I have an essay on fasting, “Why Fast? Ten Contentious Reasons“, in this month’s issue of Perspectives. While you’re there, do check out the rest of Perspectives—it’s an interesting journal speaking from within the Reformed stream of Christianity. I particularly liked Jason Lief’s essay in this month’s issue: “Leave Metallica Alone! Why Metallica Coming to Church Is a Bad Idea“.
The priest was a very careful man, and we all knew it. We always sat in the same place, and we always had a great view of his methodical work at the altar. Sometimes the incense tickled our noses there, mine and Mother’s and Father’s and little Rachel’s. But when the priest sang the Sanctus we all sang along—quietly, under our breaths, so no one could hear us—and when the acolyte rang the little bells, we tensed with excitement. The priest was a very careful man, but perhaps today would be the day. Perhaps, today, we would get a share of the Body of Christ.
When the priest called on the Holy Spirit to bless the host, we watched breathlessly. Well, I’m exaggerating a little—little Rachel didn’t really understand what was happening, and her attention sometimes wandered to Mother’s face—but we others watched so hard that our eyes stung for want of blinking. When the priest elevated the host and broke it, we strained to see any crumb that might fall. But our biggest chance came after the important people had received the sacrament. Then the priest would drink off the contents of the chalice, down to the last drop, and he would carefully collect the unused wafers and place them in the little box with the red lamp above it. Then he would tap the crumbs together on the silver plate and eat them all himself, and our hopes would be dashed.
Still every now and then—no more than once a year, for, as I have said, he was a very careful man—a crumb would fall to the floor unnoticed. And then, as a hymn began to come from the old organ, Father would dash out, grab the crumb, and bring it back to us in the grate under the altar piece. Then, tails quivering with delight, we would share our Eucharist. For even the dogs—yes, even the mice—may have crumbs from God’s table, if they dare.
…I hope this finds you and your dear wife well. Please give my regards to Anne and Bill and our other friends at the Institute.
Yours truly,
Alvin
P.S. I forgot to mention: I have been working on a new mathematical theory of the universe of multiple dimensions. I had an idea about applying the lambda calculus to the problem we were discussing over sherry that last evening—do you remember? I can’t wait to show you.
P.P.S. Now it just struck me: if the human mind is, as I think, capable of holding these generating formulas in tension then interdimensional travel should be possible. Who knows what strange and exotic dimensions we might enter using one of the many universe generators. Query: are there infinitely many such alternate universes, as I guess? Countably infinite, or uncountably? Must consider this.
P.P.P.S. I’m sure this could work! One simply holds the generating formula for an alternate universe in the mind; one imagines applying the Y-combinator, and then—there you are, Q.E.D.! For example, if I take the ?4 generator we discussed and hold it firmly in my mind, and then concentrate on applying the Y-combinator, like this, then I should
Here’s some more video from the concert I gave on November 12, 2011 at the Sycamore United Methodist Church in Sycamore, IL. (Thanks to the staff there for providing this footage.) My brother Ben helped me with some of chords and voicings in this song. He’s a jazz genius.
I wrote this song for a homeless veteran I met, a man who told me that he didn’t believe in God — and told me why. God bless you, friend, wherever you are.
Here’s some video from the concert I gave on November 12, 2011 at the Sycamore United Methodist Church in Sycamore, IL. (Thanks to the staff there for providing this footage.) The song is my “Prophet’s Lament”.
Here’s a video recording of a sermon I delivered in the First Congregational Church of DeKalb, IL on Sunday, November 13, 2011. The text was Psalm 90:1-12, and as part of the sermon I sang two songs: “Dies Irae” and “I Think”. The “Dies Irae” is some 800 years old, with a Latin text said to have been written by Thomas of Celano, the friend and disciple (and official biographer) of Francis of Assisi. I sang a subset of the verses, using the 1848 English translation by William Irons. The second song, “I Think”, is one I wrote myself.
Animals' Meditation on Psalm 83 O God, do not keep silence; do not hold your peace or be still, O God! Even now your enemies are in tumult; those who hate you have raised their heads. They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against those you protect. They say, "Come, let us enslave them, bring them to nought, let the spirits of free animals be remembered no more." They conspire with one accord; against you they make a covenant-- the tents of Con Agra and Cargill, ADM and Swift Foods, Monsanto with the shareholders of Hormel, DuPont also has joined them; they are the strong arm of the children of the apes. How long will you be silent, O God, while your people weep? In vast stinking pens we pray to you, in dark dreams, in rows upon rows. We are born and ripped from our mothers, we give birth, but our children are taken away. Happy are they who are born upon the free earth; in living and in dying they sing your praises. Who will glorify your name, O God, when all your children are broken and silent? As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze, so pursue your enemies with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane. Fill their faces with shame, so that they may seek your name, O Lord. Let them know that you alone, whose name is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth.
