10,000 Maniacs & David Byrne, "Let the Mystery Be" -- a (sort of) theological reflection.

The clip above shows 10,000 Maniacs, with their then vocalist Natalie Merchant and a guest appearnce by David Byrne, doing "Let the Mystery Be", a song by singer and songwriter Iris DeMent. At first hearing, this may seem a paean to agnosticism. However, it made me remember a conversation some years ago with the Rev. Stephen Muncie, then Rector of Grace Church, Brooklyn Heights. I was expressing my doubts about some aspects of Judaeo-Christian doctrine because they did not comport with my understanding of physics and of cause-effect relationships. Steve's response was, "Mystery, not mastery." He also gave me a quotation from Anne Lamott that I treasure, and give below in its full context:

“I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me -- that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”

Anne Lamott, Plan B -- Further Thoughts on Faith 

Addendum: Here's the original version of "Let the Mystery Be" by Iris DeMent, with accompanying musicians. 

Happy Easter! Zissen Pesach! Ramadan Mubarak!

According to Magee Hickey on WPIX 11 Easter, Passover, and Ramadan, three important holidays of the three Abrahamic faiths, overlap only once every thirty years or so. This is one of those years. She quotes Rabbi Aaron Raskin of Bnai Avraham synagogue here in Brooklyn Heights:

"When all these holidays come together it's a time of unity ... [t]o see how we complement one another to see how we can work together to make the world a better place."

Holiday blessings to my Christian, Jewish, and Muslim friends; to all others, enjoy a glorious spring.

King's College Cambridge Choir, ""All Glory, Laud and Honour"

This morning's Palm Sunday service at Grace Church, Brooklyn began, as it customarily does, with the joyful hymn "All Glory, Laud and Honor", sung in the video above by the choir of King's College, Cambridge. Following the clergy and choir, we left our pews and sang it in procession, holding our palm fronds in one hand and our programs, with the lyrics, in the other. We sang, with help from the choir, as we left the sanctuary, went through the courtyard, and out along the sidewalk at Hicks Street.

The service ended on a somber note with "O Sacred Head Sore Wounded"; a hymn I associate with Good Friday. Ten years ago I posted a video of the Concentus Musicus Wien performing J.S. Bach's O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, from the St. Matthew Passion, which is the basis for "O Sacred Head Sore Wounded". In my commentary on that post, I noted that Bach had used a tune by Hans Leo Hassler. I also noted in that post that the tune was later used by Tom Glazer for "Because All Men Are Brothers" and by Paul Simon for "American Tune".

How best do we honor Dr. King today?

On May 15, 1957, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech to a group assembled for a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom. The theme of that speech was "Give Us the Ballot". Eight years later Congress passed and President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which banned practices concerning eligibility or ability to vote that disproportionately affected racial or linguistic minorities. 

However, in two decisions the Supreme Court has drastically limited the Act's effectiveness. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S.529 (2013) declared the Act's section 4, which determined which jurisdictions should be subject to the Act's section 5 empowering the federal government to pre-clear any proposed changes to voting regulations in jurisdictions that historically practiced discrimination, unconstitutional on the grounds that the conditions that justified it in 1965 had been eliminated and that it therefore constituted an infringement on the states' power to regulate elections under the Tenth Amendment. There were strong arguments that the Court's decision lacked a factual basis.

Last year the Court delivered an even stronger impediment to the efficacy of the 1965 Act in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, 594 U.S. __, 141 S. Ct. 2321 (2021). This decision held that Arizona's statute prohibiting third party collection of ballots and out-of-precinct voting, despite having disparate impact on minority voters, could not be invalidated under the Act's section 2 or the Fifteenth Amendment. In its decision the Court proposed "guidelines" for evaluating voting restrictions that would allow those having disparate impact where the burden imposed is seen as small in comparison to the state's interest in imposing the restriction. The Court's analysis of section 2 has been characterized as "ahistorical and atextual". 

The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, now combined with the Freedom to Vote Act, would effectively overturn Shelby and Brnovich, as well as providing new protections for access to the polls and governing the redistricting process. However, the likelihood of passage is now close to zero, given Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's opposition to changing the filibuster rule. Meanwhile, many states have been busy enacting legislation to restrict access to the polls. As of last July eighteen states had enacted some such legislation. Texas has since enacted its omnibus bill that places many restrictions on voting.

