Christopher L. Webber

A Church of One

2010-03-02T05:50:00.000-08:00

I’ve never quite understood the psychology of those who have splintered off from the Episcopal Church in recent years. Some didn’t like the new Prayer Book, some didn’t like the notion of ordaining women, some objected to the Bishop of New Hampshire. None of these are in the Creed so it seemed odd to leave the church over such matters.

But I’m beginning to understand.

I promised years ago to obey the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Episcopal Church and that means particularly the Book of Common Prayer. But what do you do when you find increasing evidence that the current Book of Common Prayer is a corrupted document and, to cap it off, that the leadership of the church has no notion of what the Prayer Book says?

It all began several years ago when I noticed that the baptismal service prints the word “Godparent” sometimes with a capital G and sometimes without. Omitting the times when the word comes first in a sentence, I believe there are four capital G’s and five small g’s in the Baptismal Service text including the rubrics. Is that clumsiness or carelessness – or evidence of a disagreement in committee over whether God is God or a god? There was a day when every jot and tittle in the Prayer Book was clear and purposeful. But what was this all about? I mused on the matter but let it pass.

But then my wife and I were saying Morning Prayer one day recently when she noticed that there was an open quote in Psalm 55:6 (“) that never closed: not in that verse, not in any verse! Now that’s really dumb. Any competent proofreader would catch that sort of thing. Isn’t the Book of Common Prayer important enough to be carefully proofread? I began to wonder whether we are still serious about the Prayer Book and, if not, what might be the consequences.

What capped it off, however. was the recent day when I was working on the annual statistical report form and came to the box in which I am asked to fill in the attendance for “Easter Sunday.” What’s that? There’s no such day in my Prayer Book. There is “Easter Day,” but that’s different. It’s the central feast of the Christian Year and the Sundays are all celebrations of Easter. But Easter itself is The Day, not just a Sunday. Shouldn’t the people in the central office of the Church know that?

So I’m out of here. I’m going to start me a church where we get it right every time. No typos in the Prayer Book, no ignoramuses in the church office, no split infinitives in the Parish Bulletin. We’re dealing with God here, after all, and we’d better get it right.

Send me your applications for membership, but remember I’m starting a church here that has everything absolutely right, more right than the pope, more right than Archbishop Akinola or former Bishop Duncan. And if you can’t do it my way – God’s way – start your own church!
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The Hands are Esau's Hands

2010-02-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

Among the hats I wear is one that says “Committee Two” on the brim. In the Diocese of Connecticut everyone knows that Committee Two is what is known elsewhere as the Board of Examining Chaplains. We are the gatekeepers who examine seminary graduates to see whether the paper the seminary gave them indicates real accomplishment or an inadequate seminary. Often we find ourselves more critical of the seminaries than the seminarians.

Be that as it may, the latest set of General Ordination Examinations (GOEs to the knowledgeable) have just come in and the national board and local Committee II members have been in a flap over one candidate’s incredible mis-spellings. What does it indicate when a candidate writes “profits” for “prophets,” “March” for “Mark,” and “Bart Timeus” for “Bartimeus”? Can someone really graduate from seminary and not known a profit from a prophet?

Unfortunately, our most profound theologians are also, often, Luddites. They have moved on from quill pens to typewriters and even, in many cases, computers, but they can’t match my seven-year-old grandson when it comes to computer savvy. Neither can I, but I know what the problem is with Candidate X.

The problem is that Candidate X used a dictation program to answer the examination questions and - the critical failure - didn’t proof read. I happen to be computer savvy enough to use a dictation program myself and I know the sometimes bizarre results you can get from speaking words to a computer. I know that if you use such a program you must - must, I say - proof read carefully.

I dictate, for example, a weekly letter to our scattered children and note for their pleasure and mine some of the errors that result. Herewith a sample:

I said: always
The computer heard: all was
I said: Toshiba netbook
The computer heard: of Sheba that book
I said:in Bantam
The computer heard:invent him
I said: baptism
The computer heard: back to some
I said: Yale
The computer heard: yell
I said: the Mississippi period of
The computer wrote: the Mississippi. Of

Now, that sounds pretty klutzy and we can laugh at the foibles of modern technology, but there was also the day I said “bouillabaisse” - a word concerning the pronunciation and spelling of which I am extremely insecure - and, without any hesitation, the computer put down “bouillabaisse.” I have to assume that’s correct!
How far away is the day when the computer's theology is also better than mine?

So we know why the bizarre misspellings occurred; what we don’t know - the frightening thing - is whether Candidate X proofread or not! Is it possible that the Candidate DID proofread with care - and didn’t notice?

What do the candidates know and when do they know it? It’s harder and harder to tell. Most exams in recent years have been given on an “open book” basis. We didn’t insist that they memorize, but we wanted them to be able to find and organize the material they needed. The result was that candidates who were best at using “google search” got the best marks. So this year, exams were “closed book.” Closed book, but you can’t forbid a candidate to use a computer because most of them never learned to write a readable hand. And we can’t forbid them to use spellcheck because most of them can’t spell. And once the computer is in the room, how do you put limits on what it can do? Where does the candidate leave off and the computer begin?

When Isaac was old, Jacob brought him savory stew and fastened lamb’s skin to his neck and arms so that if his blind father felt him, he would feel like his hairy brother Esau. “The voice is Jacob’s voice,” said poor old Isaac, “but the hands are the hands of Esau.” Like Isaac of old, I am no longer sure with whom I am dealing. The hands are the hands of Candidate X, but the voice is the voice of the computer!

It's a Habit

2010-02-18T05:06:00.001-08:00

Childhood habits persist. I learned a number of lessons early that continue to impact my behavior. I could probably make a longer list with a little thought, but here are a few examples:

1 - Never say: “It’s not there;” say, “I can’t find it.” Actually, as one gets older, there are more and more occasions when this advice is useful. An alternative strategy is to blame it on Black Holes.

2 - “Clean your plate. Remember the starving Armenians.” I don’t believe any Armenians were still actually starving when I was given this advice but my mother was undoubtedly given that advice when the Armenians were having tough times after World War I and she passed it on. This, however, is bad advice these days when eating out. One honors the memory of the starving Armenians better by taking half of all restaurant meals home.

3 - When it snows, make a snow man. In upState New York there were many opportunities to make snow men and old habits, as I say, persist. The recent snow had reached the right consistency yesterday, so I did what needed to be done.

Elsewhere

2010-02-10T18:32:00.000-08:00

Those who are interested will find an essay of mine on the subject of Ash Wednesday at "Episcopal Cafe" - click on "Daily Episcopalian." It was posted on February 10 so you might have to scan down to find it.
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Take that, Pat Robertson!

2010-02-06T07:01:00.000-08:00

When the airplanes struck the Trade Towers, when the earthquake struck Haiti, Pat Robertson had a ready explanation: Americans had lost their moral bearings, Haitians had made a pact with the devil.

