Why do they hate us?

Writing in the Hudson Review, Bruce Bawer answers a question that my friend and I were discussing just last evening: Why do they hate us?

I'm not sure how the topic came up, but at a local Orthodox conference years ago (before 9/11, I'm sure), someone made a passing comment at the end of one of the Q&A sessions: "American culture is an oxymoron." It was off-topic, and the speaker wanted to move on, but the comment needed to be challenged. If there's no such thing as American culture, how do you explain Gershwin, Twain, James (Henry or William), T.S. Eliot, the Pilgrims and the Underground Railroad, Lincoln's speech at Gettysburgh and "I have a dream." Whether or not you like every aspect of it--Starbucks, McDonald's or Disneyland--to say that it doesn't exist just doesn't deal with reality. It's good that the fourth-century Church didn't have that attitude in meeting the dominant Greek culture of the time.

But Bruce Bawer has lived in Europe, and he writes:

Yet as my weeks in the Old World stretched into months and then years, my perceptions shifted. Yes, many Europeans were book lovers--but which country's literature most engaged them? Many of them revered education--but to which country's universities did they most wish to send their children? (Answer: the same country that performs the majority of the world's scientific research and wins most of the Nobel Prizes.) Yes, American television was responsible for drivel like "The Ricki Lake Show"--but Europeans, I learned, watched this stuff just as eagerly as Americans did (only to turn around, of course, and mock it as a reflection of American boorishness). No, Europeans weren't Bible-thumpers--but the Continent's ever-growing Muslim population, I had come to realize, represented even more of a threat to pluralist democracy than fundamentalist Christians did in the U.S. And yes, more Europeans were multilingual--but then, if each of the fifty states had its own language, Americans would be multilingual, too.

He tackles a library of books on the topic, from the pathetically facile to the insightful, and gives his reader a tour of European anti-Americanism beginning before the American Revolution. It's 12,000 words, so you might want to save it to disk and read it at your leisur, but here are the highlights.

Mark Hertsgaard's The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World is one of the simplistic: "America, in short, is a mess—a cultural wasteland, an economic nightmare, a political abomination, an international misfit, outlaw, parasite, and pariah."

Will Hutton's A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World is another: "Hutton is a true statist, the sort of person who feels less than fully comfortable in societies where the government fails to make its presence sufficiently felt: 'In a world that is wholly private,' he writes, 'we lose our bearings; deprived of any public anchor, all we have are our individual subjective values to guide us.'"

Clyde Prestowitz's Rogue Nation "comes off as agreeing with Hertsgaard and Hutton that America is an outlaw state whose cultural values and political system are fundamentally flawed and whose interactions with the outside world do more harm than good."

According to Jedediah Purdy's Being America, "the spread of democratic capitalism is essentially positive, though hardly problem-free; that young Third Worlders' self-contradictions on the subject of America (cheering Osama one minute and Microsoft the next) reflects a simultaneous attraction to both American liberalism and anti-American violence; and that it's in America's interest to encourage the liberalism and discourage the violence."

He describes Richard Crockatt's America Embattled: 9/11, Anti-Americanism and the Global Order in much livelier terms, apparently, than Crockatt uses himself:

In a plodding, prudent, professorial prose, Crockatt first sums up "how America sees the world" and "how the world sees America," then offers a potted history of political Islam, of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, and of the war on terror, all the while patently seeking to strike an inoffensive balance, as if such a thing were possible with such a topic. Crockatt's book has a cultivated colorlessness: he seems incapable of making the blandest assertion without qualifying it to death or using the word "arguably" (which recurs here with the frequency of expletives in a rap lyric).

Although Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About America? more or less praises America, Bawer finds his praise lacking: "Souza shares the Islamic view that 'there is a good deal in American culture that is disgusting to normal sensibilities.' (He never tells us what he means by 'normal' --and one is not sure one wishes to know.)"

Robert Kagan's Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order refers to some often forgotten truths about Europe, Bawer says, "that the "paradise" of peace and prosperity Europe now enjoys is made possible, quite simply, by American power." Kagan says that the European "peace" is based on a fantasy protected by a people who will never be permitted to enter it.

The Frenchman Jean Francois Revel has written in his book Anti-Americanism a surprisingly spirited defense of America against the illusions of the European media elites: "To Revel, the tenacity of European anti-Americanism, despite historical developments that should have finished it off once and for all, suggests 'that we are in the presence, not of rational analysis, but of obsession' -- an obsession driven, he adds, by a desire to maintain public hostility to Jeffersonian democracy."

In the context of a couple of Norwegian books (which I didn't link, not knowing very many people who speak Norwegian), Bawer gives a brief history of European anti-Americanism:

To be sure, Western European intellectuals often claim, as Norwegian author Jens Bjørneboe did in a 1966 essay, "We Who Loved America," that they once were pro-American but, owing to some social change in America or some U.S. government action, have altered their position. The current claim is that Europeans loved America until the Iraq War; before that, it was a truism that they loved America until Vietnam. But Bromark and Herbjørnsrud state flatly that "It wasn't the Vietnam War that made European intellectuals, authors and academics anti-American. The truth is that they had been anti-American all along." As early as 1881, the Norwegian author Bjørnsterne Bjørnson argued that Europe's America-bashing had to stop; even earlier, in 1869, James Russell Lowell complained that Europeans invariably saw America "in caricature." Indeed, nineteenth-century European aristocrats despised America as a symbol of progress, innovation, and (above all) equality, ridiculing it as a mongrel land of simple-minded Indians and blacks; later, avaricious Jews were added to the list. These stereotypes soon spread to Americans generally, resulting in today's European-establishment view of Americans as materialistic morons.

The biggest divider between America and Europe, Bawer says, is the illusion sponsored by Western European media elites. "It sometimes seems to me a miracle, frankly, that America has any friends at all in some parts of Western Europe, given the news media's relentless anti-Americanism. There is no question that the chief obstacle to improved understanding and harmony between the U.S. and Western Europe is the Western European media establishment. It is an obstacle that must somehow be overcome, for Western civilization is under siege, and America and Europe need each other, perhaps more than ever."

I haven't read any of the books myself, and my reading stack is tall enough that the War on Terror may be over before I get to them, so although I can't endorse his opinions, I can say that I appreciate the context he's provided.

He doesn't explain, unfortunately, why a lifelong U.S. citizen would say that American culture is an oxymoron. I guess I'll have to ask her sometime.

SOURCE: Godspy

Continuing the conversation

Jennifer raises interesting questions about my post on the Hamtramck, Mich., decision to ratify the amplified Islamic call to prayer:

Church bells generally ring once a week? Are you sure? Doesn't that vary widely?

Does it vary? Yes. Widely? I doubt it. My parish has some of the most disturbing bells I know of. At Pascha, we ring them late at night--the funeral tone on the Vigil of Holy Friday, a joyous peal at Pascha--but that's one week out of a year. We get our neighbors' permission and get a noise variance from the city. We also ring them on Sunday morning.

The bells are nonverbal. They are not amplified; they can't be heard outside the immediate vicinity. Some churches have fake bells, but they aren't any louder than real ones. Also, two universities that I've attended had bells. They were not religious; they simply tolled the hour and quarter-hour. No one living off campus could be bothered by those bells.

What the mosques in Hamtramck have received is the right to blanket the whole community in a two-minute Arabic call to worship, five times a day, beginning at 6 a.m. and ending at 10 p.m. every day. It's a quality-of-life issue before it's anything else.

But it is something else.

Jennifer writes:

Church bells ring in the context of religion freedom - religious freedom is exactly what we have in America. How can we only have religious freedom for certain groups and not others? Are you assuming all Muslim immigrants are dangerous and want to take over the U.S. somehow? I don't, and I guess that's a basic different worldview. I'm not saying Muslim terrorists aren't dangerous, but I don't believe the majority of Muslims, especially those coming to the U.S. are dangerous or hostile.

I agree entirely that the majority of Muslims, either in America or elsewhere, are not dangerous people. On 9/11, we saw what a minority of 19 out of 1 billion can accomplish. We also saw a larger group, who did not fly planes into buildings, dancing in the streets, in New Jersey as well as elsewhere. We have also seen anti-Semitic violence rising in Europe, a British imam who has recruited terrorists and is accused of trying to start a terrorist training camp in Oregon, movement toward Sharia in Scandinavia, and many similar events.

I've also seen too much evidence to quote of the second- or third-class status of non-Muslims (or Muslim women) in predominantly Muslim societies (for starters, look up Bat Yeor and the ongoing collection at Dhimmi Watch).

I can sympathize with not wanting one's community to change, but haven't we seen this before in the 60's and 70's? Isn't it called white flight?

Which brings us back to my original point: A person in a changing community may be torn between leaving and staying, may not know how to gauge the presence of danger. By the time the danger is apparent, it may be too late to leave.

If I lived in Hamtramck, Mich., I would be looking around for someplace else to live. Another non-Muslim might enjoy the wake-up calls. At the end of 20 years, we might compare our results and see who was right. The process of that decision and the conflict it arouses is what interested me at the beginning of this.

