zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — plus ça change? ]
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Same difference?

Those of you who follow my keen interest in sameness and difference will appreciate the irony here.

There’s no disputin..

[ by Charles Cameron — polarization via divine rivalry ]
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A clash of symbols?

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Rival gods duking it out via proxies or prophets, brute force or miracles, has quite a history. Speaking at a church in Oregon, US General Jerry Boykin described his interaction with a Somali warlord in these terms:

Well, you know what I knew, that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.

It must be admitted that Gen. Boykin had scriptural precedent for his opinion. In I KIngs 18. 21-39 he would have read:

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.

Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: And call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is well spoken.

And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under. And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.

And Elijah said unto all the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came, saying, Israel shall be thy name: And with the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord: and he made a trench about the altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood. And he said, Do it the second time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third time. And they did it the third time. And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.

And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.

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From a Dutch clothing catalog:

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Readings on Odin vs Allah:

February 15, 2016, ‘Patriot’ group Soldiers of Odin debut in Norway

February 22, 2916, Soldiers of Odin expand Norway patrols

February 24, 2016, Soldiers of Odin create political poison in Norway

February 26, 2016, ‘Soldiers of Allah’ to counter Soldiers of Odin in Norway

[ by Charles Cameron — a follow up to my post on the Vespers liturgy at Hampton Court Palace ]
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Boring as hell or blissful as paradise? Religious worship can be either one.

I know that when I was at Wellington College I must have sat through dozens of sermons in which one or another scriptural passage was read in that droning pastoral voice which Alan Bennett so skilfully skewered in his Beyond the Fringe satirical sermon on the text of Genesis 27.11, “Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man”:

I was a deeply religious kid, but verses like I Samuel 15.3, “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” went right past me. I had no qualms back then about Old Testament genocides, pretty much because I didn’t notice them — these were just sacred words, intoned, a strange blend of heaven, lullaby and snooze.

In my piece on the Hampton Court Vespers, I tried to give readers a sense of how things look from a perspective where liturgy and rites and rituals more generally need not be viewed as dry relics of a past best forgotten, but as well-springs of deep personal, interpersonal and transcendent inspiration and communion.

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Here, I’d like to supplement my attempt with two “cases” that I hope will illustrate the power of liturgy.

the first I found a few days back in Peter Berger‘s essay, Eastern Orthodox Cacophony in America:

When the service began late on Saturday evening the cathedral was dimly lit, all the hangings and the altar cover were black in the color of Good Friday. Then the entire congregation went out into the street and marched slowly around the block. It was very cold. When we returned the cathedral was brilliantly lit and the color of everything was very bright. Easter had arrived.

So — somebody turned the lights on.

But no, it’s more than that, it’s the utter darkness of Christ’s descent from the cross and burial, it is grief physically imposed by that very cold pilgrimage around the block — and it’s the shock, the palpable beauty of the Resurrection dawn.

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Going back yet a day further, from Good Friday to the Maundy Thursday which in the church’s calendar porecedes it, we can see the similarly profound impact of a simple gesture as my old mentor, Fr. Trevor Huddleston, washes the feet of his students in Sophiatown, the Johannesberg shanty-town where for years he taught and preached. In his own words, drawn from his book Naught for Your Comfort, we read:

On Maundy Thursday, in the Liturgy of the Catholic Church, when the Mass of the day is ended, the priest takes a towel and girds himself with it; he takes a basin in his hands, and kneeling in front of those who have been chosen, he washes their feet and wipes them, kissing them also one by one. So he takes, momentarily, the place of his Master. The centuries are swept away, the Upper Room in the stillness of the night is all around him: “If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another’s feet.” I have knelt in the sanctuary of our lovely church in Rosettenville and washed the feet of African students, stooping to kiss them. In this also I have known the meaning of identification. The difficulty is to carry the truth out into Johannesberg, into South Africa, into the world.

That world, for Fr Trevor, was the world of South African apartheid. He carried that truth out into Johannesberg and the world in his book, and as President of the Anti-Apartheid Movement — and with what impact! He lived to see apartheid gone.

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In closing, let me quote TS Eliot who wrote, in his Dialogue on Dramatic Poetry:

I say that the consummation of the drama, the perfect and ideal drama, is to be found in the ceremony of the Mass. … And the only dramatic satisfaction that I find now is in a High Mass well performed. Have you not there everything necessary? And indeed, if you consider the ritual of the Church during the cycle of the year, you have the complete drama represented. The Mass is a small drama, having all the unities; but in the Church year you have represented the full drama of creation.

[ by Charles Cameron — defending someone i don’t much like ]
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I’m no fan of Glenn Beck, who talks quite a bit about Islamic apocalyptic and has been known to confuse Twelvers (the major branch of Shia Islam) with the Hojjatieh society (an anti-Bahai movement banned by the Ayatollah Khomeini), which is more or less like talking about Christianity and confusing the Catholic Church with the Legionnaires of Christ (which fell from grace under Benedict XVI, see also the note at the foot of this post).

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Anyhow, HuffPo carried a slightly frantic article headed Glenn Beck Thinks God Killed Antonin Scalia To Help Ted Cruz Get Elected President, and while the headline may be accurate, the body of the text attributed the following thought to God, not Beck:

I just woke the American people up. I took them out of the game show moment and woke enough of them up to say, look at how close your liberty is to being lost. You now have lost your liberty. You replace one guy, and you now have 5-4 decisions in the other direction. Just with this one guy, you’ve lost your liberty — so you’d better elect somebody that’s going to put somebody on (the Supreme Court) because for the next 30 years, if you don’t, the Constitution as you know it… the Constitution is hanging by a thread. That thread has just been cut, and the only way that we survive now is if we have a true constitutionalist.

If you listen to what Beck actually said:

I think you might conclude, as I do, that he could have been referring to himself, and specifically perhaps to this portion of his earlier presentation in suppoort of Ted Cruz:

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The religious resonances of the current election season are truly remarkable.

My question:

Does the still small voice truly require a megaphone?

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Note:

The Legionnaires of Christ received new statutes under Pope Francis in 2014

[ by Charles Cameron — plus a quick followup to my post on Political candidates and religion ]
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“No one remembers who came in second.” – Walter Hagen

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2013

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Also of interest:

@sarahposner Look at results from Sioux County – the most evangelical place in USA maybe. Trump only gets 11%. #iacaucus #IAcaucus2016

— Christopher Jones (@JonesChrisA) February 2, 2016

to which Sarah Posner responded:

Cruz 33.2 %, Rubio 32%, Carson 14.9%, Trump 10.9% https://t.co/HktWhdvAMM

— Sarah Posner (@sarahposner) February 2, 2016