OK, so now the blizzard of the century has hit Pat Robertson’s home town square on and if he doesn’t have an explanation, I do: Pat Robertson has offended the Almighty by claiming to know God’s mind and God has sent down a blanket of snow to silence him. The true prophets spoke about such people long ago.

Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes, and .. in your own sight!. . . Therefore the anger of the LORD was kindled against his people, and he stretched out his hand against them and struck them; the mountains quaked, and their corpses were like refuse in the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still.
(Isaiah 5:21, 25)

I could say more, but Amos has a warning for those who think they know too much:

Therefore the prudent will keep silent in such a time. (Amos 5:13)

Hear that, Patrick? Better keep quiet ere worse things befall you!

Scholarship

2010-01-23T07:22:00.001-08:00

“Scholarship” is a musty word, redolent of ancient manuscripts stored on dark shelves in obscure libraries. It is best experienced, I believe, in a library at Yale known as the “Mudd Library” in which the “stacks” are - I love it - the Mudd Stacks.

I well remember my first entrance into those hallowed precincts. The document for which I was looking was said to be on the fourth floor. I showed my “affiliate” card to the guard, passed through to the elevator, and rose to the fourth level. The door opened and I stepped out into a realm of darkness. Shadowy stacks were visible ahead but no light switches were evident. Uncertainly, I stepped forward - and the lights blazed on. Motion sensitive lighting in this ancient realm!

I found the shelf and the number, lifted down the box, untied it, opened it, and took out a package tied with a pink ribbon wherein was the crumbling document for which I was searching.

Now that’s scholarship. Had the motion sensitive lights been replaced with guttering candles, it would have been perfect.

More recently I have been pondering the word “scholarship” again since a publisher to whom my agent submitted a draft of my current project responded that he wondered whether “the scholarly underpinnings were strong enough.”

My agent responded by inquiring whether the 45 pages of end notes had been lost in transmission.

And I responded by narrating another day of scholarly endeavor in stark contrast to the Mudd Stacks.

I have been attempting to establish the date of death of James W. C. Pennington’s second wife. If, as I suspected, she died in 1867, this would explain why he left the work he was doing in Mississippi, sold the house they had lived in on 26th Street in Manhattan, and took charge of a congregation in Maine. But no record of Pennington’s life so much as mentioned her death.

I spent a day at the New York Public Library and found no record of her death prior to 1866 or after 1870, but the records for 1866-1869 were not in the NYPL. I would need to go to the Municipal Library downtown on Chambers Street.

Last week I made that journey by train and subway and found my way to Room 103 of the Municipal Archives. Why is it that government offices of this sort are so shabby? A clerk dressed like a janitor told me to sign in and pay him $5; a copy of any record I found could then be obtained for $11. He directed me to a file cabinet crammed with thin microfilms in battered boxes. I found 1866. There were two films for ordinary deaths (A to M and N to Z) as well as one for “cholera deaths” and one for “coroner deaths.” I searched them all without result. There was, oddly, only one film for 1867. I scanned through to P and there it was: Pennington, Almira; date of death: April 6; cause of death: peritonitis. The lines for “name of parents” was blank, but I don’t really need to know that. I thought the laconic response to “occupation - wife” was somewhat inadequate since she had played an active role in Pennington’s work, but I had the date and it made sense of many things. I saved eleven dollars by copying it out in longhand on recycled paper.

I then added up the “cost of scholarship:”
Train $19.50
Subway 4.50
Parking 3.00
Research fee 5.00
TOTAL $32.00
And all that to find one date!

The next day I sat down at my computer hoping to learn what it was like in Vicksburg, Mississippi, when Pennington was there and hoping I wouldn’t need to go to Mississippi to find out. In a matter of minutes I had downloaded sections of a splendid book published in 1960 that provides reams of information. For free!

What is scholarship? It’s the crumbling Mudd Stacks and the shabby Municipal archives, the Connecticut highways that take me to Yale and the city subways - and the internet. They say that someday it will be only the last of these. If so, life will be less interesting.

EARTHQUAKE

2010-01-17T14:32:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St Paul’s Church Bantam Connecticut on January 17, 2010

At around ten o’clock in the morning of November 1, 1755, a powerful earthquake, estimated to have been Force 9, hit the city of Lisbon in Portugal, a city of 200,000 people. Forty minutes later a tsunami swept into the city and after that fires broke out that raged for five days.

Perhaps half the population of Lisbon died. The tsunami also swept the Mediterranean coast and drowned some 10,000 more in Morocco. A ten foot tsunami hit the coast of England and the earthquake was felt as far away as Finland.

The physical impact was bad enough - the king of Portugal lived in a tent the rest of his life - but the cultural impact was greater. The 18th century had seen an enormous upswelling of human confidence. Isaac Newton and others had begun to map the scientific structure of the universe and create unprecedented confidence in the power of human reason. They called it “The Enlightenment” and “The Age of Reason” and said it was “the best of all possible worlds.” Reason and logic was so universally respected that one leading English theologian wrote a book called: Christianity Not Mysterious.

You see this mood reflected in the classic New England Meeting House painted white and with clear glass windows where hour long sermons explained the logic of God’s world. Not for them the stained glass and dim light of a gothic cathedral. Not for them the sense of mystery of the ancient liturgy of the church. The world was reasonable and logical and good.

We know better. We live after the holocaust and 9/11. The Eighteenth Century learned from the Lisbon earthquake.

Over the next century there was a revival of gothic architecture and a renewed interest in liturgy. But the Age of Reason’s confidence in human reason inspired the thought that human beings might be able to govern themselves. John Locke and others began to write about the rights of man and over the next 50 to 75 years three great political revolutions set out to test his theories.

The first of these revolutions, in 1776, less than twenty years after the Lisbon earthquake, took place right here where English colonists had created a society of independent minded farmers and businessmen who created town meetings and local legislatures and learned how to govern themselves before the Revolution even began.

The second revolution took place a decade later in France where peasants living in medieval serfdom rose up against a corrupt and arrogant aristocracy and created a Reign of Terror that led to the dictatorship of Napoleon and collapsed back into a restored monarchy.

The third revolution took place in Haiti where the same French aristocracy had imported slaves to work their plantations in what has been described as “one of the most brutally efficient slave colonies.” One-third of newly imported Africans died within a few years.” But by sheer weight of numbers, the slaves were able to rise up and overthrow their French masters in a bloody and violent revolt that left the slaves in charge but without any experience of self-government or any of the education or skills required to govern themselves or create a successful society.

France eventually recovered from its disastrous revolution but Haiti had nothing to work with. The French sent a force to recapture the country but settled for a huge indemnity that left Haiti free but deep in debt.

After that, corrupt governments rose and fell often selling out to foreign investors and in 1888 the US Marines were called in to put down a revolt against the system. From 1915 to 1934 the United States occupied the country, put down a peasant revolt with ruthless force, and left the country with an enormous debt to American banks.

