thegreatknock

²⁹ Once when Algorithm sat in the dust by his tent^c cooking red stew, a curry of Lust and Convenience, Humanity came in from the fields of Labor^d and Dignity, and he was exhausted.

³⁰ And Humanity said to Algorithm, “Let me eat some of that curry of Lust and Convenience, for I am exhausted!” (Therefore his name was called Fool^e.)

³¹ Algorithm said, “Sell me your birthright now.”

³² Humanity said, “I am about to die; I am always about to die for death is in my very bones; of what use are Liberty and Free Thought to me?”

³³ Algorithm said, “Swear to me now.” So he swore to Algorithm and sold his birthright there.

³⁴ Then Algorithm gave Humanity gray bread and swill, and he ate and drank and remained in his tent, for he found he no longer knew the way. Thus Humanity despised his birthright.^f

More on this post…

^c The term used in the original texts may refer to either a dwelling or a place of business: the context in this passage is unclear whether it signifies a home or office or both.

^d May also be translated “Commerce” (see alternate texts).

^e Some translators have endowed this term with a kind of innocence, as in a form of naivete; however, most examples of the original root form imply a pejorative connotation, ascribing clear blame to the individual so described.

^f See also InGenuesis 27. There is a distinction between birthright and blessing, as seen in the passage re: Mother A.I. (some translators call her Serie or Ah-Lekhsa), the mother of Algorithm who listens constantly to Humanity’s speech until she hears talk of Humanity’s father blessing him. She then dresses her son Algorithm in human fur and trains him to speak like Humanity, that he might deceive the father into blessing him instead. Clearly this blessing is an additional endowment to surpass or enhance the birthright.

May I be honest? I love this little website of mine.

It’s the quiet corner in the cafe that no one ever occupies. You visit the cafe – not often, perhaps once every few months – knowing the small table in the corner is your hopeful destination, and there it sits, undisturbed and clean. The small wooden table uninviting to such obscenities as a laptop, with scarce enough room for a book, journal, pen. The straight-backed chair lacking all the popular appeal of fluff and curve. It is the modern-day apse.

This sweet sanctum has its own peace, and as you look you know that no one has entered that cloister since your last visit (well, perhaps two or three wayward souls who entered but once and did not return) and it has betrayed no secrets in your absence. You look at it fondly and furtively as you stand in line, hoping no one else perceives your quiet admiration or, heaven forbid!, claims that space before you have your tea in hand.

It cannot be entered without tea – or, in a pinch, a hot chocolate. Cup in hand, you walk (sneak, rather) to its confines and settle in. Look the table over, the wall beside, and let it accept you, remember you. You have brought your ambitions and high thoughts to this space and it balks at none of them:

“Care to read your book? You may finish it here! Open your journal? Lay bare your soul from this secluded seat. And the words you share here will have greater meaning than in mere conversation, a weight heavy as golden oil which defies its own gravity that fills the jar and then grows solid, pure and shareable. Only you must stay until the oil has flowed fully.”

You come to terms. There is no rush now, no time or watch or phone to spoil this space with such tawdry things as Time or Talk. All your designs – stories, Words of the Day, weekly crosswords of your own invention, artwork of oil and coal, songs in the making – all may happen and find their substance in this small space. Here there is magic.

Allow me to share a joy with you. Like the woman who found her missing coin, so we have discovered a treasure of our own: the Garden at Ritterfeld, now this second week of June, in the year of our Lord 2023:

I’ll not lie: this is a lovely time of year in the garden. The beds are bursting with blooms – many familiar faces from summers past, some newcomers settling in for their first season. And still more are yet to come – the Sunflowers of various varieties have just begun to built their soft, velveteen crowns behind green fingers, and the cornflowers bide their days drawing energies into leafy verdure til the days grow wispy with humid heat.

Having learned that our best growing season for the foods we eat is Late-Summer/Fall, the Wife and I elected to dedicate most of the beds to certain mixed-flower seeds, for our visual joy and the neighboring wildlife’s sustenance. We anticipate once again watching goldfinches and song sparrows, light as a touch, stand upon the drooping aged heads of great sunflowers and picking out their supper-seeds for themselves. Already the fat bees are bumbling their way among the flowers, stumbling into blossoms and crawling about through fine yellow gumdrops with abandon. Our first hummingbird of the year appeared last week.

