tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721262113679107422024-03-13T19:06:23.183-07:00Annandale and other mattersThe Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-10781934768991155012019-12-01T19:32:00.004-08:002019-12-01T19:32:49.761-08:00"Not sticks, but arrows"--a Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent<br />
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
(Preached December 1, 2019, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, La Porte, Indiana)</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">+In
the Name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God, Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. Amen.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 0; text-indent: 0.5in; widows: 0;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As we begin our
second Advent season together, it seems to me natural to think about
the cycles of the year that bring us back to this point. Indeed, I
believe we tend to do so at <i>all</i> the different forms of new
year—here at Advent, at the civil New Year in January, at the
beginning of a new school year, at our birthdays and anniversaries.
All of these days, though more or less arbitrary in themselves,
encourage us not only to think back and to look forward, but also to
reflect on how the revolving year has brought us back around to the
same place again. Back in the 60s, we had a Joni Mitchell song—one
which seems to have been covered by nearly everybody else who could
get to a microphone—on this very subject. The title of it is “The
Circle Game,” and the chorus, which has one of those tunes that
gets stuck in your head very easily, goes like this:</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.51in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
the seasons they go round and round</span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
the painted ponies go up and down</span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We're
captive on the carousel of time.</span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">We
can't return--we can only look</span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Behind
from where we came,</span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
go round and round and round</span></span></span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In
the circle game.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It’s
not great poetry, I suppose, but people </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">are</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
still recording it. The thing is, though, even though Advent </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">as
a season</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
is capable of giving us exactly this feeling about the “carousel of
time,” the actual </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">content</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of Advent is precisely the opposite. Advent is our regularly
recurring, seasonally cycling, reminder that time is not </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">in
fact</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
cyclical, that history does </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">not</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
recur, but rather </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">is</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
headed toward something—that it was headed to the birth, death and
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the first instance, and
that it is </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">even
now</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
headed toward the great Day of the Lord and the recreation of the
universe as the visible kingdom of God. As you may remember, the
traditional themes of sermons for Advent were the Four Last
Things—death, judgment, heaven and hell—and those are not exactly
the set of ideas, it seems to me, that would lead us to think about
time as just running pointlessly around in a big circle.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.51in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">This
idea that history is going somewhere, that it is moving toward a
purpose, is one of the common elements of Judaism and Christianity
and Islam, and so it is to some degree baked into the way that our
Western world looks at things. Other world cultures have had other
ideas. The great religions of India, to take just one contrasting
example, start from an assumption that time itself </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">does</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
keep recurring in vast cycles, and that individuals are reincarnated
even </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">within</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
each cycle. In one sense, the great impulse of some sorts of Hinduism
and of Buddhism is to find a way out of that cycle of rebirth. For
some schools of Hinduism like the one which produced the Hare Krishna
movement, those folks we used to see in airports, the way out is to
realize that the soul is one with god. If that is true, the theory
goes, then the soul in the body is like a driver in a car. Thus the
</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">soul</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
shouldn’t allow itself to be influenced by things that happen to
the </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">body</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
any more than a driver would limp because of a flat on her car.
Buddhism, on the other hand, takes almost the opposite way out,
saying that the self is only a passing phenomenon, like a whirlpool
in a river, and that the way out of the cycles of time is to stop
clinging to things and people in the world as if the self had a
substantial existence.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.51in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Obviously,
I am just sketching these other religions or philosophies in broad
and general strokes: but even in these generalities, we see the
radical difference from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim idea that
there is a transcendent Creator, outside all things and above all
being, who brings the universe into existence </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">with
a goal in mind</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
Indeed, more than that, these three religions of Abraham say that God
creates the world with no </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">lesser</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
goal in mind than God himself. And I want to say a bit more just
about that—about God as the goal of creation—but I need to back
up a bit to a different theological question to get there.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.51in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">One
of the things that Jewish and Christian and Muslim thinkers spent a
lot of time on in the Middle Ages (and today as well, for that
matter) was the question of how God knows things. The Greeks and
Romans had thought of their deities watching the events of human
history as those events unfolded, like someone watching from a
distance—through a telescope, they might have said, if they had had
such things. But that sort of direct observation wouldn’t really
work for the God of Abraham, who claims, after all, to know the
future just as much as he knows the present and the past. After
several further stages of development that we don’t need to get
into, the 13</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><sup><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">th</span></span></sup></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides taught that observation
just isn’t a good analogy for God’s knowledge at all, because God
knows the world as its creator before there even </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">is</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
something to be observed, the way a builder knows a house before it’s
built, or a painter knows a painting before it’s painted. Following
up on Maimonides, the Christian theologian St. Thomas Aquinas went on
to say that </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">even</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
the analogy of God as an artistic creator </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">still</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
had a weakness.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.51in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Aquinas
pointed out that the most important thing we want to say about God is
that God is, even as the Holy Trinity, absolutely, transcendently,
</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">one</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
And, Aquinas went on, the more we stress God’s absolute simplicity,
God’s perfect unity, the harder it is to say that God can really
know anything but God’s own absolutely simple self. Philosophers
and theologians had reached that conclusion before, but no one had
ever been able to connect </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">that</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
line of reasoning with any of the arguments about God’s knowledge
of the created world. Aquinas, though, makes a breakthrough. If, he
says, God knows everything there is to know about God, then, among
other things, God knows every single way in which God can be known
and loved and worshipped by a creature. God knows all the ways that
creatures might come to find their ultimate fulfillment in him. And
God knows all of these various ways separately and in perfect
detail—not just how archangels in general </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">might</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
come to know God, but how </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Michael’s</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
experience of God would be different from </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Gabriel’s</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
experience. And so, Aquinas says, knowing all the ways in which
creatures </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">could</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
come to the knowledge and love of God, God creates some, or possibly
all, of those creatures. Out of his own simple self-knowledge, God
creates a universe of creatures which have the </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">ability</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
each following its own individual path, to finally be gathered in
worship around his throne of glory in heaven.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.51in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">What
that means in terms of Advent and the cycles of time is that history
is not </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">just</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
headed toward something. It’s not just that the Universe somehow
</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">happens</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
to be aimed at God, but rather that this exact Universe </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">is</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
created precisely because it </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">is</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">capable</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
of being aimed at God. God chooses to create </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">this</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
Universe, and us in it, specifically because this Universe is, </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
we are</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
capable of knowing and loving God, in all of its, </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">and
of our</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">,
myriad ways. </span></span></span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.51in; widows: 2;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
when </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">we</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
turned away from God, and marred the Universe itself by our
disobedience, God did not simply reset the creation to its original
conditions, but rather became incarnate as one of us. God took our
nature up into the mysterious interior life of the Trinity, so that,
having forfeited the ability to reach our </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">natural</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
goal on our own, we are brought to a </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">higher</span></i></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
goal in Christ. As I have said here before, Aquinas teaches that we
are sticks by nature but that in Christ we become arrows, aimed at
the golden dot in a target we could never have dreamed of reaching on
our own.</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0.51in; widows: 2;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Jesus
Christ is, as the Book of Revelation says, the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end; and in him and through him, by the power
of the Holy Spirit, and the eternal will of the Father, we alone of
all creatures share in the knowledge and love and life of the Blessed
Trinity. Through all the cycling years, this, and nothing less, is
the goal of history and the purpose of the Universe. Amen.</span></span></span></div>
<br /><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
--John Wm. Houghton</div>
The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-21532028589637609682019-01-29T11:25:00.001-08:002019-01-29T11:25:13.124-08:00Revised and Expanded!<div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmDQiipckgBlx7p6GkzuVvX6AjjPPxmrctMdlW5e2gR76tn14Vsk-vAK59_a-7ZOxI3W1PG_p5aUpNu3oqck6LNBxl7qWWNnHP6vp0ZDQ7G7t7x72dzW_Qd6bK7PAs-YB-ZTGnREUsk0uv/s1600/Falconry+v.+6b-1+small.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1548" data-original-width="970" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmDQiipckgBlx7p6GkzuVvX6AjjPPxmrctMdlW5e2gR76tn14Vsk-vAK59_a-7ZOxI3W1PG_p5aUpNu3oqck6LNBxl7qWWNnHP6vp0ZDQ7G7t7x72dzW_Qd6bK7PAs-YB-ZTGnREUsk0uv/s320/Falconry+v.+6b-1+small.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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One of my projects for retirement has been, or, rather, is, to revise my earlier writing and bring it out in digital editions. Publishing the novella <i>Fortunate Empire</i>, in the summer of 2017, was my attempt to learn the process; today, I'm happy to make available a Kindle version of <i>Falconry and Other Poems--</i>expanded from the original paperback with more poems, though I did leave out the handsome black and white photos from my John Burroughs School colleague William Ames Bascom, as I wasn't sure how well the digital version would display them. Here it is: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N7C8BB4">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07N7C8BB4</a>.The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-65413638834475482542018-06-10T18:55:00.001-07:002018-06-24T11:54:42.988-07:00Bear and BunnyMy Baccalaureate Address to the Hill School Class of 2018:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bear and Bunny<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If the adults in your life are like mine were—and
I suspect that in this matter most parents or guardians are quite similar—you
will someday find that they have kept stuck in a box someplace or on a shelf at
the back of a closet somewhere any number of relics from by-then-forgotten episodes
of your childhood. And when I say forgotten episodes, I mean forgotten by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i>: for your parents will surely have
remembered them, even without looking back at the objects they’ve so carefully