What can be done, given the almost certain unavailability of legislative relief and the Supreme Court's (and many lower courts') hostility to challenges of state voting restrictions? Given the new landscape, the best we can manage - and it will be a challenge - is to do all we can to assure that all prospective voters, minority or not, get whatever assistance they need to jump through whatever hoops are raised between them and access to the ballot, and to get their votes counted accurately. By doing so, we will be honoring Dr. King's legacy.

Giving up church for Lent

I don't usually "give up" anything for Lent. I've had some clerical support for this. Lent isn't about renunciation, I've heard in homilies, but about reflection. I try to do that. Four years ago I posted about my reflections looking back on Lent from Easter Sunday.

Still, as well as being a time of reflection, Lent should be a time of liturgical devotion; of faithful attendance at services, participating in communal worship and prayers, and taking of the Eucharist. That's why I was saddened, although I recognize its necessity, by the announcement that the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island is suspending, effective yesterday (Saturday, March 14) "all public worship" until Thursday, March 26, at which time it will be decided whether to continue the suspension. Any continuation would certainly extend through Holy Week; a sad prospect indeed. No Passion Narrative on Palm Sunday, in which, four years ago, I had the "honor" of reading the part of Pontius Pilate. No Stations of the Cross - a new, High Church addition to our liturgy this year. Worst of all, no Rev. Allen Robinson, our Rector, proclaiming on Easter Sunday, "Alleluia, Christ is risen!" and our responding, "He is risen indeed, Alleluia!"

So it was that I had a bit of a lie-in yesterday morning, knowing I was relieved of my duties of ushering and of being intercessor; that is. leading the Prayers of the People. But I missed the opportunity to join with my friends in worship, to greet our clergy - Allen, Erika, and Catherine - afterward, and to socialize at Coffee Hour (sometimes jokingly called the Eighth Sacrament of the Episcopal Church).  Update: Grace Church clergy are doing Morning Prayer services that are live-streamed on the church's website. 

Another thing I'll miss is the weekly in-person meeting of the Education for Ministry class, in which I'm in my second year. This is a class given by extension from the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, that is not for preparation to become clergy, but rather to educate lay Christians about scripture, church history and theology. Its intention is to prepare lay people for their ministry in daily life. We're looking for a way to continue meeting on line. Today I began reading one of our assigned texts: Life Together (1939) by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. For those unfamiliar with him, he was a Lutheran pastor and theologian, born in Breslau, Germany in 1906. His opposition to the Nazi regime led to his arrest in 1943 and execution by hanging in the Flossenburg concentration camp in April 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated by U.S. soldiers and a month before Germany's surrender. This gives a particular poignancy to the title of his best known work, The Cost of Discipleship (1937).

Life Together is a much shorter work than The Cost of Discipleship. Here is Bonhoeffer's preface:

The subject matter I am presenting here is such that any further development can only take place through a common effort. We are not dealing with a concern of some private circles but with a mission entrusted to the church. Because of this, we are not searching for more or less haphazard individual solutions to a problem. This is, rather, a responsibility to be undertaken by the church as a whole. There is a hesitation evident in the way this task has been handled. Only recently has it been understood at all. But this hesitation must give way to the willingness of the church to assist in the work. The variety of new ecclesial forms of community makes it necessary to enlist the vigilant cooperation of every responsible party. The following remarks are intended to provide only one individual contribution toward answering the extensive questions that have been raised thereby. As much as possible, may these comments help to clarify this experience and put it into practice.

Bonhoeffer's words convey a sense of urgency. They were written at the time when the Nazi regime was preparing Germany for war with its neighboring countries, and solidifying its racist doctrine that would lead to the Holocaust. He stressed the need for collective action.

The COVID-19 crisis may seem to be an impediment to our ability to act collectively, as it prevents us from physically gathering together. Technology that Bonhoeffer couldn't imagine lets us communicate in ways well beyond the printed word, radio, and telephone of his time. This technology has its well known downsides - it facilitates the propagation of falsehoods, enables on-line bullying, and lets us tune out all who disagree with us. Still, it does allow us to work together for the good, even if we must be physically separated. Let us do so, until this crisis has passed, as I fervently hope and pray it will soon.

"The Drum Major Instinct"

Two months before he was murdered, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon on "The Drum Major Instinct." He began with the text in Mark 10:35-41, in which James and John asked Jesus if they will be given the right to sit at his right and left hands in glory. Instead of rebuking them, Jesus said this honor was not his to give, and concluded

[W]hosoever will be great among you, shall be your servant: and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.

