Confessing to a Problem, Part 2

Seems to me, if someone has a problem with one of the standard ways the Church traditionally has interpreted Scripture, he or she had better go to Scripture to define what the problem is. Just saying, "It's inconvenient for me" or "I just don't like it" won't cut it.

And when it comes to the way the Westminister Shorter Catechism expounds the Fourth Commandment, it bothers me how the Westminster Divines chose to defend their interpretation Biblically. The Catechism is written for Christians and presumeably is written with the people of the New Covenant in mind. In that case, why are the vast majority of Scripture supports taken from the Old Testament? Why cite random verses from the seventeenth chapter of the book of Jeremiah in favor of strict Sabbatarianism, when the promises appended there to such adherance clearly have to to do with the physical people of Israel. There I am told that if I keep the Sabbath as commanded, "then kings who sit on David's throne will come through the gates of this city with their officials." But the ultimate King from David's line has come, His name is Jesus Christ, and He sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty in heaven. My Sabbath keeping (or lack thereof) isn't going to cause Him to rule and reign-- He already does!

They cite Isaiah 58:13b, "If you call the Sabbath a delight and the Lord's holy day honorable . . . " So why not also mention what Jesus said in Mark 2:27, about how "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." What about the wonderful verses in Hebrews about the Sabbath rest waiting for the children of God? Why are Questions 60 through 62 all about what we have to do or not do, instead of focussing on what God has done for us? "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of slavery, out of the house of bondage. Therefore . . ." Whatever happened to the Third Use of the Law, to show Christians how to live in gratitude to Jesus Christ for the salvation He has given?

Seems to me, the Christian Sabbath should be a time of refuge and renewal. It should be a time gladly to lay down the burdens of the week and enjoy freedom in the Lord. This may be why the Westminster exclusion of "recreation" bothers me so much. Isn't re-creation what the Sabbath is for?

And how can Answer 62 say that "God has allowed us six days for our own employments"? We belong to Him in Christ, don't we? Doesn't all our time belong to Him now? Are we not to glorify Him fully seven days a week? What's with this (forgive me, this is how it seems!) petulant "I let you do what you want six days a week; you better pay attention to me on the seventh!" Do we really want to reduce God to the level of a nagging wife?

On the contrary, it seems to me that the Lord's Day should be like the date night reserved by happily married spouses: a time to pay attention to and delight in one another without the distractions of work and children and bills. And that that can include such recreations as make the individual more conscious of and grateful for who the Lord is and what He has done. For me, that can mean pottering in the garden or making bread. Or getting together with friends, as I already frequently do at the OPC parsonage after morning service-- where we assuredly do not restrict our conversation to theological topics only!

Does my disquiet with this part of the Westminister Shorter Catechism mean I would throw it out and totally reject what it has to say?

No. The strictures of the WSC, legalistic as they are, address a portion of sinful human nature that is the same now as it was in the days of Moses or the days ot the Westminster divines. They were addressing evils and abuses they were confronted with in their day and applied the Word of God to the question.

But this gets us back to the whole Westminster-only question. On this past May 4th the Fighting for the Faith Internet broadcast featured a talk by Ligon Duncan on Did the Fathers Know the Gospel? Dr. Duncan's answer is yes-- partially-- at least inasmuch as the challenges of their time moved them to write in its defense. More specifically, the question asked is "Is the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ represented and set forth clearly in the writings of the Church fathers?" And the answer has to be no. For faithful as those men where as individuals, their writings inevitably assumed and thus left out those parts of the Gospel not being attacked in their time. Their writings thus are guides for the pilgrim Christian, but not the last word.

Every Christian creed and confession (with the possible exception of the Apostles" Creed) was written in response to some contemporary onslaught against the faith. As such they are of their time, and to be applied in every time, since human sin manifests itself in similar ways throughout history. But no one creed or confession can claim to have to last word in guiding us into the knowledge of what the Scripture causes us to believe and do. Not even the Westminster Standards. That would be to elevate them to the status of the Bible itself, which we must never do.

This doesn't help me in the middle run, you know. The PC(USA) for a large part pays mere lip service to any of her many creeds and confessions and may be in danger of running aground and breaking up much sooner than later. If I would choose to flee to a denomination like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, how can I in honesty subscribe to Westminster only, knowing its limitations?

Well, I'll leave that to God and time. In the meantime, with the Westminster divines or in spite of them, I find it's good to set my mind and heart weekly to accept the gift that is God's holy Sabbath, preparing for it as I would that ideal Christmas Day. Because after all, it's first and foremost what He has done for me in His Son Jesus Christ, and only secondarily, what I do-- or don't do-- for myself or Him.

Confessing to a Problem

Traditionally, at least, my denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA) is a confessional church. We have a whole book of confessions we confess: The Second Helvetic Confession, The Heidelberg Catechism, The Westminster Confession, The Declaration of Barmen, and a good handful of others. We're even looking at accepting yet another at this year's General Assembly. We claim that these are faithful guides to what the Scripture leads us to believe and do.

Other Reformed and Presbyterian denominations subscribe to only one triad of faith affirmations: The Westminster Confession, The Westminster Shorter Catechism, and The Westminster Larger Catechism, collectively known as the Westminster Standards. Westminster Standard churches charge that with all our creeds, catechisms, and confessions, we of the PC(USA) really have no standards at all. They say that having so many symbols of faith (boy, that's a good, old-fashioned theological word!), we feel we're free to pick and choose, and end up thinking and believing whatever we jolly well please. Thus the rampant degenerate liberalism (which is no true, generous liberalism at all) of our denomination.

I'm all too aware of the evils of the drift of doctrine in my part of the Presbyterian Church, and I've felt a certain admiration for those Presbyterian Churches who steadfastly adhere to Westminster. They, at least, seem to know what they believe and why they believe it.

But something's happened lately that's made me wonder if "Westminster Only" is the holy grail it's said to be . . .
The past two Sundays I've attended Morning Instruction at the Orthodox Presbyterian church where I go when I'm not filling a pulpit somewhere. The OPC is a Westminster Standards only denomination.

The class, led by the pastor, begins with memorization work. First, the children and youth recite their Bible verses. Then, the adults repeat from memory the featured questions and answers from the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

The object these past two weeks has been Questions 58 through 61, on the Fourth Commandment, on keeping the Sabbath day. This past Sunday I brought in my copy of The Book of Confessions and thought maybe it'd be cool if I could memorize one or more of these answers for recitation myself.

But then, as the others were doing their recitations, I listened to and read and reread what the Westminster divines had written. I grew very disturbed in my soul, and decided, no, at this time, at least, I could not repeat back these words. For to repeat them aloud is to affirm and accept them, and as written, I'm not sure if I can accept these words as the best and most faithful guide to the meaning of this Commandment as given in Scripture.

My biggest problem is with Question and Answer 60:

Q. 60. How is the Sabbath to be sanctified?

A. The Sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.

And even more with Question and Answer 61:

Q. 61. What is forbidden in the Fourth Commandment?

A. The Fourth Commandment forbiddeth the omission, or careless performance, of the duties required, and the profaning of the day by idleness, or doing that which is in itself sinful, or by unnecessary thoughts, words, or works, about our worldly employments or recreations.

And with certain parts of Question and Answer 62 (which we haven't really gotten to, but it goes with this group):

Q. 62. What are the reasons annexed to the Fourth Commandment?

A. The reasons annexed to the Fourth Commandment are: God's allowing us six days of the week for our own employments, his challenging a special propriety in the seventh, his own example, and his blessing the Sabbath Day.

Confronted with Questions 60 and 61 in particular, I found myself thinking, what a gray, straitened, and depressing thing to do to the Lord's Sabbath! I can't help but get a picture of a family of dour, legalistic Puritans sitting at home or in their pew at church doing their dire best not to do anything recreational, not to do anything "unnecessary," not to be idle but at the same time avoiding anything that smacks of human work, not to talk about anything earthly, not even to think of anything that could be construed as untheological! Good grief, how could even the most sanctified Christian find joy in the Lord under those conditions?!

I examined myself: Was this my own sin talking? There could be some of that, yes. But like Job, I can't say that my own depravity is all there is to my reluctance to accept this full weight. I have some biblical objections as well.

But I'd better save them for a further post. This is getting long.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour, Day Thirty-two: Epilogue

Friday, 6 January, 1989 (concluded)
Back in Oxford

I was set down on the Banbury Road a bit before 6:00. Thought I was going to be balked at the last minute, when I stood at the bus stop across from Coverdale*and could not find a break in the traffic. Once across, though, I had no trouble getting in . . .

Yes, yours truly hadn’t even considered that she was supposed to turn in her keys when she left.

My room was used over break; the furniture was rearranged just enough to make the place look uncanny when I walked in. It was too clean, too.

I soon solved that. Mrs. Smythe* [the housekeeper] was in for who knows what reason this evening and let me have the key to the storeroom. I liberated my possessions and by 3:00 AM had put them all back in order. That work included sorting out papers from last term, so the lateness of that hour isn’t as bad as it looks.