From 1957 to 1986 the country was run as a brutal dictatorship by the Duvalier family often with military and economic assistance from the United States. Inevitably many of the best educated and most ambitious Haitians emigrated to America leaving the country even poorer in human resources.

One of the few bright notes in a dismal picture involves the work of the Episcopal Church which began in 1864 when an African American priest, James Theodore Holly, from Bridgeport. Connecticut took a hundred members of his congregation to Haiti and established what is now the largest diocese of the Episcopal Church. There are half again as many Episcopalians in Haiti as in Connecticut and that church has built schools and hospitals in a country too poor to build them itself. The centerpiece of that church’s work was the cathedral built in the 1950s in Port au Prince and embellished with spectacular murals painted by Haitian artists that covered the walls and showed the life of Christ in Haitian scenes – the wedding at Cana (see above), the crucifixion and resurrection – all with Haitian figures against a Haitian background. The Clintons, Bill and Hillary, went to Haiti on their honeymoon and have never forgotten sitting in that cathedral stunned by the brilliance of those murals. I’ve never been to Haiti but I have seen pictures of those murals. That cathedral with its murals was completely destroyed last week. All that work, all that imagination and artistic skill wiped out in a moment.

As I thought about it, I realized that I was feeling the loss of that cathedral more than the human death toll. And then I thought about the way St Paul told the early Christians that the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and you, he told them, are that temple. You are, he might have said, God’s living cathedral and, yes, thousands of those human temples lie dead but hundreds of thousands survive without food or water or housing or work and before we worry about the murals in the vanished cathedral we need to concern ourselves with those still living human temples of God. Perhaps 150,000 human beings according to the latest estimates each one as unique as you and I, each one made in the image of God.

There’s an old rabbinic statement I’ve always valued that says, “Whenever a human being walks in the street angels attend him and a herald proclaims ‘Make way for the image of God.’”

The image of God, the temple of God, with what our Declaration of Independence called “certain unalienable rights.” That part of the American heritage and the Enlightenment’s legacy is dead on because it has its roots in the Bible. That’s where we learned “that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and that among those rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

That’s our foundational document and it has, because it is a Biblical truth, implications far beyond our borders: “all men - all human beings - are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I sometimes think that statement is forgotten in the health care debates in Washington where the pharmaceutical companies have lobbyists who outnumber the members of Congress and are concerned not for those unalienable rights but for their undiminished profits. And over the years we have sent the marines into Haiti more often to defend the profits of international corporations than the life and liberty of the image of God.

Does it, I wonder, take the worst earthquake since Lisbon to get our attention, and might this tragedy focus our attention in a way that changes our culture and ways of thinking as radically as Lisbon’s earthquake changed the western world two hundred fifty years ago?

I didn’t start from a text but I think today’s gospel may be more relevant than you might first think. The wedding at Cana; the miracle of water changed to wine. Think about this first sign that Jesus did and how he did it. I think this may be the one miracle in which Jesus is not really at the center of the picture. He goes as a guest to a wedding and he sits at the side with his disciples and his mother and the attention is focused - well, today it would be on the bride, but not then - in those days the focus was on the groom and providing the wine was his job and the catastrophe was his failure.

The wine ran out and Jesus’ mother noticed and mentioned it to him: “They have no wine.” But Jesus held back. Unobtrusively, he told the servants what to do and they did it and the situation was saved and the groom and steward of the feast probably never knew what had happened.

Isn’t that a parable of the role of the Christian church? I think we are like the servants at the wedding. We see the disaster that comes about because of bad planning - a typical human failure - and we might ask the classic question: What would Jesus do? Well, what did he do? He didn’t directly intervene but he sent others, working behind the scenes, not with great fanfares, but quietly and effectively, to do what needed to be done to save the situation.

I think that’s our calling: to do what Jesus did to bring the gift of life in the midst of disaster. And yes, our supply of water is weak stuff and never good enough but it becomes transformed as Jesus works with us and it becomes all that is needed and more.

We don’t dare ask Cain’s ancient question: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” or the Pharisees question: “Who is my neighbor?” Because we know the answer. Our lives have long been intertwined sometimes for better, often for worse, with those of the people of Haiti.

I didn’t ask to be born here with all the privileges and opportunities that brings nor did the Haitians ask to be born there with all the burden of two centuries of exploitation, but we are interdependent human beings and the ills of one affect us all. Whether it’s the unemployed auto worker who has lost his health insurance or the child pulled from the rubble in Port-au-Prince, he or she is my brother, my sister, my neighbor and I have not so much a responsibility as a privilege and an opportunity to act as Jesus’ eyes and hands to bring the gifts God has given in response to the need we see.

Marriage is about . . . .

2010-01-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

They are having a trial in California about the right of same sex couples to marry – and they’re off to a slow start. Here’s some of the New York Times report of how it went on the first day:
“In cross-examination, the lead counsel for the defense, Charles J. Cooper, focused on the rights of heterosexual parents to protect their children from discussions of homosexual marriage. In his opening statement, Cooper also argued that same-sex couples could not satisfy a basic requirement of marriage. ‘[The] basis of marriage is procreation,’ he said. ‘It is a pro-child societal institution.’

Why go on with the case? “A basic requirement?” Where is that written? Has Mr. Cooper never met a couple who married with no expectation or desire for children? I remember celebrating a marriage years ago for a woman 80 years old who was marrying for third time having buried two husbands. I am certain she did not marry for children!

Has Mr. Cooper ever looked carefully at the wedding service of a church or justice of the peace? In the midst of the “have and to hold, for better for worse,” there is no promise to have children or even to try to have children. A prayer for children may be included, but it is optional.

I remember an incident some years ago in Ohio in which a Roman priest refused to marry a couple because the man was paraplegic and unable to have children. He was quickly set straight by higher authority.

And what about people like me and my wife? We wanted children, and had some, but that phase is long over and we are still together and don’t feel that our relationship is diminished.

Marriage is about love. Ask any couple. Some certainly want to have children, but some certainly shouldn’t. To reduce marriage to a biological function is to miss the whole point. Many do, but to build the whole case for “traditional marriage” on that basis is to make marriage much less than God intended it to be. Adam and Eve, as I remember the story, were condemned to have children because of their disobedience, not as a bonus.

Marriage is about love. Tell the lawyers and justices before we get handed a decision that diminishes us all.

Move the Line!

2010-01-01T07:23:00.000-08:00

As the news reports came in over the last 24 hours, it became increasingly evident that the United States had, once again, fallen victim to a vast international liberal conspiracy to destroy this country and abrogate its rightful place in the world. Where did coverage of the New Year begin? In Australia! At the bottom of the world and as far from here as you can go! How could anything possibly begin in Australia?

