Well worth your time . . . .

Posted on by albrooke

Jake Meador provides a very nice analysis of Wendell Berry’s novel Jayber Crow, a must-read for anyone who loves that novel, though if you haven’t read it, there are many spoilers:

  • In this sense, Jayber Crow is a story of how one man learned to love. That, of course, sounds syrupy and sentimental to us moderns who have grown up on hallmark cards and made-for-TV movies. But it is the manner of the learning that is important. The love Jayber learns to practice is an extremely physical love grounded in practical acts of devotion that sometimes by their very nature require that he not do things he deeply desires to do.

“The Ethics of Jayber Crow,” The Rabbit Room (Jan. 4, 2024) [link].

Harrison Scott Key writes a Christmas memory unlike any other you will ever find: “I have enjoyed many happy Christmases and plenty of disappointing ones, like the one I spent eating alone at a Waffle House due to an ice storm, or the Christmas my father accused all the unmarried relatives of being gay. But of all the sad Yuletides of my life, the one I spent guarding $100,000 worth of explosives on the surface of the moon tops the list. The year was 1996. . . . ”Christmas on the Moon,” Longreads (Dec. 6, 2023) [link].

Matthew T. Martens writes about the American criminal justice system: “Since the advent of forensic DNA technology in 1989, 3,284 people have been exonerated after having been convicted of crimes. These aren’t cases of people who later got off on legal technicalities. These are people who did not commit the crimes but collectively spent more than 29,000 years in prison before their innocence was discovered. . . .” Martens, who has worked as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, is no stranger to the criminal justice system, and does not want to reform it, but rather to re-initialize (my word) it to more closely match its original form. “3 Things that Must Change in the American Justice System,” Crossway (Nov. 6, 2023) [link].

Jonathan Rogers teaches writing and here gives some thoughtful advice about drafts and efficiency: “It’s an inefficient process. I’m afraid you’re just going to have to get used to inefficiency.” “The Third Pancake,” The Habit Weekly (Nov. 7, 2023) [link].

Speaking the language

Posted on by albrooke

Frederick Buechner:

“English-speaking tourists abroad are inclined to believe that if only they speak English loudly and distinctly and slowly enough, the natives will know what’s being said even though they don’t understand a single word of the language. Preachers often make the same mistake. They believe that if only they speak the ancient verities loudly and distinctly and slowly enough, their congregations will understand them. Unfortunately, the only language people really understand is their own language, and unless preachers are prepared to translate the ancient verities into it, they might as well save their breath.” 

This quotation was originally published in The Hungering Dark, and is one of the daily Buechner quotes re-published by the good people at www.frederickbuechner.com. (Sign up for the daily quotations at https://www.frederickbuechner.com/my-buechner).

Waiting

Posted on by albrooke

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (2013).

A rich tapestry of a novel which moves from childhood tragedy to misdemeanors and felonies, art and antiques. Some most memorable secondary characters, especially Hobie and Boris.

One of my “top fifty” because of passages like these:

  • Things would have turned out better if she had lived. As it was, she died when I was a kid; and though everything that’s happened to me since is thoroughly my own fault, still when I lost her I lost sight of any landmark that might have led someplace happier, to some more populated or congenial life. p. 7.
  • . . . I was worried that my exuberant drug use had damaged my brain and my nervous system and maybe even my soul in some irreparable and perhaps not readily apparent way. p. 380.
  • And yet I was grateful for the work because it kept me too mentally bludgeoned to think. The shame that tormented me was all the more corrosive for having no clear origin: I didn’t know why I felt so tainted, and worthless, and wrong — only that I did, and whenever I looked up from my books I was swamped by slimy waters rushing in from all sides. p. 392.
  • It didn’t occur to me then, though it certainly does now, that it was years since I’d roused myself from my stupor of misery and self-absorption; between anomie and trance, inertia and parenthesis and gnawing my own heart out, there were a lot of small, easy, everyday kindnesses I’d missed out on; and even the word kindness was like rising from unconsciousness into some hospital awareness of voices, and people, from a stream of digitized machines. p. 470.
  • “Accidents, catastrophes — something like seventy-five per cent of disaster victims are convinced there were warning signs they brushed off or didn’t pick up on correctly, and with children under eighteen, the percentage is even higher. But that doesn’t mean the signs weren’t there, does it?” pp. 615-16.
  • Something in me had gone dead at the sight of him, almost like with my dad when I was a kid, long hours alone at home, the involuntary wave of relief at his key in the lock and then the immediate heartsink at the actual sight of him. p. 731.
  • “. . . good doesn’t always follow from good deeds, nor bad deeds result from bad, does it? Scary idea!” p. 745.
  • “Can’t good come sometimes through some strange back doors?” p. 758.
  • Shock and aura. p. 760.
  • [We always hear] “Follow your heart.” Only here’s what I really, really want someone to explain to me. What if one happens to be possessed of a heart that can’t be trusted — ? p. 761.