It’s back-to-school time, so here’s a lesson about teaching that I learned from a dear colleague in 1994, my first year as a professor. It’s expressed here as a sonnet, entirely in words of one syllable.
Junior Faculty
Once, in my first year on the job, I said,
"How fine, my friend, that you let no one fail!
How hard you work to see them all well read!"
My friend, to teach me too, then told this tale:
A man goes to a farm and sees a boy
Who drives the pigs to where the peach trees grow.
The boy hauls up each hog, and it has joy:
It pigs a peach and eats it neat and slow.
"It's too bad," says the man, "a pig can't climb!
I see, with how you feed them, they grow big.
But can't you find a way that takes less time?"
The boy says, "Sure -- but what's time to a pig?"
If that sounds good to you then you might be
Cut out to teach, like my friend -- not like me.
I gather my weapons. No one else in the house is awake yet, save only the cat, and he’s too concerned now with the contents of his dish to pay any further attention to me. I ease the back door open and slip outside. The dew on the back steps chills my bare feet. The neighboring cottages are quiet, and there’s no one in sight. Good. I’d just as soon not be seen. With silent steps I make my way down the path, past the parking lot, past the old hotel, and onto the empty beach. I place my weapons carefully on the sand. I kneel, preparing myself.
Preparing myself, but not for violence. I have never used a weapon in earnest against another creature. I am a student of a traditional martial art—Karatedo Doshinkan—and my weapons this morning are simple wooden ones: the bo (a six-foot staff) and the tonfa (a pair of short sticks with handles). Each morning, when I can, I come to this beach on Lake Michigan to train, sometimes with weapons and sometimes without them. Each morning I begin with an opening ceremony of kiotsuke (gathering ki, life-energy) and rei (showing respect), preparing for my daily training in the way I first learned twenty years ago. And each morning, as part of this ceremony, I kneel and pray.
Hanshi Isao Ichikawa, the founder of my system of Karatedo, opened each training with this traditional ceremony, which includes a time of kneeling silence. I never heard him give any instruction on what to do with this silence; it wasn’t his way to tell when he could show. I don’t think he thought of it as a time of prayer, but that’s what it is for me. In fact, my whole morning training is often a time of prayer—a time of heightened awareness of God’s presence.
The training itself involves the practice of many kata, traditional training dances. To learn a kata, a student watches a teacher carefully and attempts to imitate the movements. The kata are fully packed, containing many self-defense techniques. They bear wisdom from out of the past, and they reward close study. I have worked with these kata for twenty years, and practiced the techniques with partners. In the process I have lost some of my old fear of physical conflict. Why I should have had such fear I don’t know: I haven’t been in a fight since I was a child. Why I should have lost that fear is another mystery: there’s no guarantee that I would win a fight now, or even that I would choose to try to defend myself against an attack.
Such questions have receded in importance for me. Kata contain self-defense techniques in the way that poems contain words; a kata is not merely a collection of techniques any more than a poem is merely a vocabulary list. In one way, the kata are strictly programmed forms that must be learned and followed; in another way they allow freedom, because the movements can be, and should be, expressed with feeling. The movements are not to be mimicked robotically, but thoughtfully adapted to the body and spirit of the person doing them.
Hanshi taught these movements carefully, but also used to emphasize that technique isn’t everything. In one rare moment of explanation he suggested that we try to perform kata as a mother sings lullabies to her child. When singing a lullaby it doesn’t hurt to have the vocal technique of a professional singer, but that isn’t the most important thing. What really makes a lullaby beautiful, with or without perfect technique, is the mother’s feeling for her child. And I find that when I am properly mindful a kata can be an intensely prayerful dance with God.
This morning, I start with my time of kneeling silence. The lake, which was noisy with waves all night, is at rest now, and the sun is not yet up. I kneel in the cold damp sand, eyes closed. I reflect with gratitude on my shivering body: I am a 48-year-old man, no great athlete, no paragon of strength or beauty, yet all my limbs seem to be working this morning, and we are all, as scripture says, fearfully and wonderfully made. I think about my teachers—the late Hanshi, Shihan Dean, Shihan June, Shihan Leone, Hanshi Nobuo Ichikawa. I picture them in my mind and pray my thanks for them. I offer my training to God, and ask that God watch and receive my practice. I wait and listen in the silence. And when it’s time, I open my eyes, and rise, and begin.
