"IT'S PURE EVIL"

There it is then. This week's oxymoron.

I began thinking about this today after seeing "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader", the third movie/book in the Narnia series. There are some very good sequences, some departures in a technical sense but not in a spiritual sense; and Lewis' sense of hierarchy, a real horror to the modern, seems to be here somewhat restored. What bickering there is isn't so irritating as in the second film, esp. for those who know the story and the role of Eustace, who was written as a complainer but not as a usurper. It is ironic that this may be the last of the series since we have seen a decline of interest in the project, particularly for those who see this as a sort of art project (or just entertainment to be compared to other entertainments), rather than as a pretty straightforward allegory. Coming up to art house standards of the kind that bears such dismal violent film festival kind of fare isn't really the point, is it? But the competition esp. by Disney is especially fierce this Christmas with a revised fairy tale which no one expects to be "faithful" to the original. Now that Disney is out of Narnia, they are out to beat the competition, of course--including torpedoing their ex-project at least for the time being.

Narnia has survived much worse attacks than from "The Walt"!!!

For my part, if "The Silver Chair" is not made, I won't be without a film version. The BBC version from long ago is of course very primitive on special effects but I would be pretty amazed if any actor I can think of could do a more convincing Puddleglum than was done by the Brits themselves. This, too, should be seen, by you,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

But along the way of this voyage, the semitropical island lair of the White Witch (implied) is described as "pure evil". This presents, to my mind, enormous and insuperable metaphysical difficulties.

Another favorite movies of the Schulers is "The Time Bandits," a post- Monty Python project financed by George Harrison, who also wrote the closing song. Dan asked us to send him the DVD for Christmas--hopefully with extras. The final bit is posited on a long gambit rather on the same lines of the Narnian invasions by men and shape-shifters; it has a "son of Adam" extruded into a multi- dimensional set of worlds and times, who is then escorted by the bandits, who seem to be a species of gnome, once in charge of certain bushes, but stealing a map of the universe that belongs to The Supreme Being has them being pursued inexorably, both by God and by Slewfoot, both of whom want the map, either back to the Creator or to plan a new universe: "Computers! Day One!" (And no slugs)

It's all very complicated but not rich for those who dislike fantasy, silliness, and irony conmixed. The boy and the bushmen are lured into hell by an excellent Satan--Shelley Duvall I think--and at the last are rescued ex machina by The Supreme Being who reduces his opponent to a smoking carbonized statue. The statue breaks up into smoldering pieces of -you guessed it--Pure Evil!!! "God", who is portrayed as a rather fussy businessman, takes over completely , produces a large bin, and declares, "I want every bit of this cleaned up! I don't want any of these pieces left lying about......" So the gnomes work albeit sloppily on cleanup, get back their old job, and are handily, but a little reluctantly, forgiven, but they all disappear leaving the boy in a hellish situation, "without so much as a by-your leave!"

The boy wakes up in his home but his room is filled with smoke; a piece of burnt roast in the microwave being the cause. When the fireman comes out with the appliance in question, his folks open it up to see a charred seething lump and the boy cries, "Mum! Dad! Don't touch it! IT'S EVIL!!!" Which they promptly do anyway, and equally promptly explode. There is a bit more at the end that I won't reveal. But if I haven't spoiled it for you, put that in your queue and smoke it...

I will think about this some more and perhaps add some flesh to these twice-burnt bones. I hope in the meantime that some of you can do your own speculation and perhaps share it here if you like. I trust that you trust that 2011 will be extremely interesting and a blessing at the same time. It's all Pure Gift, I know--and in this I can use the word "pure" without any misgivings whatsoever. Hard to ignore 61 years of so many blessings--starting with Mumsy and Dadsy of course-- DON'T TOUCH IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mass

What does the word, "Mass" really mean? Does it derive from the same words as "Michaelmas" (which is really what we just celebrated in the view of some) which literally means, Michael-sent?

Christmas means Christ-sent, of course; One can argue that we are celebrating the conception of the One Sent, with Michael being just the bearer of the tidings of great joy; but the actual birth may have taken place in September, around the Feast of Trumpets, which could possibly be more appropriate for such a birth.

