Augustine Is Really Smart

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading my yearly allotment of Augustine: books 6-10 in the African bishop’s treatise on the Trinity. He didn’t convince me with his main point, but he did convince me (if, indeed, I needed any convincing on this point) that his intelligence embraced broad fields of knowledge and dealt with them in great power and insight.

OK, Augustine’s main point. Books 1-5 (which I read three years ago) deal mostly with terms regarding relationships between the Persons of the Trinity and with the question of Who made the appearances to Abraham, Moses, and others in certain Old Testament stories. I divided the treatise arbitrarily into thirds for my ten-year reading plan, but my artificial division seems to have worked, since books 6-10 shift focus to our relationship with and understanding of the Trinity. Augustine’s primary question is this: How can we love the Trinity when we can’t understand or form an accurate mental picture of the Trinity?

His basic answer is that we sometimes love a thing without exact knowledge of it because we have loved something else like it and reason by analogy. I, for instance, will sit down eagerly later this year as I begin The Claverings, a book by Anthony Trollope that I have not read. Why do I relish the experience in anticipation when I don’t know the book? Because I have read and enjoyed several other Trollope books, so my love is founded on the likelihood that I will enjoy this one as much.

What then, Augustine asks, do we know that is like the Trinity so that we can love the Trinity as we begin and continue to know the ultimately incomprehensible God in three Persons? There is, Augustine tells us, a trinity in my mind: the mind itself, its knowledge, and its love. This answer works to some extent: the knowledge and the love, like the Word and the Holy Spirit being respectively begotten and breathed by the Father, come from and reflect the mind itself, and the mind is not what it is without its actions of knowing and willing. But do knowledge and love have a separate identity that bears an analogy to Christ saying that He doesn’t know everything the Father knows? And doesn’t the mind perform other functions, as well, like reasoning? Augustine suggests a second trinity of human mentality: memory, understanding, and will. In some ways, this analogy seems better, and in other ways it seems just as arbitrarily limited to three as did the first proposition. But Augustine’s question still seems important to me, and his approach still provides a door to my search for an answer. I am inclined to say that I love the Trinity because God in three Persons is like nothing else in existence (thing A cannot both be with thing B and be thing B except in the case of the Trinity: John tells us that, in the beginning, the Word was with God and the Word was God), and I like other things that are unique. Yeah, there’s the problem of saying that all these things are alike in that they aren’t like anything else.

My dissatisfaction with his answers doesn’t negate the point that Augustine wrestles with a fascinating, important question. And the intelligence and knowledge he uses to put all the parts of the argument together are astonishing. Did anyone else before Augustine ever examine the human mind to the point of questioning why we love things we don’t know? Plato and Aristotle both have lots of helpful things to say about loving what we do know and even loving what we mistakenly think we know. But loving what we don’t know? Augustine also appears to me to have invented, some 1500 years ahead of time, the field of semiotics, with all of his analysis of words and mental thoughts as signs of both external things and of each other. In other books, he talks about music, mathematics, and history. In the Confessions, he takes on the mystery of consciousness of time.

In On Christian Doctrine, Augustine commended study of all these fields and more, thus, I thank God, granting approval for medieval Christians to study literature and grammar and astronomy and geometry and to create cathedral schools and universities. He is the most influential Christian writer between the writing of the New Testament and now. Had I never read a word of his prodigious output, he would still bear responsibility for much of the shape of my intellectual life, as he does for anyone geeky and odd enough to be reading this blog. Graduates wear robes at school commencements because monks delivered medieval education because Augustine sanctioned academic pursuit for Christendom.

So what can we call Augustine? An intellectual powerhouse? The founder of Christian academicism? A beacon atop the mountain of western education? It’s difficult to find the right words to describe him adequately and to capture the importance of his far-reaching achievement. He isn’t like anyone else.

Beauty in Ashes

Happy Charles Dickens’s Birthday! I just finished reading Bleak House for the third time in my life, and before writing this blog post, I looked back to see what I blogged about in 2012, the last time I enjoyed the Great Man’s ninth novel. It appears I wrote six times about the book. How did I find so much time to write these posts while I was working?

