THANK YOU, MISS ZAMOW

I love Garrison Keillor's quip: "The English major is the guy behind the counter who says, 'For whom is the cheeseburger?'." I get the joke, but I'm a grateful English major nonetheless. I started college as a drama major. (I learned how to glide -- not stride -- across the stage. Don't laugh; I'll show you sometime.) Then I switched to Biology (which, unfortunately, included chemistry), and landed at what had been my real love all along: English. English was my first love because of Miss Zamow.

There are four distinct encounters with books and reading that I remember fondly, even excitedly, as I re-trace a literary path that has carried and continues to carry me through the world. The first is the "Alice and Jerry" series in first grade. (Yes, I know, everybody else was reading "Dick and Jane." Any other Alice and Jerry readers out there?) Did I actually find the backyard and neighborhood adventures that they shared with their dog, Jip, to be interesting -- sometimes fascinating? Yes, I remember that I did. But the series really took off for me when their neighbor, Mr. Nightingale, was introduced. He traveled all around the globe, and (except for the fact that I did not yet know the word) seemed very "worldly-wise." I hope that I was an advanced child, but I think the phonics-heavy (and, yes, fun) three-to-five-word sentences of "Alice and Jerry" taught me how to read.

The next is my mother's bedside reading of Tom Sawyer. I think I was eight. What is there to say? What eight-year-old boy wouldn't love this adventure. At that age I surely must have been reading "chapter books," but perhaps I remember this as the first book I "couldn't put down." And it undoubtedly forms a memory because of the comforting presence and voice of mom, there at my bedside. I entered parenthood with the organic understanding that this is what a parent does, as surely and naturally as providing food and shelter: He reads to his child. Especially at bedtime. When I talk to parents about this, I always say, "Dads, don't let mom have all the fun." (More about reading with our kids in a later post.)

In ninth grade English class we read Moby Dick. Now, I just re-read Moby Dick and found it magically wonderful, but it caused me to wonder, "Did we really read the unabridged Moby Dick in ninth grade?" I don't know, but it worked. (Plus, I liked the teacher. She was kind of pretty and was known among us kids for never wearing the same outfit twice -- ever. I guess at some point someone started to keep track.)

Miss Zamow (zay-mo) wasn't pretty. (Sorry, Miss Zamow.) She was simply a great teacher. An English major should try to avoid these cliches, but she opened the world of literature to me. I can't cite the date, but I can see the second-floor corner classroom at Rapid City High School and I know the setting and circumstance: It was a circle of about twelve chairs, and in that circle we talked about the book we were reading, The Return of the Native.

That's it. Sitting in a circle and talking about a book (with Miss Zamow a part of the circle). That was something I'd never done before, and I've loved it ever since -- sitting in a circle and talking about books. Perhaps two other contributing elements: It was Advanced Placement English, so we had the class size and ratio (not to mention, interest) that every classroom at every level should have, and Miss Zamow loved the books she was introducing to us, and, although she was rather non-demonstrative, she loved being part of the conversation and she liked us.

(She had a wit that was so dry as to be non-existent, but it was there -- always delivered with a completely straight face. Once, I made a wisecrack and she said -- straight and unsmiling as ever, "I see we have a clown in our midst," and then continued on to the next point. Of course that made me love her all the more.)

I was exposed to a tremendously talented and lively faculty of English professors at the small midwestern liberal arts college I attended -- and many more circles. But I never experienced a more enjoyable or instructive class than AP English with Miss Zamow. Did I ever, once, go back to Rapid City High School and tell her? Of course not.

I would love to sit in one of those circles with you (perhaps now with a glass of wine) and hear stories of your "Miss Zamow." Alas, our virtual circle will have to do.

(P.S. Have you observed, as I have, that our best teachers often have some sort of eccentricity about them?)