I’d intended to do the wash this evening; had it all bagged up and ready, but found I didn’t have enough 20p pieces for the dryer. Which perhaps was a good excuse to go find something to eat and get change at the same time.

I knew Lukas* was coming back today, too, and so when I saw the light under his door I had the temerity to knock.

Well, I don’t know what his problem had been in Switzerland, but he seemed all right again. He invited me in, gave me some tea, and we talked for a half hour or more.

And just as it had in Olten at the train station, his appearance affected me in a most troublesome way. His hair has gotten longer and it looks quite well on him. I shan’t tell him that; else when he gets it cut I’ll be thinking he’s done it to spite me. Tonight, despite the extreme casualness of his dress (he had on some old slacks and a magenta T-shirt), I found him more attractive than he has any business to be, especially considering our differences on liturgical matters.

Though maybe those needn’t have anything to do with one another.

He’d already eaten and around 8:00 I went out. Tried the Lamb & Flag and the Eagle & Child, but the former was too crowded and the latter had stopped serving. Pity. The food people were eating looked quite good.

Ended up at the Fasta Pasta on Little Clarendon and spent entirely too much for a plate of tortellini. Took the half I couldn’t eat home with me and put it in the fridge in the little kitchen. I’ll finish it off sometime this weekend.

____________________________________
And that really is the end. Due to my indolence I don't have any more complete trip diaries, but may have a vignette to share here or there, of Oxford life or various short excursions. We'll see!

Living Exegesis

The other day, in my regular rota of Bible reading, the Old Testament passage happened to be Proverbs 3, which includes the verses

5Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.

A couple days later, the Psalm selection was No. 37, which in part says

3Trust in the Lord and do good;
dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.
4Delight yourself in the Lord
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

and

25I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging bread.

I've pursued my current plan of Bible reading since the year 2000 or so. So I've read these passages repeatedly the past nine and a half years. I've read them with openness, with edification, with acceptance.

But this past week when these verses came up, they evoked feelings of resentment, rejection, and fear.

For why?

Because given my situation in these economically-parlous times, they swept me back to the financially-strapped late '70s when I was subsisting as a newly-minted Bachelor of Architecture in the beautiful but heedless city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In that town and that economy I was unemployed more often than not. Frequently I had no idea where money for groceries was coming from, let alone the rent for my studio apartment. And acquaintances from the church I was attending, people who knew the paucity of my resources, would bombard me with these verses. It was their way of "ministering" to me. These verses were supposed to make everything All Better.

But they didn't. They made me feel alienated, excluded, and condemned.

Why should they? I was a Christian, after all. They should have filled me with hope and confidence in the Lord. Was I just hard of heart? Maybe a little, yes. But there was more to my desolation than than that.

These verses fell flat because they came alone. They weren't accompanied by the exegesis of my acquaintances' lives. How these people related to me did nothing to show me the true meaning of these texts or to discover to me the goodness and grace of Almighty God. They were too busy to be my friends, to just sit around and talk about everyday stuff as we got to know one another. No, I'd have chapter and verse references given to me at the last minute at the end of a Bible study. Or I'd find the text scotch-taped to my apartment door with no sign that the visit was about anything else.

These people had not yet earned the right to drop random exhortatory verses on me. I wanted friends and conversation and relationships, and what I got was Proverbs and Psalms used like robot arms to keep me at a distance. I needed information and referrals and connections on possible jobs, and they gave me Biblical magic formulas about how if I was righteous and godly enough, the positions and pay would simply come.

It felt like what it says in the Letter from James,

2:15 Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?

James could have added "emotional needs" as well. There is a time and a place to feed a Christian brother or sister from the Word, but it must never come alone. It's possible that a non-believer can also gain comfort from a quotation from the Scriptures, but there it's even more crucial that it be accompanied by the exegesis of our lives.

I've been thinking since last week on how that living exegesis would "read," about the overall love and grace of a Christian friend's conduct that would guarantee that Scripture snippets were received as the comfort they were meant to be. I need to contemplate further before I could venture to say anything about it, but I know that sort of "love with skin on" is vitally essential.

By today, I can again read the Proverbs 3 and Psalm 37 passages and see and feel their assurance and hope. My upset last week wasn't really about the verses per se, it was frustration and anger at myself that here it is thirty years later and I'm again in the same stinky financial position. But that's a different subject, and going and doing something useful now might have go some ways towards maybe getting myself out of it . . .

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twenty

Sunday, 25 December, 1988
Christmas Day
Löhenthal*

I figured out this morning why I feel so resentful about the missing clothes. If you base your life upon the idea that one of the chief aims is to cause no one else any trouble, naturally if they force you to cause them trouble by asking them for things only they can give and which are essential (like access to your clean underwear), they’ve caused you to commit a major sin. And that is intolerable.

Now, if they do things for you voluntarily, without having been asked, or if you’re paying for them to do whatever, that’s different.

Decided this must be ridiculous from a Christian standpoint so got mostly dressed and went up and asked Frau Renzberger*, rather stumblingly, I’m afraid, about the unmentionables.

I was up a little earlier, relatively-speaking, than yesterday. Lukas* was only just stirring himself.

The main feature of breakfast was a traditional bread called a Topf,† braided in a large round. Frau Renzberger makes hers without eggs, so it will keep longer, and it doesn’t have as much sugar in as my egg bread recipe. Had it with the rose hip butter (Hagenbutter) one of the neighbors brought over Friday.

Frau Renzberger (ok, Greti*) admired my dress and was amazed to find I’d made it. She pointed this out to Lukas, saying, "She can do everything!" In any other situation, you’d think she Meant something by it. But as things developed, no . . .

Lukas, his father, and I were the only ones who went to church. It was a beautiful blue sunny day and a pleasant walk to the little white Reformed church with its landmark steeple. Built in the 1500's, I think, and nicely restored.

No choir this morning, though they did have an ensemble of recorders that played in the intervals. And the organ. None of the hymns were what you’d call Christmas warhorses from American standards, though the tune of the last one was Sicilian Mariners. I was told at dinner that it just wouldn’t be Christmas without that one.

I understood the Gospel reading, the gist of the words to the hymns, and the Scripture references in the sermon. The minister preached from the first chapter of John’s gospel and brought in other Christological themes from the same book. But I couldn’t tell you what the exegesis was or if I would’ve been willing to add my Amen had I heard it in English. Still, when the minister ended by bringing in something about Hoffnung-- hope-- the very concept brought tears to my eyes. Yes, hope, that someday all this will be behind me and that my greatest cross will not be my own personality.

At Communion time, the minister consecrates the elements, then two of the church council help him distribute. The people went forward, two rows at a time. The minister gave each one of the Bread, and then the Cup is passed from hand to hand. I received it from Lukas then passed it to his father. Then the pastor pronounced the declaration from Isaiah that "the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light," adding, "Alleluia, amen." And we took our seats and the next group came up. The organist played "Wachet Auf" during this; not the Bach chorale version, though.

On the way home we saw a duck in the stream and a horsedrawn carriage out for a drive (Don’t I sound like a three year old?) and discussed preaching styles and theological education. Lukas is appalled that in England (America, too) you can qualify for the ministry after only three years of divinity school. In Switzerland and Germany, they can’t be ministers till after they’ve studied theology for seven years. I refrained from pointing out that maybe that’s why so much goofy doctrine and outright heresy comes out of those two countries. The ministers become too ivory tower and too much removed from the actual practice of the gospel. "Another damned theologian comes grunting out of the Black Forest"‡ is a quotation that came to mind, though not to the lips . . .

Lukas and I had our inevitable theological argument back home before dinner. We were discussing the service and the style of giving Communion and he said that the elements in his church are just like any other bread and wine anywhere, no symbological value whatsoever . . . In fact, he said, a pint of beer and a ploughman’s lunch at the local pub is just as much Communion as what we did in church this morning.

I said, well, what do you do with the verse in I Corinthians that says whoever eats and drinks the Communion elements without recognising the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ eats and drinks condemnation on himself?

And he said, oh, his church doesn’t put as much weight on the epistles of Paul, rather on the Gospels.

(Ye gods.) OK, say I, what about Jesus saying, "This is my body, do this in remembrance of Me?"

Lukas says, it’s only a remembrance.

I wasn’t about to accept this "only" but I wanted him to see what he was overlooking even in the little that he was allowing Holy Communion to be. Yes, I said, but it is a remembrance, something that doesn’t necessarily happen at a normal meal.

He wasn’t moved. The root of his argument seemed to be the urge towards inclusiveness, that no one, not even non-Christians, should be left out of what he seems to see as a token fellowship meal (as opposed to a sign of the Christian's special relationship with God through Jesus Christ).

He’s telling me his point of view and smiling as if to say, "Surely you see I’m right!" And I’m thinking, God, I wish he were, he’s such a sweetheart, I wish I could honestly agree with him-- but I can’t. As I see it, he and his church as a whole are still reacting against that horribly erroneous trend in Roman Catholicism in which the mysteries of the faith were reserved only for the initiated few, the clergy. But the Swiss Reformed have really gone crazy with it, it seems to me, not only saying that the mysteries of the faith are available to all, but also that there are no mysteries.

