An old favorite revisited

 I've always liked Emily, you know Emily don't you?  Anne of Green Gables' more temperamental (to quote the Murrays) cousin?  Yes, Emily of New Moon, don't you consider any literary characters amongst your dearest friends?  Too bad, even if you want to shake them for their idiocy sometimes.  I've always loved L.M. Montgomery, especially the Anne and Emily books and The Blue Castle, to quote Anne, I believe we are 'kindred spirits.'  I just reread the three Emily books, and thoroughly enjoyed the first two on reacquaintance but the third one was a little disappointing, minding me a little of Austen's Persuasion or Mansfield Park or even Jane Eyre, in that the whole book is mostly the main character wading through years of sorrow and struggle, but whereas Jane and Fanny and Anne are all patiently enduring miserable circumstances and heartbreak beyond their control, Miss Emily is mostly a victim of her own pride and her mopery is not much to be pitied.  I've always love Montgomery's ability to paint the splendor of an evening sky or haunted wood with words, which she does a lovely job of in the first two books but in the third it only appears as a mild backdrop against which our mopey miss is contrasted.  The first two books explore what it is to be a sensitive person in a hard world that doesn't understand, a topic very close to my heart, while the third just has Emily moping around waiting for her scorned lover to come crawling back on his knees, perhaps hinting that a career just isn't enough to make a happy life, nor yet are stars or twilit seashores enough to fill an empty, aching soul.  While those would have been a happy moral and a far more endurable tale were they the main plot of the book, rather they are subtle subpoints and hardly explored.

Rather we discover that if you pine long enough, fate will intervene miraculously and the desire of your heart will show up in the last ten pages and magically make everything better without the least bit of humbling on your part, save perhaps an airy paragraph or two expounding your newfound humility.  Mr. Rochester and Mr. Darcy provide a far more interesting and slightly more believable story arc of just that, which is far more edifying and enjoyable than watching Emily mope about while scores of men fling themselves at her feet.  I have far more respect for the bold Rebecca of Ivanhoe who spurns the desires of her heart, staying faithful to her faith even when it might get her burned for a heretic and loses the man who might be called her ideal, leaving him with the rather flat and insipid Rowena, than I can ever now have for poor Emily who suffers from her own surfeit of pride but doesn't seem to learn anything from it until the very last, much like the villainous knight who thought to make Rebecca his own no matter what.  And we don't even get a thrilling jousting match to tie up the plot.  Perhaps one should rewrite the plot entirely as Emily did and so grievously offended Mr. Greaves!  At least Montgomery will not be happening by and throwing heirloom vases at me for my hubris, though no doubt I'll deserve it!

It isn't just me!

 So there's a literary giant I have absolutely no taste for and now I don't feel guilty about it!  Go check out this essay about Flannery O'Connor and her excellent though shocking writing.  I've tried a few of her short stories, and while well written, they are too intense to be ingested too often, much like hot salsa!  Some people can eat spicy peppers with ease while a jar of mild salsa makes me sweat...so too my literary tastes.  Miss O'Connor is probably just the thing to shock modern audiences out of their comfy comas but I'd probably end up in therapy, as they read like my own monstrous childhood, something I don't need to relive to get the point.  Then go give her writing a try, maybe it'll just suit your taste or give you a jolt you didn't know you needed!  I'll be over here trying not to fall asleep over 'Mansfield Park.'

True wisdom and making the news!

 Wow, I officially live in a disaster zone!  At least according to the statistical gurus over at reactive media incorporated, but I really haven't noticed that the world has come to an end.  Our extremely rural, podunk, nobody ever heard of it before county made the national list of top ten most infected counties for this ridiculous virus.  I know many people who have had it, one guy died in the nursing home, a couple have been hospitalized, but school is still in session and people aren't dropping dead left and right like the media assures us is the case.  One thing they don't mention in the scare statistic is that we are a minuscule region, 3000 people in the entire county, so when one person gets infected or die, statistically that is a huge percentage!  One out of a thousand is a much higher percentage than 1 in 100,000, so even one case dramatically spikes the numbers.  If we have a ten percent infection rate, that is 300 people, versus a region with 100,000 people would need 10,000 cases to equal that, which is hard to imagine.  We have a local hospital and have been doing massive testing drives, which means we are testing a large percentage of our population on a regular basis versus larger areas where it is inconvenient to test huge numbers of people.  We are also a close knit community which easily does back tracing since we all know each other and if someone gets sick everyone goes to get tested.  But none of that matters as long as the statistics are scary and get a reaction.  We didn't even know we lived at ground zero until a friend asked how bad things were after seeing our county on the list!  Who knew?

