Dacneusblog

Religion on the way to extinction? HARDLY!

2011-03-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

If only the press and the public knew more about religion as understood in the academic world. What is declining of course is popular support for and identification with traditional, conventional, institutionally organized and often legally recognized religion. As a cognitive and emotional species, every human alive is a homo religiosus. It's just that in our secular (i.e., not dominated by traditional and institutional religious communities) world, people are ignorant of and insensitive towards their own and society's religious nature. The problem is, that religion like other phenomena (the poltical order, cosmology (physics, etc.) is still understood in terms of the world-views of the past and is not conceived or understood in genuinely contemporary terms, indeed, it is invisible to most contemporary people. In fact, what is thriving today is religion in its most primitive shape: the idolatry of self-interest. un-reflective and largely unaware (ignorant) self-interest.) Our Lord and the Prophets, Apostles and Evangelists understood this very well--perfectly in ONE CASE. Alas, the continuing battle between faith and infidelity continues to rage along the border or perimeter that runs roughly across the terrain of our own hearts and minds.

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 3:07 PM, Ken Koonce <kkoonce@roadrunner.com> wrote:

Study Finds Religion May Be Heading for Extinction in Parts of World

reflèches

2011-01-29T19:00:00.000-08:00

The Force and Origin of all being—GOD—created all that is through the gracious pleasure and intention of His Eternal Mind, the LOGOS eternally present with Him before all creation—even of such powers as may be, and most probably are—lying in their ordered place between us, free-willed and intelligent, feeling creatures, intended to return love and adoration, and to that end inspired by the kindred Spirit proceeding from Father and Son, Who brooded over all creation at its outset, its very beginning. The reason into which we have grown according to His Providence has come to knowledge beyond the animal instincts in which we were created through the process of evolution, including the relatively recent theory by which we have organized our knowledge of that creation—eohistory, as it were. We perceive in ourselves the remaining traces and forces, genetically implanted instincts, inherited from our more animal ancestors, perhaps chief among them the life force that expresses itself in human sexuality. In my sleeplessness, I am more subject to the pressure of that force upon my instincts, desires and imaginations. It is perhaps a culpable degree of regression by which I have this morning indulged myself in my sexuality, which is homosexual and sado-masochistic, the two expressions probably conjoined in a significant percentage of human individuals as part of the intended process of human self-assertion that civilized reason now perceives, and I perceive through Grace, to be at this point in human development, excessive, essentially primitive and, as it were, outmoded, and thus mistaken, but surely to some extent necessary in my and others’ cases, and to some extent allowable, and always, through the Grace of the Self-Incarnating Father, forgiveable.

Evolution and Moral Theology

2011-01-27T15:02:00.000-08:00

I imagine that moral theology has tended to operate or be considered in terms of moral finality, or final cause: toward what end or towards what result was an action intended? But I wonder to what extent since Darwin published, that question has been asked with regard to early, primitive, or emergent humanity. I haven’t really considered why or toward what purpose sado-masochistic urges or instincts came to exist in our race. They would seem to serve only evil purposes, something contrary to or destructive of human civilization. Yet human or even any intelligent life seems to do anything with some purpose or intention, and thus almost by definition towards some gratification—even if that gratification be only of a mental or imaginatively realized kind. Why should there be pleasure in another’s pain, either physical torment or mental, torture or humiliation? How can or could one or some of us impose that upon others or another? Cleary by denying, blocking, or frustrating their will: overcoming it, overpowering it, enforcing necessity rather than choice, submission rather than freedom. That implies the acquisition of superior power on the part of one side or agent as opposed to another. That in turn implies a resultant gratification in an agent’s becoming able to acquire that power. There is pleasure in dominance, especially as acquired, whether by personal effort or by gift from another. Did the advancement of our species require effort? Assuredly. A genetic impulse towards power, towards supriority over others, is therefore—or at least was—advantageous for our species. Hierarchy was at least at one time evolutionarily advantageous—progressive.

All life has some ability or propensity, however limited, towards action. Clearly some life forms are more gifted with this ability than others, and that has to be due to genetic variance, however random in its origin and development. If that is true within our species, as it seems assuredly to be, the survival of a social, intercommunicative, linguistic species would seem to necessitate cooperation, interaction, and therefore decision, and thus some acceptance or acknowledgment of priority with respect to making decisions, and thus an inequality of power at some point. If progress implies decision, and the survival, the life of a species, a genetically implanted aptitude for survival, is it not likely that some inclination in members of the species either towards assertion or submission would be genetically implanted? Is it altogether surprising, then, if at least in some human individuals a genetically implanted tendency either towards leadership or submission be present, and thus inherent, and further, evident in individuals, given opportunity for growth and experience? And is it not likely that at least in some cases, an inherent tendency to gratification either in dominance or submission be operative and eventually evident? Hence sado-masochism as a real if not universal trait in some individuals.

Comment to Defense of Bill Maher

2011-01-18T11:18:00.003-08:00

As in most respects, particular circumstances exist within a larger context. We still are, and certainly have been, the majority and dominant subculture here. Thus every cultural strain of frustration, resentment, rebellion or anger focuses itself upon and directs itself against, the central symbols of our identity. Our superior position to this time at least still allows us enough self-confidence to "take" and to tolerate it, and we are able both to exhibit and to admire that magnanimity displayed in our doing so. Our culture (religion: functionally one is the center, core, or point of origin of the other) has developed over centuries of its history, plural forms, diversity, which are characteristic of and moral models of its highest ideals. Consider the Act of Toleration of 1689, as the "Whig" tradition emerged victorious, something I pretend to regret and in certain Romanticist moods, slightly do. But I don't really believe any more in imprisoning Baptists or Quakers, or denying RC's suffrage. The history of Islam has been to the present, quite the reverse, and it has remained intolerant and authoritarian, though in its flourishing periods in Damascus and then Baghdad, it was at least open to, then enthusiastic about, and finally imitative of and then superior to Byzantine, i.e., Christian/Greek/Western culture--at least with regard to the sciences, medicine and philosophy. Whence do you think St. Thomas got his methodology other than from Avicenna (ibn Sina) and Averroes (ibn Rushd), howevermuch they got theirs from Aristotle? But, given the Crusades, the Saracen and then Turkish and almost Mongol conquests of the Middle East, and finally the economic-political-and cultural triumph of the Christian>secular/pluralistic, Modern>post-modern cultures, the Arabs reacted. The authoritarian side of Islamic culture triumphed, and it has remained in many respects subservient, resentful, and intellectually narrow ever since, although now possibly redeemable because it has entered Western culture to some extent, particularly here in the USA. Do we want to speak with ONE voice? God help us, NO!!! although our authoritarian subculture, certainly growing stronger as we become increasingly insecure and resentful, e.g., Fundamentalists, the lower-middle-class South, Mormons (i.e., "Rednecks) consider that an ideal for which they strive. I hardly think that Gay subculture has anything to imitate in their example.

In defense of Bill Maher

2011-01-18T11:16:00.000-08:00

He is very far from being an "idiot." ("Idiot," incidentally, was the self-descriptive title that both my closest sets of high school friends applied to ourselves: the "Senior" and "Junior Idiot Cliques.")   He he does differ from both of us on questions of value, and, in your case, of facts, and he is far from charitable in temper and has a deplorable attitude towards religion and Christianity, but one that is I think entirely understandable in terms of the way or ways in which both they can be presented and experienced, especially in this country and culture. I wrote what is probably a less than admirable, certainly hostile, letter to my seminary within the past two weeks, because it or they sent (twice) to me an invitation to an alumni "reunion" at the Newport Beach Presbyterian Church. I told them in no indecisive terms just what I think of that congregation, its community, and the church (congregation) that I was unfortunately exposed to as a child, and why I would like to see "Evangelicalism" purged from the Church. It is authoritarian, repressive, and anti-intellectual in the extreme, although it could certainly be rightly described as "intellectualist," and as "rationalist," although anything but rational. It is that in the predominant American religious tradition that the Founding Fathers would have hated, and in fact, did, in prominent cases: Washington, Paine, both Adamses, Jefferson, Franklin (whose birthday is today), and to perhaps a lesser extent, Madison. Of course they all believed in God, in some cases, strongly, but "fervently" would not be an appropriate adverb, and they nearly all believed in religion in the way that children of the Enlightenment did. The two great religious movements that brought American independence and identity about were similar in a few respects and antithetical in others. Both ways of thinking and feeling were I believe mistaken to some degree, but this is far more true of the Evangelicalism/Pietism behind the "Great Awakening" than of "The Enlightenment rationalism to which most of the Founding Fathers embraced. Both Franklin and Jefferson constructed their own personal statements of faith that are very close to the Unitarian tradition but not to The Catholic Faith. Washington, though an Episcopalian, was careful never to receive The Blessed Sacrament. I wonder if he ever attended a Eucharist. What they did not like about Christianity as they experienced it--especially in the Evangelical "New Lights" was in part its excessive and often unseemly emotionalism, and still more its authoritarianism: the religion of the "shut up and don't ask questions" variety, which that tradition, that version of Christianity shares of course with Papalist Roman Catholicism. It is that to which many Americans have been exposed, often painfully, and it is that which makes them as blatantly, and of course, ignorantly, hostile to true Christianity, identifying the one with the other. The American of that period whom I most admire was of course Blessed Samuel Seabury (f.d., Nov. 14), the first bishop of the American Church and earlier in his life, Chaplain to His Majesty's American forces. Had he not escaped Manhattan in a hired rowboat, he would undoubtedly have been hanged along with the other captured male Tories when the Fleet sailed away with their wives and children aboard, sadly not before they were compelled to see their husbands and fathers kicking on the gallows, intentionally erected so that they had to, since lack of favorable winds had prevented their sailing for some days.

             Hamilton, of course, was as "High Church" an Episcopalian as he could have been without having compromised his rationalism.
Burr was of course Jonathan Edwards' grandson. Edwards was of course as brilliant a thinker as this country has produced, and the third President of Princeton. But have you read or heard read (I took my advisees to his grave on his birthday and delivered much of it to them there) "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"? Brilliant thought and superb rhetoric: hardly Gospel, in my opinion, at least.

            I think that Maher was brought up in a less-than-educationally-sophisticated R.C. family, and experienced popular authoritarian American culture first-hand. That experience has left him understandably angry as hell, and thus sadly in danger of it in popular estimation. I am as sympathetic with his mindset as I can be, given that I wholeheartedly disagree with and deplore it. I don't need to see the clip; I watched and enjoyed the program. The Bible, understood as literally and ignorantly as many do, certainly more a center of belief, if not faith, than the Gospel, certainly can be viewed or felt about as "bullshit." That of course is blasphemy insofar as Scripture

containing and centered in the Holy Gospel is concerned, but it is not all that far off insofar as it is understood and believed in by Fundamentalists and similar contemporary Pharisees. I rather think that Luther would not have bristled at using the German Renaissance equivalent of the term, as Fleisch, and not Geist.

The Reconstructed “LACEIAD”

2011-01-18T11:06:00.000-08:00

The mock-heroick poet sat depressed
And to his Muse his emptiiiness confessed:
His tribute valediction lay undone;
HIs pages showed he scarcely had begun.
For sorrow and bereavenent damped the fire
Of fantasy, which verses should inspire.
At last, when failing often as he tried,
He knelt, and to his distant goddess cried,
“Satiric Spirit of Augustan times,
Who guidest priests and pedants in their rhymes, -10
An entrance for Imagination find
Into the silent chambers of my mind:
With copious couplets let its spaces ring:
Sweet Muse, instruct my sorrowing soul to sing!
His prayers prevailed the Poet-Sprite to sway:
She hastened from Parnassus to L.A.
She flew until she saw with crystal ey'n
The room at Zelzah 10339
Wherein the priest-professor-poet sad
Sat scribbling on his coffee-stained desk-pad. -20
Disdaining to set foot amid the mess,
She hovered o’er, and ‘gan him thus address:
“High time, sweet sir, you called on me again,
For it’s been ages since you wielded pen!
Or do you think, your dissertation done,
Your place amid th’immortals has been won?
What lacks, or wits or courage, that you pine,
And giving forth no ink, keep taking wine?”
Astonishèd, the bard makes no reply.
He stares through Muse and ceiling to the sky, -30
His pride and anger rise to fever pitch,
And inwardly he thinks his Muse a bitch.
At last, when failing often as he tried,
He knelt, and to his distant goddess cried,
“I blush to ask, or summon thee for aid
So long I’ve dreamt and drudgery delayed,
But now I labor, or for good or ill,
And such a sacred duty to fulfill
Confounds imagination, drains my strength,
And draws this damnéd dialogue to length -40
Unlook’d for, and I curse my fate,
That Lacey’s leaving I must celebrate.
How can I sing, in sweet and solemn* tones *gentle
The loss o’er which all California groans,
While Nature languishes and Culture bleeds?
So sad a disquisition* far exceeds *composition
My pen’s poor powers, rightly to display
The sage Savant of Santa Barbara,
THe Paragon of Portland, known as well
As Boast of Buffalo, Crown of Cornell.” -50
The wise old witch wote well he wouldn’t write
For fear of his revealing loathéd spite,
And thus advised, “Your lines will have to burn
And sting a bit, if satire you would learn.
So post a warning, as o’er Hades’ fence,
And let this motto publish your intents:

-2-

“All ye who shun abhorr'd ambivalence,
Read not these pages; quickly get thee hence!”
Thus spake the Muse, and since she sorely feared
For brevity, she swiftly disappeared. -60
The poet, filled with literary light,
In elegaic mood commenced to write:

“In bright midsummer see the skies turn gray;
The sun from California steals away;
From Point Conception e’en to Malibu
The skies reveal nor shred nor patch of blue.
The palm trees wither, and the beaches soil,
Beswept by newer, fouler slicks of oil;
Swift brushfires turn the hillsides black and gray;
Succeeding mudslides sweep the slopes away; -70
The earth itself with sobs of sorrow shakes
Because Steve Lacey his departure takes:
He leaves the West for Washington, D.C.,
And Santa Bar’bra sinks beneath the sea.”

What sort of man is this, for whose dear sake -75
Sweet Nature would her own quietus make?
A teacher, scholar, learnéd Ph. D.--
The Aristotle of U.C.S.B.,
Whose loss, though blinded colleagues misappraise,
Is measured by his students’ love and praise. -80

Will Shakespeare’s precious metal he alloyed
With Barber, Turner, Dorothy and Freud
In chains of lectures, magically wrought
To bind our prejudice and free our thought,
To teach the love of Lit'rature, his goal:
That each might search with insight his own soul.
He spared not sentiment whene'er he spoke:
He held the glass to Nature, and it broke.
He loved religion, lauded ritual,
And oft the gods to witness he would call -90
That never had he breathed a doubting word
Against these palliatives for the absurd;
With patient condescension would he list
To Anglican, Agnostic, Atheist.
His fame for eloquence not only stands
Upon his well-wrought words, but on his hands,
Whose every gesture waved the holder giv'n
By Dorothy Van Ghent as she was shriv'n;
This gilded sceptre governed every class,
Approved the genius, and reproved the ass. -100
He taught with expectation each would find *confidence that each would find
Just so much learning* as befit his mind. *knowledge
The smarter student subtly seeks to shine
And sucks salacious substance from each line;
The toiling grind a “B” would barely earn
By lab’ling Shakespeare’s characters in turn
According to neurosis, hardly hacked
From notes on Freud, footnoting scene and act.
The student saved for "C" would take his grade
As blandly as the stuff from which he’s made; -110
The dullard who instruction hath withstood
Retains the thought that “mobléd queen is good;"
Nor was his mind by reading much bedimmed
As, blond and blissful, o’er the surf he skimmed.
And if his scholarship* Steve could not praise, *intellect
He could not fault his blue eyes’ wond’ring glaze.
(And oft he quipped to boys not too obtuse,
With eyebrow raised, "The proof is in the mousse"--
How often did Steve* wish he had a boy
Instead of copious notes on JEAN SANTEUIL. -120
When lectures weren't prepared, he would confess
His private sins, or otherwise digress:
He'd rave of Marrakech, and thought it chic
To make veil'd reference to "Dark Afrique."
When ob'ter dicta would not bear the strain,
To colleagues over cocktails he'd complain,
"I taught this to my students, to my woe:
I asked them what it meant--they didn't know"!
But far more eloquent than Shakespeare's tomes, *educational
Or Proust's or Dante's, were his famed “at homes.” -130
His parties were the wonder of his age:
One heard the silent shout, the Reverend rage;
The music deafened, and the clumsy danced,
The lonely loved; the strong and silent pranced*. *;
When glasses emptied, naked hands were there
To clutch the wine and fling it through the air.
How of "the Fuzz" came flying at the call
Phoned in by foes across the China wall:
Within, the guests are swift to cover ass
With garment, whilst they haste to flush the grass. -140
Police are pacified, the mad rebuked,
Stood up the prone, sponged off the o'er-bepuked,
The blind is somehow led to find his car,
The poor, persuaded to stock up the bar,
By Steve, who calm as Christ on Galilee
From jaws of ruin rescues revelry.
One sees him, in remembrance of the mind,
As grand as a Guermantes, and as refined,
As through the throng of guests he makes his way,
His body, orotund; his spirit, gay. -160

He caters to each gluttonous request:
The host's incorporated by each guest.
With pain he acquiesces to each shock,
And prostitutes his speakers to hard rock.
“I tossed aside* that awful stuff by Bach; *"Let's toss away this
I messed it up, but Steve won’t hear the scratch, *
One guest asides to partner, with a cough
"Let's get a drink, then see what's to rip off."
They shortly leave, so small the pickings are,
Except the liquid larceny at the bar. -170
His "Ripple" drunk, the boy with bulgiing crotch
Is poured six ounces of the priest's best scotch.
“But Stephen,” cries the cleric,”He’s on wine!”
“We’re out!” says Steve, “and this will do just fine"
The strung-out surfer sips the gen'rous grant,
Chokes on one swallow, pours it on a plant.
“May God condemn the little swine to Hell!”
The priest exclaims; the host,* “Nonsense! He’s swell!” *but Steve:
Guests wander through the gardens, who’ve no pow’rs
Of self-control: the bathroom has for hours* -180 *for an hour
To ev’ry plea for pity shut its doors:
The prudish think it’s occupied by whores.
*A grease-spot lands a girl upon her ass, *a puddle
Who breaks, in fallling, one Bohemian glass.
Nor are material things drink's only prey:
Where quarrels break out, friendships fall away,
Except where bare acquaintance springs to life
Among the two or three who thrive on strife.
"Sir, you insult the Queen!" the cleric cries,
And throws his wine into Mac Davis' eyes, -190
Who calmly, quietly, and with a grin,
The priest baptizes with his glass of gin.
Guests drink, guests dance*, guests quarrel and guests neck; *Guests dance, guests drink,
At last departing, leave the place a wreck.
Thus Steve for self-indulgence makes amends
In self-destructive sacrifice for friends,
His heroes, who, when wildest oats are sown
Leave paired with one another, Steve's alone--* *Who leave with one another after one:They leave him two-by-two,
Unless a couple’s staying, or at least,
Censor’ious celibate, his friend, the priest, -200
Who, long ago, besotted, bedded down:
So Steve, to find a bed-mate,* drives to town. *leaves for
Pub-crawling keeps partying half* the night: *drinking all
The Reverend Father wakes him at first light.