As time wore on, the anomalous situation was rubbed in further with pictures of fireworks over the Kremlin. Russia was celebrating New Year’s Day and we were not yet allowed to do so in America! Then we were shown Paris and London, old world capitols! How could a new year begin in an old world? Clearly sinister forces were at work.

A little research reveals that the so-called International Date Line was established by an Anglo-French Treaty in 1917 and has never been agreed to by any formal action of the United States government. Countries are quite free to establish their own time zones and even move the International Date Line for their convenience. Kiribati, for example, moved the line – or itself; it isn’t clear which – in 1995 to make itself the first country to begin a new year. Kiribati! If they can why can’t we? Look at the squiggles in the line below and ask yourself whether that's geography or politics!

There was a time when the New Year could have begun in America. Alaska used to be west of the line, but when the United States bought Alaska from Russia the Russians outfoxed us as usual by moving the line west and keeping New Year’s Day for themselves. If Sarah Palin had been governor at the time, that wouldn’t have happened. She could have seen for herself what the Russians were up to over there and frozen them in their tracks.

Obviously the Unites States is where time begins and it’s time for Congress to say so. There might be some trouble from New Hampshire wanting the new year to begin there so they could always have the first primary but obviously the line could be drawn to place Maine in a time zone further west. Aside from a few people in Maine, who would notice? Nebraska might be more difficult but Congress could include a codicil paying off Nebraska with another health care subsidy.

Liberals can be expected to make a fuss because it will make Barack Obama’s time as president one day shorter. But how much longer to we have to put up with the Liberal-leftist assault on American values? Today ought to be January 2, one day closer to the next election. Let’s make it so. Start today to put things right: postdate all your checks and other documents by one day starting now. Eventually the government will have to conform its records to the popular will - and we will save money doing it!

Send this message to ten other people and before you know it things will change!

Move the line! Move the line NOW! Put America where it belongs!

The Joy of a Savior

2009-12-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

One of the greatest of English preachers was Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626 head of the committee that produced the King James Version of the Bible. He was often asked to preach before King James I and especially at Christmas time. Here then, as a Christmas gift, is an extract from one of those sermons: "The Joy of a Savior."
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But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11)

I know not why it is that when we hear of saving or of a Savior, our mind is carried to the saving of our skin, and other saving we think not of. But there is another life not to be forgotten, and the dangers and destruction there are more to be feared than those here, and it would be well sometimes to remember that. Besides our skin and flesh we have a soul, and that is our better part by far, and it also has need of a Savior. It has a destruction out of which and a destroyer from which it should be saved, and this should be thought of. Indeed our chief thought and care should be for that: how to escape the destruction to come, to which our sins will certainly bring us.

Sin it is which will destroy us all, and there is no person on earth who has so much need of a Savior as does a sinner. There is nothing so dangerous, so deadly to us, as the sin in our hearts; nothing from which we have so much need to be saved, whatever account we make of it. From it comes all the evil of this life and of the life to come. In comparison of that last, the evil here is not worth speaking of. Above all then we need a Savior for our souls, and from our sins, and from the everlasting destruction which sin will bring on us in the other life, which is not far from us, not even from the one who thinks it furthest away.

Even in joy there are many degrees. All joys are not one size. Some are smaller; some greater, as is this. The joy of a shepherd when his ewe brings him a lamb is not like that when his wife brings him a son; yet news of a lamb is a joy, such as it is. Then if that son should prove to be "the chief shepherd in all the land," that would be somewhat more. But then if he should prove to be a David, a prince, certainly that would be another kind of joy, great joy indeed. If the benefit is great, then the joy is great. And here the benefit is great, none greater; as much as the saving of us all, as much as all our lives and souls are worth. And if the person is great, so is the joy, and none so great as this: it is the Lord himself. This goes beyond them all; this joy puts all others down, so that none of them may be mentioned with it. Therefore the angel said well, " I bring you good news of great joy.

You may say what you will, but surely there is no joy in the world like the joy of one who is saved; no joy so great, no news so welcome, as to one ready to perish when they hear of one that will save them. Imagine the joy of one in danger of perishing by sickness, when they hear of one who will make him well again, or the joy of one about to die by sentence of the law, to hear of one with a pardon to save their life, or the joy of one with enemies, to hear of one who will set them in safety. Tell any of these, assure them of a Savior, and it is the best news they ever heard in their life. There is joy in the name of Savior, and this child is a Savior also.

It may be that we need none of these; we are not sick at present, in fear of the law, in danger of enemies. It may be, if we were, we fancy that we can be relieved in some other way. But that which he came for, that saving we all need and none but he can help us to it. We all therefore have cause to be glad for the birth of this Savior.

Logic: A Losing Battle

2009-12-21T14:21:00.000-08:00

The end of civilization as we know it has frequently been identified in recent years, but today’s New York Times (December 20, 2009) provided additional evidence that the end is near. Writing about the Senate health care bill, Times writers Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn informed us that
“Should Democrats prevail, it will put an exclamation point on an eventful first year of their control of Congress and the White House and leave Republicans on the Napoleonic side of what one predicted could be President Obama’s Waterloo.”

Could you parse that, please? For those as uninformed as Times writers, Wikipedia confirmed my recollection (though I wasn’t there) that: “The defeat at Waterloo put an end to Napoleon's rule as the French emperor, and marked the end of Napoleon's Hundred Days of return from exile.” Thus “Waterloo,” my dictionary tells me, has become a synonym for “a crushing defeat.”

So if Republicans are on “the Napoleonic (i.e. losing) side,” how could “Obama’s Waterloo” be “a crushing defeat”?

But logic and language drift ever further apart. A “man on the street” interview on today’s radio news (CBS) reported that his suburb had gotten a lot more snow than the city, which, he said, “never happens that way usually.”

Go figure!

Fire! Fire!

2009-12-18T07:45:00.000-08:00

I have quoted the diary of George Templeton Strong in previous posts and would now like to offer, as an early Christmas present, two of Strong’s descriptions of fires. He loved to go to fires and was a great connoisseur of fires and his writing about them is truly eloquent.

April 16, 1840. . . . Quite a respectable fire in Water Street near Old Slip at five o’clock. Saw the new Philadelphia engines in action. They are cumbrous, unwieldy things with their two ranks of pumpers (like a double-banked galley), but they throw glorious streams of water, and throw them with ease, over the roofs of the highest stores. I suppose they require each about thirty men, and probably two ordinary engines to keep them full. This was a dry-goods store, and all of it that wasn’t burnt must have been soaked by the Philadelphia deluge. .