Dr. King then observed,

[W]e must understand that we have some of the same James and John qualities. And there is deep down within all of us an instinct. It's a kind of drum major instinct—a desire to be out front, a desire to lead the parade, a desire to be first. And it is something that runs the whole gamut of life.

He then illustrated ways that instinct affects us badly: through competitive consumerism that leads us to live beyond our means; by bragging, name-dropping, and spreading pernicious gossip; by anti-social behavior meant to attract attention; and by a "snobbish exclusivism," including racial prejudice, which, he ruefully observed, is found in some churches.

Like Jesus, Dr. King did not condemn this "drum major instinct." Instead, he said, it should be re-directed in a positive way:

And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That's a new definition of greatness.

At the conclusion of the sermon, he said:

Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right or your left side, not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your left side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition. But I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.

Just before these final words, he quoted from the lyrics of "Then My Living Will Not Be In Vain," sung here by Patti LaBelle: Ms. LaBelle sang this as a tribute to Oseola McCarty, a washerwoman who, following a life of hard work and thrift, was able to leave a bequest of $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi.

You can read the full text of Dr. King's sermon here and hear a recording here.

Dr. King photo: File photo-Public Domain.

Tree of Life: a massacre of the aged.

When I saw that the names of those who died in yesterday's mass murder at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh had been published, I turned to it with trepidation. "Any children, teenagers, young parents?" I wondered. There were none of those, but what I found was deeply saddening in another way. The youngest victims were two brothers, Cecil and David Rosenthal, both in their fifties. There were several people in their sixties and seventies, and three in their eighties, including a married couple, Bernice and Sylvan Simon. The oldest was Rose Mallinger, 97. The full list is here.

By coincidence, this afternoon my wife and I attended a memorial service for a woman we had known for years at Grace Church and through events at the Beaux Arts Society. She was 97 when she died. She had suffered illness for some time before her death, but she passed peacefully, in the company of her son, daughter, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, all of whom gave moving testimonials at the service to her loving effect on their lives.

Hearing that our friend was 97 at her death made me think of Rose Mallinger. She would have been a young adult at the time of the Holocaust, though she may have passed that time in the safety of Pittsburgh. If so, she would have learned about it later. perhaps not until several years after VE Day. I have a copy of Life magazine's Picture History of World War II, published in 1950, which includes a photo taken in a just liberated Nazi concentration camp, that shows emaciated bodies in a heap. The caption describes them as "people Hitler didn't like." The notion that Jews were the principal, though not the sole, victims of the Nazi extermination program, was slow to be publicized. Rose may have learned early on, by informal channels of communication through family members who escaped in time. However and whenever she learned, she almost certainly felt a mixture of profound sorrow and relief that she had passed that time in a safe place.

What were her last few moments like? Hearing gunshots, trying to urge her aged frame to safety, the searing pain as the bullet, or bullets, invaded her body. What was her last thought? I can't imagine. I do know she was denied the death our friend had, and those who loved her, as I'm sure there were many, were denied the chance to be with her in her last moments.

Image: "The Kaddish Prayer" in My Jewish Learning.

Bertrand Russell on growing old.

Bertrand Russell was one of the pre-eminent philosophers of the past century. Although much of his work was devoted to analytical philosophy, particularly to exploring the logical foundations of mathematics, he also wrote and spoke eloquently and with wit about ethical and political matters, and about concerns of everyday life.

As I progress further into my eighth decade of life I, like, I'm sure, many of my contemporaries, spend time reminiscing and sometimes regretting roads not taken. Russell, in his Portraits from Memory and Other Essays, offered this observation:

"Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river — small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being."

To my fellow Christians, this may seem perplexing. Loss of individual being doesn't jibe with traditional notions of immortality. It seems, if anything, more like Buddhism. To me, though, the crucial words are "the walls of the ego recede".  I believe this to be central to the message of the Gospels; perhaps best summed up in Luke 17:33. Russell was not a Christian, nor a Buddhist, but to me it seems that in this respect his thinking was in concurrence with both traditions (which, I think, have more in common than many believers in either would care to admit.)

I'm indebted for the Russell quotation to Maria Popova's blog Brain Pickings, which I find a reliable source of thought provoking insights. If you follow the link and scroll down, you can subscribe for free. Maria relies on donations to keep up her very valuable work and, if you would like to help, please follow the link provided on her blog.