(See "The Journey of the Magi"--"I should be glad of another death.")

insert Chi Roh here

"No man ever spoke like this man."

Yes, I keep coming back to this observation, esp. when I am tempted to look at the writings of others, including my own, as anything but purest speculation. We write as if driven, yet Christ (Yes, that Christ after which Christ Mass is named) only wrote in the sand. It's surely not because he was an illiterate Galilean peasant--how then could he have argued with all those doctors about the Scriptures? No, he chose to be quoted by us, because as far as any can tell, his words are for us. And, "if God be for us (before us too!!!) who can be against us?"

One can "explain" history by materialism alone; yet is that not like trying to 'splain quantum phenomenae with Newtonian tools,with which materialism only appears to be true on a local human level? It's sure no theory of everything, even though millions have made it so in their own minds, usually to maintain their own less-fettered hedonism.

Yet even so, God wants us, apparently, to be Christian hedonists, i.e. to "enjoy Him forever." The true pleasures, per Mr. Screwtape and Mr Lewis, are His invention, and are inimitable and unsubsumable and have their components of sensate desire, but dominate them in the long run. (See John Piper's "Desiring God".

As to Christmas itself, an odd thing has happened to me on the way to the manger.

As a child, I was dominated by my desires to get stuff--giving was kind of a drag, rather like writing thank you notes for socks and underwear. So mine were Newtonian and Darwinian assumptions: you give, I get--I increase, you decrease! Kind of John the Baptist in reverse.

Since then I have been rather inundated by "Theories of Christmas" from Dickens to the "new" atheists and back to Church again. But as a result, I note that Jesus Himself had no reported words about His birth; a physician, who was apparently also a compulsive writer, gave the most commonly used account. So in deference to a scientist that was there--or thereabouts!--I would tend to accept Luke's version as definitive, "good enough", but not comprehensive--as has been said of the Bible as a whole.

But, strangely enough, it is the many tsunamis of opinion that restore a sense of mystery beyond words. "Why believe him rather than the others?" (Beckett)

Well, that's the point and there's the mystery. The gospels are as good an account as we are going to get. Scholarship will neither add nor detract from any of them. Inconsistencies simply relate to the relative views of man and are one of many reasons why the gaps will be filled in only later, as was the case with Isaiah and all the OT prophets.

Question: what does Jesus think of Christmas? Only the denizens of heaven know, and are informed more fully. "Angels long to look into these things." re: human existence.

Therefore one can only, even logically, say, "This too is a great mystery. I speak concerning the church..." concerning its Brideship. The coming in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, which I hope everyone has read--recently(!!!), therefore regains the status of mysterium tremendum simply because the plethora of opinions are all wrong, to greater or lesser degrees. This is the right sort of relativism, rightly applied to our own estate, not God's . And who then can prove otherwise? (seeing as even the revered gold standard of the scientific method and doubly-blinded studies are now suspect--as with the numbers highly specified to maintain our universe, it appears that God has been toying with the science as well--because of scientism, i.e. idolatry?

Well, so much for "Christmas Science!!!" Thanks esp. to Joyce and Dennis and John and Alex for sticking with this sticky wicket of a blog since its inception, and for making it worthwhile and challenging me to rethink my opinions and see and know how relativistic they are. For the records, I see no reason to change what is axiomatic, except the consequences of them surely need fleshing out. And if God deigned to come in the flesh, surely I can be at "present" content with my low estate and poverty of being a carnal and pushy person, and let Christ be in me more and more. Perfection eludeth me, hence the AA saying: "I can't--He can-- so I'd better let Him, eh?"

"REJOICE! AGAIN I SAY IT:RE-JOICE!!!

"oxymoron of the month"

Freeway

Dream as Traum-a Lieder

Didja ever have one of those dreams wherein you're on a wide superhighway approaching a bridge over a river the size of the Mississippi and you start to climb but the road gets narrower and narrower? And the grade becomes steeper and steeper as your car gets smaller and smaller and slower and slower?