UPDATE: Get Religion has an analysis of the built-in imbalance in "evangelization" methods between Christians and Muslims.

Tracking the wily conservative

Village Voice writer Rick Perlstein flies over flyover country and lands in such exotic locations as Portland, Oregon, where he finds gatherings (herds?) of conservatives meeting at watering holes communicating in their "bewilderingly disjointed" speech about things they like about Bush (the gathering was one of many called "Parties for Bush"--undoubtedly fund-raisers for the election campaign. Fortunately, liberals don't need to do anything barbaric like raising money for a campaign, having billionaire George Soros pledging his fortune to the effort and another billionaire conveniently married to the candidate. Anyway, fund-raising must be one way of telling the difference between liberals and conservatives, sort of like the order of stripes on a king snake and a coral snake, but back to Perlstein).

He also found a conservative living in Georgia. It must have belonged to a different sub-species, though, because Perlstein said that he was "an intelligent man who's open-minded enough to make listening to liberals a sort of hobby."

I was impressed with the level of danger and personal sacrifice Perlstein had to endure to make this "journey among the 'tough love' camp." After all, you never know when conservatives might turn on you, unless you happen to be George W. Bush:

The people who, even in the face of evidence of his casual cruelty, of his habitual and unchristian contempt for weakness, love George Bush unconditionally: love him when he is tender, love him when he is tough—but who never, ever are tough on him.

For a good laugh, read the whole thing. It reads as if it's narrated by Marlin Perkins. Warning: Swallow your coffee before beginning. The article may cause a serious spewing or gag reaction.

SOURCE: Allah Is in the House

Something about the word 'abortion'

The New York Times engages in some head-scratching over the paucity of abortion on TV. It seems that even on the most "progressive" shows (O.C., Sex and the City), pregnant characters decide to keep their babies instead of aborting them. Here's the reason:

Mr. Schwartz [creator of The O.C.] said that Theresa had to continue the pregnancy for the sake of the series, since he needed Ryan to leave his cushy life in Newport Beach to care for Theresa during her pregnancy. He said he would not shy away from a character having an abortion if it fit in with the story. But Mr. Schwartz added: "It's complicated, it's messy, it's a scary topic. Dramatically, I don't know that it has much value compared to the reaction of the audience. It's a topic where everyone watching has a strong opinion."

Mr. Schwartz chose not to use the word "abortion" in the season finale. Characters spoke about "an appointment at Planned Parenthood" and trailed off at the ends of sentences. "There's something about the word 'abortion,'" Mr. Schwartz said. "That the show would sink under the weight of it."

One more illustration of how uncomfortable Americans are with abortion--it's enshrined in law, but they don't want it celebrated on TV. And this is not just a bunch of Evangelicals boycotting--that would be a plus for Mr. Schwartz (don't you love the NYT honorific?)--these are members of their core audience who would simply find something else to watch because the associations with The O.C. would become too painful to continue.

Yes, you can still get away with a movie that confers sainthood on an abortionist (The Ciderhouse Rules), but apparently Americans, at least, won't keep coming back for more.

But just weigh Schwartz's summary on your tongue: "The show would sink under the weight of it."

SOURCE: Godspy

From this, much comfort

Father Patrick Reardon's rant about a liturgical expert at a priests' conference has buttressed my hope for the Church (not that my hope for the Church was flagging at the moment, but it never hurts to buttress).

In Touchstone Magazine - Mere Comments, he relates that the only annoying expert to speak at this particular conference was a liturgist from an Orthodox seminary, who posited that Orthodox laity, specifically high-school students, have no imagination (those aren't the words either one used, but that's what it came down to). Fr. Reardon wrote:

We clergy, three quarters of us adult converts to the Orthodox Church, sat in sackcloth and inwardly groaned like pelicans in the wilderness, while a life-long Orthodox liturgical expert explained to us at length that Orthodox worship "no longer speaks meaningfully to modern man" and suggested ways in which an established panel of his cronies and clones might bring their expertise to bear on this crushing problem of Orthodox irrelevance to American life. They would pull our worship up to date and make it more meaningful to the refined sensibilities of contemporary society.

Growls and low rumblings were audible in the assembly. The fact that there was not a sudden, violent rush at the speaker's podium is chiefly to the credit of Orthodox restraint and ascetical discipline.

One example Fr. Reardon brought from the speech was the fact that a high-school student would be confused by the liturgical references to the four elements because he's seen the periodic table of elements. Well, I managed to escape high school without chemistry, but I've seen the periodic table of elements, and frankly I can wrap my mind around earth, air, fire and water more easily than ununseptium or rutherfordium.

Fr. Reardon answers in terms of Lord of the Rings, where the four elements are part of the fabric of the culture. Our hypothetical high-school student must be a graduate of Thomas Gradgrind's academy of Facts (perhaps a fellow-alumnus of the liturgist) if he can't think of more than one way to organize the elements (so to speak) of life.

What I find hopeful about this is the reaction of the clergy: annoyance, perplexity, amusement and a sense that listening to the liturgist is part of the price of attending a good conference. It's important for scholars to explore, to wander the dim paths of the mind, and it's important for the rest of us to observe them indulgently and to point out, if only to each other, that a given dim path is wandering into the swamp. If the Church leadership knows when to laugh and ignore the "experts" and when their ideas are well enough developed to take them more seriously, then the scholars are more free to explore and the rest of us don't have to follow them down every dead-end trail.

Too late?

Responding to today's post, Thomas at Endlessly Rocking comments that by the time the non-Muslims move out of Hamtramck, Mich., it'll be too late.

Living in this time has broadened my imagination. Despite much study of the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, I never could figure out why more Jews didn't get out of Germany sooner.

Now I know. You've got a place, a familiar community, language, culture. You know the faces in the market, where to get the bread you like, that pretty little spot in the park that no one else seems to know about. You know the color of the light on a late August evening and the parade of flowers through the spring.

You've got your stuff and your friends and family and memories, and so many of them are pegged to a place that you can't imagine leaving.

Well, maybe you could, for a good job in another city or an opportunity to pursue some dream, but not just to up and leave, because the community is changing and you're not welcome any more. How can that be? It's your community--more yours than theirs. But there's never been an exclusivity about it. People come and go with their odd dress and strange customs. You live and let live. Learn something new every day. All that stuff.

But now you can't stay? Impossible. Just a phase. Wait it out. When they see that you're not really so different from them, they'll calm down, make room for all.

Won't they?

Won't they?

When the Jews really understood that the Nazis were implacable enemies, for too many it was too late to escape.

What that means for Hamtramck, Mich., I don't know. But a friend tells me that there are neighborhoods in Paris where a woman doesn't walk without a male escort and without wearing the hijab. If there are to be such neighborhoods in Michigan, I suspect that Hamtramck will be early on the list.

Citizens ratify Muslim prayer calls

Residents of Hamtramck, Mich., gave a resounding "Whatever," to Muslims' wanting to amplify their five-times-daily call to prayer.

The final count was 55 percent to 45 percent.

Not that it would have made any difference if they had voted the other way. The vote was about repealing an ordinance the city council passed in May that regulated the timing and volume of the broadcasts. The al-Islah mosque started broadcasting in May, and organizers said they had no intention of stopping.

Anyone want to start a pool on when the last non-Muslim will load a moving truck to leave the city?

SOURCE: Dhimmi Watch

Incarnation

Unvoiced the Godhead spoke the Word
And unflesh hands made man.
Time's Creator, not bound by time,
More distant than the sky,

Who willed to be in place and time
Confined, who healed and spoke
With hands and voice of matter born,
Was one of us, though God.

Closer now than one's own heart,
Time deep and cosmos wide,
Enfleshed in fallen hands and tongues,
He builds and calls the world.

I think I should offer an explanation, or perhaps an apology, for posting this, but I remember Faulkner's mother's advice to him: "Don't explain; don't excuse," and instead warn that there may be more in the future.

French history lesson

A moving account of genocide during the Reign of Terror appears at Godspy:

Once, there was a rich and beautiful and remote land, a land of secrets and songs and story; a land of ocean and forest and river; of quiet marsh and deep paths. Its people lived as they had always lived, in their land and with it, in the depths of their culture which they had not named but which they knew in every fibre of their beings. When the new ways came, at first the people did nothing. They were curious, they reserved judgment. But very soon, they realised what the coming of the new men and the new ideas meant. A violation of their land, their beliefs, their culture, their very soul. They would not stand by and see that happen. They would resist, forever if need be. The intruders, for their part, thought they were bringing progress, enlightenment, improvement, release from superstition, liberty, for heavens sake. Equality, fraternity. They would drag these benighted savages into modern times, even if it cost them some battles. But it would be easy; these savages, these half-humans, would soon be a dying race.

