Walter Wangerin

When books work well, it isn't just that we memorise them and then, by our will and our personal wisdom, shape our lives to follow them. Rather, when books work for us, we begin to walk beside the mind that created the book. That mind may be so much wiser than ours, but we walk beside it until soon we are walking like that one.

The question becomes, Who is going to teach you both how to interpret the world around you, to see it in small, and to come to a true understanding of it, organising the context in which you live? A child enters the world and really doesn't make sense of it but lives in sort of a senselessness of existence. The kid first begins to know her little house and her parents, and they become the whole world to that child. You pull a child apart from that house and that well-ordered nicely-constructed, beloved family, and the kid is lost - literally lost. As the child gets older, it becomes the child's business to read the events and the details of the universe in such a way that she puts them together so that they make sense.

So the question becomes, Who are you going to allow to become your 'heaper into heaps' and your 'piler into piles [as the old Sanskrit meaning of the word 'poet' has it]? Who will shape the world that you enter into and dwell in? Are you going to allow football to do that, so all the world is seen in a contest? Are you going to allow simpleminded understandings - like the cartoons, newspapers or the government - do that for you? Or are you going to enter into the sweet complexity of minds, this living treasure of singers and writers who embrace more details with greater richness of beauty, deeper understanding of what is truly evil, what is good and what is the precession of human experience?

You want the minds of those who have created whole cultures of insight. The more complexly we see the world, the more capable we are of admitting many people into that world - people who are not like us. Books open our eyes to the complex truths that simple, mindless stories simply have no names for. So why not pick the best?

I don't mind the people who read romances, but that's formula fiction. It repeats the same world over and over again, and it's a profoundly limited world. And every one of the people who loves romantic fiction has a mind better than the world that it shapes. We call that escapism. Gerard Manley Hopkins offers his poetry as inscapism - to escape into things, truly, not escape from them.That's the influence of great books; they teach us how to see the world that is.

From chapter 19 of Indelible Ink - 22 international Christian writers discuss the books that shape their faith, published by CWR 2

Churchill and Galbraith

It’s been a long time since I last added anything to this blog – a situation that I suspect happens to many blogs after the initial enthusiasm – but I was struck by a quote from Winston Churchill when reading Os Guinness’s book, Prophetic Untimeliness, today. The wonderful use of language and irony is typical of Churchill.

In 1936, when the Stanley Baldwin government called for a review of the situation, Churchill commented acidly,
‘Anyone can see what the situation is: the Government simply cannot make up their mind, or they cannot get the Prime Minister to make up his mind. So they go on in a strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.’

A few months ago we caught most of a one-off television biopic of Churchill (called The Gathering Storm) which covered those ‘wilderness years’ when he was abandoned by the Government and given little part to play in England’s future. Albert Finney did the cigar-chomping with great gusto and also expressed the immense hurt that Churchill felt at being ousted from the work he loved. It was also interesting to see the close relationship he had with his wife (played with great grace and stature by Vanessa Redgrave), something that’s seldom thought about in regard to Churchill.
__________________________

It’s a very peculiar feeling that the older you get, the less old you actually feel inside. I guess there was a time when I felt older as a person, but now oldness seems a non-existent thing. Inside, I don’t sense myself as being any different to when I was a child. I’m the same person – in a different-sized and shaped body, and one that certainly isn’t as flexible as I’d like – and I find it hard to distinguish anything different about the way I was (as opposed to way the I perceived the world) to the way I am now.

I can remember certain events in my childhood, and remember a greater physical freedom at that time, but the person was still the same me. Somehow he hasn’t aged, anymore than, if it were possible to go backwards in time, I would become younger.

Just noticed a quote from J K Galbraith (it was in the NZ Listener):
If wrinkles must be written upon our brows, let them not be written upon the heart. The spirit should never grow old.