This is the best of her three once-a-decade books, and here’s the kicker — it has been 10 years since it was published.

Grace

Posted on by albrooke

Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday (2015): “This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, because they said yes. And there’s always room for more.”

Crypto

Posted on by albrooke

Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon (1999). This book still feels cutting-edge 24 years after it was published. It is full of Stephensonian digressions and witticisms and is one of his best stories, as well. It is long and not for the faint of tech.

Some of my favorite nuggets:

  • “The town in question sports three small colleges: one founded by the State of California and two founded by Protestant denominations that are now actively reviled by the majority of their faculty. p. 50.
  • “Until he reached thirty, Randy felt bad about the fact that he was not socially deft. Now he doesn’t give a damn. Pretty soon he’ll probably start being proud of it. In the meantime, just for the sake of the common enterprise, he tries his best.” p. 213.
  • The company “is doing ‘systems integration’ work, which means plugging together a bunch of junk made by other people, and overseeing the installation of all the computers, switches, and data lines.” p. 214.
  • “The ineffable talent for finding patterns in chaos cannot do its thing unless he immerses himself in the chaos first.” p. 309.
  • “Turing is neither a mortal nor a god. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness.” p. 342.
  • “Most of the brain’s work is done while the brain’s owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to deliberately find something else to think and talk about.” p. 348.
  • “It is conventional now to think of clerics simply as presiders over funerals and weddings. Even people who routinely go to church (or synagogue or whatever) sleep through the sermons. That is because the arts of rhetoric and oratory have fallen on hard times, and so the sermons tend not to be very interesting. But there was a time when places like Oxford and Cambridge existed almost solely to train ministers, and their job was not just to preside over weddings and funerals but also to say something thought-provoking to large numbers of people several times a week. They were the retail outlets of the profession of philosophy.” p. 398.
  • “War gives men good ignoring skills.” p. 421.
  • “Pursuing an explanation for every strange thing you see in the Philippines is like trying to get every last bit of rainwater out of a discarded tire.” p. 481.
  • When the protagonists meet some church-going Christians: “Randy hadn’t the faintest idea what these people thought of him and what he had done, but he could sense right away that, essentially that was not the issue because even if they thought he had done something evil, they at least had a framework, a sort of procedure manual, for dealing with transgressions. To translate it into UNIX system administration terms (Randy’s fundamental metaphor for just about everything), the post- modern, politically correct atheists were like people who had suddenly found themselves in charge of a big and unfathomably complex computer system (viz. society) with no documentation or instructions of any kind, and so whose only way to keep the thing running was to invent and enforce certain rules with a kind of neo-Puritanical rigor, because they were at a loss to deal with any deviations from what they saw as the norm. Whereas people who were wired into a church were like UNIX system administrators who, while they might not understand everything, at least had some documentation, some FAQs and How-tos and README files, providing some guidance on what to do when things got out of whack. They were, in other words, capable of displaying adaptability.” pp. 585-586.
  • “In war, no matter how much you plan and prepare and practice, when the big day actually arrives, you still can’t find your ass with both hands. This day is no exception. But after a few hours of chaos, things get straightened out, people learn their roles.” p. 681.

Pastoral Prayer 05/28/2023

Posted on by albrooke

It occurred to me to wonder a bit about the relationship of several U.S. holidays, namely Armed Forces Day (last Saturday, May 20), Memorial Day (tomorrow, May 29), and Veterans Day (Saturday, November 11). I confess that the original impetus for my wondering was that I noticed last weekend that Major League baseball teams had all their players wearing olive drab caps, clearly more than a week before Memorial Day. For baseball, this is an opportunity to sell more hats, but what do the official holidays really mean?

