The following essays were published from March to July 2007. Specific topics and literary references are listed in the “March to July 2007 Index.”

Essay One

The Outlook Is Bleak

Re: Anna Nicole Smith

by Teri Ong

If Guinness gave a record for the world’s longest lawyer joke it would almost certainly be held by Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. In most editions, the book runs over 800 pages. It was the novel C. S. Lewis happened to be reading when he said that there never was a novel long enough, nor a teacup big enough to suit his tastes.

Bleak House is not Dickens’ most well known work, but it is astoundingly relevant. The plot centers around a contested will and a cast of characters who have high hopes that justice will be served up in their favor. In the end, the case is dropped when there is no more money in the estate to pay the lawyers’ fees.

The estate of Anna Nicole Smith should pop to mind– a bevy of lawyers and judges trying to sort out the complicated legal ramifications of a mother who left everything to a son who died before she did but who also had a baby daughter of uncertain paternity. The winners in this case will undoubtedly be the lawyers as in Dickens’ imaginary “Bleak” case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce.

One of the characters in Bleak House is a fabulously wealthy and beautiful woman named Lady Dedlock, who gave birth to an illegitimate daughter before the story in the novel began. The daughter lives out her days never knowing her father and only knowing her mother shortly before the mother’s death. There the similarities end.

In 19th century England immoral liaisons were not something to flaunt. Lady Dedlock ran away and died in obscure poverty rather than have her secrets come to light and bring shame on the rest of the family. The five potential fathers in the Smith case obviously have no shame about their relationship to the mother or her money. Does anyone really believe their concern is for the infant daughter?

In the case of Anna Nicole Smith it seems that we are in for another long lawyer joke, only this time the moral lessons are lost on us. Maybe none of us watching this great American soap opera have any shame left. Maybe that’s progress. But the outcome of that kind of progress looks bleak.

Information about Charles Dickens:

Dickens was born in England in 1812 and died in 1870. He was a keen observer of English society during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. His era saw the decline of the landed gentry and the rise of the middle class due to industrialization. His was an age of technological wonders; steam liners (which he hated), steam trains, the beginnings of the London Underground, automated factory equipment. But the old social orders had a hard time when they bumped against modern empiricism and “enlightened” thought.

Conflicts of selfish pursuit of wealth and power with cries for social responsibility and the “compassionate use of wealth” became fodder for many of Dickens’ most powerful works.

Dickens was himself a moralist who had a great appreciation for the New Testament of the Bible, particularly the Gospels and the example of Christ. He wrote a simplified adaptation of the Gospel of Luke for his eight children, but did not want it to be published in his life time.

His view of the deity of Christ was not orthodox. He wrote, “There is a child born today in the city of Bethlehem near here, who will grow up to be so good that God will love him as His own son; and he will teach men to love one another, and not to quarrel and hurt one another; and his name will be Jesus Christ…” (1) He, nonetheless, wrote stories that honored people with the character of Christ and which revealed the vanity of life apart from that character.

A few hours before his death, he wrote a letter to a man named John M. Makeham (who had accused him of irreverence in his writing),

“I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and lessons of our Saviour, because I feel it; and because I rewrote that history for my children–everyone of them knew it from having it repeated to them–long before they could read and almost as soon as they could speak. But I have never made proclamation of this from the housetops.” (2)

Notes:

(1) Charles Dickens, The Life of Our Lord, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., 1936), p.2

(2) Ibid., Foreword p. 1

Essay Two

C. S. Lewis and “The Children’s War”

by Teri Ong

There is an outstanding exhibit in the Imperial War Museum called “The Children’s War.” There are photos and remembrances by children who had to be relocated for their own safety during the Battle of Britain. Many London families were torn apart when children were sent to more remote country locations, or even to America and Canada. Some children were displaced for as long as five years. It was not infrequent that one or more parents were killed sometime during the blitz, and that the family was never entirely reunited.

On display are the tiny bomb shelters that were distributed by the government to be installed in homes. Some were made of corrugated steel with 20 inch bunk beds inside for more secure, but less comfortable sleeping at night. Another model looked like a steel cage with a solid top that could be used as a table during the day and slept under at night for protection from falling debris.

Ration cards for clothing and food basics were routine. Each person was allotted two ounces of meat, cheese, and butter – per week! Instruction manuals were distributed telling how to grow “victory gardens” and how to remake old clothing into new items for growing children. Posters and placards were designed to encourage people to cheerfully put up with often intense privation for the sake of winning a war against arguably the most evil person of the 20th century. Sadly, in America’s war with radical Islamic terrorism we are encouraged to help the war effort, not by living sacrificially as we did during WWII, but by spending ourselves into financial oblivion so that the terrorists “don’t claim victory by hurting our economy.” I guess we have to choose between losing our freedom to radical Islamists or losing it to banks and finance companies.

In the letters of C. S. Lewis are references to how thankful he was for special gifts of meat and cheese from American friends and how he was able to enjoy some and share some with others more needy as well. (Rationing in England lasted until the 1950’s.) He also took displaced children into his home, though he admitted that he did not particularly like children just because they were children. This is rather reminiscent of the grown-up Digory who took in the four Pevensie children at the beginning of their Narnian adventures. The sight of children standing on a railway platform waiting for a ride to the English countryside was a wartime scene that Lewis would have witnessed all-too-many times.

Lewis understood the cosmic proportions of the struggle between good and evil. From the creation account of Narnia in The Magician’s Nephew to the end of the world and the beginning of the new story that has no end in The Last Battle, war is all at once quintessentially human but ultimately divine. Victory over evil is entirely Divine.

Essay Three

A Busman’s Holiday in London

by Teri Ong

I have been in London for two weeks now. Until yesterday I was a teacher/leader for a group of nine students on a study trip. We prepared for the trip with various three-hour college courses which included an introduction to fine arts, British church and state perspectives, history of the Reformation, and the theology of worship. Many people we have met have asked us if we are “on holiday.” Technically no, but our trip is an extremely enjoyable way to teach and to learn. More on this later.