WHAT CAN I SAY? IT'S BEEN A SLOW BLOGDAY

I recently saw a movie that ended -- as is the fashion these days -- with a voice-over of a pop song. It was a good enough song (Van Morrison), but I actually prefer the old-fashioned approach of using a song written especially for the movie. However, this is not a rant. The end-of-movie song reminded me of the time I was meeting in my office with a young couple, working on the plans for their wedding. We were going over the order of service and the bride said, "Here's where we want the Robin Hood song." What she meant was the then-popular "Everything I Do I'll Do It For You," by Bryan Adams. It had been voiced over the action of Kevin Costner's "Robin Hood" movie. But I'm a child of the fifties, and the "Robin Hood song" meant something different to me: the theme song of the old Robin Hood TV series, of course! I leaned across my desk and said (singing), "Do you mean,

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen;

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men;

Feared by the ri-i-i-ch! Loved by the p-o-o-o-r!

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin H-o-o-o-d."

There was the briefest silence in the office as she replied, somewhat shakily, eyes wide, "Uhhh, no...."

It was one of my finest pastoral moments in wedding planning.

REQUIESCAT IN PACE: TWO VARIATIONS

Rest In Peace, I.

Osmo Vanska conducts the Minnesota Orchestra

I love a good requiem. Most choral requiem masses have been commissioned by the wealthy or powerful and are now presented primarily as concert pieces. But why should the flower of liturgical expression be reserved for the wealthy in a church whose Lord so loved the poor. What's more, according to the Roman Catholic encyclopedia, New Advent: "...Requiem Masses may be celebrated ... for one, or several, dead, in particular, or for all the dead in general." So when the day comes, I'd like a requiem celebrated for me. You can be included, too -- I'm not being exclusive here.

The great barrier to celebrating a choral requiem for every Tom, Dick, and Mary is the cost: an orchestra with conductor, a choir, a sizable sanctuary or hall. So here's my idea: A subscription requiem. Everyone who seeks to be remembered in such a service pays an annual subscription fee. In the year of one's demise, one's name is included in the listing of those for whom the mass is celebrated. The particular requiem (Mozart? Rutter? Verdi? Mahler? Durufle? Ellingboe?...) would be selected each year by the conductor. Names would be listed in a dignified manner in the concert program. As to liturgical celebrants, in the spirit of ecumenism it would be sufficient simply to offer a concert performance free of clerical involvement.

I have no clue as to the economics of this. If the subscription group would not be large enough to support this plan on the local level (i.e. The Minnesota Orchestra), perhaps it could be carried out on a national scope by one of our larger-city orchestras: "The Annual Subscription Requiem of the New York Philharmonic," for example. As to room in the hall for attendance by the loved ones of the departed? It'll work out somehow. (And there's always PBS.)

These funereal reflections remind me of a quote attributed to Mark Twain, supposedly delivered at the beginning of his public lectures: "George Washington's dead..., Abe Lincoln's dead..., and I ain't feelin' to good myself!" But, honestly, I'm feeling fine; which gives me time to write my letter of suggestion: "Dear Maestro Vanska...."

Rest in Peace, II.

While watching Princess Di's funeral televised in all its splendor from London's St. Paul's Cathedral all those years ago, an idea came to me: The Church of England should conduct and broadcast just such an extravagant service once a year for a homeless (perhaps nameless) person who has died without the care of family, friend, or church. I mean pull out all the stops! (In this case, quite literally.) This would be satisfying on at least two levels: 1) It would allow the world to see liturgical worship and music at its deepest and finest once a year, and 2) It would serve to counter the notion that the Anglican Church pays an overly servile obeisance to royal and societal hierarchy. It would be an act of Christian witness and outreach.

The historic Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour,
Faribault, Minnesota. "The First Cathedral"

I have many times taken up my digital pen to write the dean of St. Paul's to suggest this idea. What has stopped me? I'm a hypocrite: Why are we not doing this in our own church? Thus, I have recently suggested to our community ecumenical association that we should cooperate in conducting such a service -- at the Episcopal Cathedral, of course, because the Anglicans do it up right! (So now I feel liberated to write to

St. Paul's: "Dear Reverend Dean...")

SAY WHAT YOU WILL, CAPTAIN KIRK IS NO POPINJAY!

Caryl and I attended Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest at the Guthrie Theater a few weeks ago. Part of it's charm is that it isn't really about anything. It's a perfect amalgam of a comedy of manners and a comedy of errors.