The writer, a descendant of the survivors, says that the people of western coastal France have not forgotten, though Paris finds them whiney and tiresome:

Right wing, left wing, centre in France have never been able to deal with the legacy of Vendée. The left wing has problems with the impugning of the Revolution; the right wing because civil war put France in peril of foreign armies; the centre because, hey, it's not exactly pretty stuff. Thirty or so years ago a then-unknown but now infamous Jean-Marie le Pen championed the cause of Vendée and Brittany, applauding regionalism and independence, and produced a recording of Chouan songs; now, as the leader of the extreme right Front National, he studiously ignores it all, speaking grandly and opportunistically of the marvellous republic and the great destiny of a centralised France—for Vendée costs votes. Vendée is embarrassing, for it shows what the French are capable of doing to the French without any help from immigrant bogeys. The extreme left, the communists, of course never had any warm feelings for 'priest-ridden peasants'. Besides, they understood Robespierre's 'despotism of liberty' only too well.

Beautifully written, it's a story that has been repeated many times during the past century. Once again, the French are ahead of the curve.

SOURCE: Endlessly Rocking

Hate cult in America?

About 20 years ago, when I was still trying to get from the individualistic, anchorless existence of my youth to the community where I live now, I experimented with Weirwille's Way.

It was, at that time, an Arian (as in the hieroheretic Arius of Alexandria) sect that denied the divinity of Jesus and the personhood of the Holy Spirit, which emphasized signs and wonders as the proof of faith. Some examples: A guy who used to silently speak in tongues as he drove, running red light after red light in the "faith" that God would protect him. A woman who drove a yellow Audi convertible, but who I later learned didn't bother to pay for it. God gave her what she wanted; it was God's business to take care of the practicalities of it.

I heard them out and moved on, but while I was there I learned something about the mechanics of small, self-contained groups that build community by setting themselves in opposition to the Outside and how they manipulate lonely, hungry people into losing themselves therein. They weren't the Moonies, but the word "cult" helps describe the group dynamics.

As I was leaving, I drew an illustration, which I seem to have lost, titled "Weirwille's Way" (Weirwille being the name of the founder, a Scriptural illiterate who, throwing up his hands in despair at all the different interpretations of the Bible, developed his own, unique interpretation unaided by any Christian tradition). The illustration, a large water drop made up of lots of little water drops identical except for tiny differences in facial expression, summed up my understanding of a slogan of theirs that still appears on the website:

These fellowships in the home include an inspiring and positive teaching from the Bible, words of edification and comfort, prayer, singing, and a joyful sharing of abundance, resulting in Word-centered, like-minded believing in a broad range of activities. (emphasis in original)

That small quote contains five slogans that I remember from back then, but the one that my illustration referred to was the "like-minded believers," which went far beyond doctrinal unity or being one in Christ to an actual like-mindedness, thinking the same thoughts, processing information the same way, finding "peace" by filling one's mind with the same gibberish masquerading as prayer.

So that's my background (though some might call it my baggage) when I read this quote from a column by Thomas Lifson in The American Thinker:

There is a good word to describe groups based on common beliefs at variance with society at large, which tend to flock together socially, and which define themselves as smarter, better-informed, and more correct than everyone else. They are termed "cults."

He's talking about Moveon.org house parties, promoting a new movie Outfoxed. There, like-minded people gather for an inspiring and positive teaching from Moveon.org, words of edification and comfort, [don't know about the prayer, singing or sharing in abundance, though there's probably a collection of some sort], resulting in Left-centered, like-minded believing in a wide range of activities [the Way's website showed people playing basketball; Moveon.org's wide range of activities are probably political].

Clinical psychologist Margaret Singer lists four characteristics of destructive cults:

• The group interferes with an individual's ability to think freely.


• A charismatic figure dominates the group, claiming to have a direct line to God or some secret knowledge that makes the group elite.


• The cult persuades members that the group goal is more important than individual needs, using guilt and shame to keep followers from questioning doctrine.


• The leader instills fear that something dreadful will happen to anyone who leaves.

Three of the four have to do with "disciplining" renegades, those who question doctrine or depart from the group. On all three counts the hard Left, the mad Left, comes close to fulfilling the criteria, in the slathering animosity especially reserved for those who were formerly in their ranks.

Consider for one example (which I just happened to have read in the past few days) this e-mail to 9/11 Democrat blogger (and novelist and screenwriter) Roger L. Simon:

Among the lesser evils of the world, if there is any sadder sight than a liberal who "converts" to the radical right, I have yet to see it. Moses Wine would be ashamed of you. So am I.

Jim Turner

Simon is a grownup and quite capable of taking care of himself, but the depth of the animosity is not unique to him, and it serves as a warning to any others who might consider leaving the fold.

I despise conspiracy theories, and I don't think even the hardest Left quite makes it up to the level of destructive cult (for one thing, I can't find evidence of an charismatic, all-consuming leader), but the people who have gone to dwell in the fever swamp would be wise to look around at where their ideology is leading.

This is just plain weird

Journalist and professor Terry Mattingly attended the North American Christian Convention in Phoenix. He writes:

Here is what I saw. On one of the quieter halls of the convention center was a small room set aside for private prayer. Since this was a Protestant gathering, the room contained no traditional religious art. Yet there was an icon, of sorts. Over on a low table was a framed portrait of President George W. Bush, with a candle in front of it. The meaning was clear -- pause here to pray specifically for our president.

So was this a Religious Right shrine?

Not that there's anything wrong with praying for George W. Bush or any elected official. They come up in our church prayer every day--liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, corrupt and honest, bland and controversial; the Orthodox Church in Japan prayed for the Emperor during World War II, and rightly so, because he needed it. As does, at this time, George W. Bush.

The problem is that the convention organizers have so little sense of liturgy and unverbalized meaning that they put a president's photo in the place of Christ in the chapel. It's not just the Restorationist Christians. A friend of mine attended her brother's church's Fourth of July Sunday service and got a celebration of All Saints of the USA--St. Thomas Jefferson, St. Benjamin Franklin, St. Thomas Paine. Well, no, they left off the saints part, but it's the same thing. My friend asks when they last celebrated the memories of the Church Fathers--St. Basil the Great, St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nanzianzen? The saints, actual saints, who distilled the core faith that anchors faithful Protestantism, Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

But, again, without a sense of liturgy, there is no sense of placement or proportion.

As a Protestant, I attended a Christian Church, one of those that belong to the nondenominational denomination whose convention Terry Mattingly attended, and in my last few weeks there, Mother's Day fell on Western Pentecost. The minister had been working his way through Ephesians for the preceding several weeks, so that day, he wrenched the text of Ephesians to make it fit with the theme of Mother's Day but never gave a glance to the birthday of the Church, extensively recorded in Scripture.

Soon after that, circumstances took me to visit my present Orthodox parish, and I later told the minister I was planning to become Orthodox. "Watch out," he cautioned me, with honest concern, "for those who put the traditions of man over those of God." Even now, more than a decade later, I kick myself for not asking the question that didn't quite fully form that day: "Of the two celebrations, Pentecost and Mother's Day, which is the tradition of God and which is the tradition of man?"

In that inability to distinguish lies the danger. Mattingly writes:

A few steps away was another door leading into a larger candle-lit room. This one contained a large prayer maze called 'The Desert.' It was based on Native American prayer traditions and, whether its creators intended it or not, is part of a larger movement with branches into all kinds of alternative forms of spirituality.

In their effort to avoid the divisions and customs of historic Christianity, they have replaced them with political activism and the tyranny of the trendy.

Lord have mercy.

We're not obsessed

In a review of I, Robot, Michael Atkinson manages to get through almost three paragraphs (the second to last sentence) before falling into electioneering:

Even a late-in-the-game megalomaniac computer paraphrasing John Ashcroft--exchanging freedoms for security etc.--can't buy this lemon a sour drop of integrity.

Michael, trust me. Sometimes it's OK to be irrelevant--or at least to stay on topic.

Poor, poor Whoopi

Whoopi Goldberg delivered a raunchy but cheerful monologue that included a joke about eating bear testicles and some spectacularly unsubtle Bush double entendres. (New York Times, July 10)

I saw the same basic joke on a bumper sticker a couple of weeks ago and thought the driver had unnecessarily lowered the public discourse.

Now Goldberg, whose uncivilized behavior has gotten her fired from SlimFast is whining about the assault on her "freedom of speech." "America's heart and soul is freedom of expression without fear of reprisal," she said in a statement. Where did she get that idea?

Goldberg, whose performances I've liked over the years, seems to be descending into a second adolescence, if not madness. She should have expected reprisals for her performance because her jokes first appeared on bumper stickers. She shouldn't have been surprised that SlimFast's customers might have felt icky about being associated with her presentation. And if I think she's pathetic, well, that's another consequence. No Republicans required.

There's no Constitutional amendment to protect someone from social consequences of exercising her mouth.

Revenge of the scambaiters

We get more than we can count of them every week, in the stilted English of someone who learned the language well, but not quite well enough:

Esteemed Sir:

I am the last of a wealthy family in [African country of your choice] and have $[???] billion dollars in [a named bank of that African country]. I am a Christian [usually] and am being persecuted by [the government, religious interests, other]. I seek your gracious help in getting my money out of the country. For your generosity, I would be glad to give you a small portion of the sum, say $[???] million. Blah blah blah.

