Considering what poetry is, and what it means to enjoy poetry, I find myself in the wrong century. At some point - I'm not sure when - poetry stopped including banal concepts like rhyme and meter. This is another way of saying that poetry has, for decades now, been struggling along without integrity. Let me explain. Integrity means wholeness. When a building is well built according to a plan, we say it has integrity. When a person's actions match their beliefs and values, we say they have integrity (especially if their values are high and admirable.) Both instances require conformity to a pattern for the sake of structure and consistency. At some point (I'm not sure exactly when, but I suspect it may involve Walt Whitman somehow) poets began to utterly disregard structure. There was no pattern to make their words conform to. This was and is seen, I believe, as progress. Why? Because it allows ideas and words to be completely unrestrained. And this lack of restraint is a very modern romance. We are in love with the idea of living without boundaries. More precisely, we think we love the idea of living without boundaries, but as a philosophy that ideal is so impossible that we cannot conceive of it on any level. Every cell in your body will die unless it maintains its boundaries. Your skin provides a safe haven for your organs. Every law exists to keep people out of someone else's boundaries. You lock the doors of your home at night because you cannot live without the protection of boundaries. All of life and all of creation displays the absurdity of unrestrained impulses and the impossibility of living without borders.
Only in the realms of ethics and the imagination do we crudely believe we have eradicated the need for fences and walls. This is reflected in modern poems which disdain order so that the mind may roam free, and the result is like watching a drunken giraffe try to run hurdles. It may seem deep and intellectual to try and plumb the depths of such poems, but it is rarely worth the effort. Allow me to site one example. The following poem is one which won a national award for student poetry while I was in high school. See if you can relate to the subject, or fathom the deeper meaning here:
As we were laying in bed
us was murdered.
I cannot remember who wrote this poem, but if I could speak to that person I would tell them that the only thing murdered in this verse is the English language. I obviously cannot comment on every single modern poem, but every time I read one which follows this sort of thinking I am struck by the same inevitable thought: modern poetry has exchanged integrity for lack of content.
One of the advantages of writing in a disciplined manner is that it forces us to think in a disciplined way. Anybody who has achieved anything substantial can testify that discipline is mandatory for success, and no discipline is possible until our thoughts are disciplined. My great fear is that we no longer write poetry in an orderly way because we no longer think in an orderly way.
The lynch-pin for getting moderns to understand the necessity of integrity in this arena may actually be music. Music is a field which requires stringent discipline, and the form of the words must match requirements created by the order of the composition. Every student who groans under the weight of a long poem is ecstatic over the release of a new song by their favorite artist. The only difference is that the proximity of music makes the comprehension of the lyrics either easier, or non-essential. It is amazing how many people today don't stop to think about what the lyrics of a song actually mean!
One of my favorite songs illustrates how music may help to lead modern minds into an affinity for real poetry. One of the verses goes like this:
I heard there was a secret chord
David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It went like this; the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall - the major lift
The baffled king composing 'hallelujah'
Unless I am mistaken, there is an obvious and easily identified structure to these words. The fact that they can work apart from any accompaniment is testified by the fact that when this song was recorded, it was really recited more than sung, and the instruments were limited to the chorus with nothing more than soft percussion behind the artist's voice on each verse.
As one very worthy professor recently noted, one reason that modern poetry seems to blather on and on is that there is no structure to force them to stop! Nothing within the poem itself creates a necessity for actually communicating the idea adequately, or in a timely manner. Sure, it takes a little effort to understand well-written poetry, but that is the worst reason of all for avoiding it. As soon as we can't be troubled to think about things which have been written well, we might as well swing wide the gates, for the barbarians have already won. They are no longer approaching the city, they are disappearing over the hill with their plunder, amazed at how easy the sacking of our culture really was.
I am finding that the alarm was sounded in various places and at various times, but nobody was there to hear it.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
the Sound of Weeping and Laughter
Ezra lived in exile. Ezra was a son of the defeated, humiliated Hebrew nation. He lived under the control of a pagan emperor who inherited the territory of Judah when it was a smoldering, ruined wasteland. The destruction that Nebuchadnezzar had brought down on that tiny nation before Ezra's birth was so very complete that today it has been called the Babylonian gap; a blank, uninhabited void in the history of the Jews, a desolate empty parenthesis when nobody lived there, and nobody settled there. The houses were burned, the gardens and farms were razed, the walls were thrown down, the palaces were obliterated and the temple was annihilated.