preserved. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So, as I say, at some point you will find these
things. It might be anything, from baby shoes to your first tooth to a blue
ribbon from a first grade science fair. One guy I knew in St. Louis kept his
sons’ tonsils in a glass jar in a kitchen cupboard, but I assume he was a
statistical outlier. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As you will have inferred, I am speaking from
experience here. Indeed, I am speaking in a certain sense from triple
experience, since I inherited one of these treasure troves from my grandmother
and one from a doting great-aunt as well as the expected pile of things from my
parents. But it’s that last collection, my parents’ own archive, that I have
particularly in mind this morning: and especially out of that collection I have
been thinking about these two carefully preserved relics from the Eisenhower
administration. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">[[Here, I produced two stuffed animals from my childhood:]]</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> I was apparently not a wildly creative child, at least in the
early stages, and these two rediscovered old friends are simply named “Bear”
and “Bunny.” I’ve brought them along because I want to talk about friendship,
and particularly about friendships of our youth, friendships that, like Bear
and Bunny, we may even lose track of for years at a time. I want to talk about
these friendships particularly this morning because, while my parents could
stuff these imaginary companions away in a box for me to discover later, no one
can save our real relationships for us, no one can wrap them up in tissue paper
until we want them later. That’s work we have to do for ourselves; it’s one of
the first challenges of this process of adulting that you all are about to
begin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I have a psychologist friend—someone whom I’ve actually
known since high school—who argues that for various technical psychological
reasons the friends we make in our youth—our “first friends,” as he calls
them—are qualitatively different from the friends we acquire later in life. And
this is all the more the case when we make these friends in the relatively
enclosed atmosphere of a boarding school, where our experiences are just that
much more intense, sometimes by accident and sometimes by design. People who
study these things say that sharing intense experiences—like battle or boot
camp—produces a relationship they call “camaraderie.” Camaraderie doesn’t
necessarily overlap with friendship: one article I read recently described the
camaraderie between black marines and another member of their platoon who
brought his Ku Klux Klan robes with him to basic training. But when camaraderie
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does</i> coincide with friendship, and
particularly when it overlaps with the uniquely powerful form of “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">first</i> friendship,” it forms personal
bonds that can seem incomprehensible to people who haven’t had the experience
themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">School people have been saying this sort of thing
for centuries, of course: here at The Hill, we talk, with a certain degree of
exaggeration, about “ties that will never sever,” but I bet that a little bit
of research at almost any other school would turn up something of the same
sort. All these sentimental things are clichés, of course, but sometimes things
are clichés precisely because they reflect deep-seated realities, inescapable
workings of our minds and our hearts. I’m not saying, of course, that each of
you has been, or will be, best friends with everyone else sitting in this room:
schoolboy enemies are also a cliché, after all, and probably an equally valid
one. There are, I admit, people I didn’t like fifty years ago at Culver that I
probably wouldn’t like if I saw them again this morning as I walked out of the
chapel—but I wish it weren’t so, and I certainly don’t think any of us need to
be encouraged to hold grudges: that happens all too often without any help from
me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I do want to encourage you, though, to hold fast
to these friends that you do see around you. I’m thinking, here, particularly,
about what we might call the middle-term. In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really </i>long term, looking ahead fifty years as I was just looking
back, you won’t have any trouble appreciating the value of these friends you’re
making now, if you <i>do</i> manage to keep them: half a century hence, you may
have trouble <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">recognizing</i> them when
you see them at reunions, but you’ll know very well how important they are to
you, or, in the case of those who will have died, how important they were. Time
will teach that lesson well enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On the other hand, in the really short term, you
don’t need encouragement, either—the sentiments of this moment will, generally,
carry you through. A couple of hours from now, with your clothes dripping
pond-water and hearts dripping affection, and not a few eyes dripping tears, you
will be hugging everyone who stands still long enough to fall into your cold
and clammy embraces. [[The new graduates' jumping into the campus pond, called, perversely enough, "The Dell," is the customary conclusion of The Hill's commencement exercises.]] There’s not much need for positive reinforcement there,
either. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the middle range, though, most friendships,
even these first-friendships with their deep and wide-spread roots, will
benefit from some cultivation. The most obvious thing to say about that cultivation
is that you should stay in touch; and that’s fair enough advice, even for you
all, who are perhaps the most well-connected generation since people lived in
villages so small that they thought marrying their second cousin was a wild and
crazy way of bringing new blood into the family. But, honestly, while staying
in touch is good and helpful, it’s not vital. One of the things people most
often comment about their deepest friendships is that when they get back
together again after a long separation, they can pick up their conversations
right where they left off. So, being in touch, while obvious, isn’t absolutely
necessary. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>
necessary, I suspect, is <i>lowered</i> expectations, at least in a practical
sense. I’m putting it that way to be provocative, of course, but I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> want to get at a serious point. One
of my ethics students reminded me last year of a classic distinction between
various kinds of friends: there are useful friends, pleasant friends, and then
finally true friends, friends properly so-called. The fundamental difference
between true friends and the other two kinds is that true friends are friends <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simply for their own sake</i>. That is to
say, when we have<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> useful</i> friends, the
good will between us and them is based on the fact that there is something we
can do for them and something they can do for us: that’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">genuine</i> good will, as far as it goes, but when the underlying
transaction is finished, the friendship tends to fade away. And the same sort
of thing is true with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pleasant</i>
friends, except that the transaction is emotional, not physical or economic: we
can exchange a genuine good will with people when we make each other happy,
but, again, if making each other happy is all there is to it, the friendship
will tend to go away when we stop finding each other clever or cheerful or
attractive or amusing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So when I advise you, for the middle term, to
have low <i>practical </i>expectations of your Hill ties, what I mean is this:
don’t reduce the true friendships you have made here to merely transactional
ones: don’t drag these people you have known so well at such a crucial time in
your lives down to the level of the merely useful and pleasant. That’s not to
say that you may not, over the years, be able to help a friend out in some
useful way—I have rented my house back in Culver to an old school friend on
just a handshake for the last thirteen years, and couldn’t have asked for a
better tenant, while the publisher of my two novels is a friend from both high
school and college (which is the only reason they got published at all). So a
true friendship may at some point turn out <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">also</i>
to be useful: but if you<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> expect</i> it to
be, you’re very much liable to reduce it to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mere</i>
usefulness, and then to lose it when that moment of usefulness passes. And the
same is true, of course, with respect to pleasure: true friends often entertain
us and make us happy to be around them, but if we try to make the interchange
of pleasure the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">basis</i> of friendship,
we risk losing—indeed, we almost certainly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will</i>
lose—the true friendship that not only entertains us but also consoles us in
our grief, celebrates our joys, and stands silently with us when we can’t bear
anything other than the mere presence of another. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So, don’t expect utility, and don’t demand
pleasure, from these first friendships that you have formed: welcome those things
when you happen to get them over the decades, but don’t mistake them for the
higher values of your unseverable ties. The goodwill between true friends is
based, not on usefulness nor on pleasure, but on an appreciation for what is
permanently, ultimately, good in each other: that’s what makes these
friendships enduring. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now, I have to consider at least one possible
objection to what I’ve been saying: or, rather, an objection to my having said
it. After my talk to the whole school earlier this spring on Lorenzo the
Magnificent, someone got in touch with me to say that the talk was all right,
but that I surely should have spent at least <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">some</i> of my time talking about the life of the mind. My
correspondent argued that as someone with a decent education and an active
career as a scholar, speaking, after all, in a school, I had missed a chance to
commend the intellectual life to our community, ignoring the opportunity to
remind us all of our place in an academic tradition that runs all the way back
to Socrates meeting with his students in the Athenian grove of Academe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And I suppose these remarks this morning are
subject to that same criticism, that I have been talking too much about
friendship and not enough about wisdom. Though, in my defense, I could quote
Cicero, who wrote in his dialogue “On Friendship” that friendship is the second
most important thing after Wisdom itself. He said: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 45.0pt; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">For friendship is nothing else than an accord in
all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection, and
I am inclined to think that, with the exception of wisdom, no better thing has
been given to humanity by the immortal gods.<a href="file:///C:/Users/jhoughton/iCloudDrive/Last%20talk/Bear%20and%20Bunny.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And,
in fact, Cicero goes on to clarify that even wisdom is not better than
friendship in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">some vague and general way</i>:
rather, wisdom is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">specifically</i>
better, precisely because we need wisdom to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">manage</i>
friendship. Obviously, <i>evil</i> people can, and often do, take advantage of
their friends, but even good people will sometimes, with the best of
intentions, ask friends things with which the friends ought not to agree. For
example, in Robert Bolt’s play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Man for
All Seasons</i>, set in the time of King Henry the Eighth, the Duke of Norfolk
tries to convince the central character, the famously wise Sir Thomas More, to
sign a document approving of King Henry’s divorce and remarriage. Norfolk says,
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don't know if the marriage was lawful or not . .
. but damn it, Thomas, look at these names. Why can't you do as I did and come
with us for fellowship? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-right: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To which More replies: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for
doing your conscience. . . and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you
come with me, for fellowship?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Fellowship,
or friendship, Bolt tells us, is no reason to disobey conscience, which is the
moral aspect of wisdom: Like Cicero, Bolt says that it is the job of wisdom to
restrain us when goodwill might otherwise drive us to folly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So, yes, certainly, by all means, embrace the
life of the mind, whether as scholars or simply as educated, curious, and
humane citizens of your several nations and of the ever-more-closely tied
together world. As the fourth chapter of the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew
Bible says, personifying Wisdom as God’s female agent in Creation:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #010000; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">7. Get wisdom,</span><span style="color: #010000; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
<span style="background: white;"> and whatever else you get, get
insight. </span><br />
<span style="background: white;">8. Prize her highly, and she will
exalt you;</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"> she will honor you if you
embrace her. </span><br />
<span style="background: white;">9. She will place on your head a fair garland;</span><br />
<span style="background: white;"> she will bestow on you a
beautiful crown.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Or,
as our reading from the <i>Gita</i> this morning said, “Understand that which
is to be known by respecting the wise and by asking proper questions”; or,
again, as St. Paul put it, direct your minds toward whatsoever things are true,
honorable, just, pure, pleasing, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But as you live out those rich, true, excellent intellectual
lives, remember, too, this piece of advice from the sixth chapter of the
apocryphal book of the Bible called Ecclesiasticus, also known as “The Wisdom
of Sirach”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">14. Faithful friends are a sturdy shelter:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>whoever
finds one has found a treasure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">15. Faithful friends are beyond price;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>no
amount can balance their worth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">16. Faithful friends are life-saving medicine;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and
those who fear the Lord will find them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
people sitting here with you today, I would suggest, are a shelter you already
inhabit, a treasure you have already found, a medicine you have stored up
against future need. The challenge is to keep them until, fifty years or more
from now, you come back here, as worn and unrecognizable as Bear and Bunny, and
sit down, perhaps even in these very pews, to be astonished all over again by
the ties that bind you to these comrades and first friends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">---The Very Rev. John Wm.