This outrageous story manages to bilk $200 million from U.S. cititizens alone every year.

Now a handful of wily computer geeks have mounted a counteroffensive. Using the same methods--e-mail and a sob story--one has managed to collect $80 to cover administrative expenses. He told the scammer that he needed to join a new faith, The Church of the Order of the Red Breast, in order to get the help he desired and received a photo of a rotund black man in initiation paint.

The scambaiters have sent the e-mail exchanges to police in the UK, Niger and the U.S. FBI, but the law enforcement agencies have given no response.

In the meantime, Prince Joe, the new Nigerian devotee of The Church of the Order of the Red Breast, who is out $80 in processing fees, continues his daily prayer, "When all above seems a great test, Get on down with the Holy Red Breast," and waits for his $18,000 from Mike the scambaiter.

Sometimes it doesn't get any better than this.

Of blogs, bridges and mystery

In a comment, Douglas says I should explain the significance of the bridge in the upper left corner of this blog.

To begin with the basics, it's the Hwy. 101 bridge over Yaquina Bay at Newport, Oregon. It's a beautiful bridge, built in 1936 when Oregon was still a distant place and when Depression work projects were building highways and landmarks around the state. (Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood was built by the WPA, also in 1936.)

It's there to replace the lighthouse that comes with this Blogger template. It's a nice lighthouse, but I don't want my template to look like everybody's template, even though I'd be at sea without the coding it incorporates. So my photo replaces the Blogger lighthouse photo.

The rocks at the bottom right are part of the original template. I think the idea is that the blog is in the space between the lighthouse and the sea. For now, they go well enough with the bridge, but both bridge and rocks will change as the mood strikes me.

The deeper question is why a bridge, even one of the most beautiful bridges in the world?

A bridge is a mystery, spanning chasms, linking unconnected things and carrying travelers over whatever dangers--or delights--might lurk below. It at once unites (horizontally) and separates (vertically). It's a metaphor for Christ (Bridge between God and man) and man (bridge between spirit and matter), for translators and historians and storytellers. The archetypal bridge, the one that makes us feel its bridgeness most intensely, is a creaky, crumbling span miles above an impassible gulch. In its most familiar form, fast-moving traffic uses it to flow fearlessly, awelessly, across slow-moving rivers. But even at that, kids hold their breaths as they cross, so that they won't drown if it breaks.

Stories of conspiracy and paranoia

Foucault's Pendulum, The DaVinci Code, Jonathan Rabb's execrable novel titled The Book of Q, Three Days of the Condor, Conspiracy Theory, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Fahrenheit 911, Late Great Planet Earth, and its descendant Left Behind, Pinky and the Brain.

The paragraph above is a mixed bag of great fiction, crackpot theories, movies and books, and several works that purport to be nonfiction. Murder mystery, adventure, thriller, "evangelistic" tract and excuse for blaming all the world's problems on one of its tiniest and least-landed minorities.

What they all have in common is that they "reveal" (or portray) a secret society with designs of world domination, with religious overtones (although the nefarious conspiracy is occasionally a political body), and seeing the world through the prism of the work gives the audience a new view of reality, a question that lingers after the work is finished, "What if it's all true?"

The oldest in that group (not at all a systematic collection) is the Protocols, dating from the early 20th century.

I haven't read (seen) all of them, but what I'm getting at is not their quality as works of art or research, but more about what their popularity says about their audience. I've got more questions than answers right now:

• What is the history of the secret society-conspiracy literature? What would a systematic collection look like?


• What is the appeal of the secret society, beyond the conflict of the story--that is, why does that specific conflict feel so intensely interesting?


• Is the interest a function of our large, mobile society? If so, how does the popularity of the Protocols in Egypt and around the Middle East figure (is there an answer beyond the obvious one? is the obvious one a function of something else?)


• Why are we so willing to believe? A friend saw a sign under The DaVinci Code in Powell's Bookstore: "Even if you don't like the story, read it for the information"(!).

I write this not as someone who is so above the hoi polloi that I've never experienced the appeal, but as someone who has tasted and enjoyed the paranoia. I'm hoping that recording the questions is the first step in getting the answers.

Modifications done

Several hours later, the modifications to the Blogger template are done. That's the Hwy. 101 bridge at Newport, Oregon, in the upper-left corner, instead of the generic Maine lighthouse. The rocks in the lower right are Blogger rocks, but they look a little like Oregon rocks.

The font is Trebuchet, which I think is beautiful. The color scheme is the blogger template.

Links and ad bugs transferred over. Javascript menu installed for archives.

Whew.

Maybe I'll have time to write something now.

Coming soon: a list of some main blog entries by topics.

I wasn't ready to roll this out yet

But I've taken the dive for the new templates. Now I like it.

Modifications to follow.

Google fun

Someone looking for information about george de paris tailors guestbook 2004 found this listing:


In case it's too small to read, if you take out the ellipses, it says, "George W. Bush was asked whether he believed that the streets of Paris are washed by compassion like rainmakers, two hatters, two silversmiths and four tailors."

I hope someone raises that question at his next press conference.

Raise it up to throw it down to raise it up again

Thomas at Endlessly Rocking has helpfully posted a paragraph that leads into something I wanted to think some more about.

[The Declaration of Independence] is our charter of liberty, and the Constitution is a workaday framework for daily governance crafted in compromise and cunning, and together they constitute this country as a rather weird experiment. It's fatally flawed, of course, and in no way resembles or helps bring in or models or otherwise yields a speck of the Kingdom of God. In fact, this will no doubt go the way of all penultimate things - God raised it up, he'll throw it down.  It's his way.  "The nations are as a drop in a bucket," the rulers and peoples of the earth "are like grasshoppers" hopping pitifully at his feet.  He looks upon them and laughs, and who can blame him? All the same, as that's out of our hands, let's make use of our fortune while we may, so that when we are gone some might faintly remember that once there was a place invented as a broad space for liberty and virtue.  I can dream anyway - I want all tyrants here and abroad, now and forever, to remember, and tremble all the more in their night terrors.

To begin with, since I'm going to take one sentence and depart in a tangent toward Neptune or somewhere, I agree with his basic and overall points.

I depart at the place where it says "He looks at them and laughs." That may be true as well, but . . . .

I heard Fr. Thomas Hopko on Incarnation Broadcast radio talking about the work of the laity in the world. He said--and I wish I had it written down instead of aurally ingested, so that I could cogitate on his words--that when Christ redeems the world, it will be the whole world, not only what He created, but also our widgets and software and bridges and buildings and sculptures and symphonies and novels and poems and plays, and, I suppose, even our various experiments at government.

What we do has meaning and value because we are human beings and because our creative works participate in the creativity of the Creator. It doesn't mean that what we've done is perfect--in the sense of either "finished" or "unfallen"--but because we are part of the cosmos, what we bring into the cosmos will be redeemed.

As Fr. Michael Oleksa said in a recent sermon in our parish church, John 3:16 doesn't refer to the "civilized world" (ecumene), but to the "created world" (cosmos): "For God so loved the whole creation that He gave His only begotten Son . . . ."

More abandoned buildings

Kate from Saskatchewan has photos of an abandoned store.

You know how I love abandoned buildings, especially shelves of spices and canned goods black and rusted with long disuse.

Where's Havdala?

Is it just a temporary Blogger thing, or is Doves and Pomegranates removed from the Web?

It's amazing how you develop affection and concern for people you wouldn't know if they walked down your street, and to find someone's blog gone 404 is like finding your neighbors' house empty with no announcement that they had planned to move.

But maybe it's a Blogger (I almost wrote Blooger) quirk.

The Literary agent as institution

"Publishers, reports The New York Times, are 'not overfond' of the wheelings and dealings of agents: 'They say he has been of advantage to the few writers of the first class, having made their work much more expensive, while he has been the ruin of all the smaller fry. The steady, old-fashioned relationship between publisher and author no longer exists.' True, true: Things are (sigh) so much less gentlemanly now, and what with all those obscene advances for celebrities and blockbusters, these are hard days for midlist writers."

Thus writes Paul Collins in his Village Voice history of the institution of the literary agent. In the next paragraph, he reveals that that observation was written in 1899.

The literary agent arrived after the 1890s, when new copyright laws acknowledged intellectual property (thanks, Congress!), and writing became a commodity:

What happened was money. In the 1890s, new copyright laws meant that authors could no longer be ripped off with impunity. Authors now possessed intellectual property—and wherever there is property, agents are sure to follow. Publishers now faced dealing not with reclusive and impractical artistes easily put off with vague numbers and legal language, but with negotiators as ruthless as themselves. And as author William Alden tartly observed in 1898, "a publisher never approves of anything that puts money in the pockets of the author."

Collins recounts how agents became the publishers' gatekeepers. He opens with his own classic story of a manuscript being rejected from the slush pile while an editor is drooling over the same manuscript, submitted by an agent. He also recounts the Deering agency scam, illustrating the truism that a good agent is worth every penny, but a bad agent is worse than no agent at all.