Should we be stupid, no.  Should we be panicked, no.  Why are we destroying lives over something, that even at ground zero, isn't that much more deadly than influenza?  We have had as many covid-related suicides in this county as we have had covid-deaths, and several more attempts that were unsuccessful but that doesn't make the news.  Let's destroy lives and the economy and our social infrastructure over this?!  What happens when something really nasty comes along?  Can you imagine our current society and government enduring a world war or the Great Depression or another Spanish flu (which covid is nothing like!!!).  But maybe that's the problem, this is all about feeling like we are in control of everything, life, death, creation, weather, everything, and when we aren't, we panic.  But we weren't meant to be in control.  It's a lie as old as creation: 'did God really say?'  Yes, yes He did, and we did die, at least spiritually and certainly physically, but maybe if we can control this virus it will prove we don't need Him, but the mess we are enduring is as painful and embarrassing as our exodus from Eden, and equally of our own creation.  But there is a cure, no it isn't a vaccine, but rather a baby, a helpless, shivering infant born to an unwed mother in the darkness two millennia ago.  When the wisdom of the world proves folly, perhaps it is time to remember the folly of Heaven.  Merry Christmas!

The Day After the End of the World...

 I'm an old campaigner, I've survived Y2K, Monkey Pox, Bird Flu, Acid Rain, the looming petroleum shortage (predicted in the early '90s), mutant frogs, the hole in the Ozone layer, and even life before the internet, I can even read a plat book (much more accurate than google maps!), so it is little surprise that I have survived the night, an epic battle with the fate of reality in the balance for both political parties...what the Romans had in the Coliseum we have on election night, ugh!  At least my gluten free graham crackers turned out, that's the important thing.  I am so tired of the drama, very much concerned about the deep divide between seemingly every person against every other over everything, but mostly just tired of 'the end of the world is nigh unless so and so wins...'  And the big story of the morning is not who won or didn't but again, how badly the polling reflected the actual results.

I don't know what could go wrong with polling, I mean everyone wants to be explicit on the phone with a complete stranger when your business and reputation can be destroyed, your property vandalized, your family threatened for a wrong answer, when every media outlet and social media source is constantly beating one over the head with one's innate racism, homophobia, stupidity, and nazism for even daring to momentarily ponder something contrary to what the cultural elites tell us is best for us.  In a country where looters and rioters are justified to vandalize, threaten, and destroy and can gather in any number (without masks) as long as their cause is 'just' but getting together to eat a meal with your extended family for anyone else is an overt violation of human rights and endangers the very fabric of reality, you wonder why the polling might be a little flawed?

After the last election, some number from a deep blue state called our church and demanded to know if my husband was racist.  This person happily clarified by demanding to know if he voted for Trump before slamming down the phone and not waiting for an answer.  I can't wait to see what happens this time around!  No, I can't imagine why people might be reluctant to mention their true thoughts on anything, especially a heavily contested election.  It is bad enough reading baking blogs looking for recipes, there are people that turn nasty at the thought of using real sugar or eggs or canola oil (and they still have the nerve to complain their results aren't anything like the real thing!), how much worse this political slough?!

I don't like politics, I don't want to get into them here, but the truly disturbing thing is the dehumanization of everyone who isn't one's self, anyone who disagrees with us over anything is an enemy.  I don't think the internet or social media or 24/7 news commentary has been good for human civilization.  It overwhelms us, it divides us, it intimidates and frustrates us and we take that out on our fellow beings.  Let's consider pulling the plug on non-essential media and internet usage, put down the phone and pick up a book or a conversation, shut off the blathering head on your TV and listen to your blathering toddler, it will be far more intelligible.  Learn to think, learn to love, learn to appreciate, learn to help, learn to encourage one another, that will save civilization as we know it far more efficiently than whomever gets elected.