The photo (public domain; photographer unknown) is of Russell with his children John (born 1921) and Kate (1923). Judging by the children's appearances, the photo was made in the late 1920s when Russell (born 1872) would have been in his mid-fifties.

At Lent's end.

It's late on Easter Sunday. This morning The Reverend Stephen Muncie proclaimed, "Alleluia, Christ is risen!" I, along with the rest of the Grace Church congregation, responded, "He is risen indeed; alleluia!" For now, though, I'm looking back at what has just ended.

Nine years ago and again eight years ago I posted at the beginning of Lent about my state of mind entering that most profound of Christian liturgical seasons. Mostly these were about the doubts I held, both about Christian doctrine and about myself. This past December I posted at the end of Advent, noting that it had seemed more like Lent to me, reflecting as I was on the loss of friends and my own advancing age, and on the disastrous turn I saw our civic discourse taking.

As in Lents before, this year I didn't undertake any traditional "discipline" in the form of giving up something. I thought that by reading the Lenten devotions supplied by Grace Church along with the scripture readings by which they were inspired, and meditating on them I would get somewhere. After two weeks, I gave up on the devotions and scripture. I put this down to the demands of my paying work and of the Brooklyn Heights Blog. The world was too much with me.

I also attended a class, given after church service by our resident seminarian, She guided us in writing a "spiritual memoir". I didn't get far. After our first session, I managed to write this, which gives a clue as to why, besides the distractions of everyday life, I stopped reading the Lenten devotions:

In the Lenten readings, there are several passages the belittle the role or efficacy of human wisdom, e.g. 1 Corinthians 3:19 ("For the wisdom of the world is as foolishness to God" and "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.") Is wisdom or intellect futile, or even an impediment, in trying to understand God? 

As an extension of the thought above, a thread that runs through much of Christian teaching is paradox. One must lose one's life to gain it, the first shall be last, and, perhaps most fundamentally, the nature of Christ as fully human and fully divine.

The "paradox" part didn't bother me; indeed, I rather liked it. As I acknowledged in an earlier post, I have an attraction to paradox, to the tension between the known and the unknown; between, as Steve Muncie put it, "mastery and mystery." While I prize intellect and knowledge, I also cherish the quotation Steve gave me from the "born-again paradox" Anne Lamott: "“The opposite of faith is not doubt, it’s certainty.”

Image: Locus Theologicus.

Pontius Pilate: arch-villain, fall guy, or saint?

This year I volunteered, as I have done for some years, to participate in the Passion reading at the Palm Sunday service at Grace Church. Last year I was Narrator (effectively St. Mark, from whose gospel the reading was taken), which meant I had more lines than anyone else. This year the reading was taken from Luke, and I was given the role of Pontius Pilate.

"Not the most appealing of characters," I thought. At least I had more than one or two lines. This got me to thinking about the enigmatic character of Pilate. The image above, by Giotto de Bondone (1266-1337), shows him looking devious--note the averted eyes--but also weak, as indicated by his soft, fleshy features. No one who didn't see Pilate in the flesh knows what he looked like; there are no surviving portraits, drawings, or sculptures from life, if indeed any ever were made. Giotto's fresco comports with the accounts in the gospels, which describe Pilate as vacillating, initially appearing to sympathize with Jesus, although willing to have him flogged before releasing him, but later yielding to the demands of the crowd and ordering him crucified.

To most contemporary Christians that yielding and that order cements Pilate's characterization as a Very Bad Guy. I remembered, though, having read that Coptic Christians in Africa consider him a saint. The Biblical Archaeology Society gives an account of how this came to be. St. Augustine of Hippo, an African, believed Pilate to have been a convert to Christianity. Pilate's washing of his hands and declaring himself "innocent of this man's blood" (Matthew 27:24) is seen as a parallel to Jesus' sacrifice washing away the sins of humanity. Pilate's wife was also canonized in the African and Greek Orthodox churches on the basis of her message to Pilate, reported in Matthew 27:19, that he should not harm Jesus because "I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him."