Kerry Packer

Kerry Packer, whom I hadn’t previously thought of as a theologian, said at the time of his 1990 heart attack, when he was pronounced clinically dead for eight minutes, "The good news is there's no devil. The bad news is there's no heaven. There's nothing." This piece of information was played back after the news report today of his (very private) funeral.

Well, the good news is that now he’ll know whether he was actually right. The bad news, for him, anyway, is that he may have been totally wrong.

Elsewhere it was stated that he was making a million dollars a day out of his investments, business interests and so on. Pity that none of it will do him any good where he’s gone – wherever he’s gone.

On the basis of my understanding, he’ll stand, like everyone else, before God Almighty, and have to account for his life. I wonder if being a ‘brash, swashbuckling businessman with a voracious appetite for gambling, both in the boardroom and in the casino’ will be deemed as a worthwhile way to have spent his life. Or the fact that he revived the game of cricket: will God be interested in this, I wonder?

Let’s hope Mr Packer was secretly giving away some of those daily millions to the poor and needy. That would help him a little.

The Amaziah complex

I suppose there is an analogous situation for some of us. We might call ourselves ‘evangelicals’ and yet there is little zeal after personal piety, little effort to teach and indoctrinate our families, not much passion to bear personal or public witness – or to raise our voice against unbelief in our church denomination. We’re evangelical – no need to go bonkers over it. Maybe it’s the Amaziah complex: we don’t see why righteousness must be rigorous or godliness aggressive.

Dale Ralph Davis, discussing 2 Kings 14 (with some irony) in his book, The Power and the Fury, page 205.

The Great Divorce

Reading C S Lewis’ The Great Divorce again the other day, for at least the third time, I came across this section on page 71:
"This curious wish to describe Hell turned out, however, to be only the mildest form of a desire very common among the Ghosts – the desire to extend Hell, to bring it bodily, if they could, into Heaven. There were tub-thumping Ghosts who in thin, bat-like voices urged the blessed spirits [already in Heaven] to shake off their fetters, to escape from their imprisonment in happiness, to tear down the mountains with their hands, to seize Heaven ‘for their own good’: Hell offered her co-operation."
How like the last book in Philip Pullman’s famous trilogy, His Dark Materials, this sounds. It could almost be a summary of what goes on in the great battle in that book, quite apart from a reminder of that awful section where the children ‘release’ the spirits under the Earth into…what? Not life, but nothingness!

Men, those dangerous creatures

Obviously the PC brigade has found yet another way to try and make us blokes feel ashamed with this latest revelation that men (horrors!) shouldn't sit beside unaccompanied children on passenger planes. (Not just shouldn't, in fact, are not allowed to.) What I can't understand is how this decision could have come about....weren't there any men involved in making it and why did they kowtow to whoever thought it was a good idea?
A friend of mine, Pat, (for Patricia) whom I bounce ideas off a good deal, replied to my comment above:
"I can't imagine who was involved in that decision by the airlines. I strongly doubt that the decision could have been made by women alone, because the majorityof airline executives are men. It would be lawyers, I suspect, trying to out-guess possible future lawsuits. It seems to me that if airlines are willing to carry unaccompanied children (for profit), then they are in loco parentis for the duration of the flight, and should accept and carry out the responsibility which they have willingly undertaken, by exercising parent-like direct supervision. Clearly, they don't bloody feel like it. So they try to sidestep liability by parking the kids wherever, and then inconveniencing and insulting other paying passengers. I don't think anyone 'kowtowed'; I suspect the decision-makers thought what they were doing was jolly good business practice. I think this policy is - what word should I use, now? It's beyond my ability to sum up in a single adjective. Pathetic, irrational, cruel, stupid, hurtful, pointless, and most likely ineffective, for starters. This morning's ODT says the policy has been in place 'for years' (I doubt that) and is in line with 'the best international practice' (I doubt that, too), or words to that effect. I think it stinks, I think the airlines are trying frantically to put a positive spin on it, and I hope they don't succeed. They sure as hell don't convince me.
Now then. I can't say fairer than that. Tell you what: I reckon air-freight companies must have facilities for transporting dangerous wildlife, like lions and other big cats, right? They must have cargo holds with strong cages built in - room to move around and lie down, and with space for adequate food and water supplies, but properly locked up and SECURE. Obviously, that's where men should be required to travel, eh? Or maybe the entire aircraft ought to be gender-segregated."