On insulting one's intelligence and the nuisance of small gods

For all you science geeks, here are a couple articles you might find interesting from two completely different perspectives: are we living in a computer simulation (think 'The Matrix') and even more startling, intelligent design just got a peer reviewed study.

The modern concept that 'science must only tell us what we want to hear' drives me batty, that is like asking a scale to only display the weight you want to see.  Science should be an objective tool, not a subjective weapon.  Many published studies can't be replicated and some are just made up to enrich the publisher while anything that disagrees with our modern mores is enough to blackball your career, whether it challenges evolution, modern social constructs, or our determination that the sky is truly falling and only mass extinction of the human race can stop it.  How often do we hear angry pseudo-scientists claiming that they are being treated like Galileo when they are the ones proclaiming that the sun revolves around the earth and that everyone else had better agree with them or else?  It is the job of science to support or disprove natural phenomena, it is not meant to viewed through a political lens, it never proves anything, and it shouldn't be used to measure things in the abstract: love, faith, ethics, philosophy, the supernatural, meaning, purpose...when it does, which seems to be the case in this strange modern era, it is become a religion, a faith in its own right, with its own dogmas and ethical code and mythology, which is exactly how 'the experts' act, no wonder they are far more ready to believe everything is a computer simulation rather than admit their science is as mythic as they accuse Christianity of being.  They are the modern variant of the pharisees that Jesus confronted in His own day, 'you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in' (Matthew 23:13).

The idea seems to be 'believe anything but God,' and I've seen some very curious examples in a variety of disciplines and situations, including this one!  The simplest, the most obvious explanation is defied in preference to some other complicated, ridiculous supposition with all the confidence of the serpent in the Garden proclaiming, 'ye can be gods!'  'Did God really say?' was also his postulation and we still ask it today.  I love the people trying to wrap our modern sexual mores in a shabby cloak of Christianity and proclaim the resulting monstrosity as the 'true church, as Jesus intended,' minding me much of the donkey wrapped up in a lion's skin and called 'Aslan' in 'The Last Battle.'  And no one can understand why the liberal, modern denominations are stagnating?  Why play pretend with the Gospel when you get neither the benefits of true religion or the pleasures of its many secular alternatives?  In Revelation we are told to be either hot or cold, not lukewarm, which is just insulting to oneself and God, either choose for or against, don't rewrite the tale to suit your own agenda.  Paul warned that 'we of all men are most miserable if Christ be not raised,' meaning that if Jesus did what He said He did, there is some point in living as a Christian ought, but if he didn't, what's the point?  All the pain and none of the joy, all the trouble and none of the peace?  It makes as much sense as trying to twist PETA's views to support the beef industry!

Somehow both science and the liberal 'christian' faith are both telling us exactly the same thing: whatever the liberal left elitists think is the truth, always has been, always will be and anyone who thinks different is stupid, uncivilized, and inhuman.  That's why you need to consume material from non-social media and network news and mainstream papers, be it your grandfather's recollections of the second world war or a classic book or taking your dog for a hike in some beautiful place sans your phone or singing a wonderful song or laughing with friends or watching a good movie or cooking a good meal or whatever, just get away from the incessant, remorseless 'words, words, words,' of those that would have you react without thought, reply without knowing, think without understanding, shut out the noise, take a peek at something that is not 'safe, appropriate, socially acceptable, publicly approved, popular.'  Find out for yourself, silence the nattering heads, discover what you believe and why, instead of merely giving in from sheer exhaustion to the unending chatter of the socially acceptable gospel, just another blurry eyed, vacant minded sheep in a dull and boundless flock.  The real lion isn't tame or safe, but He's good, but alas that we prefer a preposterous little donkey in His stead!  Take a good, hard look at your god, whatever or whomever it be, is it merely an ass in a lion's skin, ridiculous, petty, and powerless, or can He make the mountains smoke and tremble, cause realities to crumble with a thought or produce whole worlds out of nothingness?  What did God say and why is the serpent so determined that we never figure it out?  That is truly the answer to 'life the universe and everything,' the number 42 not withstanding!