Worship - the link that was not so much missing as torn away from them. They could, of course, express themselves to God anywhere, and they strove to do so; yet at the same time, they could not. At least, not right away. Once the survivors and the exiles had straggled into the precincts of Babylon and settled down, they were asked for music. Their conquerors demanded a song. Can't these Jews, so famous for their singing, manage to whip up one quaint old hymn of theirs to perform for us? But the Jews knew, as all oppressed people know, that tragedy can overwhelm the impulse to sing. They'd had the music torn out of their souls. The symbol of their close relationship with God, the temple, was destroyed. While they lived through that impoverished waiting time, they learned what it is they had undervalued for too long. Life has a way of taking the things you hold too lightly, and it is still true that you don't really know what you have until you lose it.
So when they were permitted to return, naturally many of their children and grandchildren jumped at the chance. Imagine, finding that corner of the old city which grandfather told us about so many times when we were growing up! We'll build a fine home there; we'll be the first to return, we will be settlers in the land God promised to Abraham! It must have felt like the conquest of Canaan all over again. They left in groups and in caravans, disregarding the safety of the pagan empire for the adventure of re-taking their promised land.
Ezra made it there with them. He followed along at some point, confronting them with the failures of their forefathers and the primacy of worship. While he was there, under his constant encouragement, plans were made for rebuilding the heart of their nation and their religion: the temple.
A crowd was there the day they dedicated the ground anew to the Lord. Many of them had never been to Judah. They had been born as subjects. But there were others in the crowd who had spent their childhood in the days before the fall of Jerusalem. Old now, they were perhaps the few hardy elders who could not countenance one more day apart from the land of promise. They had been torn away, and the tear had never fully healed for them. So they took the perilous, unlikely gamble of travelling along with the youth, the young families, the adventurers and the discontent. And they were all together when the outline of the temple foundation was identified, and the rubble and grass and the brush were all cleared away. They reinforced the stones and inspected the joints and corners, perhaps even replacing beams which would form portions of the walls. And when the foundation was ready to hold the walls, when construction was about to begin, they came together to celebrate.
They were celebrating a new beginning, of course. They were wiping away the memory of God's judgment by building again on the basis of his promise. The very project was a living picture of grace (already finished in their imagination).
Here I see an attitude I recognize, for there are so many young people coming into the kingdom in this day and age. As they come, many of them are gravitating towards the newest expressions of worship, the most recent books, the most popular speakers - we Americans believe in the future! We look forward, not back! Perhaps there is something of the ruined, ineffective exile period in our recent Christian heritage. Didn't uncle Tozer say that the church in America was in a modern Babylonian captivity? We haven't lost our promise or our relationship with God, he observed, but we have surrendered the power of our independent subservience to the King of the Universe. We are waiting for a deliverance from apathy, fear and self-interest, he said. Many young people left the church because of what they witnessed in the adults they knew who professed Christ. I have spoken with teenagers who want to believe in God, but simply don't believe most of the Christians they've met! As many of those youth come back, they want to build something new for God. They want to create an edifice which faces the future - a new century and a new hope.
But we have to realize that the foundation is already there, and has been there for centuries. You can't build on nothing. The Jews who returned could build because they were not the first; the young believers of today are not the first either. I see ages and ages of holy men and women whose examples must continue to illuminate and model true faith down through the centuries. They have crafted our creeds and fueled our evangelistic endeavors. Their stories are more nourishing than a stadium full of newspapers and magazines filled with current events. Their lives and their sacrifices will (if we let them) enrich the very soil on which we build our little hamlets for God's glory. But those saints are gone, their lives and stories are finished.