Just as fair Venus, when Jove life her gave,
Rose to her half-shell from the briny wave,
Steve from the heaving surface lifts his head,
And with a slosh, leaps from his water-bed.
He stumbles forth, the coffee-pot to fill,
And with red eyes gropes for the Dexamil. -210
He lights, beneath the morn's increasing ray,
The first of sixty cigarettes a day.
He ambles to the porch, admires the view,
Decides to have a cigarette or two.
Once seated on the ledge, he has now pow'r
To rise, or think of workng, for an hour.
The Father joins him 'neath the clearing skies,
And while the clouds of Burleigh's incense rise,
He reads his office: since it's not a fast,
Between each Psalm he hints at a repast. -220
"Dear'st Howard, give me time at least to think
And have a cigarette." "Let's have a drink,"
The temp'rate priest, if not his host, suggests,
"And get some breakfast, 'ere you have some guests."
Steve struggles from the porch, and walks within,
And stands, transfixed with horror, at the scene
Of littered tables, o'erturned chairs, and more
Appalling remnants of the night before.

He* walks around his carpet* and laments *Steve *2 carpets
Its stains, its burns, it puddles, and its rents. *Its holes, its burns -230
His guests repaid Steve's fond attempts to please
With broken goblets, vomit spots, and fleas.
Now Mem’ry’s fingers play on Conscience’ harp:
The Father beats his breast and starts to carp,
Once more his id’s his superego’s thrawl,
And moral condemnation covers all.
Can Steve survive the penitential prayer?
He does! A footfall sounds upon the stair!
As swift as Mercury, Steve gains the floor
And greets with joy a face seen twice before. -240 *They eat for breakfast stuff made long before;
Just then a knocking sounds upon the door:
Two guests walk in, and "Stop" turns into "More!"

A boy on high-heeled wedgies* wobbles in, *high-wedged sandals
With drug-befuddled brain, bepimpled skin.
Steve's spirit soars--a lark in morning song--
Then falls: his darling's pulled a pal along.
This pair from San Francisco "thought they'd try * “While we’re in town we thought we’d just drop in,”
While they were both in town to just drop by," And Stephen's home again becomes an inn."
Explains in lisps the former of the twain,
Who share a bed, few clothes, and half a brain.
They want Steve to meet friends, and soon the group
From a quartet expands into a troop. -250
Steve serves a drink to all the rav'nous bunch,
And, hoping that they'll leave, postpones his lunch
In vain he watches for their ranks to thin:
The hordes have heard the word: The Doctor's in."
They come in tears for counsel and advice,
And patiently take Daniels without ice.
They spill out ev'ry detail of their nights:
Their latest loves, their bed-play, and their fights,
All unaware of warning once unfurled
Above Guild Hall: "Tell Lacey, tell the world." -260
At last they leave, convinced at Steve's behest
To seek abortion or a new blood test,
(Except for two or three who shelter seek:
Steve bids them stay the night; they stay the week.)
And Steve heats up the scraps of last night's feast
As luncheon for a surly, starving priest.
In vain that gentleman snhot scowls of hate
At those whose staying made his lunch so late;
Steve's visitors he views as as a bad dream:
The veriest scum, he thinks would rise like cream -270
Above these social dregs: how could one hope
To catalogue Steve's circle? For its scope,
Its numbers and variety would reach
From plushest mansion to the barest beach.
That question, once it's formed, becomes a hunch,
A challenge, and the Father after lunch,
Sits gazing on the sea, as from a throne,
And tries to list acquaintances he's known.
Thus, even as his vodka gimlet's poured,
Convenient categories are explored: -280
He finds their number threefold, joy of joys!
Steve's colleagues, and his students, and his boys.

***His Colleagues***
Among Steve's colleagues, he must list all those
With whom in former student days he froze
Through stormy winters, warmed with danger's spice,
When Steve, then stouter, lived in dread of ice.
Cornell and Buffalo: from these Steve's gone
For many years: he'll list these later on.
He turns from listing friends from days of yore
To Steve's companions on the Western shore. -290
One first thinks of Fred Turner and Mei Lin,
Who left the place where Lacey next moved in:
Remembers late Thanksgiving afternoons,
With Lacey's guests, inflated as balloons,
When Fred and Mac, less satiate than tight,
Would haggle over Hegel half the night.
Mac always loved an intellectual fight:
He'd talk through banquest, scarcely touch a bite.
'Twas not that Mac aggressive was, or mean,
Although he'd always vilify the Queen -300
If Tory Anglican sat at the board.
(If he was not, another's ox was gored)--
'Twas that his philosophic cast of mind
Was always finding some new ax to grind:
He never was out-argued, nor bereft
Of zeal for politics of the New Left:
Conventon's claims he'd loudly disavow--
He loved to play, "More radical than thou."
He mocked tradition, and at faith he hoots,
Scorns Catholic rearing and Chicago roots, -310
And yet the consicence of this lean-flanked wraith
Betrays in its despair the marks of faith.
Despite his "je ne peu croire pas,"
His pastimes were impeccably bourgeois:
Where other folk were Esalened or Rolfed,
Our Marxist Mac played basketball and golfed.
How oft to Steve's would Mac and Zandy go
With Steve's godchild and namesake both in tow;
They came for cocktails, parties, and din-din,
And he on them quite frequently dropped in. -320
****

Then handsome Ramsey, smiling, suave, and sport,
Who drowned Steve's dinner with the taste of port.
This lecturing Lothario led each lass
To unrequited love who took his class;
HIs line of lady-loves one's loth to list:
He loved them, then replaced them, never missed
Their presence, till at last upon the scene,
There ope'd the Georgia blossom-child, Charlene.
No less than Ramsey's presence at each bash,
Steve counted on his comfort and his cash. -330

***

When colleagues missed his parties Steve would sigh
Especially if he lacked his friend, Ken Bai.
His tender heart was also more than riven
If at a soirée he saw not Kit Given.
But Mel and Penny added to his joys,
And sent Steve searching for their children's toys.

****His students****

Spring dawns upon us--April first, then May,
And Tom, then Bill, salutes his natal day:
The poet, egocentric as he is,
Suggests they celebrate them, close to his, -340
Bids them to dinner, and, you guessed as much,
Suggests his fav'rite rest'rant, says, "It's Dutch!"
One selfish action proves another's sequel:
To Bills' and Tom's largesse he's quite unequal.
Tom wastes his film, and Bill his haute cuisine
Upon a poet, stingy, pinching, mean:
They gave him dinners, poured him gin and wine,
And he for them indicted not one line;
His invitations few, his cooking bac,
But worst--he bars them from THE LACEIAD. -350
Each season fresh excuses bloom and wilt:
"There's no ambivalence!" But there is guilt.
"What rhymes with Hopkinson?" he asks. "O Hell!"
The world replies: "What doesn't rhyme with Dell?"
The truth of that rings clearer than a bell:
Happ's calculating conscience scarce could tell
The reasons that like blighted blossomes fell,
And none would buy what he would cheaply sell:
For unsubstantial reasons will not gel--
Excuses worse than fest'ring lilies smell. -360
E'en fickle Charles was truer to his Nell,
Who thought on her misfortune as his knell,
(Too late for deeds his conscience' pangs to quell)
Than poet to his practice: what a shell
Of fragile pretense! Rhymes would come pall-mall
If Ellen Pall required them for "The Trell-
Issed Lane," and she would judge them well.
He gloats to see his students glut the press,
Out-do him quite, he sadly must confess, -370
And Regency afficionados thrill
To each new novel of Fiona Hill.
But slower than a pearl sinks in green Prell
Our poet was to rhyme one word with Dell:
A monkey at the keys might him excel.
(The reason his Unconscious knows! Won't tell.)
Caught writing for excuse, the little worm
Commits high blasphemy, and blames his form, -380
Suggests that poets of more ancient fame
Were pattern for a son of Notre Dame,
Whose temposs, more Adagio than Lento,
And seeks his model verse in High Tercento.
And thus when Pope's or Johnson's rhyme scheme fails,
Our poet apes the "Canterbury Tales:"
"Whan thattë Laceiye with his frendes cavourte,
Our Bille y-cookëd Spanische Windtorte."
But finding each new metre's more a bomb,
The poet turns to celebrating Tom, -390
Whose hair becomes more glorious as it greys,
Whosepale blue eyes suggest the morning haze,
Whose broad-cheeked smile would melt the Arctic snows,
Whos body would look better without clothes,
If modesty vied not with Tommy's beauty,
These lines in detail could fulfill their duty:
More would the poet say if he were able,
Who once felt his embrace upon Steve's table,
Where semi-comatose in drink he lay,
But keeps this mem'ry clear to e'en this day. -400
Once more his verses spread their broadest sails,
Fanned by the breeze of fancy for fair males,
And lets his couplets sing his praises, fond
Of altar-boyish William's pink and blond.
More than his viands, table-settings, flow'rs,
O'er which he spent his earning and his hours,
Bill was the proper aim of taste and sight:
A blushing Irish bon-bon! Want a bite?
How oft the Reverend in his fondest dream
Indulged his fantasy for Irish Cream; -410
Imagined, as sleep's suasions teased his smile,
Just government once more on Erin's Isle,
True order, true Religion there restored,
And he an Irish bishop and a Lord;
Imagined William, rescued from the stable,
To hold his chair, pour wine, and grace the table,
To trudge up creaking stairs with steaming tub,
To bathe his master and give him a rub,
To pour in perfumed oils, refresh his gin,
'Til bishop pulls his bath-attendant in. -420
Who'd not prefer a naked Irish boy
To rubber ducky as a bathtub toy?
But, fantasies aside, the poet whines
For respite from these penitential lines.

With conversation, 's lost a promised feast;
Postponed the breakfast of a starving priest ,
Who, scowling, left his bed to find no board;
What’s worse, with idiots’ babbling, he is bored,
Whilst he no breakfast and no luncheon grieves,
He dreams of better times he’s had at Steve’s: -430

His steps in haste ascending, one might view
A boy’s bare body, or a beauteous two.
Perhaps some Ganymede is sitting there
With Botticelli body, Titian hair;
His face a girl’s in loveliness of gaze,
Who yet unblushing manly parts displays.
He couches ‘gainst the the shoulder, t’wixt the thighs
Of gentle giant, half again his size,
Whose bronzed, broad-shouldered, tapered, muscled length
Is kitten’s softness, caged in tiger’s strength; -440
Whose figure Michelangelo might own,
And yet his features are Columbia’s own.
His eyes, dark blue; his hair, a dusky blond:
A tender cut of rare Chateaubriand.

The Father in his musing finds he tends
To list and catalogue all Stephen’s friends.
First, there’s Chris Carrol, thoughtful, blond and trim,
Who comes from beach, from studio or gym.
He wrought Steve’s fabled table with his hands,
Which, swinging and not standing, stable stands. -450
Thanksgiving feasts and culinary hopes
Will leave guests sated t’wixt its straining ropes.

[Desunt nonnulla] Chris Carroll Wolf

For Stephen wine was love, and food was living;
His highest feast, not Easter, but Thanksgiving . . .
The sea grows grey, then gold with morning's ray,
And Steve, exhausted, greets Thanksgiving Day.
He stumbles to the kitchen, nearly dead,
And views the thawing bird, the dried herb-bread
That lies in piles as countless as the sands,
Which Steve had turned with tireless, thyme-strewn hands -460
The night before as long as he was able
While blond Adonis framed and raised his table,
Which labor, sharp, observant reverend eyes
Delight to watch and deign to supervise.
(Chris wrought Steve's hanging table with his hands,
'Though yet his garish rom unfinished stands.)
The Father seeks, while rambling 'round the room,
To lighten with his leisure labor's gloom:
Refreshes drinks, sniffs, pinches, tastes the dressing,
O'er Carroll's labors mumbles frequent blessing, -470
Drinks bourbona, changes records, pours forth chatter,
Imagines Chris, not turkey, on his platter;
Envisions his pale torso, well-trimmed hams
Veiled modestly by parsley, gravy, yams.
O ye of little tastes, know priestly palates
Prefer "garçon nature" to veal or shallots.
Such preparations done that eve, by ten
Next morning, whiskey's poured again.

****His boys****

Steve's in his element, not stirring gravy,
Expecting hourly "Dennis-from-the-Navy," -480
Resisting priestly pleadings and requests
For some vague estimate of Stephen's guests.
Soon, soon they come, supplying from their means
A pumpkin pie, a casserole of beans.
The wealthy bring Jack Daniels, and the poor
Were clearly asked to brighten the decor.

A well-built lad, like Vulcan at his forge,
Stands lab'ring, that his mentor's friends might gorge:
He hammers on pig knuckle and cow hoof
To make the aspic for Françoise's boeuf . . . -490

Our friend, our mento, therapist and host:
It is his cooking that we'll miss the most.

Yet I forget the kitchen's brightest star:
Steve's ever-flowing, all-abundant bar.
How many vodka gimlets been poured
From that rich cab'net where the booze is stored,
That library more valuable than books,
The quarts of 'Daniels and of Ezra Brooks,
The countless limes whose essence has poured in
To lakes of tonic and to seas of gin? -500

Again, his boys . . .

Their languor and their license and their lust.
Is happiness collecting splendid dust?
That question's not conventionally half-meant:
These lines were written in the time of Lent.

And though Steve from these sun-strewn shores may stray,
Beaux, bums, and beach-boys hail a future day
When Santa Barb'ra's local lore will vaunt
Itself on having Lacey's fav'rite haunt:
His shrine, gus sanctuary, and his club,
His well-belovèd bar, the famous "Pub." -510

....

Whenever something broke or went amiss,
Nine chances out of ten,'twas Mike and Kris.
To save expensem Steve summons the fair-haired
Chris Carrolll, and the damage is repaired.

{The "Bug Canto"

Four limbs for wrestling, two for giving hugs:
Steve found three pairs de trop: he hated bugs!
Of all th'insects. arachnids, none can please:
Steve swats the glow-worms, lady-bugs, and fleas.
In outrage and in triumph hear him pant,
Pursuing to to its slaughter one poor ant; -520
In close encounters Steve was more than macho:
He cared not, cucaracha, cucaracho--
Indiff'rent whether Spanish fly or Mex,
In entomology Steve shied from sex,
For just as Mother Nature keeps us fed,
Chef Lacey liked her lower creatures dead.

...

Wom, first adoring, one soon seeks to kill:
The snippish vixen he-bitch named Bruce Hill . . .
How deep an education does he show,
Who mocks the Mass as merely "magic show?" -530
His hair, a silken sunset, reddish glows
Above a neck that shames the blushing rose;
So sanguine a complexion does not fit
His disposition's humour: purest shit.
A boyish face, a mustache set above
Soft lips, that seem the smooth, sweet source of love,
But are instead the killers of delight:
The fountainhead of scorn, deceit, and spite.
The nether beauties of the little whore
One can't describe, because he won't show more. -540
A friend who boasts of pounds he's lost--a score,
He blandly asks, how soon he's losing more:
The lad requests another cup of cheer
And warns his host that he should take light beer.
He calls for beers, and wishes the ingrate,
The insolent young veal were on his plate,
Or that he were the chef, the boy were bared:
His task, to choose how he should be prepared;
The boy, a-tremble, as he feels his lean
And supple limbs, while reading of cuisine -550
Tahitian, Maori, or West African,
Consid'ring, should he par-boil the young man,
Or have the little bastard stripped and tied
And turned upon a spit, or else French-fried?
(He hangs, he hurts, he hears each sizzling splat
As fresh-cut collops fall into the fat:
Thus rendered tasteful, render him his due--
Still hard to swallow, crunchier to chew.)

.....
Steve leaves the West for Washington,D.C.,
And Santa Barbara sinks beneath the sea, -560

Steve fears to be rejected for his race,
And nightmares show each leering , dusky face.
But surely charity must lurk beneath
Their gleaming switchblades and their grinning teeth. 160
And he were either slave or coward who
Would not with joy depart for Howard U:
For newer, brighter,younger* loves are found *truer
In Washington, where handsome lads abound;
And he were no less tasteles, dull, or blind,
Or void of sense and wit, who would not find
Each fed'ral agency a store of toys,
For every office has its office-boys.
How many Senate pages turn his head,
Corrupt his morals, or adorn his bed? -570
Imagine there some golden-fleecèd Jason,
A midnight's quest around the Tidal Basin.
The one time Proust's de Norpois spoke the truth
Was when he ventured that the golden youth
Within the various embassies employed
Were chosen to be looked at and enjoyed:
Each has a faultless figure, gait and grace:
A soldier's stature, and an angel's face,
A woman's eyes and hair, a hero's chin,
A giant's shoulders, and a baby's skin. -580
The treasured-up state secrets in each head
More of than not will be betrayed in bed.

....

Lacey in Washington

Thus spake the priest, who, prophet though he be,
Possessed no mystic sight, no prophecy,
And thus was blest with blindness, lest he grieve* *But friends with students, relatives, must grieve
To see what Washington would do to Steve:
Unhappy Lacey, victim of black spite,
Condemned to battle in a losing fight,
There would he spend two years in fruitless strife--
No period, but a hyphen in his life. -690
Nor could the few fond friends in Chestertown
Suffice to shield sad Steve from Fortune's frown;
Nor could the psychic salves of Harvey Rich
Prevail to heal the wounds wrought by a bitch.
Devouring Durga! May her noxious name
Be drowned in anonymity and shame!
May Howard U. now feel stern Heaven's rod:
Damnation from his priest, His Church, and God!

"A Hymn of Thanksgiving on the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, 1977"

Tyranny dies! Oppression melts awau!
Peace claims her triumphs! Justice has her day! -700
Repentant Fortune rescues Steve from Hell Thus God saves Stephen from her harmful Hell/A gen’rous Heav'n saves Stephen
And brings him, joyous, to Fair Old Cornell! from her Hell
King's hallowed Hilltop welcomes him again;
Summer's abundance frolics on the plain;
Trees in the lavish verdure of late June
Swell like an orchestra their songster's tune:
Nature, exulting, flings the tidings wide
From Brushy Creek to distant Lake MacBride;
Melody flows from high Mount Vernon's hill The good news spreads from high Mt. V sernon’s hill
To Lisbon, Solon, and Mechanicsville; -710
Soon all Linn County's hills with song abound--
All fields of Iowa with song abound--
Its high thanksgivings e'en C.R. must owe:
Home of the never too-malignéd Coe.
Lacey returns! The brightest and the best,
Both coasts disdaining, crowns the glad Midwest!

But hark! What omen marks* Steve’s journey West? *greets
On Steve’s own birthday, see our culture blest!
Elvis expires! both earth and Heav’n rejoice!
Music herself in triumph lifts her voice, -720
Measure, decorum, harmony and grace
Sing, for a blemish fades from Music’s face.
Beauty exults, and scarcely less does Truth:
Gone is the tastelessness that stained our youth.
Note as he goes, the slight sulphurous smell--
For a just Heaven sends his soul to Hell.
Ripely to Death's scythe Presley falls like hay,
Perishing, timely, on Steve's natal day.
His fun'ral flames with banquet torches blend,
And celebrating flames to Heav'n ascend, -730
Whilst grieving rednecks throng to pass the pyre,
And bear home flow'rs--or bits of chicken-wire.
On Stephen's birthday * Fate sets no mean price: *Steve's departure
Supplies a "Star" as fatted sacrifice:
Who'd limit tears o'er such a famous head?
The pelvis-pumping King of Rock is dead.
Thus Stephen's birthday's filled with light and love,
Cheered by this birthday present from above.

