The Airy Christ
by Stevie Smith
After reading Dr Rieu’s translation of St Mark’s Gospel.
Who is this that comes in splendour, coming from the blazing East?
This is he we had not thought of, this is he the airy Christ.
Airy, in an airy manner in an airy parkland walking,
Others take him by the hand, lead him, do the talking.
But the Form, the airy One, frowns an airy frown,
What they say he knows must be, but he looks aloofly down,
Looks aloofly at his feet, looks aloofly at his hands,
Knows they must, as prophets say, nailèd be to wooden bands.
As he knows the words he sings, that he sings so happily
Must be changed to working laws, yet sings he ceaselessly.
Those who truly hear the voice, the words, the happy song,
Never shall need working laws to keep from doing wrong.
Deaf men will pretend sometimes they hear the song, the words,
And make excuse to sin extremely; this will be absurd.
Heed it not. Whatever foolish men may do the song is cried
For those who hear, and the sweet singer does not care that he was crucified.
For he does not wish that men should love him more than anything
Because he died; he only wishes they would hear him sing.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Dan Harrington on New Biblical Scholarship e.g. Pheme Perkins
Nobody surveys new biblical scholarship better than Prof. Dan Harrington of Weston School of Theology, editor of New Testament Abstracts, and here's a new survey in America for March 31, 2008.
I like Pheme Perkins' Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels very much but I'm not quite ready to consider it as a required text. I think that statements about Peter in Matthew are too open to anachronism: Peter "on the one hand provides a link between the teaching of Jesus as it is remembered and practiced in the church of Matthew's day and Jesus himself. On the other hand, Peter also appears as an everyman figure possessing the weaknesses and strengths that any disciple might posses" (p.189). This is nuanced but not quite enough. Ekklesia in Matthew 16 describes something more like an assembly. The problem is that the word "church" conveys much too much of our modern connotations of public religious building. I know its in modern translations but textbooks don't have to reinforce it. (And I know what Tyndale says: congregacion!)
I'll continue reading the book this Spring. And I'll continue to look for a discussion of the relationship of "community" to "church" in the book since both terms occur and overlap but are distinct. I'm wondering, for example, why there's a community/church in Matthew's gospel but only a community in Luke's gospel.
I like Pheme Perkins' Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels very much but I'm not quite ready to consider it as a required text. I think that statements about Peter in Matthew are too open to anachronism: Peter "on the one hand provides a link between the teaching of Jesus as it is remembered and practiced in the church of Matthew's day and Jesus himself. On the other hand, Peter also appears as an everyman figure possessing the weaknesses and strengths that any disciple might posses" (p.189). This is nuanced but not quite enough. Ekklesia in Matthew 16 describes something more like an assembly. The problem is that the word "church" conveys much too much of our modern connotations of public religious building. I know its in modern translations but textbooks don't have to reinforce it. (And I know what Tyndale says: congregacion!)
I'll continue reading the book this Spring. And I'll continue to look for a discussion of the relationship of "community" to "church" in the book since both terms occur and overlap but are distinct. I'm wondering, for example, why there's a community/church in Matthew's gospel but only a community in Luke's gospel.
Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?
Why -- do they shut Me out of Heaven?
Did I sing -- too loud?
But -- I can say a little "Minor"
Timid as a Bird!
Wouldn't the Angels try me --
Just -- once -- more --
Just -- see -- if I troubled them --
But don't -- shut the door!
Oh, if I -- were the Gentleman
In the "White Robe" --And they -- were the little Hand -- that knocked --
Could -- I -- forbid?
Last night, I went to a recital of songs by Joyce DiDonato including Copeland's settings of poems by Emily Dickinson. "Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?" is here.
We might expect a quiet question but the opening lines are sung assertively with a double forte dynamic. Copland’s Dickinson has no thought of modulating her voice, altering her opinion, or amending her thought.
