Spiritual sustenance for terrifying times

A friend asked on Facebook, "How are you going to sustain yourself emotionally and spiritually in the coming months and years?" I never thought of responding, "I'll go to church."

If people who call themselves Christians could bring us Donald Trump and his evil minions, I was inclined to stay home, walk my dog, and read distracting novels.

I admit: I was being grossly unfair. The church I attend is made up largely of the very people most likely to be harmed by Trump's administration: immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, women, seniors, people whose children are in the military. I should have thought of it as a primary source of emotional and spiritual sustenance, but I was maybe just a little ticked at our pastors for not speaking out more specifically and forcefully about the dangers so many of us are facing and our pervasive fear in the face of those dangers.

Yet for some reason, though I had planned to stay home yesterday morning, I found myself walking through the church doors anyway. I'm glad I did.

Not because of the sermon. It was a perfectly decent sermon for normal times, but the preacher typically made no direct reference to the seriously abnormal events that are washing over us. Well, he did tell us that followers of Jesus are more likely to suffer than to get rich. He got that right.

No, it was the hymns and Scripture readings that brought emotional and spiritual sustenance--and I'm not saying that because my husband is the music director. He and the pastors together chose the hymns well before Trump's hugely disastrous first week in office, and the Scripture readings were chosen years ago by the Consultation on Common Texts. God works in mysterious ways, as the seriously depressed William Cowper noted in 1774, two years before his country went to war.

But wait--before I'm sucked back into the Slough of Despond, let me share some of yesterday's poetry with you, in case you too are feeling short on sustenance.

Here are three verses from the first hymn, "Rise Up, O Saints of God" (imagine singing this lustily with congregation and organ):

Speak out, O saints of God! Despair engulfs earth's frame;

As heirs of God's baptismal grace, the word of hope proclaim.

Rise up, O saints of God! The kingdom's path embrace;

Redress sin's cruel consequence; give justice larger place.

Give heed, O saints of God! Creation cries in pain;

Stretch forth your hand of healing now; with love the weak sustain.

This is the summation of the first Scripture reading, Micah 6:1-8:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you 

but to do justice, 

and to love kindness, 

and to walk humbly with your God?

Psalm 15 is especially striking when read responsively:

Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle? 

who may abide upon your holy hill?

Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, 

who speaks the truth from his heart.

There is no guile upon his tongue; he does no evil to his friend; 

he does not heap contempt upon his neighbor.

In his sight the wicked is rejected, 

but he honors those who fear the Lord.

He has sworn to do no wrong 

and does not take back his word.

He does not give his money in hope of gain, 

nor does he take a bribe against the innocent.

Whoever does these things 

shall never be overthrown.

The second Scripture reading, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, warns against boasting because "God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong." 

The Gospel reading, Matthew 5:1-12, is Jesus's list of those who are blessed in God's kingdom: the poor, mourners, the meek, those who hunger for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for speaking truth to power.

Joshua Banbury movingly sang the prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, which includes these words:

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy...

As the service ended, we all stood up and sang "God of Grace and God of Glory" (to the tune usually used for "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah"). Here are two verses. Sing it as you read, and hear the church singing with you:

Lo! the hosts of evil round us

scorn thy Christ, assail his ways!

From the fears that long have bound us

free our hearts to faith and praise:

grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

for the living of these days,

for the living of these days.

Save us from weak resignation

to the evils we deplore;

let the gift of thy salvation

be our glory evermore.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,

serving thee whom we adore,

serving thee whom we adore.

Christianity will have a hard time recovering from self-proclaimed Bible-believing Christians who played a major role in bringing us the horrors now unfolding in Washington DC and around the world. Churches that take Scripture seriously, however--if they do not give in to "weak resignation"--may be among our best sources of emotional and spiritual sustenance in the coming months and years.

Rise up, O saints of God! The kingdom's path embrace;

Redress sin's cruel consequence; give justice larger place.

Today, even better 50 years later

David recently posted this picture on Facebook along with a line from the 1964 hit "Today" (New Christy Minstrels): "I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine."

I love that song even more than I did fifty years ago, but for different reasons.