I didn't think so. But it ends when you almost get to the top and you realize your car is stuck at the top of a grain bin and your superhighway is a tin tube to a deep dark tank--so you must get tanked! "Every grain of wheat must die".....first....a fitful fearful ferment follows sometimes. Even when I wake to full sunshine...hence this late entry.

The old saying, "yeah, but in the long run, we're all dead," may be be apropos here...since all we see is a tiny fraction of what's over the bridge/tube and we never quite get to the top so that we are once again left with wonder, on the plus side, and dread on the other. Notice how these dreams are almost always cut off just before the most spectacular views and/or the most terrible abysses should appear? Maybe our curiousity IS limited? A bit,a bit...

Define death, then! Doth death, like taxes, evade all formats of relativity? One must assume that either biological death is the end; or it's not. If our deaths are final, as most of the Western world lately seems to assume, then as Gordon Liddy says (yeah that Gordon Liddy--but who would know better than a real burglar?), "we're all just worm food." and life is all sensate satisfaction and avoidance of pain,"full of low sounds and silent fury".

I have gone back to reading Joseph Conrad's short stories, such as "The Lagoon", which with all its brooding may have been a precursor or a postlude to "Heart of Darkness" in which all human aspirations are reduced to one low unlit level which is quickly swallowed up by an omnivorous wilderness, without and within.

"Arsat had not moved. He stood lonely in the searching sunshine; and he looked beyond the great light of a cloudless day into the darkness of a world of illusions." Arsat expects himself to go back to a whole world of enemies to avenge his brother's death and to assuage his guilt for not dying with his brother and having caused that same brother's death as well. "In a little while I shall see clear enough to strike--to strike. But she has died, and ....now...darkness."

You see, Arsat was both a feared warlord and a thief of his king's wife, all thanatos and eros which clearly caused the death of the "secret sharer" long before he would be biologically dead. So, if death can come before death, can it not only come after death as well, what is known as "the second death"?

We cannot assume it does not--at least not from evidentiary methods that we have or are likely to develop. "Unless a man die......"

7777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777777

I see that the subject of suffering strikes a chord among my couple of readers. I would say, "Oh, good!" like Mrs. Fawlty but that might be disrespectful to those billions who do suffer considerably more than the all the three of us thrown together-- that too would be an assumption based on little or no evidence at all except the bits we have shared together thus far. (Thanks to Joyce and Dennis for being semi-public sharers on this bog of a blog:)

My job, for good or ill, requires me to inure myself to the suffering of others as much as it requires me not to faint at the sight of entrails. It's a thin line between these three at least: detachment, empathy, and unacceptable callousness. If we did not have some inborn interpersonal and societal reflexes, this would be impossible to do. Think of Asperger's. Think of the sociopath. Think of the portait of the artist as a young man-- namely Dorian Gray.

"It's Complicated" (maybe unsubsumable)

As Joyce can tell us, I was what we could kindly call a social "retard" as a young man, with lots of squeamishness but very little "outer directedness" (Riesman); only a very blighted, erroneous self-awareness. But are we to call subsequent developments inevitable, the result of hard work, or the Grace of God? Given every man's "heart of darkness" (I dare not speak for the other half of the human race here) what defense or hope can there be? This judgment too I will leave to others--but I will say that esp, this time of year, I see life far more as a Gift and a call to both Grace-i-tude and Forgiveness-hood of the transcendent kind, than as a blow in the face or the results of my trying to build a giant bridge from Hell to Heaven. "Be content with such as you have."; "be ye kind"; and "be ye thankful" are all simple messages from the same author, which are so simple as to be unnatural and hence only possible with tankfuls of Mercy and Grace.

And a larger car? "In your dreams!"

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 is not great

"Oh Lord woncha buy me a Meeeeercedes Benz............." Applause, pleez.

To blurb is human; to forgive is impossible...

"_______________'s limitless curiosity will engage and enlighten readers..."

From one of multiple blurbs 'o praise from a recent nonfiction release.

What a funny statement--first of all, I will disregard the tedious and by now somewhat meaningless phrase, "engage and enlighten readers." Since this was penned by another published author, it still seems odd that he couldn't take the time to "engage and enlighten" us more than this!