The column is sprightly written and entertaining as well as informative. It makes me wish there had been literary agents when Jane Austen was writing.

New at the Onion Dome

The Onion Dome: Orthodox News with a Twist is up again this week. Here are the headlines:

The monks of Mount Athos are protesting the reunification talks between "the Church Overseas of Russian Orthodox Christians (COROC) and the Patriarchate of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and All the Russias Besides (PMSPNNARB)," in which that excellent COROC priest Fr. Alexis Lafitov makes an appeareance.

The insurance carrier for St. John Orthodox Church in Springfield Wash., ups its premiums because of a series of altar-boy merry mishaps.

And your humble rambling reporter finds an Orthodox spiritual autobiography, My Life: In Christ by Fr. William ("St. John the Baptist") Clinton, suprising the publishing industry as it climbs the New York Times bestseller list.

Two books worth hearing

I didn't know this was a young adult book when I picked it up at the library, and I was well into the book before I realized that it was. It doesn't matter, Coraline, by Neil Gaiman, and read by the author if you pick it up on audiobook as I did, is a splendid adventure, even if you're so far past young adult that you're becoming childish again.

Coraline is an ageless little girl who moves into a flat in a mysterious house with peculiar neighbors and a bricked-up door in the drawing room--except sometimes the bricks aren't there, and it's a door into a creepy "other" house, with an "other" mother and an "other" father and "other" neighbors. Apparently, only the door and the cat remain the same.

Coraline finally has to choose between the very interesting other world, with its pasty white other parents with button eyes, talking rats and walking toys, where her other mother loves her like a lawn ornament, and the boring world of her real life, busy parents, not getting green gloves and an upcoming school year. Gaiman is a good reader and the audio version has some original songs written for it that are creepily haunting.

And while I'm on the subject of books playing in my car, I want to say that narrator Anton Lesser is a genius. I just finished his reading of Dickens's Hard Times (abridged, unfortunately), and I was amazed at the variety of voices and dialects. A lot of men in audiobook narration do a good job with women's voices, and some women do a passable job with men's voices. I really just want them to read the part and get out of the way, and the good ones do that. But Lesser gets the women's voices so right that it's hard to believe it's the same person reading both parts, and it's not so much pitch as modulation. And the dialects. I don't know where "Coketown" is, but I suspect Lesser does, and he does different speech patterns for the workers and the factory owners, and when Mr. Bounderby is introduced as having a voice like a trumpet, Lesser takes Dickens literally. What a performance.

Nashville readers

Get religion does a great gotcha on a British snob who presumes that people in the Bible Belt don't read. Read the whole thing; it's worth it.

But here's what snagged my interest. They did a seat-of-the-pants survey of the top books ordered from Amazon.com from regions inside and outside the Bible Belt (the Bible Belt readers were doing quite well, thank you), but check this out:

Nashville
1. The Praktikos Chapters on Prayer by Evagrius Ponticus
2. Wisdom of the Celtic Saints by Edward C. Sellner, Susan McLean-Keeney
3. Gregory of Nyssa: The Life of Moses by Abraham Malherbe
4. Athanasius: The Life of Anthony and the Letter To Marcellinus by Robert C Gregg
5. Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller by Marshall Chapman
6. Celtic Spirituality by Oliver Davies, Thomas O'Loughlin
7. Discipline for Life: Getting it Right with Children by Madelyn Swift
8. Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works, edited by G.R. Evans
9. Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises, and Defense, edited by Edmund Colledge, Bernard McGinn
10. The Rule of St. Benedict: In English by Benedict, et al

As someone in the comments asked, "What's the deal with Nashville?" It looks like the whole town is joining a pre-Schism Church reading group. Maybe the Patriarch of Constantinople should move to Nashville. "American Byzantium" has a nice ring.

Scene to chapter to act to novel

There's a parallel structure in fiction that runs from the overall arc of the novel down through act, chapter and scene--and, so I've heard, down through paragraph and sentence.

There are a lot of different terms for these different aspects, but a central reality at the heart of all of them:

Character starts in her *ordinary world*, her everyday life, in which she has some problem or desire that's bigger than she's aware of. Something happens, something extraordinary that throws her out of that world, out of her comfortable set of presuppositions. The world as she knows it is gone (inciting incident).

She responds to this new world, learning its tricks and traits, acquiring new skills to deal with it. Nevertheless, it's too much for her, and it gets worse and worse, and defeat is imminent,

Until she pulls her resources together and fights back (crisis). There is an outcome to the struggle, for good or ill (climax), and she returns to a state of equilibrium with the original problem having been addressed (resolution).

Summary: ordinary world -> inciting incident -> crisis -> climax -> resolution.

Now here's what I've learned. The novel is made up of acts. Act I leads up to the inciting incident; Act II leads up to the climax; Act III is the resolution. The inciting incident is the climax of Act I, and the climax is the climax of Act II, and the process of resolution in Act II contains its own climax. In other words, each act has its own story arc, beginning with an ordinary world (the situation as it is at the beginning of the act), followed by reversal, response, decision, outcome of decision and a return to some kind of balance--the character incorporating new information--before the beginning of the next act.

It also works on a chapter level. The chapter is a series of scenes, leading through the same series of steps, but on a smaller scale and within the building of the overall arc. (In screenplay terms, a sequence is the rough equivalent of a chapter.)

So, to give an example, detective Josh Blain goes into a bar, having just interviewed the dead man's widow, to ask the bartender what he knows about the murder. Even though it's chapter 13, he begins from a point of relative equilibrium (ordinary world). He asks the bartender, gets slipped a mickey, and finds himself tied up and tossed into a cellar (inciting incident). He makes several attempts to untie himself, and then he smells smoke. They've set the building on fire with him in it. On the verge of despair, he gathers his resources and burns the rope through (crisis), then escapes just in time to get the license number of the retreating car (climax). Now he knows something more about the killer and goes on to chapter 14.

And each scene has a similar, but smaller arc of rising and fallng action. In the first scene of Josh Blain chapter 13, Blain walks into the bar (ordinary world). The bartender, instead of answering his questions civilly, tells him to get the hell out (reversal of expectations--inciting incident). Blain threatens the bartender, and the bartender threatens back (rising action). Blain collects his resources and tries a more amicable approach (crisis). The bartender gives him a drink and talks to him. Then Blain realizes that he has been slipped a mickey (climax). The world goes fuzzy and he blacks out (resolution). In the next scene, he wakes bound in a cellar with a roaring headache, and that's his next "ordinary world."

I've been told that this carries down to the paragraph and to the sentence. Is that true? Is it an optimum to work for?

Of Roasted Brians and Other National Cousins

I've got to run this morning, so I'll just send you off to a funny column in the Moscow Times about mangled English in Azerbaijan.

Here's a taste (so to speak):

In restaurants, menus offer weird and wonderful dishes, from "Hot and Cold Snakes" to "Blins under Cold Sores." My personal favorite is "Roasted Brians."

Engrish.com is another source of these translation oddities, although there, sometimes, it's not so much mangled as just translated from one inscrutable culture to another, such as today's label on a pair of pants:

Mountaineer and Fisherman
of Favorite Style
COMFORTABLE TORCH
Surprised Pants
The New State of Color
For Your Healthgiving

Oregon Berries

It all started when a Dutchman named Maarten asked blogger Matt about Oregon. Douglas referred him to my site, which wasn't particularly Oregonian at the time. But I had talked about Charles Williams, and Matt is a fan, so he mentioned this site on his.

Well today, we went berry picking, and to my readers who don't live in berry country, I can only say Too bad.



So sad.



What a pity.

A couple of pies are cooling on the stove right now.

Oh, and thanks also to Douglas (yes, the same one) for the html lesson on using the "title" tag. That's how I persuaded the little box to appear with the berry names when you hold the mouse over the photos.

The door remains closed (for now)

At GetReligion, Terry Mattingly posts this photo of a door in Constantinople (Istanbul to those who count the past 550 years as more important than the prior 1450).

It's symbolic, because it's a door into the Phanar, the headquarters of the Ecumenical Patriarchate there, which was welded shut after the Turks hanged Patriarch Gregory V after the 1821 Greek rebellion.

Now, in an effort to prove that Turkey has religious freedom and merits entry into the European Union, the Turkish government is thinking of allowing the Orthodox Seminary at Halki, closed since 1971, to reopen. The Greek community has been progressively hemmed and harried from the Ottoman conquest until now. Mattingly writes:

There are fewer than 2,000 Greek Orthodox Christians left in Istanbul, most of them elderly. Turkish law requires the patriarch to be Turkish and, quite literally, if the current patriarch died tomorrow he would be almost impossible to replace.

He adds that the Turkish government says it will reopen the seminary when the Church opens the welded door. The Church replies that it will reopen the welded door when the Turkish government permits it to open the seminary. It sounds like a squabble going on right now between two high-school girls of my acquaintance, but I guess that shows how important the symbolic gestures are rather than how trivial the parties are.

I wonder if it's too late to save the Patriarchate of Constantinople, one of the five great patriarchates of the ancient Church.