Two paths divergge: as Presley speeds to'rds Hell,
Steve's ancient auto struggles to'rds Cornell. -740
A moral in their diff'ring progress lies:
One falls with ease; with labor gains the skies.
But 'twas not strain that caused Steve's eyes to fill
When once again he saw King Chapel's Hill
How many years had flown since that blest day
When Steve from Oregon reached Iowa?
Sixteen had passed! And he but eighteen old
When he commenced those precious years of gold
Whose days were marked by classes and by chimes:
What power can recall those distant times? -750
"The Mem'ry!" preaches Proust: again, again
Steve's body's every sense responds, "Amen!"
With ev'ry step or breath old scenes renew:
Steve's eyes behold each place in doubled view.
He drives through Solon, once again hears speak
A friend's inevitable line of Greek.
One bump recalls the route he rode, allowed
By grades to gourmandize with Dean's List crowd
At the Amanas, and, presiding there
With gourmet grandeur to deride the fare. -760
"How Protestant!" What scorn the phrase implies
About the chintzy rooms, the rayon ties,
The undistinguished dishes classmates pass
Around the checkered cloth, the cheap cut glass.
Two words suffice, 'though Steve might spend an hour
On how a sauce needs more than milk and flour,
For Steve perceives with patience, not with haste,
He'll elevate his friends' provincial taste:
Their nostrils can't identify a cork
Whose fingers aren't familiar with fork. -770
Steve's freshman strivings one mayh simply state:
To soften, sensitize, sophisticate
His clumsy comrades, or, in plainer sense,
To change naïveté to decadence.

The road's next turn, t'wards lovely Lake Macbride:
Steve's mem'ries drift, and he recalls a slide
A friend took, thinking that the photo's worth
Would be the record of Steve's pond'rous girth.
Unhappy times! Yet rather than to grieve
O'er gravity oe'rgaine, he made "Big Steve" -780
A Campus legend, in a campaign lost
By HIS ONE VOTE, and counted not the cost.

The road now reaches to the valle wide
Across which all Mount Vernon's tow'rs are spied--
The newest sight, old mem'ries countless drown:
Awash with these, Steve gains the dingy town"
The houses near the quary, where would walk
Steve's friends, in rare departures from his talk,
Which always, from mid-evening 'til mid-morn
Was so diverting, few from it were torn, -790
Thoug, some were giv'n to "drinking with the guys,"
Or walking silent streets 'neath midnight skies.
The turn down shabby First Street gives him chills,
Remembering Ma Fisher's unpaid bills:
Sad Maid-Rite! with the theatre now lost
To grey Mount Vernon by late holocaust.

Drendel Canto

Thus Fortune speeds Steve on to bette days:
Far busier, too, producing Shakespeare's plays,
While lect'ring endlessly from dawn 'til dusk
'Til the new system leaves him but a husk, -800
Since popularity with studens dubs
Him daily sponosr of their myriad clubs:
Thw Women's Honor Dorm, the Mortarboard,
The English Club, Cornellianl each is scored
A Lacey trium;ph, and a growing peril
To Crossett's cursèd concord with Bill Carroll.
At last to all his bays he adds the crown:
Men's Honor Res'dence claims him as its own,
Just as, to swell the honor of the House,
Mount Vernon hails the rich return of Klaus. -810
Yet once again Steve plays the favored host,
'Though 'tis no longer this role he loves most:
New enterprises all his pow'rs engage--
Steve leaves his parties' for the actual stage.
Here Shakespeare's lines Steve makes his students feel,
And joys to see his fantasies grow real.
There see the handsome athlete scorned and tripped,
Abused, made love to, fondled, nearly stripped;
His face is slapped, his fair cheek brightly wealed,
And with his stripes is Stephen briefly healed. -820

Steve's heart this lad one autumn day did scorch,
When, shirtless, sweating, he first trod Steve's porch.
Alas! poor wrestler, blest he did not know
Who had him in his grip, intent to throw
HIs glist'ning body down across the hard,
Spotlighted boards--the altar of the Bard.
Now see the boy his youthful ardors spend
As Bremner's ring and Lacey's stage contend.
With patient loyalty his suff'rings borne,
As ligaments, if not his hear, are torn. -830
When did theFates e'er cast such cruel dice
To doom this boy to Thespian sacrifice?
He means to play his part: beware, young Drendel!
You mean to play Demetrius, but Stephen, Grendel.
Displacement, hail thy bright, triumphant dawn!
The stage's drapes like ravening jaws now yawn,
And Stephen, both producer and gourmet,
Incorporates young Drendel in his play.

* * * * * * * * * *

Yet though his hair's with laurels crowned and bays,
Steve, solitary, saddens as it grays. -840
Success' bright triumphs loneliness can dim,
Though beauty burgeons, pickings still are slim.
Though subtlest, sweetest suasion Steve employ
That scholarship seduce a favored boy,
From California's sun to I'was snow,
Yet will he prove compliant? Heaven knows!
Thus, gazing in is glass a whit'ning hair,
Steve greets black Death's first herald, grey despair.
What glad event could Steve from sadness part,
And once again let joy reign in his heart? -850
Can solace come to one unus'd to pray'r?
To need, Grace, oft un-called, descends Heav'ns stair.
All-loving Heav'n its purposes achieves,
Unasked, makes saints from harlots, popes from theives,
And thus, from all eternity unmeasured Pow'r
Had foreordained for Steve the saving hour
That to his wants all succour would supply
And bless henceforth the Eighth Day of July.
Is there such balm? Could Heav'n prevail to send
So rich a blessing ev'ry ill t'amend? -860
How can we doubt, when all our health and weal
Was once an infant sent to save and heal?
This holy pattern, image of Our Lord,
Can Heaven's treasury with ease afford,
And thus we see the grace-bestowing mace
Bend from God's throne, to bless the Laceyan race.
Who is the lady, bearer of all joy,
To give redemption's image--a new boy?
The lovely Julianne, sweet, meek, demure,
Whose outward form is lovely; inward, pure; -870
Whose beauty, mind, charm, virtue all sufficed
That Laceyan arms with Gregory's be spliced.
As when the joy of Eastertide draws near,
The Church prepares herself in sober fear,
Marks foreheads with dark ashes, keeps as fast,
Weaned from the earth for Heaven's joys at least,
So, to prepare proud Portland for the day,
St. Helen's veils her face with dust of gray,
And thus the envious grumblings of Mount Hood,
Topped by a child as beautiful as good; -880
In vain the snow-crowned height outshines the skies,
When all in Portland elsewhere bend their eyes.
New lustre pales the marbled limbs of Greece:
Grace, new-embodied, in the face of REESE. -884

BOOK II

Swift fly the years, but swifter fly jet planes:
Their youth has fled; their frienship still remans;
And Stephen, starved fro sunshine, rest, and sex,
Is greeted by the priest at LAX.

...

Stephen's fortieth Birthday

For the event, the scribbling padre comes,
Fumbling with bags, dissheveled, and all thumbs, 890
He brings in lieu of gift or card or song
A paltry piece of poetry along.
When dinner numbs, lest else the senses bleed,
The host, bereft of choice, must bid him read:
We cite his doggerl in his epic verse
That reader think this better, hearing worse.

"To Stephen, Turning Forty"

"Tot annos, tot labores"--Virgil

Call the day not ill-begotten,
Think not that life's pleasures fly, 900
When a fruit's decayed and rotten,
Boys, like maggots, multiply.
Think not lads and loves of youth-time
Like the years have flown away:
For tomorrow's face-the-truth-time
Offers more than yesterday.
Every pleasure one delights in
With the lads with whom one's lain,
Can return, as when one bites in
To a tea-soaked madeleine. 910
Think of all that handsome harem
You acquired in seasons past--
Will the age of forty scare 'em?
No! They'll come as thick and fast!
Will they come as solemn duty
That their debts should be repaid/
No! but greedy of the beauty
Still you have which cannot fade.
Why before did heroes chase you,
Seek your door both night and day, 920
Hardly that they might embrace you,
Deathless, fairest flow'r of May.
Why did they flock in, make tables,
Do you favors, all unpaid,
Deck your porch with forms from fables,
Give massages, or get laid?
T'was not your physique that charmed them,
Not the tawdry gifts of youth
Where your glamour? You school-marmed them
With seductive talk of Truth. 930
Frankly, Stephen, had Kit Marlowe
Passed you, he'd scarce glanced at you,
Hastened off, t'wixt hope and sorrow,
To see how you'd reviewed "The Jew."
Not the curls which fabled Jason
Rashly raped from Colchis' shore,,
Nor the head set in a basin
Sick Salome slobbered o'er,
Not the eyes that Alighieri
Hoped to see at Heaven's door,
Nothing that would please a fairy 940
In grim fact or Grimm's folkllore;
Not the shoulders that an Atlas
Would shrug off the world to buy,
Not the arms, the back, the hairy
Chest keeps t.v. ratings hight;
Not the bulging pecs, the slim
Rib-cage, or the abdomen flat
You devoured in Bud or Jim
And thereon felt nauseous at:
Not the transient charms of flesh, 950
The cause of passion and distaste,
None that one could catalogue
Above, or e'en beneath the waist,
Was the charm that led them to you:
T'was your learning and good taste.
From the days when first I knew you,
From the hey-day of your youth,
You possessed those fading beauties
Less than you do now, in truth.
Yours the figure growing thinner, 960
Mine the image of the whale:
I th'admirer, you the winner;
I, the Johnson, you, the Thrale.
They admired the wealth of learning
And the gen'rous, caring heart,
And the gift you have of turning
Sentences, all works of art,
Life's not over when one's forty!
Thinking so befits a child:
Then the hunt becomes more sporty, 970
And the game is far more wild.

THE LACEIAD, part III (Variorum edition.) [Recovered from disc, Friday, July 28, 2000]

The years go by--the Father's hairs grow few--
While Steve's progress from grey to powder blue:
One turns to God's as Nature's glory thins--
The other, far more practical, tries rinse.
Steve asks his mirror daily how he greys,
And sighs, rememb'ring Santa Barb'ra days,
And calls upon deaf Heav'n to answer why
He loses colour as he's lost his Kai,
Who once, Nijinsky-like, graced Stephen's lair, 980
Bewitched his guests, and cut and styled his hair.
'Twas hard to tell what Steve in Kyle loved most:
HIs talk, his torslo, haircuts at no cost.
Immured in I'was ice, Steve cannot hear
The glorious news: his student's now his peer!
And Steve, if he seek Kai to dye his locks.
Must steel himself to face the shock of shocks:
His barber has a new M.A. degree,
And Stevem though shaggy, can't afford the fee.
The danseur-tonsor has become a don-- 990
Legs weaken, edges dull; he'll lecture on!
Kai from his mentor well acquired the pow'r
Of pumping language to inflate an hour,
Thus mast'ring phrasing as he rules orchesis--
You don't believe me? Read Ganado's thesis!
Then joine with countless friends to hail the god:
A Proust with p;en, Barishnakov in bod!
And sing the wisdom of U.C.L.A.,
Who dignifies herself with Kai's M.A.
In Heav'n Archangels for sheer joy are dancing--
And Earth's response sets fauns and faggots prancing! 1000
If Fame and Fortune make their fav'rites mad,
Then fear for Kai--he's made THE LACEIAD! 1002

[Inscribed, "Congratulations, Kai! Love, Howard+" St. Blaise's, 1986]

He could not love at all, who would not gladly
Abandon love of all for love of Bradley,
A Christian Scientist, who made Steve feel,
Despite Miss Eddy, that the flesh was real.
His was the praise once poured to gold or wine
Or sung by sages to the Truth Divine:
In him some editor sublime had spliced
The grace of Ganymede with that of Christ. 1010
Not mountain lakes nor snow 'neat Summer's skies
Drew more to Joseph than Jim Bradley's eyes,
Where passion heated as it slaked desire,
Like melting diamonds, or ice on fire,
They flashed love, wrath, or humor at a phrase:
Their warmth caused chills; their coolness set ablaze.
By light thus blinded, eyes fell, one suspects,
To rest and feed upon Jim's peerless pecs,
Matched as to one a mirror's image fits,
The trimmed, tanned muscles, taut erectile tits. 1020
Just as a thurifer tow'rs or a boat-boy,
Jim was to Bud: Adonis to a goat-boy.
If not so tall, Jim's pure-proportioned form
Embodied in each limb and nerve the norm
Which in his verse blind Homer gave Achilles,
To'rds which in marble struggled Praxiteles:
The perfect shoulders, rippling stomach, thighs
'Twixt which one oft sees beauty's apex rise;
Beside Jim's buttocks blushed Bud's boasted splendor;
Jim's are more round, more firm, more full, more tender.
Jim's head was framed with far more lovely mane,
Yet triumphed most in this: it held a brain! 1030
Add this, when all Jim's praises have been sung:
His beauty's crown: he was divinely hung.
His soul, his mind, his beauty were his wealth--
His was the end of Science: perfect Health!
If Eddy's lore so shaped all human clay--
Forget the Scriptures! Throw the Key away!

The Eighteenth of September! Once a line
Laid tributary wreaths at Johnson's shrine; 1040
Now Thames alone flows soft past Johnson's tomb
Whilst Lake Wallowa's shore can scarce find room
For Passion's pilgrims, lustful, crazed, and noisy,
Who flock from Portland, Bend, Spokane, and Boise.
The heart of one professor, one learns sadly,
Lets flicker Johnson's lamp, but flames for Bradley.
For Paris' choice still holds: let wealth and duty,
Truth and learning go--first seek out beauty,
Most when with wit and virtue it is one
In Joseph's citizen and Boston's son, 1050
Born on this day, inscribed on Fortunes page,
Whose mind surpasses, face belies his age!
What wonder, tehn, that life should death outclass,
The ranger's love the lines of Rasselas?
Survey the world from China to Peru:
Who cares for Bradley? Thousands! Johnson? Few.
'Neath Johnson's gaze, a scholar 'mid his junk
Indicts poor verses to the handsome hnk,
A priest neglects his prayers to write a hymn
Whose only burden? "Happy Birthday, Jim" 1060
The moral is as certain as unjust:
Lads live, when lexicographers are dust.

Sonnet VII 1984

With eyes set on Olympus, not the Styx,
Adonis gains the age of thirty-six:
As yet no furrow mars his godlike brow,
And beauty triumphs in the transient Now.
But dare the lyre's strings to his pages tune,
To sing once more his eyes, his chest, his hips,
When poets are illumined by the Moon,
And her light's from the Sun, now in eclipse? 1070
O let Apollo bid his Sun return,
'Ere forty winters freeze 'neath Shakespeare's curse:
Before Time turn our good enough to worse.
The Poet's pen grows dry, his ink grows colder,
While Beauty, once his object, s'growing older. 1075

In Natalitia Johnsoni, 1984

Once more the birthday dawns, and then grows dim:
Brief day lights Johnson, and elipses Jim.
While "Nations slowly wise and weakly just
To buried merit raise the tardy bust,"
Our Steve, so tardy to remembrance carried, 1080
Thinks Justice week indeed, if Jim's not buried.
For rancor rises as his fondness fades,
And Steve, rememb'ring, hopes that Jim has Å.I.D.S.
He sees him, in the fancy of the mind,
Half skeleton, half-living, and half-blind,
And most rejoices, as the wretched wraith
Sees realism triumph over faith;
His ski as shrunken as its color pale,
Sees Eddy's pages darken, feels her fail. 1089

{At Ashland--a disco]

Her torso twists, her silver cymbals clinke: 1090
The customers, a-goggle, stare and drink.
They gyrate to cacaphony, whose ground
Reveals how far Alberti's was profound.

[The following written after the Lacey/Austin visit to Los Angeles, Feb., 1986.]

See how each Fall for Steve sheds new delights,
Thick as the leaves, new students, pages, knights:
Some yield true friendships, some at length ring hollow:
Sing one, O Muse: Mount Vernon's own Apollo.
Steve's view of Iowa: abomination--
Was metamorphosed into adoration
When one fine Autumn, answer to his prayer,
The Corn-God freshman, tassled gold for hair, (error somewhere) 1100
So thick, so soft, so rich in sunlit curls,
The talk of campus, envy of the girls,
Crowned Cornell College, mesmerized the town:
What won the students? Body! Brain, the gown:
Except where taste and intellect conjoin:
No mind appraised more keenly than the loin.
More quickly than the Danes to Bismarck's Prussia,
Our Steve surrendered: Luxemburg to Russia!
And could one blame him? Certainly not I:
Though one could find him quiet, almost shy, 1110
Our hero, though of meek and mild demeanout,
Yet shielded, like the aegis of Athena,
A weapon dazzling bright--his flashing smile:
Enough to melt the Arctic, dry the Nile.
Quiet in manner, open, yet half-shy,
Strong in opinions as in humor dry,
His eyes as open as the mid-June sky,
Seeming naïve, yet complicate, wry,
Clamb'ring with thougts, though quiet as the tomb,
He'll grasp the Students' sceptre, and Liz Isaac's broom, 1120
'Gainst all his virtues, balancing the list--
He was a liberal, and a Populist:
A stout defender of his native sod,
He championed peasants as he mirrored God,
Recalling the young Hermes 'mid his flocks--
If only he wore naught but wings for socks!
Imagine Bob a tiller of the soil--
Could one resist enacting his dark foil?
A robber baron, anxious to foreclose
On farm, on funds, on few remaining clothes,
Scarcely content to leave him hones sweat,
Ready to take his virtue for the debt, 1130
To seize possession of the bankrupt boy,
And bear him to Bar Harbor as a toy,
And there claim interest dailhy, which in turns
He yields on yacht, in bed, 'neath potted ferms
Of plush Victorian parlor, or, when able,
He's sprawled at night on beach or billiard table. 1136
......

Ten days on Southern California rained
The weather, who from fear and envy feigned
Seattle's, lest his bright and sunny fair
Should be outshone by Robert Austin's hair. 1140

July 5 Cornell College

Can modern minds believe some heav'nly race
Serves God, saves man, and flies from sphere to sphere
Without traversing interstellar space
Moving by virtue straight from Heav'n t here?
Franciscan painters of St. Thomas' School
Could this debate, paint irridescent wing;
This notes the scholar; this believes the fool:
For who since Mary ever heard them sing? 1150
Thus might the ministers of love and grace,
Unknown, watch o'er, unguessed at, help and heal,
Had not their King so framed your heart, limbs, face,
And halo hair, that we might think them real,
And, in your presence, almost feel their breath,
And, in your angel image, welcome Death. 1158

7.5.85
(Included in his Christmas card, 1991, which produced an end to our correspondence.)