December 29, 1842 It was snowing when I got out at eleven and there was a great fire burning downtown, and never was anything more splendid than the effect it produced. The whole sky was lit up with a bright soft crimson and roofs were all tinted with the same color. It had a most magnificent and unearthly appearance. I was told the fire was in Wall Street and started off on a run, expecting to find the office on fire and the old gentleman wringing his hands in front of it. The snow was deep and my run soon subsided into a trot, and then I took the first cab I could find and came downtown. Found that the fire was on Water Street, five or six stores blazing, and a fine sight it was. It was the worst fire we’ve had for a long time. The wind was very strong at N.E. The engines were retarded by the snow—the hydrants were many of them frozen—and at one time the fire crossed both Maiden Lane and Water Street, but it was checked in that direction. The walls kept each other up for some time but at last one gave way, and then four or five large stores came thundering down with a prolonged roar that seemed to shake the ground, and the change from the blaze and brightness of active conflagration to smothering smoke and comparative darkness, only lit up by a perfect hailstorm of sparks and cinders, and then to see great masses of thick smoke light up as the flames rose again among the ruins and eddy round and sweep off before the northeast wind till the glare of the burning buildings was fully displayed again, was very fine.

[The picture is of the great New York City fire of 1835)

Quintissentially American

2009-12-10T05:56:00.000-08:00

We had visitors this week from Australia. We knew them when we lived in Tokyo, forty years ago. They were traveling in the United States and came by to renew old acquaintance - and to visit the Norman Rockwell Museum. Did you know that the Saturday Evening Post circulated in Australia?

The NRM is in Stockbridge, forty miles away. We’ve driven through Stockbridge many times but never turned aside to see the Museum. If you are ever there and if you have a deep and abiding interest in Norman Rockwell, I can recommend it as a very nice place. There’s gallery after gallery of Rockwell paintings with excellent explanatory material. I had no idea.

I grew up with Rockwell covers on the Saturday Evening Post. They were part of the landscape, in every library and dentist’s office, and one didn’t think about them any more than one contemplated the elderly ladies in the house next door. They had, presumably, always been elderly and always lived next door. And the SEP had always had Rockwell covers that came out of a drawer somewhere. It never occurred to me that Rockwell spent weeks painting each of them, that he researched them, that he traveled to locations to get it right, that there was a time when he was growing up and struggling as a young artist and celebrating his first magazine contract.

But there the museum is and the paintings are: an encapsulated picture of life in mid-twentieth century America. There are the kids in the old swimming hole, and the teen-age girls primping for the prom, and grandma setting the Thanksgiving turkey in front of grandpa while eager faces look on.

And what a range of interest! There’s humor: the young mother with a child over her lap to be spanked, hairbrush in one hand and a book on raising children in the other. There’s social commentary: a very small black girl being escorted toward her school by four very bulky U.S. marshalls. It’s mid-century America frozen in amber. That’s what it was like.

And yet, somehow, it’s not what it was like. Rockwell was called “the painter with the photographer’s eye” and he often used photographs as the basis of his work. You couldn’t ask runners to pose in mid-stride but you could photograph them and be sure to get it right. The museum has the photographs and you can see how exactly right Norman Rockwell was. It was like that.

But somehow it was not like that. These are not photographs but paintings and, as such, they tweak the original and the result is a quintisentiallization of life that becomes part cartoon, part icon. The kids are too quintessentially kids, every small boy with a missing tooth. The adults are too iconically what they are: the telephone lineman like some Stalinesque hero of American labor, the parents tucking their child in at night somehow unreal in their normality, their Normanality.

I lived those years and it was like that, and yet it wasn’t at all like that. Rockwell’s photographer’s eye asks you to believe that there were people exactly like that – and there were not. There were similar people undoubtedly, but they were all different, each one more individual than a snowflake. The lineman confidently repairing the wires may have had a troubled marriage, the grandma putting the turkey on the table with a satisfied smile may have spilled some gravy just a minute ago in the kitchen. We see none of that. But life is not the series of iconic moments that Rockwell shows us. And even when he shows us the wrinkles in life, they become too amusing or too tragic or too stereotypical to be quite real.

The museum, somehow, was exactly what you would expect: a series of magazine covers, all surface and no depth. I wonder who will go there when those who lived those years are gone and have taken their nostalgia with them. Fifty years from now, will there be anyone there except sociologists, puzzling out the exact relationship between the artist and his age. I come at it as a working theologian, knowing that no two of us are alike and no quintisentiallization of life can show us the reality.

Adventures in Bookland

2009-12-03T06:55:00.000-08:00

In recent years I have gained a working knowledge of libraries at Yale, Wesleyan, and Trinity College to say nothing of the Connecticut State Library. I didn’t use breadcrumbs to learn my way in and out but they might have been useful. More than once, I took a wrong turn in the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale and had to work my way back up staircases on which the door at the bottom was locked or ask a security guard to tell me where I was and how to get out of it. Libraries are like that; they are designed to keep books in but not necessarily to enable you to find them. Yale uses two indexing systems and shelves books with almost identical call numbers in two totally different places: some are on the fourth floor of Sterling and others in the Bass Library, under the courtyard in front of Sterling. I have mastered all these intricacies.

Until yesterday, however, in spite of one or two visits, I had no similar working knowledge of the New York Public Library, whose website catalog, by the way, is CATNYP. Yesterday I was given an unplanned tour of the facility.

My project was to find city directories from the mid-19th century. I had looked them up online and knew they were there. I had a reference number which began, mysteriously, with the word “Stuart.” I went in the front door of the library, a building which resembles an Egyptian mausoleum complete with sphinx-oid lions crouched on the front steps. The entrance hall alone, a great echoing marble sarcophagus, is large enough for most libraries. To the left was a booth marked “Information” but it was un-staffed. The brochures provided said nothing about reference numbers and no staff person emerged. Finally I went back to the door and asked the guard, whose first language was apparently not English. Finally he was able to communicate his belief that I should go to the opposite side of the entrance hall and ask someone at a booth labeled “Friends of the Library. The elderly “friends” on duty there told me they were not librarians so I should go to the third floor and ask a librarian. They told me where I could find stairs to the third floor or an elevator. I have been in the New York Public Library often enough to know that stairs to the third floor are not a good option, so I found the elevator and ascended.

Arriving at the third floor I found a librarian and showed her the printout of the reference number for which I was looking. “Oh,” she said, “you need to go to room 101 on the first floor.” On my way back down, I counted the steps from floor two to floor one: there were 45. This building was not designed for people who have lost their agility. Room 101 is at the south end of the first floor and the library occupies one city block. In room 101, I found a librarian who told me I really needed room 119 at the north end of the floor.

So I hiked back to the north end (only a short distance from the Friends of the Library booth where I had started) and, sure enough, there was a librarian on duty who knew exactly what I wanted and where it was and got it out for me immediately. I spent a happy hour studying microfilm of 19th-century street directories and came away much enlightened not only about where James Pennington lived in the years between 1850 and 1867 but about some of the various ups and downs and abouts of the New York Public Library.

But who or what is “Stuart?”

Priorities

2009-11-30T09:53:00.000-08:00

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Jonathan Swift remarked that “Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.”