I tried to compromise with him, saying I could see his point of view if he meant that Christians should have the same sacramental attitude to food outside the church as they do to that given within it . . . but still, I think we could have had a good bang up argument if his father hadn’t called us to dinner. I was trying to see his point of view without prostituting what I see as the truth on this, but he was making no effort to do likewise. Most frustrating.

Happily for the preservation of the Christmas peace, the only explosion this afternoon was from the cork of the bottle of Champagne I brought. Herr Max Renzberger* opened it just before dinner. The cork flew out the open french windows into the yard, who knows where. Bringing that seems definitely to have been a good move.

Christmas dinner was interesting. It did not focus around a major meat dish like turkey or a roast. Rather, it was raclette, a traditional Swiss dish in which each person melts a certain kind of cheese in individual dishes in a special heating unit brought to the table, and drips the cheese over boiled potatoes, mushrooms, onions, olives, artichokes, and other such items. There was wine with this, and Christmas cookies after.

At the end of dinner Lukas declared that if I wanted to go for a walk after supper, I’d have to go with his father, he was tired and was going to bed. I did not express a desire to follow either of their examples; neither of these options, a walk with Herr Renzberger* Senior nor a nap, seemed like a particularly fun way to spend an already short day.

Not that I spent it any more usefully. I looked at a cathedral book that’d been gotten out for me, then tackled my French version of Hector’s Mémoires. Have to confess it’s more fun in English, where I can just read through, but I’ll get the French eventually.

So the afternoon passed quite quietly (no football games around here), only broken up by the general farewell to Thaddeaus* when his father made ready to drive him home.

At 6:30 or so everyone left was ready for a walk, so shoes were changed and we all went for a tour of Löhenthal under the stars. First time I’ve seen the Big Dipper since I’ve been in the Eastern Hemisphere.

I’m impressed with the solicitous care Lukas took of his grandmother, supporting her on his arm. Me, I found it awkward, because if I hung back to be with them it would look deliberate. And somehow it seemed essential I not appear to have any ulterior motives towards him. So I tended to walk with his parents, holding back every so often when it seemed we were getting too far ahead. Still, I found it disconcerting that when I did rejoin him and Granny he never engaged me in conversation, only talked with his grandmother in German.

Back at the house, there were the leftovers from last night’s charcuterie and more cookies and wine.

They were kind enough to let me call Mom in Houston to wish her a Merry Christmas . . . Got her right away. Nothing much earthshaking said, only that Leila* [my 17-year-old niece] wasn’t going to be there for Christmas dinner, she actually has a job, in a movie theater. Shock. Hope it goes well.

I couldn’t tell Mom much, not having the time at international rates and also because I was feeling more than a little subdued. It had occurred to me that Lukas really hadn’t spoken to me since before dinner, though it couldn’t’ve been the theological discussion, we’ve had those at Coverdale* and it’s never bothered him before. But I’d noticed that if anyone addressed me in English, it was his parents. And my ability to find sufficient enjoyment simply in the sound of him speaking Swiss German was beginning to wear off.

Another awkwardness at bedtime this evening. Greti had taken not only my shirts to be ironed but also my nightgown. I had to go to the master bedroom to inquire in usual tongue-tied fashion after its whereabouts after she and Max had already started getting ready for bed. The thing was sitting in their bathtub . . . It was rather difficult trying to make her understand I do not need an ironed nightgown, I need something to sleep in. Especially difficult saying so in front of Max.
_________________________
†Seems I misunderstood and it's actually called a Zopf, and it's usually formed as a braid.
‡The saying is by the writer Wilfrid Sheed, and I probably got it from an article by Cullen Murphy in the December 1986 Atlantic Monthly. So far (Feb. 2009) I am unable to discover in what context Mr. Sheed first said or published it.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Ten

Thursday, 15 December 1988
From Toulouse to Conques & back to Toulouse again

Rented a car from Hertz and drove up to Conques today. Only way practicable to get there. Hertz was the only one with unlimited kilometrage for a one-day trip so they actually came out the cheapest. 490F, meaning about £49, meaning . . . †

Oh, well. Always wanted to go to Conques.

Kind of a dumb joke here: The rental agent at the Hertz place was the first one since I’ve gotten to France who has attempted to speak any English with me. And I suppose he thought he had to, since I was allowing myself to become self-conscious over the differences between the Toulousain accent and the Parisienne one I was taught and was mispronouncing things and generally tripping all over my mouth. And this guy had the charming cheek to say to me-- in English-- "You know, if you want to learn French, you just have to practice and just try to speak it!"

I refrained from telling him I have been speaking nothing but French for the last week and a half and that when I get into stressful states I can’t even speak my native tongue properly, let alone a foreign one.

Beside, I was going to have enough fun with the car anyway. It was not a Ford Fiesta, it was a mini-Peugeot. I never did get the trunk lock to come open--well, once, to put my stuff in, but then couldn’t get it out; had to get into it through the back seat, but never mind that.

First real issue was not being able to turn the key in the ignition. Clerk came out and showed me how the steering wheel locks and you have to turn the one to free the other. Oh.

Then I worked the little car out into traffic-- where it promptly died. Tried anew. Died again. At which point the clerk came running out and showed me how this car has a manual choke and you have to pull it out till the engine warms up. Oh.

By that time I had a nervous cramp and a bad case of the shakes in my left leg and it was dancing all over the clutch. But fortunately I’d worked out the route so I knew where I was going and knew that if I just kept driving I’d get over it. And out of the major city traffic.

This was not a good day to drive near Toulouse. Extremely foggy but try telling the truck drivers that that makes a difference. I got passed a few times. Great. Let them.

French roads really are those long straight affairs with ranks of trees on either sides, like you see in pictures. Plane trees in this part of the country. Pity I couldn’t see more than a few yards of them at a time. The fog was very poetic but I could’ve done with less romanticism and more visibility.

By the time I was driving through Albi, though, it was just gray skies.

I got a bit turned around there. The signage was great to that point, always telling you in each small town that the N88 traversed which turn to take to get to Albi. But once I reached Hereticville I lost my signs. Ended up in the middle of town, pulled over, with my Michelin.

Got out of there and on towards Rodez. Fog closed in again, as the road reached higher and began to curve around the foothills.

Rodez is very prettily sited, all on a hillside. Church prominent at the top (cathedral, maybe?) with all the buildings ranked down the slope at its feet. Kind of place you’d want to pull off the road and photograph-- if the whole town visible from the road wasn’t modern. Wonder if the Germans had something to do with that . . .

Found the D901 to Conques off the bypass; no trouble this time. Fog continued in drifts on up into the mountains. But it was the sort of thing that just maybe might disappear up higher and give place to sunlight.

Then I got to a scene I wish I could’ve captured on film, if I’d had a place to pull off. The mist became suffused with radiance, which glinted off the trees and hedgerows covered with white hoarfrost. And just a little farther on and higher up-- voilà! there it actually was-- blue skies and sunshine. Thank you, Jesus!

Whatever else that little car had, it had good interior acoustics. First time I’d gotten to do any real singing in a week and a half.

Conques, as I’d remembered reading in Gourmet Magazine, is on a switchback road. Paved, not gravelled, happily. Put her into second and had fun with it.

Conques was kind of strange, as a town. I got there around 1:30 and so it wasn’t surprising that everything was closed. But nothing ever opened thereafter. More people around than in old Carcassonne but nothing like the bustle of even La Côte (There’s a thriving village. They even have an architect’s office). One wonders what it must be like to live there. The major activity in sight was repair work. There were trucks back and forth all afternoon redoing the paving in la rue Charlemagne.

I approached the pilgrimage church of Ste.-Foi-de-Conques from the east side, having left the car at the carpark near the new cultural center (they have concerts there in the summer). It was below me as I came upon it and I could see the chevet and crossing tower. Steps lead down to the place at the west front, and there she was, that wonderful Last Judgement tympanum, with the antique polychrome showing pastel pink and blue. The sun was shining on just the lefthand side of the embrasure and I decided to hold off on too much photography there till the light was hitting the tympanum more directly, from the west.

Into the church through the westward side door of the south transept. First thing I noticed was the fresco that occupies a wall blocking off the far end of the south crossing arm.

The second thing was that the crossing itself was filled with scaffolding. They were repairing the lantern. Oh well. It apparently needed it. The vaults in the side aisles definitely do. If one had the money that would be a good place to throw some.

Even with the scaffolding in the way I could see up into the lantern. It was very beautiful and filled with golden light. And I could just see the carvings of the angels and apostles in the corners.

Walked around the ambulatory to the north transept. The apse chapels were filled with dismantled woodwork. But the transept was free of emcumbrances and yes, the Annunciation relief was where I’d guessed it was, in the center of the north wall.‡ It forms a kind of column at the meeting of the two blind arches under the tribune there.