Some biblical scholars have argued that the quasi-sympathetic portrayal of Pilate in the gospels is a result of the gospel authors' seeking to shift the blame for Jesus' crucifixion from Roman authority to the Jews. This was because, at the time the gospels were written, Christianity, which initially had been a sect within Judaism, was beginning to separate itself from its Jewish origin and was seeking Roman approval, or at least a measure of tolerance. The starkest indication of this is in Matthew 27:24-25, where Pilate washes his hands, declares his innocence, and gets the response, "His blood is on us and on our children." For many centuries, it was Christian doctrine that the "us" in that statement meant all of the Jewish people, at least apart from the few who were Jesus' disciples or followers. This was the basis for many centuries' persecution of Jews in pogroms and ultimately in the Holocaust, although the latter also had non-religious origins. On October 28, 1965 Pope Paul VI promulgated Nostra aetate ("In Our Times"), a declaration of the Second Vatican Council that the Jewish people as a whole, including all Jews living since the time of Jesus, were innocent of Jesus' death.

The vilification of Pilate appears to have begun with the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, and a concomitant desire to break with Rome's earlier paganism, to which Pilate bore allegiance. It has been years since I read (in translation) Dante's Inferno, and I was curious to recall where in the circles of hell the poet placed Pilate. As it turns out, Dante nowhere mentions Pilate by name in the Inferno, or anywhere else in the Divine Comedy except in Canto XX of Purgatorio, where Dante calls Phillip IV of France "the new Pilate" for his having delivered Pope Boniface VIII to his enemies. There is an ambiguous reference in Inferno Canto III, where Dante sees the vestibule of hell to which the uncommitted--those who did not choose between good and evil--are condemned. Here he sees "the shadow of that man who out of cowardice made the great refusal." Some readers have interpreted this to refer to Pilate, whose "great refusal" was not to defy the crowd's demands to crucify Jesus. Others think it refers to Pope Celestine V, whose abdication of the Papacy led to the accession of Boniface VIII (the same mentioned in Purgatorio XX), whose policies led to Dante's being exiled from his native Florence.

Consideration of Pilate's nature brought me to an uncomfortable realization. In an earlier post, I noted that the then Episcopal Bishop of Alabama had joined other prominent local Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy in calling on Dr. Martin Luther King, then jailed in Birmingham, to call off the peaceful demonstrations against segregation and for civil rights that he led. Reading that letter, with its calls for moderation and patience, I realized that, had I been in the position of that bishop at that time, I would have been strongly tempted to sign the letter. While my heart was on the side of those demonstrating for justice, my inclination has always been to avoid confrontation where possible, and not to alienate those in power, in the hope that in time they can be persuaded to do the right thing. What would I have done had I been in Pilate's position? Could I have mustered the courage to defy the crowd? Can I find that courage now?

Addendum: see John Wirenius on Pilate.

Martin Luther King Jr. on extremism.

From Dr. King's "A Letter from Birmingham Jail":

You speak of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of an extremist... But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel; "I bear in my body the marks of Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the ends of my days before I make butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.,," So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?

In a post three years ago I noted that Dr. King's letter, written in his jail cell on scraps of writing paper that visitors secretly gave him, was a response to a letter signed by several prominent Alabama clergymen urging an end to the non-violent demonstrations going on at the time in Birmingham, counseling "patience" on the part of those seeking justice, and praising local news media and law enforcement officials for their "calm" response (which, in the instance of law enforcement, included the use of fire hoses and dogs on peaceful demonstrators, including children).

One of the signatories of that letter was C.C.J. Carpenter, the Episcopal Bishop of Alabama who was then the senior (but not presiding) bishop in the Episcopal Church U.S.A. He was what at the time was called a "Southern moderate"; he probably believed that the system of legally sanctioned racial segregation was both wrong and doomed, but wanted it to end gradually so as not to cause more social stress than he thought necessary. As I noted ruefully in that post, had I been in Bishop Carpenter's position, I would likely have signed the letter. Although I've spent my career in a profession, law, thought to be combative in nature, I was drawn to the side of the work that involved negotiation and compromise. This is fine and well; negotiation and compromise are essential, and we could certainly use more of it in Congress today. Still, there are times when it is necessary to take an uncompromising stand, when "Justice delayed is justice denied" must be the guiding principle.

Photo: Library of Congress.

At Advent's end.

As the Advent season comes to its end, I'm thinking how different it has been for me this year. I've done the usual things: gone to parties, bought and wrapped presents, wrote and mailed cards. Yet, while the festive mood has gripped me on occasion, I've become more pensive. It may just be that I'm getting older; intimations of mortality and all that. I've thought of friends I've lost; most recently Mario, my law school classmate and roommate for our first year in New York. I've been eating and drinking less. In some ways, it seems more like Lent.

