Coherence

Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm"

Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail,
Poisoned in the bushes an' blown out on the trail,
Hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Suddenly I turned around and she was standin' there
With silver bracelets on her wrists and flowers in her hair.
She walked up to me so gracefully and took my crown of thorns.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Now there's a wall between us, somethin' there's been lost
I took too much for granted, got my signals crossed.
Just to think that it all began on a long-forgotten morn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, the deputy walks on hard nails and the preacher rides a mount
But nothing really matters much, it's doom alone that counts
And the one-eyed undertaker, he blows a futile horn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

I've heard newborn babies wailin' like a mournin' dove
And old men with broken teeth stranded without love.
Do I understand your question, man, is it hopeless and forlorn?
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

In a little hilltop village, they gambled for my clothes
I bargained for salvation an' they gave me a lethal dose.
I offered up my innocence and got repaid with scorn.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Well, I'm livin' in a foreign country but I'm bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

T.S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi"

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and
women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation,
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the
darkness,
And three trees on the low sky.
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the
lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Point - Counterpoint

I went to a funeral today. The mother of one of our students passed away after a long battle with cancer. It was a beautiful Christian funeral, at which one of her daughters read John Donne's "Holy Sonnet X".

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

As I was listening to it, I couldn't help hearing for the first time, though I am shocked to say so, the echoes of Hamlet's famous "To be, or not to be?" speech, which I have taught to seniors for over ten years now.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

The profundity of Donne's poem was only increased for me by putting it into dialogue with this challenge from Hamlet to the Christian hope beyond the grave. In fact, reading the robustly Christian critique of death that is "Holy Sonnet X" in the context of the deeply humane but pervasively pagan Hamlet, not to mention thinking and feeling my way through this in the context of a real death and real grief, gave me an even greater appreciation for all three.

Andre and Wally

In honor of Criterion's re-release of My Dinner With Andre.

Easy Rider Soundtrack

This has to be one of the greatest original movie soundtracks ever.

Thinking About ...

... the corresponding moral imaginations of Woody Allen and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Here's Woody's Isaac talking with Yale in Manhattan:

YALE: I'm not a saint, OK?

ISAAC: You're too easy on yourself. Don't you see?

You're... You rationalise everything. You're not honest with yourself.

You talk about you wanna write a book, but in the end you'd rather buy a Porsche.

You cheat a little bit on Emily and you play around the truth with me.

The next thing you know you're in front of a Senate committee naming names.

YALE: You are so self-righteous. I mean, we're just people. We're just human beings.

You think you're God!

ISAAC: I gotta model myself after someone.

You just can't live the way you do. It's all so perfect.

Jesus, what are future generations gonna say about us? My God!

You know, someday we're gonna be like him. [pointing to the skeleton of a caveman in the room]

And he was probably one of the beautiful people, dancing and playing tennis.

And now look. This is what happens to us.

You know, it's important to have some kind of personal integrity. I'll be hanging in a classroom one day and I wanna make sure when I thin out that I'm... well thought of.

And here is a monologue from Isaac near the end of the film, shortly after the scene above:



And here's Dostoyevsky's Ivan speaking to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov:

I've been sitting here now, and do you know what I was saying to myself? If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become convinced, on the contrary, that everything is a disorderly, damned, and perhaps devilish chaos, if I were struck even by all the horrors of human disillusionment--still I would want to live, and as long as I have bent to this cup, I will not tear myself from it until I've drunk it all! ....

There is still an awful lot of centripetal force on our planet, Alyosha. I want to life, and I do live, even if it be against logic. Though I do not believe in the order of things, still the sticky little leaves that come out in the spring are dear to me, the blue sky is dear to me, some people are dear to me, whom one loves sometimes, would you believe it, without even knowing why; some human deeds are dear to me, which one has perhaps long ceased believing in, but still honors with one's heart, out of old habit. Here, they've brought your fish soup -- help yourself. It's good fish soup, they make it well. I want to go to Europe, Alyosha, I'll go straight from here. Of course I know that I will only be going to a graveyard, but to the most, the most precious graveyard, that's the thing! The precious dead lie there, each stone over them speaks of such ardent past life, of such passionate faith in their deeds, their truth, their struggle, and their science, that I -- this I know beforehand -- will fall to the ground and kiss those stones and weep over them -- being wholeheartedly convinced, at the same time, that it has all long been a graveyard and nothing more. And I will not weep from despair, but simply because I will be happy in my shed tears. I will be drunk with my own tenderness. Sticky spring leaves, the blue sky -- I love them, that's all! Such things you love not with your mind, not with logic, but with your insides, your guts, you love your first young strength.