The nave was radiant, especially in its upper reaches, with winter sunlight. And, more considerately than at some other places I could name, the historiated capitals are illuminated. You could actually see the carvings.

Unfortunately my Olympus battery had managed to run itself down again so I didn’t feel safe using that camera. Did what I could with the Minolta. Ate lots of film as the sun kept moving around and striking the sculpture and columns at new angles.

After I’d seen all I could inside, I went over and learned where to buy a ticket to see the treasury. You get it from an old Augustinian (Premonstratensian) monk, and I’ve never learned yet how one addresses such personages in French these days.

The treasury was certainly impressive, especially when you think of all the donations, all for the sake of that little girl named Faith martyred in the 4th Century. And for Jesus’ sake, too, one hopes. The funny thing is that the whole cult of relics got started because it made people feel closer to heaven-- here was physical evidence of someone who had lived a saintly life on earth and who now was united with God’s holiness in heaven. But it’s been so long since all that that it’s lost its power. The risen Christ seems closer.

From the standpoint of liking it, though, I think my favorite was the crystal on the back of the statue of Sainte Foi, with the Crucifixion showing through it. Rather ghostly, but effective.

The fee for the cloister treasury also affords one access to the museum in the Syndicat d’Initiative. Most of the work here is from a later date, except for the artifacts in the downstairs room which are fragments of capitals and other carvings salvaged when the cloister was demolished in 1830. Does that mean the cloister that’s there now is only 140 years old?

Otherwise, there was a great deal of 16th and 17th Century work, painted wood statuary and most importantly, a series of tapestries recounting the life and legend of Mary Magdalen. Like a lot of others, this artist makes her identical with Mary of Bethany, Martha’s sister. I wonder who’s right . . . I really liked the scene of the supper at Bethany with Christ dressed, from the waist down in the typical 1st Century flowing robe, and from the waist up in a doublet like a 16th Century noble’s.

Over to the abbey magasin after that and bought the obligatory postcards and guidebook. They had one in the same edition as that for St. Sernin. Does Dr. Gendle have one? Should I have picked one up for him?

Wrote him a postcard, at any rate. Don’t know his postcode but figure the British postal service can find Oxford . . .

Sunlight on the tympanum was better by now. The blessed look pleased as punch to be in heaven, though one little soul gives an apprehensive look over his shoulder at a leering devil, as the angel leads him into himmlische Reich . . .

The sun was setting all pale gold and I took advantage of the rest of the light exploring the town, with all its little cobbled streets and stairways. But damn! it was quiet! People were there, though-- you could see the smoke coming out of the chimneys. And occasionally someone would peer through a window as I passed.

Shot several very antique-looking houses. I realize that if I were being really scholarly I would’ve documented their general appearance and location, street and so forth, for future reference. But dammit, it was cold.

Ran out of slide film there. I mean completely. I’ve shot all ten rolls I brought already.

Decided to use the final frame on a view of the town from the west, with the light on the houses and the towers of the church. In order to save my feet and not lose the light, I made up my mind to drive over to that end of town.

Wrong. Got about three blocks worth and ran into the repaving work, blocking the way completely. Big red dump truck and a backhoe. No place to turn around so I had to take the car in reverse-- uphill-- all the way to the carpark (the black exhaust was shocking). Ended up walking back that way after all.

In the process discovered something else interesting about that little Peugeot. Not only will it not work if the choke’s off when it’s cold, it also won’t work with the choke on with the engine warm. Until I discovered that too much gas was the problem I thought I’d done something highly regrettable to the car.

The road from Conques looks west for awhile. And I was privileged to see a real live honest-to-God sunset, my first in a long while.

But, as didn’t greatly surprise me, the clouds closed in as I drove lower, and with dusk returned the fog. And if you don’t think that was enough fun on that curving mountain road you can also figure in the aggressivity of French drivers who don’t think 40 mph (or 65 kph) is half fast enough, even under those conditions. I had a whole string of tailgaters. They were perfectly free to pass if they dared but me, I was going as fast as I could.

I had gotten a taste of the daredevil passing habits of the French on the way up, so it didn’t surprise me greatly to come around a bend and see two pairs of headlights coming towards me in tandem out of the fog. I hit my brakes just enough to give the passer leeway to get back in and kept on singing Berlioz: "Elle s'en va seulette; L'or brille à son bandeau . . . "†† That’d be heart attack city in the USA, but here it’s business as usual.

Fog lasted all the way to Albi. If the drivers didn’t care for what I was doing, I wonder what they thought of the slow-moving trucks doing 20 mph? I know my thoughts weren’t particularly patient or kind.

Had hoped to go a different route on the trip back, maybe even make it up to Aurillac, but decided that under the circumstances I’d better go a way that was at least somewhat familiar.

Found the bypass around Albi this time. The way between there and Toulouse took a much shorter time this time around. I still didn’t go much over 100 kph.

Finally got back to Toulouse and the rental agency a little after 8:00, without having struck any dogs, pedestrians, trees, or other cars. Dropped the key in the slot after parking in the only available spot. Discovered later that I was supposed to drop in some copies of the rental agreement. Well, I’ll do that tomorrow.

Went over to a café at Jean Jaures and rue de Strasbourg and had cassoulet and an Abbaye de Leffe beer. The beer was good. I suppose the cassoulet was, too, if you like the idea of spending around $7.50 for what is essentially baked beans with assorted cured meats.

Well, it’s Famous and now you can say you’ve had it.

Back to the hotel by 10:00 and washed my hair. Stayed up too late waiting for it to dry. Which was dumb, because I do have my blowdryer and a converter with me.
____________________________
†The exchange rate at the time was around $2.00 US to the pound sterling.
‡This had been in question for me. The previous term in Oxford when I'd decided to do an essay on this church, the only book my Medieval Architecture History tutor could recommend to me was a 1939 guidebook held by the Bodleian Library. It was completely in French and had no pictures at all. To make things more interesting, some of the pages had never been cut and I had to get permission to do it with my new Swiss Army knife! You'd think I was the first one to read it in almost fifty years!
††Hector Berlioz, La Belle Voyageuse; words by Thomas Gounet, after the Thomas Moore poem "Rich and Rare." Literally (with poetic license), "Travelled she alone, with gold her circlet shining . . . "

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Nine

Saturday, 25 March, 1989
Iona
Day Nine, Holy Saturday

Another session this morning, which I wasn’t particularly keen to go to. The handout had a poem in it, and I had to make myself see my apathy in that I couldn’t even identify with it, though the situation the poet described could be considered very close to my own. "That’s his problem," I tend to think.

But the sun was still out afterwards, and I walked to the beach at the north end of the island, joined for awhile by Marie*, one of the other women in my dorm room. Today you could see the peaks of Mull, with one tallish one all covered in snow. And I could observe the horses out running, and the red-feathered chickens, and the sober black-faced sheep, and the shaggy Highland cattle. A lark was singing high overhead, the first I’d ever seen or heard.

Marie* turned back when we approached the beach, as the sea air breezes give her sinus trouble. But I went all the way down to the rocks and looked out at the little islands across the water. There were cattle grazing among the washed-up kelp and sea gulls crying overhead. This is what I came to Iona for . . . instead I’m spending most of my time so far sitting in church and not in particularly satisfying church, either.

After a hurried lunch (I was late getting back; it was vegetarian again) I did more handwash. Only this time the spin-dryer really got off balance and the plastic baffle affair you put on your clothes really got chewed to heck. At least it’s only that and not the machine itself.

Finally got around to writing Daddy a note for his birthday. Took it down to the village to mail it, borrowing a piece of tape from a store clerk when the envelope gum refused to stick.

There were children in the lane playing with pieces of styrofoam insulation that the wind had blown away from the Center construction materials depot yesterday. No telling where the rest of it is now.

Stopped into the Abbey bookstore and only bought a few postcards. Christine MacLean was there and I told her about the spin dryer baffle. She said not to worry; she doubted it could be that bad.

So I came back and did my best to destroy it some more, doing more wash that wouldn’t fit in the first time around. Actually, I have gotten the hang of how to stop the machine before too much damage is done.


I’m not sure what to make of Karen* and Therese*, the two other girls in my dorm. Therese* is a vegetarian but she smokes, so I suppose her motivation for not eating meat is concern for animals and not care for her own health. Karen* puts on the most outrageous airs and tells whopping tales that you simply can’t believe. Where they are as Christians I can’t tell at all, because although they seem to be into things that smack terribly of New Age spaceheadedness I couldn’t say if they’d go along with the rest of the N.A. program or if they simply have certain ecological, etc., concerns in common with New Agers. And I haven’t got the energy to get into a debate about it.

Besides, I find they have a streak of cynicism about the whole programmatic structure here that I find all too easy and amenable to identify with. They cheerfully sleep through anything they please. I have punted a seminar or two already but I don’t feel too confident about it.

But I tell myself I can sit in church meetings anywhere, and these aren’t particularly effective or fulfilling church meetings, I feel so out of fellowship here (Palm Sunday service in March was much better). But only here (in light of my schedule) can I walk along the hills and beaches of Scotland, and that’s what I came here to do.