Back then it was a sweet love song for the uncommitted. I was 16, living away from home for the first time, falling in love every week (not that the lucky guys were aware of this), living on the edge (if hitchhiking in Italy counts), and thinking I might spend the rest of my life wandering the world. I had no trouble with the line from the second verse, "I'll be a dandy, and I'll be a rover..." As far as I was concerned, "Green, green, it's green, they say, / on the far side of the hill," and I was goin' away to where the grass was greener still.

"Today" is still a sweet love song, but if a million tomorrows haven't all passed away, 18 or 19 thousand have. Now I'd just as soon skip over that second verse and go right to the third:

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine,
I'll taste your strawberries, I'll drink your sweet wine. 
I can't be contented with yesterday's glory; 
I can't live on promises, winter to spring. 
Today is my moment and now is my story. 
I'll laugh and I'll cry and I'll sing ... 

A few blossoms are still clinging, but people my age had better not live on promises of future springs. And if we're contented with yesterday's glory, we become awful bores. Today is our moment, and now is our story. Let me suggest a rewrite of verse 2 for those of us who came of age in the 60s:

Though now we're grandparents, we still can be lovers.
You’ll know who we are by the songs that we sing. 
You’ll feast at my table, I’ll steal all the covers, 
Who cares what tomorrow shall bring?

Or we can just sing another 60s song, one that hit the charts right about when David and I got engaged:

THE TOOTH TATTOO by Peter Lovesey

It seemed appropriate last week, when my dentist was replacing five fillings, to show him the book I was reading: The Tooth Tattoo by British writer Peter Lovesey (published April 30).

Like Lovesey's Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Diamond, I had never heard of tooth tattoos, but my dentist told me he had done some. He then hauled out a handful of photos to show me the possibilities. My favorite showed a Canada goose on the upper molar and a bullet on the corresponding lower molar.

In Lovesey's latest novel - the thirteenth in the Peter Diamond series - an almost unidentifiable corpse is discovered in a canal. The one distinguishing feature, so faint that it was missed by the first medical examiner, is a tattoo on one of the corpse's teeth. It appears to be a quaver, or an eighth note. Diamond and his team spring into action.

But all is not well at the Bath CID. Diamond's coworkers fear that, due to the economic crisis and government cutbacks, their jobs may be on the line. Diamond's churlish behavior, even more extreme than usual, seems to confirm their fears: they have no way of knowing that he is in the midst of a crisis of his own.

When I read the first 12 Peter Diamond books last year (for a review in Books and Culture magazine, "A Rough Diamond"), I grew increasingly enamored of the burly Bath detective's exploits. The Tooth Tattoo, I think, is one of Lovesey's best. Like the others, it's a procedural puzzle, but here Lovesey pays more than usual attention to Diamond's personal life. In addition, much of the novel focuses on the relationships among the members of a world famous string quartet. (If you like music-themed mysteries too, see my reviews of Morag Joss's Sara Selkirk series and Donna Leon's The Jewels of Paradise.)

You don't need to have read the rest of the series to enjoy this book. After you've read it, though, you may want to go back and check out the others. Here's a list of all the titles.

FUNERAL MUSIC by Morag Joss

Thanks to my friend Anne Buchanan, who recommended Morag Joss's Sara Selkirk mysteries.

Anne knows the kind of mysteries I like best. I'd rather the murder(s) happened offstage. I want the characters to be more than plot devices--I like to read about their friends and families, what annoys them at work, what brings them joy, what they like to eat. I love a writer who knows how to develop a sense of place. And it helps if the writer can make me laugh every now and then.

I was delighted with Funeral Music.

Sara Selkirk is a concert cellist of international renown who has been suffering from "musician's block" for a year or so. Originally from Scotland but now a resident of Bath, England, Sara has agreed to play a short concert at the Pump Room in order to raise funds for the Bath Festival. Not long afterward she discovers a corpse.

Fortunately she is well connected. One of her cello students is a police inspector. A friend is a colleague of the murder victim. Another friend takes her to an alternative healing fair, where she happens to observe the eventual murder victim talking with a large man who, it turns out, badly wants a job they both are applying for. This friend's landlady, as it turns out, is the large man's girlfriend (Bath's population is only about 80,000). And then there is Paul, who is good with women and knives; and James, who has a rotten alibi; and George, the prejudiced museum guard, and ...