Advent and Lent are both seasons of preparation; Advent for a birth, Lent for a death, but followed by a resurrection. Alfred Delp, a German Jesuit priest imprisoned, tortured, and hanged by the Nazis, had this to say about Advent:

Advent is the time of promise, but not yet the time of fulfillment. The world is still filled with the noise of destruction, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. And there shines already the first light of the radiant fulfillment to come.

Like Europe in the early 1940s, and like Palestine under Roman rule 2,100 years ago, today we have "the noise of destruction, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, and the weeping of despair." We have calls to hang out the sign, "No room at the inn." We have massacres of the innocent. We have refugees, as Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus became escaping Herod's massacre.

I cherish the hope that this Advent will bring a rebirth of compassion in enough hearts to start to reverse our present course; that the "eternal realities" cease to be silent in those hearts, among those realities being the need to "love those we find it hardest to love."

Image: Crossing the Streams.

Of God, children, and she-bears.

The Deity and I, you might say, got off in a bad way. When I was five or six, my mother would read to me from a book, published in the late nineteenth century, Bible Stories for Children: Volume 1, The Old Testament. Judging by its publication date, I can surmise that my great grandmother probably bought this book to read to my grandmother, who had in turn read it to my mother, then passed it on to her for my edification. The New Testament volume probably went to Mom's older sister, my Aunt Dorothy. This had a profound effect on the early development of my attitude concerning religion.

Instead of gentle Jesus, my introduction to Abrahamic faith focused on the stern though frequently providential God of the ancient Hebrews, his relationship with his often rebellious chosen people, and his merciless measures against those who opposed them, or just happened to be somewhere at the wrong time. The nineteenth century Bible Stories text, though intended for children, did not stint on the harsher aspects of this narrative. One delightful bedtime story was derived from the Second Book of Kings, Chapter Two, verses 23 and 24, rendered in the King James Version as follows:

23 And he [the prophet Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.

24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

This was rendered in more up-to-date prose ("tare" I think was replaced by "slew"), and accompanied by an illustration quite similar or identical to the one at the head of this post. I know that I reacted to this with horror. I must have said something to my mother, though I can't recall what, nor can I her reply. I'm sure she tried her best to be reassuring, probably saying that God would never do such a thing to a good kid like me. Whatever she said, although I may have faked it, I wasn't consoled. I lay in my bed that night thinking that I hated God, and thinking that, at any moment, God might destroy me for that thought, just as he had the children of Bethel.

In doing a Google search for pictures related to this story, I found this image of a painting by the seventeenth century French artist Laurent de la Hire, which depicts something not mentioned in, but implied by, the Biblical account, The Children of Bethel Mourned by their Mothers:


In recent years, I've sometimes asked Christian friends if they're familiar with this story; usually, they say "No." Once, I was in an on-line discussion with a conservative Christian* who allowed that the King James rendition of Elisha's tormentors as "little children" might not be accurate; that a better translation might be "young people." Indeed, the New International Version of the Bible says they were "youths" (though the New Revised Standard Version, used by the Episcopal Church, calls them "small boys"). But does it really matter whether the victims were the Rugrats or Beavis and Butthead?

At age five-going-on-six, when I first heard this story, I was soon to be introduced to the kinder, gentler side of Christianity: sweet Jesus, who liked children and lambs, went around telling scary but instructive stories, and died a gruesome death to protect kids like me from the wrath of his father. This seemed satisfying for a while, at least until adolescent rebellion

Several years ago we were guests at a seder given by the mother of one of my daughter's friends. The Passover story is another troubling one for me, involving as it does the slaying of babies and children whose only offense was to be the first-born offspring of parents of the wrong sort. It had been some years since I had last participated in this festive meal, so I had forgotten this portion of the Haggadah:

Midrash teaches that, while watching the Egyptians succumb to the ten plagues [of which the slaying of the firstborn was the tenth], the angels broke into songs of jubilation. G-d rebuked them, saying "My creatures are perishing, and you sing praises?"

As we recite each plague, we will spill a drop of wine--symbol of joy--from our cups. Our joy in our liberation will always be tarnished by the pain visited upon the Egyptians.