What it means to be a pelican of the wilderness

 Here's a great article on unlocking some of the hidden metaphors, references, and analogies sprinkled throughout classic literature and even our common parlance, it's like a great big riddle or mystery to solve, to deepen the meaning, to truly understand what the author is trying to convey (rather than the horrendous idea that the author is only saying what we want them to say).  I remember reading one of the 'Anne of Green Gables' books and came across a paragraph wherein a child asked her about 'the pelican of the wilderness' and I was delighted, I wonder how many thoroughly modern people could link that reference up with the King James version of the book of Job?  Don't become irrelevant and literally illiterate, go brush up on your anachronistic metaphors asap!  

On conflation and cats of one color!

 I'm terrible with names, unless it's a latin binomial, if your moniker consists of a species and a genus, we're good (in all save fish)!  Why is it I can remember the scientific name of a burrowing rodent or a bacteria often associated with bovine foot pathologies but can't remember my fellow men?  Maybe there is a sort of poetry in Eptesicus fuscus or Emydoideia blandingii which is lacking in John Smith or Jessica Doe?  Maybe it is the meaning hidden in the latin pseudonyms, Felis concolor, that cat of one color, while names of mere mortal choosing seem rather arbitrary.  Maybe it is the relationship between them and no two the same, though the Amos Yoders in the plat book in Amish country must be distinguished by their middle initial, none of the Genus Felis have that problem, concolor and domesticus are each their own animal but still cousins.  Or maybe it is all those years of forced memorization in the art and lingo of the biological sciences that it has become a second language?  Whatever it is, it has rendered me unappreciative for several years as to the existence and works of one Dorothy Sayers, yet another dead English author, whom I was strangely conflating with Flannery O'Connor (yes, an American with an Irish appellation, I don't know why I confused the two!).

I have read a few of O'Connor's short stories, but came away rather chilled by the experience, chilled, not cold mind you.  She is an excellent writer, a keen observer of human behavior and nature and able to translate that into excellent literature, but for me personally, too much delving into the darker side of human life, from which I am still trying to emerge like the mythic legged fish from the primordial ooze of non-being (who says there isn't poetry in atheism, but then poetry cannot exist without myth to give it metaphor and thus form).  Having consumed my tithe of O'Connor, I contented myself therewith and moved on, little realizing that I was closing the proverbial door on Dorothy Sayers as well, whom I had heard of certainly, but knew little more than she was an authoress of some fame, which is probably where the conflation arose, for that could be the inane definition of O'Connor as well!

I ran across an article a while ago about a book containing excerpts from the correspondence between Sayers and C.S.Lewis and was forced to reconsider my assumptions, since Lewis is a favorite author, perhaps this mysterious woman he was so happy to correspond with to such an extent that it warranted a book on the subject might be worth a second look, whereat I discovered my lunacy and delved immediately into the various works of Sayers, while wondering who it was I had confused her with (finally discovering O'Conner and putting my vacuous mind at ease).  I've read through the Peter Wimsey detective novels, which are pretty good, I still prefer Father Brown but Sayer's detective is much preferred to the legendary Sherlock, but far better is her 'Mind of the Maker,' which may just be my own authorial prejudices, but it is a book I'd rate as high as Lewis's Mere Christianity and Chesterton's Orthodoxy and Everlasting Man in being very readable, enjoyable, profound, understandable, and a great exploration of theology in a non-drowsy formula.

In the 'Mind of the Maker,' Sayers explores the nature of the Trinity by comparing it to the creative process involved in a literary work, particularly a stage play, but applying it more generally to prose, poetry, and any other creative process, even political speeches, sermons, and daily work.  As an author, I think her insight is brilliant and may help many a creative person in their endeavors to improve their art.  As a Christian, I believe her ideas are profound and help to shine light into a subject that is often beyond the ability of mere words to explain.  If you've ever found the idea of Christ attractive but have been bored or intimidated out of delving deeper, this just might be the place to start (or one of those other books mentioned above, which are wonderful for beginners and lifelong saints alike).  Don't let conflation or any other silliness prevent you from indulging your philosophical curiosity or enjoying a rare literary treat a moment longer!