The Onion Dome is up

This week's Onion Dome is posted. Alex discovers a convert who doesn't like Way of a Pilgrim, I've covered this week's lineup on The Orthodox TV Network, and Marie visits But and Mary Jane and Her and Alice at the Summer Festival at St. Serious of Radonezh Retreat Center.

As I Lay Lying

This is the last you'll see about the Clinton memoir here, but The Minor Fall, the Major Lift has a brilliant parody in the style of William Faulkner:

Here are a few paragraphs:

There was a fire in it and Vince squatting in his shirt tail in front of it, chunking Rose Law Firm records into the blaze.

"What you know about it." Hilsey said. "What trance you been in."

"Dont need no trance." Vernon said. "Aint the sign of it laying right there on that bed. Aint the sign of it been here for folks to see four years now."

"Spose it is." Hilsey said. "It aint hurt none of you and yourn, is it. Mack working and McDougal dead off your hands and A.G. getting big enough to take Billy's place when term limits finish getting him."

Read the whole thing.

SOURCE: Maud Newton, including a nomination for the Bulwer-Lytton Award.

From grammar to voice

I haven't read the best-selling grammar-advocacy book, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, not for any reason of taste or principle, but just because it hasn't risen to the top of my stack (it's a tall stack). Now Louis Menand in his New Yorker review of the book says I haven't missed much. I've got some disagreements with his grammatical issues, but they're not worth blogging about.

The second half of his article talks about "voice" in writing, and it's well worth reading. He begins:

One of the most mysterious of writing's immaterial properties is what people call "voice." Editors sometimes refer to it, in a phrase that underscores the paradox at the heart of the idea, as "the voice on the page." Prose can show many virtues, including originality, without having a voice. It may avoid cliché, radiate conviction, be grammatically so clean that your grandmother could eat off it. But none of this has anything to do with this elusive entity the "voice."

As you can see, he defines "voice" not as the essential something, the DNA, about anyone's writing, but more as an engaging manner of writing that hooks the reader by its style of conversation. I hold with the first definition, but all the same, he makes some pertinent observations about that second definition of "voice" (whatever might be a better term for it).

The Greater Trumps

I don't read Charles Williams in quite the same way I read other novels, unless every novel is different, which is a possibility. I don't read him for the puzzle, for the "Aha! I know that person!," for the eye-popping descriptions. I know when I pick up one of his novels--or his poetry for that matter--that it's not going to be a beach read, but I bought a used copy of The Greater Trumps a few months ago, and when I finally got around to reading it, it was as hard to put down as people tell me The DaVinci Code is (next on deck is a Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, another puzzler, and a different kind of delight altogether, but I was talking about Williams).

Williams is controversial in some Christian circles, and Trumps is a perfect example of why: An ancient Tarot deck has a perfect correspondence with golden figurines who illustrate the dance of the cosmos. Fortune-telling, manipulation of the environment, murder and mayhem--and those are the good guys; in another of Williams's novels, a man who has practiced witchcraft his whole life is finally redeemed because he truly loved Satan, and that love is enough of a hook for Love to catch hold of.

Williams also has some unusual spiritual ideas, such as co-inherence, which I wouldn't dare try to explain, but will only hint that people can really bear each other's burdens, literally and truly, even spiritual ones. It's an idea best explained through poetry, and his poetry is difficult (though it rewards the effort).

And if anyone can explain Shadows of Ecstasy to me, I would be grateful.

Compared to his Arthurian saga in poetry and Shadows, Trumps is a walk in the park (OK, walk in the park through a cataclysmic snowstorm). Here's how the Charles Williams Society summarizes the plot:

The Greater Trumps (1932) has the original set of Tarot cards coming into the posession of an English legal official, with devastating results, of which the threat of a universal snowstorm is only one. Williams's use of symbolism is close to its highest here.

His description of the cosmos as participating in a dance, from the atomic level through the decisions of human beings, is something that strikes very close to home for an Orthodox Christian (Williams was Catholic), and his character of Sybil Coningsby, the protagonist's maiden aunt who is very advanced in the ways of Messias, as Williams calls Christ in his novels (why does he do that?), gives a speculative glimpse into the mind of a great saint.

I never know quite what to do with Williams. His works stir my soul in ways that I can't say are bad, but they are so idiosyncratic that I can't abandon myself to their currents either.

Here are a few lines that I copied into my notebook, thinking, "I wish," but wondering . . . .

. . . responsibility, that task put into the hands of man in order that his own choice may render it back to its creator, that yoke which, once wholly lifted and put on, is immediately no longer to be worn.

I can proof-text it, too, but is it the mind of the Church?

Who's reading your blog?

I've always been impressed that St. Jude and others read the classifieds page of the newspapers.

Now I learn that Allah reads Lileks.

What does it take, do you suppose, to get on God's blogroll? St. Seraphim's?

Just wondering.

Garage sale

I was out yesterday tending our garage sale. A great day for it--hot, in the sun at least. But in the breezy shade under the tree in the front yard, I communed with Charles Williams (+), Elmore Leonard (-) and then Umberto Eco (!) as the people came, looked over our stuff, bargained it down, and took it away. It was too hot to sell the sweaters.

More than half the people who came were from somewhere else--Hispanics mostly, but also Slavs and Middle-Easterners, some with barely accented English, others with little English or none, paying 50 cents or a dollar for a clothes, books, puzzles, learn-to-read games. A Russian asked me if I'd take a quarter for a nice teen-ager's fleece pullover (perfect for Oregon winters). I said it's a good pullover; I was hoping for 50 cents. He looked dubious. Fifty cents. I said how about three for a dollar. Done. Hah. I drive a hard bargain, eh?

The best was the two little Hispanic girls with their mom, who bought I forget what and found she had enough left over to ask about the stuffed animals. My daughter is selling them for 50 cents for the little ones and a dollar for the big ones. Well, the little girls were so cute that we called the middle-sized bunnies they picked "small," and they went away hugging their new toys.

Planning and organizing the things are always a hassle. Siphoning through the junk, putting the ad in the paper, putting up signs, coming up with displays. I always hate the idea of it, and then enjoy the negotiating, marketing, people-watching and long stretches of sitting in the shade with a book or talking to a neighbor. What can be better than that? (I know. A lot of things. But it's up there--somewhere.)

I go away lighter (especially after delivering the unsold stuff to the Goodwill), and the folks go away with that special glow that comes from getting a nice stuffed toy for 50 cents or three good jackets for a dollar.

Damick does it again

Andrew Damick poses a question that has puzzled me a lot over the years: Why Should the Devil Get All the Good Music? Instead of bemoaning the incroachment of rock 'n' roll into the "sanctuary" or observing that the melody to "The Star-Spangled Banner" came from a drinking song, he actually gets at the philosophy behind some of the "church" music trends these days.

Most popular Christian art in America shares the same essential assumptions as secular art, so it is largely trying to accomplish the same thing ­ products are being created for a particular market, artists are engaging in self-expression, and art is being consumed as entertainment.  . . . How many times have we heard songs in which the object of affection could just as easily be Jesus or a boyfriend?

. . . . Christian artists find their stylistic inspiration in secular art, then “change the lyrics” to fit the tastes of a Christian sub-cultural market.  . . . Meanwhile, while secular art is being repainted with the face of Jesus on it for the Christian consumer, secular artists have moved on to the next big thing, leaving their Christian contemporaries to catch up in the next few years.

And then, having addressed the phenomenon, he gets to the answer for it, an answer worthy of (probably inspired by) Fr. Alexander Schmemann:

First, there ought to be no separation between the sacred and the secular.  Rather, all must be made sacred. The secular should be subsumed into the sacred, baptizing it in the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, cleansing it of what is impure and vivifying it with the uncreated life of the Holy Trinity.  Or to consider the issue from another angle, Mother Raphaela in her book Growing in Christ says, “Rather than thinking in terms of putting Christ into our Christmas, we may rather think in terms of putting ourselves, including our Christmas, into Christ” (p. 35).

We must make Christ our cultural atmosphere.  We must make our source of inspiration not the spirit of the age but rather the Holy Spirit.  We must enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, a transcendent and eternal culture which is the life of becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4).  This pursuit of the sacred is a denial of the very existence of secularity, which has no real existence, being ultimately nihilistic.  In previous ages, when the idea of having a non-religious society did not even occur to most people, all art was what today might be identified as “religious” but to our forefathers was simply “art.”

I've blogged Damick's thoughts on Christianity and the arts before, at Fellowship of St. Caedmon. Apparently, this essay is the introduction to an upcoming book of his titled The Transfiguration of Culture: Orthodox Christianity and the Arts. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it.

They should withhold their next payment

Bloggers are outraged that Dave Winer pulled the plug on their blogs without warning.

He'd been hosting 3,000 blogs on his server for free, beginning in 2000. Now, because of time, financial and health demands, he decided that he couldn't do it any more. So he stopped.

People woke up Monday morning to discover that they didn't have a blog.