Gosh I'm going to miss teaching these kids ...

One of my eighth-grader's year-end definition of poetry:

"Poetry is something that exposes the root of beauty - namely love."

A Poem In Its Infancy

"May 19, 2009"

Swallows,
like nymphs and children,
can catch a midsummer breeze
and frolic

on the lightest wind.


And in a good autumn gust
even the ravens
put aside their Nevermores
to play with Elsewhere

for a while.


But today
the hot winds blew so hard
that three vultures
over a field of last year's stubbled corn,
set aside their slow circling
mortal cycle

to dance.

"Beyond Here Lies Nothing"

There's a 'video' of Dylan's new "Beyond Here Lies Nothing" at Amazon.com.

It's really a photo montage though, and an interesting one, fit well, I think to the song.

Seven more days.

Creation in Conversion

Consider the two creation stories of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, with it's imagery of water, day, night, light, darkness, dust (or earth), spirit and breath as the backdrop for John's highly poetic conversion narratives:

John 3:1-21

1 There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." 3 Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." 4 Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" 5 Jesus answered, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.' 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit." 9 Nicodemus answered and said to Him, "How can these things be?" 10 Jesus answered and said to him, "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things? 11 Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. F14 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but F15 have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 18 He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

Of Blogs and Books

OK, 22 Words has done it again.

I understand that for some reason it is necessary to make short paragraphs on blog posts.

I also understand that this doesn't necessarily mean that people who read blogs can't read books with long paragraphs.

But... I do really fear for the future of the older classics in this new culture of techno-literacy. As people become more and more accustomed to shorter paragraphs, twitter content, IM, etc., I fear they will have completely unsuited themselves for Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Hugo ... even Steinbeck.

If this happens on a large scale, I do not think it will be a failure of education, desire or inteligence, simply a matter of habit and conditioning. That's what scares me the most. It's so easy.

And then what? As Morissey might say: "Come armageddon!
Come, armageddon! come!"

Unfortunately, only a couple days after that post on short paragraphs in blogs, I found some of these very fears disturbingly realized reading the comments of 22 Words's fairly literate readership in response to the question, "Are there any good books you don't like?"

Dickens used to appear in the newspapers for crying out loud! Now he appears on lists of books that fairly literate people couldn't get through.

It's almost enough to make me drop out altogether, like one twentieth century writer, thinker, and human being I admire an awful lot.

Best Of 2008 - Movies, Books, Albums, Photographs

Time for a little end of the year best of!

Movie of the Year

Federico Fellini's 8½

This movie absolutely stunned me. A brilliant meditation on one man's struggle with his art, his relationships and his own ego.

The film drifts seamlessly between the present (such as it exists), reverie, dream and fantasy. Now I know how much something like Todd Hayes's I'm Not There (last year's movie of the year and soundtrack of the year) owes to 8½. In fact, the scene where Cate Blanchett's Dylan is flying like a balloon on a string (you catch a glimpse of it in the trailer)and the opening scene in the car seems to be taken directly from the opening dream sequence of 8½.

Runner Up: Craig Gillespie's Lars and the Real Girl



Book of the Year

Peter Leithart, Against Christianity

A fabulous "theological bricolage" (Leithart's description) that asks us to re-examine where the faith is at in the twenty first century. Leithart definitely owes a debt to others like Bishop N.T. Wright and Stanley Hauerwas, but brings his own spin as a Reformed (CRE) thinker who really is willing to engage history, theology and other traditions.

Leithart has helped further my thinking about the intimate relationships between cosmology, theology, Scripture, history, politics, culture and literacy.

Furthermore, he puts his thoughts into easy to digest small nuggets. This is also true of his excellent blog.

Runner-up: Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos



Album of the Year

Bob Dylan's Tell Tale Signs: Bootleg Series Vol. VIII

A fabulous collection of rare, unreleased or live versions, including my favorite on the album, "Across the Green Mountain" from the soundtrack to Gods and Generals.

As Dylan ages his voice becomes increasingly pleasing matched with the roots music to which he has returned.