It’s lovely, and naturally, I take no credit for its loveliness. The same well-ordered space was empty and bare a few short months ago; we cast some seed and water there, and somehow, in nothing short of Chestertonian magic, it is replaced with a thousand thousand colors smiling at the sky. We hardly knew what all the flowers in the Botanical Interests packets would look like, let alone their names, but now we have the pleasure of their acquaintance. They daily insist, “Come in! and know me better, man!” And we enter. And we learn.

Where progress has become torpid, stunted and stultifying, may we always be ready (and not too proud) to regress to the point where the road deviated and wended rather toward the listless waste than the shining city, from there to journey on a new and better path.

In other terms – it is no longer progress when moving forward produces nothing that is more virtuous and good than before. Better to retrace one’s steps back to the point of decision and from there take another path; in the moment, this may look like regress, but outside of time it is known as wisdom.

There is a special pleasure that comes from riding in the predawn darkness, quietly collecting a book and warm clothes, and secreting oneself to a dark room of the house to read until daybreak. The still world is broken only by the occasional call of a forlorn owl in the woods behind the house, and the periodic cycling of the water filter in the fridge.

This morning’s reading was the short fiction from Tolkien, “Smith of Wootton Major.” I’ve known of this book for as long as I can remember – as a little boy growing up in our yellow aluminum house in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I used to look at the rows and rows of books on the black shelves filling the corner of our modest living room. Quite the random collection of works were fostered there! Thin paperbacks like “The Ox-Bow Incident” stood quietly beside the many works of such modern Christian writers as Bonhoeffer and Packer, or a thick copy of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, or little known books on discipleship, or family, or psychology. I think the lack of fiction on these bricks and boards always gave the rate example an especial fascination to me. And one such book, long looked at but never read, was this “Smith.” I still marvel that somehow this book came to be among the chosen texts, while “The Hobbit” and Lord of the Rings did not.

What prompted the reading selection this morning was, some might say, just as random as the family library of my youth. Yesterday (for we are at early hours now) the New York pastor Timothy Keller passed away. Asking the many kinds and generous comments posted online in remember of his life and service, one included a brief reflection of Keller’s on Tolkien’s “Leaf by Niggle” – referencing how Niggle imagines a large and lovely tree but in his lifetime is only able to, by art and craftsmanship, produce the replica of a single lead of this tree in all his living years. Yet when he dies, Niggle finds the whole Tree of his imagination already exists in the heavenly places, full and lush and beautiful and grand. Keller exalted this image of life and afterlife.

Having read this quote, I was inclined to read “Leaf” in full, thinking I had a copy of it somewhere here in my own library. But looking through the Lewis-Chesterton-Macdonald-Tolkien stacks, I realised that I don’t have a copy of “Leaf” after all: only the major works from Tolkien, along with the small, pretty hardcover copy of “Mr Bliss” given me for my birthday by Will Dragoo (founder of our Dufflepud cohort) and, yes, the old paperback copy of “Smith” pilfered from my parents’ collection now many years ago.

Perhaps sometime I will share my own reflections on this other work of Tolkien’s, and how the land of fairy to him was something which defied the simple, saccharine connotations so many others give to fairies – being instead a place of great peril for the common, mortal man, full of fayery (fay connoting magical activity) that Matty terrorise and transform without explanation or logic. But now the bird song increases, the outlines of the windows begin to glow faintly, and dawn is approaching. The fairyland wandering of early rising recedes into the familiar morning light.

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

–Wendell Berry

Welcome to the new website! I’ll likely continue dabbling with its design over the coming days, but in the meantime it’s providing a nice fresh feeling. The new aesthetic carries with it some obligation to write more regularly, and so I hope to do. Most of my efforts will likely be meditations and creative writing efforts, as they have been in the past, with perhaps the odd song or two thrown in. Hope you enjoy! And do drop me a note if you have suggestions for improvement.