Then, at the Good Friday service at Grace Church, one of the clergy recited the Solemn Reproaches, a litany which is similar in its call-and-response structure to the Dayenu litany of the Haggadah. The penultimate of the Reproaches was:

I grafted you onto the tree of my chosen Israel, and you turned on them with mass murder, and Holocaust. I made you joint heirs with them of my covenants, but you made them scapegoats for your own guilt.

To this, as to all the other Reproaches, the response by the congregation was:

Holy God, holy and mighty,
Holy immortal One, have mercy upon us.

The "Holocaust" element in the Reproaches is obviously a very modern addition, though a welcome one. The reference in the Haggadah to Midrash indicates that the reference to God's mourning the Egyptians may have originated in the second through ninth century C.E.; many years after the Exodus story was committed to writing. Faith traditions evolve. Does God evolve with them? Certainly our understanding of God does.
__________
* For Fray alums, the person in question is "Locdog."

TBT: Procol Harum, "Repent Walpurgis."

We're staying in the magic year 1967 this Thursday. Procol Harum, a band named for a cat, had a huge hit that summer with "A Whiter Shade of Pale", with a J.S. Bach inspired melody by Gary Brooker, played on Hammond organ by Matthew Fisher (Fisher would later successfully sue Brooker for partial credit for the music), and surrealistic lyrics by Keith Reid, listed on their album jackets as a band member with the designation "poet."

Procol Harum's follow-up to "Whiter" was a song called "Homburg", but for a while WRKO, the Boston AM top forty station I had on my clock radio (yes, sometimes that fall I was awakened by the Strawberry Alarm Clock) was playing an instrumental with the title "Repent Walpurgis." When I first heard a DJ announce it, I thought he said, "Repent While Purchase," which made no sense, even in Procol Harum's psychedelic terms. I learned the true title when I bought the group's eponymous first album, on which it's the final cut. I knew that the eve of May Day is sometimes called "Walpurgis Night," but I wasn't sure who Walpurgis was. It turns out that the event is named for Saint Walpurga, an English born nun who became an abbess in Germany and was later canonized.

Like the melody for "A Whiter Shade of Pale," that of "Repent Walpurgis," composed by Matthew Fisher, is influenced by J.S. Bach (as is Garth Hudson's organ intro to The Band's "Chest Fever"), and also by the French organist and composer Charles-Marie Widor.

"What will become of his dreams"?

Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him...and we shall see what will become of his dreams.

--Genesis 37:19-20 (N.R.S.V.)

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only Love can do that.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Epiphany, or, Dia de los Tres Reyes.

January 6 is Epiphany, marking the end of the twelve days of Christmas and commemorating the visit of the three kings, or wise men, or magi, to the infant Jesus, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It is an important feast day in the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant traditions. In Eastern Orthodoxy, it is also celebrated as the date of Jesus' baptism, and considered more important than Christmas.

In some Spanish speaking countries it is an especially joyous occasion. The video clip above, courtesy of Conociendo a Puerto Rico, shows the celebration in the city of Mayaguez. There are three costumed "kings" in front of whom children pose for photos and, of course, lively music.

Dai Bosatsu Zendo

During our Memorial day weekend visit to the Beaverkill Valley our hostess suggested a tour of the International Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji, located a few miles from the house where we were staying. She phoned, and was told we would be welcome. On a rainy afternoon we rode along a two lane road that followed the course of the Beaverkill for several miles, then turned off onto a narrower, rougher road. We were on this for some time and our hostess, who was driving, thought we had missed the entrance. A short way further we came to a large Japanese style arched entrance way spanning a two rut dirt road. If the approach to the entrance gate seemed long, the driveway seemed interminable. At last we saw a pond ahead of us, the road curved to the left, and on a hillside ahead was the monastery (photo above).

We went in, removed our shoes and, as instructed, rang the bong twice. Within moments we were greeted by a woman resident, who made us feel welcome and at ease. 

This magnificent Buddha figure sits in the hon-do, or main hall, on a dais flanked by paintings of guardians. Below are photographs of people who have been associated with the monastery. Immediately to the right of the small guardian figurine near the bottom right of the photo above is a photograph of the late Peter Matthiessen, writer, naturalist, frequent visitor to Dai Bosatsu Zendo, and uncle as well as namesake of Peter M. Wheelwright, author of As It Is On Earth.

This is the zen-do, the room in which residents and visitors practice zazen, or Zen meditation. Some use one cushion; others prefer two. 