The only irritating thing about this release was the 3CD set that was released at the same time. The third CD even includes an alternate version of one of my all time favorite songs, "Ring Them Bells" from Oh Mercy!. You just can't have too many versions of this song.

Alas, It almost tempts one to really bootleg.

Runner Up: All the other Bob Dylan albums I listened to this year.



Photograph of the Year

Multnomah Falls
Columbia Gorge, Oregon

Runner Up:

Bamboo Stand, Huntington Botanical Gardens
San Marino, CA

A Christmas Carol - and Nora's stage debut

The kids got to be in another Trinity School production this week, an adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Unfortunately, a technical problem the first night left me unable to get any shots of Emily and the next day I was watching the wee one while Jen watched the play.

Here's a slideshow of Dietrich, Anna and Nora's parts, though.

Nora was something of a showstopper.

(Double Click above for better slideshow opportunities)

I'll post individual pictures of all of them in their costumes later.

Thinking About ...

Get Out the Olive Skinned Crayons

A little tiff two of my young nephews were having about how to draw God, combined with some meditations I'm working through at a People of Praise conference on friends hip with God led me to this piece of advice for young Maxwell the artist.

If you want to color God, Max, what you want is some crayolas that approximate a dusty, olive-skinned look, a good sense for the Semitic profile and some rough edged Palestinian paper.

"He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father."

One of the great things about having kids...

... is getting to play amateur psychoanalyst.

My latest experiment is in reader-response criticism. If you really live in a literary world, really get into it and feel what's going on and breathe the air around you, then your responses in that world -- your affections, likes, dislikes, passions and thoughts -- say as much about you as about the world.

So nearing the end of our years in Narnia (at least the first time through), here are my eldest three children's favorite characters (excluding Aslan):

Dietrich: Jewel the Unicorn

Anna: the dryads

Emily: Puddleglum

Each speaks volumes does it not?

So ... who is your favorite character?

(click for a nice full size map of Narnia)

The Court of the Hamadryad

Here's a little something inspired by Guillermo del Toro.

This Machine

The Last Battle

We started reading The Last Battle at the dinner table last night, having spent the last couple years in Naria after our meals.

I don't think I'm going to make it.

I choke up at a simple sentence like, "The last of the Kings of Narnia sat under the great oak which grew beside the door of his little hunting lodge," or at the enslavement and beating of the talking horse by the Calormenes, or at the death of the Dryads at the felling of Lantern Waste.

What a great set of stories.

If you have never read them before or haven't read them since childhood and you've grown younger since, read them again.

Any favorite Narnian moments?

Three Quirky Movies about Becoming Human One Ordinary Day at a Time

Lars and the Real Girl



Groundhog Day



Jibeuro



Any you would add?

Serendipity -- Our Day With Diamond Dave and the Anarchists

So this morning I had gone early to the Saint Paul Farmer's Market to take some pictures. The light wasn't quite right, but I got to chat with a very nice woman about organic baby food, ran into someone who knew several colleagues at Trinity School and sampled Thai eggplant.





On the way home I stopped on Smith Avenue to take some pictures of the RNC Welcoming Committee's headquarters, which were raided last night.


The local FOX affiliate was taping a brief morning update so I stayed to watch.

Then this older tie-dyed fellow came riding up on a bicycle and said he was with the Seeds of Peace, a group who were in town for the convention as well, feeding protesters and supporting non-violence.


He spoke a little ramblingly of his days in Dinkytown before he left for San Francisco and of his close association with the young Bob Dylan. He introduced himself as "Diamond Dave." Hmmm ... I thought. Riiiiiiiggghhht.


As the FOX 9 News reporter was leaving she asked Diamond Dave if he was going to be at the news conference on Harriet Island. He really wanted to go, so I told him I could give him a ride but that I needed to run home first. When I got home, I googled him ... just in case. Here's what I found.

San Francisco Bay Guardian, "2007 Local Heroes"

The Haight-Ashbury Beat, "Diamond Dave Still Sparkling"

From the SFB Guardian piece:

"Whitaker's initial involvement entailed witnessing the scene and spreading it; one of his claims to fame was passing along a copy of Woody Guthrie's Bound for Glory to a young Bob Dylan during a brief return to Minneapolis in 1961."

The guy was legit!!!