Houghton, Ph.D.,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dean of the Alumni Chapel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
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<br />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///C:/Users/jhoughton/iCloudDrive/Last%20talk/Bear%20and%20Bunny.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“</span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=est&la=la&can=est1&prior=iungeretur" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">est</span></a><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=enim&la=la&can=enim0&prior=est" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">enim</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=amicitia&la=la&can=amicitia0&prior=enim" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">amicitia</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=nihil&la=la&can=nihil0&prior=amicitia" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">nihil</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=aliud&la=la&can=aliud0&prior=nihil" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">aliud</span></a><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0040%3Asection%3D20#note1"></a><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=nisi&la=la&can=nisi0&prior=aliud" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">nisi</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=omnium&la=la&can=omnium0&prior=nisi" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">omnium</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=divinarum&la=la&can=divinarum0&prior=omnium" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">divinarum</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=humanarumque&la=la&can=humanarumque0&prior=divinarum" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">humanarumque</span></a><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=rerum&la=la&can=rerum0&prior=humanarumque" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">rerum</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=cum&la=la&can=cum0&prior=rerum" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">cum</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=benevolentia&la=la&can=benevolentia0&prior=cum" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">benevolentia</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=et&la=la&can=et1&prior=benevolentia" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">et</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=caritate&la=la&can=caritate0&prior=et" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">caritate</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=consensio&la=la&can=consensio0&prior=caritate" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">consensio</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">, </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=qua&la=la&can=qua0&prior=consensio" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">qua</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=quidem&la=la&can=quidem0&prior=qua" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">quidem</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=haud&la=la&can=haud0&prior=quidem" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">haud</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=scio&la=la&can=scio0&prior=haud" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">scio</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=an&la=la&can=an0&prior=scio" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">an</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=excepta&la=la&can=excepta0&prior=an" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">except</span></a><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sapientia&la=la&can=sapientia0&prior=excepta" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">sapientia</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=nil&la=la&can=nil0&prior=sapientia" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">nil</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=quicquam&la=la&can=quicquam0&prior=nil" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">quicquam</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=melius&la=la&can=melius0&prior=quicquam" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">melius</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=homini&la=la&can=homini0&prior=melius" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">homini</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=sit&la=la&can=sit1&prior=homini" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">sit</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=a&la=la&can=a0&prior=sit" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">a</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=dis&la=la&can=dis0&prior=a" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">dis</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=immortalibus&la=la&can=immortalibus0&prior=dis" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">immortalibus</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=datum&la=la&can=datum0&prior=immortalibus" target="morph"><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; text-decoration: none;">datum</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">” (<i>de Amicitia</i> 6.20)</span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<br />The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-81735599250823190812018-06-10T18:30:00.000-07:002018-06-10T19:08:37.915-07:00Be Like LarryMy final regular school year Chapel Talk at The Hill School:<br />
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 18.0pt;">Be Like Larry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
suppose you’ll all remember that we had my official gushy sentimental good-bye
Chapel Talk back in November, on Founders’ Day, when Ms. Lim directed that huge
ensemble of singers and instrumentalists in a performance of “A Hill Anthem.” I
listened to the piece again with pleasure the other day on YouTube (</span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6fH5M44uHY&t=53s" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6fH5M44uHY&t=53s </a>)</span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">: Preparing
it was, I know, a huge amount of work, and I’m still grateful to all of the
participants for doing it. </span><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
then, since all the mushy getting-ready-to-leave stuff is already out of the
way, at this point I can do an everyday chapel talk, perhaps with extra added
advice. In thinking about that everyday task, and about certain <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everyday requests</i> for a shout-out, I
eventually came to the conclusion that I basically had my choice of two
Italians to discuss this morning. One would be my advisee, your President, and
the other would be Lorenzo de’ Medici, a Renaissance ruler of Florence who died
back in 1492, 526 years ago yesterday. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Naturally,
I decided to go with the dead guy. So, since Lorenzo is the Italian form of
“Lawrence,” the title of my talk is “Be like Larry”—and I do want to be clear
that that’s not the same, God forbid, as “Be like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i> Larry.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now,
when I say “be like Larry,” I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">also</i> have
to be clear to begin with that Lorenzo de’ Medici had a lot of characteristics
that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no-one</i> would want you to copy.
Being a ruler in Renaissance Italy wasn’t a whole lot less brutal than being a
ruler in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Game of Thrones</i> (for
instance, Machiavelli dedicated his famous book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Prince</i> to Lorenzo’s grandson) and perhaps one of the nicest
things you could say about Lorenzo was that he wasn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">always</i> all that good at it. At one point, he managed to get the
whole Republic of Florence excommunicated by the Pope, and he nearly caused the
collapse of his family’s banking empire—though, on the other hand, as Wikipedia
points out, he eventually got <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not only </i>one
of his sons <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">but also</i> a nephew elected
to be Pope, and he did maintain the balance of power in Italy under a treaty
that kept peace for his lifetime. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
after you take note of all of his negative qualities—and I haven’t even mentioned
that in an age that idealized beauty he was also short and unattractive and
badly needed a nose job—even after you take note of all those, there is still a
lot to be said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for</i> Lorenzo. One of
the reasons that the family banks got into trouble, apparently, was that he and
his family gave away and paid in taxes for arts and civic projects in Florence 663,000
florins—almost half a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">billion</i> dollars
in current money. He founded what is still one of the world’s greatest
libraries, with an invaluable collection of ancient manuscripts; he helped
Leonardo da Vinci get the job that resulted in the painting of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Last Supper</i>, and Michelangelo was
his house guest for five solid years. He himself was one of the great poets of
his generation, writing in both Italian and Latin. In brief, he was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">literally</i> the kind of person they had in
mind when they came up with the phrase “Renaissance Man.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
be like Lorenzo. If you happen to have a chance to found a library, take it: if
you’re lucky enough to be able to give half-a-billion dollars to charity—and
some of you may—then do it. Write great poetry, if you can: encourage the next
Michelangelo, if you have the opportunity. All of those are worth doing, and indeed
they are worth doing even on a small scale, if you can’t afford a grand one: giving
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one</i> book to a library is still a good
thing, and there are literally charities out there that do good work by getting
half-a-dollar at a time, not half-a-billion. But: what I really want to push
you toward isn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">just</i> recreating those
virtuous details of Lorenzo’s life, whether large scale <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">or</i> small. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
fact, what I actually want to hold out to you is not specifically anything
about Lorenzo’s life, though that life clearly had something to do with it, but
rather his nickname. Rulers attract all sorts of nicknames, of course, many of
them less than complimentary. Lorenzo’s own father, for instance, has gone down
in history with the medical epithet “Peter the Gouty,” while Lorenzo’s son, who
succeeded him, was called “Peter the Unfortunate.” There was a King of France
called “Louis the do-nothing,” and there was even an eighth-century Byzantine
Emperor known as “Constantine the Poopy-christened,” because of an unfortunate
accident during his infant baptism. So historical nicknames can be a little bit
mean. The people of Florence, though, were looking to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">compliment</i> Lorenzo when they gave <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">him</i> an epithet, and so, apparently even during his lifetime, he was
known as “Lorenzo il Magnifico,” Lorenzo the Magnificent. So this is what I
mean when I say “be like Larry”: be magnificent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Be magnificent</span></i><span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">. Literally, the word “magnificent”
means “doing great things,” and as I’ve said, if you have the opportunity to do
great things on a scale that will benefit human civilization, as some of you in
years to come may very well have, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>then
by all means do them. But the first great thing to which I want to urge you is
closer to hand: the first step in personal magnificence, if I can put it that
way, is something Damian mentioned in his excellent chapel talk last Friday.