Singaporean Execution

I must be a hard-hearted person, I think, but I’m finding it very difficult to understand why there was such an outpouring of sympathy for the young Australian man, Nguyen Tuong Van, who has just been executed in Singapore, why people were saying, ‘This is barbaric,’ and why they were condemning the Singaporeans for hanging people.
The bloke was carrying drugs, knowingly. He knew the risks. There is no secret about the Singaporean attitude to drug-smuggling. However high-minded his motives, he was doing wrong. It would have been just as illegal if he was bringing them into Australia.
Yes, it is sad that he ended up this way, but what about all those who would have suffered from the effects of the drugs he was smuggling if they’d actually got through customs? They don’t seem to have been considered in this case at all.

New Music in Orchestral Concerts

I don't think programming more new music will make sense until the new music is better: engaging the world rather than retreating into these near-static marathon evocations of nothing or directionless explorations of timbre or the straggling serial compositions (the amazing musical technique almost nobody can hear!).

Phillip Bush - November 17, 2005

One of the comments on Greg Sandow's book in progress: The Future of Classical Music?

The Wretched Treaty (of Waitangi)?

Maoris are assumed to be different - at least by the treatyist brigade and their hangers-on.

Maori are a sequestered, self-interested group driven by a never-ending sense of entitlement at the rest of society’s expense. Maori have more rights than other people, but no responsibilities to anyone other than themselves.

It is time this nonsense was ended and the abolition of Maori seats would be a fine first step. Not, as the professors would caution, when Maori themselves in the fullness of time conclude they are tired of unfair advantage, but as soon as it can be arranged. Apartheid, by whatever smokescreen we care disguise it, is not acceptable anymore.

That done, we could commence a real debate on the wretched treaty, which has long outlived its relevance and which, mutating like a toxic virus and sprouting principles ad nauseum, serves purely as an instrument of division. It is a zombified relic of a time long gone, and a sure sign that, as a nation, our condition is schizophrenic.

Apartheid Unacceptable (Time for Real Debate on ‘wretched treaty’) Dave Witherow – Otago Daily Times columnist, 28th Oct, 2005.
Dave in full flight, and surprisingly getting away with this without a screed of follow-up letters to the Editor.

UPDATE, 27.11.17
The piece above was written in 2005, and in 2017 Dave is still at it. His latest rant about things Maori - this time the 'overuse' of Maori language in the media - did get some angry letters to the Editor, but not so many as you'd expect perhaps.

44 Scotland St - and a Funeral

It’s a curious thing that McCall Smith seems to enjoy the random adventures of the people at 44 Scotland St and environs more than those in the Philosophy Club. The latter are a bit drear, a bit earnest, a bit too precious even, with the middle-aged main character and her concerns for the young men of Edinburgh (who all seem a bit fey).

The people in Scotland St are more robust, even though one of the main male characters is narcissistic – at least he’s energetically so, and provides some of the high comedy moments in the first novel in the series.

It would be interesting to write a novel in this way, revealing a section a day, no going back, no ability to repair mistakes, no way of getting a character out of a difficult spot by rewriting (Smith’s usual method is just to forget the character!). And the pressure of having to keep up. If I thought a weekly column was an achievement, what about a daily chapter!