The other phrase, "limitless curiosity" is, as we all know, "just a phrase." Also overused to the point of no meaning. On the other hand, if it is really meant as is, the implications are profound. First, it implies everlasting life as well as attributes that really could only describe a god or goddess. It implies a kind of omnipotence, yet also limitless ignorance as well. So it describes neither a human being nor the idea of God as the West generally defines the term. Pandora had limits--as the gods most quickly showed her! Her curiousity was abruptly curbed and it is hard to imagine how the rest of her life turned out (jes' kiddin'). What is really implied here is a type of paganism in which one cannot really tell much difference between gods and men. Which makes for great tales--all tall, too tall but not tall enough; esp. not to evince sustained sincere belief. Is this what we now call, "truthiness!"?

The art of blurbization is obviously far behind the state of the rest of the "bozarts" (see H.L. Mencken, a well established bigot yet could probably write better blurbs than these.)

I would suggest one postmodernist interpretation of such hypertonic solutions; blurbs represent a kind of circling of the wagons of those who make similar--however unjustified
--assumptions and also unknowingly produce similar self-contradictions and unthoughtful unhelpful mutual praise. It's about power and reinforcing whatever cultural hegemony such authors assume they have-- and sometimes really do have, along with their contributions of considerable talent and hard work. The blurbs are felt to help the sect, if you will; and to re-advertise the blurbers own books and boost what are probably by this time sagging sales.

The other tribes may object...with predictable and possibly internicine "unintended consequences"......

Please read: "THE TRUTH WEARS OFF" by Jonah ! Lehrer TNY 12/13/10

An open letter to The New Yorker

12-17-10

As a practicing scientist/physician, the new and humiliating paradigm shift for science comes as no surprise to me; although I have to congratulate the New Yorker editorial board for their bravery in presenting this data to a world blissfully and willingly unaware of such bleeding-out of our scientific integrity.

The first and most immediate question is the most apparently practical one: who is going to pay for all this? I cannot but think of the horse Boxer in "Animal Farm" who in the face of an obviously failed pig's paradigm simply declared that he must work harder. My guess is that if our studies cannot be few but many to achieve the funnel effect, and must have larger and larger numbers of subjects--then science in which we can have confidence will become rather like much of our medical and consumer technology, i.e. a luxury that increasingly few can afford.

I have seen this effect time and time again in medical practice, not only the effect of entropy on hype, but also a therapeutic law of diminishing returns. The broader question now is, can science be actually and reliably done by mankind? Is, as you rightfully ask, the scientific method flawed to the core? Do we have enough resources to actually do trustworthy science any more? Or are we lacking something else we cannot see or imagine?

At the very least it demonstrates that the source and sustenance of science is culture, not the other way around. The scientific community is the tail, not the dog, in spite of its vaulting ambitions to dominate every field from politics to poetry to philosophy.

It also suggests what many have long suspected, that it isn't just a paradigm shift that defines and redefines the role and methods of science; there is an unsubsumable (to use Walker Percy's phrase) ethic required to do science that is not only transcultural but supracultural. If science as we currently know it is in thrall to the la belle dame sans merci of cultural norms, then the very definition of science becomes a de facto moot point, and we are back to the purely arbitrary. Which is where your excellent article left it, more or less. Good meat for postmodernists and political junkies!

This has implications for TNY itself. In retrospect, TNY has only been around since 1925, and its founder based its unique contribution on the phrase, "I believe in malice." as per your previous article on this subject.

That may be the critic's go-ahead signal, but it is far more than that. TNY would not even be possible without the advent and assumption of scientific materialism. And like Boxer, the horse that knows not what he does, TNY has participated unknowingly in the demise of its own basic paradigm, which is the same essence as Loren Eisley's famous statement, that one must be sure that no mysterious supranatural foot gets in the door. The TNY has been fastidious to a fault in this regard.

The scientific commmunity at large however is far less united on the principle of "materialism-only, forever and ever amen", than are the editorialists of the magazines we generally read--these family feuds in science are something we rarely hear about because we get much of our information from said magazines.