In that great celebration, Ezra tells us that the sound of rejoicing rose up over the crowd because of the newcomers who saw only the future. Mingled with it, and indistinguishable from it, was the sound of weeping as the elders remembered the former glory. Perhaps no other verse so perfectly embodies the current state of the church in America, for we see every reason to hope as we go through transitions and metamorphoses - yet we have every reason to weep for the effectiveness we abandoned during a crucial and dark period in our nation's history. We can remember the giants who stood out from the crowd once upon a time, who are now merely history; we can remember the institutions they built out of nothing but faith and sweat; we can still read the books with which they shook the world; we can remember the songs that have lasted for centuries; the devotions thoughts they were considerate enough to record for our benefit; the impetus given to evangelism and the force of their work for the Lord...
Some of us think that the world has yet to see, in this generation, anything equal to the greatest saints who went before us. And maybe we can be forgiven for the tears we shed when we look at the potential of the present, and remember the glory that used to be. It could be that God will raise up something even more glorious, but for the moment the sound of laughter mingles with the sound of weeping, and nobody can tell the two apart, for both of them are equally true.
Worship - the link that was not so much missing as torn away from them. They could, of course, express themselves to God anywhere, and they strove to do so; yet at the same time, they could not. At least, not right away. Once the survivors and the exiles had straggled into the precincts of Babylon and settled down, they were asked for music. Their conquerors demanded a song. Can't these Jews, so famous for their singing, manage to whip up one quaint old hymn of theirs to perform for us? But the Jews knew, as all oppressed people know, that tragedy can overwhelm the impulse to sing. They'd had the music torn out of their souls. The symbol of their close relationship with God, the temple, was destroyed. While they lived through that impoverished waiting time, they learned what it is they had undervalued for too long. Life has a way of taking the things you hold too lightly, and it is still true that you don't really know what you have until you lose it.
So when they were permitted to return, naturally many of their children and grandchildren jumped at the chance. Imagine, finding that corner of the old city which grandfather told us about so many times when we were growing up! We'll build a fine home there; we'll be the first to return, we will be settlers in the land God promised to Abraham! It must have felt like the conquest of Canaan all over again. They left in groups and in caravans, disregarding the safety of the pagan empire for the adventure of re-taking their promised land.
Ezra made it there with them. He followed along at some point, confronting them with the failures of their forefathers and the primacy of worship. While he was there, under his constant encouragement, plans were made for rebuilding the heart of their nation and their religion: the temple.
A crowd was there the day they dedicated the ground anew to the Lord. Many of them had never been to Judah. They had been born as subjects. But there were others in the crowd who had spent their childhood in the days before the fall of Jerusalem. Old now, they were perhaps the few hardy elders who could not countenance one more day apart from the land of promise. They had been torn away, and the tear had never fully healed for them. So they took the perilous, unlikely gamble of travelling along with the youth, the young families, the adventurers and the discontent. And they were all together when the outline of the temple foundation was identified, and the rubble and grass and the brush were all cleared away. They reinforced the stones and inspected the joints and corners, perhaps even replacing beams which would form portions of the walls. And when the foundation was ready to hold the walls, when construction was about to begin, they came together to celebrate.
They were celebrating a new beginning, of course. They were wiping away the memory of God's judgment by building again on the basis of his promise. The very project was a living picture of grace (already finished in their imagination).
Here I see an attitude I recognize, for there are so many young people coming into the kingdom in this day and age. As they come, many of them are gravitating towards the newest expressions of worship, the most recent books, the most popular speakers - we Americans believe in the future! We look forward, not back! Perhaps there is something of the ruined, ineffective exile period in our recent Christian heritage. Didn't uncle Tozer say that the church in America was in a modern Babylonian captivity? We haven't lost our promise or our relationship with God, he observed, but we have surrendered the power of our independent subservience to the King of the Universe. We are waiting for a deliverance from apathy, fear and self-interest, he said. Many young people left the church because of what they witnessed in the adults they knew who professed Christ. I have spoken with teenagers who want to believe in God, but simply don't believe most of the Christians they've met! As many of those youth come back, they want to build something new for God. They want to create an edifice which faces the future - a new century and a new hope.
But we have to realize that the foundation is already there, and has been there for centuries. You can't build on nothing. The Jews who returned could build because they were not the first; the young believers of today are not the first either. I see ages and ages of holy men and women whose examples must continue to illuminate and model true faith down through the centuries. They have crafted our creeds and fueled our evangelistic endeavors. Their stories are more nourishing than a stadium full of newspapers and magazines filled with current events. Their lives and their sacrifices will (if we let them) enrich the very soil on which we build our little hamlets for God's glory. But those saints are gone, their lives and stories are finished.