Lindsay Crooks

My wife and I went to Lindsay Crooks’ funeral yesterday, a jam-packed affair that almost filled First Church to overflowing. It was a disappointment somehow, if one can say that about a funeral. It Lindsay’s arthttp://tinyurl.com/ybcefp8a, which surely, in the end, will be what people remember him for (the photo on the cover of the hymn-sheet of him with one of his cut-out works is delightful, but it’s matched by three of him on the back on the beach). His art and his warmth and ability to make friends wherever he went. Good, solid friends, by the look of it – even those who only had a small acquaintance with him (like us) were struck by his easy and always genuine friendliness. Certainly the friendship angle came out solidly: people who’d known him for years, as friends, were much to the fore. I was surprised that out of that huge crowd no one took the opportunity to speak up in regard to his art – his brother mentioned it in passing, while giving a eulogy (he couldn’t have avoided it) but always, always it came back to the surfing. And it was the surfies who were giving the ‘wake’ rather than the arts community.
seemed almost as if the surfies had taken over (the aging surfies, for the most part – surfing is obviously a sport a man can carry on in through his mature years). There was little about

But the other thing that was disappointing was that there was no preaching, even speaking, from the minister. Yes, he prayed, effectively and sincerely, and we sang a hymn, and Lindsay’s stepson or godson, (I’m not quite sure who he was) sang a very definite praise song, but what a lost opportunity for the minister to speak. I can only wonder if he was cautioned off it – by the surfing community, perhaps (‘they won’t want any preaching; they’re just ordinary blokes, you know?’). Of course I’m bound to be wrong in that. Whoever made the decision, however, it was the wrong one. People’s hearts are seldom more open to listening to words about eternity than when they’re in the middle of a funeral – even I am, and I’ve been listening to eternal words for decades, and hearing them too. It’s a time when the bubble of life is easily burst, and we know – we really, really know – that our time on this earth isn’t eternal, it’s severely limited. In some cases, as in Lindsay’s, far more limited than it ‘should’ be; and in Rod Donald’s – in his case the fact of his dying so suddenly and without apparent cause is even more of a message to semi-deaf ears).

Orthodoxy

What we suffer today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert – himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason. The truth is that there is a real humility typical of our time; but it so happens that it is practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic.

Orthodoxy - G K Chesterton

Chesterton and Polkinghorne

Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the society beings to decline; when it food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless.

The Everlasting Man – G K Chesterton – chapter 8

The analogy between scientific and theological enquiry is not complete. Theology does not enjoy the luxury that experiment grants to science, of being able to deal with essentially controllable and repeatable experience. It has to look to the given and unrepeatable revelatory events in which God has chosen to make the divine nature known. The closest scientific analogues are cosmology’s reconstruction of the unique history immediately following the big band and biology’s reading from the fossil record the story of the unique evolutionary development of life. Theological enquiry is also not simply concerned with quenching the intellectual thirst for understanding. Its insights demand response and carry implications for human conduct.

Belief in God in an Age of Science – John Polkinghorne – chapter 2

I find it interesting that Polkinghorne uses these two 'analogues' to explain the problems of theology, even though in some circles both analogues are classed more highly than as revelatory events.

Ahead of the Class

When the first draft [of the Action Plan] is completed it all sounds wonderful but next morning I feel I’m receiving a message from Above when I open my paper and read some words by Ferdinand Mount, the political historian, who has studied why some government regimes last longer than others. He calls the long-lasting ones ‘survivor regimes’ and argues that they ‘do not usually arrive in office with any detailed set of plans stretching over years or, if they do, the plans have speedily to be rewritten under the pressure of events.’ The first need of survivor regimes, he believes, is ‘to communicate a sense of confidence and to establish stability. ‘Characteristically, they will then develop a rolling agenda.’

I stick the cutting on the noticeboard in my office. Action Plans are all very fine I know, but it’s how we respond to day-to-day events that will really matter. The Action Plan can’t possibly encapsulate everything we plan to do.

Ahead of the Class by Marie Stubbs – chapter 2

Sons of the Father

I would say, no, I never had a father. I had no father in the sense of a man who had a son whom he regarded as his own; whom he cherished a cared for, no matter how imperfectly, from when that son was born until he was grown. I know I am far from alone in not having had this kind of father. The trouble is that no matter how distant the events of my childhood become; no matter how much I know, understand and accept; no matter how much I rationalize and forgive, the child in me still cries out, ‘Why did he never come and find me?’