Spiritual beliefs were supposed to die out after Darwin--but studies done at the dawn of the 20th century and repeated recently showed that a steady 40% of scientists in general would not assume that there is no divine principle at work in the world. Under the surface of well- publicized unity of scientism there are enough personal doubts to put the whole scientific enterprise into a larger perspective which sees the scientific method as an occasionally useful tool, in the nature of a hammer or a saw; not as a life-coach or a master over philosophy etc. There are, obviously, many ways of knowing--but virtually always "in part, through a glass dimly"

Is this then,at last, a "Boxer Rebellion"?

Sincerely,

William Schuler M.D. Mendota IL

To eror is human--but not humane!

Cognitive biases that lead to diagnostic erors (oops):

"Anchoring bias; availability bias; confirmation bias; diagnosis momentum; overconfidence bias; premature closure; search-satisfying bias."

It's obviously only by grace that anything gets done in medicine or science at all! Yet the last thing we will acknowledge in these fields is Grace and Mercy! There are salient exceptions, such as the editor of the Journal of the AMA, as I mentioned in the past. Yet her brief acknowledgment may even so be cultural lip service, or a concession to Muslim physicians.

But Flannery was generally correct, even about the 1950's, that the majority settle for "practical atheism" and that "nihilism is the very air we breathe now." (my paraphrase--was she a canary down the gemeinschaft?)

Will computerrors solve our problems with medical errors? Not so long as they are the manufacture of men! If anything they have compounded the problem by the surfeit of more information than we can even sort out, much less handle in any practical sense. Medicine in particular and in practice is in a great reverse; we are using and being compelled to use drugs that are relatively ancient, because they are cheap and because of the current debunking juggernaut/political bias against newer drugs. The new bottom line: if it's new and expensive, it's gotta go. In this case the tail of politics is definitely wagging the dog of science and medicine--which may be nothing new. At bottom, science and medicine are largely products of culture(s) and their goals are almost always those that the given and current social mileu dictates. No where is this more evident that in hospital boardrooms!!!

Time magazine recently paraded out Stephen Hawking who reasserted his basic atheism; one writer's critique was published: "As I see it, the only handicap Hawking has is his inability to recognize a personal God who created the universe. Someone needs to nudge Mr. Hawking on the shoulder and tell him that the realm of God likely begins where physics ends. Trying to explain God's existence from within the confines of physics reminds me of the saying, "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." This brings to mind all the inevitable biases noted above, esp. overconfidence bias and premature closure.

Not that I am fond of the God-of-the-Gaps theory ( or any gap theory for that matter) nor would I rely on such an argument from ignorance, in spite of human ignorance being a true and blatant abyss, which is also relatively devoid of much sense of wonder or thankfulness. Thanklessness and the narcissism from which it springs is not only a universal human bias, it is also frequently a disease that affects adversely every human body part.

The problem with "proving" God's existence is that although there is both a null hypothesis and an alternative hypothesis to this most basic of all questions, there is no conceivable experimental protocol for something above science from within the small world of pure science.(assuming there is such purity/holiness of science, which is patently doubtful but often used to get grants) Once again, this is not a subsumable entity we are talking about, so when one assumes that the God v no God hypothesis can turn from theory to proven fact,which is stridently trumpeted from the academy, one has to proceed from a huge bias towards materialism--which is precisely what we see in Hawking and Dawkins.

They rule out God by assumption no matter where the data leads. So the "design" hypothesis means absolutely nothing to them, axiomatically and automatically. Once again we see human will and subrational choices--with some attempt to disguise them by PR and shouting loudly on both sides--in the fore, supported by pro and con sensate reactions to current perceptions and biases; but lacking any unspurious methodology.

TNY has an article just out on the problems of experimental science--will comment later

12-13-10 from Oswald Chambers inter alia

"There is no respect of persons--or nations--with God."

"Behind every face besotted with sin is the face of The Lord Jesus Christ. Behind every downtrodden mass of human corruption is Calvary. Deep within each person is the potential for a life incandescent with God's Holy Spirit. The entire world belongs to Him."

--merely conceptualizing this is virtually and actually impossible.

