holy season

it's not just christmas; it's saint stephen's and saint john's and the holy innocents, and holy family sunday, and the solemnity of mary. "rejoice! rejoice! immanuel shall come to thee, oh israel." and while you're at it, read a little james joyce. re: joyce. in "ulysses" james joyce more or less sums up or recapitulates what's been best in western civilization. joyce may not have been strictly speaking a believer, but he certainly made a large contribution to our culture. and don't forget epiphany. joyce was big on "epiphanies". it's the fifth day of christmas. rejoice.

sexual differentiation

it's a good thing,

it's an act of God

jesus's birthday

there is usually a good deal of discussion at this time of year about why we celebrate jesus's birthday on december 25. i think we all pretty well know by now that that is a conventional date and not necessarily his real birthday. that need not be an occasion for discounting whether or not he ever really lived or whether or not he really is who he is reputed to have said he is. those are matters of individual faith and belief. but the fact that it is not necessarily his actual birthday is not a good reason to discount church authority altogether nor traditional christian belief. for those of us who still believe, it is a profound occasion for celebration. for non-believers it is just what it is...a winter festival that one may or may not take great pleasure in. it's a personal decision not to be dictated by mere whim or inadequate reasoning.

motherin' daddy

for the most part, i tend to believe in traditional orthodox Christian theology. i really do believe the God is our Heavenly Father, that through Him and His Spirit the Universe is actively animated and comes to life; but that is not to say that i deny that He also has mothering aspects, cares and concerns that are necessarily a part of the whole Creation process. and, that is, I think, what the Catholic Church has always taught, or at least most certain teaches today. the maternal aspects of God tend to be somewhat neglected in our traditional address.

it is also important to remember that we do have a Heavenly Mother as well, that principal incarnated in Mary, the Mother of Jesus. She is constantly intercedng for us with the Father through the Son. I do not think it entirely inappropriate to address her with our deepest concerns.

if this seems hopelessly sexist, i really cannot offer much else in the way of apology. while i do believe that we are all equal in the signt of God, i do not necessarily believe that we are all the same. differing humans almost always have differing gifts. it seems to me somewhat misguided to ignore our differences. a man cannot give birth to a child. a woman cannot conceive without some element of male participation. those are just facts of life. they do not justify discrimination in areas where we can work together in full equality, but some respect for our differences is also called for.

i only state these matters by way of clarification. they might be better left unsaid. but in a climate of radical and raging and virulent attack, i think some sort of statment is justified. please forgive me if i seem to offend.

i myself had a very maternal father whose loving concern for my happiness and well-being i never seriously doubted. i am very grateful and indebted to that care. i ascribe that same virtue to the God I worship and love. i believe that such a love which transcends all conceptions of male and female is an essential part of His eternal character. i have no good reason to doubt that either.

dreams at 5:45 am

i slip into a little, out-of-the-way office at trinity and tell a young father pool that mother is much better. he advises caution, a wait-and-see attitude.

i am at a service station and have called mother to come pick me up to go to a conference, perhaps one on peace and justice. i am not quite dressed and am slipping on my white terry cloth robe with a hood when she drives up in a white fifth avenue with a red interior.

justice is about how we go forward from here. revenge is about getting even.

the light of Christ

"the light of Christ has come into the world"
cryest thou in the wildernesse?
a Child amongst broken reeds

"whosoever endures until the end...
that person will be saved"

saint stephen's day 2013

do not hide your light under a bushel,
but set it up upon a hill, that thereby
the whole world may be enlightened.

jerri nell bush? reidy
a reedy plant He will not refuse
a needy ploy

oh please employ
me in thy
service, Lord

good morning

in the end

in the end i realized i had nowhere to go but back to the Bible and back to the Catholic Church. no other teaching entity has the authority to interpret controversial passages and topics like she does. she has not failed me yet. there was hardly any hope in the Internet, hardly any hope in the television, hardly any hope in secular literature, and certainly scant hope in my friends and relatives. there was no one else i could rely upon. i go back time after time to the writings of saint paul of tarsus. there is nothing else like them anywhere in the universe, not at least that i can find. they are bedrock. they come down to us directly through the Church. it's not really all that difficult to comprehend a coherent teaching and understanding in the Holy Scriptures. what cannot be avoided Is that "all have fallen short of the glory of God". all have apostacized. we live in a desolate and perverted world. our hope is in the Name of the Lord. Amen.

violent revolution

just take a look, take a hard look, at the french revolution, at the russian revolution, at the chinese revolution, at the mexican revolution, at the vietnamese revolution. see the hard results. is this what we want, what we want on our heads? the Bible teaches us to be civil to one another, to cooperate with the civil authorities unless it is a matter of serious conscience. rebellion, under most circumstances, is not encouraged. here we have no abiding place. our ultimate home is beyond all this. but then, we have pretty well rejected that teaching, have we not now?

vignette

when I was young, maybe ten years old, I took a bus from tcu to downtown fort worth. I got off the bus near the federal courthouse and walked across what was then Burkburnett park which had a large elevated goldfish pond. I was on my way to see the movie “Giant” which was playing on seventh street at either the Hollywood or the Palace, both grand venues now long since disappeared into history. As I crossed the park, I saw a man kneeling beside a seated woman on the edge of the pond. He has obviously proposing. It was a tender and private moment, and I realized that at once and continued on my way.

