poet who has used the English language since Keats's death and also every major critic since the Victorian era,' (W. Jackson Bate, John Keats, 1963: p. viii).

anglicans never fail to disappoint...

     The Anglican Church in North America has issued a new catechism. The damn thing makes my head hurt. It was put together by a task force, don't you know, and is seventy-two pages long. (That's not the extended version, which contains a vision statement.)
     Now, I have only glanced at the thing, but you can see right away that it's doomed. Among the 'guidelines for drafting' used by the task force we read, 'Everything taught should be compatible with, and acceptable to, all recognized schools of Anglican thought . . . ' (p. 4). That gives away the game before it has even started. It is that sort of latitudinarian 'comprehensiveness' that sank the Anglican Church.
     For my house, Luther's Small Catechism will do just fine. If you want something larger, he also wrote a Large Catechism, so you should have plenty to read.

     Keats and Byron are on my mind. 
     Just thought I'd mention it.

just stopping by for a moment...

     Wireless went down last night. It's back up now. Why, nobody knows. It's just one of many mysteries around here of late. 
     I'm serious - there's weirdness afoot. 

money!

     I've noticed among many of my friends a disdain for money, or rather, for the making of money. I don't mean that they are outraged at greed and the oppression of the poor, though that may also be true. No, what I see is a good, old fashioned class issue - the disdain of the academic and leisured classes for those activities that make money. They are seen as unclean and beneath contempt, and are often portrayed as essentially identical with greed and the oppression of the poor. That I would sell something and earn a commission, or earn dividends from the trading and ownership of equities; that, in short, I would work on the street to earn money, makes me a lower class of person.*
     Mind you, they really like the things money can buy them. They like endowed chairs for professors; the like concerts and mp3's; they like guitars and banjos and drums and all manner of musical instruments. They definitely want good hospitals, good clinics, and well-tended roads and bridges. A decent stadium wouldn't go amiss I should think. Perhaps the more pious among 'em would like their parish churches to be well-endowed, with good central air and heating and a copious supply of communion wine for the Eucharist which constitutes the Church. If they're not particularly 'traditional', they might need a lot of startup capital for the praise band, Powerpoint screens, lights, smoke machines, and payroll. And finally, we must fund conferences, where attendees can spend at least some of their time insulting those of us who move money around and thus earn a living making such things possible.
     So, we have the Clerks against the Merchants, as of old. As something of a combination of the two, I find the conflict foolish, and I more and more take the disdainful and moronic comments as personal insults.
     Now, if you'll excuse me, I have business to attend to before I can settle down and read Julian of Norwich.  

*Need I point out that if you've made your millions as a soulful pop star, then it's probably all right? Mind you, that money came from somewhere - the label financed your first tour, marketed the first singles, and so forth. People with jobs bought tickets to your concerts and downloaded or otherwise bought your music. Someone, somewhere signed on the line that is dotted, and collected a commission, but it's best to forget about such regrettable realities.

damn...

this just makes me happy...

a poem revised...

Invitation

How long ago it was, we cannot tell,

for time has overtaken every thought;

we must proceed as if this shanty hell

were real, and not the fancy men have sought

even as their twiddling daydreams came to nought.

Enough. Come, have another glass of wine,

down a few more since there’s not a lot

to say between us now, then see how fine

remains this fractured world we may, somehow, divine.

a poem...

Your Poem Does Not Meet Our Needs At This Time



Dear Sir,

You show your sail of greatness, as this verse

you’ve sent is nothing like the devil’s due

in rhyme (for you have joined the blessed few

among the poets he won’t deign to curse), 

so, will you think it vain that I rehearse

the virtues of your poem? Let others sue

me shirtless if I notice something true

therein, or fail to note how you inhearse

each word in an alliterative train,

a tomb for the signifieds that you disdain 

in such a way as to inspire pure dread

among those poets who conspire to wed

the sign to some real thing, that strain

you’ll never sense though every Muse complain.

Sincerely,

The Editor

hell's frozen over, and facebook still has all your data...