That first step is to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">uncompromisingly
yourself</i>, to be the very best version of yourself that you can be, and
nothing less than that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
expand a little bit on what Damian said, this business of just being ourselves
is a deep philosophical issue. When the ancient Greek philosophers talked about
how something could become evil, they decided that an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">increase</i> of evil was a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loss</i>
of being, a kind of fading away, becoming more and more of a shadow rather than
a really existing thing. (If you’re a Tolkien fan, by the way, that’s why the
One Ring makes its wearer invisible: the Ring is infectiously evil, and it
draws the wearer toward nothingness.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Medieval
philosophers, though, took that ancient idea a step further and said, well, but
wait a minute, a thing can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> be a
good example of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whatever it is</i>. A
good candy bar is good specifically <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as
candy</i>, and the candy bar is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bad</i>
when it fails to measure up to the standard for that particular treat: and
since the only possible standard for each one of us is to be our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">self</i>, we turn toward evil whenever we
give up the effort to be precisely and authentically who we really are, when we
settle for being something other, or less, than our true selves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To
come at the same point about authenticity from another direction: on the
gateway into the Oracle at Delphi (the place where ancient Greeks went to hear
prophecies of the future), instead of posting a message about understanding the
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oracle</i>, the Greeks put the
inscription “Gnothi Seauton,” which means “know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yourself</i>.” Their point was that if we don’t know ourselves, even a
message from the gods won’t be able to help us. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
a lifetime’s work to know ourselves, but unless we do, we can’t make sense of
anything else, and as we come to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know</i>
the authentic self, it more and more lays a claim, even a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demand</i>, on us. To the degree that we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know </i>our authentic self, we’re lying to ourselves and others if we
don’t also try to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be</i> it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
then, my first step toward personal magnificence is to find your authentic self
and then be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that person</i>, in spite of
everything. My second step is to be generous. Partly, I do mean being generous
with money, like Lorenzo and his family’s half-billion bucks. I wrote a whole
chapel talk on this subject of giving away money three years ago, so I am not
going to repeat it all now, other than to encourage you to do what you can,
even if it is small. Form a habit of giving away a percentage of your income now,
and it will last you a lifetime. Round up the total when you give a tip: it
will almost certainly mean more to your server than it does to you. Don’t tie
yourself in knots about giving money to beggars and homeless people; give and
don’t worry about it. C. S. Lewis once gave some cash to a beggar in Oxford,
and as they went on, the person Lewis was walking with said, “Jack, that man is
just going to spend that money on drinking.” “Strange,” Lewis said, “that’s
just what I was going to do with it.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Being
generous with money is a virtue. But the real generosity I am thinking of, the
generosity that helps to begin to constitute personal magnificence, goes beyond
the financial. Beyond being generous with money, we need to be generous with
other people, generous both in our judgment <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">of
</i>them and in our presence <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with</i>
them. At the very minimum, in matters of judgment we can be generous enough to give
other people the benefit of the doubt. We can start by assuming that their
lives and their motives and their consciences are just as complicated and
conflicted as our own. When we wonder why <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">other</i>
people act so unreasonably, we can do well to remember how much of our own
inner life doesn’t even make sense to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">us </i>ourselves,
and thus realize that it certainly wouldn’t do so to others. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
when I talk about being generous in our presence with others, I certainly don’t
want to risk my lifetime membership in the International Association of
Introverts. I am not even remotely interested in saying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how much</i> time we need to spend with others. But I do want to argue
that when we do engage with others, we owe it to them to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fully</i> engaged, in whatever our role may
be. Different occasions and different relationships call for different sorts of
presence, obviously: but I can’t stand at the altar and say Mass and be
thinking about my grocery shopping instead of the congregation; or, to take another
example, all of us know, whether we live up to it or not, that we get the most
out of classes in which we are actively engaged, not simply passively present.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
then, my first two steps are to be authentic and to be generous. These kinds of
lists can go on and on, of course, but I mean to stop at<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> three</i> steps toward personal magnificence, and my third one is
this: be true. I don’t particularly mean “true” in the logical sense, as when
we say a statement is true because it corresponds with reality. The English
word “true” didn’t develop that logical meaning until as recently as the
thirteenth century: before that, “true” meant something about the person who
was speaking, rather than about what they were saying. In English, originally,
a statement was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">true</i> because it came
from someone whom you could <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">trust</i>,
which is in fact a different form of the same word. What I am saying, then, is,
be someone whom others can trust. Keep your word<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> to </i>them, keep their secrets <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for</i>
them, and be loyal. Here at The Hill and out in the world, show people that
there is, back of each, the strength of all: now and for the rest of your lives,
do what you can to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">create</i> the ties
that will never sever. That’s not to say that you won’t be betrayed, sometimes:
indeed, most of us are, at one point or another, and it always hurts. But
that’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">still</i> better than being the
other guy, the one who can’t be trusted in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So,
then, finally, here’s my completely unsentimental bottom line: You are people
of amazing talent and outstanding opportunity. Indeed, except for pure
political authority and piles of actual gold, all of you have more power at
your fingertips than any Renaissance prince, Lorenzo de’ Medici included. You
can travel farther in a day than he did in a lifetime, you have more
information in your pocket than he could have had in a thousand libraries, and
you, unlike him, will probably not die, of some undiagnosed intestinal ailment,
at the age of 43. So I am not being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">completely</i>
rhetorical if I challenge you to be magnificent: Our everyday world is, after
all, shot through with a magnificence Lorenzo could not have imagined. But I am
even<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> further</i> from being rhetorical
when I offer these three things as first steps for the rich lives that I know lie
ahead of you: be authentic, be generous, and be true. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">---The Very Rev. John Wm Houghton, Ph.D.,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dean of the Alumni Chapel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-51185268152413220042018-01-14T18:52:00.000-08:002018-01-14T18:52:03.735-08:00I had the honor of speaking this afternoon at the annual Pottstown Celebration of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Hill has typically hosted this event every other year, but always in the Center for the Arts. This was the first time we have held the service in the Alumni Chapel.<br />
<br />
Here's what I said:<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My parents always remembered
clearly where they had been when they heard the news from Warm Springs,
Georgia, on April 12, 1945, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died. And like
most people my own age, I remember where I was—in my fifth-grade teacher’s
classroom—when we learned that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. I
don’t, however, remember where I was on Thursday night, April 4<sup>th</sup>, 1968;
it was a school night, so at a few minutes after seven I was probably at home,
and I suppose we would have heard of Dr. King’s death later that evening from
Walter Cronkite, as we were not a Huntley-Brinkley family. Nor do I remember
hearing Bobby Kennedy’s speech about Dr. King’s death, delivered that night in
our own state capital of Indianapolis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I do, however,
remember going to school the next morning, Friday, at Culver Military Academy,
the excellent private school in my home town, and discovering that Mr. Gordon
Hough, our freshman English teacher, was <i>still</i>
so shattered by the loss that he couldn’t pull himself together to do anything,
but just sat there on his desk, and quietly sent us away. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had a colleague
once, though, who impressed me with a different memory of that week. He had
been a choirboy at the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul—the National
Cathedral, in Washington, D.C.—and he remembered hearing Dr. King’s last
sermon, delivered there on Sunday, March 31. The sermon was entitled,
“Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," and Dr. King took as his
text, from the 16<sup>th</sup> Chapter of the Book of Revelation, <span style="background: white;">"Behold I make all things new; former
things are passed away." This was the sermon which Dr. King closed with
the words that are now inscribed on his memorial in Washington, his declaration
that “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the
stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling
discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">At the center of the sermon, it seems to me, at the heart of
it, Dr. King talks about why he happened to be in Washington that Sunday in the
first place. He was, of course, happy to preach in the great Cathedral: but Washington
was very much on his mind at the time because, ever since the previous fall, he
had been devoting his energies, and those of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, to a major new project scheduled to begin in the spring of 1968. He
called it the Poor People’s Campaign. If
you will allow me a rather long quotation, this is what he said to the
cathedral congregation on that last Sunday morning of this life,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In a
few weeks some of us are coming to Washington to see if the will is still alive
or if it is alive in this nation. We are coming to Washington in a Poor
People’s Campaign. Yes, we are going to bring the tired, the poor, the huddled
masses. We are going to bring those who have known long years of hurt and
neglect. We are going to bring those who have come to feel that life is a long
and desolate corridor with no exit signs. We are going to bring children and
adults and old people, people who have never seen a doctor or a dentist in
their lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">We are
not coming to engage in any histrionic gesture. We are not coming to tear up
Washington. We are coming to demand that the government address itself to the
problem of poverty. We read one day, "We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,
and the pursuit of Happiness." But if a man doesn’t have a job or an
income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of
happiness. He merely exists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">We are
coming to ask America to be true to the huge promissory note that it signed
years ago. And we are coming to engage in dramatic nonviolent action, to call
attention to the gulf between promise and fulfillment; to make the invisible
visible.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Why do
we do it this way? We do it this way because it is our experience that the
nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for
black people until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct
action. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Many of Dr. King’s
friends and allies in 1968 thought the Poor People’s Campaign was a mistake, that he was
losing his focus. Desegregation, voting rights, fair jury trials and similar
issues had been Dr. King’s specialty and the main thrust of the SCLC; but on
April 4, 1967, King had, in another powerful sermon at the equally famous
Riverside Church in New York City, come out against the war in Vietnam, finding
a connection between the Civil Rights movement and the Peace Movement that many
other people just did not see. So when he began adding poverty to the mix in
the fall of 1967, as the idea of the Poor People’s Campaign began to grow, people told
him that he was dividing his energies among three causes, and thereby weakening
his support of all of them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dr. King was
convinced, though, that these three causes were deeply and intrinsically
related. Indeed, the National Cathedral sermon not only talks about the Poor People’s Campaign but also firmly denounces
the war in closely related terms, saying “It has strengthened the
military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our
nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the
Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime
that is stacked against the poor.” And, in searing language that could have
been written yesterday as easily as fifty years ago, he condemned racism that
day as strongly as he ever had: again, quoting--<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We are challenged to eradicate the
last vestiges of racial injustice from our nation. I must say this morning that
racial injustice is still the black man’s burden and the white man’s shame.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It is an unhappy truth that racism
is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans, spoken and unspoken,
acknowledged and denied, subtle and sometimes not so subtle—the disease of racism
permeates and poisons a whole body politic. And I can see nothing more urgent
than for America to work passionately and unrelentingly—to get rid of the
disease of racism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 8.0pt; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Something positive must be done.
Everyone must share in the guilt as individuals and as institutions. The
government must certainly share the guilt; individuals must share the guilt;
even the church must share the guilt. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">So, then, whatever
</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">others </i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">may have thought, Dr. King on
that last Sunday certainly felt that poverty and peace and racism were all
parts of the same puzzle, all parts of the same fundamental challenge to
America and indeed to the world.</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-right: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dr. King argues
that poverty is a violation of human rights by appealing to the grand language
of Mr. Jefferson’s declaration, that sweeping assertion of self-evident truths
about unalienable rights that belong to individuals not as principles of
government but as gifts of their Creator: “<span style="background: white;">if a man doesn’t have a job or an income,” King says, “he has neither
life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely
exists.” And, as far as it goes, Dr. King’s interpretation is perfectly sound.
