Layout – slow reads

Victoria and I talked this morning about our fears of not being heard. For my part, I’ve been working on a book that I may or may not ever finish. I’ll let Victoria speak for herself.

Hannah Arendt’s vision of the political is essentially positive: the political is a realm where people are seen and heard. All creation, it seems, wants to be seen and heard, to express the god-ness that God has placed in each.

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Today’s Post.

When I teach, I teach too much. That is, I talk too much. This summer I’ve worked hard on a plan to talk a lot less this fall.

I talk so much I didn’t know that one of my students, forced like the rest into relative silence, was working hard this spring choreographing an award-winning musical that meant so much to me and many others. What kind of talk is that, that doesn’t care to know its listeners?

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The most important prayer is what’s prayed through us: “Lord, teach us to pray.” Or the most important prayer is whatever’s on your mind: “You have not because you ask not.” Are these concepts so different? Because prayer is fundamentally communion, its content — the petition side of the operation — won’t come together outside of communion. The petition side is about hearing and being heard, the real presence that always expresses itself in communion.

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We all know by now that, despite his almost 11,000 false or misleading claims since becoming president, the president can count on the unwavering support of a very large base. That’s because, for the first time in their lives, many people in that base feel heard by their government. (The “familiar themes” in today’s headline refer to themes the president made to his base in 2016.)

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Consider two verses in which three steps seem to do the job of two:

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.. – Romans 10:17 (NASS)¹

And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him. – 1 John 5:14 – 15 (NASS)

Our dyadic Western minds want to truncate these verses into simple, two-figure propositions: “Faith comes by the word of Christ,” and “If we ask anything according to his will, our prayer will be granted.” It’s not so simple, or at least it’s not so mechanical. In the former proposition, we’ve left out our hearing God. In the latter, we’ve left out God hearing us.

Hearing and being heard are among the most triadic and capacious of actions and are close to the ultimate “mediators,” to employ Charles Pierce’s concept.²

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Walter Lippmann in his essay “The Indispensable Opposition” defends freedom of speech with a unique argument: we need what our opponents have to say:

Unless all the citizens of a state are forced by circumstances to compromise, unless they feel that they can affect policy but that no one can wholly dominate it, unless by habit and necessity they have to give and take, freedom cannot be maintained.

° ° °

Five things (among many) that steal voices:

Abortion. Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, whether you see abortion as murder or as the lesser of two evils, you are probably not pro-abortion. Abortion silences voices. The birth of a hero saga turns the births of Moses and Jesus into tales of survival; each hero in his birth survives an edict to kill babies. In a sense, considering the number of sperm that never fertilize eggs, we are all survivors. We are also all heroes. (I’ve listened enough to my students to finally understand this.)
Poverty and economic inequality. The French Revolution focused on the poor’s need for food, and it discovered that the poor speak this need with one voice, fulfilling Rousseau’s concept of the General Will. On the other hand, the American Revolution, when it addressed the poor at all, focused on the poor’s need to be heard. America’s poor wouldn’t disrupt society, John Adams believed, but would not have the leisure time for civic engagement and the public visibility it brings. Adams’s thinking about the poor was in this respect different from Robespierre’s: “The poor man’s conscience is clear; yet he is ashamed . . . He feels himself out of the sight of others, groping in the dark. Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles and wanders unheeded. In the midst of a crowd, at church, in the market . . . he is in as much obscurity as he would be in a garret or a cellar. He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached; he is only not seen . . . To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable.”³ The American Revolution focused not on discerning and addressing the General Will but on forms of government, including (imperfect and incomplete) forums for the expression of specific viewpoints. The effective price of admission to these forums keeps many people out.
The destruction of the local community and of Tocqueville’s mediating institutions.
Facebook. Ironically, I suppose.
That image I just saw for a split second: a rock star’s windmilling his last chord, raising his arms in triumph. The next split second: his adoring crowd.

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Arendt on the “too apathetic or too stupid”:

It was characteristic of the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and of the Communist movements in Europe after 193017 that they recruited their members from this mass of apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention. The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents; these movements not only placed themselves outside and against the party system as a whole, they found a membership that had never been reached, never been “spoiled” by the party system. Therefore they did not need to refute opposing arguments and consistently preferred methods which ended in death rather than persuasion, which spelled terror rather than conviction. They presented disagreements as invariably originating in deep natural, social, or psychological sources beyond the control of the individual and therefore beyond the power of reason. This would have been a shortcoming only if they had sincerely entered into competition with other parties; it was not if they were sure of dealing with people who had reason to be equally hostile to all parties.⁴

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and this from U2 (moments before the Edge windmills the last chord):

I woke up at the moment when the miracle occurred
I get so many things I don’t deserve
All the stolen voices will someday be returned
The most beautiful sound I’d ever heard

[Outro:]
Your voices will be heard
Your voices will be heard

° ° °

There. I’ve said enough.