Lines indicted on hearing that the Dark Forces of Techno-Capitalism have closed Kienow's, the Good, Old-Fashioned Market in East Portland, Oregon

Limerick Introductory:

I should like to excise all the p----s
From the guys who are shutting down Kienow's:
They are more than just mean
To Steve's mother, Claudine:
They make Portalnd's lanes look more like Reno's. 1165

Bad news, like storms, blow from the north and west:
Times seek the mediocre, scorn the best.
From kind Claudine, whence protest's never heard,
Comes seldom-sighed, but oft-discouraged Word:
Kienow's is closing: close, old-fashioned mart, 1170
As cherished by the palate as the heart.
Here barbecuing Laceys trooped in June
And raced, last-minute, morning, night, or noon,
For haste-neglected dressings, sauce with jazz,
For milk, for coffee, or for mayonnaise.
If Clarke were guest, they gathered, as one please,
The best of wines, of gins, of breads and cheeses;
For most, good bourbon; for the clergy, scotch;
To warm the cockles, and to cool the crotch. 1179

[There lack here about sixty lines penned at Stephen's former house while Reese read and I scribbled, mid-morning, July11,
St. Benedict's, 2000.]

Finally, there remains the concluding sonnet which I sent to Diane and have myself lost. All this may be in my school office.
[It wasn't.] I thought it proper to finish and dispatch this fomr home, on this, the anniversary of Stephen's birth, The Feast
of St. Stephen of Hungary, 2000.

"Qujs sit desiderio pudor aut modus tam cari capitis?"

All the above is of my authorship. (c) 16.8/00 Howard J. Happ, Ph.D. Entered into my blog, Jessehowards.blogspot.com,
on the 36th Anniversary of my Priesting, St. Charles Borromeo, 2009H

"Darkest before the Dawn"

2010-10-29T14:51:00.001-07:00

“Darkest before the Dawn”

A Hallowe’en Sermon on Sin, Confession, and Justification

Delivered at St. Nicholas’ of Myra Parish,

Encino, California 90275

The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost,

Sunday, the Eve of All Hallows’, MMX. A.D.

Ps. 32: 3-6 For while I held my tongue, my bones consumed away

through my daily complaining. For thy hand is heavy upon me day and night, and my moisture is like the drought in summer. I will acknowledge my sin unto thee; and mine unrighteousness have I not hid. I said, I will confess my sins unto the Lord; and so thou forgavest the wickedness of my sin.

St. Luke: 19: 5b, 7. “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay in your house today … All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who was a sinner.”

“Simul justus et peccator.” --Martin Luther

O Lord, thou knowest our faults, and our sins are not hid from thee, nor by thy saving, forgiving, and cleansing grace are they altogether hidden from us, for they stand before us, before Thee, and between us night and day, and there is neither day nor hour, nor scarcely minute or second when our self-love and self-will do not darken or corrupt utterly our love for thee and for our neighbors. In thy mercy, we beseech thee, keep thy Cross before the faltering eyesight of our faith that by thy grace daily bestowed through thy Holy Church and Sacraments we may have the comfort and reassurance of thine abiding peace, mystical union, and indwelling presence with us, and thus come to dwell in thine house with thee forever, as in thy Holy and Saving Name we pray. Amen.

I’m pretty sure that most of you these days, like me, are almost amazed, and perhaps amused by the degree to which the popular and probably peculiar American custom of observing Hallowe’en by buying up, storing up, and possibly gobbling up with as much goblin-like delight as the younger folk about us the tricky treats (for they contain as much as they conceal calories) of this rather recently concocted holiday, has grown, developed, even exploded—in our lifetimes? No doubt many of us—even a goodly proportion of the folks in my retirement home, have been busied in decorating our doorways, windows, rooftops, driveways, and table-tops with jack-o-lanterns, plain old pumpkins, skeletons, witches’ gangrenous faces, ghosties, ghoulies, feline-footed beasties, and other decorations in the—to the privileged among us—sacred--colors of orange and black—not to mention welcoming in the now elongated “holiday season” with parties, even masquerades and dances for those in their second childhoods as well as the kiddies. I wonder if you all wonder as I do just how such a widely and even weirdly now almost month-long celebration has come to be. Does it have any meaning? If so, has it any deep, perhaps psycho-sociological, only half-conscious, cultural meaning? Perhaps even disguisedly theological—or else demonological—deeper meaning?

I confess that my graduate studies in religion have led me to think so. Holidays, their observance, are after all part of the ritual structuring of human life, and I doubt that it takes college classes in religion or anthropology—at least not for us Episcopalians, certainly Anglo-Catholics—to realize how centrally and perhaps inescapably important ritual is for our humanity. Ritual is, after all, the acting-out, the dramatizing of the symbols, the primal graspings of reality, probably preceding language, on which our common consciousness, our communication, our culture depends, from which the structures of social and political life spring.

Two scholars particularly come to my mind as having shaped my understanding of ritual. The first was Victor Turner, an Australian anthropologist, who taught about what he called “structure versus anti-structure” as fundamental to human society and elemental to ritual, which he saw as a social, a dramatic way of coming to know the basic rules, the norms, of human life through occasional acts of reversal—of precisely violating those laws, of reinforcing social order—morality—in occasional rites or rituals that recognize, realize, enact disorder, chaos—violation, immoral behavior, even orgy. An earlier scholar, another anthropologist, Sir Edmund Leach, suggested or illustrated the same idea in an article called, “Of Time and False Noses,” in which he argued that through custom and costume we enact, we realize norms and their reversal—at special, “sacred” times—on “holidays,” through ritual. Such holiday rituals usually, Leach argued, involve three stages: the middle one, orgy, is a sort of anti-drama--frenzied dancing, falling into trances, that can involve licentiousness, violation of moral norms and the shedding of social distinctions through the shedding of clothes: think of Mardi Gras, of Mayday, of fraternity initiations, freshman-Fall’s hazings—or of baptism in the ancient Church. On either side of this ritual reversal, people emphasize proper norms and roles sometimes by disguising them through masquerades of Mardi Gras and Hallowe’en disguises, New Year’s Eve’s party hats, noisemakers and confetti, and then also people overemphasize norms, standards, and ideals by overemphasizing them: eucharistic vestments, clerics, uniforms, Masonic ritual costume, public ceremonies, white tie dinners, formal dances.

And thus it seems evident that in our increasingly secular, pluralistic, non-church-attending, country, a purely secular, non-denominational ritual should attain an almost universal observance, since it places emphasis on all sorts of reversal: death, decay, decadence, self-indulgence, reversal if only in children ‘s demanding that adults render a tribute of goodies, etc. And thus it is understandable that in mediaeval and Renaissance Europe, high and solemn feast days were often preceded by their “Eves,” such as Mardi Gras, Midsummer-night’s Eve (that of St. John the Baptist), and All Hallows’ or All Saints’ Day’s Even. Thus it was appropriate that on the Eve of All Saints’ in 1517 a university professor and priest (dangerous combination) named Martin Luther should tack upon his church’s door (I’m uncertain whether it was the cathedral’s or the university church’s, or if they weren’t the same) 95 theses challenging practices that were normative for the Church at that time. To speak of Luther in what at least has been an Anglo-Catholic parish may seem my own sort of reversal ritual. I do think that our Episcopal Church is right in not observing today as “Reformation Sunday” as our Lutheran brethren do. But I do think it appropriate to remember one way in which Luther was a model for Anglo-Catholics: at least in his earlier years, he very much believed in and practiced frequently the unquestionably Catholic custom that he regarded as a sort of “half-sacrament:” having a confessor and going to or going through private confession.

This is not to say by any means, certainly Luther did not himself believe, that a Christian’s offering up a private prayer of confession of sin—or, more regularly, saying the prayer of general confession along with the parish congregation in its Sunday liturgy, isn’t really, fully, theologically sufficient to gain us God’s merciful forgiveness—indeed, the theological certainty of our pardon and restoration to the guiltless holiness of Christ’s Body through the sacramental ministry of that body, the Church. But it may well be the case for some faithful Christians of tender conscience and troubled memories, that a more particular, concrete, and assured sense of forgiveness and peace within themselves and with God is needed. At least at one time Luther is said to have needed such a sense of absolution and assured justification before God. Sometimes even contemporary Episcopalians feel that need and present themselves for the Sacrament of Penance. I know that regularly if occasionally this priest does. I trust it’s no great breach of Church etiquette to tell you that I made an appointment for such with your gifted Rector this morning—a superb confessor, I’ve discovered, as I first intuited upon meeting him years ago. Hence the topic of this sermon, a Sacrament about which Father Williams taught me decades ago, then directed me to Bishop Campbell up at Mt. Calvary, my first confessor—and a saint!

For just as ritual generally reinforces socio-cultural norms by ritually, perhaps just playfully, violating them—making moral lines known by drawing them as if with colored chalk on the sidewalk, so Hallowe’en seems to provide an at least semi-conscious sense of order and orientation to our otherwise seemingly mindless and conscience-free secular nation by leading us at least playfully to deal with death and the demonic; with self-indulgence if not serious sin. And far more effectively the Sacrament of Penance, of confession and absolution, the opportunity to focus our attention on our sins, and thus upon moral theology—Fr. Williams’ great subject of interest and expertise—coming to understand the structure of moral behavior by studying the different moods, motives, and degrees that constitute sin—is a practical and useful and indeed refreshing as well as morally strengthening exercise, whether or not it’s recognized as a soul-saving Sacrament.

Today is the Eve of All Hallows’. At least our nation is playing, if not praying, with its inadequate notions of evil, of sin and the Devil, and all the bewitching attractions of the world—its treats—and too sadly, its tricks. Again we face the darkness of this jack o’lantern-lighted night. Tomorrow we rejoice in the company of all the saints into which Our Saviour’s Grace has brought us. It’s always darkest before the dawn.

Zacchaeus, like the persona of St. Paul behind the text of Second Timothy, could well have thought himself “the worst or chief of sinners.” To be a tax collector was first of all to be a traitor: a collaborator with the Roman oppressors of your own people, God’s chosen ones. And it was to be a greed-obsessed, superlatively self-centered, successful genius at money-grabbing and cheating: Zacchaeus, the Gospel Lesson tells us, “was rich.” He put himself ahead of and in place of God, and he betrayed his neighbors. He didn’t know that when he climbed the sycamore tree. He knew it when Our Lord called him by name and told him to come down: that He loved and accepted and forgave him and would dine as a guest at his table that evening. Our Lord accepted; Zacchaeus converted. Grace preceded faith, and faith preceded repentance. He came down: it was a ritual of reversal—the Sacrament of Penance. It was acceptance and then assurance of absolution. Zacchaeus dined with Christ. We have heard Our Lord call us to come down. We have received His saving absolution, the assurance of our justification: our reception of His Holiness through the mystical Union we receive in dining at his table, in beholding his Presence on the Altar, of dining in the fellowship of His Love. Together let us, like Zacchaeus, come down.

“GOING HOME"

2010-09-21T23:30:00.000-07:00

“GOING HOME”

A sermon preached at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Fort Dodge, Iowa,

on Saturday, the Feast of St. Sergius of Moscow,

DURING THE FIFTIETH REUNION OF THE F.D.H.S. CLASS OF 1960,

by the Rev. Canon Professor Howard J. Happ, Ph.D.+

Ps. Lxxxvii: 4b “Philistia too, and Tyre, with Ethiopia—“This one was born there,” they say.

How often, I wonder, has any of you heard a minister, pastor, or priest choose as her sermon text or his, a verse from the Book of Psalms? A very close seminary friend of mine whom I’ve known for forty-three years—a respectable space of time even at a high school graduation’s fiftieth anniversary—told me that he couldn’t clearly remember when if ever he’d picked a Psalm verse for his text, but that he’d chosen to do so quite recently—and he’s a well-practiced, top-flight preacher. I could remember clearly only the one time that a verse from Psalm 42 allowed me in my “hammy” way to make a pun on the name of our mutual friend who was the bridegroom on the occasion. John Donne, the poet who I think was the best preacher in our language, preached on them often, but then he was, after all, a poet—(remember Miss Thomas’ class?)—and one might expect a poet to preach on the Psalms, which are, after all, poems—every one of them.

How and why did I come to choose this Psalm for today’s sermon? Those Christian denominations or traditions called, “liturgical,” that is, that order their worship according to an historically determined “script,” if you will, choose their lessons from a selected list laid out on a calendar that is followed year after year, and almost never read a lesson purely because it seems to fit or address a particular occasion, such as a class reunion. For us Episcopalians, today is the Feast of St. Sergius, the Patron Saint of Russia. Now how, some of you must be asking, with an impolite expletive in your question, can he or his feast day have any relevance or meaning for our gathering here at St. Mark’s, Fort Dodge? I asked that question to myself over this past weekend, when scanning the appointed lessons for something at least half way on target. Happily enough—pun intended—I found only one chapter, one Psalm, that fit—that worked!

So here we are together—and here it comes!

Much as some people like to praise the Internet as “the source of all knowledge” for today, it has, as doubtless most of you have noticed, its real limitations. That’s because a lot of the information one would like to get hold of has been gotten hold of over the past fifty years—and thus from books or other sources still under copyright, and it’s hard to get hold of just who has read the book one would like to know about oneself, who has also provided proper credit and citation to the information’s sources. This seems particularly true with respect to Biblical studies—not exactly popular or well-known material. So most sites on my computer at least that offer even commentary rather than hard information about Biblical material seem to date from the Nineteenth or even the Seventeenth Century. And Biblical Studies are one field of knowledge always and ever becoming more up-to-date, more current. Most of you will think that statement odd coming from an antiquarian like myself—but my antiquarianism is very selective, and I’m a bit picky about Biblical knowledge.

I would really like to know, for example, about the poet and I think the prophet who wrote this Psalm, Number 87. The tradition that the Psalms were mostly written by King David is, of course, as wrong historically as it is historic and charming. Whoever the author of the Psalm was (besides the Almighty, in His characteristically very indirect way), he was WAAAAY ahead of his time. The mind of Ancient Israel was on the whole a prime example of chauvinism: a nationalistic superiority complex. Perhaps the central theme of what Christians term “The Old Testament” is the idea of “Holiness,” or separation, set apartness, particularity, being extra-special—the Chosen People. The idea arose among this unique Semitic people, who were just beginning to be called or to think of themselves as “Jews” after their kingdom had been conquered, their leading citizens taken captive, hauled off to Babylon, forced to face the threat of loss of identity due to their being surrounded by foreigners—“Gentiles”—and tempted or even coerced into intermarriage. Then good King Cyrus, the Persian conqueror of Babylon, allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, their devastated but treasured capital, and to rebuild the Temple—the “House of God—of Jahweh—and to resume their quest for Holiness—set apartness—“Kashruth”—“kosher.” One might say, it became their religious obsession.

But that wasn’t true in the least of whoever it was that wrote this Psalm—87! True enough, his hymn or poem begins by praising Jerusalem—Zion! Indeed, the Lord—Elohi’m—is said to love “the Holy City” not only more than all others in the world, but “more than all the dwellings of Jacob.” It is the center, the capital city, of the nation whose people only, it would seem, know the only true, the only real God: “them that know me.” That sounds self-centered and chauvinistic enough. Indeed, I find it ironic that the Psalm’s second verse was made the basis of a favorite hymn for some of us: “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken: Zion, City of our God.” Most people who know hymns at all know that one as set to the tune by Joseph Haydn, originally worded to honor the Emperor Joseph II of Austria-Hungary. Some know the tune as the musical setting of “Deutschland über Alles.”

But then the author and his Psalm immediately and totally reverse themselves: “with them that know me,” that know God, are listed the Babylonians—until recently the conquerors and captors and enslavers of the Jews, and “they of Tyre,” the super-Gentile international trading center of the internationally venturesome Phoenicians, and the Ethiopians—THE ETHIOPIANS? Distant black Africans? They are in reality—in God’s super-reality—as good as, the same as native-born citizens of Jerusalem! “Of Sion it shall be reported, that he was born (they were born) in her… when he writeth up the people, … he was born (they were born) in her! WHAT!? Does he really mean that these god-awful foreigners are in God’s eyes, native-born. Surprise! It seems he does. God’s special, Holy City is their HOME! When they are with the all-Holy, sacred, set-apart God, they are at home—they have come home!

And today especially, this weekend especially, perhaps here, especially we know just what that feels like. For we have all for however brief a time, come home! We are suddenly wrapped in the reality of a place, places, that are more familiar, more haunted by memory, more shared with more friends, than perhaps any place on earth! Not as luxurious, probably; not as sophisticated, almost certainly not as “with it,” as “mod,” as sophisticated; in my case and in many, certainly not as blessed with an ideal climate—but more OURS, in some ways---indeed, for nearly all of us at least, our hometown! This is a reunion with our town, our past, old places, and each other—our HOMECOMING!

And I wonder, dear friends and classmates, if this occasion in your lives, in our common lives, hasn’t been for you, and/or is weirdly continuing to be for you, a special time for coming home personally, deeply, and inwardly. I trust that I am not just imagining or projecting this. As you see once more long absent, but familiar faces—however much mutual aging may have made them strange—at least for a while—as you see old, familiar places, however altered in many respects, haven’t you had a strong sense of suddenly coming into contact with yourself—newly and more strongly in touch with yourself, perhaps even like “the Prodigal Son,” coming unto yourself? If not, perhaps it’s because you haven’t allowed yourself time to reflect upon yourself, your life to the present, your life as it has emerged and developed out of your past, and in large part from this place, this town, this school, this place that is HOME? If not, might this be the chance, the place, the time to explore that possibility, to allow yourselves that luxury—a time to remember, to reflect, to consider, to think, perhaps even to pray?

There is a deeper, more real layer or level of coming home, beyond coming to Iowa, or Fort Dodge, or your old house, or church, or the High School, whether in the concrete reality of the present, or in sharpened memory. There is a more real way of coming home to your +self, unto yourself, like the Prodigal Son. Remember that in the Parable the young wanderer’s father caught sight of his child “a long way off” and rushed to meet, to embrace, and to hug, re-clothe, and then to feed, feast, host, and celebrate his wayward child. Such a banquet, such a homecoming, such a welcome awaits us all now. The family table is prepared. We are all family with each other and with our common, loving parent—Our Father. We could not be more welcomed or more loved. Come to the Table—come together—come home!

In nomine . . .

Play, Perversity, and Perversion

2010-09-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

Play, Peversity, and Perversion

H.J.H.+ 7/3/09; 7/7/09 . . .

I found the other day only one article on “Google” titled, “Christianity and Homo-eroticism.” As I recall, there was scarcely more on “Christianity and Eroticism.” I should imagine there’s scarcely more on “”Christianity and Eros.” Christianity has throughout the great stretch of its history been hostile to Eros, or deeply suspicious of it at least, often considering it almost antithetical. What is true of the phenomenon is necessarily truer of the phenomenon taken as principle or organizing theory, and still more so of a narrower and perhaps perverse phenomenon. Eros must be distinguished of course from Sex or Sexuality. Those have long been at least tolerated or conceded space in human experience because necessary or at least accessory to recognized goods: procreation, primarily, and intimacy, cooperation, fidelity and commitment, i.e., marriage, secondarily. But Eros seems to mean or entail the sexual expression of our humanity not as a means to a good and justifying end, socially productive or merely useful, but as a means merely to pleasure apart from practical value: mere enjoyment, even self-indulgence, perhaps self-assertion, and as probable consequence, self-regard. Then self-centeredness, and finally selfishness—loving self ahead of, more than, disregardful of or indifferent to, or even in spite or at the expense of others--the antithesis of good –moral indifference extended into evil.

