Persnickety

My favorite movie, a movie I believe to be a perfect gem, is The Third Man . There are many wonderful lines in that movie, both by the author, Graham Greene, and by that genius Orson Welles. But the line I choose to be my favorite is from Dr. Zhivago, a line that I must have heard many times yet when I hear it again I will weep again. General Yevgraf—Yuri’s half brother—is attempting to convince young Tanya Komarova (listed as “The Girl” in IMDB casting, played by Rita Tushingham) that she is the long sought after daughter of Yuri and Lara. There’s no proof, but the general tells her to consider the tale he has told her and that she should think it all over. She leaves along with her boyfriend. Tanya walks away, beneath the floor above where Yevgraf watches her. As she slings a balalaika over her shoulder he notes it and asks if she plays. “Does she play? She’s an artist!” the boyfriend exclaims. The general hears this and smiles, knowing exactly what it portends: “Ah. Then it’s a

After a Trump Victory in 2020, How Would I React? With resignation. Allow me to explain. Resignation may be applied to someone who takes an unfortunate circumstance with grace and decorum, or if not with that level of charitableness, then at least a simple stoicism. I do not mean that. I mean the other definition: the act of giving up one’s position. If Trump and the Republicans win the Senate once again, the country will officially be a failed experiment. The American Empire will be over. We will have imploded, blown ourselves up from within, and not with a bang but a whimper, as Eliot said. The climate will then be well over the tipping point of no return. Our grand-kids will be doomed…humanity itself will have set the alarm to some centuries further on. And so there won’t be a whole lot to do anymore. We can—many will, no doubt—gnash our teeth, fulminate, march, and so on, but it will have been a case of too little, too late. They might as well save the wear and tear on t

I've just come across a piece by J. K. Rowling, she of Harry Potter fame, and I wanted to showcase it. It is from years ago, concerning an election in the UK but I think it still applies, especially in the current dawn of the neo-fascist Trump era. So... From  The Times Online , J.K. Rowling writes: I’ve never voted Tory before, but . . .” Those much parodied posters, with their photogenic subjects and their trite captions, remind me irresistibly of glossy greetings cards. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more general elections have in common with the birthdays of middle life. Both entail a lot of largely unwelcome fuss; both offer unrivalled opportunities for congratulation and spite, and you have seen so many go by that a lot of the excitement has worn off. Nevertheless, they become more meaningful, more serious. Behind all the bombast and balloons there is the melancholy awareness of more time gone, the tally of ambitions achieved and of opportunities missed. So

I’ve just finished listening to a sermon by Erwin Lutzer, at the  Word Of Life Florida Conference Center (January 28, 2018: “How to Die for the Glory of God”). It concerned our attitude towards our own death. I won’t attempt to transcribe it, or outline it. But I do want to say something about it, as it seems to me to be emblematic of evangelical sermons written today. It contains the chief elements necessary for a sermon to be “evangelical.” These are: Placing ultimate value on an individual’s grace God is Supreme Call to circle the wagons Reliance on cliche Showing the divide between the Saved and the Damned, the Christian and the...well, damned, using biblical evidence picked, chosen among many verses leaving out any that might show another viewpoint. Jesus is supremely valuable, says Lutzer. He says, “ My death is my win [my emphasis].” To live is Christ, to die is gain. --Philippians 1:21 The evangelical sees death as a win... his win. There is so much

I’ve been asked if I am a Christian. I said that No, not in the way that most people think of the term. I wanted to say more--so much more--but felt that there wasn’t enough time and besides, I was too tired to get into it. So I’d like to get into it. When someone asks me Am I a Christian, I want to say Yes, but… or No, but… I also want to just say what someone wrote in a blog on Patheos (apologies but I cannot find the source) when she said that she was “a human being.” It would be nice to just sometimes leave it at that. I do and I don’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus. I do and don’t believe in his divinity. By that, I believe in the narratives (there are more than one) and their power and their truth. But I don’t understand those narratives to be some overarching historical artifact. Because I don’t feel that there is any overarching historical foundation to any narrative. In other words, there is only narrative. That is it. There is nothing beyond that. Nothing

Evangelical Christianity has failed, and has failed for want of sincerity. In order to explain, here is a paragraph from "Hugh Kenner's "A Sinking Island: The Modern English Writers" (pp 203-4): One thing very engaging about the first half of the book [I.A. Richards' Practical Criticism ] is Richards's genial aplomb as he sorts out the comments, never soliciting the knowing snicker. It's clear how his auditors could feel they were helping with a scientific inquiry, not being trapped into acts of self-exposure. And it's exhilarating still to watch the co-author of The Meaning of Meaning make a useful word out of such a rubber stiletto as "insincerity." This Richards defines as "the flaw that insinuates itself when a writer cannot distinguish his own genuine promptings from those he would merely like to have, or those which he hopes will make a good poem. Such failures on his part to achieve complete imaginative integrity may show t