     'When hell freezes over!' 
     It's obvious, of course, that this means 'Never!'
     Not so fast, my friends. If Dante is right, then the heart of hell is already frozen over, and has been since Satan found himself imprisoned there.
     So the next time someone replies to you 'That'll be when hell freezes over,' you can just calmly remind 'em that hell is already frozen over, and so they are without excuse. This will, I'm sure, lead to greater understanding, friendship, and peaceful relations among all people.

Since I've got nothing for you this evening, here's some Beethoven, Op. 132 to be precise.

while we're at it...

     O, I don't do the 'New Year's Resolutions' thing. I do, however, have a business to run, and with that in mind I made a plan of sorts. My plan you see is to have no plan. It's really best that way.

is it really a new year?

     Well, Columbus has sped past the line, so it is now 2014 here. For those of you still in 2013, I can tell you that not much has changed. We still use iPhones and debit cards and spend too much time looking at cats on the interwebs. O, and there are alien ships hovering over every major city.
     So, yeah, 2014 is really more of the same.

the impending 2014 book purge...

This book purge will be the most radical yet - nothing is off limits. I am stalled, and a revolution is therefore in order. Such a move requires deliberation, but be of good cheer for I have a cunning plan...

i'm about to wield my threshing fork once again...

     You see, I am considering another book purge. This one would be even more radical than any in the past. With a few exceptions, all 'secondary' works would go, no matter the author. Even studies and monographs and suchlike by scholars I rather like would be fair game. This, I imagine, would reduce the stock by at least a third. 
     Already, the books plead with me, 'Spare me. Keep me for another day, a week, a year even, and I will prove my worth.' O foolish books, it is not your worth that I weigh. My reasons are inscrutable, my decree irrefragable. Do not try to avoid your destiny with simpering pleas. I will keep those book that I will keep - that is the end of it.

prattling on about a book...

     So, a copy of the classic text and translation of Bernard of Clairvaux's The Steps of Humility arrived today from Engelond. In addition to the essay by Bernard himself, the translator gives us an introductory study of Bernard's epistemology. It's a delightful example of old school scholarship in medieval philosophy and theology. 

Here you see the volume itself. It was published in 1940. The Latin text of De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae is that edited first by one Barton Mills and published in 1926 by Cambridge University Press in a volume entitled Selected Treatises of S. Bernard of Clairvaux. I happen to have that little volume as well.

     The volume that arrived today actually has many uncut pages. This is what they look like.

     Now, it was common for books of this vintage to have uncut pages. The reader would cut them as needed. That said, I was not expecting any in this particular book, but find 'em I did, all through the book. So, I get to cut them, which is something I haven't done in a long time. What's more, this tells me that I will be the first to read this copy since it was printed in 1940.
     

a poem...

Invitation

How long ago it was, I cannot tell,

the dreams have overtaken every thought;

we must proceed as if this boring hell

were real, and not the fancy men have sought

even as their twiddling daydreams came to nought.

Enough. Come, have another glass of wine

with me. I know, I know, there’s not a lot

to say between us now, yet see how fine

remains this fractured world we may, somehow, divine.

Armenia & Persia Music

Now, this may seem out of place on this day, but I assure you, it is not.

The Divine Liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church in English

It's not just the liturgy of the Greek church, but that of all the Orthodox churches. Just thought I'd mention it. 

Christ is Born -Χριστός Υεννάται

2(9) - Gloria (I) Missa Solemnis (Beethoven) 2011 BBC Proms 67

Something from lovely lovely Ludwig van for the Feast.

a poem, revised...

How Fortunate the Fall



It seems a memory, not fit to amuse
us when we so desire to slip away
into a dream of all the good we may
or may not dare. For we yet hate to lose,
shambling and resentful of the news
that loss is woven into every play
we make. The sun yet burns us as we weigh
the odds that love’s an everlasting ruse.
So like a dream, this memory undone.
The hour's not as early as we thought,
yet we bear the remnant of our love
for a garden City lost, then won -
a fugitive law presses from above
that all as one might be more dearly bought.

We’re yet waiting in a silent hour,
penned down with our brand of vanity
into a little space, where we can see
only a hint of joy beyond the power
of easeful death. The promise of the flower
is enough for now. We can only be
and hope God never posts a probate fee,
for he always makes a strong man cower.
Listen to the echo now of every fall
of every one alive, the weal and woe
of time that is itself the final call
to flee our place of self-made famine, low
enough that God himself learned how to crawl -
it’s his delight to charm us from below.

a poem...