If it would stop blowing and sleeting for an hour together!

Yes, it started again this afternoon, almost as bad as before. I’m glad I dug out my silk longies at the last minute before I left Oxford.


Saw the film The Mission in the chapterhouse of the abbey this evening. I’d been wanting to see that. Problematic picture. One knows that love is more powerful in the long run but still I found myself wanting to root for the priests who chose to fight, who left the way of peace. Maybe it’s because I’m rather angry right now, at things in particular, and those people were doing what I felt. More objectively, it seems as if the people in the story failed to ask the essential question. And that is, if we have to cease to follow Christ in order to preserve the Jesuit Order, what the hell use is the Jesuit Order?

Or any church institution, for that matter?

Marie*, who also saw it, thinks it was done from a liberation theology viewpoint and of necessity would glorify the priests who chose to fight. I didn’t see it as quite that severely slanted but she has a point, anyway.

She’s a funny person. She’s going through a divorce, or has just gotten one, I’m not sure which, and her emotions are extremely volatile. At one point she’ll be telling you how incredibly high and happy she’s feeling in the experience of being here and two hours later she’s crying her eyes out. Or she speaks of how calm she feels-- but confesses she’s been chain-smoking since she arrived.

There is something in the way of an explanation, though. She also has a friend attending the abbey program, who, like Lukas*, apparently hasn’t been acting all that friendly. But it’s worse for her-- she confesses she has been in love with him and he knows it. And seemingly he’s attempting to squelch it in that disgusting wet-blanket male way.

It was enough like my situation that in the tea time between the video and the vigil service at 11:15 PM I pointed out Lukas* and told her why I could empathise with her problem, even though mine isn’t exactly analogous. I was even so reckless as to admit that though I don’t fancy Mr. Renzberger* in that way there is another Coverdale* student I wish I could, except that he’s thoroughly taken . . .

But I think that was mostly to keep her from thinking I did like Lukas* the same way she likes her recalcitrant friend Seamus*-- as well as for the sheer pleasure of speaking about Nigel* even without actually naming him.

The rotten thing is, the more Lukas* acts like a complete jerk and вопреки, the more important he’s becoming to me. He didn’t come to the video and I found myself regretting his absence. And seeing him across the room with his new friends, acting as if I didn’t exist, made me want to slide into the attitude of a dog eagerly waiting and hoping for the least crumb from its master’s table. I try to shake myself out of this by taking the superior position that well, obviously he hasn’t learned the lesson of the old Girl Scout song:

"Make new friends
But keep the old;
One is silver
And the other, gold."

But in the general frame of mind I brought with me its very hard to maintain that. I keep thinking it’s me, something I’ve done to offend him, and I feel myself craving his notice and approval to reassure me I’m acceptable and forgiven.

It sounds as if I’ve got this all analysed out and intellectually settled, but I haven’t at all. Somehow his present caddish behavior is throwing the memory of what a dear, caring person he can be into bright and high relief, making me want to flee to that Lukas* for comfort and warmth and security-- but instead I find only this cold, heedless, aloof reality, and my sense of loss is doubled. If only he would--! I am tempted to think, and the responding "Never!" falls into the deep pit of all the other "nevers" in my limited life, a pit that threatens to swallow me up with them.

Hope of some vague, unfocussed sort does insist on rearing its head, however. Both last Saturday walking along the Backs behind Nigel's* old college of Clare and now here in this wild weather I am nudged to recall the Robert Browning poem, "Never the Time and the Place." I wonder if the abbey library has a copy of it. God, it would be wonderful if I could be sure that

This path so soft to pace shall lead
Through the magic of May to [him]self indeed!

But how and with whom, I haven’t the least idea.

But now it was time for the Easter vigil service. I can’t say I really like this night-before celebration business, it seems a bit previous to me. I suppose I need the sense of anticipation brought about by sleeping on the thing, both at Christmas and Easter. Anyway, here it was.

The service had more drama and no preaching and little if any Scripture reading, again. I guess they assume everyone here knows the Easter story, because a lot of it was pantomime, in the American sense, and not all that well done.

I was somewhat taken aback when in a Scripture quotation used as part of a litany the Holy Spirit was referred to as "she." I’d be awfully interested in knowing what the exegetical basis of that is. But at the moment I shall assume it is merely a fashionable affectation and like disco and polyester leisure suits will eventually blow over. There’s nothing I can do about it here and now and besides, it is only a ripple in the great pond of my isolation here . . . isolation caused not so much by evident doctrinal disagreement with most people here as by, apparently, some fatal flaw in myself. I seem to be losing all ability to make and keep contact with others, and Lukas* and his avoidance of me is a glaring, blaring symbol of my alienation. If he will not come forward and accept me as a human being and a friend, how can I ever expect anyone else to?

Well, a little early (11:55 PM) but close enough the service got to the point where the Lord could be officially declared to be Risen and the abbey bells tolled and tolled. A great continuing chant of "Alleluia" arose and the church was gradually relit, the candle flame being passed from one person to another. The ornaments were brought back as the black draperies were stripped away.

And last of all, as I’d expected, dear Lukas* himself grandly bore the silver cross back to the altar and placed it there as offstage (appropriate term) cymbals clashed and the altar spots came back on for the first time since Thursday night. And I, neither wanting to succumb utterly to my misery nor to allow myself to feel too proud of him, despite his actions toward me, dragged a bit of grim, cynical humor out of it all, thinking, "Well, his mother obviously gave him a good Swiss upbringing-- he puts things back where he found them."

But it didn’t help a great deal, as the last of the printed songs and responses were sung and the piano banged into "Lord of the Dance" and he and the other people in the worship group began to dance in the aisles. If it’d happened at my home church I would’ve said, "Great!" But here, even though I was singing along with the choruses I was growing more and more distant from it all. If Christ is risen, he is not risen in me, not tonight. Not yet.

My candle blew out at the cloister door, and with it the last of my own warmth and light. Out in the cloister people were grabbing one another in great hugs and crying, "Happy Easter!" If the greeting had been, "He is Risen!" answered by "He is Risen Indeed!" I could have coped with that. That is a statement of fact. But "happy"? That is an emotional state that has nothing to do with me.

The wind and rain were still howling, otherwise I would’ve gone straight back to the Center. But as it was, the prudent thing was to head back to the tea table in the abbey seminar room and wait for the weather to die down.

I was making my way through the crowd in the cloister, not far from where Lukas*, with a very unSwiss lack of reserve, was hugging everyone in sight. Goodie for him. And all of a sudden he was there before me and was enfolding me in his arms, exclaiming, "Happy Easter, Blogwen!" and I-- God help me, I held him tightly as if by the mute pressure of my hands upon his back I could tell him how much I needed him to acknowledge and accept me as a human being and a friend. And then I grew frightened, because if I continued I might not be willing to let him go. So I held him apart from me and asked, "How is it going with you?" meaning this week at the abbey, meaning last week in Liverpool, meaning he himself (when he is himself). He took the first meaning only and politely said, "Oh, the week’s been great. How do you like it?"

"It’s all right," I said noncommittally, knowing my attempt to break through had failed. He released me completely then and turned his attention to others, while I made my way through the painfully joyous crowd, feeling so estranged and alienated but far too present as well. I couldn’t even find any of the people from the Center program. I could no more wade in and embrace those people than if I’d been made of stone.

I am bullheaded in my way, though. I hung about in the cloister passage till Lukas* made his way out of the celebratory embraces and tried again to engage him in conversation. I tried humor, since my emotions had to be kept down at all costs. "I see your mother trained you well. You put things back where you find them."

"It is not a matter of training. It’s a matter of spirituality."

Oh, shit. Does he always have to be so blasted literal? Yes, I realise now it was bad taste to make a joke about something that happened in the service. Just because I was feeling out of it doesn’t mean he was. But he never can tell when I’m joking, and I don’t think it’s the language barrier, I think it’s his lack of imagination. It’s not me. I made another joke in front of one of the Englishmen a little later in the tea room and he got it and laughed immediately.

Hung around in the tea room reading the paper, playing with building blocks, and making polite conversation till 2:30 DST. Lukas* was back to being Mr. Aloof again and I was trying not to give a damn.

Then I and a few others made our way back to the Center. I revised the poem I wrote yesterday . . . Then was in the process of crying myself to sleep with the aid of Schubert Lieder when Karen* roused and informed me the music was leaking out around the headphones and could I please turn it off?

Sure. Right. Whatever you say.

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Eight

Friday, 24 March, 1989
Iona
Day Eight, Good Friday

Funny what a creature I am of arbitrary circumstance. I felt much better this morning-- simply because I dreamed of Nigel*. I dreamed he'd adopted me as his sister and put me under his protection. It made me feel so warm and safe and cared for and secure that I could cry recalling it.

This is totally silly, I know. But not absolutely. There is precedent for this in waking life . . . oh, God, protect him!

Everyone is on a chore team here; I am assigned to the toilet-cleaning detail. I have lots of experience at that from my maiding days when I was in Architecture school. Spent much of my stint today cleaning excess grout, sealant, and sanding dust off the fixtures and tile.