Part of the "manners" of the action is the foppishness of it's male characters, and of course Wilde's dress and manners were a part of a persona that he carefully cultivated. A sidebar in the Guthrie playbill traced Wilde's sartorial style back to Beau Brummel (1778-1840) and forward to... us! The basic male pattern of shirt, coat, and tie has remained unchanged (except for a few obvious evolutionary alterations) for at least two hundred years. (This fashion-ancestry explains why even a very conservative business suit is often fitted out with a tie that would make a bird of paradise blush. Just a bit of the Beau.)

Although I grew up in a generation that has touted the freedom of going without coat and tie, I actually like the "put together" feeling that such an ensemble gives me. And it is a feeling more than an attempt at a look. Knotting on a tie (or putting on the "dog collar" of my calling) produces a feeling akin to wrapping a muffler around my neck on a cool day.

So we guys have not been very inventive regarding fashion for the last couple of centuries, but I'm not sure if the man of the future will fare any better. Why is it that the standard male costume in science fiction movies since at least the 1930s -- and continuing today -- is basically a Nehru jacket? From Buck Rogers to Dr Evil. (Granted, there is sometimes a variation: A Vee-neck reminiscent of a 1940's male college cheerleader.)

I'm still waiting for a really creative Hollywood manifestation of an alien. But even more -- for a costume that takes us beyond 1952!

IS THIS BEAUTIFUL OR TERRIFYING?

In a previous post I wrote about the NASA site, APOD (Astronomy Picture Of the Day), and its its wonderful Hubble photos. Here's another one. The commentary on the web site says, "What caused this outburst of V838 Mon? For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded." (The APOD link, above, expands on this description.)

I have no profound commentary to add, except to say that this seems to be an image of the beauty of destruction. (Click on the picture to get the full image.)

AN ORDINARY MAN

I'm thinking these days of Jesus the graybeard.

In Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ, the temptation of the title is not to great wealth or power, but just to give it all up (being a savior) and grow old as a respected graybeard in the community, to enjoy the company of his wife and dandle his grandchildren on his knee. (I'll leave it to you to discover Kazantzakis' marvelous treatment of this temptation. I recommend the book rather than the movie.)

I'm thinking of this because, of late, I am living the life which tempted Kazantzakis' Christ: I have a gray beard, I dandle my grandchildren on my knee, and I greatly enjoy the company of my wife.

Of the many simple pleasures I am blessed with in this life, one of the best is listening to Caryl play the piano. When she sits down at her medium-grand Kawai, it is like a siren song. I put down what I am doing, take the piano-side chair, and am transported.

Sometimes I hear a piece elsewhere and I think, "I'd like to hear Caryl play that." And so over the years I've ordered sheet music: Copland's "Our Town," Lauridsen's "Dirait-on," Davies' "Farewell to Stromness." I present them to her hopefully and she plays them -- beautifully. I get tears in my eyes.

A light, subtle thought has slipped in lately during my listening sessions: "This will not always be." Maybe it has to do with that gray beard -- passing the sixty mark. This will not always be. It only makes these times better than they ever were.

"This will not always be" could be the title of Linda Pastan's poem, which is actually titled "50 Years:"

Though we know

how it will end:

in grief and silence,

we go about our ordinary days

as if the acts of boiling an egg

or smoothing down a bed

were so small

they must be overlooked

by death. And perhaps

the few years left, sun drenched

but without grand purpose,

will somehow endure,

the way a portrait of lovers endures

radiant and true on the wall

of some obscure Dutch museum,

long after the names

of the artist and models

have disappeared.

I applaud Pastan for facing it, but I still want to deny it. I prefer the doughty spirit of Phylis McGinley's "Midcentury Love Letter:"

Stay near me. Speak my name. Oh, do not wander
By a thought's span, heart's impulse, from the light
We kindle here. You are my sole defender
(As I am yours) in this precipitous night,
Which over earth, till common landmarks alter,
Is falling, without stars, and bitter cold.
We two have but our burning selves for shelter.
Huddle against me. Give me your hand to hold.

So might two climbers lost in mountain weather
On a high slope and taken by the storm,
Desperate in the darkness, cling together
Under one cloak and breathe each other warm.
Stay near me. Spirit, perishable as bone,
In no such winter can survive alone.

