From the 2016 memoir The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ, by Andrew Klavan:
The fact was, as a story -- even leaving out the supernatural, especially leaving out the supernatural, taking it all as metaphor, I mean -- the Bible made perfect sense to me from the very beginning.
I saw a God whose nature was creative love. He made man in his own image for the purpose of forming new and free relationships with him. But in his freedom, man turned away from that relationship to consult his own wisdom and desires. The knowledge of good and evil was not some top-secret catalog of nice and naughty acts that popped into Eve's mind when a talking snake got her to eat the magic fruit. The knowledge was built into the action of disobedience itself: it's what she learned when she overruled the moral law God had placed within her. There was no going back from that. The original sin poisoned all history. History's murders, rapes, wars, oppressions, and injustices are not the inescapable plot of the story we're in.
The Old Testament traces one complete cycle of that history; one people's rise and fall. This particular people is unique only in that they're the ones who begin to remember what man was made for. Moses' revelation at the burning bush is as profound as any religious scene in literature. There, he sees that the eternal creation and destruction of nature is not a mere process but the mask of a personal spirit, I AM THAT I AM. The centuries that follow that revelation are a spiraling semicircle of sin and shame and redemption, of freedom recovered and then surrendered in return for imperial greatness, of a striving for righteousness through law that reveals only the impossibility of righteousness, of power and pride and fall. It's every people's history, in other words, but seen anew in the light of the fire of I AM.
It made sense to me too -- natural sense, not supernatural -- that after that history was complete, a man might be born who could comprehend it wholly and re-create within himself the relationship at its source. His mind would contain both man and God. It made sense that the creatures of sin and history -- not the Jews alone but all of us -- would conspire in such a man's judicial murder. Jesus had to die because we had to kill him. It was either that or see ourselves by his light, as the broken things we truly are. It's only from God's point of view that this is a redeeming sacrifice. By living on earth in Jesus, by entering history, by experiencing death, by passing through that moment of absolute blackness when God is forsaken by God, God reunites himself with his fallen creation and reopens the path to the relationship lost in Eden. Jesus' resurrection is the final proof that no matter how often we kill the truth of who we're meant to be, it never dies.
[That summary right there is worth the price of the book, I think].
But there's more:
For years, maybe most of my life, I had languished in that typical young intellectual's delusion that gloom and despair are the romantic lot of the brilliant and the wise. But now I saw: it wasn't so. Why should it be? What sort of wisdom has no joy in it? What good is wisdom without joy? By joy I don't mean ceaseless happiness, of course. I don't mean willed stupidity for the sake of a cheap smile. The world is sad and it is suffering. A tragic sense is essential to both realism and compassion. By joy I mean a vital love of life in both sorrow and gladness. Why not? The hungry can't eat your tears. The poor can't spend them. They're no comfort to the afflicted and they don't bring the wicked to justice. Everything useful that can be done in the world can be done in joy.
Klavan's insight summoned a song for me.
The "Nazareth" that Robbie Robertson of The Band was writing about pulling into "half past dead" was Nazareth, Pennsylvania, home of the Martin Guitar company. But we all know which Nazarene put the original town in Judea on the proverbial map. And I don't think it coincidental that the refrain of "The Weight" is deliberately redemptive: "Take a load off, Annie" [or Fannie, if you sing it that way]. Take a load for free!
If you take a load off, what are you supposed to do with it? Jesus is the man who stepped up to say "You put the load right on me!" Moreover, he volunteered for that.
The best kind of Christian music is stealthy Christian music. Ol' Luke ain't the only one "waitin' on Judgement Day." [Remember the stream of pilgrims going "down to the river to pray" in O Brother Where Art Thou, or Jake and Elwood Blues putting the band back together because they were "on a mission from God"? Remember the question about "Will the Circle be Unbroken" by and by, or Rick Beato pointing out that U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" has gospel music phrasing in it?].