Sons of the Father – Philip Temple – page 197

Timebends

Before the idol, men remain dependent children. Before God they are burdened and at the same time liberated to participate in the decisions of endless creation. “It was an idol and no God. An idol tells people exactly what to believe, God presents them with choices they have to make for themselves. The difference is far from insignificant; before the idol men remain dependent children, before God they are burdened and at the same time liberated to participate in the decisions of endless creation.

Timebends – Arthur Miller - page 259

Predictive text

I’ve started reading Bill Bryson’s, Mother Tongue, that marvellously anecdotal and humorous look at English and a whole host of other languages. It’s getting a bit old, of course, having been written in 1990, before the age of texting. Celia just received a text message from Dominic, replied to it, and then received an answer back almost immediately. ‘How does he do that?’ she asked. I told her that Dom and Ben actually use predictive text all the time, but leave the words that the cellphone comes up instead of changing them to the word they intend. Consequently they’re virtually speaking in a foreign language or code – few other people would understand their messages to each other, which somehow manage both to communicate and be hilarious at the same time.

Garrick Tremain has a cartoon in the ODT today comparing the bird flu pandemic (which, of course, hasn’t actually ‘begun’) to the YK2 bug hysteria. And perhaps that’s not unrealistic: putting the death rate so far in perspective, there have been an almost minimal number of deaths from the flu, and not that many more who’ve been sick because of it. Of course, the deaths themselves are all tragic for the families involved, but is it realistic to call this a possible pandemic? Wouldn’t a pandemic catch the world almost unawares and take control before humans had got their act together – or are we at least nowadays a bit more up with the play when it comes to such things?

People are hedging their bets on it: a few days ago the chief medical officer of Britain said, ‘A bird flu pandemic will hit Britain - but not necessarily this winter.’ And in another report, it says: "Scientists have warned that a strain of the disease deadly to humans could cause a lethal pandemic if it mutates into a form that can be spread from person to person. [Note that ‘if’.] The H5N1 strain has killed more than 60 people in South East Asia since 2003. However, of those only one is suspected to have died after catching the virus from another human, and experts stress the risk is low."

So people have caught it from the birds, apparently, but not from each other, and that’s where the worst problems would arise. But 60 deaths in two years? In a part of the world where the population is around one billion? That’s about .00000006%. Even 50,000 people out of Britain’s population is about 001% - again, though a large number in real terms, not a large number in terms of the population.

Am I dismissing the value of these individual lives, and the effect such losses would have on the general state of the country? No, not at all, but I am wondering if there isn’t a rising hysteria being created by the media about something that hasn’t yet proven to be anywhere nearly as dramatic as made out. More than twice as many people have just been killed in an air crash than have died of bird flu so far – are we going to stop people flying as a result?