Can there be sexual expression that gives pleasure and/or enjoyment—fun—without disregard for or at least harm to others? That doesn’t in addition serve a good or at least useful purpose, coincidently or at least accidentally? Can there be pursuit of pleasure without purpose that is not sexual? Can there be innocent fun, pursuit of pleasure without utility or purpose that is not harmful? Isn’t there such a thing—a legitimate thing, as PLAY? There is, it would seem, some play that isn’t sexual, or corporeal at least. And there does seem to be some sexual expression that is neither productive or useful, but not harmful either, merely playful, simply enjoyable, simply fun. But doesn’t, or hasn’t Christianity, at least in its customary or usual moral rigorism or asceticism (eremitism, monasticism, Puritanism, Jansenism, Pietism, Evangelicalism) tended to see fun and play as sinful, or tending to sin?

“Play” seems even more than erws [What stupid swine put the Greek font into this machine, not knowing that a sigma takes a different form when terminal?] to have been banished from the dictionary of Christian theology. The Church has not to my knowledge paid much attention to Huizinga. What value or estimation does She place on human creativity, imagination or humor? Traditionally, much human thought—even if in play—is categorized as “evil thoughts.” And we conceive of God—at least as a conception-transcending Ultimate Reality—in some part through our imagination, that is, through projection. If indeed the concept of the person, the category of the personal, really is at the center of either Christian or democratic thought—or both—it would seem that the Transcendant must be personal, just as the created order implies a creating and ordering God, Who, unless human moral consciousness is an accident or an error on His part, must be a Person—and if so, then One who must address the persons in His Creation—as I believe He did in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. But if human projection is a means to communication with Reality as well as to self-understanding, it has to be true that, given the almost infinite variety of human conceptions, projection is also merely and thus often erroneously human. I would hope that is true of the concept of God as held by the homophobic fanatic from Los Angeles—originally Kansas. And I hope almost equally that that is true of the God one finds in the Canon of Sacred Scripture—at least in the Old Testament, and possibly elsewhere, as in the Epistle to the Romans. One hopes Origen had a projection closer to communication—to revelation—than Calvin.

If God is a loving Father, as Jesus taught, surely he must be more tolerant and understanding of the creature he made in His image than one’s loved and trusted psychiatrist. And surely it’s one’s actions, not one’s imaginations, that count, although certainly imagination must have its effect on temper and motive and intention if not finally on act. One hopes so devoutly in view of what one has at times imagined.

Theologoumen--to Frank

2010-03-31T11:12:00.001-07:00

If God is Good and God is Love, and the world is His creation, why is there evil in the world? "That is the question." Hamlet was at least a hair off. Stating the reason why there is evil in creation, finding an understanding of evil has baffled the thinkers of the Church throughout the centuries. Perhaps because it is of the very nature of Evil that it cannot be brought under the control or into the grasp of reason or understanding, either intellectual or emotional. It seems to me that Scripture offers not an explanation for evil, but a solution for or resolutions of it. "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." Our Lord and our God does not give us a command, an instruction, an advice that is not in the long run possible. That must be stressed: “In the long run.” He will overcome it. Love will overcome it in the end.

Human history our faith must trust is a process of victory, victory that was once and already won in Christ's resurrection from the dead. Evil subdivides topically or formally into natural and moral evil: the evil that is inescapable in our nature, our lives-that is, death, and the evil that we suffer from our fellow creatures and impose upon our fellow creatures, the worst consequence of which is also death. Christ's Resurrection was both the final victory and
the foretaste of that victory. The work of the Spirit, the life of the Church is the working out of that victory. Patience and trust are the virtues that outlast and overcome suffering. Courage and hope are the virtues that outlast and overcome injustice, tyranny, and murder.

In Christ the Word by which all things were brought into being, out of love for us and for all creation took on the form of our humanity--and of materiality and corporeality and temporality, subjecting Himself to the condition of creation out of love for creation, experiencing sympathy with creation because involved in its
limitation, gross imperfection, and suffering. He experienced the ultimate evil: non-being, death, and experienced with us persecution, derision, torture, pain and fear. Sheer Love, the force before and behind all Creation, raised Him from the dead, triumphed over death,
and the Spirit, filling the whole earth, has in the life of the Church--the life of human love and faith universally--begun the renewal, the healing, the resurrection of all creation as a sort of dialectical pattern expressing and enacting itself in history.

2009-10-27T11:03:00.001-07:00

Sunday, September 27, 2009
Letter to Athanasius, Canon Hart, 9/27/09
Philotate Athanasie,

I think you're aware of the degree to which synchronicities occur in my off-the-graph-Myers-Briggs-N life. In a way, it's been that kind of day. I am often quite amazed and amused by the subjects that cross my mind when waking. This morning it was the problem that has been raised in my mind a few times over the past week or so: what to do with certain artifacts in my possession that have strong sentimental portent. Among these are my great-grandfather's flute, which occupies a shelf in my living room. Near it (about which I'm about to write my favorite cousin) is the first book I ever received as a gift. Probably it was for my second or third birthday. It's a lovely book, although somewhat aged, though not much really weathered. I remember my mother's reading it to me often. It's quite beautifully illustrated. It's called Birds at Home--a children's "bird book." It hadn't occurred to me as I remember until I was looking at it recently, that there was a specific motive in the giver. I was sitting in her arms on the little porch the projected in classic grandiosity from a window of her quite elegant apartment. She lived there with her husband, "Dr. Frank," one of the two physicians, he the senior, the uncle of the other, Dr. Howard J. Hartmann, my godfather, for whom my mother had her first job, as their office nurse. Their office was immediately below Dr. Frank's home--a large office with two separate consulting rooms, a room between, two examination rooms, a small pharmacy and a small surgery, and a huge waiting room, furnished in the rather grand style Dr. Frank liked: Louis XV. I couldn't have been much more than two when I was taken in to Dr. Frank's dining room to be shown off to his guests, which that evening did not include my two proud parents: it was white tie. Dr. Howard and Helen lived in an adjoining apartment in the same building, smaller, and perpendicular to Dr. Frank's. There was another apartment building across a small court in the same style: something between Federal and Baroque: mahagony woodwork and concrete or masonry exterior windowsills, with curved, 18th Century ornaments (there must be a word for them). That's where my folks had their apartment at the time I was born and for two years thereafter, when they moved to Ft. Dodge. In the basement lived Oscar, the Afro-American janitor, of whom I have perhaps the vaguest memory, but I'm told I was his great favorite, and that he carried and rocked me a lot.

To return to the book, it was while being rocked on the little balcony, that I said my first words, "pretty birdy," somewhat to the disappointment of both my parents, who'd been pulling for either "mommy" or "daddy." But I was imitating "Aunt Martha," who had been saying those words while pointing out a robin or something. (I have tears now.) In any case, there's a robin on the cover of the book that Aunt Martha gave me, for the reason I now surmise. She had no children, and I was a favorite of hers. She was a great lady, "of the old school," with blue-tinted silvery hair. Pretty much of the same vintage as your lady wife. And I assume, not without some prejudice, my god-daughter. "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." But there IS something, as I believe Shakespeare knew. For which reason, if she should by any means care to have it, the book is Martha Hart's. I hope in time she'll have a little one to read it to.

Other odd facts: it was Dr. Frank, whose cabin at Lake Okiboji we used to visit, when Aunt Martha was still living, who, when he had retired to the home at Ft. Dodge, gave me for my h.s. graduation birthday the money I used for my trip to Oxford and Europe in grad school. He and Dr. Howard were, needless to say, STAUNCH Republicans (but, alas, lukewarm church-goers, though Dr. Howard and Helen were members of First Pres', Waterloo, where they oddly enough allowed the custom of having godparents--Feast of St. John, Evangelist, 1942.) The one next-door neighbor to whom I became most attached, incidentally, was named Becky.

I've been trying to work out some sort of "moral theology" to determine and evaluate the nature of thoughts, fantasies, and recreational activities. I've been re-reading, not without difficulty in comprehension, the definitions of "laxist," "rigorist," "probabilist," and "probabiliorist." My late dear Rector at St. Nick's, Encino, Evan Rowland Williams, D. Phil. (Oxon.) took his doctoral examinations and wrote his thesis in moral theology--of John Henry Newman, while he was serving as Chaplain to the Dean of Christ Church, after getting his B.D. while studying the same at Pusey House. This sort of moral theology was perfected, of course, by St. Alphonsus Liguori, whom Evan knew backwards and forwards. So I was thinking as I went to luncheon (or dinner--it's far too casual, but it is Sunday noon), "I wonder how many people just now are thinking of Liguori?" I got back to my room and turned to Google as I usually do, to find out what events, birthdays, and deaths occurred on September 27. Guess whose birthday (other than Cosimo de Medici and Louis XIII) today is? St. Alphonsus Liguori!

Over and out.

Happ+
Posted by Dacneus at 2:17 PM 0 comments

2009-09-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

Who do you Say … and Watch what you say, Teacher!”
A Sermon Preached at St. Nicholas’ Church, Encino,
Sunday XV post Pentecosten

St. Mark 8: “Who do you say that I am?”
St. James 3: “You know that we who teach will be judged with greater
strictness. For all of us make many mistakes.”

It is a great honor and pleasure to have been asked to preach to you of this beloved Parish of St. Nicholas’—St. Nick’s—today. Your gracious calling me here today to be present and participating in the blessing of Professor Mazzuchelli’s generous and beautifully hand-crafted gift--his hand-embroidered replica of an illustrated manuscript of The Beatitudes—is an honor of which I feel as unworthy as I am grateful for it. Vince and his close friend, John Thornbury, were of course, faithful members of this parish during some of my happy years here. As I write this sermon, I am all too aware of the difficulty I will probably have in giving it, for I am deeply moved by this occasion and this honor.

Ιt is also somewhat daunting to attempt to preach on this Gospel text, which is at the center of the very purposefully constructed narrative traditionally attributed to St. Mark. For although only St. Peter answers the question Our Lord poses, Jesus asks it in the plural—to all the disciples, as I believe he still asks each and all of us, “Who do you say that I am?” It is some relief to me to note his verb: who do you SAY [λεγετε] that I am? He doesn’t ask, “Who do you BELIEVE [πιστευετε] that I am? He is asking about orthodoxy in teaching—what we publicly confess and proclaim to be truth as fully considered and assented to—more than in honesty, sincerity, and integrity—either in momentary inward attitude or in habitual human complacency while attempting to teach. But it is his choice of verb when aimed at his disciples—those commissioned to evangelize—to spread his Gospel—that makes a preacher or professor nervous. St. James hardly helps the situation when he adds in his epistle, “we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Thus I prepared this sermon and step into this pulpit –hallowed by the teaching of predecessors in it--fully aware that I am asked, “Father Professor Canon Happ, who do YOU say that Jesus is?”

It was only Wednesday that I was asked to preach. When Father Maronde first told me of the parish’s intent to honor me, I supposed I would just be attending. My usual self-assertiveness came to the fore. I normally attend of necessity an early service that has no music. I thought I could at least satisfy my needs and tastes and leave something of a personal mark on the service by suggesting the hymns, and I was courteously granted that privilege. Some change of mind on my part and further discussion with your talented and equally courteous choirmaster led to some change in those hymns, but since I have long borne them in mind, I found that they represented stages in the Church’s history and in the development of my thought in terms of which I can set out my ideas.

Our processional hymn is not from The Hymnal of The Episcopal Church. I helped make it the official Hymn of the Class of ’68 at Presbyterian Princeton Seminary because it was ascribed to John Calvin, my great hero in those days. Just this year, Calvin’s Quinquecentennial, when asked by PTS what influence the Reformer has had on my life, I bluntly replied, that he had led me to The Episcopal Church. That’s partly because, like the Benedictine scholar, Fr. Kilian McDonnell, I think he believed in The Real Presence in The Eucharist. He did believe in at least weekly celebration of it. He represents the first and chief of what Blessed Richard Hooker asserted were the three authorities in Anglican theology and worship: Scripture, which takes precedence over Reason and Tradition. With St. Peter in today’s chapter from Scripture I say that Jesus is The Messiah, the Anointed One—the prophet, priest, and king prophesied in the Old Testament and expected and hoped for by the People of Israel and later and still today by the Church Catholic. (The professor in me is now compelled to interject that today we know that the hymn was not written by Calvin, but by some burgher of the French Reformed community in Strasbourg in 1551, whose name I’ve managed to lose record of; it is still my favorite, and was sung at my ordination to the priesthood and not by me at least since then.)

The second hymn I chose originally but in agreement with your good director later exscinded, WAS in the old hymnal but was similarly cut out of the new one: “Lead, Kindly Light,” by Blessed John Henry Newman. Newman was, as I remember, part of the subject of Fr. Williams’ Oxford dissertation and perhaps the chief founder of our Anglo-Catholic tradition. I hazard the guess that St. Nick’s is the only Episcopal church in this country that has put him—a later convert to the Roman Communion—in stained glass—mostly my idea some years ago. He represents the role Tradition plays in what we have to say about who Jesus is, for the Oxford Movement recalled us to the realization that there were disciples who proclaimed the Resurrection—and thus there was a Church—before St. Paul first testified to the Risen Christ in I Corinthians “in the early ‘50’s” [New Oxford Annotated RSV], and indeed, however Scripture may be granted priority to Tradition authority-wise, it was only through the gradual formation of consensus in the Church that The Bible, the Canon of Scripture, came to be recognized and constituted. Well before that The Apostles’ Creed, and scarcely later than that, the Nicene, were more deliberately and officially and ecumenically recognized by the Church as authoritative, and thus I can and do say in Her tradition that Jesus is “the only-begotten Son of God…of one substance with the Father…incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary” and all the rest.
I chose two further hymns by authors one can call “Liberal,” who died in 1959 and 1969 respectively, one, a devotee of “The Social Gospel” and an editor of the RSV, a student of 20th Century Biblical criticism, the other zealous in movements for women’s rights and pacifism, the brother of an Anglo-Catholic poet and theologian. They represent the authority of Reason in our Communion, a criterion Hooker placed as prior to Tradition. I’ve known and loved both hymns since seminary days.
It is, of course, with respect to the realm and scope of reason that I am obliged to try to speak to you this morning. Reason—our common human ability to achieve a shared understanding of reality through intelligible language—is perhaps uniquely acknowledged as authoritative by us in the Anglican Communion among Christians who also claim reverence for Scripture and tradition. (Wow. That was a difficult sentence for me to speak and perhaps for you all to understand; for some reason known only to itself, my computer’s “spell-check” underlined the whole sentence until I inserted, “of reality.” Now it has modestly and mysteriously underlined, “itself.”) Our tradition has quite consistently attempted to realize St. Anselm’s goal of “faith seeking understanding.”

In our culture today we are caught between two enemy camps: those who exhibit what the great scholar Richard Hofstadter characterized as “Anti-intellectualism in American life,” who in their professed caricature of faith prefer ignorance to understanding, and those who in seeking understanding reject faith. Among the latter group stands prominently my favorite comedian, Bill Maher, writer of the current film, “Religulous.” Maher has a laudable moral sense of the dangerous closed-mindedness of what popularly passes for religion, and a lamentable insensibility to real religion and a regrettable failure to understand the academic and philosophical concept of its universality as a human phenomenon: even atheists, agnostics, and Satanists have a religion or a religious dimension. Everyone necessarily acts; action presupposes choice; choice, values, and values are gratuitous: they cannot be derived from or justified by facts, by empirical knowledge: they are at base taken for granted, as given, in a manner analogous to faith.

Αt the beginning of the last century, the thought of the Church was preoccupied in its faithful quest for understanding who Jesus was, by what Albert Schweitzer called “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” Schweitzer concluded that through historical method we can learn only minimal facts about Jesus. More recently, in what is called, “The New Quest,” scholars have come to realize that through historical method, what in German is called, “Historie,” we can understand that the faith of the Church is itself an historical phenomenon. Thus Bishop Spong of Newark, who ably seeks to mediate between the world of scholarship and the mind of the Church at large, points out helpfully that the Gospel narratives were written, not as literal history, but as “midrash,” in the Jewish tradition of understanding the world by the means of holy Scripture and of extending and expanding Scripture in terms of the Scriptural tradition. Reason achieves understanding through knowledge of Scripture within the developing tradition of the faith of the Church.

When I was in graduate school I encountered the challenge reason seemed to present to faith—or my understanding of faith—in reading and hearing in lecture the philosophy of Jonathan Flew—“the world’s most notorious atheist,” an Englishman who at the time was Professor in The University of Oxford. Flew was in part a representative of the British “language analysis” school of philosophy that held that the traditional academic study of metaphysics—the attempt to understand reality through rational theory—was a vain enterprise: human knowledge consisted only of empirical science and the method of logic, a method in terms of which metaphysics, particularly any language about God, was inconsistent, self-refuting. Hence, I came to think that perhaps Bob Kolb, a Missouri Synod clergyman and scholar of Luther, a close friend since my early adolescence, was right in holding to Luther’s persuasion that faith and reason are finally antithetical, a position held by my equally close friend from that time on, Lanny Bell, an Egyptologist and committed agnostic. That was the position stated when last I knew him by my beloved Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, Victor Preller, of Princeton University, in his maxim, “Illusion, be thou my reality.” Vic was, when I knew him, a former monk and priest of The Episcopal Church who later returned to the Church and the priesthood.

Most recently, Professor Flew published in 2007 a book in which he revealed that he had “changed his mind” and argued brilliantly and to me convincingly in favor of “the argument from design” that he had long opposed, convinced within the continuing philosophical debate on the classic lines of argument on that subject. The title of his book appears at first glance to be, “There is No God,” but a closer look reveals that the “No” is crossed out, that the real title is, “There IS a God.”
Flew claims that his new belief is based on his up-to-date understanding of science: among other things, of astronomy, sub-nuclear physics, microbiology, and paleontology. He argues not only that there is in the known universe, not only an incredible complexity but also an intelligibility, a conformity, a parallelism that necessitates belief in a Supreme, transcendent Intelligence—God.

Beyond that, Flew emphasizes that the existence of the particular conditions on our planet earth are statistically highly unlikely, improbable, coincidental, and that this is true no less of the emergence of life and of human beings and intelligence through evolution, which implies design not only as a matter of form, rational and intelligible, but of will, of choice, of a Creator. He acknowledges that he is not himself a believer in any religious tradition, but he writes of the possibility of his being converted by a voice not his own, and states that of all religions, Christianity seems to him the most reasonable.
Since reading his book, I have come to think that reason and faith are not opposed, but congruent, as St. Thomas Aquinas and Bd. Richard Hooker had earlier persuaded me. It is not necessary but reasonable to believe that a benevolent God who brought into being our world and our human nature that seems to conceive a universal natural moral law and to set its highest value on human personhood, should reveal Himself to that personhood and draw it towards personal fulfillment in the knowledge of Himself through His Incarnation in history, that is, human self-knowledge through the story of its past, in German, Geschichte, rather than the academic study of the past, Historie, within the people and culture most aware and appreciative of God in its history (Geschichte), that is, in its midrash, its Scriptural tradition expecting the coming of a Messiah as such a person, such a Messiah—or Christ, as that word translates into New Testament Greek. “Who do you say that I am?” You are the Christ. That’s as much as I can say—in faith that I am not mistaken.

Consciousness and its Implications

2009-08-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

[A laboriously, dutifully, and painfully produced second expression or production of a thought mindlessly erased and ironically replaced on this machine by my semblance of a mind. Lammas, ‘09] 11:15 a.m.]