In that great celebration, Ezra tells us that the sound of rejoicing rose up over the crowd because of the newcomers who saw only the future. Mingled with it, and indistinguishable from it, was the sound of weeping as the elders remembered the former glory. Perhaps no other verse so perfectly embodies the current state of the church in America, for we see every reason to hope as we go through transitions and metamorphoses - yet we have every reason to weep for the effectiveness we abandoned during a crucial and dark period in our nation's history. We can remember the giants who stood out from the crowd once upon a time, who are now merely history; we can remember the institutions they built out of nothing but faith and sweat; we can still read the books with which they shook the world; we can remember the songs that have lasted for centuries; the devotions thoughts they were considerate enough to record for our benefit; the impetus given to evangelism and the force of their work for the Lord...
Some of us think that the world has yet to see, in this generation, anything equal to the greatest saints who went before us. And maybe we can be forgiven for the tears we shed when we look at the potential of the present, and remember the glory that used to be. It could be that God will raise up something even more glorious, but for the moment the sound of laughter mingles with the sound of weeping, and nobody can tell the two apart, for both of them are equally true.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
The Naked Prophet
I know why Isaiah preached naked. In Isaiah chapter 20 it says that God told him to take off his clothes and preach to the people – which is a little odd. After all, public nudity is (mostly) illegal, and for good reasons. The Bible associates it with shame and humiliation. It is not a spectator sport or a healthy pastime. So why would the greatest prophet of the Old Testament preach that way? If I were to do that on a Sunday morning, I’d be presumed insane and replaced by a pastor who was less inclined to exhibitionism. So why Isaiah?
I think I know. The preacher’s lot is a hard one, and it gets harder all the time. Imagine with me now… it falls to you to find ways to tell people what God’s word means and what God is saying to your generation. A very few of the people you know actually want to hear it. A few others want to hear it, but they believe you have gotten it wrong and they want to tweak things until they are comfortable. A small number of people actually hate what you are trying to do; they regard the precious and magnificent promises which are your breath and blood as nothing more than indulgent, mythological self-delusion, effectively undermined by every branch of science and every intellectual since at least 1703. These folks are actually attacking your efforts, drawing people away from the glory that God has shown you.
But by far the largest segment of people you deal with simply don’t care; and this is the cruelest reality of all. What if you were a doctor (you wonder) and victims of malaria didn’t care about the medication you offered them to prevent the disease? What if you could plant in some young heart a love for the greatest classical music ever written, but they are simply uninterested? To be hated is one thing; to strongly disagree is another; but to be disregarded – to be simply ignored as if the Creator and His message are so terribly dull – this cuts deep. Too deeply, sometimes.
One of the most successful preachers of all times was Charles Spurgeon. In the midst of a ministry which spanned decades and drew thousands of listeners, he once said: “In this world, is it not a weary business to be a minister of Christ today? If I might have my choice I would sooner follow any avocation, so far as the comfort of it is concerned, than this of ministering to the sons of men, for we beat the air. This deaf generation will not hear us. What is this perverse generation the better for years and years of preaching?… The world is not worth preaching to.”
No wonder Isaiah was willing to strip, if only it would cause people to SIT UP AND TAKE NOTICE! How far will I go to get people’s attention, to get them to care? Well, not as far as Isaiah (for now, at least… but I’ve only been at it for five years.) But I know why Isaiah was willing to do what God asked. The message is everything. The messenger is nothing. He threw his pride and dignity aside and walked among the laughing, pointing crowds shouting his warning upon the winds, his voice carried far away. Did they hear his cry?
I think I know. The preacher’s lot is a hard one, and it gets harder all the time. Imagine with me now… it falls to you to find ways to tell people what God’s word means and what God is saying to your generation. A very few of the people you know actually want to hear it. A few others want to hear it, but they believe you have gotten it wrong and they want to tweak things until they are comfortable. A small number of people actually hate what you are trying to do; they regard the precious and magnificent promises which are your breath and blood as nothing more than indulgent, mythological self-delusion, effectively undermined by every branch of science and every intellectual since at least 1703. These folks are actually attacking your efforts, drawing people away from the glory that God has shown you.