A simple money order

Once upon a time a person could send a money order anywhere in the world, and it would be cashed at a Post Office in the blink of an eye.
No more. For some reason, money orders are regarded as the scum, or dregs, of banking, and banks don’t like to get their fingers dirty.
My shop received a money order today to pay for a book the customer had ordered. The money order was sent from the Bank of Montreal and designated in US dollars. What could be simpler?
The shop’s bank, Westpac, wouldn’t take it into our account, claiming only Post Offices do money orders. NZ Post, when asked, said, yes, they do NZ money orders, but not overseas ones. Try Cash Converters! What? Yes, according to the person at the Post Office, Cash Converters changes international money orders. Of course, the person at Cash Converters had only been there a week, and knew nothing about it – and when he asked further, it turned out Cash Converters doesn’t do anything with international money orders. Not now.
I’ve lost track of how I got onto Western Union, but they said, No, try ANZ, they’re supposed to do international money orders.
Now the fun started for real. After going through the usual process of having to wait to find out which button to press on the phone, I finally got through to someone who didn’t know anything about it, but would put me through to the International Banking section. Who seemed to be out for a late afternoon tea. The frustrated girl finally got someone called Stuart (his real name, since giving him a pseudonym wouldn’t make any difference) and Stuart, after some debate, said yes, they would deal with it if I had an account with ANZ. The only account I have nowadays (after having given up on ANZ in disgust in the past when they used to treat their customers like dirt) is a credit card. Can I deposit this money order into the credit card? Yes, as long as you fax me a copy of the money order to verify it. That seemed simple enough, and I did. Stuart rang me back after five or ten minutes and said I could go ahead. Was he sure the bank teller would actually do it when I went there? Oh, yes, he’d authorised it.
I went to the ANZ Moray Place branch. As always, there was a long queue and only two tellers. It was getting close to 4.30 pm by this time, so I ran along to the ANZ on the corner of Hanover St. No queue, and half a dozen tellers.
I went up to the young lady at the counter, explained what had happened with Stuart, and – I could tell – she wasn’t believing this. Worse, she now brought up the fact that the money order was made out to the shop, not to me, while the card was in my name, not the shop’s. Stuart hadn’t mentioned this as a problem, but it did occur to me about this time that perhaps that hadn’t been clear.
Of course she had to ring ANZ International banking, and of course, Stuart agreed that it couldn’t be put into my credit card account, when it was made out to the shop. All this fuss, mind you, for the equivalent of NZ$80. While I’m standing there waiting for the girl to talk to Stuart – at length, it seemed – I was looking at the ad for ANZ’s latest big deal: get a home loan with them and they’ll give you an island holiday. (It doesn’t say what you have to do, of course, to qualify for this holiday, but I suspect it’s not given out to all and sundry). I was thinking, here they can afford to give away island holidays, but they can’t afford to transact a piddling money order, because that’s what the girl was now telling me – and so did her superior, when she called her in. Sincere apologies, Stuart must have misunderstood, no way it could be done, have to go back to Westpac, since ANZ doesn’t have ‘a relationship with your shop.’ This from the bank who talks about the ‘better we know you the better we can serve you.’
Right.
Of course, Westpac, like all the banks, was now closed for the day, so I rang them. And got one of those young ladies who knows that ‘it can’t be done’ but has ‘no idea why not.’ Could she put me onto someone who does have an idea. This person had apparently gone for an early tea break, considering the length of time it took to find her.
When she arrived, she turned out not to be the International Banking Person for Westpac, but merely the ‘team leader.’ Team Leaders are thick on the ground these days, but not easy to get to if you want to speak to them. ‘This is what my team leader says….’ ‘My team leader told me….’ Could I speak to the team leader? ‘Just a minute, I’ll ask her…..She says so and so…’
Team Leaders don’t like to speak to the hoi polloi.
Anyway, this Westpac TL did say that the teller at Westpac should have rung up and asked her, or someone in her department, how to deal with this money order. (Remember the money order?)
I suspect that it wouldn’t have made any difference, but we’ll give it a try when the banks are open on Tuesday (it’s Labour Weekend, so they’re closed on Monday, of course) and see how much of the rigmarole I have to go through again then.

Music and chaos

One must have a chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star.

Michael Tippett - quoted in a number of places, but in fact the sentence seems to come from Fredrich Nietzsche.

Adjectives and nouns...and centipedes

For I think we respect nouns (and what we think they stand for) too much. All my deepest, and certainly my earliest, experiences, seem of be of sheer quality. The terrible and the lovely are older and solider than terrible and lovely things. If a musical phrase could be translated into words at all it would become an adjective. A great lyric is very like a long, utterly adequate adjective.

C S Lewis – Letters to Malcolm – chapter XVI

Lewis putting paid to all those writing teachers who insist adjectives are very secondary in the scheme of things.

....who can dance no better than a centipede with wooden legs.

C S Lewis – Letters to Malcolm – chapter XVII