Consciousness and its Implications

The first reaction of human consciousness to itself should be wonder, followed by reflection and concluding in worship. But this is seldom the case. The reflection that consciousness when fully aware finds the idea of a transcendent Mind necessary, tends to be frightening, or at least daunting. (Tremendum, however fascinosum, necessarily a Mysterium.) What is even slightly fearful or troubling, like all disturbing experiences, consciousness tends to deny or repress and usually surrender to the Unconscious. It is only in happy occasional circumstances, that consciousness allows and stimulates itself to become reflective, imaginative, intuitive, conscientious, and aware—of itself, the world, and its Creator.

The Creed in the Liturgy?

2009-07-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

I of course had quite a different opinion about the matter sometime recently--this morning, I think, when hearing the Creed in its best context--arguable, perhaps, especially if one prefers Bach's--a Mozart mass--in this case, "The Coronation" (of the Virgin), K.? And then I recalled that the spoken mass only arose in the Church's history in what? the 8th Century??? Good question. My memory fails me--culpably. Of course in the Ancient period--even the "Christian Origins" one, I suppose, the "singing" would have been whatever sort of "chant" or "Sprechstimme" in or with which prayer presumably was made, as with the Psalms, the earliest Jewish liturgy, the Carmina of Catullus or Horace, the Iliad or Odyssey, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, the Shammaneh, etc., etc. The point is, the Creed originally had the quality of a poem or hymn--and, presumably in its being uttered, something of musicality or sonorousness, quite apart from whatever semantic freight it bore. As spoken only, it acquired more the character of prose--and eventually--in the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the late 19th Century (the age of Charles Hodge of PTS and later Fundamentalism) of literal signification--as it were, as an historical proposition. I wonder if such an idea was strictly conceivable or entertained until one of those periods. I have always thought that if said in Prayer Book English or Tridentine Latin (as opposed to Rite II, e.g.), it still has more a poetic, hymnic character--"as a piece of tradition that should be read" as historic, not historically, if I may be so bold. (Als Geschichte, nicht als Historie.) As tradition, perhaps even as historical theology, but not as systematic or philosophical. And in that way I THINK IT SHOULD ALWAYS CONTINUE TO BE SAID IN THE CHURCH IN THE EUCHARISTIC LITURGY. If Mozart included it, so should we. So wird es gesprochen worden! Sed contra.

cannibalism and The Eucharist

2009-07-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

What IS or was the source of the “Words of Institution”? Just certified to myself that only St. Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus saying directly, “eat . . .this is my body; drink . . . this is my blood.” Mark merely says something like, “do this,” although I think Jesus takes bread and wine, but as I recall he never says, “This is” or “Eat” or Drink.” Luke says of “the cup” “divide this among you,” but as I recall now—having read it in Greek moments ago, there is no direct “eat,” “drink,” or “this is.” St. John’s Gospel just refers to a meal or banquet (deipnon), and has Jesus wash the disciples’ feet. St. Paul, in I Corinthians (15th Ch?) has Jesus take the elements, but as I now recall from moments ago, he does not directly say of each element “this is” my body or blood or “eat” or “drink.” Are the Words of the Eucharistic blessing entirely based on St. Matthew? Interesting to do a bit of amateur Biblical criticism on that fact First, since the words are peculiar to Matthew and different from Luke’s version, they’re not from Q-Source but from the material proper to “Matthew’s” source, which was the most Judaic. Luke rather steers around it, Paul circumambulates his own way, Mark stops short of it, and John—the most “sophisticated, ignores it. What seems to embarrass or offend is probably what the original said. The words would seem to be Jesus’.

But then don’t we have from our Savior’s lips what seems not merely to smack of, but in fact to exonerate human sacrifice and cannibalism? That of course is what the “civilized” world has thought about—and fantasized and projected upon “primitive” cultures. But in fact apparently cultures that practiced human sacrifice didn’t extend the practice to actually dining on the sacrificial victims—at least that appears to be true of the Aztecs. And the Fijians, who apparently were cannibals, didn’t apparently practice human sacrifice. The ancient Israelites did, like most cultures that practiced animal sacrifice, dine on the meat of their victims. Thus the Israelites—or Hebrews—or modern Jews—ate or at least ceremonially eat—lamb. And one biblical theme at least is that Christ is the Lamb of God. Human sacrifice occurs very infrequently in the Hebrew canon. There’s the daughter of the priest who vows he’ll sacrifice the first thing he sees—can’t remember now the names of either priest or daughter—used to know it certainly. And there’s the king who is hacked apart—“Agag came delicately.” And there’s the case of cannibalism in extreme circumstances—starvation—the mother who persuades the other mother to offer her child as a menu item first, but then reneges and doesn’t contribute her own—Isaiah?? Jeremiah??

Other than those examples, I can’t think of any in Hebrew literature. Supposedly, according to popular lore, Christianity got the idea of eating the sacrificial human victim from Pagan sources. But I’m unable to identify them. Pretty sure they’re not Egyptian. Perhaps the source was Babylonian, less probably Persian. I believe there was at least one case of human sacrifice in ancient Greece—on one of the islands. But not, I believe, cannibalism. I can’t think of a case of cannibalism in Greco-Roman mythology—except for Kronos’ eating his sons. I’m thinking of asking John Gager.

If I’m right in thinking that the “cannibalistic” metaphor—or were I a strict Roman—the physics—of the “Words of Institution” HAD to have been Jesus’—or they would’ve been scrapped, as, except for St. Matthew’s Gospel, they were, and given that there would seem to have been no real cultural influence on the historical Jesus that would have determined his choice of words, they must have come from his Divine Nature or his human, historical imagination or unconscious. For the most part, cannibalism is unthinkable—save for a few kooks. Yet this kook remembers the idea entering his consciousness in very early childhood—from both parents. Mother, when kissing me repeatedly all over my body, would say something like, “I could eat you all up.” And Dad, probably some time later, when teasing me, would say, “I’m a big bear, and I’m going to eat you up.” And children’s stories—at least the adaptations of those from the Brothers Grimm—had that as a motif—as I recall, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” and especially “Hansel and Gretel,” where the notion of Hansel’s being kept in a cage, fattened up, and squeezed daily to see how fat he was getting—he held out A BONE that never seemed to gain fat—was particularly affecting. Were the Grimm stories ever told by Germans other than to children?

A second memory occurs. When I was a very small boy—hardly more than a baby, I was told by Mother that I bit her—hard—once on her breast and once on a plastic “pearl” pin she used to show me my tooth marks on. (Of course, “zu happen,” means, “to bite,” and “der Happ,” a little bite, a nibble, “ein Bisschen.” (sp.?)) Why should I have bitten Mother twice in the area of her breast, her chest? Because I used to nurse precisely there. (Nurse—nutrix—nutrition.) Presumably nursing—eating—is pleasure-full for infants—their stomachs are being filled, and they have the sense of touch, of being held, of intimacy with an other—mother—of being loved—and loving—at least of needing, wanting, clinging, depending. It must be an infant’s most profound and dominating, determining experience: Mother—God. And an infant must not immediately perceive the difference between nursing—sucking on the mother’s breast—and eating, taking nutrition—or at once between sucking and biting. How many babies bite their mother? I should suppose that most do. Loving and eating must be at first inseparable experiences. And indeed sucking, licking and nibbling are part of adult erotic experience. And so Jesus would seem to have anticipated and outdone Freud. He may well have anticipated “his Passion and precious death.” The Evangelists—the Synoptic-writers say that he did. But he also tied incorporation—eating and drinking—to the deepest and most primitive awareness of love and dependency and pleasure: our sense of Parent (how did “father” get in there?) and of God. The Holy Eucharist—“The Last Supper”--το δειπνον. Not bad thinking, Jesus!

Current thinking, Eve of Calvin's 500th anniversary

2009-07-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

Current theory of life/ theology:

1. The nature of the empirical universe implies a Transcendent Mind/Creator. (This is now conceded by Antony Flew--heretofore perhaps the most persuasive philosopher (English language analysis) arguing for atheism--not agnosticism, atheism.)

2. That much for a Mind or Transcendent Order behind the order. But existent within it are human beings--persons--some of whom organize their value system (and they all have values--one cannot NOT act, not choose, not prefer) around the idea--the conviction for some--that human PERSONS have the highest value. Some believe (existentialist atheists) that they simply choose to act with that value as their highest principle--regardless of the apparent meaninglessness of the universe--and some believe that the universe or the Cause behind, above and inherent within it has a personal character. This is truest of adherents to the three "Ibrahamic" religions. Of those, Christianity believes Reality revealed itself (Himself) as Personal, mindful of human persons, in a human person, Jesus. If Reality has a personal nature, it is reasonable to think that It would communicate Itself to persons, most effectively AS a person. If personhood implies valuing persons ultimately--as equal to self and for whom even self-sacrifice is necessary, the Christian Myth is at least probable. The enunciation--proclamation--of that myth--"the Gospel" IS historical. A life of faith (trust in the Source of life, attempting to realize justice=human equality, or at least, human personhood as one's highest value) is at least an option, if not an implicate of the reality of human personhood, perhaps THE implication.

3. The reality of Evil a.) natural evil--the reality that the given order of the universe includes or entails the negation of human value (death, suffering) and b.) moral evil--the reality that human persons, having consciousness of value and of human value--are free and able to act so as to negate that value--is difficult, to say the least, to reconcile with belief in a God who is good (cares for the good of human persons) and also omnipotent. But it seems probable that in creating human nature, He intended that it be expressed as fully as possible: that all humans, to a greater or lesser extent, be able and perhaps required to realize what seem the highest human values: trust, patience, recognition of and action in accordance with duty, courage, hope, and love, love to the extent of self-sacrifice on behalf of or for the sake of others. That would seem to be the purpose of the Personal and Moral Ultimate in His creation of the known universe.

(4. The reality of moral consciousness--of action according to duty--does not obviate or preclude as a perhaps essential human characteristic--Play--imagination and creativity outside the demands of conscience--even in action, if the actors act by mutual consent and volition, perhaps in play that violates duty. This of course involves the erotic.)

From the DIARY, a reflection

2009-06-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

Ceteris paribus (such as pain, or certainty of one’s impending death), subjective certainty is itself a comfort. Which is why the most “up tight” among us must be those accustomed to it are probably those half-consciously on the verge of doubt.

Diary Entry, Dominica Tertia post Pentecosten

2009-06-21T07:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 21
Third Sunday after Pentecost

“How long wilt thou go halting between two opinions?”

“O Almighty and all-loving God, Heavenly Father and Eternal, Incarnate, Crucified, and Risen Saviour, Jesus Christ, Thou Only-begotten Son, O Blessed Holy Spirit, Source of Light and Life, Co-eternal with the Father and the Son—O, All-Glorious Trinity, I humbly and gratefully and lovingly bless and thank Thy Holy Name for thy surrounding and preventing Grace that even when I tremble in confusion, pain and doubt on the brink of renouncing Thee, dost by gentle whispers and soft touches lure me back to the haven of thy bosom, with tears and tearings of my heart I thank Thee for the loving mysteries of Grace that have only just this troubled morning reached out to save me from doubt and despair and damnation. I see before me clearly at this moment the choice I must make between the path of thy love and obedience and that of taking pleasure in denying the dignity of others and indulging in cruel and domineering thoughts about and towards them. A door to that expression has been found closed. Let me see that it was by Thy Will that it is so, and help me keep that door closed, despite all appeals from friends and from dark sentiments within myself. Humble my false pride, I beseech thee, and lead me in the paths of righteousness for thy Name’s sake. All thanks and praise be to Thee, Alleluia.”

I thank thee, Father, by that mysterious grace that led me to choose as if by whim the music of this thy servant, the blessed composer whose music has now captured and rescued my soul. And I humbly take it that it is thy loving and assisting prayers, O blessed Mother, which even now this music calls forth, that have aided me in this time of peril. Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. Ave, Maria.

There must be a distinction made in sentiment and in practice between love and lust—and this must needs be true for Gay people—for males—as well as for others. Can a difference be made between the loving and the erotic? Or in erotic, between the celebration and adoration of the other and self-regard that can delight in the humiliation of another—or of one’s self? Can the humiliation of the human have any positive moral value? God knows all too well that it has or has had a strong appeal for me. Can human sexual expression and encounter avoid exploitation, especially as regards and the face of the beguiling and enticing attraction and beauty of human (in my case, male) nudity?
If there is or were a legitimate, God-intentioned purpose for or in such eroticism, how or should limitations be placed upon or set to it?
What is the relation or relationship, if any, between the ego and eros, between egotism and eroticism? Between eroticism and ethics? Eros and agape?

Retractio. St. Bede's Day, 2009

2009-05-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

“And when he came unto himself,” he said . . . “Father, forgive me, for I knew not . . .”
God be praised, I have come to some saving insight. I was dead wrong. My idea was satanic and blasphemous. I was calling Darkness, Light.
It would seem simple enough, but I—and I suppose we fallen humans—are inclined to be deceived or to deceive ourselves by imagining that we have discovered evil in one direction, that the opposite direction is good. We turn from ignorance and bigotry and self-hatred and repression and anger to false sophistication and moral laxity and self-seeking, self-centeredness, self-indulgence, lust, pride, and cruelty; from superstition, legalism, and pharisaism or moralism to indifference, irreverence, immorality and atheism.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Time for Evening Prayer. It’s St. Bede’s Day. Thanks be to God! (It’s still the Pentecostarion, Easter tide and Ascension tide.)

We also can exalt the general and the abstract---the universal—over the particular, the concrete, the historical, the Personal—the gracious and saving revelation of God in the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ---of an idea or ideal instead of The Face of Jesus Christ.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Miserere nobis. Amen.

"POST-COMMUNION MARIJUANA BRUNCH"

2009-04-18T16:43:00.000-07:00

(Composed after a post-Communion party at the home of parishioner of the Mission of St. Charles, King & Martyr, Northridge,, CA, ca. 1972-3. A Song Parody set to "Ascot Gavotte" from Lerner & Loewe's "MY FAIR LADY")

"Ev'ry swinging clergyman is here!
Ev'ry turned-on Anglican is here!
It's so ripping
Elegantly tripping
At the Post-Communion Marijuana Brunch!

There is smoking with decorum here
'Cause the vestry has a quorum here,
And no canon
Ever put a ban on
Smoking at a post-Communion brunch!

Rectors smoking,
Vicars toking!
Note our Verger:
He has never BEEN High-Churcher!

On the floor is half the Parish,
Sharing joints before they sit down to lunch.
So, politely
Tell the acolyte he
Still has time to roll another bunch!

O, the convent garden grass
Is noted for its strength
And its quality!
So, inhale one:
It's Episcopalian!
Just another way of taking tea!"

General Epistle #4

2009-04-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

The Rev. Prof. Canon Howard J. Happ, Ph.D.

Easter Wednesday, 2009

Dear Friends and Relatives, doomed to be recipients of my “General Epistles,”
My previous bad temper, aided and abetted by my having had not a wink of sleep night before last, has now been assuaged by a relatively pleasant day, seven hours’ sleep preceding it, followed at day’s end by the ingestion of a wonderful chocolate and walnut in nougat egg accompanied by Handel’s Concerto #2 in F Major, and so, following as usual the brilliant and inimitable example of my friend, Frank, I’m setting forth on what is, I estimate, #4.

I suppose that the formal heading of my stationery, which I found embarrassing when it reappeared in the address of the very generous and reassuring letter I received yesterday from The Presiding Bishop, is indeed pompous as the stationery’s owner and designer. One kind friend offered that my appearing such is merely the effect of my polar personality. Perhaps. But having engaged in a fairly serious Lenten self-examination, I have concluded—another friend said about this discovery, “What planet have you been on?” (i.e., that I hadn’t realized this sooner)—that, perhaps or even probably because of my being an only child, I am inescapably self-centered and self-indulgent and therefore lazy and thus demonstrably unproductive. No, I don’t really think I’m being “hard on myself,” as some of the more charitable of you insist. I think that, in opening, I’m opening up and just being honest. As you might ascertain, I haven’t as yet made it to confession and so am in a mood of preparation for it, having just chosen but not yet been able to come in contact with a new confessor.
I received in the mail today the CD of “Slumdog Millionaire” which I intend to view at long last—with a fellow inmate—tomorrow afternoon. The only other film I’ve seen in the past few months was “Milk,” which I enjoyed as much as I anticipate I will its superior in Oscar honors. Handed out tonight to a retired high school chemistry teacher, a fellow churchperson, Küng’s From the Beginning: Science and Religion, which perhaps I’ve said before is the best book I’ve read in years.

I told Sarah our Rector Saturday night that this year’s Triduum liturgy was the best and certainly the most affecting I’ve ever experienced. Like my dear friend and mentor the late Rector of St. Nick’s, Encino, I had long vowed I’d never participate in a foot-washing rite. But it turned out to be quite viscerally affecting, which is probably why this Episcopalian previously and most of the parish this year avoided such an event. I have always argued that the office belongs only to HRM. Even more affecting was our approaching at the Station, “Christ is Nailed to the Cross” a wooden cross and a collection of nails, one of which we were expected to drive into it. Doing so, and listening to the pounding of others was, as perhaps you are realizing, chilling—goosebump-raising. I thought as I made four resounding bangs, “I crucified Thee.” (From “Ah, Dearest Jesus”/”Herzliebster Jesu”) Similarly but not equally affecting was the placing of a taper nearby and a rose on the same nail-studded cross at the Veneration that evening. The Vigil and subsequent Paschal Mass were very beautiful. Not that I measure the validity of worship by its emotional effect. But it was historically, theologically and liturgically entirely proper in the first place. I congratulated all the clergy and meant to do the same for the choirmaster/organist and the choir and the very well-prepared and delivered readers. I think my coming to St. Francis’ providential. Given that three of its four clergy are women, I think there’s some evidence that, if it was not already evident, the same Providence has an ironic sense of humor. I said the same the previous Tuesday at the Cathedral’s Renewal of Vows service, where I encountered with great pleasure and no small pride a goodly number of my former students, now priests, all women.

I told again to quite a number, including one Suffragan, the story of my encountering in a dream a Native American woman, who merely stared—or glared—at me, until I awoke, almost bound in sweat-drenched sheets and, driving along the Pacific shore the next morning, realizing that my mind had been changed, my opinion reversed—perhaps my soul to a fuller extent converted. It could be regarded from a secular viewpoint as simply a deep unconscious resolution of a psychic conflict, but I have said I thought it the one extra-sacramental, direct operation upon me of The Holy Spirit. That was immediately following my having stayed up until nearly two a.m. trying to resolve a flaw in the argument against women’s priesting I had been polishing for almost three years, having earlier partly published it and orally delivered it at the regional A.A.R. Convention. It was fortunate I’d been a high school debater, since I had to deliver my argument—which I no longer supported—at the debate Bob Hart had invited me to at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City. I told this story to the good lady fellow-parishioner who drove me to and from the Vigil. She took both hands off the wheel to applaud—she is half Chippewa. Sang her--and Father Jim the previous night—The Post-Communion Brunch song, which I have since delivered to a chosen few here. Easter left me in high spirits!

This is I guess as thoroughly theological as I’ve ever gotten in one of these deliverances. I don’t beg to be pardoned by the some of you unsympathetic to all this, but I hope you will do so.

(Wish I could have adjusted the frame of this typescript better.) That’s all, folks!