All that poem needs is a piano. I'm going to go find Caryl and request "Farewell to Stromness." Jesus should be so lucky.

THE LIST

"The List," Roseanne Cash's CD of that title, is a recording of a number of songs that her father, the late Johnny Cash, considered to be essential from his experience and point of view -- a collection that has understandably become very dear to her. I am certainly not the only one who will derive an idea from this: Hey! I should make a list. Just for fun, I'm working on a list of songs, but in the meantime I have another list.

A few years ago a friend said, "Dick, you're a classical music guy. Why don't you give me a list of pieces you think I'd like." Instead, I thought I'd give her a CD per month of some of my favorites. I never gave her the list or the CDs (potential friends, this might give you pause), but it's been churning in the back of my mind ever since. So, with this journal entry, I endeavor to answer that request: Twenty classical music works that I suggest (from my extremely limited bank of knowledge) to those who, like my friend, would like to get acquainted with the genre.

(I make this list with gratitude to my college roommate and [still] friend, Peter, who came to school with an LP of Bach's "Wachet Auf." It's the first classical music I'd ever heard -- except for my parent's single "Montovani" record. I listened to Bach's cantata over and over, and was hooked. Thanks, Peter.)

I decided to create this list off the top of my head, which means that next week it would be different, as it would if I took the time to rifle through my records and CDs. Although this is pretty much stream-of-consciousness, I vaguely attempted to represent a variety of periods and backgrounds. I ended up with composers of eight or nine nationalities across four centuries.

(By the way, there is nothing scholarly or objectively representative about my selections. These are all pieces that send me.)
Many of these will seem obvious or "popular" to some. But that, in a way, is just the point. It's a list for those who want to see what the attraction to classical music is all about, and these have stood the test of time (well, most of them).

Many will have more rarified tastes; but whether rarified or common, a collection like this naturally invites you to submit your own contributions, dear reader. Here's my list, in chronological order:

• Vivaldi: The Four Seasons
• Bach: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor
• Bach: Cantata “Wachet Auf” (Sleepers, Wake)
• Handel: Concerti Grossi
• Mozart: Requiem
• Beethoven: Symphony #6 “Pastoral”
• Liszt: Un Sospiro
• Verdi: Requiem
• Bruch: Violin Concerto #1
• Elgar: Enigma Variations
• Mahler: Symphony #2 “Resurrection”
• Sibelius: Symphony #5
• Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto #2
• Howard Hanson: Symphony #2 “Romantic”
• Aaron Copland: Symphony #3 (includes the original setting of “Fanfare for the Common Man”)
• Barber: Violin Concerto
• Bernstein: West Side Story (Either the suite or the cast album conducted by Bernstein)
• John Rutter: Requiem
• Morten Lauridsen: O Magnum Mysterium (on the CD, “Lux Aeterna”)
• John Adams: Harmonielehre

GOT THE CORN IN TODAY...

In a couple of recent friendly exchanges I've been challenged with the question (actually, the conversations led me to ask myself), "Why the blogging?"

I was explaining to my daughter that blogging ties into two great interests of mine: the essay and the conversation. "And," she said, "maybe a little vanity, Dad." Well, maybe... a little. (It could have been worse; she could have said "megalomania." It has occurred to me that someone who thinks he can deliver a sermon about life and faith and the way of the world to hundreds of people every week has to be touched with just a little bit of megalomania.)

I'm as vain as the next guy, but, actually, I plead innocent. I understand the blog to be a modern version of something that's been around since the dawn of the written word: the journal. I've always been one of those frustrated journal-keepers, and somehow the blog seems to work for me. Now I grant that not all journal-writers do so with the intention that others will read their thoughts. But I think many do -- not so much out of vanity, but because of the impulse to carry on a conversation -- or to impart something to the next generation. Most of us would love to have, for example, a grandfather's journal -- whether to read his thoughts on politics and the world around him, or just which crop he planted that week.

A journal is involved in a sort of implied conversation; a blog invites a real-time exchange of opinions and ideas. I am grateful, dear reader, for yours.

(By the way, I think "blog" is a clever but ugly word. I much prefer "journal." But I don't think "bjournal" is going to catch on.)