But by far the largest segment of people you deal with simply don’t care; and this is the cruelest reality of all. What if you were a doctor (you wonder) and victims of malaria didn’t care about the medication you offered them to prevent the disease? What if you could plant in some young heart a love for the greatest classical music ever written, but they are simply uninterested? To be hated is one thing; to strongly disagree is another; but to be disregarded – to be simply ignored as if the Creator and His message are so terribly dull – this cuts deep. Too deeply, sometimes.
One of the most successful preachers of all times was Charles Spurgeon. In the midst of a ministry which spanned decades and drew thousands of listeners, he once said: “In this world, is it not a weary business to be a minister of Christ today? If I might have my choice I would sooner follow any avocation, so far as the comfort of it is concerned, than this of ministering to the sons of men, for we beat the air. This deaf generation will not hear us. What is this perverse generation the better for years and years of preaching?… The world is not worth preaching to.”
No wonder Isaiah was willing to strip, if only it would cause people to SIT UP AND TAKE NOTICE! How far will I go to get people’s attention, to get them to care? Well, not as far as Isaiah (for now, at least… but I’ve only been at it for five years.) But I know why Isaiah was willing to do what God asked. The message is everything. The messenger is nothing. He threw his pride and dignity aside and walked among the laughing, pointing crowds shouting his warning upon the winds, his voice carried far away. Did they hear his cry?
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
TaxTime
In honor of Uncle Sam and his indecipherable tax code, we offer this gem from Robert Frost:
Never Ask of Money spent
Where the spender thinks it went
Mortal man was never meant
To remember or Invent
What he did with every cent
Thank You.
Never Ask of Money spent
Where the spender thinks it went
Mortal man was never meant
To remember or Invent
What he did with every cent
Thank You.
Friday, March 21, 2008
mot juste
Mot juste, we are told by the inimitable Hemingway, is more than just a French phrase thrown into our language to impress and influence. It is a standard, a lifestyle - it means exactly the right word; the one word in the entire language which is exactly suited to a particular desire; the one and only perfect word to describe whatever it is you happen to be describing. I am a big believer in mot juste, and I continue to be dedicated to hunting down the perfect word for every situation, which is not only a personal burden I am willing to carry, but a privilege as well.
Five years ago I began working with youth in our church. After a few months a young man began to attend who made fun of the way I speak (something which did not seem laughable to me.) He accused me of using "fancy words" to "impress" people. I took this rather hard, because it was nothing like what was happening. What was in actual fact occurring was that I was simply speaking the way I always do... I was speaking the way I read. Unfortunately, the young man had no idea what I was saying.
Let me digress for a moment and mention texting (the connection will become clear later.) A typical text message between two teenagers does not look like English. It barely looks like Swahili. It is full of unnecessary punctuation resembling sideways-facing faces, numbers substituting for letters, and invented slang which, as someone who grew up during the eighties, I can testify that we NEVER used.
I always thought this was merely an unfortunate trend, until I read a book about punctuation. Really. In this book the author made the cogent point that such behavior is not merely a matter of personal preference, it is actually rude. What it communicates is the following: "I know that words have proper spelling in our language, but that is a lot of work for my thumbs, and I'm quite busy, and so I'm going to invent characters which have no real meaning and let you work it out for yourself. You may have to say it out loud a few times before you get it. It's like a little puzzle I made just for you."
You see what this does? It takes the whole burden of comprehension and lays it upon the poor wretch who is wondering why he just received a message which looks as though it were accidentally typed out by someone's buttock while the phone was in their back pocket. The responsibility to communicate is not assumed by the person speaking, (which is where it belongs) rather it is foisted upon the person receiving the information. If somebody has something to say, it has historically been believed that he or she has a responsibility to make themselves clearly understood. Apparently, that's too much of a bother these days.
Back to my dilemma. I found the same thing happening in reverse when I was speaking intelligible English to my youth group. One reason they were so quiet while I spoke was they were trying to figure out what some of those funny words meant, or which language I'd borrowed them from. Once I realized what was happening, I faced a very serious problem.