The puzzle is fun, with several healthy red herrings. Even more fun are Joss's descriptions--short ones, like "his face had the faraway, otherworldly look of a defecating Labrador," and dazzling longer ones, like her evocation of Bach's Trio Sonata in C Major, which

splashed out and down in a shower of weightless drops into the open lap of the abbey nave.... Only Bach could do this, make you feel you had been only half alive until this moment, pull you into the dance, lift you and take you as high as the roof, right up to where you could drink from the music's spring and be filled with a few bubbles of his crazy joy.... It flowed on, the little sounds dancing out across the transept like drops of light, darting through the melodic web that the organist's feet and fingers were spinning to and fro on which to catch them. Sara had the sensation that she had unknowingly been suffering from some sort of deafness and that with this glorious noise she had suddenly woken up to find that her ears were working properly.

Joss spices up the story with a number of complicated relationships: Paul and Sue (or Olivia?), Andrew and Valerie (or Sara?), Derek and Cecily (or Pauline?), James and Tom (or Graham?). One of the funniest scenes I've ever read in a mystery is between  Derek and his wife, Pauline, after she has learned about Cecily--but you'll have to read the book if you want to know more.

Publishers Weekly gave Funeral Music a starred review and P.D. James gave it a laudatory blurb. I'd call it a clever combination of Peter Lovesey and Jane Austen. I can't imagine why the Wheaton Public Library doesn't have the Sara Selkirk mysteries on its shelves, but they got it for me quickly through interlibrary loan. Or you can get a used copy for less than $4 from Amazon.

THE JEWELS OF PARADISE by Donna Leon

After writing 21 detective novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, it's not surprising that author Donna Leon needed a break.

Still, having read all 21 of the Brunetti books, I was expecting Jewels of Paradise to be book 22 in the series. It is not, and I was disappointed.

Disappointed because by now the characters - the lovable detective from Venice; his wife, Paola, and their two young adult children; his sidekick, Sgt. Vianello; his insufferable boss, Vice-Questore Patti; and the indomitable Signorina Elettra - all seem as familiar as Facebook friends, and I wanted to stay involved in their lives.

But my nostalgia is no reason to keep Ms. Leon from expanding her horizons. I was more disappointed because Leon's new book simply didn't hold my interest.

A lot of the book has to do with biographical material concerning Agostino Steffani (1654-1728), churchman, diplomat, and nearly forgotten composer. (Hint: Leon's plot will be easier to follow if you read the Wikipedia article first. Want to hear some of his music? Cecilia Bartoli has a new album, Mission, devoted to his work [you can listen to the NPR program about it here].)

But don't come to this book thinking it's historical fiction. It's closer to historical research as done by a high-school student - and there's no afterword telling us which parts of the story are historical and which invented.

The main character, Caterina, does not seem to have much of a life outside the library. We learn even less about the other characters (though her sister, Cristina the Religious, might be worth a book of her own someday, or at least a bit part in a Brunetti novel).

The plot is thin. Somehow two 300-year-old trunks have been found, and two cousins each claim inheritance rights. Caterina, a musicologist, is charged with reading all the documents in the trunks and figuring out which, if either, has claim to the material.

There aren't many scary parts. At one point, you think scariness is developing, but (spoiler alert) it doesn't.

There isn't even much good food - but I suppose without Guido's ever-cooking scholar-wife, Paola, in the kitchen, there wouldn't be.

And when all is said and done, I know what was in those trunks, but I'm still wondering who the trunks belonged to, and how they came to Venice, and what Opus Dei had to do with the whole situation. Maybe my mind was wandering when all that was explained ...

Why I kept reading: (1) I'm loyal to Donna Leon. Up till now, she's been one of my favorite detective story authors. (2) I appreciate her wry observations about Italian culture and the Catholic Church. (3) I kept thinking the plot would heat up.

If you are a diehard Donna Leon fan like me, you should read it too - and please let me know what you think. I confess that I began skimming the historical parts; maybe I missed something important. If you have not yet become a Leon addict, however, don't start here.

LES MISÉRABLES

Les Misérables - the film - opened yesterday, and David and I were in back row center (my favorite seats) for the six o'clock showing. This was not because we are big fans of Les Miz. David had neither read it nor seen it, and though I saw the stage musical twice in London (the second time because my boss, with whom I was traveling, insisted), I wasn't crazy about it. But hey, it was Christmas Day, we needed to do something while digesting dinner, and it would have been too ironic to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace by going to see Jack Reacher.