But it does seem to me that he is ignoring another part of Mr. Jefferson’s
thought, a part of Jefferson’s thought that shaped America far more profoundly
than the soaring language of the Declaration—which is, after all, just a
declaration and not the constitution or a law. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-right: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">As the great American historian Edmund S. Morgan pointed out
in his ground-breaking book <i>American
Slavery, American Freedom</i>, back in 1975, Jefferson was, like so many of the
Founding Fathers, a great student of ancient Rome, and the message, above all
messages, that they took from that study was that Rome fell into tyranny
because of the political power of the common people, the political power of the
huge mob of Romans who had to be kept satisfied with bribes of cheap food and
free entertainment—with bread and circuses, as the Romans would have said.
Jefferson, Adams, Madison—the whole pack of them thought that poor people are, <i>by their very nature</i>, the enemies of the
state, and they quite literally and specifically designed America to <i>deny</i> power to the poor. America is a
republic, not a democracy, founded from the beginning on a <i>deep fear</i> of the poor and on an absolute <i>terror</i> of the enslaved—and all of this nation’s <i>undemocratic</i> features, and the cultural
attitudes that result from them, are fundamental parts of the original plan to
keep those groups in their place. Dr. King’s expansive reading of the
declaration may make sense to <i>us</i>, but
Jefferson would have rejected with horror the implication that the <i>government</i> should do something about
poverty. Once a nation starts giving bread to its poor people, the Founding
Fathers would have told us, the end is near.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-right: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">So part of what I am saying is that Dr. King’s struggle
continues today, fifty years later, because it is a struggle against ideas and
attitudes that are <i>more</i> American than
apple pie. I heard on the radio on Friday evening the honorable governor of
Utah talking about imposing a work requirement for various sorts of poor
relief, because people shouldn’t be “on the dole”—if you just take handouts, he
said, you lose your self-respect. But this is nonsense. I stand here this
afternoon with degrees from some of the best universities in this country,
including both Harvard and Yale, and someplace in my attic I have the receipts
to prove that whatever work I did to help pay for that education, and whatever
loans I took out, were only <i>teaspoons in
the ocean</i> compared to what it actually cost. And I don’t feel that all
those scholarships reduced my self-respect. Not do I feel my self-respect
slipping away when I drive on a free interstate highway or visit a free
national park. And after shelling out a chunk of change for medical deductibles
this week, I am <i>certainly</i> not going
to lose any self-respect when I sign up for Medicare next June, assuming it’s
still around by then. Nor, I think, do any major corporations lose self-respect
when they line up for tax breaks and handouts at the public trough. What people
like the honorable Governor really mean, though they may not even realize it
themselves, is that “people <i>who are not
respectable in the first place</i> lose self-respect if you give them free
help.” And that’s what Jefferson would <i>want</i>
the governor to think, because <i>if</i> we
think like that we are less likely to <i>give</i>
those people the help, the bread and circuses, that will, in the opinion of the
Founders, undermine the Republic.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> So, then, part of what I am laying out here is a quibble with
Dr. King about America’s deepest values, as represented by Jefferson and his
colleagues, great men though they were; following Professor Morgan, I think Dr.
King’s reading of their work is entirely too optimistic. But the other part of
what I want to say is that Dr. King is </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">surely,
ultimately</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">, right about the values to which he calls us. And to make that
point, let me go back further in American history than Dr. King did, back
almost another 150 years, back to the ship </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Arbella</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">,
which sailed from England on April 8, 1630, arriving in Massachusetts on June
12. The Puritan passengers of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Arbella</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
and its companion ships were to be the founders of the Massachusetts Bay
colony, and their Governor was John Winthrop, who preached, while they were
still at sea, a sermon called “A Model of Christian Charity.” Presidents and
politicians have often quoted the last lines of this sermon, where Winthrop
applies to his new colony the words Jesus used to refer to the Church, “You
shall be as a city set upon a hill.” But what the Presidents and the
politicians leave out is the reason </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">why</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">:
Winthrop doesn’t think the colonists will attract the attention of the world
just </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">because</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> they have started a new
colony. Not at all: they will attract attention because of the covenant they
have made with themselves and with God. The message of the sermon is that the
colony, like any place else, will certainly end up with both rich people and
poor people: but unlike other places, the rich people of this colony will
remember their covenant and will understand that it is their </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">obligation</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> to help the poor. Winthrop
says “If thy brother be in want and thou canst help him, thou needst not make
doubt of what thou shouldst do; if thou lovest God thou must help him.” Notice
that there is no quibbling here about losing self-respect: Winthrop is brutally
straightforward: “If your brother or sister needs help, and you can help, if
you love God then you must help.” Speaking as he is to a Christian audience,
Winthrop appeals to the idea of the Body of Christ, but as we have heard in
this afternoon’s lessons, he could make equally good arguments from Jewish or
from Muslim principles as well. This new colony, he says, has entered into a
covenant with God, and one element of that covenant is that “We must be willing
to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’
necessities.” What the world will marvel at, in Winthrop’s opinion, is not the
mere fact of a new colony, but the fact of a colony </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">which dares to take seriously </i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">“the counsel of Micah, to do justly,
to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God.” America is not a city set upon a
hill because Jefferson’s and Madison’s republic continues to creak
undemocratically along: rather, it is a city set upon a hill because, and if,
and when, and to the extent that, we see it as the basic covenant of our
society that we are willing to abridge ourselves for the supply of others. If,
fifty years after the death of Dr. King, and fifty years after Bobby Kennedy’s
funeral procession passed through the People’s Campaign’s “Resurrection City”
in Washington, D.C.; if now, at last, in defiance of President Jefferson and
the governor of Utah, we can truly become a nation that, as a result of its
fundamental covenant, sees the needy, sees its own immense wealth, and
concludes that its duty is therefore to help the needy, then truly “we shall be
as a city upon a hill, and the eyes of all people will be upon us.”</span><br />
<br />The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-27569663843937333242017-08-08T17:27:00.004-07:002017-08-08T17:31:13.981-07:00One of this summer's projects has been to turn a story I'd always meant to write into an e-book--more of an e-booklet, I suppose, since it's turned out to be a long-ish novella, rather than a novel properly so called. I finished it last night (or early this morning), somewhat surprised to see that html skills I learned back in the 90's still came in handy. So it is now available from Amazon on Kindle: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fortunate-Empire-Leedeu-Worlds-Heart-ebook/dp/B074MQWF7C/">https://www.amazon.com/Fortunate-Empire-Leedeu-Worlds-Heart-ebook/dp/B074MQWF7C/</a> Here's the blurb: "Fortunate the nation that grows by marriage rather than warfare," a proverb says. In an age still new to steam and steel, the fledgling empire of the World's Heart has long overlooked the ancient city of Leedeu, far off to the east on the other side of the globe. The Autarch's decision to dispatch the empire's heir apparent, incognito, to serve as the first official Legate to the city only highlights imperial ignorance of the older culture. Confronted as soon as they leave their ship by a series of seemingly random deaths which local authorities insistently downplay, the Legate and his staff face increasing complications as they labor to navigate shadowy factions that have been struggling against each other since before the earliest legends of the World's Heart. Ultimately, only the Prince's submersion in the city's grotesque rituals resolves the tensions his legation has caused."<br />
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The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-3330226196298113312017-04-28T03:44:00.003-07:002017-04-28T03:44:37.185-07:00A New Tolkien EssayI was very pleased to hear yesterday evening that an essay I've been working on for a while has appeared in the<i> Journal of Tolkien Research</i>. I am on the board of <i>JTR</i>, so this could, admittedly, look a bit fishy, but we use blind peer review, so I'm taking legitimate pride in the piece. It's on-line here:<br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" /><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol4/iss1/9&source=gmail&ust=1493462432035000&usg=AFQjCNH5UzkVW2tlB2D8Ep1k9tiY5179Gg" href="http://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol4/iss1/9" rel="noreferrer" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">http://scholar.valpo.edu/<wbr></wbr>journaloftolkienresearch/vol4/<wbr></wbr>iss1/9</a>The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-32645721081778357012017-02-25T08:09:00.002-08:002017-02-25T08:09:37.864-08:00The indefatigable Douglas Anderson has written a very nice blog post on fantasy by Tolkien scholars (in which company I am honored to be included):<a href="http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/2017/02/tolkien-scholars-write-fantasy.html" target="_blank"> http://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.com/2017/02/tolkien-scholars-write-fantasy.html</a>The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-15008006904805762702017-02-19T17:36:00.000-08:002017-02-19T17:36:55.011-08:00A Vernal ExerciseVery springlike weather today in Pottstown led me to a springtime sonnet, with perhaps a little too much allusion:<br />
<div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The only pretty ring time<i> . . .</i>” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">--<i>As You Like It </i>V.3<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Could any of us then have understood,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In that now-faded spring when golden boughs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of poorly-kept forsythia wove nets<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Along our paths, and April lilacs bloomed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In mourning or in promise at the gate—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Could we have recognized in our own lives <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The vestiges of such an ancient flame<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As stirred the heart of one Italian boy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Or doomed a queen, and made Augustin weep?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The overwhelming question, like a Boston fog,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Surrounded, choked, or even blinded us:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And yet eluded us—or we fled it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Love, more than youth, is
wasted on the young:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "garamond" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But fear can master us at
any age. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-31730351495531518642016-09-01T13:16:00.001-07:002016-09-01T14:07:46.187-07:00A New SonnetMemorial Room<br />
<br />
How many halls like this, in schools like this,<br />
Display to students' unobserving eyes,<br />
Inscribed on oak or marble, or engrossed<br />
On ornamented vellum, rank on rank,<br />
The hundred-year-old names of boys like them<br />
Enrolled in an academy of war,<br />
A university of slaughter, where<br />
A new curriculum of horror taught<br />
Their generation too soon how to die?<br />
Their parents, teachers, friends they left behind<br />
Committed them, in what they built, to us<br />
Who could not mourn or cherish them, but might<br />
Renew their memories, preserve their hopes,<br />
For youths whose anthems sound no note of doom.The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-81607009318596178332016-03-26T10:10:00.001-07:002016-03-28T15:59:03.072-07:00"Brilliant Magical Realism"Crystal Hubbard, a former student of mine from John Burroughs School in St. Louis who has done a good deal of writing of her own, was kind enough to give a boost to my Jonathan Evans books, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rough-Magicke-John-William-Houghton/dp/158832124X" target="_blank">Rough Magicke</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Like-Noise-Dreams-William-Houghton/dp/1588322378" target="_blank">Like a Noise in Dreams</a>, on her own Facebook page, responding to a post on mine. <span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: inherit; line-height: 19.32px;">It's actually not too long to quote, but it is a bit embarrassing--nonetheless, here's one bit I was particularly happy with: "This is brilliant magical realism with absolutely no contrivances or elementary tropes." See the rest here</span>: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/CrystalHubbard/posts/10209409461304151">https://www.facebook.com/CrystalHubbard/posts/10209409461304151</a> The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-23154873458060749572016-03-13T12:57:00.000-07:002016-03-13T13:55:47.807-07:00A Poem in First Draft<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .6pt;">
I spent last Friday afternoon at Longwood Gardens, a few miles south of here, and have been picking away at this since then. I'm not quite sure I've gotten to the end, and other bits of it could still be polished, I suppose. But I guess it's cleaned up enough to go out in public.<br />
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<br /></div>
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Lines Composed at Longwood Garden,
Late in Lent<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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“The woods are set to burst,” my
old friend says,<o:p></o:p></div>
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As full of energy as if his ninety years<o:p></o:p></div>
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Were only nine or ten. There’s not that much<o:p></o:p></div>
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In bloom—a snowdrop here, some cherries there—<o:p></o:p></div>
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As we walk past the black, expectant, beds.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And yet the air’s already scented, thick<o:p></o:p></div>
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And sweet, at intervals throughout the park,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Until we reach, with some deliberateness, <o:p></o:p></div>
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The great Conservatory on the hill.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Within, it’s color more than scent,
at first:<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’ve come for Orchid Month, and everywhere<o:p></o:p></div>
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One’s gaze alights, extravagant displays<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of epiphytic and terrestrial<o:p></o:p></div>
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Exoticism challenge vividly<o:p></o:p></div>
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The pallid palette of the preconceived.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But there’s a rich, dark, loamy undertone<o:p></o:p></div>
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Beneath the warring perfumes of those blooms,<o:p></o:p></div>
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In part the melded odors of the plants<o:p></o:p></div>
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In longer-term displays—there’s one whole wall <o:p></o:p></div>
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Of deep-green ferns and mosses, on our right—<o:p></o:p></div>
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In part the smell of warm damp earth itself,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Its age-old promise, urgent now, of life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“It saddens me,” he says, “to think we’ve
lost<o:p></o:p></div>
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The sense of being festive. And I don’t just mean<o:p></o:p></div>
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My peers who’re dozing in Death’s waiting room:<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s younger people, too. They celebrate,<o:p></o:p></div>
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They have their holidays, they send <o:p></o:p></div>
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More birthday messages than ever, but—”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“ . . .