So of course when I told Dietrich that I met the guy who gave Bob Dylan a copy of Woodie Guthrie's biography, Dietrich wanted to come along and meet him. The Seeds of Peace are set up about a block and half from us on Smith and Wyoming! So I swung over to their camp, a little three bus set-up in a vacant lot, to pick up Dave and take him to the press conference on Harriet Island.

Because we were with Dave, I became a part of some 'inner circle' conversation about houses being raided, code names, etc. -- real black-ops stuff. At one point, one woman turned to me, eyed my camera and said, "Are you press?" I said, "No. I'm Dave's driver." Then she was cool. We stayed for the news conference, which was very interesting because the media were extremely hostile -- not at all what I expected. And when the RNC Welcoming Committee people spoke they used names other than those they had been using in the inner circle meeting I had been a part of! I shot a lot of photos and someone from Twin Cities Indymedia asked me for my contact information.

Here's a mini-slide show.



At the press conference, Dave found out that there was going to be an anarchist rally in Powerderhorn Park (South Minneapolis) at 11:30. He asked if I was going to that and I said, "Sure!" So I swung home, downloaded the pictures off my camera and took Anna and Dietrich over to the Seeds of Peace camp to pick up Diamond Dave for round two.

When we got there they were putting lunch together for the rally, so Dietrich and Anna ended up helping out. Washing lettuce and picking off the bad parts with some other woman from the neighborhood.


While we were there some panic ensued when a reporter showed up, having heard a a report that they were going to be raided next. It turned out it was much ado about nothing and actually stemmed from Diamond Dave's word in someone's ear (I was there when he said it) that the police would try to shut down the food supply next.

But it did turn out that they didn't have anyone to take the food to Powderhorn Park and were going to have to call a driver back, but since I was going anyway I said I could take some stuff. We loaded up the Toyota with a rag-tag fleet of makeshift soup tureens, salad bowls and bread, then Steve and Sarah from Moab, Utah hopped in with Diamond Dave, myself, Dietrich and Anna and off we went to Powderhorn Park. We were one seat short so Sarah rode on a bucket of soup while Steve read the Star Wars Universe book we had checked out of the library.


Dave (who had never seen one) and Sarah (who has apparently spent most of her life, saving a brief stint in Missoula, in the sheltered red-rock naturalism of Moab) were pretty amazed at our GPS navigator, Neville. Dave even broke into some spontaneous spoken word poetry.

When we arrived a group of around 300 people had assembled to get updates on the status of the protest movements in light of the arrests and raids. While we were there, word came that the headquarters of the RNC Welcoming Committee on Smith Avenue had been reopened (only they don't call it a headquarters, they call it a convergence center).


When they were all done with their meetings and ready to break out into various groupings (child care, health care, food, strategy, etc.), someone announced that lunch would be served and my kids wanted to help so they jumped right in! The Seeds of Peace group had brought all manner of second hand bowls, mugs, and cups in which to serve soup, salad, bread and coffee. Steve from Moab served the soup, Dietrich serve the salad (and later corn) and Anna dispensed the bread while Sarah tried to remind people to wash their hands and recycle their bowls.

Dave took a walk to have a smoke (tobacco). He was very careful not to smoke around the kids.


Here's a slide show:



Midway through it was clear we didn't have enough containers to go around, so some decided to pile their plates and bowls high and pass them around while I left the kids with Steve and Sarah to go to the dollar store to pick up some plastic plates.

When it was all over, we cleaned the stuff up, took the leftover scrapings for composting, took all the plasticware to wash and reuse and headed home to St. Paul. Steve and Sarah got a ride back to Seeds of Peace with someone named 'Garlic' and we picked up one other person who had been 'detained' the night before in the raid and needed a ride back to St. Paul.

On the ride home, Diamond Dave and I talked about theological aesthetics, Socratic education, Basho, Rumi, Dave's 10 year sobriety, coffee shop poetry readings, his son's career as a musician, hurricane Katrina and the future we see for our children.

All in all ... this is a day I will not soon forget.

Now it's off to a Lord's Day celebration with friends from South Summit.

More reflections on the implications of this day to follow, I'm sure. (Lest you all fear ... I am not becoming an anarchist).

In the meantime, as Diamond Dave says (and said to me at least three times today):

Cast a wide net
Find a common thread.
Let life flourish.
Don't panic, just keep it organic.