All Scripture quotations in this post are taken from the New American Standard Bible^® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org. ↩
“When processes of comparison grow complicated, new ‘third terms’ or ‘mediators’ may be needed at each stage of one’s undertaking. . . . it is by means of the use of a ‘third’ that each act of comparison is made possible, — whether the case in question be simple or complex. And the mediator plays each time the part which Pierce first formally defined.” — Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity, at 301. ↩
Adams, John. Discourses on Davila, Works, Boston, 1851, vol. V1, p. 239-40, 267. 279. ↩
Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism, pages 311-312. ↩

Categories

Passages

Moribund

14 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

You can dream of a knife, its laddered spine beside a plate of bread or fruit, and not think twice about it. You might dream of the same knife sailing through the air, landing in the soft center of a target that explodes as a blast mine. It releases cloudy hexagons in the air, summoning the bees. In the dream you give them all your teeth, which you've plucked like pearls from a modest clothes- line. You've been told that to dream of losing teeth is a portent of coming death. But the bees know this already: when they fly too far or are separated from their tribe, they die alone in that wide wilderness just a few yards from the hive. [Read more...]

Poetry Blog Digest 2021, Week 23

14 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. This week: the pleasures of summer, memories of childhood, remaining a kid at heart, and more. “Wintering” is a season turned verb that served us during lockdown. During the 14-month hibernation, people proposed ways of thinking about dark days by developing a cool state of mind, lowering one’s emotional temperature so one could be nurtured by the reality of whatever comes, not what we create. Now comes “summering.” Only wealthy people “summer,” people have long cried! But the way we collectively re-verbed “winter” is being done with summer too. We’re seeking a summer of the mind, because we’re still at home and time is moving on. Call it a return to lightness. The painters had their favorite spots for light — Provincetown, the south of France — yet on these cool, not-quite summer mornings light pours around a doorway in the house, streams through branches in the… [Read more...]

Drawing 101: Where to Start your Drawing

14 June 2021 - Beth

Several people have asked, "Could you talk about how you begin a drawing? How do we know where to start?" It's a very good question. So often sketchers gets frustrated because suddenly here they are on the left side of the page and there's no more room, or the drawing looks misshapen, and they can't figure out why. We all have those problems from time to time. But what I want to say up front is that "Most errors that we think are in drawing actually begin with errors in SEEING." So, before we ever set our pencil to paper, we need to stop and look at our subject with an analytical mind. Can we imagine some simple geometrical shapes into which it fits? And then can we subdivide those shapes to get a better idea of the placement of different elements that make up the subject? Here's a pot with two different kind of plants in it that I decided to draw from life last night: and here's the drawing I made from it,… [Read more...]

TEN OLD MONK POEMS (19)

13 June 2021 - Tom

IT'S NOT WHAT'SIt's not what'sin the basketthat's important,the old monk says.What's importantis that youbring it.~SEE HOW I DO THATSee how I do that,the old monk said,directing the sunset.It's all in the wrist.~IT DOESN'T MATTERIt doesn't matterhow you die,the old monk says.When you're dead,you're dead.~YOU THINK ABOUTYou think about funerals,of course you see darkness,and the darkness sees you,the old monk said.~PUT IT THEREPut it there, the old monk said,if that's where you want to put it.I understand he bites.~YOU WANT MORE?You want more? More?the old monk said.Then you carry itup the mountain.~THERE IS SOMEWHEREThere is somewherean angel, whether you thinkyou need one or not,the old monk says.~ALL THE THINGSAll the things you want to sayyou don't say outloud,the old monk says, is whatmarks you as a wise man.~THAT'S THE WAYThat's the way it isin the monastery,the old monk says,biscuits and gravyevery dayfor breakfast.~IF I COULDIf I could I wouldsell you a dozen moreat half the price,the old monk said,but I have tomake a living.~The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Objective correlatives