I have just one thing to write about after this visit with the deep, mysterious, disturbingly comforting Bleak House. I see that I touched on it in one of my posts from nine years ago when I commented on this passage:

It was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove the rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn thunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the tremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to consider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and leaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage which seemed to make creation new again.

The dark storm makes creation new. After the deluge comes a new brilliantly colored sign in the heavens.

Throughout Bleak House, characters are immersed in atmospheres of influence. Influence, a common word in the book, originally referred to streams of celestial power in our atmosphere flowing (fluens in Latin) in from the planets. These influences, it was believed, both shaped character and caused temporary changes of temperament or health. Influenza came from the influences. At the beginning of Bleak House, the air is filled with “fog,” which sounds romantic to us now but actually consisted mostly of smoke from factories. As we progress through the pages, we get the pervading rain around Chesney Wold, the dust that blankets everything in Tulkinghorn’s chambers, the soot of the poor neighborhoods, the disease in the noisome air of a cramped urban cemetery, and, most importantly, the poisonous influence of the Court of Chancery, touching and harming everyone who has the misfortune to find his business taken up therein:

How many people out of the suit Jarndyce and Jarndyce has stretched forth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide question. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty warrants in Jarndyce and Jarndyce have grimly writhed into many shapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks' Office who has copied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that eternal heading, no man's nature has been made better by it. In trickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under false pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never come to good. The very solicitors' boys who have kept the wretched suitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle, Mizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments until dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into themselves out of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. The receiver in the cause has acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a distrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle, Mizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising themselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter and see what can be done for Drizzle—who was not well used—when Jarndyce and Jarndyce shall be got out of the office. Shirking and sharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some off-hand manner never meant to go right.

And yet beauty arises from the wreckage of this whirlwind. This isn’t Great Expectations, so Dickens awards his good characters happy endings in this novel with the sad name. And yet every happy ending summarized in the last chapter of Bleak House has a depth of beauty that comes from some tragic mark. One character ends happily married and has a baby girl – who is deaf and dumb. But doesn’t the mother only love her child the more for that deficiency? The narration tells us explicitly that one pretty widow is more beautiful with the shadow of loss on her face. Two neighbors who have argued over the ownership of a disputed strip of land try reconciling but find that they actually have more fun arguing. John Jarndyce still calls his study the Growlery. And the house, in commemoration of the storm that has made creation new, is still affectionately known as Bleak House. Because of its realism and familiarity, isn’t this the happiest of all Dickens’s happy endings?

Ringing the Changes

Dorothy L. Sayers’s mystery novels were once thought of as “literary” detective stories, as opposed, I suppose, to the – what? flaccid pulp? – of Agatha Christie’s offerings. I happen to like both authors quite a lot, although I can see why Sayers was once thought to be artistically better than Christie. The very qualities that earned her this reputation are probably responsible for her books appealing less (and to fewer) today than her counterpart’s, but if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably up for it. If you haven’t tried these out, start with Murder Must Advertise, and then, if you’re still happy, proceed right to The Nine Tailors.

The Nine Tailors! Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow! If you didn’t know anything about change ringing before, you will by the time you’re finished with the book. But look up some articles while you’re reading the novel, and dig even deeper. (Here’s a good place to start.) Listen to some change ringing on Youtube. The topic is fascinating in itself, provides a pervasive atmosphere of activity and terminology throughout the book, and plays an important role in the solution of the mystery.

What is it, you ask? In short, change ringing is a practice of tolling a given set of bells one at a time over and over but changing the order each time. For instance, in a Plain Bob, a set of six bells would begin by ringing in order: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6. The line is then divided into three pairs, which change places: 2 - 1 - 4 - 3 - 6 - 5. Now the end bells retain their rhythmic placement while the four inner bells swap in pairs: 2 - 4 - 1 - 6 - 3 - 5. And so it goes. A complete peal, which takes several hours (more or less, depending on the number of bells involved), gets around to the performance of every ordered permutation. If you had heard this description before knowing it takes place in a mystery by Dorothy L. Sayers, would you have guessed that such a mathematical practice was English? But if I told you that the methods for changing the order of the bells have such quaint names as Steadman’s Triples and Kent Treble Bob Major, would you have guessed any country other than England?