Just beyond the zen-do there was a view from a window of a Japanese rock or dry garden, sometimes called a Zen garden.

What is Zen? It's easiest to say what it is not. It's not a religion. It is a practice involving disciplined meditation that is intended to lead to self realization. It is non-theistic, but neither atheistic nor anti-theistic. I have known Christians and Jews who practice Zen, including one who is both Roman Catholic and a Republican. 

On our way out, we stopped in the monastery's gift shop, and I bought a copy of Zen Flesh Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings, compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki. The sixteenth of the "101 Zen Stories" that begin the book is about a student who visited the Zen master Gasan and asked if he had read the Christian Bible. Gasan said no, and asked the student to read to him.

The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: "And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in his glory was not arrayed as one of these....Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself."

Gasan said: "Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man."

While Zen is associated with Buddhism, its practitioners do not necessarily consider themselves Buddhists. According to the foreword to the 101 Zen Stories, early Zen masters "instead of being followers of the Buddha, aspire[d] to be his friends and to place themselves in the same responsive relationship with the universe as did Buddha and Jesus." As Reps points out in the preface to the book, the origins of Zen may pre-date the Buddha's life. The book includes "Centering, a transcription of ancient Sanskrit manuscripts" that "presents an ancient teaching, still alive in Kashmir and parts of India after four thousand years, that may well be the roots of Zen." I can add that "centering prayer" is a discipline taught and practiced at my own Grace Church in Brooklyn Heights.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

As my friend The Rev. Nicholas Temple reminds me, the 24 hours that began at sundown today (Sunday, April 27) and end at sundown tomorrow constitute Yom HaShoah (יום השואה), or Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The image above is of identification papers issued by the occupying German forces to Jewish residents of Krakow (or Krakau, in German spelling), Poland. All of these people may be presumed to have died in the Holocaust. The image is from an article posted on January 27, 2012 in The Northerner Blog of The Guardian. January 27, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, largest of the Nazi extermination camps, is recognized as International Holocaust Remembrance Day or Holocaust Memorial Day, in many countries.

The Guardian story is about remembrance of the Holocaust in the City of York, England, which itself, in medieval times, was the site of a massacre, reminiscent of Masada.

Nick's post, linked in the first paragraph, includes a list of mass killings subsequent to the Holocaust. Even on a smaller scale, but just as heinous, murder based on ethnic or religious prejudice continues today.

"All Glory, Laud and Honor."

The traditional opening anthem for Palm Sunday services, as performed at King's College, Cambridge, last year. The tune is "St. Theodulph" by Melchior Teschner (1584-1635), arranged by William Henry Monk (1823-1889). The words are by St. Theodulph (Theodulph of Orleans) (ca. 750-821) himself, translated by John Mason Neale (1818-1866).

This rendition is more stately than those to which I'm accustomed; I like it.

Karen Shaw proves Mies and Browning right ...

...at least in fifteen out of nineteen languages.

Ms Shaw's (photo above) art is based on a simple premise that yields a plenitude of results. The premise is: assign to each letter of the Roman alphabet its ordinal number, A=1 through Z=26. For any word, sum up the numbers of the letters. Find other words having letters that yield the same sum. This can lead to interesting relationships that may be used as the basis for a work of art. For example:

The number 53 corresponds to O'Keeffe and to F Kahlo, artists associated with New Mexico and Mexico, respectively. It also is the sum of the word "sum," as well as of "emerge" and of the Spanish unidad ("unity").

Similarly, 77 yields print, Hogarth, Warhol, parallel, and character: something for aspiring art historians to contemplate.

The centerpiece of Ms Shaw's exhibit, "The Summantics of Art," was her demonstration that the statement "Less is more," which I have always associated with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, one of the preeminent architects of the past century and designer of the Seagram Building, but which statement Ms Shaw noted was earlier used by the English romantic poet Robert Browning in Andrea del Sarto, is true in fifteen languages using the Roman alphabet. In each of these languages, including English, the sum of the numbers corresponding to the letters in the word meaning "less" is greater than that of the numbers corresponding to the letters in the word meaning "more." Ms Shaw admits this does not hold true for Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Gaelic, or Welsh, and wonders, "What could this mean?"

At the time she developed her numerological system, Ms Shaw wasn't aware of its kinship to the Jewish mystical practice called Gematria, but was delighted to learn of it.