13 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to my office, where most of the morning doing business and seeing my window-frames new painted, and then I out by coach to my Lord Bellasses, at his new house by my late Lord Treasurer’s, and there met him and Mr. Sherwin, Auditor Beale, and Creed, about my Lord’s accounts, and here my Lord shewed me his new house, which, indeed, is mighty noble, and good pictures — indeed, not one bad one in it. Thence to my tailor’s, and there did find Mercer come with Mrs. Horsfield and Gayet according to my desire, and there I took them up, it being almost twelve o’clock, or a little more, and carried them to the King’s playhouse, where the doors were not then open; but presently they did open; and we in, and find many people already come in, by private ways, into the pit, it being the first day of Sir Charles Sidly’s new play, so long expected, “The Mullberry Guarden,” of whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (9)

13 June 2021 - Tom

Every day is anotheryear for cottonwoodsin the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Nocturne: Near & Far

13 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

"We try to see in the dark; we toss up our questions and they catch in the trees." ~ Annie Dillard After rain, the cotton-heavy breasts of clouds; the redbud, the hawthorn, the fringe tree. I still hear the one that tapped all morning, insistent in front of a gate that wouldn't move. Only the moon pauses, stretches wide as a palmful of dough. Unmuffled, the owls begin their two-note chant: who-when? who-when? I've long understood how distance is what makes the faraway conspicuous, the near at hand swizzle into a kind of silence. [Read more...]

Apocryphal

13 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

(Lord’s day). Up, and put on my new stuff-suit, with a shoulder-belt, according to the new fashion, and the bands of my vest and tunique laced with silk lace, of the colour of my suit: and so, very handsome, to Church, where a dull sermon and of a stranger, and so home; and there I find W. Howe, and a younger brother of his, come to dine with me; and there comes Mercer, and brings with her Mrs. Gayet, which pleased me mightily; and here was also W. Hewer, and mighty merry; and after dinner to sing psalms. But, Lord! to hear what an excellent base this younger brother of W. Howe’s sings, even to my astonishment, and mighty pleasant. By and by Gayet goes away, being a Catholick, to her devotions, and Mercer to church; but we continuing an hour or two singing, and so parted; and I to Sir W. Pen’s, and there sent for a hackney-coach; and he and she and I out, to take the ayre. We went to Stepney, and… [Read more...]

SHANI RHYS JAMES EXHIBITION

12 June 2021 - Unknown

Shani Rhys James' latest exhibition Hunan-Ynysu: Self-Island opened on Wednesday this week at the Connaught Brown Gallery at 2 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4HD. I was there. If you could enter - literally, physically enter - a space made of thick, gleaming oil colours passionately coaxed with brush and palette knife into recognisable forms and feelings, then you would experience something of the effect Shani’s paintings have on a viewer, at least this viewer. I deeply identify with her work precisely because of its bold, unapologetic self-exposure: all cards on the table, yes, but hidden within a veil, a mask of paint. That we were wearing Covid-necessary masks, limiting verbal communication, made the experience all the more metaphoric and relevant. Shani’s explosive flowers are darkness-dispelling incantations but it is the unsentimental, fully admitted darkness and sadness of the human figures which attracts and envelops me. As a lifelong and long-lived artist I can’t claim objectivity about other artists’ work, past or present. Some intangible personal rhythm or note in the work of an individual artist… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (8)

12 June 2021 - Tom

It comes hardor it doesn'tcome at allin the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

The laying out and the sorting: the more than enough

12 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

You are of the tenor again, while the vehicles of this life wave their assorted banners and say what were you thinking? You can't take anything with you, but neither do you want to take anything for granted, you know? To not allow for any more pleasure, to speak a constant apologia: it takes away such depth of sky. Even a tiny wound reeks of salt-lick and pine kindling. Even the ancestors come back for a taste. [Read more...]

The mower against gardens

11 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up; and to the Office, where we sat all the morning; and at noon, home with my people to dinner; and thence to the Office all the afternoon, till, my eyes weary, I did go forth by coach to the King’s playhouse, and there saw the best part of “The Sea Voyage,” where Knepp I see do her part of sorrow very well. I afterwards to her house; but she did not come presently home; and there je did kiss her ancilla, which is so mighty belle; and I to my tailor’s, and to buy me a belt for my new suit against to-morrow; and so home, and there to my Office, and afterwards late walking in the garden; and so home to supper, and to bed, after Nell’s cutting of my hair close, the weather being very hot. I saw the art of sorrow in her garden cutting my hair close the weather being hot Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 May 1668 [Read more...]