Bummer. I'd be shocked, too, if it happened to me. I confess that for all the bells and whistles on this site--template, server storage, site meter, blog indexes, comments, I've paid not one penny (it's probably obvious). It's a choice I've made, and an option I'm grateful for. When one of these free benefits stops working, either it gets fixed or I drop it. But calling the giver an "egomaniacal blowhard" is just plain weird.

Blogger belongs to Google now, another free service, but it has long-term stability. But we haven't signed any contract. I keep copies of my own archives on my own hard drive. If Blogger sometime decides to collect fees for the service, I'll analyze the benefit against the cost and make a decision. But I won't accuse anyone of betraying "blogtopia."

Sheesh. Get a grip. (And back up.)

Horror story settings

Abandoned buildings talk--they laugh and gibber and shriek like crazy old ladies. The folks at Dark Passage hear them, too.

It's a tour of some of the creepiest places around, like the tunnel that eats light and comes up under the house that used to hold the funeral home that processed H.P. Lovecraft's body.


I don't know why this photo of the Abandoned Science Institute in Yonkers seems so full of fantastic possibilities. It's a geenhouse, for Pete's sake, with red doors and light-streaming glass roof. But it's almost empty, and the gray light filtering in could be from a post-apocalyptic dawn or the gray afternoon on a haunted English manor. Looking through the series of doors gives the effect of looking into twinned mirrors and finding one of the images out of step with the rest.

There's also a story about the secret subway tunnels in New York and FDR's underground route from Grand Central Station to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

I read the fine print. They apparently don't care if you use their photos as a jumping-off place for horror fiction.

I feel better already

I swear it's not schadenfreude. The author at debcentral (sorry, I've got my wrong glasses on and can hardly see the screen, much less read small white type against a black background) has kindly posted a gallery of her rejections.

I've got more of those than she shows on the web. Altogether, I may have more than anyone. But we have some of the same ones. And she's got some scrawled encouragement, and I've had some scrawled encouragement.

It's a club. I'm a member, and Deb's a member, and if you're a writer, you're probably a member, too.

One suggestion for the major fiction markets: if you made the rejections slips smaller, you could get, oh, maybe 150-200 of them out of one 8.5x11" sheet of paper. Don't worry about us. We'll buy microscopes to read them.

I've got a couple of stories I need to get back into circulation.

SOURCE: Maud Newton

The Storrow Drive Venus

If Charles Williams were blogging in the 21st century, he might sound something like Stephen Baldwin:

. . . as the discarded soda and beer cans bobbed along in the water's edge like rusting buoys in a brown foam so disgusting that it seemed even the seagulls disdained to get their feet wet, I thought to myself: what kind of Venus would be born from the waves of an ocean into which such a river flowed?

And then suddenly - as if belched out from the guts of some mutant, bottom-feeding mollusc - there she was, standing before me in all her grotesque, obese, acne-scarred, frizzy-haired, gum-snapping, incoherent shouting glory.

I've been wanting to refer my readers to this blog for a while, but haven't found a passage to capture his quirky, ethereal prose. This one does it.

Sometimes it seems like he's obliquely referring to the world the rest of us know; sometimes not. But always worth a read, in my experience.

It's not just the Islamists who think Americans are Satanic

Apparently, the Greeks do, too.

I knew about the Greeks' disaffection for America, but Mike Epitropoulos, a scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, writes that the disfavor goes beyond the Muslim immigrants and holdover communists. The Orthodox Church wrote a prayer to protect Greece from Western (especially American) tourists:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on the cities, the islands and the villages of this Orthodox Fatherland, as well as the Holy monasteries which are scourged by the worldly touristic wave.

I guess I'll delete Greece from my list of places I'd like to visit, sadly. I'd hate to be part of the "worldly touristic wave" inflicted on that unfortunate country.

Epitropoulos's piece is long and worth reading. I was particularly interested in the complicated relationship between Greek-Americans and their anti-American brethren back home.

Anyway, I just sent in my Onion Dome piece last evening, and if anyone wonders where I get such weird ideas, they're "ripped from the headlines."

Bad advice

At the West Linn High School graduation last evening, the unpublished theme was "risk-taking": "Follow your dreams"; "The only thing you'll regret is not taking chances"; "Don't pay any attention to what the naysayers say."

Even the school board chair, Tom Bruggere, talking about his 40th reunion with the Berkely, Calif., High School Class of 1963, took up the meme. After a toss-off line about classmates who ruined their lives in Haight-Ashbury, he said that everyone was there (at the reunion), and the only thing anyone regretted was the risk not taken.

The dozen valedictorians, along with the various teachers and administrators, gave examples of good risks--going to college, moving from Ohio to Oregon, sky-diving, joining the Peace Corps--but they spoke before hundreds of high-school seniors, many of whom are already participating in high-risk behaviors. Even in an upper-middle-class school district like West Linn (or maybe especially in an upper-middle-class school district like West Linn), drug and alcohol abuse are rampant, as are sexually transmitted diseases, along with young drivers' reckless habits. These students already ignore the tiresome naysayers (the ones who still have the courage to say, "Nay") who tell them to stay straight and sober, get more education, learn delayed gratification.

No one mentioned delayed gratification throughout the whole evening, nor even a passing obervation that the value of risk taking depends on what's being risked and the possible rewards. No, the consensus was that risk is an objective good, no further analysis needed.

I'm sure that Bruggere was not accurate when he said everyone was at his 40th high-school reunion; I wish he had mentioned what happened to the ones who ruined their lives at Haight Ashbury. And the view that his classmates regretted not taking more chances tells more about their dissatisfaction with their own lives than about the value of risk for high-school seniors, because it's impossible to know what the outcome of an untaken action would have been.

Probably most of the kids in their green robes and flat hats were too excited to hear the speeches anyway. But I wish that someone had the courage to lead, to inspire, to push toward greatness, rather than just to advise the kids to "follow their dreams" and then turn to the next class.

UPDATE: Here is the commencement address I wish someone had given. It may be what they meant, but were too careless with words to say (which is understandable in high-school kids, even a dozen valedictorians, but I wish there were more to administrators. Oh well.)

Do you think anyone would notice if I started talking like this?

In his Telegraph UK column, Oliver Pritchett has struck a chord for grace and elegance in language.

Think how much more beautiful our airports would be if this message told us to mind our bags:

"Put not thy trust in bags that are unattended, for it may be the work of thine enemies who seek to devour thee. Go forth first and find a man who travaileth in the terminal and speak unto him, saying, 'Behold, this suitcase standeth alone like a rock in the desert.' Then shall the man seek out the forgetful person who left the suitcase there and he shall chastise him."

Or this warning:

"Great is this carton for it containeth a brand new personal computer. Let its ways be for ever upright. Let no man smite and let not the rain fall down upon it. For if the heathen droppeth it from a great height it will be destroyed and all its software with it and the heathen will then rend his garments and hide his face."

Lo, my heart bends to form such beauty of speech from the words of my mouth, but my soul quails within me, for those who travail beside me would laugh me to scorn, and those among whom I dwell would rend their garments and cry out to the LORD: "Alas! for our mom has gone off the deep end at last, and we are smitten with grief, for it was hard enough to understand her before!"

Verily did this link come from GetReligion.

Orthodox radio on the Web

I love Incarnation Broadcast Network, which is why it's so maddening that it's so charmingly wonky. (I listen by way of Live 365.)

A Liturgy in fine Byzantine chant is interrupted suddenly by a whiney-voiced woman giving an honestly inspiring reflection about the Fatherhood of God.

When she finishes, a Liturgy begins that has the background noise of a hotel conference room, so badly recorded (on top of being badly sung) that it literally hurts my ears (I'm listening at work with earphones).

I have to tune out, because I can't stand it, but when I come back a little later, the noted Orthodox musicologist Vladimir Morosan is giving a talk on the late-19th-, early-20th-century Russian liturgical music composer whose name I didn't quite catch. I had hopes of learning about him in more depth, but it was not to be.

Morosan is interrupted by a minute or so of Russian Church bells, followed by yet another program of liturgical music, interrupted by yet more church bells.

Then we get a 30-second snippet of a talk about the role of the unordained theologian in Eastern and Western theology. I've just gotten hooked when it switches to Pascal vespers.

Bewildered, I go away to Pat's Guitar Jazz, which at least has a program and plays the song all the way through.

Incarnation Broadcast is typically Orthodox--done with love and devotion, but seemingly built like the great churches of Byzantium, without a plan, just a pile of stones formed into arches and domes and overlaid with stunning frescoes that testify to the glory of God.

UPDATE: I suppose it's only fair to report a few days later a normal morning of Web radio at the Incarnation Broadcast Network. I heard the rest of Vladimir Morosan's discussion of Chesnikov (that's who it was), an excellent workshop-type lecture on the measure of one's closeness to God and good music played from beginning to end.

Emigres and immigrants

In his New York Times piece titled A Russian Émigré Finally Gets His Russian Passport, Serge Schmemann tells about his uncle's receipt of a Russian passport after decades of living as an emigre in France. Serge (I guess I can call him Serge, since he gave my newly adopted daughters and me a ride from Liturgy at St. Catherine's to where we were staying in Moscow in the mid-1990s. Funny how we presume on past kindnesses given us. Nevertheless, onward) writes gracefully, as always, about the long-term exile of some Russians.