--virtually and actually, every judgment by humanity of, on, or against God is, at base level, an emotional argument. There is no strictly or even partially rational argument against God. We argue more by induction these days than by deduction--but it still comes down to emotional reactions to life experiences with the agenda based on our preferred assumptions. In psychology this is called, "secondary gain", and no one is immune. We do not ever experience life objectively but are reactionaries in every way, thought, and deed.

--how else does one account for such radically different interpretations of the question of suffering between the authors I have been reading-- Camus, Simone Weil, Flannery O'Connor, and Phillip Roth? (see "Nemesis" by the latter, an interpretation of the polio epidemic of the 1950s)

Apparently it's not about talent, accomplishments, and fame!

(Incidentally, isn't it ironic that Mr. Roth, a strident atheist, is named after one of the first and most potent evangelists who was the first missionary to black Africans?)

The fact that our vision is terminal and terminally limited seldom occurs to the most thoughtful of us. Einstein's theories did not humble us in the least, even though that is the only logical conclusion he or the rest of us could draw. No, our response is typical, to twist honest findings to add to our hubris and our epicurean presumption. The majority, and the majority of every minority, will jump to the conclusion that now we know everything, which gives us the self-endowed keys to the universe, God, and every question imaginable.

Uh, that's not the point......and by the way, how could suffering itself, being a reaction consisting of various sorts of pain, be approached by mere men, as anything other than an emotional problem to be solved by the same means it came about, i.e. emotions impacting the human will, our decision-making capacity? The fact that none of us would even survive childhood without pain here, there, and everywhere is, as Al Gore used the term, an "inconvenient truth." The fact that most of us die in some kind of pain hardly obliterates the necessity of pain!!!

To Ruth Pitter: Magdalen College
Oxford
April 16, 1952

Dear Miss Pitter

It always seems a bit of cheek to send anyone (especially the likes of you) a ticket for one's lecture, unless one could do it in the Chinese style 'In the inconceivably unlikely event of honourable poetess wishing to attend this person's illiterate and erroneous lecture..............'

--letters of C.S. Lewis 1950-1963

EXTENSION LADDERS TO HEAVEN? JUST SAY YES!

The New York Times cannot contain its enthusiasm about tech gifts--none of them any less than $500 a crack. I don't mind suggestions and I don't even mind giving out an apple or two at Christmas ( to go with the orange and the anthracite) however avast ye miss the greatest revelation of all:

"MY DEVICE, MYSELF" (UNDERLINE THAT)

"They are glass, plastic, and silicone. They aren't sentient, (Hal will really cost you) and yet our smartphones and tablets are increasingly becoming an extension of us."

(end of statement-- is it under- or over-statement?)

My first thought was, well, a potato masher is an extension of many of us. Yet I never use one. And life goes on.

Rocks and sticks continue to be important extensions of ourselves, and in some areas of the world, people use little else--well, maybe a little hemp... but ONLY to tie the rock to the stick you understand. Thus was the first guitar invented. Now we even have an "Ax Church". All of them extensions of people, not the extentable psuedopodia of the amoeba that supposedly started this whole mess. Amoebas with nuclear weapons, there's a thought!

Do I belabor the obvious? Well of course. I thought I would take a vacation from being entirely obscure.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

For the second time we "extended" our vacation with family to include a short visit to Milledgeville GA, this time to take the tour of Flannery's actual home. They still have three peacocks (actually one peacock and two peahens); no longer free range but penned. Sad. But we bought a made-for-TV version of her story, "The Displaced Person," which as some may recall is the short story of an immigrant family from Poland to the South as an aftermath of the War. It ends badly of course, but the 80 year old priest steals the show. Henry Fonda does the introduction and there is a whole series of these by other authors--ho, Dennis!

This film was actually made at Andalusia, the farm/home of Flannery and her mother Regina; Regina seems to be a bit like the somewhat unsympathetic widow trying to run the farm with residential blacks and transient-intransigent whites. Well you write what you know.