At the close of the song, these lines are repeated almost as a refrain. Indeed, the score directs the vocalist to offer the closing lines with a triple forte dynamic and to hold the word “loud” for three full measures, and therein lies the irony of the lyrics. Although the speaker speculates that she is barred from heaven for being “loud,” and acknowledges that she is capable of singing “Timid as a bird,” she persists in her assertion of her right to sing with force and vigor. She does so to underscore her direct statement that she has deliberately made herself unfit for heaven. She might be timid and thereby earn eternal salvation, but she chooses to proclaim—and, in Copland’s setting, to proclaim yet again—the worldly self.
Why is the singer so assertive? She hypothesizes that if she were heaven’s sentinel, she would have difficulty in barring entry. Copland’s lyrics repeat the question, “Could I forbid, could I forbid, could I forbid,” the possibility rendered more unthinkable with each voicing.
Copland’s lyrics change the singular “Gentleman” of Dickinson’s poem into plural “gentlemen in the white robes.” Thus, the figure of God the Father in his role as judge has been replaced by a gendered collection of religious gate-keepers. So access to God is effectively cut off by male religious authorities and this is what the poet/singer protests.
And that was just one song!!!
Did I sing -- too loud?
But -- I can say a little "Minor"
Timid as a Bird!
Wouldn't the Angels try me --
Just -- once -- more --
Just -- see -- if I troubled them --
But don't -- shut the door!
Oh, if I -- were the Gentleman
In the "White Robe" --And they -- were the little Hand -- that knocked --
Could -- I -- forbid?
Last night, I went to a recital of songs by Joyce DiDonato including Copeland's settings of poems by Emily Dickinson. "Why Do They Shut Me Out of Heaven?" is here.
We might expect a quiet question but the opening lines are sung assertively with a double forte dynamic. Copland’s Dickinson has no thought of modulating her voice, altering her opinion, or amending her thought.
At the close of the song, these lines are repeated almost as a refrain. Indeed, the score directs the vocalist to offer the closing lines with a triple forte dynamic and to hold the word “loud” for three full measures, and therein lies the irony of the lyrics. Although the speaker speculates that she is barred from heaven for being “loud,” and acknowledges that she is capable of singing “Timid as a bird,” she persists in her assertion of her right to sing with force and vigor. She does so to underscore her direct statement that she has deliberately made herself unfit for heaven. She might be timid and thereby earn eternal salvation, but she chooses to proclaim—and, in Copland’s setting, to proclaim yet again—the worldly self.
Why is the singer so assertive? She hypothesizes that if she were heaven’s sentinel, she would have difficulty in barring entry. Copland’s lyrics repeat the question, “Could I forbid, could I forbid, could I forbid,” the possibility rendered more unthinkable with each voicing.
Copland’s lyrics change the singular “Gentleman” of Dickinson’s poem into plural “gentlemen in the white robes.” Thus, the figure of God the Father in his role as judge has been replaced by a gendered collection of religious gate-keepers. So access to God is effectively cut off by male religious authorities and this is what the poet/singer protests.
And that was just one song!!!
According to Paul Sims of the Daily Mail, The Rev Robert Harrison's book, Must Know Stories, contains retellings of ten Bible stories and is out tomorrow.
In the nativity story, Jesus is born in an overcrowded house instead of a stable, amid family conflict as Joseph's aunt deals with the fact that he and Mary are not even married.
Mr Harrison, who preaches at St John's in Hillingdon, West London, added: "It's better to tell the story controversially than not at all."
A Church of England spokesman said: "Robert Harrison is simply drawing parallels between biblical stories and situations that people may recognise in modern life.
"It doesn't change the original stories."
But last night some notable Christians disagreed.
Catholic MP Ann Widdecombe said: "It sounds to me as if it's gone much too far. It is one thing to give a biblical story a modern application and something quite different to distort all the facts."
Dr Justin Thacker, head of theology at the Evangelical Alliance, said: "In trying to communicate the stories to a contemporary audience some of the essential features and message may have been lost."
In the nativity story, Jesus is born in an overcrowded house instead of a stable, amid family conflict as Joseph's aunt deals with the fact that he and Mary are not even married.