THE BRIDGE

R. S. Thomas, who died in 2000 at the age of 87, was for forty years a priest of the Church of Wales (Anglican), serving a number of back-country parishes. He is widely considered to be the greatest religious poet of the twentieth century, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. By all accounts he was a caring pastor, but one of the chief themes of his early poetry was a clear-eyed, unsentimental look at his rural parishioners:

Men of the hills, wantoners, men of Wales,

With your sheep and your pigs and your ponies, your

sweaty females,

How I have hated you for your irreverence, your scorn even

of the refinements of art and the mysteries of the Church,...

But he is also one of them, and comes to have a gruff respect for their perspective on life:

...why should you come like sparrows for prayer crumbs,

Whose hands can dabble in the world's blood?

Even though he writes in exasperation of their ignorance and their uncouth ways, he credits them as the very source of his poetic vocation:

I have taxed your ignorance of rhyme and sonnet,

Your want of deference to the painter's skill,

But I know, as I listen, that your speech has in it

The source of all poetry, clear as a rill

Bubbling from your lips; and what brushwork could equal

The artistry of your dwelling on the bare hill.

The artless speech of these farmers forms what Norman Maclean calls the "words that are under the rocks." Of this natural poetry of everyday speech, Robert Pinsky writes, "It's as though we're singing to each other all day long."

Near the end of his life, Thomas brings this view of poetry to a kind of ultimate conclusion: the language that is the song of human speech -- the language that Thomas had early recognized as the bridge between the "refinements" of the priest and the roughness of the people -- is the language (poetry) that bridges "the limits of our articulation" and communicates the divine:

...You have given us the ability

to ask the unanswerable question,

to have glimpses of you

as you were, only to stand dumb

at the limits of our articulation.

Is it our music interprets you

best, a heart-beat at the very centre

of your creation? Is it art,

depicting man's figure as the conductor

to your lightning? Had I

the right words, it is the poem

that would announce you to

an amazed audience; no longer

a linguistic wrestling but a signal

projected at you and returning quick

with the unpredictabilities at your centre.

References:

Robert Pinsky, "The Sounds of Poetry"

R.S. Thomas, A Priest To His People, "Collected Poems"

R.S. Thomas, Neither, "No Truce With The Furies"

"THE LIFE THAT REALLY IS LIFE"

Note: In memory of E. Jeff Rohr (1923-2010) I am adapting and re-posting this earlier entry, which I wrote with him in mind.


I have come that you might have life -- life in abundance. ~Jesus, in John 10:10

The hope for eternal life is -- at one basic level -- just an expression of selfishness: "Thank you God, that you are going to make sure that I, personally, will live forever." This may seem to some like blasphemy and to others like an understatement. At another level, of course, eternal life is a promise that comes out of the heart of God -- a promise of love. A God who is love seeks and in fact dies for an eternal relationship with the beloved. As Jurgen Moltmann has said, "God loves us so much that he cannot conceive of himself without us." Like a parent's love for a child. (Life was good before our daughters came along -- now I cannot conceive of my life without them.) So perhaps these two approaches are not mutually exclusive: As a child's self-centered self-comprehension does not negate a parent's love, so our grasping for something beyond this life does not exclude the possibility that this is God's very intention.

In fact, this is the point made in Jesus' chief description of God: the parable of the prodigal son. (A story that is better titled, "The Waiting Father," according to Helmut Thielicke.) The rebellious younger son demands his inheritance, spends it all in wild living and pleasure, then heads for home (and -- here's the thing!) not because he's repentant but because he's hungry! And what is the father's response? To hell with you? No, he runs out to meet his son (probably kind of an alarming approach when the kid looks up and sees him coming toward him), interrupts his son's carefully-rehearsed I'm sorry speech with a big hug -- and he throws a party. As one interpreter has put it, the father says, "This party is for me - I'm so happy!" And so it could be that what we call eternal life is something we're caught up in because the love of God is so broad and encompassing that we can't avoid it. Like that father's hug. Like infinity.

I actually didn't set out to write a sermon here. I was thinking of eternal life because I was thinking of my friend and mentor, Big Jeff, the Reverend E. Jeff Rohr (whom we laid to rest in beautiful Riverside, California this week), who said, "I trust God to his promises of the life to come, but living the Christian life is reward enough."