Christmas Stockings

Somewhere back along the way, Mother’s family, the Latimers, were related to the Stockings. I sort of tend to think that Great-Grandmother Latimer’s mother may have been a Stocking. Great-Grandmother Latimer was originally Daisy Ward.

They were all Panhandle people. Jerome Stocking had the drug store in Clarendon, Texas; and I think may have been a prominent Panhandle physician. Mother always referred to Jerome as Cousin Jerome. At least I know that there was a famous Panhandle physician named Stocking. His doctor’s bag is preserved in a museum somewhere.

Great-Granddaddy Latimer built the water works in Clarendon and operated them for fifteen years. His is a long and interesting history, which I have told elsewhere and which I will leave for another time to tell again.

I knew Wade Stocking many years ago, who lived in Wichita Falls. His name always makes me think of Roe versus Wade. I’d rather row than have to wade.

Tonight I was thinking of Mother, and about my plans to bring her here to the Grove Home for our annual Christmas party, when I began considering which shoes to take for her. I know she would like to wear her red Trotters from Cartan’s. She had shopped there since she was a girl.

Then it occurred to me that she would need clean, or in fact new, stockings. I will pick up a pair at the dollar store. And then I thought, this is Christmas. Of course she needs a stocking. A stocking cap, if nothing else. It’s going to be a Merry Christmas.

my yetzirah

my netzero
my yetzirah

yetzirah - kabbalistic term. realm of creative making. after binah.

from "words over herd"

internet and yahoo
enter netanyahoo

these weighty tomes
such mighty tombs

faithbook

demeter/dimeter

a number of my facebook friends are giving expression to their belief that after death we experience a great and eternal sleep. shakeskpeare had something to say about that, "to sleep...to dream...ay, there's the rub". for the non-traditional believer, eternal sleep seems the best option. most unsatisfactory (sadist factory) in my opinion. believers are often accused of "wishful thinking", but, eternal sleep and nothingness, that's my idea of "wishful thinking". i am convinced it is "heaven"" or "hell", and heaven is essentially christian. oh, i'm not saying that everybody else necessarily goes to hell. that may or may not be the case, but what i am sure of is that "every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord." i do reserve the possibility that there may be a place of waiting or purgation. my church teaches that, and certain passages in the removed books (shakespeare again: "pause, but look where my abridgement comes"...hamlet) indicate the same. i believe in the teaching authority of my church, and i accept the authority of the authorized scriptures.

out of earshot
out of here now

"the teaching should carry with it its own demonstration"
demon striation

doug pedersen, saguache, colorado

vu de blog

mother and jeremey bentham

bringing mother here to the grove home for our annual christmas celebration is a little like jeremey bentham's attendance at the annual board meeting of the school of economics at the university of london every year. after mr. bentham had died, he had his bones stripped, a wax head made, and had himself dressed in his best clothes in a wicker backed wheel chair. his bequest stipulated that he must be present every year at the annual board meeting. his actual head was preserved in mummified form in a box above a portal at the school. i saw a photograph of it in the london times when i was there in 1968. i went to the school and inquired of a porter, and was shown the portal where the head was, and mr. bentham on display behind a glass case. i asked if he had been out lately, and was told, oh yes, mr bentham recently attended the classics department dinner.

bringing mother here is not exactly the same, but she lives in an nearby nursing home, largle incognizant, but seems to know me, and responds to yes or no questions. she obviously enjoys her food. she will be dressed in some of her best clothes and brought here in a wheelchair. my brother pat will assist me. everyone here is anxious to see her, and i want her to see my rooms. i think she will enjoy the trip and being here among the people and i'm sure she will like the food. it should be a great event for all of us. i hope so. keep us in your prayers.

literature

once, a sailor in the merchant marine, not ivory-marchant, was reading the olympia press edition of vladimir nabakov's "lolita" when a fellow sailor grabbed the book out of his hands, saying, "here, let me take a look at that". olympia was known for its x-rated publications. the second sailor looked through the book for a few seconds; there were no pictures; and then threw it back at the first sailor, exclaiming, "to heck with that, man;
that's literature".