There’s something lacking,” I suggest.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well,
yes,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I was going to say, they’re still somehow<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Alone</i>, wrapped up
in ‘authenticity’<o:p></o:p></div>
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So thickly that they almost can't conceive <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of how the larger culture might provoke <o:p></o:p></div>
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A universal un-ironic joy,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One great delight that runs through everyone. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A universal <i>grief</i>
can still, I think, be felt,<o:p></o:p></div>
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But even there, the cynics will be heard.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The winter
holidays are just one case:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not just Christmas having slowly changed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To ‘Merchandising-tide,’ to coin a phrase.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Quite honestly, I think this stronger sense<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of self before society would keep<o:p></o:p></div>
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A person at arm’s length from V-E Day!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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(Which he remembers proudly: when we drive <o:p></o:p></div>
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To lunch, he’ll steer me to the space reserved <o:p></o:p></div>
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For veterans, though he’ll protest that he<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Could walk much farther if he needed to.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“The disenchanted world?” I
ask—last year<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
His Christmas gift was Charles Taylor’s book<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On how the world became so secular,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And I’ve been marching through it, bit by bit.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Exactly
so. And it <i>is</i> cultural: <o:p></o:p></div>
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I don’t think you or I can look at this”—<o:p></o:p></div>
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He stoops and peers a bit to read a tag—<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“<i>Paphiopedilum </i>in
quite the way<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That Wordsworth would have done; there’s beauty here,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We know that well enough, but can it reach<o:p></o:p></div>
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‘Into the purer mind . . . Till we are laid asleep<o:p></o:p></div>
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In body, and become a living soul:<o:p></o:p></div>
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While with an eye made quiet by the power<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,<o:p></o:p></div>
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We see into the life of things’? I doubt <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It can; I doubt our world can feel his sense<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Of something . . . That impels all thinking things,<o:p></o:p></div>
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All objects of all thought.’ I wouldn’t have<o:p></o:p></div>
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His pantheism if you gave it me, <o:p></o:p></div>
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But even for the <i>Christian</i>
of today,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think that sense of Spirit as a ground,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A source of self which lies outside ourselves,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is something that we <i>say</i>
more than we <i>feel</i>.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You
don’t sound very happy.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“No, I’m not.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But is there some alternative?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I <i>hope</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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There is, but hope is not an argument, <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As you’re about to tell me yet again.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He smiled
and nodded, as we skipped the turn<o:p></o:p></div>
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That led off to the Palm House and went on,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Past ranks of <i>Phalaenopsis</i>,
toward the sound<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of falling water coming from the room <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of emerald bromeliads. The path<o:p></o:p></div>
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Was just a little slick, and for a step<o:p></o:p></div>
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Or two he took my arm to supplement<o:p></o:p></div>
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His cane; but back on dry and level ground,<o:p></o:p></div>
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He struck off independently again<o:p></o:p></div>
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Into the desert room. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“All
right,” I said<o:p></o:p></div>
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At last, “Let me try this: If we can say<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’re even <i>ill at ease</i>
with what you’ve said,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Much less if we can wish it weren't true,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then doesn’t that conception in itself<o:p></o:p></div>
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Imply that we can stand outside that frame<o:p></o:p></div>
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Of thought? I mean, however much I try,<o:p></o:p></div>
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I can’t <i>desire</i> the
sun go round the earth, <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although I can imagine it, or say <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The words as if they might be true. If some<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Great shift of paradigm has really changed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The way we think about ourselves, deep down<o:p></o:p></div>
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Among our axioms, it shouldn’t be <o:p></o:p></div>
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So easy to desire that it has not.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Or
else,” he answered, “it has changed <i>so</i>
much<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can’t tell what we’re not imagining.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You
wouldn’t have to throw up obstacles<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To <i>everything</i> I
say.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“If not me, who? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s pretty much my job. But go ahead. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ll listen while I smell the roses here.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They were arranged in several ranks, each one<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Stretched out for thirty feet or more:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For him to sniff at just the bottom row<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Would offer time enough and more for what<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Few further thoughts I had. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well,
I admit<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t react to nature as I think<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That Wordsworth did, or as he says he did; <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And if I say like Keats that beauty’s truth,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Truth beauty, I suppose that there’s no way<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To know for sure that either of us means<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The same thing as the other one, much less<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The same thing as Plotinus. But I’m still,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By my own standards, moved by all of this,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And even if I’m not drawn off into the heights<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of transcendental union with the One,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t think they were either, day by day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Augustine and Monica look out<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The window of their room in Ostia<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And work their way up from the garden view<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To something like the face of God, I think<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The point is that they’d had the view before,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But not that same sublime experience. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, now that I say that, wouldn’t he<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Insist that the experience derives<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not from the beauty of the scene, but from<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The grace of God, who opens up the path<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For one brief moment from the garden there<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To Paradise?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“So
then you’d want to say<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That even if our axioms of thought have changed,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Have isolated our conceptions of ourselves,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s only one more obstacle, which is to say,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No obstacle at all, to grace. That’s pretty good.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m not persuaded, mind you, but it’s good.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He gave
up on the roses and we passed along<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Beneath the huge banana plants (not trees,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But rather more like grasses, as a plaque<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Explained) into the great east room, where walks<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With borders of some fiery Kalanchoe<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Surrounded spotless swathes of perfect lawn:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so at length we came out to the pool<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that great arch of orchids which had first<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Confronted us when we arrived. We took<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Advantage of a bench set up nearby<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To catch our breath before the walk downhill.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Conveniently enough for us, one huge<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Division of the grounds was closed, so we<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Were spared the challenges of walking it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As we
heading back, the carillon <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Began to play some tune I didn't know.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My friend was drawn to it, and thought it worth<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a> modest detour to the conifer <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And oak collection, up a gentle knoll,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But closer to the bells. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We
took our time,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And as we reached the tree-lined crest, we both<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Came to a startled stop, as did the pack<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of selfie-stick and phone encumbered guests<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Who’d passed us as we climbed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 2.0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Beneath the
trees,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As far as one could see, there stretched a field,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A thick-laid carpet, of bright daffodils.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“They’re
not as big as Wordsworth’s would have been,”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I said.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I don’t
suppose they are: but still,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They do show something’s trying to break through.”<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivz6KsKnzTf8csg9Ty4kCNcFou_DDaz_MI5WWt0r2kjLFeo7px9N4l8afAoORN9zgYdMFxSsUPkZEl8xINmsscjo2a6b6B6iGHqQbMeW5LvbbsR4XYjj3kUR4qUIPsIMznfSkybcG6rJXt/s1600/IMG_0073.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.8px;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivz6KsKnzTf8csg9Ty4kCNcFou_DDaz_MI5WWt0r2kjLFeo7px9N4l8afAoORN9zgYdMFxSsUPkZEl8xINmsscjo2a6b6B6iGHqQbMeW5LvbbsR4XYjj3kUR4qUIPsIMznfSkybcG6rJXt/s320/IMG_0073.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-53085210356929296842016-02-19T21:01:00.004-08:002016-02-19T21:01:37.656-08:00We make the WSJMy old friend, colleague, and collaborator from St. Louis's John Burroughs School, William Ames Bascom, has <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/my-first-and-last-day-at-harvard-law-school-1455925209" target="_blank">a great piece</a> in the <i>Wall Street Journal </i>today<i>. </i>It's a hilarious tale, and he managed to work in a reference to our book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Falconry-Other-John-William-Houghton/dp/1588320928" target="_blank">Falconry and Other Poems</a>, as well.<br />
<br />