While we have been here, the horrific shootings in Virginia made the front pages of the London papers. We have been asked, “How can the Americans let something like this happen? Why don’t they do something about guns?” Also while we have been here, the front pages covered what is to me an equally gruesome story of a headless and mutilated corpse of a woman found floating in the Thames. I respond, “Evil will always find a way.”

Man proves everyday in a multiplicity of ways that he is, indeed, depraved. God has not chosen to undo the consequences of man’s sinful actions, but He has chosen to redeem our circumstances. For unbelievers, unpleasant and uncomfortable consequences of sin may serve as a foretaste and therefore, as a warning of judgment to come. Carnal believers may realize the folly of dabbling in sin. Believers will see firsthand how an omnipotent and loving God can cause all things to work together for their greater good, and their faith will be strengthened.

While we have been here, our group went to see Agatha Christie’s famous mystery play, The Mousetrap. It has been running continuously at St. Martin’s Theatre in the heart of London for over 50 years. There is a book shop on Charing Cross Road (near the theatre) entirely devoted to detective novels and films. Many libraries have separate, and usually large, sections devoted to mystery novels. What is the appeal of this popular genre with all of its incidents of depravity?

The mystery story has been a favorite of Christian novelists including G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, George MacDonald, and even our own American Jerry Jenkins. Dorothy Sayers described mystery novels as a grown-up version of fairy tales. There are evil creatures who do wicked deeds, there are victims of varying degrees of innocence, there is a hero who appears to vanquish evil and set things right, all to restore our sense of peace and security in a hostile world. Are such “fairy tales” worthy of our attention, or are they “just for fun?”

I believe that the form of all good literature is found in the Bible– the literature of God. In it we find poetry and prose, history, biography, short story, drama, didactic exposition, among others. Even the basic plots that have stood the test of time are to be found in some form. For example, the Book of Esther has many similarities with the “Cinderella” story. So where do we find the detective story? The relationship of David and Bathsheba and the ensuing murder of Uriah has many common elements with the murder mystery.

King David clandestinely takes Uriah’s wife in a moment of passion. When Uriah is unwilling to spend a night with his wife, David plots the perfect murder to cover up the consequences of sin. Uriah will be sent to the front lines where he will undoubtedly die an untimely death. No one would ever suspect anything but the normal course of warfare. Uriah dies. But there is a mystery, something unknown that will be revealed in a holy denouement by the prophet Nathan. (See II Samuel 11- 12:25)

It is a man’s glory to seek out a matter. And we enjoy being along for the ride with the great mystery writers.

About Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers:

Sayers was a contemporary of and friend of C. S. Lewis. She began her career writing short stories and novels that could broadly be classified as “mysteries.” Many of her most popular and well-written stories involved the fictional Lord Peter Wimsey and his eventual wife, Harriet Vane. She abandoned writing fiction during the run-up to World War II as she thought the tidy and simplistic solutions in a detective novel were too vacuous in the complex and horrifying world that was Europe in the 1940’s. She turned then to writing Christian essays calling Christians back to a Biblical and vibrant faith. She knew that revival was possible because of her own restoration after a period of moral collapse during the years right after her graduation from Oxford.

Her novels, though involving non-Christian characters in decidedly worldly and sinful circumstances, portray the grace of God shining around the edges of the dark human clouds. In Busman’s Honeymoon, Lord Peter and Harriet have just gotten married after a unique five year courtship. Lord Peter has purchased a house that Harriet lived in as a child and they plan to live happily ever after. However, after a ragged evening of trying to get into the house that was supposed to be ready for them but was not, they, of course, discover a dead body in the cellar. The newlyweds, one an amateur detective and one a detective novelist, have to spend their honeymoon unraveling the mystery in their new home.

The mystery unravels along normal lines for the genre. Sayers, however, does not depend on improbable coincidences (as Agatha Christie often did) which she felt were a modern day version of the deus ex machina technique of the Greeks. The reader knows everything the detectives know at any given point in the plot and is able to unravel the mystery along with the characters.

Sayers usually had some underlying theme that she explored in her novels that on the surface had little to do with the actual detective plot. For example, she wrote in a letter that the theme of Gaudy Night and her play, The Zeal of Thy House, was the same– integrity. In Busman’s Honeymoon she explores what it means for two people to become one flesh. Even though Peter and Harriet are not Christian characters, the two of them go through a process of leaving old ways of life and cleaving to each other in a beautiful and wholesome way. Sayers’ Christian world view shines light on God’s common grace in the very mundane activity of “marrying and giving in marriage.”

Essay Four

War Is…

by Teri Ong

The sight of a tent city and an odd assortment of war protesters outside the Houses of Parliament at Westminster was a reminder to me that we are still at war in the Middle East. The protesters were trying with their largely incoherent rhetoric to convince us anew that “war is hell.” What came to my mind, however, was that “war is human.”

Taking up the theme of my last post, human sinfulness and depravity are everywhere evident on this earth, no less in the war zone than on the streets of cities across the world. I had the opportunity last week to go to the Imperial War Museum for the first time. The first room past the entrance is an impressive display of tanks, aircraft, submarines, missiles and bombs. But the other 90% of the museum is a monument to heroism in suffering and to the fact that human might doesn’t make right.

It occurs to me now that war isn’t always human. Sometimes it is divine. Francis Scott Key wrote,

Oh, thus be it ever when free men shall stand

Between their loved home and the war’s desolation,

Blessed with victory and peace

May the Heaven-rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved it a nation;

Then conquer we must

When our cause it is just,

And this be our motto, “In God is our trust.”

And the star spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

That is a little known and seldom sung verse of “The Star Spangled Banner.” Key makes the point that there is such a thing as a just war. There is presently even war in heaven until the Enemy of our soul is finally consigned to hell eternally. There has been “enmity” between God’s seed and the offspring of Satan ever since man fell into sin. All war in some respect is a battle between good and evil, between forces for life and forces for death, between freedom and oppression.

God conquered once and for all evil, oppression, and death on the cross of Christ. But He leaves us here to struggle for a time with the consequences of our sin, I believe, so that we will have a greater understanding of the cosmic nature of the struggle with sin and self and a greater appreciation of God’s provision for us. “The one who has been forgiven much, loves much.”