You already know this, right? Armed Forces Day is to honor those currently serving, and Veterans Day is to honor those who have served. Memorial Day is to honor the memory of those who died in military service.

So this is not a time to have the veterans in the congregation stand up – that’s in November – or to have our current service men and women stand up – that was last week.

This is a time to honor the memory of those who died in military service, and to reflect on the fact that their deaths occurred for our benefit.

Those deaths were to protect brothers and sisters in arms, or protect our country, or to protect those who were oppressed, and you don’t have to believe that all wars are wise or just or necessary to realize that those deaths accrued to your benefit and mine . . . and that we don’t deserve that benefit.

Given our context here today, it is hard not to think about Paul’s words in Romans 5:6-8

  • For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5 uses a series of words to describe the beneficiaries of Jesus’ death – weak, ungodly, sinners, enemies. That’s us, but Christ died for us.

Perhaps those we honor on Memorial Day did not ask themselves whether we deserved their sacrifice, but Paul says God did consider that question and he was nevertheless willing to send Jesus to die for the weak, ungodly, sinful, rebellious people in this room and beyond those doors.

That’s grace.

Let’s pray.

Holy Father, we come before you in awareness of who we are – we are weak, ungodly, sinful, and rebellious. And yet . . . I pray that you would help us know who we are more clearly.

I ask that we would become more deeply aware that in Christ we are strong, we are godly, we are clean, we are yours. Teach us this truth.

We come before you in the name of Jesus – who died for us and made it possible for enter into your presence:

And so we pray for those who are ill and infirm in their bodies – we ask that you would bring healing to their bodies and comfort to their hearts and peace to their souls.

For those in spiritual turmoil, we pray that you would call them back to your side, that they (we) might live in peace and purpose the lives you have called us to.

And we are so aware of the deaths of the service men and women that we will commemorate on Memorial Day – comfort their families, remind us of their sacrifices, and make us willing to serve others in whatever way we may be called.

And we have seen the deaths of our brothers and sisters in Christ – Tim Keller, Willis Potratz, and others known to us – teach us to live in sacrificial obedience as they did, that we, as they, might receive the commendation “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

And we are aware of the sacrifice of our great Savior – remind us every day that he did not die because of our worth but because of his deep grace. Teach us to live in that grace.

And now, we “rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation,” and we pray these prayers in the name of Jesus, which is above every name.

Amen.

Friday

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Friday, April 7, 2023, 7:00p — Westside Chapel · 4541 Shirley Avenue, Jacksonville · 904 388-5117

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

from T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets, “East Coker” IV:21-25 (1940) [link] [link].

Murder Mysteries

Posted on by albrooke

Richard Russo, Elsewhere: A memoir 153 (2011) on the difference between English and American mysteries:

  • My mother’s large collection of murder mysteries was particularly instructive. She much preferred the English variety, with its emphasis on the restoration of order. In books by her favorite “Golden Age” British mystery writers—Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, John Dickson Carr, and Agatha Christie—evil might lurk around every foggy corner, and murder most foul would throw everything into temporary flux, but in the end the detective, often a rogue aristocrat like Lord Peter Wimsey or Roderick Alleyn, ferreted out the culprit in a stunning display of logic, intuition and, often, an understanding of complex social realities for which aristocrats, in novels like these if nowhere else, are famous.
  • American murder mysteries left her cold. She thought they were less clever, which was true enough; Raymond Chandler famously couldn’t follow his own plots. But they also operated on an entirely different set of premises. Here detectives didn’t solve crimes by means of brilliant deductions or arcane knowledge. In American detective novels the hero’s primary virtues are his honesty and his ability to take a punch. Sam Spade hasn’t much interest in restoring order because, as he knows all too well, that order was corrupt to begin with. Villains are typically either rich men who made their money dishonestly or, worse yet, people of limited moral imagination who aspire only to what money and power can buy, who want to move up in class and don’t care how. In this noir world, cops are on the take, lawyers and judges all have a price, as do doctors and newspapermen. In a sea of corruption your only hope is a lone man, someone you can hire but who can’t be bought off by anybody who has more money.