Unfortunately I have read all her stories at least once so no new stories; but I have now the final chunk of letters, many of which were not included in the admirable and timely New American Library edition of collected works. Sally Fitzgerald, a good Catholic friend and writer compiled what we have available into a large book, "The Habit of Being". Not as many as the letters of C.S. Lewis or TSE--3 volumes apiece--so I have a fighting chance to finish these too--eventually. Some of her comments will undoubtedly invade my writing and those few of you that remain may be further exposed to her "causticity", if there is such a word. (There otta be)

By the fly, there is going to be a major FO'C conference at Loyola in Chicago, next Oct. See you there? Ralph Wood, one of Stephen's teachers at Baylor and a prolific author, will be one of the main spealers (did I just say that?)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Kudos and an old fashunned back slap to Dennis Hall. Jean spilled the beans in her Christmas letter and states that Dennis has been given an actual Apple laptop and he is as happy as a baker's dozen of clams. Other than Keziah and Alathea, I guess I'm the only holdout, I still don't have a laptop. I have been holding out not because I am a Luddite but because I figure at least some of them have gotten more sturdy, lower in price, and more user friendly. Also because I'm cheap and I like to borrow other people's stuff.... We are however getting my mother her own apple--so far she has only "core" techabilities but she is a teachable spirit for sure.

(I guess a hillbilly with an IPhone would be a Techabilly) Tetchin' , ain't it ?

Lynch Mobs

One of the most fascinating aspects of this trip has been meeting Jim Lynch. My Dad has a good friend in Jim; but is also a bit of a co-worker in his artworks. Jim is a fascinating guy, a freelance artist who does both painting and sculpture. He has done large scale work for Disney World, Caesar’s Palace, and numerous Mardi Gras floats and lived in New Orleans for about 5 years doing this. Dad has helped him by photographing his paintings to make prints—which came out quite professionally good—

But Jim is world-famous for building a 62-foot statue of Jesus for a church on I-75 in Ohio. He started work in 2004 and then the statue became even more famous because lightning struck its right hand last June and it burned to the ground, also doing some damage to the church itself. A thousand questions could be raised about this and probably a thousand thousand lessons learned even by individuals who mostly have not seen the statue. But to talk to Jim about it is a thousand times better than seeing the statue, which is, after all, just a statue.

As a giant ”object lesson ” it may prove much higher than 62 feet—and much longer than I-75!!! I am just now going to read Jim’s take on it, edited by my Dad but as yet unpublished. My Dad and my sibs are all published writers but Jim isn’t too good at it—great with visual-spatial though.

The statue is only of the upper half of Jesus— the Renaissance version of Jesus with long mane, perfect for Jim and his long gray locks—and it is supposed to look like Jesus coming up from the waters of Jordan after being baptized by John; Jesus looks like he is grinning from ear to ear and his hands are raised ecstatically in true charismatic style. You can of course see it on the web and youtube has footage of Jesus on fire. (I thought we were supposed to be on fire for Jesus, not the other way around!!!)

The statue did not win the hearts and minds of the townspeople—75% thought it was an eyesore, bad for business, bad for the town’s reputation, and the money better spent on the poor. Funny, these are the same objections registered by the people of Nazareth, and Judas, about the real Jesus.

I can’t help but wonder what Flannery O’Connor would say about this—it would make a great story for her and it recalls other authors who have used similar icons, such as a novel called, “The Gospel Blimp”, which portrays a church and a community chagrined and shamed by this aerial display of bumpersticker theology.

Obviously O’Connor was Catholic and would have a different take on it than an evangelical author—but the irony of O’Connor would be to use the situation artistically to show, shall I say as the madrigal song goes, “ He hath casted down the proud.” New York Times and Salon.com have been completely predictable in the mockery of the whole situation without knowing a single person involved. The Times in particular refused to publish even a few lines of John’s letter of response. The knee-jerk ridicule regarding this and similar “stuff white people don’t like” is over-common grist for significantly desperate comedians, columnists, and all the judges civilization can harbor.

We went from Jacksonville FL back to Milledgeville GA to revisit O’Connorville and to tour her home (Andalusia) where she did 90% of her writing. So it’s hard-and anti-productive to segregate these subjects and people: “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” We shall see more but I may be thinking and writing about this outside this blog more than in it.

The computer is being particularly diific……………