Essay Five

Face It– We All Need a Lift

by Teri Ong

The ཁbaby boomཁ generation is having the hardest time of all accepting the coming of age with grace and dignity. We’ve been called ཁbabiesཁ now for 50 to 60 years and we’ve believed it. We, like Peter Pan, have wished to live in Neverland, refusing to accept the idea that life demands change.

Whether we accept it or not, age does come. Businesses that give us the illusion of perpetual youth have proliferated in the last 20 years. But many of us are beyond the help of chemicals (i.e. hair dye, skin firmers, wrinkle erasers) and are now into medical interventions (i.e. laser surgery, tummy tucks, lifts of every description). One radio commentator observed that the ཁbeforeཁ pictures in the face lift advertisements always look like ཁsomeone pulled out of the river,ཁ while the ཁafterཁ models are wearing professional make-up and have the benefit of studio lighting.

Our hopes and desires for perpetual youth are as illusory as the lighting in the ads. But we will willingly be duped like the woman in Jesus’ time who was so desperate to regain her vitality that she had ཁendured much at the hands of many physicians, and had spent all that she had and was not helped at all, but rather had grown worse.ཁ (Mark 5:26)

Our bodies become temples to Apollo, the god of youth and beauty, that are as hypocritical as the ཁpainted tombs full of dead bones,ཁ that Jesus talked about. (Matthew 23:27) We are like the Dickens character whose cheeks became redder as her eyes became dimmer. Every year we have to paint over the cracks and crevices with thicker and costlier paint to keep the exterior looking good.

William Shakespeare, who knew first hand about the artifice and illusion of actors on a stage, nonetheless wrote about the folly of devoting oneself to physical maintenance only. This is the last sonnet he ever wrote:

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,

Rebuke these rebel powers that thee arrayཀ

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost, having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,

Eat up thy body’s charge? Is this thy body’s end?

Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross,

Within be fed, without be fed no more:

So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

He certainly took his own advice to ཁbuy terms divine in selling hours of dross.ཁ In his later years Shakespeare gave up the stage in London and went home to Stratford where he became the lay-rector of Holy Trinity Church.

We know very little of Shakespeare’s spiritual life. Many critics have made conjectures based on quotations from his plays. Some have said that he was irreligious because of harsh portrayals of Roman Catholic and Anglican clergymen. But it is just as likely that he was hard on them not because of irreligiosity, but because of Puritan sentiments that have been documented within his family. He quotes or alludes to the Bible in nearly all of his plays, and the wording he uses most often is from the Geneva Bible (the Bible of the Puritans). We know nothing of his personal devotion, but we know that he had a deep knowledge of the Bible and its teachings. And in the end, he showed that he understood what was real and what was illusion.

Shakespeare concurred with the Apostle Paul, who wrote,

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outward man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day….while we look not at the things which are see, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. (II Corinthians 4:16,18

)

In the final years of his life Shakespeare did not seek a ཁlifestyle liftཁ; he sought and found a lift of lifestyle, serving in his hometown church. He was buried inside the church, as Thomas says (p. 39), ཁnot because of his fame as a playwright and poet, but because…he was a lay rector. By doing so, Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, London, was robbed of their greatest prize.ཁ Shakespeare, on the other hand, had gone on to gain his greatest, and knew first hand that for those dead in Christ, ཁthere’s no more dying then.ཁ.

Biographical notes on Shakespeare:

William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to John Shakespeare, the chief magistrate and bailiff of Stratford-on-Avon. William was christened in Holy Trinity Church– the church in which he served as lay-rector the last seven or eight years of his life and in which he was finally buried.

After Queen Elizabeth I passed the law that formerly Roman Catholic churches were to destroy ཁaltars, crosses and vaine symbols,ཁ William’s father John oversaw the conversion of the church in his town to Protestantism, which the historian Dugdale says was done in ཁa thoroughly Puritan fashion,ཁ as John not only ridded the church of icons, but also sold the vestments, which other Puritan writers had called ཁthe last vestments of the Amorites.ཁ (1)

William’s oldest daughter Susanna married a skilled Stratford physician who was also a noted Puritan. John Hall, Susanna’s husband became the church warden of Holy Trinity Church 12 years after the death of his father-in-law William Shakespeare on April 23, 1616.

Literary critic Alec Robertson wrote this tribute to the genius of William Shakespeare:

Shakespeare, knowing that the history of the world is simply the history of the human heart, shows it to us in particular terms. He lays it bare in almost every detail. Give a man the words of Shakespeare and he can find all human nature mirrored there; give him the Bible and he can find out the ways of God with man; give him both works and he will have little need of any other.ཁ (2)

End notes:

1) I.D.E. Thomas. William Shakespeare and His Bible. Oklahoma City: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000, pp. 27-28.

2) Alec Robertson. Contrasts: The Arts and Religion. London: SCM Press, 1947, p. 75.

Essay Six

Victims of Self

by Teri Ong

Downtown. The word itself bespeaks the best and the worst of human life and culture. Downtown we usually find the best architecture and the oldest businesses giving a sense of historical significance and industriousness. But there we also frequently find the “down and out,” those who gravitate to public places and low rent.

We have lived in a downtown neighborhood for twenty years and in those years we have seen a great deal of urban renewal. But we have also increasingly seen the ugly side of life. Our neighborhood has been the scene of arson fires, vandalism, petty theft, domestic violence, and even murder. From twenty years of church ministry to the people of this neighborhood we know that much of the crime has ties to drug and alcohol addiction.

Some people would like to de-criminalize drug use. It’s only a social issue after all, a “victimless crime.” After all, de-criminalization worked so well for alcohol. Now we don’t have to worry about the mob, just about the drunken criminals behind the wheel of a car.

Last summer a large apartment complex in our neighborhood had to be vacated because of active meth labs. In the process of vacating the building, it came to light that five felons were living in the building. I watched from a window in my house as a young man pulled out a hand gun and shot at another man down the alley near this apartment building. The police know the place well.

Now the building is vacant, fenced off, a different kind of blight on the neighborhood, in receivership, tied up in court proceedings, with a quarter of a million dollar clean-up operation needed. Who knows how many innocent people were displaced from their homes by these victimless crimes? Self-destruction rarely stops with self.