This is one I wrote in 2006 if my notes are correct. I thought it apt for the night.

Nativity



An old man stares, as in a trance;
with cracking joints he bends down low,
laughs and sobs at love’s mischance –
what men had lost through guile, they’ll know
at last in dereliction, one
child he’ll pierce with his own lance
and nails; he glances up – the stars look on
while drifting in the blank expanse –
and, cold, he flinches at the blow
in the savage, silent night.

She rests as though a torn up sack
which, tossed aside, a total loss,
its burlap stitching frayed from lack
of care, is left to mice as dross;
but when she rises, holds her child
at last, her son, her Lord, whose rack
this birth prepares, she feels such mild
and calming pangs, while, through the black,
she sees true light with darkness cross
in the savage, silent night.

The moon, though pure, yet hides in shame
before that newborn human face
streaked with tears and blood, that lame
and shit-stained flesh which yields pure grace;
o hear how helpless is this Lord
who still commands the ranks of flame,
those ministers who hear his word –
God wails, pukes; he bears our blame
to put us, finally, in our place
in the savage, silent night.

The world’s one root and only friend
falls still at last.  He sleeps, delight
steals up and takes them, and they bend
once more in prayer to stand aright
in the savage, silent night.

"God is With Us--з нами Бог" (Christmas) Compline Nativity of Our Lord

It is almost time for the Feast. I'm giddy my friends.

have some Mozart...

stuff you need to know...

     So you see, I lift weights. Then I eat meat, lots of meat, and drink gallon after gallon of whole milk. Then, I feel the urge to lift weights even more than I did before eating all that protein and fat. That, in turn, makes me hungrier, so I eat still more meat and drink still more milk.
     Today I ate five hamburgers, without buns, and drank a gallon and a half of milk. O, there were vegetables of course - sautéed poblano, red, and green peppers with onions and mushrooms. I'm not a barbarian after all. The protein cravings, however, were what drove me on to such a delightful feast of ground round, sirloin, and chuck.
     Still, still, I never feel full. As we speak, dear reader, I am hungry enough to eat a dozen eggs. I must remain content for the night with a large mug of hot tea.
     Yes, that's right, I even need super sized mugs of hot tea - a mere cup will not suffice.
     I'm caught in a delicious circle, though just a beginner. Who knows where it will end.

Gojira...still not a movie review

     So, I just watched the original Gojira in all its Criterion Collection glory. It's been a long time. I forgot how complex the story is - there's a debate early in the film over whether to make the truth about Godzilla public. One representative asserts that if it's true that the beast has been set loose from a habitat devastated by H-bomb tests, then Japan's diplomatic, economic, and political recovery would suffer. That's fairly canny for a monster movie. Of course, Gojira is as relevant now as ever - Fukushima comes to mind, as do the continuing rounds of threats and talks over Iran's rather whimsical nuclear program. O, and the sound of the creature's footsteps from early in the movie scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. 

     Now, to settle in and wait for the 2014 film. 

so this is humility...

     So, I found this essay by one Henri Blocher at the site La Revue réformée:

     « Qu’enseigne Calvin sur la justice que Dieu déploie dans toute son action, et, spécialement, dans l’expiation rédemptrice ? (Il ne s’agit pas ici de la « justice de Dieu » au sens de Romains 1.17, au sens que le réformateur attribue à la formule dans ce verset, c’est-à-dire comme le don fait au croyant et mis à son compte.)
     « Sous l’influence du grand libéral Albrecht Ritschl, certains auteurs ont rapproché Calvin de Jean Duns Scot, qu’ils caricaturaient du même coup, et des nominalistes auxquels Scot avait ouvert la voie. Le même accent sur la volonté, le décret souverain, leur suggérait une convergence substantielle: pour le réformateur comme pour les nominalistes, le bien et le juste auraient été déterminés par la libre décision de Dieu, auraient dépendu de sa puissance absolue – ce qui aurait frappé leur définition de contingence et permis d’imaginer une définition différente. La conséquence fait vaciller, dans le cœur des humains, le sentiment éthique.
     « Les meilleurs calvinologues ont pulvérisé cette erreur de lecture[6]. Calvin attaque plusieurs fois la conception nominaliste. Après avoir dit que « le Seigneur se défendra assez par sa justice, sans que nous lui servions d’avocats », il ajoute : « Toutefois en parlant ainsi, nous n’approuvons pas la rêverie des théologiens papistes, touchant la puissance absolue de Dieu », et il insiste : « Car ce qu’ils en gergonnent est profane, et pourtant [pour cette raison] doit nous être en détestation. Nous n’imaginons point un Dieu qui n’ait nulle loi (exlegem en latin), vu qu’il est loi à soi-même. » (IRC, III,xxiii,2; cf. I,xvii,2) Richard Stauffer cite dans le même sens plusieurs sermons sur Job (le 64e, le 88e), et le 21e sur Jérémie[7]. »