<br />The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-16207273007285919272015-12-30T16:10:00.004-08:002016-01-04T18:01:12.754-08:00Local Coverage of _Like a Noise in Dreams_Mr. Jeff Kenney, editor of the town paper back home, <i>The Culver Citizen, </i>has written a very kind piece about <i>Like a Noise in Dreams. </i>My thanks to Jeff and to Plymouth Pilot-News Managing Editor, Diona Eskew, for permission to reproduce here the article, which originally appeared in both the <i>Citizen</i> and the <i>Pilot-News </i>[Copyright (c) 2015 by <i>The Pilot-News. </i>All rights reserved.]<br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Houghton's New Novel Places Pieces of Culver in England</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By Jeff Kenney</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Citizen editor</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's been a decade since the Rev. Dr. John Houghton's first novel, which was set in a fictionalized version of Culver, and -- perhaps somewhat to his own surprise -- several characters from that book are back in "Like a Noise in Dreams," which was just released this fall.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A bit ironically, "Dreams" -- a novel featuring Culver characters set in England -- arrives the same year as a novel featuring English characters but set in Culver ("No Place to Hide," by British best-selling novelist Susan Lewis) was released to much fanfare. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Houghton, who was featured in a<a href="http://www.thepilotnews.com/content/culver-middle-earth-0" target="_blank"> Culver Citizen article last year</a> focusing on his editing work on a tribute book to the most preeminent scholar of the writings of "Lord of the Rings" novelist JRR Tolkien (and who has written many columns for this newspaper starting in the 1970s and picking up in the past eight years), grew up in Culver, attended Culver Military Academy, and earned degrees from Harvard, Yale, Indiana, and Notre Dame Universities, specializing among other areas, in Medieval history and Tolkien. When "Rough Magicke" was released, he was still fairly new to his role as an Episcopal priest (a role in which he serves at the Hill School in Pennsylvania, where he also teaches, a role he's been familiar with for decades). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Magicke" was deeply steeped in Culver lore, past and present, from the fictional name of the town itself, Annandale, which was borrowed from a blockbuster novel set in Culver from 1905, "The House of a Thousand Candles," to a litany of familiar references to Culverites in location, people, and traditions (in fact, Houghton has, for the new novel, updated the fictional website for Annandale Military Academy he created during the "Magicke" days, at </span><a href="http://www.annandalemilitary.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: blue; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">www.annandalemilitary.com</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Rough Magicke," as was noted by some who reviewed it, was something of an "occult thriller" undergirded by an unusual blend of magic and Christianity and with a partial boarding school background (another part of it was set in Michigan City, then the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Indiana). </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-7388ee17-0f7d-a09f-4efb-96fe066adec8" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From 'Magicke' to 'Dreams'</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The new novel, "Like a Noise in Dreams," like its predecessor, draws heavily from Houghton's own experience, in this case most pointedly from his experiences teaching at American summer camps in Oxford, England. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Says Houghton: "What I've done is imagined Culver had a summer camp in England," which is not, on the surface, such an unusual idea since Culver Academies does indeed have summer camps, even if the England part is purely imaginary. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The author also weaves parts of Southern England, where his Houghton ancestors hail from, into the story as well. Michigan City turns up in a third part of a book he describes more as "three novellas than a single novel" proper. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"It was fun sort of trying to take the general experience of this camp I've worked at and reimagining it being an American military school in Oxford...and then sort of playing with the same kinds of concerns of schools and magic that we're playing with in earlier volumes. It's sort of contemporary world fantasy."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The core cast includes narrator Jonathan D. Mears (with enough real-life parallels not to see him as something akin to a fictionalized version of Houghton himself) and his niece and nephew by marriage (the nephew having been a principle character in "Rough Magicke," carried over) and another Culver (or, officially, "Annandale Military Academy") cadet from the same generation. There's also a new cast of cadets and English characters as well ("There are not quite as many background characters as a Dickens novel, but..." Houghton chuckles). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the years since his first novel, the narrator has become the Episcopal bishop of Michigan City, attending what is actually a real-life every-decade meeting of bishops in England during the summer of 2000.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The lead character has some of the magic things attached to him," adds Houghton. "There's a kid at the summer camp who has connections both to Annandale and this Oxford colony."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A key locale in the novel seems to be haunted by a great aunt, a connection made more intriguing by her connection with founding the college itself. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"In the 1920s to early `30s there were several new institutions founded at oxford that actually became colleges in the 1960s, so this is pictured there," Houghton explains. "There's a lot in it about the interest in spiritualism going on -- there was a time between 1900 and 1930 when otherwise orthodox Christians were involved in these ideas about spiritualism; even ideas like 'spiritual radio.'"</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The novel gives considerable time to debates within Christianity about the role of magic, with undertones of the work of one of the best-known of Christian fiction writers, C.S. Lewis, whose characters engage in forms of magic, or something referred to as such within the context of some of his books. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"There's a certain influence of (Medieval-themed fantasy novelist) Katherine Kurtz novels," says Houghton, who adds there was some influence as well from Charles Williams, a novelist who formed part of the Oxford "club" of Christian novelists known as The Inklings, which included Lewis and Tolkien as well. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Tolkien was notoriously reluctant to have magic used much in his stories," adds Houghton. "There's that whole discussion that happens at one point, or which things do we call magic that aren't, necessarily."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of these matters might beg questions as to the moral framework of "Like a Noise in Dreams," something Houghton says is evident, "though I don't want to be too pretentious. Somebody has to respond to (an evil magician character in the novel) at some point, so that's another angle on it."</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A hint of Culver across the pond</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Culver and Lake Maxinkuckee area, of course, have arguably inspired more than their fair share of novels, from the higher profile entries mentioned above, to lesser-known regional works, and while this book perhaps does not properly fall into the same category as Culver-set fiction such as recent novels by Richard Davies, Marcia Adams, and David Girard, to name a few, it "has a flavor of Culver," says Houghton. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"There's a lot of (Culver) Academy stuff -- an officer in charge, teenagers in uniform running around Oxford."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That, and those important Houghton ancestors from Southern England who formed part of the cadre of settlers who first arrived here in 1836, something Houghton managed to allude to in the novel as well. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That said, Houghton actually hadn't conceived "Rough Magicke" as having a sequel when he first penned it, though there is the possibility now hanging in the air of a third entry in the ongoing adventures of both novels' characters ("It may turn out there's some human instinct towards doing things in threes," he smiles). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Like a Noise in Dreams" is instead the result of "fiddling around with the idea of whether I could set anything in England (and) under what pretext could I get these people to Oxford."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that idea in fact came about during Houghton's faculty days at Culver Academies when, in the winter of 1975-76 he was sitting around a dining hall table at the school with the faculty's then-resident Brit, John Chadwick, and other faculty "with a high-end British real estate magazine...and the idea was kicked around that Culver could have an overseas camp and Oxford was the logical place to put it. So in a sense that nearly half-century old idea, as well as my experiences in England (were an inspiration)."</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"Like a Noise in Dreams," published by Unlimited Publishing, is available online at amazon.com. </span></div>
The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-3937749038104544302015-12-01T19:19:00.003-08:002015-12-01T19:20:06.826-08:00A sonnet from last winter<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Frost in February<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">
It’s winter, still, outside, the sullen snow<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Still draining all the world I see of warmth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
I wonder, in these frigid shortened days,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
When darkling sentiments begin almost<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
To crowd aside the memory of light,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
What depth of frozen ground has overlain<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
The insubstantial seeds of hope, what frost<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Now inches downward toward still hidden life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
The sleeping
groundhog underneath my porch<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Might stir to promise Spring, some early burst of green,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
An easy resurrection: but we know<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Enough of hate to say this icy death<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Will not pass quickly, that it never does,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
But lingers in the heart where love has blazed.<o:p></o:p></div>
The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-55204163970576954982015-11-29T13:23:00.001-08:002016-03-26T10:11:40.526-07:00Where credit is dueIn the course of posting some snapshots of locations from<i> Like a Noise in Dreams </i>over at the Annandale <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Annandale-Military-Academy-49625098421" target="_blank">Facebook page</a> (about 35 of them, in all), I noticed that the photographer who took the picture of the bust of Serapis used on the cover, had, in the process of releasing the image to the public domain, asked nonetheless to be identified, as a matter of courtesy. So I hasten to do so: the photographer is Marie-Lan Nguyen, and the image is posted on Wikimedia.The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-83034882165858135712015-10-28T15:23:00.001-07:002015-10-28T15:23:31.426-07:00"Paperback Writer"The paperback version of <i>Like a Noise in Dreams </i>appeared on Amazon.com (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1588322378">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1588322378</a>) a week ago tomorrow (October 22), and attracted a kind review from John David Cofield the next day. So it is off and running. An e-book version will follow in a couple of weeks, though for various technical reasons it will reflect the state of the text immediately <i>before</i> the last few revisions--which feels like a very medieval-manuscript development for a digital text. I'll post a list of corrigenda on the AMA website, <a href="http://www.annandalemilitary.com/">www.annandalemilitary.com</a>, which already has various other bits and pieces that might be of interest (including, self-referentially, a copy of this blog).The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-46606569146387701762015-10-08T16:15:00.005-07:002015-10-08T16:15:56.398-07:00<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px;">Well, <i>Like a Noise in Dreams </i>did not make it as a Kindle Scout selection, so Amazon will not be sending out free Kindle copies of the book to those who voted for it. </span><a class="profileLink" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/user.php?id=1143620165" href="https://www.facebook.com/dosnow" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px; text-decoration: none;">Danny O. Snow</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px;">'s company, Unlimited Publishing, is, however, going to offer a 20% discount on the paperback edition, which should be out in a few weeks, as well as on the paperback of <i>Rough Magicke</i>. If you're interested, use the form at Annandale's QM store (</span><a href="http://www.annandalemilitary.com/the-qm-store.html" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.annandalemilitary.com/the-qm-store.html</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17.5636px;"> ) to send me your e-mail, and I'll send you the discount codes and instructions on how to use them.</span>The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-57180343159583202202015-09-05T19:16:00.001-07:002015-09-05T19:20:45.344-07:00Characters in Like a NoiseOne of the bits of front matter that doesn't show up in the Kindle Scout campaign page (<a href="https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/26XIPE0E27TJO" target="_blank">here</a>) is a list of the main characters: so I am reproducing it here.<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
The Rt. Rev.