Substance abusers start out by feeding their own bodily desires; it is only one small step from that kind of self-focus to not caring how others are impacted by your behaviors. The 19th century Scottish writer George MacDonald put it this way, “A beast does not know that he is a beast, and the nearer a man gets to being a beast the less he knows it.”

Substance abuse is only one type of anti-social behavior. But the core of all anti-social behavior is self-centeredness. Americans, more than any other culture, are devoted to the trinity of “me, myself, and I.” MacDonald also observed, “There is one kind of religion in which the more devoted a man is, the fewer proselytes he makes: the worship of himself.” (1) We will not make any headway against selfish anti-social behaviors until we as a society value a greater purpose in life than self-gratification.

Information about George MacDonald:

George MacDonald was born in 1824 in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and died in 1906. He was a singular literary giant during the Victorian era in his own right and was a friend to such literati as the Byrons, Mark Twain, Willie Collins.

His writing spanned numerous genre including “unspoken” sermons, fantasy short stories and novels for young people, fantasy stories for adults, poetry, translation of poetry from the German, and “realistic” novels set in his native Scotland and his adopted homeland, England.

MacDonald trained as a Congregationalist minister at Highbury College in London. His first pastorate was in the small town of Arundel between London and the south coast of England. He was too literary and often too forthright with his exhortations to be comfortable in established churches, which struggles he wrote about in semi-autobiographical fashion in several of his novels (notably the “Curate of Glaston” series”).

He was a magnanimous and generous pastor and friend who himself struggled with serious health problems and financial stresses. He was able to empathize fully with everyday trials and tribulations and offer truly heavenly minded solace. Upon leaving the pastorate, he made his living through his writing. He and his wife and their large entourage of children made several European and American tours and produced their own stage version of Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress.

His books were so popular that pirated editions were printed in America as soon as they were published in England. This same phenomenon happened to Mark Twain in reverse. The two men struck up a friendship and hoped to protect each other’s interests on their own side of “the pond.” Though miles apart theologically, the two enjoyed a long fruitful friendship.

(1) C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology of 365 Reading (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001 edition) p. 126.

Essay Seven

Reflections for the Easter Season

by Teri Ong

“Father and Son”

From depths of despair

We hear the Son cry,

“Oh, my God, my God!

Why forsaken, why?”

So as the Son groaned

Did God turn His face,

By black sin repulsed,

By shame, by disgrace?

God can’t look on sin–

Cannot look on sin?

That is all that He does

Day out and day in.

But in some such words

We glibly describe

The cold heart of God,

To justice ascribed.

The Son was not so–

Christ turned not aside

But stood there and wept

When Lazarus died.

But Christ, the image,

Revealed the Father–

Tender, merciful,

One like the other.

So God looked away

While His dear Son dies

Because of the pain

Averting His eyes.

Not sin, but sorrow,

Not vengeance to have–

In pain, both alone

For the sake of love.

Like Son, so Father,

For pity and Love

Endured death alone

Redemption to give.

Essay Eight

Fashion Freedom and the Fashionistas

by Teri Ong

The soldiers of fashion are on the march– everywhere and all the time. This insurgent army wants us to think that they are ཁfreedom fightersཁ who want us to be liberated from the old stodgy styles and bring to us the freedom to be whoever we want to be. But in reality, they are mercenaries that are seeking fame and fortune by keeping the citizenry in line.

Logically, one would think that clothing should be about taking the human body– which, frankly, doesn’t look all that great unclothed most of the time– and making it look its best. That, however, is not what fashion is about. Fashion is about a small, elite force making a name for itself by exercising the power to make others fork out money for something that makes them look worse than they otherwise would.

On my recent stay in London, the site of ཁmodཁ, ཁhipཁ, ཁpunkཁ, and other fashion atrocities in the past 50 years, I was handed a copy of the free newspaper called ཁLondon Lite.ཁ As one tour guide said about the Tate Modern (museum of modern art), ཁIt’s free, because if you’ve ever seen it, you know that no one would ever pay for it.ཁ The small portion of the paper that isn’t advertising, is 90% about celebrities and their outrageous behavior and particularly outrageous clothing. Most of the advertising is about how you, the paying public, can copy their outrageous looks for merely a few hundred pounds sterling.

While I was there in April, one issue had side-by-side photos of two actresses wearing the new ཁnightieཁ look that was only cool if you were wearing your nightie with inappropriate footwear such as embroidered cowboy boots (beaded ballet slippers are out this yearཀ). Even these cute young things looked absolutely terrible– perhaps memorable– but nonetheless, terribleཀ It looked to me as though they had picked up in the dark whatever they had dropped on the floor for a few days previous. But the fashionistas were still screaming at us, ཁGo thou and do likewise.ཁ

How does this army make us quake in our shoes to the point that we are willing to fork out king’s ransoms every season to buy things that make us look outrageously awful? Fearཀ The same weapon wielded by every army of all times. We fear that if we are not in the same uniform as the army they will kill us socially for being on the wrong side.

This is not a new phenomenon, though the pace of being pushed around by the fashion army has picked up considerably due to the pervasive nature of media and the availability of easy credit. Charles Dickens wrote about it in the 1800’s. In his novel Bleak House Dickens described the ཁfashion intelligenceཁ and those fashionable people that they tailed, one of which was Lady Dedlock. He described her thus:

ཁA whisper still goes about, that she had not even family…But she had beauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to portion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to these, floated her upward; and for years now, my Lady Dedlock has been at the centre of the fashionable intelligence, and at the top of the fashionable tree.ཁ (pg. 9)

Even the concept of ཁbling-blingཁ is not new. Dickens wrote about that too.

ཁ…there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in everything associated with my Lady Dedlock as one of a class–as one of the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes herself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the ken of ordinary mortals…Yet every dim little star revolving around her, from her maid to the manager of the Italian opera, knows her weaknesses…and caprices… Is a new dress, a new custom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewelry, a new dwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? (pg. 11)

He also astutely understood how the ཁfashionableཁ as well as the ཁfashion intelligenceཁ may be manipulated for gain.