Do I continue to work hard to craft my vocabulary in order to maintain high personal standards, and to impart those standards to others? Or do I continuously lower my style of communication down to the level of monosyllabic grunts and hand gestures which would be fundamentally comprehensible to Bobo the trained gibbon? What is a fellow to do in such a quandary? Should I say "twisty, flexible stick thing" when I really mean "withe?" Or should I say "a sort of name that gets stuck to someone like a title" when I am thinking of "appellation?"
According to the above theory, I should take responsibility to make my meaning clear for the listener; but here I run into a philosophical dilemma. In the first scenario, someone who can speak coherently refuses to match up to their own ability, preferring instead to take the quick and painless route, (for themselves) thus contributing to the already-appalling decline of grammar in our society. In the second case, a brave and lonesome, handsome speaker strives to raise the awareness and linguistic prowess of those within his sphere of influence. So who is right?
We can answer the question by remembering the entirely fictional history of a people who should have existed many thousands of years ago, whom we shall call the Nozirev. The Nozirev can easily be imagined as living somewhere between two countries you've never heard of north of the subcontinent. They had a beautiful, sophisticated, sparkling language called Nozi which was capable of both great subtlety and great specificity. It was rife with poetry to melt the heart and rhetoric to stir the soul. This people produced great orators and musicians and writers, and trade unions, subjugating nearby cultures using nothing more than their wit and their semi-annual pilgrimages to the Shrine of Perpetual Verbiage. All was well, until one enterprising man invented a way of capturing pigeons and training them to return to a previously appointed locale.
Before long, these pigeons were all the rage with the teenagers and young adults living in that land. They took to tying little parchment messages on the pigeons' feet and sending them to their friends. But because of the dear price of ink, and the smallness of the parchment, they had to contrive smaller words, abbreviated phrases, and slang. It is possible that this is where the # sign originated, although we will never know for certain.
Soon, all the teen Nozirev were speaking in Pigeon-Nozi, talking to one another in adumbrated phrases which were neither comprehensible to their elders, nor conducive to their rich literary heritage. Within one generation, the adults and the youth could not communicate, which was a great joy to the young people, but a great sorrow to the adults whose job was to preserve literature, teach children, and hire people to work in fast-food booths. Because of this dichotomy, their entire culture soon fell apart. Every trace of their existence disappeared so completely that today all information about them has to be completely invented.
You may not be able to comprehend what I'm saying here, but it sure makes me feel better to say it.
Five years ago I began working with youth in our church. After a few months a young man began to attend who made fun of the way I speak (something which did not seem laughable to me.) He accused me of using "fancy words" to "impress" people. I took this rather hard, because it was nothing like what was happening. What was in actual fact occurring was that I was simply speaking the way I always do... I was speaking the way I read. Unfortunately, the young man had no idea what I was saying.
Let me digress for a moment and mention texting (the connection will become clear later.) A typical text message between two teenagers does not look like English. It barely looks like Swahili. It is full of unnecessary punctuation resembling sideways-facing faces, numbers substituting for letters, and invented slang which, as someone who grew up during the eighties, I can testify that we NEVER used.
I always thought this was merely an unfortunate trend, until I read a book about punctuation. Really. In this book the author made the cogent point that such behavior is not merely a matter of personal preference, it is actually rude. What it communicates is the following: "I know that words have proper spelling in our language, but that is a lot of work for my thumbs, and I'm quite busy, and so I'm going to invent characters which have no real meaning and let you work it out for yourself. You may have to say it out loud a few times before you get it. It's like a little puzzle I made just for you."
You see what this does? It takes the whole burden of comprehension and lays it upon the poor wretch who is wondering why he just received a message which looks as though it were accidentally typed out by someone's buttock while the phone was in their back pocket. The responsibility to communicate is not assumed by the person speaking, (which is where it belongs) rather it is foisted upon the person receiving the information. If somebody has something to say, it has historically been believed that he or she has a responsibility to make themselves clearly understood. Apparently, that's too much of a bother these days.
Back to my dilemma. I found the same thing happening in reverse when I was speaking intelligible English to my youth group. One reason they were so quiet while I spoke was they were trying to figure out what some of those funny words meant, or which language I'd borrowed them from. Once I realized what was happening, I faced a very serious problem.