The performances require stamina, athleticism, and mental focus. Imagine going to a cold, windy bell tower and pulling on a rope that controls a massively heavy bell for nine, fifteen, perhaps twenty hours, all the time paying attention to the pattern and keeping track of when to dodge and when to hunt! The herculean feat is made possible by alternates who are ready to sub in when it’s time for a refreshment break and by a leader who helps by shouting the changes like a caller in a square-dance (another artistic form involving the reordering of the participants). The adjustment of the timing that makes the permutations come about is made possible by the method of swinging the bell all the way to its vertical position, where it hovers like a gymnast doing a handstand on the top of the high bar until called to descend and toll again.

I offer a couple of caveats before you go wading into The Nine Tailors and wonder why you let this weird blog writer lead you into a morass. First, it’s long. Mystery novels work best in about 250 pages: enough to hide the connections of the pertinent details but few enough that the reader doesn’t forget those details by day 6 of reading. The Nine Tailors comes in at around 400. Second, Sayers’s language (especially her slang) is just different enough from ours to make descriptions of some key events obscure. I’ve read the book twice, and both times I got bogged down on page 1 trying to figure out how Lord Peter’s car got bogged down in a ditch. The situation isn’t relevant to the mystery other than as a means of getting Lord Peter delayed long enough to get involved in the local intrigue. But let me help potential readers out by suggesting that “the road cresting the dyke” should be interpreted as “the road that ran along the crest of the dyke.” I’ll also point out that a “lag” is a convict and that it’s best just to assume that someone asking for “Paul who is a tailor” could be remembered as and taken as someone asking for Paul Taylor. (Perhaps the book was so long that even Sayers forgot her own details.)

At one point while reading the book, I was looking up what some other people thought about it and found that Upton Sinclair considered it one of four “essential” detective stories. Also on his list was Dickens’s Bleak House, which, it just so happens, was on my plan as the book to start on the day after I finished The Nine Tailors! So I’m reading half of all essential detective novels in one month. That’s an accomplishment almost as impressive as ringing a full peal of Bristol Surprise Major.

Journey to the Center of Two Questions

Given that one of my goals in this third decade of planned reading is to bring back some of the boyhood wonder and excitement of reading classic adventure stories, after rereading Journey to the Center of the Earth for the first time since about 1972, I have to say, “Mission Accomplished!” Of course, the experience isn’t the same this time; I approach this book this second time with almost fifty extra years of experience and understanding. But, wow! Did I have fun! The obsessed professor! The runes! The thrilling sensation of hearing and reading at desperate moments the adventurous name of Arne Saknussemm! Glorious!

Now let me bog down my notes with two annoying grown-up observations my sexagenarian mind can’t help making. First, I couldn’t help laughing at the supposedly seminal science-fiction author alternately praising and flouting science. Axel, in his narration, keeps the reader abreast of the latest scientific information about the structure of the earth, geological eons, and evolutionary strata. But then the plot he unfolds contradicts all of it. For instance, the most prominent indications of prehistoric life the group discovers are actual, living prehistoric beings, whose ancestors at some time long, long ago slid with their habitat down a hundred miles of a gaping chasm, only to survive and breed underground for millions of years without any evolutionary change whatsoever: the adventurers note that they match exactly the skeletons of supposedly extinct species they have seen in museums.

Geology? Oh, sure, the explorers pass through various types of rock that “prove” the latest theories of the formation of the earth. But this all happens in the first fifty miles or so of descent; the next few hundred miles take them through more and more identical tunnels of extinct volcanic action, all of which is assigned to a small molten core that occupies only the very center of the center of the earth. They mention the scientific belief that temperature will increase as they descend and then find that it really doesn’t – until, that is, they find themselves at last in an active volcanic zone. It seems actual science stands in the way of a journey to the center of the earth, so Verne, in order to make good on the promise of his title, has to reject it. The good professor who leads the expedition tries to preserve some kind of scientific authority by saying that Sir Humphrey Davy has an opinion about the inner parts of the earth different from that of all other scientists. But a lone opinion can’t make the premise of the book scientific. An unsupported opinion can’t make science scientific. Some might point to the contradiction as a flaw, as a cheat. I just enjoyed watching the precarious balancing act as Verne showed off both his passion for science and his utterly unscientific yet captivating imagination.