ཁThere are deferential people, in a dozen callings, whom my Lady Dedlock suspects of nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage her as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their lives; who humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience, lead her and her whole troop sfter them… ‘If you want to address our people, sir,’ say Blaze and Sparkle the jewellers–meaning by our people, Lady Dedlock and the rest–‘you must remember that you are not dealing with the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest place, and their weakest place is such a place.’ ‘To make this article go down, gentlemen,’ say Sheen and Gloss the mercers, to their friends the manufacturers, ‘you must come to us, because we know where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it fashionable.ཁ

Fashion, after all, isn’t about freedom; it’s about being enslaved to the capricious whims and manipulations of others who have something to gain (power? prestige? wealth?) from our loss of dignity and/or moneyཀ

I am glad to say that the fashionistas have no interest in me because I have no ransom to pay. I can be part of the liberated few and am better off for it. I don’t have to look really bad in order to have the emotional comfort of ཁlooking good.ཁ I can wear my pleated plaid skirts because they hide a multitude of chocolate chip cookies and because the fabric makes my eyes happy. I can wear blouses that actually blouse because then no one knows that there is ཁwrinkled, lined, and flabbyཁ underneath; this is my gracious gift to those who have to see me in the grocery store.

Bibliography:

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. New York: Books, Inc., n.d. (after the author’s revision of 1868).

Essay Nine

If They Tell You It’s Art…

By Teri Ong

Many years ago I attended a science and humanities symposium at which the most memorable statement was uttered by the president of St. Benedictus College. He said, and I quote him exactly, “If they tell you it’s art, and you don’t think it’s art, don’t believe them.”
The spirit in which this advice was offered indicated that when faced with atrocities of modern and post-modern construction, we did not have to accept them as significant contributions to culture just because the artist (or anyone else) told us we should. But a post-modernist mindset would take this statement to mean that anyone’s opinion is as valid as anyone else’s opinion, and one man’s poison is another man’s “art.”  There is no way to know truth, there is no way to judge beauty, there is no way to define “art.”
Until the twentieth century, artistry has universally involved three things: 1) an idea in the mind of the artist, 2) the idea beings crafted into something tangible, 3) the recognition of the artist’s idea by the mind of the audience. I call these 1) design, 2) craftsmanship, and 3) communication.  These three elements were present in oriental art, ancient middle-eastern art, Hebrew art, Greek art, Roman art, western art in Europe and America (as well as other cultural traditions I have not mentioned).
Then something happened in the twentieth century. A whole variety of philosophical ideas led down a path of uncertainty and relativism which followed what Francis Schaeffer called “the line of despair.” As we “progressed” we arrived at nihilism (nothingness) and dadaism (absurdity).
In the past, design, craftsmanship, and communication combined to give us works of immense beauty and enduring worth. But post-modernist ideals have replaced these three elements with three others.  Design has given way to “concept”, craftsmanship has given way to “staging”, and communication has given way to “manipulation.”  These three combine to give us works that are neither beautiful nor enduring.
Consider some of the “great” masterworks currently in galleries around the world.

“Felt Suit” by Joseph Beuys
This is an ordinary man’s wool suit hung on a hanger.  It is not a suit of Beuy’s design or craftsmanship. The museum curators interpret the “work of art” for the audience, declaring that its purpose is to give the audience a sense of warmth.  I suppose it might give you a sense of warmth if you put it on. However, the warmth will be imperfect since the suit is now becoming moth-eaten. What spectators actually see in the Tate Modern is one of 100 reproduction suits that were produced after Beuy’s death.

“Bed” by Antony Gormley
This work is a full size double bed made out of stacks of white bread.  The artist’s silhouette has been created in the surface of the “bed” by the artist eating parts of the slices in the middle of the arrangement. He nibbled them away in 1980. So guess what the bread looks like now– 27 years later.  It has become quite moldy. Conservators have now dipped the whole thing in paraffin wax to preserve it from further deterioration.

“Merda d’Artistica” by Piero Manzoni
This is a can of artistic fecal matter. Manzoni’s stated purpose in creating this art work was to put one over on the art market– not to create a thing of beauty and permanence.

“Work No. 88” by Martin Creed
This is a crumpled up piece of typing paper. If this is truly “art”, I have thrown away basketsful of the precious stuff. What have I done?!

I could go on and on– sculptures crafted from dryer lint, crumpled toilet paper, licked out of blocks of chocolate, sculptures made of bent twigs, smashed windshields, autographed toilet bowls, lights flicking on and off randomly in an empty room, etc.
The lights have been flicking on and off on western culture for close to 100 years now.  Someday they will flick off and never come back on if we keep allowing ourselves to be manipulated into giving reverence to art that is not art.
Taste is only one component in the evaluation of art, as it is in food.  But year-old snack cakes wrapped in cellophane are not “good food” just because someone likes to eat them. They don’t compare favorably at all to freshly baked artisan bread or a Gateau Ste. Honore.  Damien Hirst’s “Self Portrait” consisting of brown- stained toilet paper has no comparison at all to Rembrandt’s self portrait in “The Raising of the Cross.”
We must come back to recognizing and declaring unashamedly that excellent art involves excellence of design, craftsmanship, and clarity of communication.  Artists with real talent should be rewarded for artworks that please and inspire rather than shock the audience.
If people tells you something is art, and you don’t believe them, be courageous; teach them what real art is.

Essay Ten

What Is Truth?

By Teri Ong

Man has been grappling with this question ever since Satan raised doubts about the nature of truth and reality with his question, “Has God said…?”, in the Garden of Eden. Is there an absolute truth in the universe? The universe is a reality and the way things really are in the universe is truth. The problem is that we are finite and we cannot look at the universe with single point perspective. We look at the universe with the distortion of a fish eye lens– the best we can do as finite beings. But we can know about certain things from God’s single point perspective because He has revealed them to us.

I recently listened to a three hour debate/interview on the Hugh Hewitt radio program between Christopher Hitchens and Mark Roberts. Hitchens’ latest book, God Is Not Great, has become a New York Times list best seller. Roberts is a Christian theologian who was asserting the knowableness of truth from God’s perspective.