     I get the drift - Calvin is not a Nominalist Voluntarist. Nominalist Voluntarism being by definition Very Bad, we cannot help but fall down in gratitude that Calvin escapes such a fate. So much the drift, but I couldn't translate it into good English prose for all the Earl Grey in the world. That's a problem, my friends.
     So much to do, so much to do.

fed up here with a few things...

     So, dear reader, allow me to rant a while. Outside the sun shines, the sky is blue, and snow gleams with a blinding brilliance. Since it's a delightful day, I would rather walk about and take the air, then read for a long time. Instead, I must vent my complaint upon the world.
     I have had my fill of sentimentality, my fill of cant. The world does not labor under the weight of an excess of reason. Our autumnal polity does not stand desiccated by a mass of people devoted to the goods of intellect alone. We are on the contrary besotted with ourselves, with our feelings; feelings, mind you, with no moorings, no moral consequences. We are a gaggle insanely craving self-expression, yet we lack any sense of agency. So we drift with the currents of opinion, seeking to associate our vacuous selves with anyone and anything that draws approval from those whom we would please and cajole. We don't do anything, but if we can support the right causes, praise the right people, then we too will, by sheer force of association, come to seem virtuous.
     We will know this because then we, too, will be praised as if by proxy. This is devoutly to be wished, for here and now it is better to seem than to be. So we pretend that any of us might become a poet, an artist, or otherwise be creative, without discipline, without risk, without any danger at all to our fond self-image.
     I have had enough of this. I will no longer hesitate to take apart a friend's 'poem'; no longer will I suffer foolish sentiment, casual cliché, and emotive bombast to go by without censure. My scorn and my anger will wash over them all, and those with moral intelligence, a sense of reason and proportion, those who know true, deep feeling, as opposed to momentary passion or manufactured sentiment, they will likely stick around. The rest, well, they can go to their reward. 
     With that, my friends, I must beg your indulgence, that I might descant upon my own art.
     I am a poet. I know this not because I 'feel creative' or because I seek to 'express myself,' but simply because I make poems. I work in a discipline that weaves its works across thousands of years. You will find poets in every civilization, poets devoted to a demanding discipline, working within - and sometimes breaking apart - forms that require skill, daring, invention, and knowledge. Unless you have submitted to the discipline, can name your masters, and would put the made thing ahead of your self, you have no business calling yourself a poet, for being a poet is not a matter of publishing, fame, or self-assertion. It is, at the last, a matter of love, and as always, love is labor over time. That is why an artist is devoted to the good of the thing to be made, first, last, and always. 
     So, if you want to scrawl a few words in order to exorcise some feeling or another, feel free to do so, but do not call it a poem. If you wish to burden the world with your opinion, there is nothing anyone can do to stop you, but know this, an opinion is worthless. Only knowledge growing into wisdom is worth a damn in this or any other world. Spare me therefore the shoddy, sentimental, half-assed opinions you have borrowed without risk or effort from the latest marketing campaign. Time is short, you see, so you're really better off taking a walk or reading a good book. 
     With that, it's time for me to do both.
     Peace out.

sweet thoughts for Advent...