Mr Harrison, who preaches at St John's in Hillingdon, West London, added: "It's better to tell the story controversially than not at all."
A Church of England spokesman said: "Robert Harrison is simply drawing parallels between biblical stories and situations that people may recognise in modern life.
"It doesn't change the original stories."
But last night some notable Christians disagreed.
Catholic MP Ann Widdecombe said: "It sounds to me as if it's gone much too far. It is one thing to give a biblical story a modern application and something quite different to distort all the facts."
Dr Justin Thacker, head of theology at the Evangelical Alliance, said: "In trying to communicate the stories to a contemporary audience some of the essential features and message may have been lost."
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
I agree with this review by Carlin Romano of Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. I saw her interviewed on Bill Moyers. I've read parts of the book.
..If Jacoby were a more nuanced thinker, she'd be less abusive and more explanatory. Many secular thinkers, after all, grasp that religious thought persists not because believers are stupid or can't reason, but because concepts like God, faith and design possess logical peculiarities that make it impossible to disprove religious beliefs without prior agreement on how one defines terms.
It's telling that Jacoby piles on The Da Vinci Code and The O'Reilly Factor while ignoring NPR and BOOK-TV. The latter play the same role in the "edifice of middlebrow culture" as many of the media for which she's nostalgic (e.g., Saturday Review), but because she insists that edifice has "collapsed," they don't exist in her inventory.
"It is possible that nothing will help," Jacoby writes ruefully in her last chapter. "The nation's memory and attention span may already have sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived. . . . "
On the contrary. Jacoby needs to get out of her apartment, stop seething about "junk," and parlay her books into a professorship. That might introduce her to students - a species with whom she seems unacquainted - who reject her senior-citizen notion that "reading for pleasure . . . is in certain respects antithetical to the whole experience of reading on computers and portable digital devices."
..If Jacoby were a more nuanced thinker, she'd be less abusive and more explanatory. Many secular thinkers, after all, grasp that religious thought persists not because believers are stupid or can't reason, but because concepts like God, faith and design possess logical peculiarities that make it impossible to disprove religious beliefs without prior agreement on how one defines terms.
It's telling that Jacoby piles on The Da Vinci Code and The O'Reilly Factor while ignoring NPR and BOOK-TV. The latter play the same role in the "edifice of middlebrow culture" as many of the media for which she's nostalgic (e.g., Saturday Review), but because she insists that edifice has "collapsed," they don't exist in her inventory.
"It is possible that nothing will help," Jacoby writes ruefully in her last chapter. "The nation's memory and attention span may already have sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived. . . . "
On the contrary. Jacoby needs to get out of her apartment, stop seething about "junk," and parlay her books into a professorship. That might introduce her to students - a species with whom she seems unacquainted - who reject her senior-citizen notion that "reading for pleasure . . . is in certain respects antithetical to the whole experience of reading on computers and portable digital devices."
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Martin Marty writes in the Chronicle about Jeremiah Wright: Prophet and Pastor:
Trinity focuses on biblical teaching and preaching. It is a church where music stuns and uplifts, a church given to hospitality and promoting physical and spiritual healing, devoted to education, active in Chicago life, and one that keeps the world church in mind, with a special accent on African Christianity. The four S's charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don't stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home.
Yes, while Trinity is "unapologetically Christian," as the second clause in its motto affirms, it is also, as the other clause announces, "unashamedly black." From its beginning, the church has made strenuous efforts to help black Christians overcome the shame they had so long been conditioned to experience. That its members and pastor are, in their own term, "Africentric" should not be more offensive than that synagogues should be "Judeocentric" or that Chicago's Irish parishes be "Celtic-centric." Wright and colleagues insist that no hierarchy of races is involved. People do not leave Trinity ready to beat up on white people; they are charged to make peace.