It's not too much of a hop from "The Weight" to C.S. Lewis and what he wrote about "The Weight of Glory." Think of the same theme in two different keys. But as the Klavan excerpt (and the harmony between Levon Helm and Mavis Staples in their live recording) makes clear, the Chronicles of Narnia author wasn't the only one "surprised by joy."
While I'm on a roll, let me drag J.R.R. Tolkien up to the bar so he can help me make the argument from Middle Earth that Frodo and Sam and the other hobbits were invited into the Fellowship of the Ring not merely for their humility, but also because the most obvious characteristic of hobbitry (hobbitdom?) is joy (in contrast to the fragile valor of the humans, the cultivated detachment of the elves, the pugnaciousness of the dwarves, and the wisdom of wizards).
The Fellowship needed joy, which I think is why Tolkien inserted two "spare" hobbits into it for a total of four, and no more than two representatives of any other free race among the nine heroes. As Saint Paul had before them, Tolkien and Lewis saw joy as a hallmark of the Christian life.
It's inspiring to see a contemporary thriller writer like Andrew Klavan wrestle his way into the same insight, and then surrender to it.
My sweetheart spent last night making a pumpkin pie while listening to Christmas music. Contrarian that I sometimes am, I still insist that Christmas music before Thanksgiving is premature, That said, her example inspired.
We were doing meal prep in two different states, so I kept track of what was playing while I made deviled eggs from a proven recipe in The Deplorable Gourmet.
Directions in that crowd-sourced cookbook are, for the most part, spot on, but there's no way that prep time for deviled eggs is only 30 minutes -- at least not for me! My tripling the recipe didn't shorten prep time, but that's alright. Thanksgiving, y'all.
The playlist is eclectic because Dad had an influential hand in forming my musical ears. I miss him.
Pro tip: Slice the eggs on the longitude, not on the latitude. And I think they peel a little easier if you go pole to pole, north to south, after denting the egg to give your thumb some purchase.
Music to peel hard-boiled eggs
Honky Tonk Woman -- Rolling Stones
End of the World Again -- The Steel Wheels
Good Hearted Man -- Fats Domino
Call Me -- Blondie
Egg slicing
Something so Feminine About a Mandolin -- Jimmy Buffet
Mirabeau Bridge -- James Keelaghan
Scooping and grating
You Ain't Going Nowhere -- Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
When Silence Was Golden -- David Schnaufer
Brighter Than the Sun -- Colbie Caillet
The New Jerusalem -- Dan Wheetman
Mix and measure
When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings -- Willie Watson and Tim Blake Nelson
Worried About You -- Rolling Stones
Fat-Bottomed Girls -- Queen
Using the "Poor Man's Pastry Bag"
Some Nights -- Fun.
Si Lo Hice y Que -- Carin Leon
Into the Mystic -- Van Morrison
Be Thou My Vision -- Martha Bassett
More Than a Feeling -- Boston
How Great Thou Art -- Home Free
Decorating with Paprika
Find a New Home -- Will Banister
Yellow Ledbetter -- Pearl Jam
The Load-Out -- Jackson Browne
The recipe doesn't include a dash of Frank's Red Hot, but my deviled eggs do. That's how I roll.
These actors and actresses have more range than many people seem to give them credit for having:
Kathryn Erbe
Katheryn Winnick
Jack Black
Ana de la Reguera
Mary McDonnell (Truth to tell, however, when you successfully play characters in both Dances With Wolves and Battlestar Galactica, people know you've got game)
Among poets, on the evidence of When Earth's Last Picture is Painted, I think Rudyard Kipling is underrated.
Among brewers, don't sleep on the Benedictine monks of Birra Nursia.
Underrated musicians (lauded but not as well-known as they should be, given their talent):
David Mason, the trumpeter on the Beatles' song, "Penny Lane"
Laith Al-Saadi, dark horse Voice contestant and Michigan music legend
Evelyn Glennie, deaf but extremely accomplished percussionist
Most entertaining event on TV The "Field of Dreams" baseball game played August 12 in Dyersville, Iowa between the Chicago White Sox and the New York Yankees.