I agree. I submit that the Christian life -- a life of complete liberty lived as a response to God's free gift of grace -- holds up well when considered as a part of any philosophical conversation of what makes for "the good life." (It is we Christians ourselves who have stunted it and turned it into a set of religious rules primarily for the use of judging others.) But, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "Jesus didn't come to make us religious; he came to give us life." Here's to you, Big Jeff. Thanks.

The Christian is the freest lord of all, subject to no one; the Christian is the greatest servant of all, subject to everyone. ~Martin Luther

Title citation: Paul, in 1 Timothy 6:19

THE LOGOS BY ANY OTHER NAME...?

Marc Kaufman, writing in the Washington Post, explores whether and how deeply the discovery of "intelligent, moral" extraterrestrial life would threaten our earthly faith. The article concentrates primarily on the response of the Vatican, whose spokesman, at least, seems fairly unworried about the prospect (even though Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600 for embracing just such a possibility), but Kaufman suggests that the conservative, literalist wing of the evangelical church might be the most threatened.

Although it might be a bit unsettling to hear E.T. say "Jesus? Jesus who? Never hoid of 'im," there is a lot of room in Christian and Biblical theology for the acceptance of "sheep who are not of this fold," and of a variety of manifestations of the logos. (i.e. John Cobb, Christ in a Pluralistic Age, to name one sample reference). And of course the Great Commission, and the history of Christian missions (replete with abuses -- to be avoided when spanning the cosmos?) teach us that if Grok doesn't know Christ there's nothing stopping us from telling him the story.

I have neither the space nor the inclination -- at this point -- to explore these fine points. The real reason I introduced this topic is because Kaufman's article reminded me of this simple, open-hearted, haunting poem by Alice Meynell. Christ In The Universe:

With this ambiguous earth

His dealings have been told us. These abide:

The signal to a maid, the human birth,

The lesson, and the young Man crucified.

But not a star of all

The innumerable host of stars has heard

How he administered this terrestrial ball.

Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word.

Of his earth-visiting feet

None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,

The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,

Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.

No planet knows that this

Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,

Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,

Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.

Nor, in our little day,

May his devices with the heavens be guessed,

His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way,

Or His bestowals there be manifest.

But, in the eternities,

Doubtless we shall compare together, hear

A million alien Gospels, in what guise

He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.

O be prepared my soul!

To read the inconceivable, to scan

The million forms of God those stars unroll

When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.

~ Alice Meynell, 1847-1922

ON NOISE

(Ahh, the joy and randomness of the blog. Yesterday I rhapsodized on the cosmology of eternity, today I'm carping about candy wrappers.)

On Noise, Part 1.

There have been a number of times when, attending the theater or symphony, I have rolled my eyes and fidgeted in my seat in response to the honking and coughing and sneezing of some poor sap in the next row. The problem is, this is almost a sure sign that the next poor sap doing the coughing will be me! (This happened to me this very day.) It's like a divine reminder that before I can remove the speck from my neighbor's eye I need to remove the log from my own. (And just when will that be, I wonder.) So, I have become more tolerant, over the years, of the organic human need to cough, sniffle, and honk. I've come to have a zen-like attitude that, within reason, these sounds are part of the wholeness of the live concert experience.

But the lozenge wrapper is another matter. A fellow concert-goer today unwrapped his cough drop relatively quietly, but then proceeded to (certainly unconsciously) knead the wrinkled wrapper between his fingers for the remainder of the piece. Crinkle... crinkle, crinkle... crinkle.... My eyes started rolling heavenward, I imagined dialogue friendly (uhhh, could I take that for you...) and unfriendly (DROP IT ON THE FLOOR!!!). Of course there is no good approach to such dialogue, so I kept quiet. Good thing, too, because at intermission he proved to be a very engaging fellow.

Now, lest you think you are reading the rantings of the most petty guy in the world, the reason I'm going on about this is to report on a really neat science project I heard about a few years ago. An acoustical engineer proved (in an experiment that was written up in a professional journal) that if you unwrap a lozenge very slowly or very quickly, the exact same volume and level of noise is produced either way! (So get it over with and unwrap it already!) Neat, huh?