Hitchens’ title is a misnomer or a publicity stunt since Hitchens does not believe there is a God. The title should more appropriately be “Religion Is Not Good” since he blames all of the evils in the world on repressive religionists including, ironically, atheistic religionists like Stalin and Mao Tse Dong.

Hitchens kept coming back to the refrain, “Why does this matter to you? Why is it so important to prove that all this silly nonsense (i.e. the Biblical account) is true?” What seems more “silly” to me is trying to pin all the wickedness in the world on a God who doesn’t exist and on “religionists” who are devoutly anti-religious such as the Stalinists.

Judeo-Christianity coherently and reasonably accounts for the presence of evil in the world and gives hope for redemption and ultimate justice. The Bible has for thousands of years provided a credible tertium quid by which we can adjust our skewed perspectives on life. We agree with Hitchens about one thing– it is sinful man who oppresses. But we agree with Jesus Christ about the source of freedom– it is the truth of God which sets us free. And we agree with the Apostle Paul’s declaration, “Let God be true and every man a liar.”

Opinion Page Column in the Greeley Tribune

August 2006

The Importance of Being True

by Teri Ong

Stories are important. Each person’s life is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Author David McCasland said that a good story introduces a man, puts the man up a tree, and then gets him down again. Creation, fall, and redemption. That is the story of mankind. The Bible is indisputably a book of stories.

The relating of an incident in the form of a story has no bearing on whether or not the incident happened in real life. Fiction writers and journalists alike tell stories. I tell my children things that happened in my past. When I do, I boil down the sometimes complicated circumstances so I can get my point across in a way they will understand. By showing them the relationships between my actions and the resultant positive or negative outcomes, I hopefully am teaching them truth about the way life works. God gave us the stories in the Bible for the same reason– to convey truth about how to relate to Him and to others, in a way that we can understand.

What gives my stories power with my children is that they are based on real occurances in my life. The truth is based on what is true. The incredible story of the survival of the Shackleton expedition would have only a fraction of its power to teach us about hope and endurance if it were fictional.

The term “story” is sadly misunderstood. We use the phrases “telling a story” and “telling a tale” as euphemisms for lying. The word “myth” comes from the Greek word “muthos”, which simply means story. Nowadays, to say something is a myth means it is not true. But a story can be based on a real incident or an imaginative one.

The parables Jesus told are clearly identifiable as imaginative literature. The metaphoric language of Biblical poetry is also clearly identifiable. But a great many open-minded persons with experience in literature find nothing in the story of Jonah or David and Goliath besides historical records in the form of stories. The Bible abounds with factual records of the miraculous. If we are going to say that a particular miracle in a story proves that the story is imaginative fiction, where do we stop? The “unbelievable” happens every day. The Reader’s Digest is full of unbelievable but true stories of people who survived horrific events against all odds. We believe the unbelievable all the time because it is verified by witnesses who put their testimony in writing.

The written testimonies of Jonah or David’s miraculous survival are no less credible than the records of George Washington’s incredible escapes in the French and Indian War or the return of Shackleton’s men. They are only further removed from us in time.

Mortimer Adler, the father of the “Great Books” program, taught that to evaluate religious writings properly one must come at them presupposing they are what they claim to be. The Bible claims to be the words of God spoken and written to and through select humans. (II Tim 3:16, II Pet 1:20-21) In order to teach God’s truth, the Bible must be acknowledged to be true. God’s stories have power for the same reason that my own do — because they are based on real incidents and real outcomes.

C. S. Lewis reminded us that Jesus would not qualify as a “great teacher” or as an example for our lives if he were not who he said he was. Claiming to be God’s son apart from being God’s son would make him a lunatic or a liar — neither one being something to emulate. By way of analogy, how could God convey truth if he could not even convey historical fact?

C. S. Lewis became a Christian because he was convinced by J. R. R. Tolkien that the elements that touched his heart in stories were also present in the stories of the Bible, but that in the case of the Bible, the stories were true. The Word was made flesh. The meaning was made real. The real relevance of the Bible is that God said exactly what He meant, and means what He said.

Teri Ong will be presenting the paper “Christian Artistry: The Picture or the Frame” at the conference Truth Under Deconstruction sponsored by the International Institute for Christian Studies in Kansas City, July 12-14, 2007.

Essay Eleven

Reparations for the (Un)Fairness Doctrine

by Teri Ong

Last week [July 2007] Congress failed to pass a bill that would have protected us from what some would call ཁa resurrectionཁ of the old ཁFairness Doctrine.ཁ A resurrection is usually a good thing, but Scottish author George MacDonald wrote that some things don’t resurrect, they ཁrise up vampire-like to haunt us.ཁ The Fairness Doctrine is a specter of zombie-like proportions.

About a month ago I listened to a round table discussion on one of the cable news shows about ཁnew mediaཁ and its impact on society. One of the journalists was ཁsaddenedཁ by the fact that polls have shown that people now gravitate to blogs and news sites that agree with their political perspectives. They no longer ཁget both sidesཁ as presented by, of course, network news and old style newspapers.

We all know, however, that what we used to get when network news and old-style newspapers were all we had, was the liberal slant on just about everything. As one person put it, the only facts in the paper were the sports scores. What this discussion group journalist was really sad about was not that people were only getting one side nowadays, but that they weren’t just getting HIS side any more; the ཁchoiceཁ people are only about choice if you choose their side.

In the language of deconstruction, conservatives have for many years, from a news media perspective, been an oppressed and voiceless group. With the advent of talk radio and the blogosphere, conservatives have found an effective and persuasive way to communicate. But whereas, leftist elites generally want to liberate oppressed peoples by giving them a voice, they will pursue almost any course of action to once again silence conservatives.

Why? Because the conservative voice of the new media has been effective enough to reduce the liberal power base so that nationally, political numbers are about as close to 50-50 as you can get, which puts more races and issues up for grabs than at earlier times in collective memory. This has only happened over the last 20 years.

Democrats in Congress would like to bring back theཁFairness Doctrineཁ so that every minute of what they deem conservativism must be balanced with a minute of liberalism. We don’t need the Fairness Doctrine; we need Constitutional freedom of speech. There are plenty of opportunities for everyone. And honestly, we should get reparations for all of the years of oppression in the past; affirmative action for conservatives in journalism and media. Why not?ཀ It’s a good liberal idea, isn’t it?