Our teenaged granddaughters wanted to know what we thought of Les Miz. Though we made a game attempt, a 2-hour-and-37-minute film is hard to review in text messages, so here are my extended observations.

The story. Quite faithful to Victor Hugo's sprawling novel (1779 pages in one French edition, and no, I haven't read it), this is a set-up, if not for the Oscars, at least for Christianity Today's annual list of most redeeming films. It won't be a spoiler for you to know that the hero, Jean Valjean, is a repentant thief who spends his life selflessly helping people. This is a story that reeks of moral uplift. And that's good: in an age that celebrates ruthless individualism, it is both shocking and inspiring to watch this reminder of the power of forgiveness and self-sacrifice.

The problem with the story. Despite his repeated willingness - if inability - to die for others, Valjean (like his creator, Hugo) supports an armed band of young insurrectionists who hope to overthrow the government. If you believe that peace is created by angry men who shoot the people with whom they disagree, you will find no inconsistency in this aspect of the story.

The historical background. Do read at least a couple of Wikipedia articles before going to see the movie. The one on the June Rebellion is a good place to start. Later you might want to read Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, if you haven't already, or watch Oliver, the musical that reportedly inspired the French librettist of Les Miz. Oliver Twist was published 24 years before Les Misérables (it takes awhile to write 1779 pages), but the two books deal with the same general time period, and the lives of the poor were just as miserable in England as in France. It helps to realize that there's not much exaggeration in Les Miz, except of course that the poor were unlikely to be as gorgeous as Anne Hathaway.

The opera. Be aware that Les Miz is not just a musical. It's grand opera: "a genre of 19th-century opera ... characterised by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events." The characters are much more likely to sing than to speak. There are recitatives and arias, rousing choruses, and even a sextet where the conflicting characters lay out their differences in counterpoint and set the audience up for the dénouement.

So what did I think of Les Miz? I liked the lavish spectacle. I thoroughly enjoyed the rowdy song "Master of the House" featuring Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter. In fact, I enjoyed every scene featuring the evil duo. The sextet and chorus, "One Day More," is quite glorious. David, old romantic that he is, liked "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables."

The other 2 hours and 20 minutes, however, often left me thinking, in the oft repeated words of archvillain Javert, "Shoot me now."

At one point I whispered to David, "There are only two things I don't like about this opera: the words and the music." Apart from a few stellar numbers, the music ranges from insipid to tedious. One or two leitmotifs are endlessly repeated. Worse, a lot of the recitatives are simply drawn-out scales. If you can't come up with actual music, I wanted to scream, just let the characters talk, for Pete's sake.

The words are even worse. When I was a teenager, a particularly bad amateur poet came often to our church and read his supposedly inspirational poetry at us. I kept awake by playing a game: after he declaimed one line, I tried to guess the word he would use to make the next line rhyme. It was amazingly easy. I recommend, dear granddaughters, that you play this game while watching Les Miz. 

The librettist dips into his large sack of easy masculine rhymes (be/me, done/run, know/go, chill/kill) and scatters them prodigally about. He is particularly taken with the near-rhyme Jean Valjean with "on" and "gone." Never does he play with words like Alan Jay Lerner in, say,  Camelot ("You'll never find a virtue / Unstatussing my quo / Or making my Beelzebubble burst ...") or Stephen Sondheim in West Side Story ("I like the isle of Manhattan, / Smoke on your pipe and put that in!") Except for the bawdy tavern song, all the songs in Les Miz are so earnest, so sentimental, so predictable.

Still, as of this writing, 63% of the top critics (surveyed by Rotten Tomatoes) liked the movie, as did 72% of critics in general and 86% of the audience. That's not shabby. You may like it too, and I won't think less of you for it. Just don't put yourself through it three times. Nobody needs to be that misérable.

Number-One Hits: Not Just for Birthdays

The Andrews Sisters

A lot of my Facebook friends are sharing links to the number-one hit song on the day of their birth. Listening to the song can be disconcerting. One friend, after discovering his was by the Andrews Sisters, wrote, "Will someone spoon oatmeal into me for dinner?"