Do I continue to work hard to craft my vocabulary in order to maintain high personal standards, and to impart those standards to others? Or do I continuously lower my style of communication down to the level of monosyllabic grunts and hand gestures which would be fundamentally comprehensible to Bobo the trained gibbon? What is a fellow to do in such a quandary? Should I say "twisty, flexible stick thing" when I really mean "withe?" Or should I say "a sort of name that gets stuck to someone like a title" when I am thinking of "appellation?"
According to the above theory, I should take responsibility to make my meaning clear for the listener; but here I run into a philosophical dilemma. In the first scenario, someone who can speak coherently refuses to match up to their own ability, preferring instead to take the quick and painless route, (for themselves) thus contributing to the already-appalling decline of grammar in our society. In the second case, a brave and lonesome, handsome speaker strives to raise the awareness and linguistic prowess of those within his sphere of influence. So who is right?
We can answer the question by remembering the entirely fictional history of a people who should have existed many thousands of years ago, whom we shall call the Nozirev. The Nozirev can easily be imagined as living somewhere between two countries you've never heard of north of the subcontinent. They had a beautiful, sophisticated, sparkling language called Nozi which was capable of both great subtlety and great specificity. It was rife with poetry to melt the heart and rhetoric to stir the soul. This people produced great orators and musicians and writers, and trade unions, subjugating nearby cultures using nothing more than their wit and their semi-annual pilgrimages to the Shrine of Perpetual Verbiage. All was well, until one enterprising man invented a way of capturing pigeons and training them to return to a previously appointed locale.
Before long, these pigeons were all the rage with the teenagers and young adults living in that land. They took to tying little parchment messages on the pigeons' feet and sending them to their friends. But because of the dear price of ink, and the smallness of the parchment, they had to contrive smaller words, abbreviated phrases, and slang. It is possible that this is where the # sign originated, although we will never know for certain.
Soon, all the teen Nozirev were speaking in Pigeon-Nozi, talking to one another in adumbrated phrases which were neither comprehensible to their elders, nor conducive to their rich literary heritage. Within one generation, the adults and the youth could not communicate, which was a great joy to the young people, but a great sorrow to the adults whose job was to preserve literature, teach children, and hire people to work in fast-food booths. Because of this dichotomy, their entire culture soon fell apart. Every trace of their existence disappeared so completely that today all information about them has to be completely invented.
You may not be able to comprehend what I'm saying here, but it sure makes me feel better to say it.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Cause and Consequence
Perhaps the greatest (or primary) tragedy in the drama of the abortion debate is not that millions of lives have been destroyed, but that we have apathetically allowed conditions in our nation to atrophy to such a point that abortion has become an issue at all; that many see it as a practical necessity in light of circumstances is a consequence of placing freedom of choice above God's standard of moral purity.
Let us remember that immoral sexual attitudes came first. When we strike out against abortion we are aiming at a symptom (albeit a tragic and horrifying one) of our nation's growing idolatrous fascination with the view that humanity's great compensation for the woes of this life is sexual gratification.
This view was legitimized by Freud, defanged by Kinsey, popularized by the media and canonized by that generation which is so proud of the accomplishments of the 1960's.
Struggling to make abortion illegal may not be harmful, but it may not be effective either; it is a symptomatic treatment at best, and unless something is done to eliminate sex-worship among all levels of society, our struggle will only be the stamping out of fires which will continue to arise straight out of human nature. History gives us no consolation as we consider the odds against us. Abstinence movements which depend on logical persuasion, trinkets or fear tactics may serve some good, but statistics are not encouraging. What is needed is not incentive to avoid wrong behavior, but a passion for godliness, and genuine morality for its own sake.
One thinks of the fame of pop-icon Brittney Spears. Her once-justifiable popularity is now destroying her like slow acting poison, while the eroticism she and countless others peddle as art eats away at our ability to comprehend purity. Our culture and the tragic heroes of excess we have created are like the new-age image of a snake with its tail in its mouth. What feels like a satisfying meal turns out to be our own annihilation. First the tail, then the body, then the head all vanish in the vulgarity of our appetites.