Nothing much has changed over the years. Some laws are rigorously enforced while others are widely ignored. How many people ever get stopped for texting or using their cell phones? But I can tell you that if you drive with one headlight out, you will attract attention.

I was coming home on Saturday from a Thanksgiving celebration in Richmond, Virginia. It’s a distance of roughly 450 miles and I had covered over 400 miles of it before darkness fell. But as I made my way up Route 22 in Dutchess County, New York, I noticed flashing lights behind me and pulled over. To make a long story short, a New York state trooper wanted me to know that I had one headlight out and that I ought to deal with it as soon as possible. I thank him for the information and we drove on.

It’s less than 10 miles from Route 22 in New York to Route 7 in Connecticut and we had gone less than 10 miles when, once again, the there were flashing lights behind me. Now it was a Connecticut state trooper who wanted me to know that I had one headlight out. I told him that they had already informed me of the problem in New York State. He told me I should get it fixed as soon as possible and he hoped I would have a nice weekend.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had that much attention from the authorities. Over the weekend I have been meditating on that subject and making lists of other suitable objects for the attention of the law’s representatives. I have also had my headlight fixed. Now what about the other areas of American life that needs some fixing?

Peripheral Issues

2009-11-22T14:42:00.000-08:00

This week, in an uncharacteristically bold move, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared the pope peripheral. He didn’t say it in so many words – he’s a theologian after all – but it was perfectly clear to anyone reading between the theological lines. Only a few weeks after standing beside his Roman opposite number in England, the Archbishop of Westminster, to announce a new Roman initiative that would allow the pope to take on the most troublesome members of the Church of England (and good luck to them!), he went to Rome to ask, “Who needs the pope anyway?”

Now, Archbishop Williams knows perfectly well that the pope is not ready to renounce on short notice authority acquired over many centuries. Why then suggest it? Perhaps the Archbishop was speaking in Rome to lay out a principle more immediately applicable to the divisions in the Anglican Communion. The Archbishop cited a Lutheran/Roman Catholic agreement of 1972 “that the question of altar fellowship and of mutual recognition of ministerial offices should not be unconditionally dependent on a consensus on the question of primacy.” In other words, (theologians need other words!) we don’t need to agree about the pope in order to be in communion. He spoke of “Cardinal Willebrands' celebrated sermon in Cambridge in 1970 which spoke . . . of a diversity of types of communion, each one defined not so much juridically or institutionally as in terms of lasting loyalty, shared theological method and devotional ethos.” It’s a complicated (theological!) way of saying that being in communion need not depend on the pope if there is “lasting loyalty, shared theological method and devotional ethos.”

“The underlying idea” said the Archbishop, “ seems to be that a restored universal communion would be genuinely a 'community of communities' and a 'communion of communions' – not necessarily a single juridically united body – and therefore one which did indeed assume that, while there was a recognition of a primatial ministry, this was not absolutely bound to a view of primacy as a centralized juridical office.” Translating the theological jargon again: The papacy is peripheral.

And doesn’t this apply much more immediately to the relationship between the Anglican bishops of West and Central Africa and those of America? Yes, we disagree about sexual matters, but do these supersede “lasting loyalty, shared theological method and devotional ethos.” Do these differences destroy any possibility of communion? Is sexuality not peripheral also to the central nature and mission of the church?

“I am asking,” said the Archbishop, “how far continuing disunion and non-recognition are justified, theologically justified in the context of the overall ecclesial vision.”

Yes, indeed, How far can continuing disunion and non-recognition be justified if we have our priorities straight? Not far at all. Anglicans who announce themselves as being out of communion with the wider church need to ask themselves how to justify their position. The Archbishop has suggested an answer.

Who Pays for the Lies?

2009-11-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

The recent spate of attacks ads targeting representatives who voted for health care reform and the larger number of ads attacking the idea of healthcare reform does nothing to improve the quality of life but it makes me wonder whether the time has come for some element of facts and truth to be injected into the equation, like - who pays for this ad?

In campaign season, candidates are required to identify themselves and tell us that they approve of whatever scurrilous attack on their opponent we have just heard and seen. It doesn’t seem to do much for truth and honesty, but at least we know who to blame.

Why isn’t there a requirement that all political advertising on any issue be identified in the same way? Wouldn’t it be helpful to hear, “this dishonest twisting of the facts was paid for by George T. Smith.” Maybe we should also be provided with George’s e-mail address and telephone number.

While I’m dreaming, how about a requirement that every assertion come with a footnote providing the source of the alleged information and maybe a requirement that every “anti” ad must be followed immediately by a “pro” ad - and vice versa?

It’s just that in a democracy, the “demos” need to be accurately informed in order to provide the best “cracy.” Right now the stuff the demos get is not conducive to accurate and informed judgment. Why should we expect the Iraqis and Afghans to adopt a system that we do so badly after over two hundred years? Can’t we find a way to do it better?

Here’s an example of what’s possible under the present system.

2009-11-08T17:23:00.000-08:00

Few things seem to me as frightening as religious people with a cause. We got health care through the House of Representatives yesterday but only after the addition of a provision that makes sure no one can use federal health care for an abortion - or even their own self-paid-for insurance plan. The House was much more supportive of that than the health care bill itself.

Now, I’m not a big fan of abortion. I wish it would never happen. But unlike so many, I’m not really sure when life begins and not really sure that a small collection of cells with the potential to become a human being is entitled to the full protection of the law.

Isn’t it odd that the same people who are so sure of the value of pre-natal life are so ready to support the death penalty? Doesn’t that life also have potential value? How can we be so sure that the doer of evil deeds will never repent and find a way, however constrained, to be useful to society?

The polls reenforce my discomfort at the certainty of some people’s moral compass. The majority of the population, after all, denies evolution. One recent poll learned that 28% of registered Republicans believe President Obama was not born in the United States. Has anyone checked lately to see how many Americans believe the world is flat? But they know when life begins.

In the middle ages, the church taught that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ between the syllables of the word “cor-pus”in the phrase “Hoc est corpus meum.” As for me, I’m not sure of that either. It happens, sometime between the moment I enter the church and the time I leave. So, too, the cells become a human being somewhere along the line between conception and birth. Do we need to know exactly when? Do we need precise answers for all life’s ambiguities so that we can shout down our neighbors and force our certainties on them? Is there no mystery to be respected?

W.B.Yeats once wrote, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” That’s not quite fair either. (I’m also not really sure whether Yeats would lump me with “the best” or “the worst”!) I do, however, have strong convictions, and one of them is that we aren’t and can’t be sure of everything. I have to respect my neighbor’s conscience - even if he or she has no respect for mine.

I will paste in below a statement of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention on the subject of abortion in 1994. I find in that a quite commendable intensity, a balance between respect for life and respect for conscience that is seldom to be found these days.

*******************************************

All human life is sacred from its inception until death. . . .