Newspapers and Opinions in Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

(an excerpt)

Stepan Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them–or more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.

Stepan Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society–owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity–to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything was wrong, and certainly Stepan Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Stepan Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather it allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of people; and Stepan Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of alll the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a good joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family–the monkey.

And so liberalism had become a habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch’s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary,” in our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress.ཁ

About Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina in serialized form and published it between 1875 and 1877. It was his second great novel after War and Peace. Through War and Peace, he established himself as one of the great Russian novelists along with Turgenev and Dostoevsky. But even as he was being recognized for his greatness in literary circles, he was becoming more and more disenchanted with the artificiality and emptiness of life in those circles.

Before he began writing Anna Karenina he retreated to his family estate with his wife and children. He cancelled his subscriptions to newspapers and professional journals, cutting himself off from the culture of the intelligentsia of his day. He purposefully isolated himself from opulent and adulterous urban society and devoted himself to writing a moralist Primer for his children.

Through the characters in Anna Karenina, Tolstoy provides commentary on various social stereotypes: the handsome hunk ཁwith a chip missingཁ (in modern parlance), the bon vivant, the sanctimonious religious hypocrite, the society flirt, the careerist, the philosophical seeker, and the desperate housewife–Anna. Much of his own spiritual journey from Enlightenment utilitarianism to mystical Christianity is reflected in the character Levin (derived from Tolstoy’s family nickname Lyova).

Though published 130 years ago, Tolstoy’s novel has endured precisely because of his insights into human nature. In the character of Stepan Arkadyevitch we recognize a mainstay in modern American society; the man who puts on the proper opinions laid out in the newspaper each day, the same way he puts on the proper shirt that has been laid out for him by someone else.

But what if more than one shirt were to be laid out? What if there was a real choice to make? Then some amount of thoughtful consideration would be required. What if more than one opinion were presented? Then the opinion might likewise be more thoughtfully taken up. LONG LIVE THE NEW MEDIAཀ

Endnotes_______

Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003, pp. 10-11.

Essay Twelve

Dumbed-down Architecture

by Teri Ong

I have taken about a month off from writing my blog in order to do some remodeling and refurbishing in my home and in my mother’s home. I live in a small but interesting 100 year old home built with real 2×4 2×4’s, lath and plaster walls, and old fashioned sash windows. We have lived in it for almost 22 years, so a lot of the “character” has been added by us. The floors sag more than they used to under my extremely heavily loaded china cabinet. There are more cracks and bumps in the plaster from all of the picture hanging we have done. And some of the windows really are permanently painted shut.

We just added a faux finish to the walls that actually is enhanced by the cracks and patches in the plaster. We also added a paneled look under the staircase and on the landing. Our work, being less than perfect, looks like it has been around for the entire 100 years. Our upgrades were not necessary to the well-being of the house, but they were a boost to the well-being of its occupants. Some things aren’t essential, but, as talk show host and author Dennis Prager says, they enrich our life experience.

I am an “artsy” person. Some very small things I find to be very enriching, like botanical prints in antique frames on my freshly painted antique walls. Like good black tea poured from a traditional china pot into a simple, but elegant Royal Doulton tea cup. Like “improving books” lining bountiful book shelves within reach of almost every chair.

Just this week I read a very interesting article about the relationship of expansive ceilings to expansive thoughts. That idea is not new; it was understood by the architects of the great gothic cathedrals. The enormous churches were built to enhance people’s understanding of a high and holy God who was infinite and transcendant– expansive ideas indeed!

It does seem to me that life in America has become petty (same root as petit, French for “small”). We spend a great deal of time thinking about small things, like sports scores, who is going to win American Idol, whether or not to buy the trendiest flip-flops or nail polish, or if drinking a certain kind of beverage or wearing the right kind of underwear will give us a sexier image. All of those things sure have life-shaping ramifications! Maybe such small thinking is because many of us spend much of our waking time cooped up in our cars and cubicles. But I think it may even start in school for a lot of us.

School rooms used to be expansive places with large windows and large chalk boards.(I was blessed to teach in one like that as a first year teacher) When I was in junior high, however, the pride and joy of my school district was a sleek, low-slung building with narrow windows at the tops of the walls that were perpetually covered with venetian blinds. By the time I was in high school, the district had up-graded its high school building so that many of the classes met in rooms called “pods” with walls made of poured concrete that had no windows and which were lit entirely by some kind of eery vapor lighting. Now days many students spend hours behind computers in little study nooks.

Many of the modern businesses and churches that we have visited have high ceilings, but the effect is not the same when the ceiling is a dark cavern filled with electrical conduit, structural steel, and duct work sprayed with acoustic foam. Prince Charles once said that the urban planners and architects had done more damage to London than the German bombs had done. In my own town, our stately marble floored post office with high vaulted ceilings was torn down and replaced with a boxy cement building with no windows, no ventilation, and no imagination during LBJ’s “Great Society” experiment.

I know experientially that great and expansive thoughts flow freely when I am sitting in a lofty stone building listening to naturally mixed live music such as a brass quintet at St. George’s or a string quartet at St. Pancras Church. They also flow when I am sitting in the Evangelical Library on Chiltern Street in London. There I am rewarded for a walk up three flights of stairs by tall stacks crowded with books– mostly old books, with that wonderful dusty-musty smell, leather bindings, and letters that were impressed into thickish paper by real metal type. Soaring piles of books that go nearly to the skylights never fail to inspire lofty thoughts.

Edith Schaeffer, who founded L’Abri with her husband Francis, wrote in The Hidden Art of Homemaking back in the 1970’s,

‘The environment’ differs from other art forms in that instead of standing and looking at a picture or a statue in front of you and judging it, ‘The Environment’ involves a whole room, in turn created to involve you in thoughts and emotions as soon as you step into it. The idea is that you are involved in an environment which has an effect on you, drawing you into something the artist wants you to feel and think…

The height of a room’s ceiling is part of “environment.” According to the research study, a high ceiling draws us into lofty thoughts while a low ceiling draws us into narrowly focused, analytical thoughts. In the Christian walk, we have need of the cathedral and the prayer closet– quiet consideration of the transcendence and the immanence of God.