10:15 was craft time. As to that, it's become obvious that when Christine MacLean told me on the phone there was a program for people staying at the MacLeod Center, she didn't just mean a special room and board rate. She meant a program-program, with a schedule and meetings and seminars and all. If the weather would behave-- like stop raining horizontally-- I'd maybe say phooey on it and go do what I came here to do. But as it is, I can't go out and there's nothing else really to do up here in the Center. Besides, it feels like since I'm getting such a cheap rate to stay here, I have to "pay" for it by going along with expectations.

Which this morning was a craft session. We were supposed to do a collage sharing the journey of our lives (vs. the life of Christ, which is what I would have expected on Good Friday) and then explain it tonight in a session. Oh, shit. Expose myself in front of all these strangers, with whom I may not even be in basic sympathy? But I decided I didn’t want to suffer another creative block like I did in January† so I made myself go to work anyway, in chalk. (Finding magazine pictures would’ve taken too long.) Depicted the truth, too, since I couldn’t begin to lie about such a thing. Wouldn’t know how.

There was tea at 11:15, then diddling around till time to go to the church for the Good Friday service at noon. It was a Stations of the Cross, thirteen or fourteen of them, with more made-up dramatic language instead of Scriptural passages.

After that there were the Seven Last Words from the Cross, followed each one by ten minutes of silent meditation. I stayed for the first two . . . Lukas* was across the choir. I wondered if he would ever think of praying for me. I’m beginning to gravely doubt it would cross his mind. I prayed for him, and for me, that I would do the right thing by him. And for Nigel*-- all blessings on Nigel*, especially with the troubles he's facing at home with his family back in S-- . . .

It had stopped raining when I left the church, so I walked into the village to see about getting some wash done. But everything was closed for lunch. I could stand on the beach and watch the tide come up, though.

It started to rain before I got back, of course. And blow.

Got myself in for lunch just in time. Soup and crackers with cheese. Soup entirely vegetable-based, very lacking in body-- and soul. I found it a bit demoralising.

Decided to try to get a little Walter Scott read, then did some handwash in the sink in the laundry room here. They don’t have a washer, which is odd, but they do have a spin dryer that takes most of the excess water out of your handwash. It got off-balance once and made the most horrible racket.

I was on the setting up and serving team for supper. Got it done somehow, despite having missed out on the description of the drill. The menu was fish, which was a nice change.

The collage-explaining thing wasn’t as bad as I’d envisioned, mostly because I do feel so out of sympathy with what’s going on here-- don’t worry, I realize it’s my own fault-- that I don’t really care what the people around here think of me. So I can tell them the truth, though of course properly dressed and packaged. One doesn’t want to be tedious, after all.

Another service in the church this evening, of Commitment. More drama, illustrating the people like Peter, Judas, and Pilate, who failed to make a proper commitment to Christ as he was going to the Cross. (Someone had asked me before dinner if I’d be willing to participate and make the noise of the cock crowing offstage as Peter denies Jesus the third time. I said No, for I was feeling too depressed to believe I’d be able to make a sound when the time came. And I couldn’t help believing the Brits were thinking, "Oh, she’s an American, she’s Loud, she’ll do fine." But whoever did it instead did such a piss poor job of it I regretted my decision. I should have gathered all my high school and college drama training about me and let that rooster rip regardless.)

It hit me how ineffective all this liturgical drama is for me when the prayers began and I suddenly realized I was hearing them as still part of the drama, something to be observed and analysed from the outside and not part of an act of worship in which I was to participate.

The burden of the prayers seemed to be towards commitment to one’s fellow man and not to Christ Himself. I suppose you can’t have true commitment to Christ without serving your neighbor. But there’s so many people who think they can achieve commitment to Christ merely by being good to others, with no focus on Jesus Himself, and I don’t think it works. Not that anybody here has said outright they were trying this method . . . One more example of my general ambivalence towards what's going on.

The only time this uncertainty was broken was when in the darkened church some actual words of Jesus from the Scripture were read out, and then the wind of the Spirit began to blow.

Tea in the refectory again. Nothing out of Mr. Renzberger* again. This fact is beginning to assume an importance it shouldn’t have. I could understand him cutting me dead if we’d been very close and quarrelled or if I’d given signs of wanting to be close when he did not, but neither of those things are true. He can't possibly think I've come to Iona just to be with him; we see each other all the time at Coverdale* and besides, I told him last month I'd always intended to come here. I certainly don’t expect him to take great blocks of time out of his fellowship with his new-found friends in the abbey program, but good grief, would it kill him to come and say, "Hi, how’s it going, how are you; well, I have to get back and talk to Whatsername or Whatsisname before they leave"? If he weren’t making me feel as if I had some sort of fatal social disease, I’d say he was being extremely rude.

I wrote a poem about this when I got back to the room, and felt better, a little.
_________________________________
†In January of '89 the married students at Coverdale* College had hosted a progressive dinner. For a party game, at each stop we diners had to execute an assigned art project in a limited amount of time. At the first house, I'd tried to prove my artistic bona fides by working a Masterpiece in the tiny piece of plasticine we were given. I wasn't happy with what I'd made and in my childish frustration smashed it. To make things worse, the host said to me, "That's all right. We can't all be artists!" Crap!

Scalene Trinities

Today is (or has been?) Trinity Sunday. And I, being too dumb to know that all self-respecting preachers should be afraid to go anywhere near that doctrine, preached on it anyway.

Actually, it's all the fault of Dorothy L. Sayers. Her book The Mind of the Maker is one of my favorite theological treatises, and the way she demonstrates how the process of human thought and creativity is a little image of the Three-Personhood of God is simply brilliant. The unknowable-in-itself Idea reflects God the Father. The Energy (or Activity/Execution/Word/Image) gives the Idea expression and is a model of God the Son. The Power resulting from the Energy as it expresses the Idea is an earthly demonstration of the work of God the Holy Spirit.

Miss Sayers argues that the doctrine of the Trinity isn't difficult because it's too esoteric and irrelevant, it's difficult because it's so much like what we all do and take for granted every day. I've found I can take her analogy into a church made up of high school and junior college graduates and they get it.

What I can't do in a church on Trinity Sunday or any Sunday is get into Miss Sayers' follow-up discussion of what she calls scalene trinities. But I love it, because I love thinking about art and artistic production and what makes works of art succeed and what makes them fail. God the Holy Trinity is like an equilateral triangle: all the sides and all the angles equal, all working together in perfect, stable balance. But what we make seldom is equilateral. Generally something in our artistic trinity is out of balance. It's scalene.

Scalene, adj (of a triangle) with three unequal sides (The Chambers Dictionary, 1993).

When a work of art-- it could be anything-- a book, a painting, a movie, a piece of music-- is truly great you really don't have to analyse it (unless your prof makes you for Composition and Lit class!). It's there, it's wonderful, and all you have to do is enjoy it and respond to it. If you think about its Idea, its Energy/Expression, or its Power separately, it always takes you back to glorifying the work as a whole.

But when the work isn't quite-quite, it's so much fun to consider which part of its little trinity is out of whack-- and what you wish you could do about it.

Take a movie, for instance. You walked out of the theater and said, "Wellll, no, it wasn't that great." What was wrong?

Was the problem in the Idea, its "Father"? Was its "Father" too weak or nonexistant ("I'll give 20 francs for an Idea!" the young Hector Berlioz used to heckle pedestrian operas)? Was the "Father" idea too strong for the screenwriter to come up with appropriate expression for it? Are there competing "Fathers," too many Ideas at once (artistic polytheism!)? Without a strong, single, unifying Idea, a work of art is doomed from the beginning.

Or is the trouble with the "Son"? Maybe the director had a great Idea, but didn't know how to express it. Or the Idea was a nice little one, but the Energy was grandiose. Maybe the artist picked the wrong form-- tried to Execute his Idea as a musical comedy, say, when it should have been a gritty western. A play where the plot goes nowhere or in ten different conflicting directions, a book where the language is so involved and intricate all it does it draw attention to itself, a movie that knocks you out of its world and makes you exclaim, "Why on earth did the screenwriter do that?!"-- those are all works with "Son" or Energy/Execution/Expression trouble.

Power or "Spirit" deficiencies usually proceed from a weakness in either the creative "Father" or "Son." That is, if the work's Idea is bad or conflicted or is the work is shabbily done, it's going to fall flat. It won't have any Power.

But not always. You can have works that are "Spirit"-ridden, that are all effects and no content. They're the kind of pictures and novels and movies that a lot of people think are really great. They're exciting and entertaining. But when you think about it, there's no Idea, no There there. Movies like that sell popcorn, but that's all they're good for.

A work that's really strong in the "Spirit" department can cover up the fact that there's something ailing with its "Son." Sheridan Le Fanu, the 19th century Anglo-Irish specialist in the supernatural, wrote a thriller called Uncle Silas that I read three separate times before I realized that the way he wound up the plot simply makes no sense. But he got away with it and continues to get away with it, because the novel has a strong Idea and the Effect of his writing is so powerful you're too busy enjoying the shudders it evokes to notice that towards the climax its "Spirit" has bypassed its "Son."