This does seem more-or-less right, and I wonder if it holds true for film?

On finishing

Posted on by albrooke

From Robin Sloan, who is always entertaining and sometimes serious:

  • When you start a creative project but don’t finish, the experience drags you down. Worst of all is when you never decisively abandon the project, instead allowing it to fade into forgetfulness. The fades add up; they become a gloomy haze that whispers, you’re not the kind of person who DOES things. When you start and finish, by contrast — and it can be a project of any scope: a 24-hour comic, a one-page short story, truly anything — it is powerful fuel that goes straight back into the tank. When a project is finished, it exits the realm of “this is gonna be great” and becomes something you (and perhaps others) can actually evaluate. Even if that evaluation is disastrous, it is also, I will insist, thrilling and productive. It’s the pump of a piston, preparing the engine for the next one. Unfinished work drags and depresses; finished work redoubles and accelerates.

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EMM 1958-2022

Posted on by albrooke

I’m Al Brooke, from Jacksonville, one of Ellen’s “cousins-in-law.” I’m married to Katherine Davis Brooke, the oldest of the Davis sisters.

—

Ellen Melinda Morgan Lefevre had a hard life.

In the last ten days Katherine and I have caught ourselves over and over saying “poor Ellen,” and really she did suffer much over the years.

Ellen grew up in Kerhonkson, NY, as an only child just across the road from the big Davis family farm and the four children — Katherine, Holly, Margaret, and Peter. While she was in the big family, there was also a sense in which she wasn’t completely in the joyful and chaotic Davis clan.

Her mother was a large personality, and her father, much older than her mom, was an — eccentric — personality. It was, in some ways, a difficult childhood.

Around her high-school graduation in the mid-seventies she was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes, a chronic incurable condition in which her pancreas would not produce sufficient insulin. It was not a death sentence, but it changed the way she would live for the rest of her life.

After college, she moved to Connecticut and lived with Katherine for almost two years. They found a wonderful church and Ellen had a good job with The Hartford insurance company. When Katherine moved to Texas for school, Ellen remained in Hartford.

She remained on her own in Hartford until the mid-nineties. Early in the nineties her father passed away, and then the next year, surprisingly, her much younger mother died of a sudden stroke and fall.

In those years before remote work, there was no option to move back to New York, so in short order Ellen had to ready her parents’ house for rental and had to return to Hartford and her job.

Having moved all of the beloved family heirlooms to Connecticut, Ellen’s apartment suffered a fire which destroyed everything she had kept. Furniture, pictures, everything.

In the late nineties, Ellen moved to Atlanta and married, but her husband left in just a few years. Still, she continued to work in the insurance industry and loved her work and her church.

Without her own family, she still had her cousins and importantly her uncle Phil, who made sure she was included in all of the Davis family events, and took her on several trips as well.

As the years passed, Ellen suffered repeated — and increasingly severe — health issues, and in 2015, she lost her foot to diabetes. A couple of years later she suffered her second amputation, and had to retire from her job, which she had loved.

In 2019 she had to begin dialysis — kidney failure is a major risk for diabetics — a painful burden. She continued dialysis until last month.

So you can see that Ellen “had a hard life,” and you can see why Katherine and I found ourselves thinking “poor Ellen.”

But . . . .

The apostle Paul wrote: “. . . we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. . . . we do not lose heart.” 2 Corinthians 4:7-10, 16a.

That was Ellen, wasn’t it? She did not lose heart, but was amazingly resilient and cheerful, considering what she was experiencing. She lived what she believed. And continuing in the same passage “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4: 16b-18.

Ellen believed that, absolutely.

Ellen had joy in this life, particularly in her friends, and family, and church. She spent her days in hospice visiting and talking, praying and singing, with all those who were important to her, including many she had not seen in years.

Ellen saw what she was living through as a “light, momentary affliction” which was preparing her for “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”

When her preparation was complete, she left the clay vessel that was her body and stepped through the gate of heaven where she has now been robed in an “eternal weight of [Jesus’] glory.”

This life does not compare. She was not “poor” — she is “rich”!

Would that we may learn Paul’s lesson through Ellen’s life, that we might live faithfully in this transient world in preparation for that which is eternal.