     Before I sign off for a few hours’ sleep, here is something from Johannes de Silentio’s Fear and Trembling, A Dialectical Lyric, Problem One, as translated by one Walter Lowrie: 

‘One is deeply moved, one longs to be back in those beautiful times, a sweet yearning conducts one to the desired goal, to see Christ wandering the promised land. One forgets the dread, the distress, the paradox. Was it so easy a matter not to be mistaken? Was it not dreadful that this man who walks among the others - was it not dreadful that He was God? Was it not dreadful to sit at table with Him? Was it so easy a matter to become an Apostle?’

notes from a commonplace book...

'Still more important is the following observation: the eminent sensual refinement of a Baudelaire has nothing at all to do with any sort of coziness. This fundamental incompatibility of sensual pleasure with what is called Gemütlichkeit is the criterion for a true culture of the senses. Baudelaire's snobbism is the eccentric formula for this steadfast repudiation of complacency, and his "satanism" is nothing other than the constant readiness to subvert this habit of mind wherever it should appear,' Walter Benjamin, 'Central Park', in The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire.

'[W]e must be careful to distinguish between the moralizer and the moralist. The former believes in goodness and badness, the latter in righteousness and sin; the former is a materialist, the latter holds to spiritual values; the former is odious to Baudelaire - and not only, one may hope, to him - the latter, Baudelaire assuredly is, with his conviction that belief in original sin is the true foundation for all human attitudes to life and art. The moralist's attitude ensures an unflinching gaze at life, admits of pity but not of sentimentality in human relationships, cuts at the root of cant, of false values in creative work and critical judgments, strives, at least, to strike dead all human vanities,' P E Charvet's 'Introduction' to Baudelaire, Selected Writings on Art and Literature. 

it's all about Jesus...

     Spend a moment with St Maximus.

     'The mystery of the incarnation of the Logos is the key to all the inner symbolism and typology in the Scriptures, and in addition gives us knowledge of created things, both visible and intelligible. He who apprehends the mystery of the cross and the burial apprehends the inward essences of created things; while he who is initiated into the inexpressible power of the resurrection apprehends the purpose for which God first established everything,' (Centuries on Charity and Economy 1.66).

     'For Christ's sake, or for the sake of the Mystery of Christ, all the ages and all the beings they contain took their beginning and their end in Christ. For that synthesis was already conceived before all ages: the synthesis of limit and the unlimited, of measure and the unmeasurable, of circumscription and the uncircumscribed, of the Creator with the creature, of rest with movement - that synthesis which, in these last days, has become visible in Christ, bringing the plan of God to its fulfillment through itself,' (Quaestiones ad Thalassium 60, trans. by von Balthasar).

looking ahead...

     I see on page 21 of Biggar's In Defence of War that it is 'mistaken to assume that Christian love is properly disinterested . . . .' Well, that's a problem right there. I can only assume that he will elaborate on this, but it's a theologically false claim whatever one's position on Christian participation in rough politics and war.
     I also wonder if it's proper to take Hauerwas as the test case for 'Christian pacifism'. He is right to note that Hauerwas is rather well known. Indeed, Hauerwas is both notorious and popular. What's more, Hauerwas is unusually provocative for an academic theologian, and always forthright. I do much wonder, though, if he is truly representative of 'Christian pacifism'. It is in fact unclear that such a term of art can be applied univocally across all the theological, political, and ecclesial movements that assert Christians must refrain from all coercive physical violence. Again, to reduce this complexity by means of a brief engagement with Hauerwas will hardly advance Biggar's case.
     This opening gambit in the book troubles me, for if he sets up a straw man by a single-minded focus on one particular, and admittedly peculiar, theologian, which in turn allows him to set up his own convenient 'definition' of what I will say is so-called 'Christian pacifism', then his whole book will be one long exercise in begging the question. Biggar is, of course, entitled to throw a polemic into the fray. But a good polemic will do more than take apart a conveniently constructed simulacrum of the opponents' position or positions. I fear that Biggar will merely stop with this easiest of straw men while setting up the counterargument to his own. (Here he would, in fact, be in good company with Hauerwas, who is, yes, often provocative at the expense of careful argument and exegesis.) If I'm right about this, my friends, then Biggar will have failed on a fundamental level to have argued his case, making his book a waste of paper and time and money.
     We shall see.