this story courtesey of thomas parkinson, professor of english, u.c. berkeley.

betty spears

one day betty spears, the wife of monroe spears, the moody professor of poetry at rice university, but at the time editor of the "sewanee review" at the university of the south in sewanee, tennessee, was walking across the sewanee campus, when she was stopped by an elderly gentleman who asked her the way to the offices of the "sewanee review". betty offered to the man that she was headed to those offices at the time, that her husband was the editor, and that she would show the gentleman the way. the elderly man then continued, " i come here every year to buy a subscription for my grandson. perhaps you have heard of him; his name is tennessee williams."

this story reminds me of the time i was walking across the princeton campus in the snow when i ran into tish taitte, then the wife of my friend lawson taitte, who was a graduate student at princeton at the time. that was very coincidental since i was there to visit the taittes and had no idea how to proceed.

the misfits

finally something came on the tv that seemed remotely worth watching. it was an early 60's movie, i think, with marilyn monroe and clark gable called "the misfits", perhaps the last movie for them both, but i admit i'm not sure. i think marilyn monroe was then married to the playwrite arthur miller, whose work i have a tendency to admire; and i also think he may have written or at least worked on the script for that movie. it was fairly engrossing, filmed in black and white, but not a great showcase for either of the actors. gable was apparently pretty advanced in years at the time. what did strike me as odd was his character's name in the movie, gaylord or often simply "gay" which indicated to me that it probably predated the vernacular use of the term "gay" to indicate homosexuality. of course there are many other uses of the word "gay". i had an acquaintence in high school named gay. but i don't think there's been a lot of that at least since the late 60's. i first heard that usage in new york in the mid-sixties among relatively covert homosexuals. i did not have a high opinion of the usage at the time and frankly i still do not today. as has often been noted, it seems somewhat contradictory; and then it besmirches what was once a perfectly good English word, frequently used by Shakespeare. but i know it's way past reformation now. i recorded the movie, bt i haven't actually watched all of it yet. it made me think of another movie, "they shoot horses, don't they". and it made me think just a little of tennessee williams, whose plays i also like. perhaps i'll look for one or two of those to watch on youtube. i did find a complete version of the 1962 film, "david and lisa" which i want to watch some night...not the 90's color remake, but the old black and white. i wathed a french movie from the period recently, "sundays and cybele" and once again enjoyed it very much.

further coincidence

yesterday i blogged about coincidences involved with my encounter with the poet ted berrigan and around a dedication of a recent poem of mine to the poet mark jarman. what i did not say about the encounter with berrigan at the poetry project at saint mark's in new york was that the featured poet that night was, if i remember correctly, michael hamburger, reading from some of his german translations. today a poem translated by hamburger popped up in much the same channels as the jarman poem. i know that must seem pretty insignificant, but not perhaps if you consider that when i got home tonight to the retirement center, our evening meal, for the first time in the three plus months that i have been here, was a substantial hamburger which i thoroughly enjoyed.

as the french socialist said after nationalzing the banking system, "excuse me. i'm enjoying a 'rothschild'.

coincidence

somewht strangely, a day or two ago i blogged about an encounter i had had with the poet ted berrigan in new york in 1968. today's poem by lynn emanuel from poetry daily at www.poems.com includes reference and an address to the poet ted berrigan as well. i had a similar experience recently when i addressed a poem to the poet mark jarman and the next day the poem from poet.org was by jarman. it is interesting to get the influx of these various postings. i, of course, believe that there is no such thing is co- incidence; but that's just my personal belief. i find it confirmed almost every day. it sort of amazes me, the extent to which our culture is now dominated by an attitude of un- or non-belief.

am re-reading monroe spears' 1968 book, "dionysius and the city", a study in literary and cultural modernism which i have read in extensively before. it's an excellent book. i just wish dr. spears was still around so i could tell him how very much i respect and appreciate his efforts.

moonlight sonata

once when thomas parkinson was walking in a grove of trees on the berkeley campus with another professor, howard hugo; they were discussing a bi-sexual colleague whom, one commented, brought home young hustlers to his house when his wife was home and played the "moonlight sonata" for them on the piano. "well," the other replied, "she's lucky he brings home trade who are willing to listen to the 'moonlight sonata'."

which reminds me of the time a young hustler went home with another man who wanted him to put on a flannel nightgown. the hustler objected, saying, "i did not come her to play 'little women'."

liberalism

thomas parkinson, the prominent radical poetry professor from berkeley, once commented on a fellow graduate student of mine that he was a vietnam veteran, a political conservative, and a believing Christian. "in the name of diversity," thomas parkinson said, "how can we not award this man a phd."