(If you want to find your song, click here.) Mine was a song I'd never heard of - somehow I didn't pay much attention to the hit parade when I was in my bassinet. What with diapers, bottles, and sleep deprivation, my parents may never have heard of it either. I just checked the top hits on the days my daughters were born, and they were completely unfamiliar to me too.

So I got to thinking, this meme has it wrong. The important song in my life isn't the number-one hit on the day of my birth. It's the number-one hit on the day I was conceived. That song might explain my existence.

I immediately checked out my idea by looking up top hits on my daughters' probable dates of conception. OK, scratch that theory. One song was barely familiar. The other was "American Pie." Well, yes, "I can still remember how that music used to make me smile..."

The top hit on my own probable date of conception, though, seemed sweetly appropriate: Francis Craig's "Near You." (If you want to estimate your date of conception, click here. If you were born in a leap year, choose 2012 as your birth year; otherwise, choose 2011.)

But hey, the hit parade is more for teenagers than for sober young householders. What song was popular that Sunday afternoon when Mr Neff and I, aged 19 and 18, snuggled in a parked VW and decided to get married?

Groovin'

On a Sunday afternoon ...

We'll keep on spending sunny days this way

We're gonna talk and laugh our time away

I feel it comin' closer day by day

Life would be ecstasy, you and me endlessly . . .

More than 44 ecstatic years later, the music hasn't died, though it's getting more and more difficult to groove in a VW.

Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy reflect on civil discourse and the limits of human understanding

This evening Mr Neff and I ate dinner to the music of Mavis Staples in her new album, You Are Not Alone, produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame, who also wrote two of the songs.

Earlier in the day we'd been talking about Alan Jacobs' article in Big Questions Online, "The Online State of Nature."  Jacobs, a professor of English at Wheaton College, asks (quoting Thomas Hobbes): "Why has Internet discourse devolved into a 'war of every man against every man'?"

Well, Mavis and Jeff have a song for that.  It's called "Only the Lord Knows," and you can watch a version of it here.

Here's the refrain:

What can you do, what can you do when you can't trust

Anybody to tell you the truth?

Can't trust him, can't trust her - what to do, what to do now?

Only the Lord knows, and he ain't you.

"That's a wonderful example of epistemological humility," said Mr Neff.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

Though I've been in love with Mavis Staples ever since she teamed up with Aretha Franklin in "Oh Happy Day" in the late 80s, and with Jeff Tweedy ever since I met him, his wife, and their toddler son eating celery sticks backstage after a Wilco concert in the mid 90s, I would never have thought of putting them together. Two years ago, however, Tweedy joined a small audience as Staples recorded a live album, and two weeks after that, Tweedy and Staples did lunch.

The resulting album, the one we listened to tonight, was released this week, and it's a match made in heaven. Maybe literally. You can read positive reviews in the Chicago Tribune, Paste Magazine, Rolling Stone, and even Christianity Today. Or you can watch Staples and Tweedy chat. Or, of course, you can just download the album and enjoy the whole thing beginning five minutes from now.

Big Brother hopes you'll shop at his store

Even when I was very small I hated the Sunday-school song that begins

O be careful little eyes what you see
O be careful little eyes what you see
There's a Father up above
And he's looking down in love
So, be careful little eyes what you see

The song then advises the child to take equal care of his or her ears, hands, feet, and mouth. You never know when that all-seeing God, loving though he may be, is going to smite you.

I couldn't find out when the song was written - I learned it in the early 1950s - but its secular version comes from 1934:

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!

Unlike God, Santa Claus doesn't claim that his omniscient spying is love-based. He is, however, coming to town with a bagful of presents, so the child who understands enlightened self-interest had better watch out.

In today's New York Times, Stephanie Clifford offers yet another reason to watch out: "Web Coupons Know Lots About You, and They Tell."  She writes:

A new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, is packed with information about the customer who uses it. While the coupons look standard, their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place.

God and Santa Claus, I've been told, can't be blocked. They know everything I think and do. Fortunately, retail marketers, like the devil, don't have that capability unless I hand it over to them. But it's so easy to let the marketers in. All I have to do is use an internet coupon for free shipping or 20% off.