His father, on the other hand, theologian and priest Father Alexander Schmemann, wrote in 1977:

I, for one, never emigrated from anywhere: I was already born an "emigrant," and although I have never been in Russia, I have always, since I was conscious, identified myself unequivocally as a Russian — and this despite my having lived almost 30 years in France and accepted French culture as something very close, almost my own; and in recent years, I can say without exaggeration, that I not only have embraced America, but have dedicated the major part of my life's work to it.

I can appreciate the loyalty of the exile, but even more, I appreciate the generosity of one who embraces a younger culture, who brings the gifts of his home to it, who enriches the lives of those who might otherwise never have known what he taught. Recommended reads: For the Life of the World and The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-1983,

Thanks to Geri Ethen for the tip.

Multicultural crisis in Eugene

Oh, please, is my first reaction to this "cultural crisis" recounted in the Oregon Daily Emerald, the newspaper of the University of Oregon in Eugene.

At a conference to teach students how to obtain jobs, a workshop leader told students that for best results they should use a firm handshake and good eye contact. One student said that in her culture, those things were discouraged.

The leader told the student that a small thing like that could distract the employer from her many finer qualities and lead to her losing the job. He called the syndrome "the blemish effect." (I could get started on human resources jargon, but it would be a side trail with no return.)

The student was offended, saying that the workshop leader must have thought her culture was a blemish. And she reported her discomfort to the Diversity Police at the Ethnic Diversity Affairs Committee, who instead of explaining the language of the culture where the student lives, proceeded to list recommendations so that no one (except those who hold traditional values) will ever be offended again.

These magic steps? Create a five-year plan to address the issues. (This is good. It should keep the Diversity Police busy for at least five years.) Develop standardized and enforced procedures for handling complaints. (The complaint form will be 12,010 pages long, continually growing, and computer readable, with such questions as "The workshop leader called my culture a blemish" Y/N.) Require diversity training for staff and faculty. (Now here's the employment opportunity. Only how does one get trained in diversity? The only way to keep from offending anyone is never to say anything. We may as well close down the university now and send those tender souls back to a culture that understands them.)

I love this:

Graduate student Jim Lyda, coordinator of the college's Ethnic Diversity Affairs Committee, said students of color in the college have experienced cultural insensitivity from some faculty members. He said local schools also have raised concerns that the college produces teachers who lack multicultural skills.

"That's kind of what we term a crisis," Lyda said.

It's kind of what they term a crisis. Does he mean it's almost a crisis? Or it fits into a broad category of things that they deem crises? Probably the latter, since I suspect their recommendations come up every six months or so.

What are students of color anyway? When I grew up in the 1960s, we referred to African-Americans as "colored people" (it was the polite term at the time, about four designations ago). But I can't imagine an African-American woman in a university setting being afraid to look someone in the eye. The woman's complaints sound more Asian to me. Have Middle and Far Easterners become "colored"?

Here's the thing: If a simple misunderstanding provokes a crisis, then I would guess that not many professors refer to their students as "ragheads" or "frogs." And if the sensitivity patrol can't help deal with real cultural misunderstandings, but call them crises and propose programs and standardized tests, then who loses?

As far as I can tell, no one helped the "student of color" figure out what her options are when she's job interviewing and some employer reaches across his desk to shake her hand. Have him arrested for insensitivity?

Source: Tongue Tied

Blood libels and American politics

I'd like to see a survey of the relationship between various blood libels and genocide down through history. My hypothesis is that there are several roles in the development of genocide.

First, the idea-shapers promote the libel--that Jews eat children, that Christians drink blood, that blacks are apes or whites are soulless ghosts. It begins with the accusation of heinous crimes and progresses to a denial of human status.

Then others dissociate themselves from the subjects of the libel, so that they are not caught in its net: "First they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew . . . ."

Finally, the genocide takes place, with the cooperation or at least the nonintervention of those who have been persuaded that the victims deserve it. I suspect that the same process has taken place before every genocide in history. Not that the blood libel always precedes genocide, but that genocide is always preceded by the blood libel.

What brings this to mind is Michael Feingold's theatre review of King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe. Feingold reads it as an allegory about George W. Bush. For a good deconstructionist critic, literature is always about whatever the critic himself is thinking about at the time, but Foreman's program notes support his view: "I hope [that the play's fictional devices] allow many levels of theatrical irony and comic energy to coexist with my anguished point of view concerning the direction in which current American policy is leading us."

But as far as I can tell the libel is Feingold's, not Foreman's:

Republicans don't believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don't give a hoot about human beings, either can't or won't. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm. (emphasis added)

We've seen it all: the Bush=Hitler signs; the bumpersticker that reads "Lobotomies for all Republicans: It's the law"; the unwillingness, even on the part of such "reasonable" and nuanced parties as the Religious Left, to acknowledge that their opponents in the political arena may have the best interests of the poor at heart, even if different ways of pursuing those ends; and the accusation that Bush and his cabinet caused and profited from 9/11.

I know that there are people such as Michael Savage out there, profiting off the production of right-wing bile. But he is his own voice and not representative of anyone else. He is certainly not the media presence of the Village Voice or the organizations, such as MoveOn.org who work with the Democratic Party. Nor are those voices as widespread on the right as on the left.

All the same, I wonder how seriously Feingold takes himself in this respect. If someone handed him a gun and promised not to prosecute him, would he join the firing squad? I ask this because I know people who make similar statements, and I wonder where their hearts are. It's only a joke, they would say, but would it be funny if it were turned the other direction?

And what would be the result if this blood libel triumphed?

(Link came from Politburo Diktat.)

UPDATE: Jessica's Well helpfully adds a yellow Republican star for us to wear on our clothes when the Feingoldian Brownshirts take charge.

Manalive

Just finished reading G.K. Chesterton's novel Manalive, a story about the pursuit of joy.

Innocent Smith is a man with two legs, who discovered in college the truth behind the pessimistic philosphies of pre-World War I England: that the professors could talk gloom and despair all they wanted, but if bullet whizzed past their heads, they would be happy to be alive.

Building on that discovery, Smith goes to the ends of the earth (well, to the other side and back) to "find" his home and elopes with his wife again and again to keep the magic in the relationship.

It's classic Chesterton, with lines that make you laugh, scratch your head and then laugh again, with characters who talk deep philosophy in a way that actually works as fiction. Set in the context of a "trial" of the criminal Mr. Smith, the story carries echoes of the trial of Christ, then the holy fools, then a simple man who is searching for joy in his own life. The progression from Great Mystery to struggling person maintains the believablity of the character in a context that begs for unbelievability.

I had the story recommended to me by someone who had read my story, "The Fool." It's not the only "fool" story I've run across recently. Another friend gave me a paperback mystery about an accused arsonist similar to Max. Chesterton's fool is similar to the way I'd envisioned mine--they even share a wind--but Chesterton's work is longer. I didn't even dare to try to maintain mine for that length of work. His is funnier, bigger, wilder and more extravagant. I was trying to make mine something one might see any day and not realize. No one could see Innocent Smith without taking notice.

If I were in grad school, I'd think about a thesis on the fool in literature. It could be a big topic.

Israel: Sympathy or statecraft?

Chris Jones comments on Doesn't sound like apocalypticism to me:

I am a supporter and admirer of President Bush, but I think his remarks, as quoted, must be regarded as politically necessary rhetoric, not to be taken seriously as the truth.

Serious reflection on the meanings of the terms friend, ally, and democracy does not suggest that they apply particularly well to the State of Israel and her relationship to the United States. Sympathy, more than sober statecraft, has always driven our policy concerning Israel.

My response went over 1,000 characters, and my comments wouldn't hold it, but since I'm queen of this blog, I can post it right out here with as many characters as I want:

My distinction was between those who say that the only reason to support Israel must be the (to my mind) flawed correspondence between the biblical "Israel" and the modern state. There are other reasons, whether of statecraft or sympathy; neither is fundamentalist theology.

However, and again for all its faults, Israel holds up quite well in comparison to other allies (notice the lack of squirm quotes) such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and France. And it's alone and under seige. There are more non-Jewish Arabs elected to national political office in Israel than in any other country in the Middle East. May Iraq soon pass them in that distinction.

If the death-worshipers stopped killing Israeli kids and little old ladies, as well as Arabs, I would get back to criticizing Israeli policies again.

As for Bush, those who think he's stupid (not pointing at Chris) misunderestimate his strategery. We won't know to what extent for another 50 years or more, when the information is released and when we get past the passions of our times. I probably won't be here to see the definitive 20/20-hindsight biography, and I regret that.

Oprah picks Anna

Oprah Winfrey has picked Anna Karenina for her book club.

I've never watched Oprah's book club (not a snob, just never made the connection), but I'm impressed with this selection. If her fandom reads this impressive volume, it will ennoble our civilization. I'm serious.

I'm only sorry that Tolstoy can't collect the spike in royalties.