Schaeffer goes on to point out that we as human beings are part of the environment of other human beings. We, just by being present in the same place, can have a positive or a negative effect on those around us.

In the novel David Elginbrod, Scottish author George MacDonald puts a cast of characters into each other’s environments. There are cathedral characters (such as Elginbrod), prayer closet characters (such as Elginbrod’s daughter), chicken coop characters (such as Mrs. Appleditch and her boys), and a dungeon character (Count Halkar). These various “environments” have profound effects on the two characters in conflict, Hugh Sutherland and Euphrasia.

As the story unfolds, the God that Hugh first encountered in the cathedral (Elginbrod), he meets face to face in the prayer closet (Elginbrod’s daughter). Euphrasia, however, never quite recovers from her experience in the dungeon (Count Halkar). You’ll have to read the book to see what I mean.

I would rather not be a chicken coop or a dungeon to people who are around me. Some may need me to be a cathedral– to encourage lofty thoughts of the Infinite Holy One. Some may need me to be a prayer closet– to encourage a personal meeting with Abba Father. Either way, may Jesus increase!

Notes_____________

Goldade, Kristi. “Ceilings affect our thoughts and feelings,” UMN News, University of Minnesota, May 1, 2007, accessed at http://www1.umn.edu/umnews/Feature_Stories/Ceilings_affect-ou on 8/22/2007 at 7:39 p.m.

MacDonald, George. David Elginbrod. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1863.

An accessible and more readily available modern version is:

MacDonald, George. edited by Michael Phillips. The Tutor’s First Love. Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1984.

Schaeffer, Edith. The Hidden Art of Homemaking. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971. (p. 207-208)

Essay Thirteen

Where Were You On…?

by Teri Ong

I listened to some of the talk shows on September 11 — “Patriots’ Day” — and the question was almost universally asked, “Where were you on 9-11?” Older people equated the question to the other universal question of the boomer generation — “Where were you when President Kennedy was shot?” And older people still thought again about where they were when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

I’m too young for Pearl Harbor, but I do remember the day President Kennedy was assassinated. I was in the third grade in Mrs. Austinson’s class at North Heights Elementary School in Roseville, Minnesota. My recollection is that another teacher came gravely to our door and whispered something to Mrs. Austinson. It wasn’t long until someone wheeled in a television on a big, black A-V cart.

We had a sense of the history making importance of the moment, but we also had a sense that the television was in the room not so much for us as for our teacher. Almost like the time that Mr. Wakefield wanted us to be enculturated into the American Pastime just when his team was in a crucial game in the World Series. We had a TV in the room then too.

Growing up in a staunchly Republican home, my parents had not voted for Kennedy. But we were swept along in the great American tragedy. My father was subcontracted to the military during those years doing projects that were necessitated by the Cold War, and then as now, we all had a sense of the increased fragility of our place on planet Earth.

Where was I on 9-11? Just getting ready to take my husband to the hospital for throat surgery. It was not emergency surgery, but it was also not elective. Throat surgery is a big deal for a minister. I had just turned on the morning news on the radio– my usual weekday habit– when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. The first words from the newscasters were that a small plane had hit the first building. But the scenario quickly changed while we listened in horror.

We listened for the 40 minutes it took us to get from our town to the hospital. By the time we got there, the whole hospital was a buzz of serious conversation and tearful disbelief. Every television in every corner of the hospital was tuned in to the blanket coverage by the networks. My husband and I joked later that we had wanted to write on his chin, “Please keep your mind on your work!”

We were not panicked, but we were concerned. My husband’s brother is a New Yorker and sometimes had occasion to do business in the Trade Center. He was not there that day. But in the waiting room of the hospital where I sat, there were a brother and sister who had come to Colorado from New York to be with their grandmother who was having surgery that day. Their father was in one of the buildings when it was hit. He was one of the thousands who were able to get out alive, and by mid-day they had heard from him. The sister convulsed in tears of relief.

For the rest of the day the two of them sat watching the endless replays nearly transfixed. The brother now and then would say, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe he’s alive even though I heard him with my own ears.”

In A Book of Days for the Literary Year, Septemeber 11 is an inauspicious day. It is author O. Henry’s birthday (9-11-1862) and the birthday of D. H. Lawrence (9-11-1885). Not much for us literary types. Ironically, September 11 is an almost uncanny connecting point between President Kennedy and the Trade Center attack. It was on September 11, 1962 that the Cuban government announced that the Soviet Union had permission to use Cuban harbors for “fishing.” The Soviet ships were, however, intending to bring missiles to Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis became a defining moment for the Kennedy administration.

On that very day the Rev. Edward B. Lewis opened the U. S. Senate with this prayer (in the Congressional Record):

Our Heavenly Father, who by Thy love hast made us and in Thy love wouldst make us perfectly free, we bow in Thy holy presence, beseeching Thy continued help, wisdom, and guidance upon these, Thy servants, in the Senate of the United States of America. Be with them this day as they serve Thee and their people on the Senate floor, in committee, in conference, or representing our country with the President elsewhere.

We love this great country of ours. Help us to be worthy citizens of what we have been given by our forefathers. As we now are acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest nations, may we find more greatness in humility, honesty, justice, forthrightness, and a deep religious faith that has blessed us through our history.

Help us with plenty to be thankful– and to want to find ways for others to have plenty. Help us with knowledge to find ways for others to have the freedom of knowing. Help us with power to use this power in such a way that others will find strength to stand with us for that which is right.

Bless the President of the United States and his associates. Give them health, wisdom, and balance under tension.

Give to us the direction to find the way, the truth, and the life. Give us Thy salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Forty-five years later, we are yet in an ideological war of global dimensions. Forty-five years later, this is still a good prayer. The final paragraph puts everything in proper perspective. “Give us Thy salvation,” so that someday, when we are asked “Where were you on Judgment Day?”, we will be able to give a good answer.

Notes______

(1)Jones, Neal T. A Book of Days for the Literary Year. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984.

(2)LaHaye, Beverly and Farris, Michael. On This Day. Washington D. C.: Concerned Women of America, n.d.