At least God and Santa Claus use their information in order to offer me things I want, like eternal life and Christmas presents. And they give me these things free of charge, apart from their insistence on reasonably good behavior. Retail marketers, by contrast, offer only more marketing, finely tuned to my personal preferences so that I will covet their stuff and pout if I don't get it.

But wait - won't that jeopardize my standing with God and Santa Claus?

Oh Happy Days - 15,330 of them so far

Forty-two years ago today, Mr Neff and I publicly vowed to love and cherish one another "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part." At dinner last Saturday night we joked about what we'd be doing in another 42 years, when he's 104 and I'm 103. In spite of the fact that his grandmother and several of my great-aunts made it past 100, we decided to plan our really big celebration for our 75th anniversary, just in case we're too tired on our 84th.

But then we learned about Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher. He's 104 and she's 102, and on May 13--the day after our daughter Molly and son-in-law Byron celebrate their 20th anniversary--Mr and Mrs Fisher will celebrate their 86th. Theirs is not yet the world's longest recorded marriage--three or four other couples are ahead of them--but they are the longest married of any living couple. And they are certainly the hippest. On Valentine's Day they answered questions about their enduring marriage on their Twitter account.

Stay married long enough, and people start asking about the secret of your lengthy marriage. I'll defer to the Fishers, who are 44 years ahead of us.

How did they know they were right for each other? "We grew up together and were best friends before we married. A friend is for life - our marriage has lasted a lifetime."

What was their marriage like? "With each day that passed, our relationship was more solid and secure. Divorce was NEVER an option - or even a thought."

There you have it. A good marriage begins with friendship, is based on commitment, and grows stronger as the years go by.

Yes it does. As the Fishers pointed out, "The children are grown, so we talk more now." Also, we eat more interesting food, and we have more time to spend with adult friends. Last night while chatting with friends before dinner we discovered that all of us love the song "Oh Happy Day." Apparently based on an 18th-century hymn sung to the tune of "How Dry I Am," it took on new life as a gospel song in 1969 performed by the Edwin Hawkins Singers (and may have been the inspiration for George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord").

My very favorite version of "Oh Happy Day," though, is the 1987 cover by Aretha Franklin and Mavis Staples. Never have I heard so much gutsy joy packed into eight sweet minutes. Theirs is the happiness of a mature faith or a ripe old marriage, an ecstasy greater than newlyweds can imagine, a truly aspirational ardor. So of course I immediately played the CD for our friends, and then this morning I linked to it on You Tube as part of my Facebook update.

And then I discovered another version of the song that I offer to people who are new to commitment, people who aren't sure if they're going to make it, and people who are friends of those people. It's from Sister Act 2, and unless your boss is in the next cubicle, go ahead and watch it now. See the kid grow in confidence and enthusiasm. Notice the huge supporting cast--Sister Whoopi, of course, and also the choir, the nuns, the congregation. That boy can sing "Oh Happy Day" because he's part of a community that wants him to succeed.

Mr and Mrs Fisher know how that goes. “Everyone who plants a seed and harvests the crop celebrates together,” they twittered. "We are individuals, but accomplish more together."

Mr Neff and I know how that goes too. Thanks to our friends, families, and communities that have been and continue to be our supporting cast. Today is our happy day because of you.

And Mr Neff, try not to work late tonight.

Theological dogs

Last week a friend who knows my dogs sent me a link to Wendy Francisco’s wildly popular new song, “God and Dog” (over half a million views at time of writing). G-o-d and d-o-G--two words, one kind of love. "They would stay with me all day; / I’m the one who walks away . / But both of them just wait for me / and dance at my return with glee. / Both love me no matter what ..."

Well, OK. I know that "nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God" (Romans 8:39) and that "joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth" (Luke 15:7). And I've noticed that both Greyfriar's Bobby (pictured at left) and the Old Testament God (not pictured; dislikes graven images) are renowned for their faithfulness. If self-doubting, guilt-ridden You Tube viewers are moved by Ms Francisco's song to consider and perhaps even feel some of God's everlasting love for them (Jeremiah 31:3), she has accomplished a lot.