Once you've figured out where in its artistic trinity a work's problem lies, you can entertain yourself thinking what you would do about it, were you the creator's editor, master painter, director, whatever. What strikes me when I play this game is that in art, as in the Godhead, it all comes down to the second person of the trinity. If I determine there's something wrong or deficient with the work's Idea, there's nothing I can do. If the Power is weak, well, as the western version of the Nicene Creed rightly (I affirm) maintains, the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified. Or in the case of our out-of-balance trinity, not. You can't make a work of art any stronger by whipping up fancy effects. The only thing an artist or editor can really do anything about is the "Son" aspect of the work, the way the Idea is expressed and executed. Assuming that the "Son's" function is to be the true Word of the "Father," you get that right, and the work of art will be right, powerful, effective, and true.

Which is why I spend entirely too much time editing my blog entries, even though the ideas I express in them are very small indeed!

My Great Britannic Adventure, Day Seven

Thursday, 23 March, 1989
Glasgow to Iona
Day Seven, Maundy Thursday

It was snowing this morning when I woke up. Lovely.

Breakfast was interesting, as the hostel seemed to have been taken over by a gang of junior high-aged boys, who made a terrible din-- and who insisted on using the women’s bathroom, despite the sign. I’m not sure the food was worth the £1.85-- it was all rather soggy from having languished too long in the bain-marie.

Only 93 miles to the Port of Oban, but I got out of town around 9:30, and good thing I did, too.

First, of course, I have to get lost trying to find the A82 out of Glasgow. But once that was located, I was fine the rest of the way. When the town was cleared you could see the snow-covered foothills of the Highlands, and it was so beautiful! It was "Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen" over and over, and thank goodness I had some decent top notes to sing it with!

The A82 goes along Loch Lomond and where I wasn’t crawling along the queue due to construction work I was hopping out to take pictures. Scotland doesn’t make it easy on you, though . . . No nice designated overlooks as in Nova Scotia.

Got the A85 at Tyndrum and thereafter the weather grew entertaining again. I’m afraid I was becoming thoroughly tense and white knuckled, especially as most of the other drivers were zooming along around the curves as if it were a dry, sunny day. The landscape is beautiful, though, all bathed in mist, and I began to wonder if maybe I should’ve taken the train.

Arrived in Oban a little after 12:00. The ferry to Mull left at 1:00 and I needed every bit of that time to find the ferry pier, buy my ticket, learn where to park the car and park it, assemble my bags, and stagger with them back to the gangway and onto the boat.

On the ferry, I bought a cup of tea and, establishing myself on the upper observation deck, I drank that and ate a bun and a bit of stottie bread. There was a slight swell, though nothing unpleasant. The sea was a beautiful green color under the overcast. You never get out of sight of land on that run . . . I went out on deck despite the flecks of rain and watched the islands with their lighthouses and castles drifting by.

The bus journey across Mull is about 37 miles and takes a long time, along a one-lane road. I couldn’t see much, as the windows were all fogged up. I should’ve brought something on to read. There were a couple of boys, ten or eleven years old, in the back singing popular songs in flat, tinny voices-- they nearly got a paper was bounced off their noggins. Fortunately they were not coming to Iona.

It was raining in earnest at the ferry pier in Fionnphort (pronounced more like "Finnafort"). The Iona ferry is a little thing and I elected not to try to cram into the diminuative cabin with everyone else, but remained out on deck. The sea was indulging in the most lively of leaps and arabesques and making its presence emphatically known over the sides. My umbrella had rather the worst against the wind, so pretty soon I took it down, moved my bags to where they wouldn’t get quite so soaked, and resigned myself to a total-immersion baptism by salt water and fresh.

It’s really a pity my camera isn’t waterproof. The swells were hilarious. And again, that jaw-dropping combination of sea-green and grays and muted blues . . .

The people from the MacLeod Center had brought a blue van down for us and we all piled in. They said the magic words-- "Tea" and "Fire"-- and after a blind journey along a narrow road between rock walls, they made good on the promise.

I suppose the first thing to say is that the Iona Community is not Roman Catholic. After a few questions put here and there, I learned that it’s fundamentally Church of Scotland, which is to say Presbyterian, and was started by the Duke of Argyll fifty years ago [I've since learned that the Duke of Argyll and the Rev. George MacLeod were two different people with different roles in the founding]. But it currently has an ecumenical thrust with emphasis on peace and reconciliation. The members and staff are a mixed group, men and women, singles and marrieds. I’m still not straight on how people join, what sort of commitment they make, or how the community is funded.

The second thing is that the MacLeod Center (named after the aforementioned Duke of Argyll [my misconstrual--see above]) is a brand new building, a replacement for some derelict huts of an old youth camp across the road and up the hill a bit from the abbey, all not far from the Sound of Iona. And unlike a lot of other retreat centers, the owners got an architect to design it. Christine MacLean, the woman who is the Center’s director, told me it was someone named Joe Green, but that sounds highly unlikely in Scotland . . . The detailing of doorframes, pulls, benches and other built-in furnishings, as well as the general proportions and disposition of the spaces, shows a good eye for line, space, and detail. The building isn’t quite finished, as is obvious by the lack of curtains on the windows and all the hooks that aren’t where they should be. But it’s all on order, from what I hear.

The dorm rooms have six berths apiece, with nice new mattresses on the unfinished pine bed frames. Oh, yes, the woodwork still needs to be stained.

After tea and biscuits in front of the fire in what they call the Combination Room (I’d tend to call it the Common Room or the Great Hall), the first order of business was a shower, to wash the highly-evocative but not entirely amenable smell of sea water off my person. After that, I found the drying room (the only warm room in the place) and hung up my wet things. Tempting just to stay in there-- the wind was coming in through every crack and the hardware was not keeping the doors closed at all and the central heating wasn’t working worth a poop. Nothing wrong with that building a little caulk and some revamped hardware wouldn’t solve . . .

Dinner, aka tea, was at 5:30. And I don’t know why, but it bugged me a little that it was vegetarian. Maybe because I associate that kind of thing with political and religious views I’m not entirely in accord with. In fact, I get the strong feeling the whole thrust of this place is a little--ahem--liberal . . . but I’ve learned since coming to Oxford and Coverdale* last October not to automatically brand people heretics just because they have this or that view on isolated topics that happen to be shared with frankly syncretistic or cultish groups. So I’m going to hang loose and see what happens around here. But I really don’t like the ambivalence and find it very hard to relax.

There was a recital down at the Abbey church at 7:15. Goodness, the things I’ll do for music! I have never been out in such wind and rain before in my life, especially not after nightfall. It was sheer labor to make any headway against the gale and the rain was driving so everyone was soaked even before we reached the MacLeod Center gates. And no one in this little group had brought a flashlight with them. You get out in a wild cold dark wet windy blow like that and you’re likely to forget everything except getting in out of it. And it didn’t help that the cloister door down at the abbey has no light over it.

All got in, though, and sat in the choir stalls trying to keep the teeth from chattering while the recital was going on. Various people played: pianists, flautists, a violinist, singers . . . The wind players were rather good but the violinist needs to work on his tone.

Lukas* was not there, but I’ve never known him to be a diehard music lover. There’s time enough to see him and to do that wasn’t the point of coming here, anyway.

The MacLeod Center group had a session in the library over the chapterhouse afterwards. The purpose was to catch us up with what the abbey group has been doing all week, following in Jesus’ footsteps as He moves towards the cross. The avenue to this seemed to be more that of imaginative projection than of direct Scripture-study. And I’m afraid I was rather a вопреки† and inwardly refused to do the ‘quieting’ pre-contemplation exercise, since although quieting is probably just what I need, I associate the prescribed technique with New Age idiocy.

By the time the Maundy Thursday service started in the Abbey refectory I was feeling really out of it. I couldn’t find any of the people I was sharing the room with and Lukas* didn’t come in till the very last and sat quite far from me. And I decided I was going to wait for him to greet me first. It was his prerogative, under the circumstances. He's established his turf here since last Monday and it wouldn't be right for me to push in.

The service proceeded, featuring a bit of drama that may be ok if you know the actual New Testament story but which needed to be taken with a large grain of salt anyway. And a lot of singing. They have a highly skilled a capella choir led by a woman who seems to have perfect pitch. And the acoustics enhance the voices very effectively.

For that matter, I wish I could have gotten my camera down to the abbey without drenching it. The chinks between the stones of the refectory walls were filled with little candles that made a myriad points of light all over the long room.

After the Communion bread (leavened, wheat) and the wine (real, but golden) had gone around and some more singing was done, a chant was begun and everyone proceeded through the cloister for the ceremonial stripping of the church. And behold, Lukas* was holding the door as everyone went out. I saw it would be terribly rude not to acknowledge his presence when face to face with him. So I silently saluted him as I passed . . . he gave me no response . . . and now I’m beginning to wonder if it was a misjudged thing to do. . .