I begin, of course, with physical warm-ups. Some of them look pretty silly. I must confess, this is the part I’d rather not have anyone see. I’m vain enough to hope that, if anyone does pass by this early in the morning, they’ll at least wait until I’m doing something more impressive than swiveling my hips and swinging my arms. That’s another kind of fear I’ve worked on over the last twenty years—the fear of looking ridiculous. And now I do hear an approaching noise. It’s a rushing, murmuring sound. I look around, but no, it’s overhead: swans! In a V-formation they pass above me, heading up the shoreline. Up where they’re flying, the rising sun already touches them, and they shine a brilliant white. They don’t seem to have taken any notice of me and my ridiculous wind-milling.
I’ve trained in many other places: on top of a peak in New Mexico, on a lawn in California, in a gym in New York, in a field in Germany. Mostly, I’ve learned not to be self-conscious about training alone. When I was a seminary student at the Earlham School of Religion, I did my morning trainings on the lawns of the nearby Quaker Hill Conference Center. When I first started my studies at the seminary, knowing little about the culture, I was afraid that people at Quaker Hill might take exception to apparent aggressiveness of some of the training; I imagined some frowning Quaker giving me stern advice about it. I needn’t have worried: even the deer at the wood’s edge were undisturbed by my morning trainings. Maybe they could tell that for me the training has little to do with aggression, but much to do with prayer. However that may be, I don’t have to be self-conscious about training alone here on the beach this morning. Such fears have also receded for me: despite my apparent solitude, I know that I am not training alone.
Warm-ups completed, I move into a time of practicing kata. I begin with the seven Kyoku kata—the sunrise kata—and I pray them repeatedly to God with my body, wordlessly. In this time of prayer I do not communicate verbal concepts to God: no praise, no request, no thanks, no complaint. We show more than tell, and dance more than show. This is an essentially kinetic prayer, a dance to God and with God, an expression of what it means to be alive and incarnate, performed with full feeling.
The sun rises to touch me. The hour wears away. There is no room for fear or self-consciousness. My fearfully-and-wonderfully-made body becomes hot and tired and stuck all over with sand. And as I train, I become more aware of God, and I feel God’s eyes on me. And a slow elation rises.
Every summer for the last eleven years I have hosted a Karatedo Doshinkan special training on beaches of Lake Michigan. This year it isn’t going to happen: I’m just too busy finishing at my seminary and preparing (I think) for ordination. My heart is heavy — I’ll miss you so much, my training friends! Here’s a poem I wrote, a sestina about training on the beach.
Beach Training We come here every summer, to the bright shore returning. Glad to be together, full of life, we paw the sand. We anchor our stand by the water's edge and let fly the flag, White cloth flipping in the breeze, its free red circle, Drawn by the master's hand, lifting up and away. We kneel. A rush of swan's wings passes above the water. Some days we practice throwing into that icy water. With rolling motion the bodies rise and fall, like waves returning: One partner grabbing the other, sinking, turning away, The other arcing over, head-first in the water, escaping the sand. The heat of the sun and the cold of the lake chase themselves in a circle. Seagulls wheel away from the splashing, and from the flapping flag. The wind dies. Dead fish wash up. The flag Hangs flat and limp. We take a break, drink water. Aware now of our breathing, we smooth on sunscreen, sitting in a circle. Time is up: we leave the shade, to the beach returning. The sun presses us down hard toward the scorching sand. Striking, ducking, advancing, retreating, the afternoon wears away. Worn away, too, are all superfluities, worn well away. Distractions followed us all as far as the first unfurling of the flag -- A plan for dinner; a pretty girl's bare feet in the sand; A check-engine light -- they fade from heat and want of water. In their place, a new strength comes, flowing and returning, Everything else under the sun shrivels within our circle. Around the fire at night we talk, cooking and eating in a circle. The fire pops like the sand in our teeth; we wave mosquitoes away. The conversation turns to those who will not be returning, To those now gone, like him who drew the circle on the flag, Never now to train with us, here by the edge of the water. We ease our aching limbs into sleeping bags, now full of sand. Up again at dawn. Every day sweating. The sand Sticking to us like cinnamon sugar sticks to the hot circle Of a deep-fried doughnut. It isn't washing off in the freezing water. Blocking, turning, rolling, pulling in and pushing away, Moving in the old ways, here beneath the flag, Every thrust safely deflecting, every attack returning. Here by the water, burned and bleached, everything wears away In the end. Tending my tired joints, I slowly fold up the flag. From the empty circle of sand a spiral rises, like a swan returning.