I'll admit, though, that the song makes me uncomfortable--not just because of its sticky sentimentality, but also because of its God-as-a-pet-dog theology. The canine metaphor for the relationship between humans and God is nothing new, of course. "Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs," said the Greek woman to Jesus (Luke 7:28): even pagans can be blessed, if indirectly.

In the early 1800s, theologian and philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher came up with an idea that the Greek woman might have appreciated: the basis of religion is not reason, creed, or dogma, but rather a feeling of absolute dependence. Schleiermacher's colleague in philosophy, G.W.F. Hegel, famously retorted: "[Then] a dog would be the best Christian, for it possesses this [feeling of absolute dependence] in the highest degree and lives mainly in this feeling” (Crouter, 91).

Note that in the Greek woman's plea, as in Hegel's wisecrack about Schleiermacher's theology, God is the human and I'm the dog, not the other way around.

Hegel published his comment in 1822. Some 70 years later, rescued opium addict Francis Thompson wrote what would become his most famous poem, "The Hound of Heaven." In it, God has become the dog.

But Thompson's hound is no friendly if neglected pet. It's a hunting dog with a one-track mind, a dog you don't want to get involved with if you're a rabbit:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him ...

The hound of heaven doesn't just wait; it pursues with "deliberate speed, majestic instancy." It doesn't wag its tail; it brays at its prey, "How little worthy of any love thou art!"

Read the poem aloud so you can appreciate its relentless rolling cadences. Spoiler: it has a happy ending. But the hound never turns into a poodle.

"God so loved the world"--though if you do a word search on Bible Gateway, you'll see that the New Testament writers don't mention God's love nearly so often as they point out the love we ought to have for God and one another.

Like the prodigal's father (Luke 15), God waits and rejoices--but the time in the far country can be terrifying.

My little dogs warm my lap and my heart, lower my blood pressure, and make me get enough exercise--but I still think that if anyone in the relationship between God and me is a schnorkie or a shih-poo, it isn't God.

A false sense of well-being?

A friend just e-mailed: "But you don't have any happy songs for yesterday (and, hopefully, today)!" Mea culpa. I was thinking of some possibilities, though. Anyone want to offer some lyrics to one of these--or to others of your choice?

Up, Up and Away

Bridge Over Troubled Water
Here Comes the Sun
I Feel Fine
We Can Work It Out
Good Day Sunshine
Dancing in the Street
The Beat Goes On

Of course, you may not feel as upbeat as my friend. Perhaps you are of the David Brooks (aka Eeyore or Puddleglum) persuasion. Check out his column "Big Government Ahead," which begins with this warning:

[M]ost economists say there is a broader economic crisis still to come. The unemployment rate will shoot upward. Companies will go bankrupt. Commercial real estate values will decline. Credit card defaults will rise. The nonprofit sector will be hammered.

If Brooks is right, I'll still have plenty of opportunity to use songs like the ones I worked on over the weekend while walking my dogs, a moderately glum version of "Mrs Robinson":

Here’s to you, Henry Paulsen...
Jesus left your office long ago.
Woe, woe, woe.

and a slightly more upbeat "The Day the Market Died":

Bye, bye to the pie in the sky
Found a Chevy at the levee but the gas tank was dry
Bernanke and Greenspan drinkin’ whiskey and rye
But hey, this could be a good time to buy
This could be a good time to buy...

Bonds, Stocks & Tears

What goes up
must come down
Wall Street, Main Street
got to go round
Jesus drives a Prius,
GM suffers for its sin
Take another aspirin
See the candidates spin ...

Wall Street Park

Someone let my money down the drain...

I don't think that I can take it
Cuz it took so long to make it
And I'll never have retirement plans again

Oh nooooooooooooo ...

Droopy Tuesday

Good-bye, droopy Tuesday
Now the Dow is black and blue
My funds shrink with every new day
Dollars, gonna miss you...

Frail children of dust

I grew up singing "O Worship the King," a 200-year-old hymn written by Robert Grant, a British MP and social reformer. It includes this concise description of the post-Edenic human condition:

Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail . . .

Now, I don't think we're frail because we are dust--Adam and Eve and Jesus were dust too. Nor do I think that our frailty is limited to our dust component--fallen spirit does every bit as much damage as fallen dust. But frail we certainly are, and our feebleness is especially distressing when it shows up in church.