My second annoying observation is related to the first. The editor of the version I read offered occasional notes indicating passages in which she saw Verne’s scientific observations indicating a break with Christian doctrine and sometimes outright disdain for it. I don’t know anything about Verne’s religious views. I can only say that people – Jules Verne belonging to that distinguished society – fall into many more subtle positions regarding the relationship of faith and science than the two the editor seems to recognize. Verne sometimes speaks of the “antediluvian era.” Was he joking in referring to the biblical flood? Was he throwing a comforting blanket to his theologically more conservative readers? Or was the author (or his first-person narrator, Axel, actually) trying to reconcile the accounts of the first few chapters of Genesis with the expanded timeframe of recent geological science? These and twenty more variants were all views held by actual people at the time, and they all represent possible understandings of Axel’s (and possibly Verne’s) view, especially since Axel never says, “And so our journey to the center of the earth has disproved the book of Genesis.”

In any case, since Verne gleefully used his plot to throw out all the science he so carefully alludes to, how could his science possibly throw out any given theology?

The Play’s the Thing

Like a holiday whose meaning metamorphoses over the centuries, my tradition of starting each year of reading with some plays has origins from a bygone era – a previous millennium, in fact. My first ten-year reading plan, which came with the set of Britannica Great Books, started many years with Greek plays and then proceeded somewhat chronologically throughout any given year. Tom Stoppard is not an ancient playwright. He is, in fact, one of the most recent authors on my schedule for 2021. But playwright he is, so January he comes!

My reaction to the plays that I read isn’t fair, I know. Dramatic works should be seen, not read. But I don’t have the luxury of watching performances, and I’m interested in Stoppard’s wordplay and philosophical meanderings. Given that caveat, I’ll say that, while I enjoyed Jumpers and Travesties much more than I enjoyed the Stoppard plays I read three years ago, I still wish I liked them better. I want to love these plays; I really do. Let’s list the possible explanations for my disappointment:

(1) The plays aren’t very good, and their accolades come through an emperor’s-new-clothes dynamic.

(2) The plays are good, but I don’t know enough to see everything that’s good about them.

(3) I want something in a play that Stoppard, writing perfectly good plays, just doesn’t provide.

I think the truth includes elements of options 2 and 3, although I wouldn’t be surprised to find fans who secretly see the emperor as naked. But option 3 surged to the fore when I read one particular exchange in Travesties. This play consists entirely of recollections by the main character of meeting Lenin, James Joyce, and dadaist Tristan Tzara in Zurich in 1917. All are seeking ways to negotiate a world newly unmoored from traditional views of its coherence. Some character (I don’t remember which one) says something a little crazy (they all do), and after someone calls the utterance nonsense replies, “Yes, but at least it’s clever.” A page or two later, Tzara speaks the line, “Dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada dada.” Again someone says he’s speaking nonsense, but Tzara gives an extra turn to his reply: “Yes, but at least it’s not clever.”

Is my problem that I’m trying to find something clever in Stoppard’s word salad when he just wants me to enjoy the mixed greens? Maybe. But then, somebody in the play (yes, somebody – it would all be easier to keep track of if I could see performances) says words to the effect of “We can no longer believe in causation because of the war.” See, I think that’s pretty clever, and I want more of that. So I still have some money on option 2; I’m concerned that maybe Stoppard is clever all the time while I just don’t catch it all. On the other hand, I do like the tastes and textures of a random assortment of romaine, spinach, cherry tomatoes, red onions, croutons, and italian dressing, so I’ll be keeping this play in mind when, later this year, I tackle the greatest tossed salad of them all: Finnegan’s Wake.