Jonathan D. Mears, D.D., Bishop of Michigan City<br />
Annandale Military Academy, 1970; Harvard College, A.B., 1973;
Indiana University, M.A., 1974; Cloyne Divinity School, M.A.R., 1976;
Chaplain, Annandale Military Academy, 1976-1994; elected Bishop of
Michigan City, 1994</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Daniel Mears<br />
AMA, 1973;
brother of Jonathan; University of the South, A.B., 1977</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Caroline Lee
Mears (“Car,” rhyming with “bear”)<br />
Walsingham University, A.B. 1998; University of Chicago, M.A., 2000;
daughter of Daniel, god-daughter of Jonathan</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0.5in; orphans: 2; text-indent: -0.5in; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Rhys David Evans
(“Otto”)<br />
AMA, 1995;
Walsingham University, A.B. 1998; University of Chicago, M.A., 2000</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Geoffrey Thomas
Adams (“Tomboy”)<br />
AMA, 1995; Princeton University, B.A. 1999</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<i>At Walsingham
College, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford:</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
The Rev. Canon
Janet Laughlin, Ph.D., Warden</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
The Rev. Timothy
Laughlin, Ph.D.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Brigadier Dalton
Hinton, Domestic Bursar</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Cedric Cope, M.A. (Oxon.), Fellow</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<i>In the Annandale
Military Academy Oxford Summer Program:</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Ms. Andrea
Brownstein, Director</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Ms. Jane
Erdenberger, Associate Director</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Cadet Captain
Clement Austin Talbot (“Tex”), AMA 2001, Senior Captain</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Cadet Lieutenant
Weston Smith (“Colt”), AMA 2001</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Cadet Lieutenant
John Henry Holliday (“Doc”), AMA 2001, Co-chair of the Honor
Council</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Cadet Lieutenant
Emily Shanley-Roberts, AMA 2001</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Cadet Lieutenant
Rachel Hunnewell, AMA 2001, Co-chair of the Honor Council
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 2; widows: 2;">
Cadet Jason
Everett Watson (“Sherlock”), AMA 2004 </div>
The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-66030794141462973522015-09-03T15:34:00.002-07:002015-09-03T15:34:33.118-07:00I've already posted this on my personal Facebook page, but perhaps it will hold up to a little more exposure. The Latin at the beginning is from the last part of a hymn, "Pange Lingua Gloriosa," by St. Thomas Aquinas sung as part of the liturgy of Benediction; the italicized lines further down are my translation. (Here's a YoutTube video of the full hymn: <a href="https://youtu.be/w8fVgqTtPfA">https://youtu.be/w8fVgqTtPfA</a> )<br />
<br />
<div class="clearfix" style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6181812286377px; zoom: 1;">
<h2 class="_5clb" style="font-size: 24px; line-height: 28px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
Benediction: An Ode</h2>
</div>
<div class="mts _50f8" style="background-color: white; color: #9197a3; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6181812286377px; margin-top: 5px;">
<i style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></i></div>
<div class="mts _50f8" style="background-color: white; color: #9197a3; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6181812286377px; margin-top: 5px;">
<i style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Tantum ergo sacramentum</i></div>
<div class="mts _50f8" style="background-color: white; color: #9197a3; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6181812286377px; margin-top: 5px;">
<i style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Veneremur cernui,</i></div>
<div class="mts _50f8" style="background-color: white; color: #9197a3; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6181812286377px; margin-top: 5px;">
<i style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Et antiquum documentum</i></div>
<div class="mts _50f8" style="background-color: white; color: #9197a3; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6181812286377px; margin-top: 5px;">
<i style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Novo cedat ritui:</i></div>
<div class="mts _50f8" style="background-color: white; color: #9197a3; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6181812286377px; margin-top: 5px;">
<i style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Praestet fides supplementum</i></div>
<div class="mts _50f8" style="background-color: white; color: #9197a3; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 14.6181812286377px; margin-top: 5px;">
<i style="color: #141823; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Sensuum defectui.</i></div>
<div class="_5k3v _5k3w clearfix" style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; margin-top: 16px; overflow: hidden; word-wrap: break-word; zoom: 1;">
<i></i><br />
<br />
I.<br />
<br />
While lightning bugs begin to spark the dusk<br />
(As thick now as they were when we would pierce<br />
The lids of rinsed-out jars in childish hope<br />
That we could keep the cold enticing fire<br />
Alive beyond the moment of its pulsed<br />
Allure), and Deneb, Vega, Altair first<br />
Appear against the gray blue of the sky,<br />
A shadow on the trail in front of me<br />
Becomes a doe, and stops, and stamps a hoof,<br />
And snorts a warning, half to me and half<br />
To near-invisible twin fawns who know<br />
Enough to stay behind her, but not yet<br />
Enough to be afraid of such as I.<br />
One step: a flash of white, and they are gone.<br />
<br />
II.<br />
<br />
Merton warned against the dream of<br />
Reaching to the hearts of things--<br />
God, he said, will let us touch them<br />
Only long enough to feel<br />
How the fire of being blazes<br />
More than we can bear to hold.<br />
<br />
Yet if all around us passes,<br />
Fleeting, from our mortal grasp,<br />
Still the stars above us circle<br />
Where we would not think to reach,<br />
Signs (despite their trepidations)<br />
Showing sempiternity.<br />
<br />
All our <i>nostoi</i> seek a fixed home,<br />
Firm as that Odyssean bed<br />
Built around the living olive:<br />
Only God transcends all change,<br />
In himself the unmoved center<br />
Crucified in human flesh.<br />
<br />
Swan of summer, Cygnus hovers<br />
Stretched along the Milky Way,<br />
Spreads imagined wings out, cross-like<br />
Spanning all the galaxy.<br />
Ambrose would have seen salvation<br />
Figured in those distant lights.<br />
<br />
I would think of some lost summer<br />
When I knew our souls were one<br />
Like the legs of Donne's twinned compass<br />
Drawing one another home—<br />
Some night when I gazed up wondering<br />
Deep into the well of stars.<br />
<br />
Here below, the gleaming monstrance,<br />
Rayed to be both cross and star,<br />
Holds enthroned the wholly other<br />
Where the consecrated Host<br />
Shows, still hid, that highest power<br />
Veiled once in the Virgin's womb.<br />
<br />
More than figure, unseen Presence<br />
Calls, though silent, to the heart:<br />
As an undamped string will tremble<br />
When the master chord rings out,<br />
So all being resonates with<br />
This insistent source of song.<br />
<br />
Love is strong as death, and many<br />
Waters cannot quench it—yet<br />
Love itself has shared our dying,<br />
All the loss that you and I<br />
Never then imagined feeling,<br />
Never knew we ought to fear.<br />
<br />
<i>Such a sacrament we, therefore,</i><br />
<i>Prostrate worship and revere,</i><br />
<i>Where the sacrifice once ordered</i><br />
<i>Yields to this new ritual:</i><br />
<i>Faith comes forth to show in shadows</i><br />
<i>What the senses cannot know.</i><br />
<br />
III.<br />
<br />
Before we must sleep through that one perduring night<br />
The hungry shadows strive to wrap us in such gloom<br />
As we cannot remove by memories of light.<br />
<br />
Too young, we come to know the evanescent bloom<br />
Of life, the once-played tune, escapes our hold:<br />
That all we love or own is forfeit to the tomb.<br />
<br />
With time, we learn to fear as well the growing old:<br />
The dulling mind, the hopes outlived, the humbling need<br />
For help, the pain we see in hearts where love's gone cold.<br />
<br />
So living leaves its mark on us. Soon others read<br />
The graying hair, the weakened eyes, the lines, the scars,<br />
As if these were the chart of age: yet they mislead.<br />
<br />
Beyond all life can do, all time destroys or mars,<br />
Remains the love that moves the sun and other stars.</div>
The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1072126211367910742.post-42861790893374875142015-08-31T20:01:00.000-07:002015-08-31T20:01:07.137-07:00Here's a sonnet I wrote back in 2007 to be part of an exhibition of photographs by my friend, William Ames Bascom (who did the photographs in <i>Falconry and Other Poems</i>). The photos were all in black and white; the title is an allusion to the formal title of "Whistler's Mother."<br />
<br />
Arrangement in Grey and Black<br />
<br />
It must be rare, at least, in that great deep<br />
And mystery of heart and mind, that we<br />
Conceive a new idea: as rare as if<br />
One were to fall in love by willing it.<br />
<br />
Ideas dawn on us, they come to us,<br />
Rise up from silent and unfathomed pools<br />
Like ancient fish, or fall down from the Light<br />
To cast the shadows of the world we know.<br />
<br />
The skills of logic and of science give<br />
What even love, in love, provides: some means<br />
By which we can assess, connect, arrange,<br />
On their own terms, the givens of each art.<br />
Our creativity must lie in what<br />
We make of them, as we compose our lives.The Very Rev. John Wm. Houghton, Ph.D.http://www.blogger.com/profile/15849565574356604625noreply@blogger.com0