Curious allies?

 We've been watching the BBC version of "Father Brown" lately, though we aren't yet through season 3.  I was vastly curious to see how the BBC would portray G.K.Chesterton's priestly detective, as the company's views are hardly those of either the Catholic Church or even the social mores of a hundred years ago.  They've done very well at times with some of their adaptations while others have been a little unsettling.  Overall, I must say I have been rather impressed at their mostly respectful treatment of christianity and christians, at least I don't feel that they don't stereotype and degrade doctrine or faithful characters any more than they do any other character or creed.  Actually, it is a very human experience, with mystery and humor and warmth and curiosity and beauty and fear and anger and sorrow and joy, mercy and grace and forgiveness.  It is a refreshing change compared to most modern American productions, which are really just a celebration of vanity, selfishness, violence, sex, and politically approved social trends.  There's no complexity, no depth, no real virtue or vice, no plot, no characters, no interest save a carnal delight in individuality and selfishness in most American shows.

I've never been a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, the books or the various live action versions, while somewhat interesting, they aren't very interesting because they aren't human.  Holmes might be brilliant but he doesn't have a heart, sort of like reading a story written by a computer, while factually stimulating, it must needs be rather flat in every other aspect.  There's no charm, no humor, no philosophy, no heart, no emotion save horror and disgust, and nothing but the cold calculations of a nearly inhuman mind.  Chesterton's detective is anything but brilliant but he's everything human!  And the BBC has captured that, heart and soul.  They've made significant changes to the original stories, they really had no choice, but each one has been well written, well acted, beautifully filmed, and is a solid, quality piece of art.  And nobody is pushing a political agenda.  A character isn't inherently evil or good or brilliant or insipid because of his political or spiritual views; people can have a discussion without hating one another simply because they don't agree.  What a difference from our modern political and social climate and most modern TV!

I'm not saying I agree with everything they've done, but overall, I believe they have captured the spirit of the character and the stories, especially the pervasive attitude that this bumbling priest is a superstitious fool because he believes in things unseen but somehow earns the respect of those around him, even his enemies, by his whimsy, warmth, willingness to listen, and keen understanding of human nature; he neither swerves from the truth nor uses it as a bludgeon against those who don't yet see things his way.  A lesson it would be well for the church as a whole to learn, for so does the world view us, it always has, but by being who and what Christ has called us to be, we too can earn the grudging respect and curiosity of the skeptical and cynical world!

Dangerous splendors

 I wrote recently about a little book I had found at the local thrift store, and while a nifty little story, the main attraction was its introduction of Charles Williams, a hitherto unknown to myself compatriot of C.S.Lewis, J.R.R.Tolkien and the other 'Inklings.'  Curious, as the aforementioned authors are some of my personal favorites, I plunged into some of his writings.  Whereas Lewis and Tolkien write fantasy set in another world, place, or time, Williams prefers to haunt 1930s England with his own visions.  I read all seven of his novels and discovered an excellent writer, his writings are as deep and vivid and perplexing as 'That Hideous Strength' and 'The Man Who Was Thursday,' but a disquiet shadow, barely discerned, looms over them.

When asked about his 'Screwtape Letters,' Lewis remarked that it was quite easy to keep going on in that infernal vein once one got in the habit, but it was so disconcerting that he daren't continue overlong in such a study for his own sake and that of his readers.  I wonder if that is what haunts William's novels, especially his last two.  I haven't read up on his history or writing or personal beliefs or the reaction of his contemporaries to his works, but I did read a brief overview on a blog dedicated to the subject and was rather disturbed to find him an avid occultist, one with questionable intentions towards young ladies, in that light his final two novels don't surprise me in the least.

From his writing I can discern that he was a man of supreme spiritual vision, with the ability to craft a story that draws his reader into that fabulous and terrifying world, but underlying it all seems to be a gradual drift in thought away from the good and the right and the true, into a spectral grey world of ambivalent evil and banal light, wherein there is only Power and all ends the same.  Did that gifted writer, that great spiritual visionary, unlike Lewis, drift ever more gradually into the darkness, did he take Lewis's surest road to Hell, unmarked, gradual, easy underfoot?  Was he so blinded by spiritual splendors and terrors beyond his comprehension and his fascination therewith that he gradually drifted into a sort of moral stupor in which the Power was everything and the Truth nothing, in which all ends were the same and the means certainly justified thereby?  An addict of spiritual phenomena drawn inevitably to destruction like so many others drawn likewise by the more common addictions of drink, drugs, lust, or gambling?

Would I recommend his books?  Lewis really liked 'The Place of the Lion," and I believe it had some influence upon his 'That Hideous Strength.'  I certainly rank them highly as far as literary experience, quality of the writing, philosophical questions posed, and overall a satisfying experience, but they are haunted and haunting.  'The Shadows of Ecstasy' is probably his most problematic book in that light and I found very little redeeming virtues therein.  'The Greater Trumps' is a fascinating and beautiful work, if falling utterly flat at the end and failing to make much sense of what started out to be an intriguing idea.  The others are excellent books in their own right, and I would not hesitate to recommend them save for that lingering whiff of brimstone, barely discerned in most of them, but ever stronger in each successive work.  If you are looking for something to fascinate and challenge your spiritual sensibilities and you have already tackled Lewis and Chesterton, then you might be ready for Williams.  If you are wishy-washy in your faith or lax in your literary habits, start with Lewis, not 'That Hideous Strength,' and build up your spiritual and literary muscles before tackling something so alluring yet also potentially dangerous as Williams, lest you find yourself following unwittingly down that easy road to Hell, so enamored of the terrific visions that you lose sight of the 'Way, the Truth, and the Life.'   