Undergrounded

11 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and betimes to White Hall, and there met with Sir H. Cholmly at Sir Stephen Fox’s, and there was also the Cofferer, and we did there consider about our money and the condition of the Excise, and after much dispute agreed upon a state thereof and the manner of our future course of payments. Thence to the Duke of York, and there did a little navy business as we used to do, and so to a Committee for Tangier, where God knows how my Lord Bellasses’s accounts passed; understood by nobody but my Lord Ashly, who, I believe, was mad to let them go as he pleased. But here Sir H. Cholmly had his propositions read, about a greater price for his work of the Mole, or to do it upon account, which, being read, he was bid to withdraw. But, Lord! to see how unlucky a man may be, by chance; for, making an unfortunate minute when they were almost tired with the other business, the Duke of York did find fault with… [Read more...]

Narnia After The Snowmelt

11 June 2021 - Dale

The lab numbers are back, and the cholesterol ones haven't moved at all. The triglycerides went down sharply, but my triglyceride numbers were already pretty good. I really thought that losing these last two inches from my waist, and cutting out the red meat and ice cream altogether, would move the needle on the cholesterol: but not a bit. I had already laid down the number that was going to make the statin decision: if the total cholesterol / HDL ration was still over 5.0, I'd start taking them. My number was 5.5, so -- here goes. I don't buy the story of cholesterol being a driver of ill health, but there's probably some value in taking the LDL level down. If I have any side effects from them, I'll stop. I don't really view it as a terribly important decision, which is why I sort of picked a number out of a hat to make it for me. I've already given it more energy than it deserves.Anyway, I'm glad to have gotten my waist down… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (7)

11 June 2021 - Tom

The grassesknow their jobin the Sandhills.So does the wind.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

All the recent talk about the new Marvel superhero

11 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

All the recent talk about the new Marvel superhero being Filipino or FilAm or Filipinx—Specifically, Captain America, following up on the premise delivered at the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame as the shield is given to Sam Wilson. Furor, though, over the name this character is given—Ari Agbayani, private school scholarship girl, hair bobbed & uniform-skirted. Short, too, if you look closely at the sketches. She's bent on justice for her best friend, but does it really kick audiences in the face if they can associate "labia, genitalia," with "Ari?" I'd like to know more about her: like, does she know how to use a tabo? need to eat rice at nearly every meal? This ordinary girl— does she know anything about the People Power revolution that toppled Marcos, quelling the old corruptions at least for a while? Remember that other guy who draped stars & stripes over his shoulders, held a walis tambó affixed to a shield to join the January 6 uprising in the Capitol? Since Ari's described as vigilante-like, would she have swept… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (6)

10 June 2021 - Tom

God made time for the Sandhills.The cowboy in the oncoming pick-upknows it.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Three

10 June 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

Chodesh tov: happy new month! One of my friends said that to me last night, and I groaned. "Wait, what? It's Tamuz already?!" I've had a few things on my mind. Preparing my shul community to shift from all-digital to hybrid / multi-access. Supporting my kid through the final days of his fifth grade year, a school year unlike any other. It makes sense that I lost track of time. But it's a new lunar month. Once again, I bump into the disjunction between the secular calendar and our sacred one. On the secular calendar, summer is just beginning: jump in the pool! fire up the grill! Jewishly, later this month we'll be mourning. And once again I grapple with the tension between now and coming. I struggle every year with winter's cold and darkness. I count the days until they start lengthening again. I crave summer's greenery, the profusion of produce, the long golden light. That season is finally beginning... and my professional life calls me to think about three months from now, when summer will… [Read more...]

Anting

10 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

I never knew either about such a word for such a thing as this sight captured on camera: a crow sitting quite still, letting an undisciplined parade of ants crawl up and down its feathers and all over its body. Audubon supposedly observed it in turkeys as early as the 1830s— No one knows for sure if in symbiosis, or if the birds were simply tolerating the insect picnic in order to have a ready supply of snacks on hand. In one picture there's a crow in an almost Sphinx- like pose; in another, a crow bends over like a dark tent in some desert, not knowng if the arrival of these tiny nomads is a blessing or a curse. [Read more...]

Coup season

9 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and at noon home to dinner with my people, but did not stay to dine out with them, but rose and straight by water to the Temple, and so to Penny’s, my tailor’s, where by and by by agreement Mercer, and she, to my great content, brings Mrs. Gayet, and I carried them to the King’s house; but, coming too soon, we out again to the Rose taverne, and there I did give them a tankard of cool drink, the weather being very hot, and then into the playhouse again, and there saw “The Country Captain,” a very dull play, that did give us no content, and besides, little company there, which made it very unpleasing. Thence to the waterside, at Strand bridge, and so up by water and to Fox-hall, where we walked a great while, and pleased mightily with the pleasure thereof, and the company there, and then in, and eat and drank, and then out again and walked, and it beginning… [Read more...]

Category: Layout

Safety

Stolen voices