Howard+

On Five Texas girls' rendition of our National Anthem

2009-04-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

Bill Milisen, Jr., emailed, asking if a video of five under-twelve girls singing "O Say" at Texas Tech wasn't the best I've heard.

Well, Bill, I will grant that it was very impressive--positively--in many ways. (You DO know whom you were aiming this at, don't you?) But I don't and could hardly agree that I've never heard it "better performed." I will agree that none "has ever matched these voices." Um, when I took the Whatever it was Music Whatever test under Mr. Walker, he looked at me strangely and asked if I knew what "timbre" meant. I didn't exactly, and, since it's close to impossible to define exactly or in an easily comprehensible way, I'm not sure I do still--at least, not so I could communicate the idea clearly, but I think over years of listening to music, particularly vocal music, I think I've reached a practical apprehension of it. In any case, it turns out that, despite or perhaps oddly because of my very nasal voice, I turn out to have--or did--an extraordinarily high score on timbre appreciation: this was after listening to a whole series of juxtaposed voices singing the same note, violins playing the same note, etc. It was in that regard that these young ladies' voices at a couple moments caused me to cringe. Perhaps it's just regional prejudice that's operating. But to me the timbre of the average or representative Texas voice--or young girl's voice, for that matter--and this is from Texas Tech, not S.M.U. or the U. of Texas or Rice---in any case, it's not the Choir of King's College, Oxford--such a voice is far from the ideal. These young girls, as I say,caused me to cringe slightly. I'm something of a connoisseur of vocal music, and of vocal timbre. Of course, I've never heard the King's College Choir sing OUr national anthem. I have of course heard them sing theirs. And I've heard a few Met sopranos and perhaps a bass or tenor or alto from the same place sing ours. Remember that the tune was originally that for "To Anacreon in Heaven"--an Eighteenth Century drinking song; I would wish our anthem were "America the Beautiful."As anthems go--just for purely musical reasons, I prefer "Rule Britannia." It was written by Thomas Arne--about as good a composer as England produced in the Baroque period--my favorite period. He was of course eclipsed by Handel. But I don't recall that Handel,Bach or Mozart wrote a national anthem. Haydn,of course, did: "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser," which tune was later set to another, "Deutschland über Alles." Haydn's is I think unquestionably for musical reasons the best national anthem. For historical and ethnic reasons, I'm very fond of the last several mentioned, probably "God Save the Queen" ringing in tops for that reason, which is another reason why I prefer "America the Beautiful" to "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." But getting back to "O Say, Can you See," I would say that if Elizabeth Schwarzkopf ever sang it, that would be the one hardest to top--unless the King's College Choir or the Alfred Deller Consort or perhaps the New York Pro Musica tried it. You see, of course,as I hardly needed to have pointed out and have now amply demonstrated, besides being gifted with an ear for timbre, I am also by choice as well as perhaps by destiny, a thoroughgoing snob--musically at least. Miss Everson really scored. Or as my friend Klaus would say (I can almost hear him)--himself a musicologist (Renaissance & Mediaeval--we roomed together at U. of Chi as well as sharing the Honor Dorm at Cornell)--"My GOD, you mean to say you asked HAPP--THAT??

Did you send this question to your revered sister? You might send her my reply. I think she would be amused, as I hope you have been.

Incorrigibly,

Howard+

I think I'll slip a copy of this into "Happsblog" (dacneus.blogspot.com). It's me (well, it is I, properly) at my MEest. Or as a lady who recently told me never to say a word to her again ("He's SO into himself") or as Klaus would say and has many times, "pompous ass." When I asked my friend, Seligman, a soph when he lived next door at Princeton, if I am indeed that "into myself," he said, "What planet have you been on that you don't know that?"

On Christian Observance of the Seder--email to Klaus

2009-04-02T22:05:00.000-07:00

Just happened to sit down to read this, your latest. I have to get picky. Christianity doesn't have what I suppose might be called the same logical--or perhaps historical will do--relation or relationship with each and every other religion. Celebration of a holiday amounts to a recognition of its religion, thus its truth-claims and/or its ethical principles or practices, presumably related integrally to the former. Some acknowledgment or acceptance of a holiday would seem in most cases proper, at least the allowance of its observance by its adherents, not only because of the right to freedom of religion, but also because a religion is an acknowledgment of an Ultimate Reality and thus shares a common faith. In saying that, of course, I depart from historic Christianity and the Ibrahamic tradition of God as a "jealous God," forbidding worship of "any gods before me." To some extent I have committed apostasy by accepting the Western post-Enlightenment culture and its sociological and philosophical understanding or definition of religion--the basis of "civil religion." Excluded from such a recognition would be observance of, for example, an Aztec holiday, since acceptance of human sacrifice would be inconsistent with the recognition of human dignity--certainly right to life for non-capital criminals--that is essential to Christianity and perhaps to any faith that can be regarded as legitimate. The caste system makes Hinduism suspect in this regard.

The close similarity of the Ibrahamic religions would seem to make some acknowledgment of--perhaps participation in or at least presence at some of their holiday observances unobjectionable and perhaps, as you suggest, even proper--a matter simply of civility towards "cultural, if not religious peers." Perhaps even "religious peers." An exception might be made for that one Muslim festival that involves camel sacrifice. Judaism and the Jewish community and its holidays would seem to call for even more recognition and even sharing--at least by presence if not participation, for if Islam is essentially an off-shoot, development, or even descendant of Christianity, Judaism is certainly its ancestor or progenitor. Thus some observance by Christians of Rosh Hashanah and/or perhaps Purim would seem proper, perhaps for religious as well as civil or civic reasons.

But observance of Pesach--as observants, as distinguished from guests and witnesses--is an entirely different matter, for it would involve a theological contradiction for Christians, a violation or at least an ignoring--alas, a not improbable ignorance of Christian faith and Christian understanding of Biblical teaching about the essence of the relation between Old and New Testaments or Covenants, between Law and Gospel, and most seriously between the sacrifices of the Temple and the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross, between the two Paschal lambs, i.e., paschal lambs and The Paschal Lamb, Agnus Dei. That might not be so entirely the case if Church tradition had not so entirely come to understand Jesus' Last Supper and Crucifixion as it has done, following principally St. Paul and St. John's Gospel more than the Synoptics. I studied Jesus under Prof. Joachim Jeremias of Göttingen, who argued, first among others, I think, that the Last Supper was not the Seder, but a chavurah meal--one shared by a rabbi and his disciples, and thus an all-male meal. That fits with the Johannine chronology of the Passion. The "Last Supper" did not fall on the Passover. That is at least historically probable--perhaps more than that. But the Johannine narrative and its theology of the Atonement, following and perhaps expanding upon St. Paul's and the later deutero-and trito-Pauline letters, not to mention Hebrews, has entirely eclipsed the significance of that possibility or perhaps probable fact. The Christ of the Canon of Scripture trumps the historical Jesus. At least for this Christian, who calls himself that by virtue of the Grace of his baptism--hardly by the example of his faith or behavior. And certainly not his imagination.

This is to repeat what I said in my homily at Evening Prayer this afternoon. It is through The Church that we receive and read Scripture.

ONE TEXT AND FIVE PARADOXES

2009-04-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

I Corinthians 3: 3b, “ . . . for are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? 4. For when one says,’ I belong to Paul,’ and another, ‘I belong to ‘Apollos,’ are you not merely human? . . . 11. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ.”

1. If I’d followed my human inclination, I’d have drawn your attention to paradoxes: the imagination of John Donne, who sought one foundation: “Show me dear Christ, thy spouse, so bright and clear”—“does she on one, on seven, or on no hills appear?” By seeking one foundation, I’ve found paradoxes—through human inclination: conscious scholarly approach and unconscious intuition.

2. In seeking to recover my unconscious intuition through conscious intention and concentration—typing outline and setting alarm-- I’ve been drive to distraction –trying to type outline and turn off alarm, thus forced through conscious intention and concentration to recover unconscious intuition.

3. In relying on one foundation, one Christ in Scripture, I’m inclined to use the lectionary of the Episcopal Church—or at least one branch of it, and thus don’t’ use the Office Lectionary but a eucharistic lectionary, not from the Eucharistic lectionary but from Lesser Feasts and Fasts, which directs us not so much to Christ and Scripture but to a human, in this case, James Lloyd Breck, who in searching for one foundation, established a tradition some regard as serving human inclination—Nashotah House (also Seabury>Seabury-Western.)

4. Generally, Christian attempts to move from human tradition to Scripture, from many denominations to one Church, have resulted in producing many more traditions or churches, new traditions.

5. Attempts to find the one foundation, Jesus Christ, have led to the discovery of human inclinations: Christ through Scripture, Scripture through Church. Paul’s non-Scriptural vision of Jesus Christ, the Gospels’ traditions (sayings of Jesus or of the early churches, Synoptic and Johannine, epistles not Paul’s; Scriptural unity through confessional tradition.

We find the ONE FOUNDATION, JESUS CHRIST, through his Grace by which we are saved, even and perhaps necessarily in our human inclinations.

Letter to Chaplain Sara--on Canterbury's "Seder"

2009-03-30T22:27:00.001-07:00

Dear Sara, (Am I right to omit a terminal h?)

As I look at my schedule for the immediately approaching week, I note that I've written in my appt. book for Wednesday, April 1 (Bd. Frederick Denison Maurice, the anniversary of my confirmation), "4pm, Seder." May I confess to you my mixed feelings and thoughts about that? On the one hand, it's entirely commendable of our chaplaincy to provide a Seder meal and ceremony for the Jewish residents here. It seems reasonable to suppose that there are few if any who have families whose homes they can still attend, if ever they really did. I append that last clause because at my table recently one member of a Jewish couple who may be attending our seder--largely I think out of courtesy and gratitude to you--made a smirking (!) comment to the effect that they hadn't observed the practice in years (did he say, never?) This indicated a matter of principle or conviction (or lack of it) on his part. On the one hand, in this couple's experience, I find that reaction entirely understandable, however regrettable from what would be my standpoint,were I Jewish. At the same time, I felt affronted. "Put off" would perhaps be more exact with regard to emotional tone. From what I know of the very few Jews here, I'm not at all sure that this attitude was at all atypical. I know it's not in one other notable case. Certainly the great majority of "Christians" here are pretty much of the same mold. Hardly excluding a number of Episcopalians. (I omit "" because that behavior/attitude is not, unfortunately, atypical or alas even contradictory to the group so named.)

Thus I wonder if it isn't perhaps true and certainly ironic if so, that perhaps the larger number of persons who will attend the seder with good--if not traditionally characteristic--motives, won't be Gentiles and very probably Christians. That leads me to set forth my attitudes towards Christians' observing the Seder. On the one hand, when done from the motive of showing good will towards Jewish friends and acquaintances, it seems laudable. Ideally that is done as I have twice in my life done it, with a family of Jewish friends in their home on the actual Seder. I wonder if it could not be similarly done here--for really devout Jews on the proper day as it were in their homes--or as close to such as can be--rather than on a day inappropriate for them--and apparently done partly at least as sort of educational experience for non-Jews. The latter option seems to me minimally valuable because to some extent at least, inauthentic. Finally there is in some cases--perhaps on the increase--the practice by some Christians, using the term broadly and charitably, of their celebrating the Seder--or a seder or sort of seder--as some sort of Christian expression, adoption or adaptation. That I believe is mistaken and utterly wrong-headed--contradictory to--do I mean, "contrary to"?--Christian understanding and belief. Ganz unheilsgeschichtliche!!!

Well, I've sounded off, as I felt compelled to--and often in the past have. I will of course show up, as I've signed myself down to do. I've debated what to wear. I've pretty consistently come down on the side of wearing
my clerics--as a Christian acting explicitly from the motive of showing interfaith good will.

Have missed seeing you at all recently.

Yours in Christ--in friendship and collegiality,

Howard+

General Epistle #3

2009-03-28T22:01:00.000-07:00

The Rev. Prof. Canon Howard J. Happ, Ph.D.

March 28, 2009

Dear friends,
What moves me this evening to undertake another general epistle—beyond the admiration I have for a friend who writes one weekly on Sundays from Washington, DC—is the growing realization that my brain is decaying, and that it’s probably the case that with the progress of time you will all witness the regress of my abilities in writing.
My referring to my brain’s rather than my mind’s powers is due to the influence of the best book I’ve read in some years—which I’m pondering buying a copy of for reference—Hans Küng’s, The Beginning of All Things: Science and Religion (2005, German; 2007, English), which I’m returning to the parish library tomorrow morning—or intending to, anyway. Since my last year in seminary, I’ve thought Küng—a Jesuit—one of the world’s top theologians, and now I think him probably the best. He’s notoriously not in favor with the Pope. I’m amazed that they exist within the same church. Fortunately, he’s solidly on the faculty of The University of Tübingen. It’s not easy going, but it is remarkably readable.
It’s really surprisingly brief. It’s an overall philosophical theology: an argument for a worldview consistent in and with and finally dependent upon the reality of God. Or perhaps “existence of God” is in its light a still more proper term, for it posits a physics and an anthropology/biology that rejects dualism (body/spirit//mind/matter). There’s a
2.

proper philosophical term for that (besides monism), but I’ve forgotten it. Perhaps “panentheism” comes close. That’s not a viewpoint readily congenial to this habitual Platonist, but Küng’s presentation is convincing—and certainly informative.
My mind (I think ordinary language will not easily change) is no longer capable of retaining and summarizing all the book’s ideas in detail—or even really any of them adequately—but I could adequately assimilate its essential teaching—as could my good friend, Jane, here. I strongly recommend it to all of you. It’s very much a review of knowledge: physics, mathematics, logic, set theory, cosmology, evolutionary theory, history or theory of religion,
Christian theology, and Biblical criticism. That’s as much of a
book review as I’m going to give or am probably capable of giving.

(Not atypically, while I was writing/typing the last sentence or so, I was also engaging in phone conversation with my new masseur, who says he enjoys talking to me. At the same time I was fussing unsuccessfully with the typescript this computer-whatever produces. It insists for some reason on underlining the “Christian—criticism” phrase above as well as the word, “book” in the next sentence. This sort of thing frustrates me immeasurably, as will not I suppose surprise many of you.)

I am increasingly concerned that our world, particularly our nation, is becoming more and more divided into discrete and often hostile “knowledge universes,” especially because we all use very disparate information media, each of us, or each set, quite selectively and often exclusively. That doesn’t imply that I am thinking of broadening my own readership or 3.

television habits. Is there a solution?

It does seem that this nation is drifting more an more towards becoming a corporate state—one dominated by an economically super-privileged and correspondingly dominant elite. There has been some persuasive criticism of President Obama’s administration for what would seem its continuing policy favoring and reinforcing certain established political-economic institutions. My failing mind knows it was given the preeminent example and that it can’t recall it. Pardon me.
I am very much inclined to question as well our strengthening our present position towards Afghanistan. I really wonder if our attitude towards the Islamic world doesn’t work overall to alienate it. Charlie Rose—whose show you know I regard as oracular—had on a really almost expressionless, affectless military/administrative bureaucrat last night who was fully committed to strengthening and lengthening our military commitment towards Pakistan/Afghanistan (they were thus linked). He turned me off. Possibly it was just an irrational reaction on my part.

I would seem to have come to the termination of my career as a clergyman, however I retain my character as a priest. I had to let the good chap who takes me with him to the cathedral and lets me celebrate there, that I have come to be uncomfortable with his driving, and the local parish has made it clear that they don’t want another vested figure up front. So they never ask me to read Scripture. I find this painful. I did write the Presiding Bishop urging her not to go to the meeting of prelates the Archbishop of Canterbury has called. I think he’s trying to create a new authority sui generis motu proprio. (Seldom can I manage to do that.)
4.

If the English Reformation established any practical principle, it’s that the mind of the Church is best exercised within a discreet and coherent cultural framework. It doesn’t really work to try to express or create some kind of trans-national consensus that is both detailed and coherent. That is, such trans-national agreement tends to be repressive. The Vatican is one example. A supposed Anglican “covenant” would be another.

That would seem to be this week’s encyclical. I really would like to hear back from more of you---or from at least some of you, more at least than the happy few who do write or call.

I assume that some of you at least are awaiting with happy expectation the return of “The Tudors” to Showtime on Palm Sunday. I rather hope you’ll think of me while watching it.

We used to call tomorrow “Passion Sunday” as opposed to the Sunday of The Passion. I did try to remember in my prayers the happy few of you who worshipped last Sunday in rosis.

God’s blessings to all,

Howard+
The Rev. Prof. Canon Howa

2009-03-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

The Rev. Prof. Canon Howard J. Happ, Ph.D.

“The Canterbury”
5801 W. Crestridge Road, 115B
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275
Bd. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, 2009

The Most Rev. Katherine Jefferts Schori, Ph.D.
Presiding Bishop and Primate
The Episcopal Church
815 Second Avenue
New York City, NY 10017

Most Reverend Madam:
I am presuming upon your good nature to express a strong concern that I have registered with my bishop, Jon Bruno+, which he suggested I relay to you. I have had the privilege of meeting you—and properly kissing your ring, as I was taught by a former rector, the late Evan Rowland Williams, D.Phil., Oxon., to do—at our Los Angeles diocesan convention last December.
2.

I have a serious request to make that I am sure is unusual, irregular, and will most probably seem extremely forward: that you not attend the meeting to which The Archbishop of Canterbury has invited the prelates of The Anglican Communion for I believe some time next summer. I do so because I believe your presence would give to the assembly the implication of a moral and ecclesiastical authority that such a meeting, one I believe unprecedented in Church history and not provided for in any previous convocation, should not have. For I fear such a meeting might authorize or at least further the creation of a “covenant” among the constituent churches that would seek to bind them to a conformity in doctrine and/or practice not consonant with Anglican tradition.

I fear further that such an assembly of primates might additionally or otherwise formulate and perhaps ratify by vote an opinion harmful to and damaging to the interests of gay persons, some of them Christians and some Episcopalians. I fear that such an action might seek to forbid or at least delay the consecration of gay bishops and/or the blessing of gay marriages. I am

3.
afraid that such a possibility would be harmful even though you should dissent from such an opinion, as I would expect and hope you would.
I am moved to express my opinion in this regard chiefly because I am gay and having lived a celibate life, due to my age and background, have not known the fulfillment I might otherwise have, and want future gay persons to be able to know that fulfillment, both emotionally and vocationally. I have given a great deal of thought and consideration to this matter, both as an individual and as a former member of the Bishop’s Commission on Theology and Ethics and of The Center for Sex Research of The California State University at Northridge.
I think that at this time there is a real opportunity both in the Church and in the nation for recognizing the full humanity of gay people as has not been the case in the past and may not be in the future and certainly will not be in any reasonable time should our Communion wait upon the consent of its Evangelical base in Africa and elsewhere. I joined my parish congregation this morning in praying for The Bishop of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I very much prize the unity of the Church. At the same time I think that if our English Reformation realized
4.
any truth, it was that conscience and consciousness are very much conditioned by national identity, and that the Church should not try to impose a false unity across cultural lines. Within our own situation the realization of justice must take a higher priority than institutional unity.
I humbly thank you for your gracious attention to so long a letter as this.

Yours respectfully,

Howard J. Happ, Ph.D.+

On Goldberg's characterization of Moyers et al.