I can’t sign off without a word about the third play I read in these last few days: Molière’s Tartuffe. This play didn’t make me question my habits of reading and thinking as Travesties did. It just invited me to read and think and enjoy and laugh. The religious hypocrite Tartuffe gets many people to parrot his nonsense while using a cover of piety to acquire donations and sexual favors, and it’s hilarious. What a relief it is to laugh at heretical chicanery! I don’t get any sense that Molière meant to label all of Christianity as Tartuffian; the character who restores order at the end is a good, reasonable, caring, sympathetic Christian man. I suppose it’s possible that the playwright simply put him in for the sake of appearances, as a screen behind which to hide his contempt for Christianity. But if so, the Church still saw the play as an attack on religion and banned it; so the supposed ploy didn’t work. In any case, I prefer to take Molière and his play at their surface-level word, and their patent message is that we cannot let true Christianity be defined by any person who self-announces his special favor with God, expects all good Christians to stay loyal to him, and then uses their support to gain power, money, and sex. Tartuffe, you deserve your downfall!

A post-scriptum: Blogspot's editor doesn't approve of the noncapitalization of "italian dressing." I guess it would want me also to capitalize "french fries" and "roman numerals." Well, now that I've typed those phrases into the editor, I can report that it has absolutely no problems with my formatting. By analogy, I stand by my lower-case "i." And may I also note that Blogspot's editor flags the word "Blogspot's"?

Book Awards – 2020

This year began with my son and grandkids living with us for a month. It ends with the exlibrismagnis book awards. Between those wonderful extremes, things were mostly pretty crummy. And I’m not even talking about coronavirus or the economy or political news. But. Hey! Book awards!

Mentor Who Is Always Standing in the Spirit at My Elbow: Charles Dickens
This year I read David Copperfield for the fourth time and only now noticed just how many struggling authors populate the pages. I also enjoyed the new film version of DC starring Dev Patel. (I’m still not sure whether I love or hate the postmodern ending of Dora’s story arc.) I read A Christmas Carol aloud to my family for the first time in many years. And I was introduced to some delightful farcical plays by the Great Man, one involving an astrologer who thinks he knows the day and hour at which his daughter will meet her future husband, and another involving mistaken identities in a hotel – complete with a hallway of doors hastily opened and shut by characters who many times narrowly miss seeing each other and ending the confusion. How can anything beat that? Fortunately for other authors, like John Larroquette with the Emmys, the father of David Copperfield long ago asked that he not be considered for an award at these ceremonies.

Best New Read in History: Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought
I talked to everyone in my family about something or other in this wonderful history every day I was reading it and for many days afterwards. Every story – Jackson’s Bank, the Mexican War, the invention of the telegraph – was familiar, and yet Howe provided nuances that gave each a new shape.

Best Reread in History: Herodotus, The Histories, book I
Cyrus takes Croesus from the burning stake to ask him about the wisdom of Solon – and then keeps the conquered king around as a political advisor. Why is Cyrus known to us today and Croesus all but forgotten?

Best New Novel: John Galsworthy, White Monkey
The skewering of modernism and consumerism was delicious. But the best part of the book involved a subplot reminiscent of Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” involving the Bickets, who are nothing like Galsworthies.

Best Reread Novel: Frank Norris, The Octopus
TV Series Must Be Made.

Best Theology: Cyprian, Treatise 7
How to show faith and love during a pandemic!

Best Poem: C. S. Lewis, “Dungeon Grates”
No, it wasn’t Coleridge. It was Lewis. And no, it wasn’t one of his Christian poems. It was a dark brood about life as a prison. And yet there are grates . . . .

Book Most Changed on Rereading: J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
Having read longer versions of some of the stories, The Silmarillion now sounds very much like a summary. But still, the heartache and beauty and goodness and truth of this constructed mythology is unmatched in my experience. This time, I was especially struck by Tolkien’s wisdom in making the Noldor the tribe that rebels against the Valar. The Vanyar stay close to the angelic beings and sing to them constantly. The Teleri don’t even travel all the way to Valinor but stay offshore, just enjoying the light of the Blessed Realm shining through a gap in the mountains. But the Noldor make their home in Valinor and build a city and make jewels. Aren’t the troublemakers always the ones who make a good show but end up thinking they can improve on God’s work?