We regard all abortion as having a tragic dimension, calling for the concern and compassion of all the Christian community.

While we acknowledge that in this country it is the legal right of every woman to have a medically safe abortion, as Christians we believe strongly that if this right is exercised, it should be used only in extreme situations. We emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience.

We believe that legislation concerning abortions will not address the root of the problem. We therefore express our deep conviction that any proposed legislation on the part of national or state governments regarding abortions must take special care to see that the individual conscience is respected . . .

General Convention, 1994

2009-10-31T05:18:00.000-07:00

Is there anything in this world, I wonder, as sad and as dangerous as believers without faith? It is an all too common phenomenon.

Believers without faith are the ones who latch onto religion as a way to deal with their fears and insecurity. If you can’t cope with the world, maybe you can co-opt God into helping you out. If you hold the true faith, everyone else is wrong and will get their comeuppance in the end.

For some people, that’s enough. They can take whatever comes their way now knowing that hereafter they will have the joy that Calvin promised of watching the others fry. That kind of faith is at least fairly harmless.

Then there are the ones who want to help God out by setting things right sooner. That might involve blowing up an office building in Oklahoma City or knocking down the Trade Towers in New York or strapping on some explosives and walking into a crowd and sending shrapnel into the bodies of whoever happens to be around at the time. That way you go to your reward even sooner than you would otherwise.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because the Pope seems to be making a collection of such people. First it was the Holocaust deniers who got welcomed back. Now it’s the sexuality deniers, the Anglicans who can’t cope with the idea of ordained women or ordained homosexuals.

Some of us thought that Anglicanism was all about freedom, about the notion that it’s dangerous to get tied down to narrow formulas because God may have new ideas and might ask us to move in a new direction. Some of us thought that the idea of papal infallibility was clean counter to everything we stood for. Now it seems that there are Anglicans – or I suppose we should say “former Anglicans” – who would rather have an infallible pope than accept the notion that women or homosexuals could be ordained. These are the believers with no faith in God. They put their trust in the past and hang on for dear life because they don’t dare let go and let God have God’s way with God’s church.

It is, let’s be honest, a very popular lifestyle. Half the population of the United States, according to some polls, are evolution deniers. Many of them also deny climate change. They need a literally true Bible that says what they think it says so they can be right and secure. Not many of them, thank goodness, are into blowing up buildings, but they can get pretty disruptive at town meetings and most of them keep guns at home to protect themselves when God isn’t available.

One wonders how it will end. The pope provides security for some and the fundamentalist version of the Bible provides security for others. We have learned this last week that some Anglicans will accept papal infallibility rather than freedom. Will fundamentalists ever get to the point where they too will join arms with the pope rather than move boldly into a new world? And will the pope, the Biblicists, and the ayatollah find they have more in common than what divides them?

Piling It Up

2009-10-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

As the days get shorter, the log pile gets longer. Before much longer, the log pile will begin to get shorter also, and as the days finally begin to lengthen this winter, the log pile will shrink even more rapidly. When the sap begins to run, the pile will shrink away to almost nothing. Ideally, there will be just enough left to take the chill off the house on a cold day in the spring - and to serve as a beginning for next year’s pile.

The traditional cord of wood is four feet by four feet by eight feet. My wood pile, however, is roughly six feet high, four feet wide and as long as necessary - about 20 feet at the moment. So how many cords is that? Well, somewhere about three. It probably takes at least three cords of wood to heat the house and another cord to make maple syrup, so I’m getting to where I need to be. For the next few weeks, however, until the snow flies, building the pile up has to be a priority. Once there’s snow on the ground, it’s harder to get the tractor into the woods to bring more wood to the pile.

It’s a five stage process. One: cut down a dead tree. There are always more of those to be found. Sometimes a high wind does the job for me. Two: cut the tree into lengths and load them in the tractor cart. Three: bring the load up to the shed behind the house. Four: unload it and split it. Five: stack it. This last stage requires significant planning. I start the stack at the end nearest the house and lay the split pieces of wood in layers each layer at right angles to the layer below it. All of this is on a foundation for which I use wood pallets from the hardware store. They get the pallets on shipments to them and put them out for anyone to pick up who wants them. As the crosshatched pile rises, I can begin to pile wood moving away from the crosshatched pile and sloping down. When I come to the end of the foundation, I will build another crosshatched pile to hold the wood pile at the far end. The pieces in between are simply placed side-by-side in a double-thick stack. The so-called face cord is a single-thick stack. Somehow that looks very complicated as I tried to explain it but, as they say, it’s easy when you know how – – and that comes from years of doing it.

Along the way you also learn the various merits of ash and maple and hickory and red oak and birch. But that’s for another time. Right now I’ve got to go and pile some more wood.

Winter on the Way

2009-10-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” asked the poet. Well, this week they were lying on our lawn. October snows are not unknown in our part of Connecticut, but they always come as a sort of surprise. One gets used to green grass and leaves on the trees during the course of our all-too-short summer but then comes the white reality check: winter is on the way.

October snows can be destructive. There are still leaves on the trees and the trees therefore catch the snow and can be bent and broken by the weight of the wet stuff. I still have quinces and apples on the trees and it’s fortunate that neither was damaged.

So the green beans are finished and the tomatoes can no longer cope. There’s still some lettuce out there and the raspberries have not given up, but gardening is now a matter of watering the indoor plants and studying the seed catalogs to plan for next year

By now the snow has melted away, unable to withstand a day-time high in the 40s. But we have been warned.

p.s. Scan down to the previous posts to remember how it was before!

Being Here

2009-10-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

It’s Columbus Day weekend and I am not on duty. Why not join the hordes on the highway and go somewhere? But where would we go? We are already here.

The sun is shining and the leaves in northwestern Connecticut have been officially pronounced to be at “peak” color. The drivers on our roads are annoying the natives by obeying the speed limit for a change in order to take in the color.

Besides, there’s work to be done. It’s also peak season for hickory nuts. There are several places I pass frequently on the road where the roadside is littered with hickory nuts. It would be foolhardy to stop on a major highway to scoop them up, but it can be almost as dangerous to collect them at the south end of my orchard. I was there yesterday and picked up a hundred of them without being hit - not by cars but by the falling nuts. A four inch hickory nut falling from a height of fifty feet would surely get your attention if it hit you. In the time I was there, half a dozen came rustling down through the leaves and landed with a thud within ten or fifteen feet.

But think of that: free food falling from above. Like manna in the wilderness. Come Thanksgiving and Christmas it will all be translated into hickory pie. Meanwhile it provides me with an activity for the hands while the eyes are on the playoff games and early season football.

Today the drivers from less happier lands cruise the highways for a brief glimpse of this earth of majesty, this other Eden, demi-paradise, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, New England.

Nature Notes

2009-10-09T15:21:00.000-07:00

It’s time for some nature notes, strange and wonderful: wonderful first.