A real book review about a real book!

 How long has it been since I've read something new...wow, I can't remember, which might mean it was two weeks ago but more likely several years.  I just finished 'Here There Be Dragons' by James Owens, a novel I found at the local thrift store, the title alone requiring my purchase thereof.  Usually I get sucked into good books and end up staying up too late trying to finish them, something that old age and kids and life responsibilities have made untenable any more, which is why I rarely read anything new but spend my rare reading time treading old and beloved paths, that and I've been so disappointed with modern writers that I invest so much time and emotion into their worlds only to give up in dismay halfway through and move on with my life.  Pern has grown merely political and tawdry, the Wheel of Time went flat, Harry Potter lost its magic, and the entire Star Wars extended universe was chucked in a wormhole to be replaced with films whose plots were taped together at random out of discards from the cutting room floor of the original trilogy.  So needless to say, I am very wary of starting anything new, especially in a modern sense.  Ware, for there be slight spoilers ahead!

On the surface this is a delightful book, and if you, like a dabbling duck, just stay on the surface and happily paddle along, it is an enjoyable read with a nifty little twist at the end, but if you are a diving duck, fearless of the watery depths, beware, for the bubble of heedless literary abandon will burst and leave you rather muddled and flat.  I love the idea, the very concept of this book, the literary Easter eggs, but like modern culture, which has reduced the celebration of the pivotal moment in human history to a celebration of a fat rabbit depositing strangely painted unripe chickens in random locations, this book has turned three of the foremost writers of fantasy and Christian thought into flat, witless, uninteresting bozos who can't see a plot point the size of a freight train bearing down on them.  While Lewis and Tolkien (I have not read anything of Charles William's yet, but I intend to, the one redeeming part of this whole book!) write with the unshakeable undergirding of their faith (as does Williams supposedly) firmly beneath their own created realities, this book seems to take dibs and dabs from just about everywhere (everything from Greek Mythology to Sherlock Holmes), pastes a classic 'conflict of good vs. evil' montage over the whole thing, with a little 'look inside yourself' mantra to soothe modern sensibilities and tries to pass it off as the inspiration to some of the world's most beloved writers.

The problem is you need to believe in good and evil, truth and deception, right and wrong, light and darkness, like the three protagonist's actual faith inspired in their own lives and writings, to write a compelling story about it.  Lewis had all sorts of pagan deities and mythological creatures peopling Narnia, but they were subservient to 'the deeper magic,' they were aware of the Emperor Across the Sea, the whole world was a product of a greater reality from which the rules of their own were derived, not a bevy of random literary characters thrown together in a seemingly random collage of all stories with only the barest threads of magic and disbelief to connect them.  It is a happy little dream, this bold little book, but to paraphrase Lewis, 'five minutes real toothache (or actual thought) would put all this fluff to flight.'  The Inklings believed this stuff and could therefore actually write compellingly about it, I have no idea what Owens believes, but I don't want to read anything written by his protagonists, if they are as vapid as he portrays them to be, though in reality two of the three are some of my favorite writers.

And why pick on these three if you aren't a closet believer yourself?  It seems weird to write a fantastic account of three overtly Christian writers if you don't want their mythos to creep into your world, unless you are trying to portray their writing as the result of their immersion in a completely different mythology that was only misinterpreted by later readers to be of a Christian flavor and thus more culturally acceptable at the time (which might make a far more interesting story, come to think of it!), but then anything is possible in this convoluted and perplexing age wherein the barricade scene in Les Mis is considered some sort of pivotal and epochal moment for social justice and the whole point of the book when it is only a minor plot point to move the story ahead and the man voicing Aslan in the live action Narnia movies seems to think them to portray all faiths and none, to say nothing of biological realities being a mere societal construct!  Or maybe these books were written to discourage people from reading the books by said authors (another fabulous novel idea!)?  Why not pick three random authors without a common faith but who might theoretically have known one another?  G.K.Chesterton provides a lovely selection in his book on Heretics!  These three were straight out of Orthodoxy, but if you want fluffy reading that doesn't lack in depth, his essays like Tremendous Trifles are delicious.

Overall, a nice little bit of literary fluff but not a series I am going to pursue due to a jarring fault in its worldview that can't decide if it is postmodern or vaguely deistic or a syncretistic hash when its three protagonists are all in reality brilliant men, deep thinkers all, and certainly Christian in their writing, worldview, thought life, and legacy.  Try 'Surprised By Joy' if you want to learn more about the real Jack, in his own words.  Or visit Narnia for real, rather than sailing off in a flimsy imitation of the Dawn Treader and experiencing it second hand.  A good premise but an unsound foundation.  A flashy paint job but the engine is a mess.

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.