On Noise, Part 2.

I take part in a weekly coffee-conversation meeting. It's one of those groups in which whoever takes a breath is the listener. Last week, five of us sat at a table near the front door of our local coffee shop. We were discussing a couple of issues that a number of us were passionate about. We were having a good time. "The talk ran high" (in the words of Gordon Lightfoot), heads were thrown back in laughter. No fewer than four people (customers from tables further back in the cafe), on their way out, passed our table and said, "My, you're a noisy group," and comments to that effect.

In a similar conversation in a similar group in a different coffee shop a few months ago, a woman at the table next to us (working on her laptop), leaned over and said, somewhat severely, "You know, there are other people trying to work in here." I apologized humbly and profusely, but later I had one of those "what I should have said" moments and wondered if what I should have said was something like, "But this isn't a library." Or, better, what another at our table suggested: "This is a coffeehouse!"

Dear reader, were we too loud?

We judge others according to their behavior, ourselves according to our intentions. ~Unknown

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth, ... when the morning stars sang together...? ~ Job 38:7

I find a mystical connection among and between science, theology and poetry. I mean "mystical" quite literally (if the word "mystical" can, in fact, be used literally): That is, it is a connection that is difficult to get hold of or put into words (not that that's going to stop me from trying). The connection of which I speak is not the usual "dialogue" between science and religion, and it is not a covert or overt attempt to use science to prove theology or vice-versa. It is rather an interplay in which the one can almost stand in for the other, or a composition in which they sing in harmony (the harmony and the individual parts being a unity and separate at the same time). And the voice of the song -- the language that describes the interplay -- is poetry.

For the purposes of this discussion I define "science" as the limitless searchings of physics and cosmology, with infinity as the nexus at which it meets theology. "Let there be light" and the"big bang" of the primal explosion each speak of ultimate beginnings which are really penultimate (what was there before...?), and they are each metaphors -- poetic expression.

Here's one of those mystical connections: The "word" referred to in John's gospel ("In the beginning was the word") is both the utterance "let there be light" and the one who uttered it: the Word. The primal explosion of the big bang is an explosion of light -- the light brought into being by the word. Physics and Metaphysics. The element that strings it all together? Poetry. Perhaps there at the beginning before the beginning is not a micro-micro-nano-particle, but a word.

Another take: Deuteronomy reports, "The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms," and Einstein assures us of the conservation of matter and energy (nothing is lost). I am a Bible-believing Christian (the perspective from which I write), but my belief in eternal life is fed as much by the physics as by the Bible. A poetic view allows us to posit that they are saying the same thing. (As is Norman Maclean, in the absolutely beautiful last lines of A River Runs Through It: "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.")

I am haunted by the cosmology of faith and the faith of cosmology. The language (the words) of the haunting is poetry. Here's A.R. Ammons:

This is just a place.

We go our round distance yearly in a star’s atmosphere,

turning daily into and out of direct light

and slanting through the quadrant seasons.

Deep space begins at our heels,

nearly rousing us loose.

We look up or out so high

sight’s silk almost draws us away.

This is just a place.

Currents worry themselves, coiled and free,

in airs and oceans;

Water picks up mineral shadow

and plasm into billions of designs:

frames trees, grains, bacteria.

But is love a reality we made here ourselves?

And grief – did we design that?

Or do these, like currents,

wind in and out among us merely

as we arrive and go?

This is just a place.

The reality we agree with that agrees with us,

outbounding this, arrives to touch,

joining with us from far away.

Our home, which defines us, is elsewhere

(but not so far away we have forgotten).

This is just a place.

If the conservation of matter and energy only allows for eternal life to be infinitely recycled stardust, so be it -- infinity is infinity. But if we stir in the possibility that the whole schmere is God's love project, then it is stardust held in the everlasting arms. I can live with that.

We must become more than what is left of our bodies

And will see and become what is always
Rushing toward us and around us. (David Wagoner)

citations:
A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean, University of Chicago Press, 2001

In Memoriam For May Noblett (This is just a place), A.R. Ammons

How It Will Be, David Wagoner