2009-03-14T01:18:00.000-07:00

I've now read the chapter on Moyers. I've decided to read the rest of Goldberg's book. Not because, as was the case with BIAS, I think he's fundamentally on the right track, but because I begin to see his rhetorical strategy, which is very clever, but I think unfair. I clearly need to read the whole book to gain a proper perspective. My first and most immediate impression of what's going on, not only with the "liberals" Goldberg is pillorying but with the "conservatives" he would appear perhaps to be identifying with, but I don't think is quite, is that polarization has led both sides, both poles, to adopt an extremism in their rhetoric that's all too typical of this country--and arguably, of humanity. Armstrong put her finger on it this evening. She was arguing for compassion--the ability to identify with one's opponents in one's imagination and to understand their viewpoint and the circumstances that combine to produce it, especially to understand how they are reacting to pain and hurt. Instead of that, she argued, people--even good people, and here she offered herself a few years ago as an example, simply discharge rage against those with whom they differ, which only hardens their opponents in their opposition, i.e., is counter-productive. I think that Goldberg has been very hurt and tends to react to those with whom he disagrees in much the same way. I take it that the man is essentially a liberal himself with regard to his basic beliefs and attitudes, but feels, justifiably in the cases he cites in BIAS, that he has been harmed by them, apparently because they are thinking and expressing themselves defensively, reactively, sometimes as paranoid--or close to it. I think he could line up a number of "conservatives" and exhibit expressions and behavior of the same kind--possibly and I think probably--still more extreme. Goldberg I think--as charitably as I can-- is reacting--over-reacting to those he has felt closest to. There does seem to be a phenomenon in this polarized situation of over-criticizing and reacting against one's own side more than against the other side. An example would be regarding the ill treatment--to put it mildly--of the Guantanamo prisoners as worse than the beheading of an American soldier. Quite obviously Goldberg is right. Beheading is worse than torture. But one expects beheading of the Arabs. One is shocked by torture from Americans, and protests more loudly in the latter case, or at least equates what are not really equal offenses. Similarly Goldberg, rightly faulting the hurtful excesses of the polarized, paranoid left, FOCUSES UPON THOSE OFFENSES, citing egregious cases and ignoring others, and not treating of the unfortunately equivalent faults of the right. In the chapter on Moyers he cites only a few examples and passes over what perhaps--I think certainly--is the more typical and prevalent moderate behavior on his part--this evening's, for good example. Polarized opinion and immoderate rhetoric seems to characterize our nation's situation over the recent--and not all that recent past and the present. Moyers, himself at least a moderate if not a liberal on most subjects, has reacted more strongly against the offenses of the left than of the right--because it was the left that stabbed him in the back. That the cases Goldberg cites are real, I don't deny. That they are altogether typical or prevalent, I question. That they are altogether mistaken, I very much doubt. Bush has perhaps been grossly maligned. I still think he is demonstrably one of the worst Presidents in history. And the behavior of the banking elite and its allies has now demonstrably run not only this country but the world into disaster. And the blindness and selfishness and insensitivity involved can not all that unreasonably be construed as a sort of conspiracy.

Two Definitions of Democracy

2009-03-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

This maniac {Ken Starr} points up the classic problem with defining and realizing and maintaining democracy. Does it mean rule by "the people"="popular sovereignty"=unlimited power (over a minority) by a majority--of the populace, of the citizenry, of the legal voters, of the actual voters, of the functional power elite, OR does it mean a government that in principle is pledged to maintain certain absolute rights for each individual under its jurisdiction? There is the subsequent problem of how those rights are to be known or defined and by whom they are to be defended. It has been traditionally argued and believed that such knowledge and definition comes by revelation from God
and or from natural law as discoverable by reason. The immediately subsequent problem is, by whom that revelation or rational apprehension is to be received or transmitted, and how that is known. The Founding Fathers thought that a practical solution was a constitution that distributes powers among different government institutions, finally leaving power to make and define laws in the hands of a legislature of which more than a simple majority is required to do s

The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality

2009-03-05T22:29:00.000-08:00

The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality

The notion that homosexuality is a defect to be remedied or a disease to be cured is no longer accepted or even entertained by educated contemporary Christians. Condemnation of homosexual behavior in the Bible, whether from Levitical texts expressing Post-Exilic Hebrew or emerging Jewish ideas of identity in terms of ritual purity in the Old Testament or Pharisaic survivals of the same in the New have no moral or theological authority in the light of contemporary Biblical critical method and historical and anthropological knowledge or in The Light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “Scripture” cannot be cited as authority in the precise sense in which it was by Hooker or Calvin or Aquinas or Augustine.

3/5/09 10:27 PM

To "Father Bob"

2009-03-01T22:34:00.000-08:00

I just dropped a letter to a Quaker friend due to an overwhelming sleepiness. I was lecturing him on the political side of human nature. Let me take some needed time (sleep) in responding to you in full, but say in the meantime that what I and I think ECUSA is aiming for are some real, political ends and goals--equality for gay (Lesbian, etc,etc.) people. All sorts of realities may be relevant to that end--the belief and practice of ECUSA and churches abroad in union with her. Unity obviously admits of degrees--some having to do with matters of practice and practicality--ethics and legality. I firmly believe we are in unity with The Roman Communion--spiritually, to some extent and degree--with Quakers as well. However, details involving laws and institutional order do bear upon matters of degree. The degree of unity between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Uganda or Nigeria or, I guess, Argentina, has some practical and political relevance to the political and practicable reality of marriage equality between persons and citizens or subjects in the USA, The United Kingdom, Canada, and elsewhere. The intentions of the ABC and other primates and bishops towards the structures involved in The Anglican Communion bear strongly upon the degree and character of unity therein, and that has to do to some extent with the probability of obtaining justice here in the USA. The understanding of unity in the Mind of our historical Lord and/or His Resurrected Presence in the Holy Trinity and with The Holy Spirit clearly has relevance and importance in these considerations, but again it seems a matter of degree and political practicability. In political reality, the attainment of justice here and in other places has a probability related to but in some practical tension with institutional unity, national and international. At the highest level of Reality, the Unity of the Church is attained. Politically and practically at the level of historical reality, the question is, whether justice should be delayed for the sake of a degree of institutional unity greater than that which at present exists, or which is possible in future, or which may really be desired. I believe that for the sake of real institutional justice here in the USA and I would hope in the UK and elsewhere, a higher degree of institutional ecclesiastical unity should be sacrificed. That this would not be fully in accord with The Mind of Christ must be conceded. I suspect it had to be so conceded even in the time of The Apostles.

Bill Maher's Antipathy to Religion

2009-02-25T12:54:00.001-08:00

On Bill Maher’s Antipathy to Religion

[Ken objects to Maher’s attacks on and unfairness to religion]

I entirely agree, of course. I always have. But I think I gather correctly that this writer agrees with me that although Maher ought to (at least) shut up about religion, his wit in other respects deserves and commands appreciation. At least that's where I stay. I'm inclined to pity Maher: something really painful must have happened to him to set him off against religion--or God--to so great a degree. Something in my temperament or experience, probably in my education, has inclined me to bend over backwards, as it were, to allow the negative its place. I have to point out, for example, that some philosophy at least has stated the view, not inconsistently or entirely without reason, that there is not and cannot be, an "objective ground" for morality. One cannot get to "ought" from "is." Some existentialists claim that one chooses to do good absolutely freely--almost or perhaps exactly as an arbitrary choice. To me that makes no sense. To have the faintest or foggiest notion at all of "good" or of "ought" is to have an idea that is independent of one's own creation. At some level, being, consciousness, and choice imply God. There are certainly problems with belief in God or an absolute. There is certainly the powerful, almost overwhelming problem of evil--both natural or ontological and moral. But (I think) there are more problems in denying any reality at all to value, and if any value has any reality . . . that suggests something like the concept of Good or God (capitalized, because somehow necessarily unique and absolute.) But there is the logical possibility of negation--and a human necessity of at least abstractly conceiving it and a right to assert it--a right to deny, to say, NO!

It is wrong that Maher gets away with so much shoddy thinking--or non-thinking. Too bad, really, that he is not made to face up to his shortcomings. He is in charge of his show, and he has the advantage of being able to get around a great deal. Nonetheless, he has a great deal of talent in his wit and seems clearly right in many of his judgments about both truth and goodness--at least sometimes in his politics and aesthetics. That rather unique and singular talent or ability has its attractiveness and commands some affection, enough for some people at least to overlook his failings in order to enjoy his virtues. What is to be regretted is the degree to which a large amount of his admirers apparently side with him in his erroneous judgments because they have experienced the same sort of alienation. I would guess that a lot of parents have been oppressive and ill intended even when they have been right, and that for many people resentment is a more powerful force in their lives than reflection, the expression of anger more pleasant than the realization of truth. God help us.

To Bishop Bruno on The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality

2009-02-25T12:44:00.000-08:00

Out of an unaccustomed but somehow strikingly clear sense of duty I am communicating to you a new and urgently pressing persuasion that I have very recently been brought to, to some extent to my own surprise. Since late December, when I believe I received an electronically inserted message from a bookseller, I have been working at or on a review of THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION AND HOMOSEXUALITY, a quite recent publication (2008) of the S.P.C.K., put forth by The Anglican Consultative Council, not without the knowledge and approval, I suppose, of His Lordship’s Grace of Canterbury. After much wrestling with an attempt at a review, I came rather irresistibly to a perception and persuasion that I set down and communicated to Fr. Jim Newman and two other close priest friends I have known since we all came to The Church together during our days at The Princeton Theological Seminary. Since then I have received a response only from Jim, who indicated his agreement with me that justice has a higher value than unity. Perhaps pending a response from yourself, I am considering sending my opinion to our Presiding Bishop, whom I had the honor of meeting at our last diocesan convention. Please allow me simply to copy my text from my computer.

The book, THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION AND HOMOSEXUALITY, is of obvious importance and relevance. At its beginning, the editor relates that a bishop in Uganda and one in New York both believe that a firm resolution of the question involved is essential to their mission. But of course they believe in opposite resolutions. The book is written in the hope and expectation that real “listening” in the context of a shared faith will result in one. My present firm but very reluctant conclusion, is that that hope is a profound delusion. It rests on a conception of “The Anglican Communion” that is a mistaken survival of The British Empire—one cherished, unfortunately, by The Archbishop of Canterbury, among many others.

In this present, real, historical, “Fallen” world, the ideal Unity of the Church and her several members’ fidelity to her Mission are in practice irreconcilable. Justice is a higher value than unity. Justice demands, though it may not readily receive, immediate fulfillment. In human reality, justice is necessarily conceived in a framework of morals or ethics and realized, so far as is possible, in one of laws and institutions. In the history of the Church two legal institutions, the Roman and British Empires, made a common Christian moral framework conceptually possible, if not fully practicable. Neither empire was ever perfect; both have expired. The moral delusions of The Roman Catholic Church are due to her failure to realize the first fact. “The Anglican Communion” has in the recent past issued moral pronouncements in a similar delusion. It stands in very present danger of continuing to do so. “The Anglican Communion” is itself a delusion. There is in fact no common moral or legal—or cultural—framework within which it can operate as one practicable institution.

If The Episcopal Church in the United States or The Church of England or any of the Anglican churches in the modern West seriously intend to further the cause of justice to homosexual persons (or to other than heterosexual persons), they must disabuse themselves of the notion of an “Anglican Communion.”

How can our Presiding Bishop be persuaded of that before she lends credence to that notion by attending the convention of presiding bishops intended by the Archbishop of Canterbury?

No Empire, No "Communion"

2009-02-23T01:09:00.000-08:00

A Preliminary Question

2009-02-18T22:02:00.000-08:00

A Preliminary Question

After beginning for a bookseller’s website a review of the book, The Anglican Communion and Homosexuality: A resource to enable listening and dialogue (Ed., Philip Groves. Copyright: The Anglican Consultative Council, 2008. Great Britain), the troubling implication of the “Introduction” to the third chapter, “The Witness of Scripture,” led to postponement of completion of what was intended to be a fairly conventional, intentionally objective and unbiased summary of the book’s contents, to call attention to what seems the underlying assumption of the book’s editor and perhaps some of its writers: that regardless of whatever “listening and dialogue” about its subject its readers might engage in, an oncoming meeting of the different national presiding bishops of the Anglican Communion—and a probable vote by that body--will in and of itself determine for some time the attitude and action of that Communion towards the subject of homosexuality and the several issues it raises for the Church. That apparent prior assumption raises a still prior question: whether The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church in The United States of America ought to participate in that probable meeting? Upon further more concentrated reading of that “Introduction,” this would-be reviewer is compelled to answer with a solid and unyielding, “NO!”

Thoughts on Self-Expression, Communication,Blogs

2009-02-01T08:31:00.000-08:00

Thoughts: Consciousness—Self-Consciousness—Attention—Reflection—Expression, Self-Expression—Retention//Communication. The Possibilities of Communication Today. The Economics and Etiquette of Communication. The Limitations of Time—One’s Own and Others’. Effort—Possibility and Limitations—Convenience. Others’ Convenience and Inconvenience.

Pleasure and Annoyance. Pleasure in Convenience, Annoyance in Inconvenience. The Economics of Attention and Information. Activity and Passivity in Information and Communication. Choice and Convenience in Communication. The Annoyance of Inconvenient and Involuntary or Un-chosen Communication. Giving Pleasure to Others, its Desirability. Annoyance of others—its Avoidability. Priority: not to Annoy above giving pleasure. Presumption: that one will not annoy, beyond that, that one will give pleasure. The Presumption in Use of the Telephone, its Possible or Probable Inconvenience. The relative Convenience of the Internet. The Relative Inconvenience of Mail and Internet—roughly equal for the receiver, more convenient—less effort—for the sender. Convenience and Imposition in the use of the Internet: the email message vs. the blog. The blog: the most choice and least inconvenience for the receiver. The internet message: more certainty of communication for the sender, minimal inconvenience for the receiver.

Presumption or Consideration: relative urgency of the need to communicate. The blog: the greater convenience for the recipient, the less presumption for the sender. Weighing the certainty of not annoying against the possibility of pleasuring. Presumption: the assumption that one is more likely to pleasure than annoy. Is it considerate to presume?

"And in thy light shall we see LIGHT"

2009-01-19T00:11:00.000-08:00

“And in thy light shall we see LIGHT.”

As Hooker observed, “the certaintie of experience” is rare enough in our lives, so that we are privileged by the Grace of God who chose us in and through the Sacrament of Baptism in his Holy Catholic Church, to rely upon “the certaintie of adherence,” cleaving to the truths that in our inmost hearts we know we have embraced—and more been embraced by—through the means of grace. Through the goodness of God some of us some times are and have been privileged to experience the witness of our spiritual senses, and come through our ordinary seeing and hearing—the photo of two dear Gay friends synchronic with the sound of a long familiar Schubert piano piece—to hear—perhaps for me more often to hear rather than to see—the Voice of God, even as Samuel did in this morning’s text. We would not come close to this certainty of experience if we did not cleave—to use Hooker’s good word—or adhere—to the revelation we have long since more ordinarily but no less graciously received. “In thy light we shall see light.”

Thank God for the King’s College Choir and the Coverdale Psalms! The Second Sunday after The Epiphany of Our Lord, A.D. MMIX. “The Canterbury,” Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Calvin's influence on my life and ministry

2009-01-11T22:58:00.000-08:00

I am one of those renegade alumni of The Princeton Theological Seminary who, though baptized through the Presbyterian Church and after graduation licensed by The Presbytery of North Central Iowa as preacher, defected to The Episcopal Church. But I still keep on the wall of my bedroom a copy of a famous engraving of Calvin given to me by a roommate in grad school at The University of Chicago on the birthday before I left for PTS. I was through my years at Seminary a devotee of Calvin and had the good fortune to take Professor Edward Dowey, Jr.'s course in Calvin. I believe seriously that it was the understanding of Calvin I received from Dr. Dowey that led to my becoming Anglican. I had been before knowing Dr. Dowey a great admirer of Puritanism, on which I wrote my undergraduate thesis and one of my two qualifying papers for my Chicago Master's. Dr. Dowey in his teaching about Calvin and The Westminster Confession argued for understanding a great difference between Calvin and the English Puritans on the question of the assurance of election. That question was addressed by Anglicanism's Richard Hooker in his "Of the Certainty and Perpetuity of Faith in the Elect," and I believe Hooker and Calvin were in essential agreement. Hooker's notion of "certaintie of adherence" stated in that work has been one of great importance in my life. I made it central in a sermon I preached on Easter IV back in the 1980's--a copy of which was sent to me recently by a former parishioner in response to my confession of a faith crisis in my life. My recollection of Hooker's idea and of what I believe was Calvin's belief resolved my crisis. At Evening Prayer yesterday evening I preached about it on the text, Rev. 2:10. I intend to write more fully about it--in a "blog" if nothing else.

Calvin also believed in at least weekly celebration and reception of The Holy Eucharist. In my Middler year I could find no Presbyterian Church that celebrated the Sacrament every Sunday. On the recommendation of another seminarian I began attending the service given in Princeton University Chapel by the then Episcopal Chaplain, The Rev. Rowland Cox. He informed me that canon law restricted Communion to confirmed Episcopalians, but agreed, understanding my belief in regular communication and The Real Presence (which I think Calvin also believed in, viz., Killian McDonnel, O.S.B, JOHN CALVIN, THE CHURCH, AND THE EUCHARIST [1969]), to admit me to the Sacrament. Three years later, at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, on a summer Fellowship from Princeton U., I was told I could not receive Communion unless confirmed. I thereupon went to Southwark Cathedral and vowed upon the tomb of Bishop Launcelot Andrewes, who I think was in most respects a Calvinist, to be confirmed. I believed at the time I was being faithful to Calvin in so doing. I still do, trusting in the Grace of God.

The Rev. Canon Howard J. Happ, Ph.D.+
Professor Emeritus, The Department of Religious Studies, The California State University at Northridge

The Eve of the Commemoration of Bd. William Laud, Martyr,
Archbishop of Canterbury

"Faithfulness unto Death?"

2009-01-08T15:27:00.000-08:00

Sometimes choosing a sermon topic is difficult. The Church appoints the lessons we are to preach upon in her lectionaries--in two sets of calendars: the Eucharistic calendar, in which the lessons to be read the Office Calendar

There are times when one consults those lists, that calendar, and one has no idea what to say:

The fault, to paraphrase Shakespeare, is not in the lectionaries, our guides to Scripture, nor in the Scriptures themselves--our very guides to life--our guiding stars--"not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Recent spiritual "Low"--a crisis--now it seems a minor crisis--it didn't--of faith and identity.

A close friend sent a sermon

No lessons, not even the Psalm

My refuge at the time--Hooker's "certainty of adherence"--recalling that, a recovered assurance--intellectually, emotionally, spiritually

Things certain in themselves--because by revelation from God--spiritual knowledge--like angels and saints

Certainty of evidence--analytical (nature) and synthetic (sense)

Beliefs--faith--faithfulness--less certain than evident certainty

We have been certain--teachings of the Church --through parents, &c.

"I know whom I have believed, and am CONVINCED . . .'

When less convinced, less certain "Now the minds sof all men being so darkened as thehy are with the foggie damp of originall corruption, it cannot be that any mans hart living sould be either so enlightened in tge jbiwkedg ir si established in the love of that wherein his salvation standeth as to be perfect ...

And then what need we of the righteousness of Christ?

"the comfortable support of that weaknessm which in deed they have

Lord help