I think it was maybe two years ago that a male cardinal first began coming to our deck. He didn’t come to the bird feeder but cardinals don’t like heights and our deck was already twelve feet above the ground. Going up another six feet to the feeder was probably too much of a challenge, but he came regularly and we were happy to see him. The bright red of a cardinal adds a vivid touch to the scenery. It was a long time before Mrs. Cardinal showed up. She was probably busy at first organizing things at home. But when she started coming she, too, became a regular visitor. So it went through the summer and then, suddenly, this week there were three young male cardinals on the deck. They don’t have their bright red plumage yet but we were glad to learn that the local family is growing. That’s wonderful.

And now for strange. I was working in the garden several days ago when I began to notice a strange metallic sound coming from the woods. It was not a sound one expects to hear in nature. There was no wind and there was no obvious reason for a sound that I compared to a stack of aluminum windows falling. The sound was irregular but it came perhaps eight or 10 times in the space of an hour. I didn’t have time to go looking but I’m a little note to check it out if I heard it again. Yesterday I had some time and decided to see what was happening. The sound was still occurring so I went in the direction of the sound and then heard a similar sound in a somewhat different direction and somewhat closer. So I went in that direction and then heard a regular volley of metallic bangs straight ahead. Suddenly I knew what it was. Straight ahead of me was the cabin that the hunters use. It has a metal roof and I was hearing acorns falling on that roof and rolling off onto the ground. Elsewhere in the woods the acorns were falling on outcrops of rock and hollow logs and giving a good imitation of life on a firing range. Great oaks from little acorns grow so there should be a lot of great oaks out their eventually – and there is not a sniper in the woods.

Strange and wonderful are the ways of nature.

Travel Plans?

2009-10-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

So are we all happy for Rio de Janeiro and the neglected southern continent? Maybe a bit sad for Chicago, but maybe Carl Sandburg did it in ninety years ago by calling it “hog butcher to the world.”

And maybe this week’s New Yorker should have come out a week earlier. “Gangland: Who Controls the Streets of Rio de Janeiro” is not calculated to send me to the nearest travel agent to buy tickets.

Item: Three million of Rio’s fourteen million inhabitants live in shanty-towns called favelas controlled by gangsters with private armies. Sometimes they shoot it out across the highway to the airport.

Item: “Rio de Janeiro is the top-ranked city in the world for ‘violent intentional deaths.’”

Item: “Rio’s police . . . kill more people than police anywhere else in the world. . . . By any ordinary calculus, public security in Rio de Janeiro is a disaster.”

Item: Ninety per cent of the murders in Rio go unsolved.

Item: The police are untrained and corrupt, “criminals themselves.” “There are no foot patrols, no contact with the civilian population.”

The Chinese cleaned up Beijing (temporarily) in time for the last Olympics so maybe the citizens of Rio will get a few weeks of law and order -- if they are still alive seven years from now. And how much of this do you expect to see in the glitzy television coverage of the 2016 Olympic games?

You Are There

2009-09-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

I have already written a couple of times about the diary of George Templeton Strong but one more seems indicated. The diary really comes into its own in the days leading up to the Civil War and on through the war itself. Strong became involved in a volunteer group dedicated to providing medical supplies to the Army to compensate for the totally inadequate medical services the Army had available. He seems to have spent more time on that than on his law practice and it involved frequent trips to Washington and indeed to the Army in the field. Most of the time however he was in New York and attempting to follow the war as everyone else did by running out for the latest “extra” edition of a newspaper. In spite of the fact that first reports were often misleading or dead wrong, the result is a very realistic picture of what it was like to live through the war as a civilian. And when news came of Lee’s surrender and a week after that of Lincoln’s assassination Strong’s diary enables you to “be there” in a way that no history book can do. Here are two brief excerpts:

April 11, 1865 – Nine o’clock in the morning. LINCOLN AND SEWARD ASSASSINATED LAST NIGHT ! ! ! . . .
10 PM what a day it has been! Excitement and suspension of business even more general than on the 3rd instant. Tone of feeling very like that of four years ago when the news came of Sumter. This atrocity has invigorated national feeling in the same way, almost in the same degree. . . .. Above all, there is a profound, awe-stricken feeling that we are, as it were, in immediate presence of a fearful, gigantic crime, such as has not been committed in our day and can hardly be matched in history.

April 16. An Easter Sunday unlike any I have seen. Drove downtown very early with Ellie [his wife], Johnny, and Temple [their sons]. Nearly every building in Broadway and in all the side streets, as far as one could see, festooned lavishly with black and white muslin. Columns swathed in the same material. Rosettes pinned to window curtains. Flags at half mast and tied up with crepe. I hear that even in second and third class quarters, people who could afford to do no more have generally displayed a least a little twenty-five cent flag with a little scrap of crape annexed. Never was a public mourning more spontaneous and general. . . .

Trinity was never filled so full, not even last Tuesday. The crowd packed the aisles tight and even occupied the choir steps and the choir itself nearly to the chancel rails. The outer doors, by the by, were in mourning, and the flag and the spire edged in black pursuant to my suggestion yesterday. Within the church, the symbols of public sorrow properly gave place to those of Easter. When we came to the closing prayers of the litany, Vinton [assistant minister] proclaimed, “I bid you all unite with me in prayer for all the bereaved and afflicted families of this land, and especially for that of Abraham Lincoln, late president of the United States, recently destroyed by assassination,” and read the proper prayer for those in affliction. He then prefaced the usual prayer for a sick person by a like bidding “for the Secretary of State and the Assistant Secretary of State, now in peril of death from wounds inflicted on them by an assassin.” The effect of these formulas introduced into the service was telling. The anthem (Hallelujah chorus) represented the ecclesiastical aspect of the day and was admirably well done. The Vinton’s sermon, or rather address, was far the best I have heard him deliver; extemporaneous, as he told us afterwards, when Ellie asked him for a copy. He blended Easter sentiment with that of public grief most skillfully or I should say rather by presenting suggestions of deep-lying truths that harmonized them. He brought out clearly the thought that occurred to me and many others; perhaps Lincoln had done his appointed work; his honesty, sagacity, kindliness, and singleness of purpose that united the north and secured the suppression of rebellion. Perhaps the time has come for something besides kindness, mercy, and forbearance even for vengeance and judgment. Perhaps the murdered president’s magnanimity would have been circumvented and his generosity and goodness abused by rebel subtlety and falsehood to our lasting national injury. Perhaps God’s voice in this tragedy is “Well done, good and faithful servant. Thou hast done my work of mercy. To others is given the duty of vengeance. Thy murder will help teach them that duty. Enter thou, by a painless process of death, into the joy of the Lord.”

The whole service was a new experience to me. Men and women (poor Ellie among them) were sobbing and crying bitterly all around. My own eyes kept filling and the corners of my mouth would twitch now and then in spite of all I could do.