And in the meantime, we legislate...
Let us remember that immoral sexual attitudes came first. When we strike out against abortion we are aiming at a symptom (albeit a tragic and horrifying one) of our nation's growing idolatrous fascination with the view that humanity's great compensation for the woes of this life is sexual gratification.
This view was legitimized by Freud, defanged by Kinsey, popularized by the media and canonized by that generation which is so proud of the accomplishments of the 1960's.
Struggling to make abortion illegal may not be harmful, but it may not be effective either; it is a symptomatic treatment at best, and unless something is done to eliminate sex-worship among all levels of society, our struggle will only be the stamping out of fires which will continue to arise straight out of human nature. History gives us no consolation as we consider the odds against us. Abstinence movements which depend on logical persuasion, trinkets or fear tactics may serve some good, but statistics are not encouraging. What is needed is not incentive to avoid wrong behavior, but a passion for godliness, and genuine morality for its own sake.
One thinks of the fame of pop-icon Brittney Spears. Her once-justifiable popularity is now destroying her like slow acting poison, while the eroticism she and countless others peddle as art eats away at our ability to comprehend purity. Our culture and the tragic heroes of excess we have created are like the new-age image of a snake with its tail in its mouth. What feels like a satisfying meal turns out to be our own annihilation. First the tail, then the body, then the head all vanish in the vulgarity of our appetites.
And in the meantime, we legislate...
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Number Two All Time Favorite
In 1972 author Richard Adams gave the world something it didn't even realize it needed: a novel about rabbits. This story is a combination of quaint and epic which is so rarely achieved that it is no wonder that this book remains such a well-known/unknown book. It is well-known because many folks have heard of it, or seen the cartoon (I never have) and unknown because everyone I've ever met who has wanted to read it has never actually bothered. I understand that we, as a culture, are enthralled by the immediate, and the more recent something is the more we value it. But if you can go back in time long enough to lose yourself in these characters, you'll be more than rewarded.
It starts in a meadow, where a large warren of rabbits is about to be destroyed by the machine of progress. The problem is that none of them know it except for a frail, intuitive bunny who somehow glimpses a shadow of tragedy about to come - blood splashed across the shrubs and soil of their hillside. That premonition sets a tiny handful of rabbits on a quest for a home of their own.
The way the author brings these animals to life, forcing you to care deeply about their combined fate, is astonishing considering most people leave their fondness for domesticated rodents (if they ever had one) far behind them once they grow up.
If you find yourself opening this book, watch the transformation of Hazel, one reluctant, average rabbit, as he goes from being a frightened refugee to a leader, a hero and a revolutionary. The journey he takes is every bit as delicious as the actual path which brings these characters through seemingly insurmountable dangers and pitfalls. It is equal to any adventure story in any age.
The charm and strength of this allegory lies in the way it uses such unabashed simplicity to craft a tangible world so very, very like our own. It has the power to make you feel ancient and brand-new, child-like and wise with age. Take a chance on something older than this summer's reading list, and find a copy of this book. You'll thank me.
Watership Down, by Richard Adams - 1972
It starts in a meadow, where a large warren of rabbits is about to be destroyed by the machine of progress. The problem is that none of them know it except for a frail, intuitive bunny who somehow glimpses a shadow of tragedy about to come - blood splashed across the shrubs and soil of their hillside. That premonition sets a tiny handful of rabbits on a quest for a home of their own.
The way the author brings these animals to life, forcing you to care deeply about their combined fate, is astonishing considering most people leave their fondness for domesticated rodents (if they ever had one) far behind them once they grow up.
If you find yourself opening this book, watch the transformation of Hazel, one reluctant, average rabbit, as he goes from being a frightened refugee to a leader, a hero and a revolutionary. The journey he takes is every bit as delicious as the actual path which brings these characters through seemingly insurmountable dangers and pitfalls. It is equal to any adventure story in any age.
The charm and strength of this allegory lies in the way it uses such unabashed simplicity to craft a tangible world so very, very like our own. It has the power to make you feel ancient and brand-new, child-like and wise with age. Take a chance on something older than this summer's reading list, and find a copy of this book. You'll thank me.
Watership Down, by Richard Adams - 1972
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