He had his part in the stripping of the church, carrying out the great silver Celtic altar cross. As a recording of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries played, one of the women danced out with a piece of the altar plate in a way that was so effectively barbaric it was almost appalling. How should that sort of thing be done? As if we were mourners ceremonially donning our black clothes, or as impersonators of the despoiling powers of darkness? I’m not sure at all.

There was tea and biscuits back in the refectory thereafter, the cold wind still howling at the windows. Lukas* made no effort to come and greet me, at which I was beginning to be a little irritated. To counteract this feeling I wanted to do something nice for him, like see that he got a cup of tea. But I couldn’t even accomplish that. When he came round to the tea table someone else had the pot and besides, he stated baldly, he was already getting tea for someone else. And that’s all he said to me.

Got wet again coming back to the Center. Stood around with some others in the Combination Room feeding the fire with bits of odd construction wood and cardboard boxes. There’s no proper firewood around here, it seems.

But the heater in the room was beginning to come on, which was encouraging.
_______________________
†"Вопреки" (vopreki), Russian preposition meaning "contrary to"; transmogrified by the characters in my high school Russian class into a noun signifying someone who willfully does the opposite of what's expected of him. It's been part of my personal vocabulary ever since.

The Easter Weekend from Hell: Prelude, Part 1

When I spent the 1988-89 academic year doing a time-warped Junior Year Abroad in Oxford, England, I and several other Americans in my program were lodgers at Coverdale* Theological College. We weren’t the only internationals there: Coverdale* played host to students from Africa, Asia, Canada, and Europe as well.

One of the Europeans was a man from Switzerland whom I’ll call Lukas Renzberger*. Lukas* was ordinarily a student at a Swiss Reformed seminary in Berne, and the fact that we were both from the Reformed tradition and outsiders compared to the Brits made it easy for us to hit it off. Lukas was about 27 at the time, a big, good-looking, well-set-up young man, and single. He would have been very easy for me to fancy, except that my affections were hopelessly, uselessly, but deservedly and thoroughly tied up with the Englishman I’m calling Nigel.*

Not being infatuated with Lukas* made college life with him all the more pleasant. We were friendly enough that it was a comfortable and relaxed thing for him to invite me to spend Christmas with his family in northern Switzerland, but not so close that the invitation and my acceptance carried any awkward implications.

I had a good time there with him and his family, up to mid-day on the 25th. Then, just before Christmas dinner, Lukas* and I got into a debate about the significance and meaning of Holy Communion. Only his father calling us to the table ended it, and after that, Lukas* seemed very distant, only speaking in Swiss German when we were all together, and turning off my attempts to start conversation when we were alone.

This bothered me. Did he think I was a heretic because I didn’t share his Zwinglian views? Maybe he thought I shouldn’t be holding forth on such topics at all! After all, he was the theological scholar and I was only an architect.

But when we both got back to Coverdale* in January, he seemed to be his old amiable self. Our friendship fell back into its usual easy course and I let what had happened in Switzerland go unmentioned.

Fast forward to late February that year, towards the end of Hilary Term. I was in Lukas’* room at college one Saturday afternoon and we were discussing our plans for the upcoming month-long Easter vacation.

"I’m joining some of the Coverdale* ordinands on the inner-city mission to Liverpool," he told me. "We’ll be serving there for a week. After that, for Holy Week I’ll be up at Iona. I’m on a programme at the Abbey with the Iona Community. Have you heard of Iona? It’s up on the west coast of Scotland."

"'Have I heard of Iona?'" I repeated. "Of course I have! I’m Presbyterian, aren’t I? At my church back home in the States, it’s practically a rule that if you get over to Scotland, you have to visit Iona. It's part of our heritage!

"In fact," I went on, "I’m planning on visiting Iona, too. Only, I don’t know exactly when I’ll be there; it depends on where else I want to go first. But maybe I’ll see you there!"

Lukas* agreed that that would be nice. And even if we couldn’t make contact during the vac, we made a date to go out to dinner when we both got back to Coverdale* the second week in April. My treat this time, I told him. I’d never yet had the chance to reciprocate his hospitality in Switzerland.

All very frank, friendly, and free. You will see anon how things actually fell out between us on St. Columba's holy isle.

Some Easter "Hymns" Need to Be Egged

A brief rant before I retire to bed this Easter Sunday evening:

I was just downstairs, plinking out Easter hymns on my new old piano, out of the 1933 Hymnal. "Come Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain." "Welcome, Happy Morning." "The Strife Is O’er." "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today." Good, solid hymns with good, solid doctrine about what Jesus really did for us on the cross and at the empty tomb.

So what did I get for one of the two hymns in the church where I preached this morning? "He Lives." What were people singing all over "evangelical" America this morning? "He Lives." Which is not really about Jesus and His resurrection and what He’s accomplished at all, it’s about "me" and how Jesus makes me feeeeeeeeel!

I was stuck with it because the organist at Indian Hill* picks all the hymns and, in the absence of a regular pastor, what he says, goes.

Lord help me, every year I’m less able to tolerate that piece of gnostic, sentimental chozzerai.

This morning I barely sang it. I went "la-la-la" to the melody line in first verse, and for the other two I made a half-assed attempt at following the alto line, still on "la-la-la."

Irreverent, you say?

Ha! I gave the bloody piece of tripe exactly what it deserved, and more.

No, I didn’t disrupt anyone else’s worship "experience." The organ was behind me and it quite effectively drowned me out. Which was the idea.

. . . I need to stop feeling angry about this. It’s not my calling to go on a one-woman crusade against bad Christian music. It is my calling to preach the gospel of Christ crucified and risen again, and Lord helping, I believe I did that this morning.

But I see I've gotten sidetracked in my rant. It ultimately isn’t about disgust. It’s about sadness.

Sadness that so few modern hymnals have the great classic Easter hymns in them at all. Sadness that it's not popular or fashionable to sing them even if they are. We’re losing our musical heritage, and with it, a great support to our faith. Something like "The Strife Is O’er" goes a lot farther is teaching a Christian what he believes and why he should believe it, than something like "Christ Arose."

But even "Christ Arose" is better than "He Lives." Gaaahhhhggghhh!

"The Other Mary"

I just noticed something intriguing while working on my sermon for Sunday:

St. Matthew, telling the resurrection story, reports that it was "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary" who went to the tomb early that first day of the week after Jesus was crucified.

St. Mark and St. Luke say it was Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James who went, as well as other female disciples, named and unnamed.

"Mary" (or Miriam) was a very popular girl's name at the time, so to identify this second disciple as "Mary the mother of James" meant that everyone in the church knew who "James" was and would think, "Oh, yes, that Mary. James' mother!"

But which James? James the brother of John? I don't think so. Every time the Gospels refer to her, she's always "the mother of Zebedee's sons." In fact, in chapter 27, Matthew mentions Mrs. Zebedee as standing "at a distance" along with "the mother of James and Joses" as Jesus died on Calvary.

Could she be the mother of James the Less, one of the Twelve?

Probably not. His career wasn't prominent enough to make him someone to be identified by.

Unless James the Less is the same as James the Just, the writer of the Epistle of James and leader of the Jerusalem Church for many, many years?

But I'd argue against that. Because James the Less was one of Jesus' disciples-- and James the Just (pace my Roman Catholic readers, if any) was the half-brother of our Lord. St. Mark in chapter 6 of his gospel records the murmuring of the crowd against Jesus: "'Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph [ Greek Joses, a variant of Joseph], Judas [i.e., Jude] and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?'"

Hmmm. And St. John tells us in chapter 7 that Jesus' brothers didn't believe in him. Their eyes weren't opened till after the resurrection. (Which may explain why Jesus commended his mother to John, and not to one of them!).

But Jesus' half-brother James did come to faith in him after he rose from the grave, and became known as James the Just, the renowned bishop of the Jerusalem church.

So who is this "other" Mary, the mother of the famous James and his brother Joses? It looks to me as if it were Mary, the blessed mother of our Lord!

So why don't the gospel writers come out and say so? Why all the understatement?

I could argue that they didn't want the pathos of a mother's sorrow to upstage the drama of God played out in the resurrection.

But I think it's more likely that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all pointing up the fact that with the resurrection, Jesus transcends his blood relationships with any one human being. No individual can now claim special identity from being his kin after the flesh.

For now Christ is united in holy and spiritual relationship to all who believe in him. Now that he is risen, the blood relationship that matters is the one forged by the blood of his cross. It is entered into not by sharing his DNA, but by faith when we accept the atonement won for us in his blood. This blood relationship is birthed in us by the Holy Spirit and nurtured every time we partake in the cup at Holy Communion.

Since the resurrection, Mary of Nazareth no longer has a special human claim on her Son; she is one with all her brothers and sisters, falling joyfully at the feet of the One who is her Savior and ours.

"The other Mary," indeed! Are there any legends of her pulling rank or demanding special treatment in the church because the Christ was born of her womb? I've never heard of any!

That's humility worth emulating!