Trinity focuses on biblical teaching and preaching. It is a church where music stuns and uplifts, a church given to hospitality and promoting physical and spiritual healing, devoted to education, active in Chicago life, and one that keeps the world church in mind, with a special accent on African Christianity. The four S's charged against Wright — segregation, separatism, sectarianism, and superiority — don't stand up, as countless visitors can attest. I wish those whose vision has been distorted by sermon clips could have experienced what we and our white guests did when we worshiped there: feeling instantly at home.
Yes, while Trinity is "unapologetically Christian," as the second clause in its motto affirms, it is also, as the other clause announces, "unashamedly black." From its beginning, the church has made strenuous efforts to help black Christians overcome the shame they had so long been conditioned to experience. That its members and pastor are, in their own term, "Africentric" should not be more offensive than that synagogues should be "Judeocentric" or that Chicago's Irish parishes be "Celtic-centric." Wright and colleagues insist that no hierarchy of races is involved. People do not leave Trinity ready to beat up on white people; they are charged to make peace.
Monday, March 24, 2008
This week's TLS on ABCs past and present
There's a good review in this week's TLS of Rowan William's Wrestling with Angels edited by Mike Higton by David Bentley Hart, a visiting professor at Providence College and a dismissive review of David Hein's book on Geoffrey Fisher by John Whale.
Hart calls the collection "provocative and profound" and notes that William's essays dealing with the thought of modern philosophers and theologians are "exercises in philosophical or systematic theology" or "careful inquisitive readings." They suit Williams well. Hart describes the essay on the nature of human interiority "somewhat original" noting that it juxtaposes Bonhoeffer and Wittgenstein. The essay on Vladimir Lossky is "deeply respectful" and brings into focus "certain troubling weaknesses of Lossky's thought." However, he fails to elaborate on what these are. He thinks the two essays on Hegel "compellingly demonstrate" why theologians must continue to engage with Hegel's thought on "the implications of Trinitarian dogma, the nature of freedom and community, the possibility of speaking of God and much else." He does not care for the essay on Don Cupitt.
David Hein's book on Geoffrey Fisher is found wanting by John Whale, former editor of the Church Times and former assistant editor of the Sunday Times. It is an incomplete picture, and a "slender biographical essay." Fisher was "an autocrat of fixed opinions who urged them even when the matter at hand had ceased to be his business." Failing to take the complete picture into account, the book gives Fisher "an easy pass." This is a good example of a critical review.
Hart calls the collection "provocative and profound" and notes that William's essays dealing with the thought of modern philosophers and theologians are "exercises in philosophical or systematic theology" or "careful inquisitive readings." They suit Williams well. Hart describes the essay on the nature of human interiority "somewhat original" noting that it juxtaposes Bonhoeffer and Wittgenstein. The essay on Vladimir Lossky is "deeply respectful" and brings into focus "certain troubling weaknesses of Lossky's thought." However, he fails to elaborate on what these are. He thinks the two essays on Hegel "compellingly demonstrate" why theologians must continue to engage with Hegel's thought on "the implications of Trinitarian dogma, the nature of freedom and community, the possibility of speaking of God and much else." He does not care for the essay on Don Cupitt.
David Hein's book on Geoffrey Fisher is found wanting by John Whale, former editor of the Church Times and former assistant editor of the Sunday Times. It is an incomplete picture, and a "slender biographical essay." Fisher was "an autocrat of fixed opinions who urged them even when the matter at hand had ceased to be his business." Failing to take the complete picture into account, the book gives Fisher "an easy pass." This is a good example of a critical review.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
'Easter', a mixed media piece by Dennis Di Vicenzo on Episcopal Cafe Art Blog, uses contemporary graphics to tell the story of Christ's Resurrection from his perspective. Di Vicenzo breathes new meaning into the symbols of Easter and offers us a visual language of new interpretation. In 'Easter', there is action as the Pascal lamb and all that follows is poured out of the cup of salvation. The communion host, the fish, the heart, the text from the prayer book, the stained glass windows - all of these symbols illustrate the story of Easter. In using imagery that is understood by people today, Di Vicenzo is in his own way offering his viewers eyes to see new life.
With thanks to Mel Ahlborn.
With thanks to Mel Ahlborn.
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