Best Play: Tom Morton, Speed the Plough
Every character, every scene is funny, and the farcical plot builds smoothly and coherently. How is this play not still known, staged, and loved?

Best Short Story: Dorothy L. Sayers, “Murder in the Morning”
I had come across Montague Egg in Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries before. But to see him and his confident, rhyming sales pitches take the center spotlight was a treat indeed. And, what do you know? Even without the intense efforts of his more famous sleuthing buddy, Monty can also solve murders!

Well, that’s it for 2020. Tomorrow, we’ll all wake up, everything will be better, and I’ll start reading the books for year 5 of my current Reading Plan. May we all have a Happy New Year (and quickly get over the Crummy Old One)!

Troll the Ancient Yuletide Carol – 2020

Most years around this time, I’ve shared some thoughts about the words to some of my favorite Christmas carols – which is to say, some of my favorite things in this world. (Click here to see posts from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018.) I thought of devoting this whole post to my strong preference this year for versions of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” that use the line “Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow.” But why focus on muddling at this blessed time? Instead I’ll just say a few words about the O antiphons.

These seven advent antiphons seem to have been around since the time of Boethius. Perhaps from that time, but certainly starting as early as the Middle Ages, they were used to introduce the singing of the Magnificat. (All antiphons were used as introductions, endings, and even interpolations for biblical songs: primarily the psalms, but also for the canticles such as Mary’s song, the “Nunc Dimittis” of Simeon, and so on. They worked much as do the new choruses inserted into old hymns by worship composers of our time.) The seven O antiphons all begin with the word “O” as a marker of address, and are directed to Jesus, Who is called by seven names drawn from various portions of the Bible. Here are the texts:

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other,
mightily and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;
before Thee kings will shut their mouths,
to Thee the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
Thou openest and no one can shut;
Thou shuttest and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

O King of the nations, and their desire,
the cornerstone making both one:
Come and save the human race,
which Thou didst fashion from clay.

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver,
the hope of the nations and their Saviour:
Come and save us, O Lord our God.

I’m struck this year especially by the multiple layers of meaning in so many of them – multiple meanings of the texts themselves as well as of objects depicted in the texts. In the first antiphon, traditionally sung on December 17, we recognize wisdom as the Word of God, as the order in all created things, as our teacher, and as the prudence that we can fit into our little human heads. A common casual prayer says, “From your lips to God’s ears.” This antiphon prays that what comes from God’s lips will enter our ears.

In “O Adonai,” for December 18, we acknowledge that only the One Who gives the law that convicts us of sin can redeem us from that very sin. The Root of Jesse, addressed on December 19, stands as a sign, but of what? It seems the sign means different things to different readers. It makes some shut their mouths, while it opens the mouths of others. The Key of David shows its multivalence clearly: a key both opens and shuts. But the main prayer for December 20 is for opening, because who prays to be put into prison?

Now on December 21, the darkness of the prisoners is again mentioned. So are we praying here for the ones who have not yet escaped the prison house? Or do the souls who have left prison still dwell in darkness? Yes and yes. And they need both the sun and the morning star.

On December 22, we sing to the “cornerstone making both one.” Hmm. Both what? A cornerstone marks the place where two straight lines join to determine a two-dimensional space. Perhaps God as King of the nations and God as desire of the nations represent two dimensions: truth and mercy have kissed. In any case, we who are made one out of two elements – clay and the spirit that needs saving – desire that King.

Finally, on December 23, we ask Emmanuel – “God with us” – to come to us. If God is with us already, why do we ask Him to come? Because Christ is the true light that perpetually comes into the world. We can never be done welcoming Him.

When Augustus called for his census, everyone apparently had to travel to the traditional city of their ancestors. That requirement explains why there was no room at the inn for Joseph and Mary. All the descendants of David had descended at once on tiny Bethlehem: a whole town full of frustrated heirs to the throne of Israel. So while all the folk who thought they were hot stuff slept snugly in their clean beds, the holy parents went to the barn and laid their new son in the feeding trough for the donkeys. Be a manger. Ask Emmanuel to come to you.