Like, for example, when religious leaders (not always Catholic, by the way) sexually abuse children, or when they wage their internal wars ("We're more scriptural!" "We're more loving!") in the press and courts of law, or when they fleece their followers to support their own lavish lifestyles.

Is this the church against which "the gates of hell shall not prevail" (Matthew 16:18)?

Well, yes. We're a mess, as imperfect dust-spirit creatures are bound to be, but we're not nearly as messy as we once were. Consider the state of church leadership in the tenth century:

In 904, Sergius III had his two rivals, Leo V and Christopher I, incarcerated and killed. He had come to power with the support of one of the most powerful families of Italy. This family was headed by Theophylact and his wife Theodora, whose daughter, Marozia, was Sergius' lover. Shortly after the death of Sergius, Marozia and her husband Guido of Tuscia captured the Lateran palace and made John X their prisoner, subsequently suffocating him with a pillow. After the brief pontificates of Leo VI and Stephen VII, Marozia placed on the papal throne, with the name of John XI, the son whom she had had from her union with Sergius III. Thirty years after the death of John XI, that papacy was in the hands of John XII, a grandson of Marozia. Later, her nephew became John XIII. His successor, Benedict VI, was overthrown and strangled by Crescentius, a brother of John XIII. John XIV died of either poison or starvation in the dungeon where he had been thrown by Boniface VII, who in turn was poisoned.

--Justo González, The Story of Christianity, Vol. 1: 275

One might read such horrors and conclude that religion does more harm than good. However, despots such as Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao do not raise one's trust in atheistic benevolence. Here are some ideas I draw from our frail and feeble church:

• The Catholic reform movement Call to Action is right in emphasizing that "we are the church, the people of God." We are not defined by our leaders. Jesus said our leaders are our servants, not our lords (see Mark 10:42-45).
• At the same time, we must keep in mind that we too are feeble and frail. "Not the preacher, not the deacon, but it's me, O Lord / Standin' in the need of prayer."
• People who want an authoritative church to decide, legislate, direct, and control should read more history.
• People who think John-Paul II and Benedict XVI are going to destroy the church should read more history.
• Justo González's two-volume set, The Story of Christianity, is a good place to start.
  

Robert Grant does not leave his frail dusty hymn singers quivering under the bed. His next line puts the emphasis where it should be, especially when the messy church threatens to block our view of the horizon:

In Thee do we trust, nor find Thee to fail.

The Green Leaves of Summer

“Is That All There Is” is one interpretation of Ecclesiastes (“This is what I have seen to be good: it is fitting to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of the life God gives us; for this is our lot,” 5:18).

“The Green Leaves of Summer” is another Ecclesiastes song from the sixties, and I like it better even if (or perhaps because) it’s schmaltzy. You can see a rough but poignant performance by the elderly Brothers Four singing at the Kingston Trio’s 45^th anniversary celebration here on YouTube.

In “Is That All There Is,” a young person looks ahead to death, anticipating disappointment. In “The Green Leaves of Summer,” an old person looks back at life, with gratitude, as “the green leaves of summer are calling me home.” My favorite lines:

A time to be plowin', a time to be plantin',
A time to be courtin' a girl of your own--
T'was so good to be young then, to be close to the earth,
And to stand by your wife, at the moment of birth . . .

Is that all there is?

A friend in her mid 30s tells me “Is That All There Is” is her favorite song. She especially likes the part about dancing and breaking out the booze and having a ball.

I was about 21 when Peggy Lee made the song famous. I didn’t like its theme, that every emotionally charged experience—even death—is bound to disappoint. I wanted to be more than dust on its way to ashes. When Peggy started singing, I would flip the dial.

But I knew then, and I know even more now, how a person could feel like that. Often enough, especially in late winter with yet another storm on its way, that’s exactly how things seem.

So, if that’s all there is, should we drink and dance? Probably, at least on weekends, and if we can party without destroying our health or driving drunk.

But what if that isn’t all there is? What if we are more than dust of the ground? What if an essential part of our human nature is a spiritual component that goes far beyond what we experience with our physical senses?

Well then, dancing and drinking may still be a good response (see caveats above). What religion doesn’t celebrate joyful feasts—not because that is all there is, but because, in the words of the Nicene Creed, God is the “maker of . . . all that is, seen and unseen”?