First day I saw fireflies out locally June 4.
Biggest summer expenditure New HVAC system was installed June 15, and totally worth it.
Biggest blessing of the summer Lisa is officially free from cancer!
The closest thing to a vacation we could manage this season A road trip to Seaford, Delaware to drop in on family briefly.
Most "North Carolina" thing we did Visiting the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park and Museum in Wilson, NC.
Best live music of the season (Only live music of the season) Harry Connick, Jr. and his band at the Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary NC on August 24.
Most entertaining summer movie It's a tie between "The Death of Stalin" (2017) and "John Wick" (2014).
Most autumnal summer movie I was impressed by "Last Flag Flying" (2017)
Famous missing persons R.I.P. to singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith, and Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts.
Best books I read this summer It's a tie between two very different memoirs that both happen to be immigrant stories:
MIG Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko, by John Daniel Barron (copyright 1983)
Call Me American: A Memoir, by Abdi Nor Iftin (copyright 2018)
If you knew nothing else about what a topsy-turvy couple of years the Wuhan Coronavirus and official response to it bequeathed to the world, you might guess that something big and destabilizing had happened just by watching "Tokyo 2020" signage on TV in the summer of 2021.
An Olympics without spectators seems wrong. I don't envy the people in charge of programming the choices they've had to make, either. But in spite of those constraints, a few athletes and athletic stories nevertheless inspire:
Filipino weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz impressed me with her improvised water-jugs-on-a-yoke training tools.
American Lee Kiefer -- gold medal in fencing while going to medical school? Whoa!
American swimmer Lydia Jacoby has the best cheering section I've seen. And she plays bluegrass bass in whatever spare time she can find.
It was fun to see Poland win the inaugural 4x400m mixed relay.
Ya gotta love a diver who qualifies for the Olympic final at age 41, as Japan's Ken Terauchi did.
Wrestling gold medalist Tamyra Mensah-Stock made news for enthusing about how much she loves representing America. I like that. She's great. But if she had a chat with NBC commentator Mike Tirico, I missed it.
The people writing human interest stories about American athletes haven't dug as deep as they might have had to in the good old days when Sports Illustrated was running stories by the likes of Frank Deford, but the one-two finish by Katie Ledecky and Erica Sullivan in the 1,500 meters also moved me. Ledecky has charisma, a metric mile is a really long swim, and anyone who medals in that event is amazing.
Ditto the one-two finish for the US in the women's 400-meter hurdles by Sydney McLaughlin and Dalilah Muhammed. Both women enthusiastically endorsed their "iron sharpens iron" rivalry, and both seem appropriately regal on the track.
I graduated from a nominally Jesuit-run university and was glad for having had the chance to go to college at that school. Even so, there are multiple reasons why "Jesuitical" as an adjective has a perjorative connotation, and -- sadly -- what Pope Francis just did won't help restore luster to that word.
Basically, Francis today approved the publication of an official "moto proprio" that pours rainwater all over one of his immediate predecessor's more popular initiatives.
It's now clear that Pope Benedict XVI was wrong to resign in 2013 -- unless perhaps his resignation was part of a divine plan to chastise the Church for awhile, which it might well have been, based on lots of what we've seen since then.
Ironically for someone in his position, Pope Francis is no fan of the most venerable form of the Mass we have. Even more ironically, his order today shackles the celebration of the Mass in Latin by using a document form with a Latin title which means "On his own impulse."
Sheesh. This Catholic wishes that Pope Francis had more impulse control.
Here -- in part -- is why the new edict stinks (You can be gentle and call it "ill-conceived," if you like). Fr. Dwight Longenecker's pitch for "subversive obedience" got my attention, also, as did Father John Zuhlsdorf's hot take.
Those two priests argue more persuasively (to my ears, at least) than the biretta-fearing columnist for National Catholic Reporter who says this change was forced on Pope Francis by bad behavior from people like the aforementioned Father Z.
