The Third Manifesto of Lutheran Surrealism
"In a time of darkness, one must hide one's light for fear of banditry & hoodlums whose only law is tyranny" (I Ching). This would be fine if we were followers of the Tao but as Lutherans we must be willing to assume martyrdom (even if there is a strong preference to give this bleak option a pass).
For the last thirty years art has been linked to social welfare and to the politics of the American political sphere. First class, then gender, and now race are considered the only politically correct lenses through which to view art. We argue for a return to the '50's. Not the 1950's, but the 1550's.
Already at that time the various options had been laid out. There was a theological art determined by the pud-pounding pundits of the Catholic tradition. There were the sex-crazed Anabaptists who sought the destruction of marriage & all the fine arts. There was the lascivious Luther who sought to separate art from theology. The downside meant that artists were often out of work, the upside meant they could follow their own visions in the garrets of Wittenberg without fear of theological reprisal. Durer and Cranach lived in the town, and both liked Luther immensely.
Marxists and fundamentalist Christians see art as essential to their political vision. Marxists want an art that illustrates their political theory. Hence the notorious Zhdanov and his Social Realism. Fundamentalists went to destroy art in order to usher in the New Jerusalem. With them are the horrid Situationists who combined the two tendencies and felt that if only we lay down our paintbrushes and sewing kits an artistic utopia of the orgy would follow suit.
Lutheran surrealism is in no hurry to make a mess of things. We are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves, and art and artists are steeped in sin. Art is a business, like carpentry or automobile manufacture, into which a ray of light may occasionally fall. Usually, not.
Unlike carpentry or automobile manufacture which is best done on an assembly line, fine art is always an exception to the rule, it is 'Pataphysical, and sui generis. Hamann has argued that poetry is the natural language of humanity, but if this is so then why is it so rare? It may be in every whale's heart, but not every whale is a poet, just as not every president is Barishnikov (Gerald Ford).
A work of art is not psychological, not political, not geographical, not sociological, not anthropological, not economical, not theological, and not even typical of anything except itself. It is like a moment of laughter. Each one cannot be duplicated, as rare as a rainbow at least, as rare as butterflies in January, as odd as gold leaves on the tree of Ygdrasil. We cannot force it into existence. We cannot mandate it. We cannot provide a blueprint for it. We cannot demand it. We can only be open to it as we are open to the possibility of grace.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Institutions in Charles Olson
Family -- his dad works in the post office -- tries to create a union -- Charles inadvertantly causes heart attack in father when he refuses father his luggage for national event -- Charles maligns Catholic mother but possibly replaces her by praising Catholic church in opening of Max
Government -- he supports Roosevelt -- works in that administration but then turns isolato with Truman's passing into power -- Truman left him cold
University -- he turns from Harvard (Unitarian) to Black Mountain (Zen?) & then Buffalo and finally ends up at some college in Connecticut
Marriage -- huge cheater
Lost in sea of alcohol he finally kills self
Nevertheless this poet is fantastic precursor to Lutheran Surrealism -- his MAX combines WCW's localism and Pound's epical history
Church -- turns from church toward poet as Jungian priest separated from any precise tradition,
isolato,
attempt to link to other mavericks such as Captain Smith, etc.
Importance of Olson is in the attention to local history; where I disagree is in the lack of attachment to any one tradition; prefer Marianne Moore's deep "taproot" through the Presbyterian, and Reznikoff through the Jewish
The resuscitation of INSTITUTION -- not the poet as individual -- but poet as part of a larger CORPORATION, corporate identity -- the need to create an engine -- his father tried it in the union, his mother through the Catholic church -- Olson saw how both could kill and went isolato -- killed by ?
Olson provides fantastic model of going through city records -- a focus on place as that which gives unity to a poem. He's had a big impact on Dale Smith -- whose thought is moving parallel to ours, and quite provocatively and productively.
Family -- his dad works in the post office -- tries to create a union -- Charles inadvertantly causes heart attack in father when he refuses father his luggage for national event -- Charles maligns Catholic mother but possibly replaces her by praising Catholic church in opening of Max
Government -- he supports Roosevelt -- works in that administration but then turns isolato with Truman's passing into power -- Truman left him cold
University -- he turns from Harvard (Unitarian) to Black Mountain (Zen?) & then Buffalo and finally ends up at some college in Connecticut
Marriage -- huge cheater
Lost in sea of alcohol he finally kills self
Nevertheless this poet is fantastic precursor to Lutheran Surrealism -- his MAX combines WCW's localism and Pound's epical history
Church -- turns from church toward poet as Jungian priest separated from any precise tradition,
isolato,
attempt to link to other mavericks such as Captain Smith, etc.
Importance of Olson is in the attention to local history; where I disagree is in the lack of attachment to any one tradition; prefer Marianne Moore's deep "taproot" through the Presbyterian, and Reznikoff through the Jewish
The resuscitation of INSTITUTION -- not the poet as individual -- but poet as part of a larger CORPORATION, corporate identity -- the need to create an engine -- his father tried it in the union, his mother through the Catholic church -- Olson saw how both could kill and went isolato -- killed by ?
Olson provides fantastic model of going through city records -- a focus on place as that which gives unity to a poem. He's had a big impact on Dale Smith -- whose thought is moving parallel to ours, and quite provocatively and productively.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Monday, January 24, 2005
Saturday, January 22, 2005
More Famous Lutherans
There is an enormous page with over a hundred names of famous Lutherans at
http://www.hope-elca.com/famous/
I think that possibly Dr. Seuss is probably the most like a Lutheran Surrealist. His pictures are somewhat surrealist (the surrealists often accepted cartoon artists and popular comedians generally) but there is also a Christian component to many of his works. For instance, in Horton Hears a Who, it is said, "A person is a person, no matter how small."
Dana Carvey (is this right) is the only popular stage comedian I can find.
The only important poet is Robert Bly. I am also certain he no longer attends a Lutheran church but there are many indicators that he has a two kingdom's theology in parts of his work.
Looking through the original surrealists it seems that some of those who joined from Germany may have been Lutheran. Max Ernst, or Hans Arp. Arp would be a real coup, as he maintained a rather saintly demeanor. People who met him spoke of his simplicity and decency. I met Josine Janco (Marcel Janco's daughter) and she said that growing up around the surrealists wasn't easy because they were lechers and weren't generally very pleasant. She made an exception for Arp, who took a kind of grandfatherly liking to her, and spoke with her often with humor and kindness.
Namibia in Africa is well over 50% Lutheran at this point. There may be some interesting artists in that community. Of course there were surrealists in Sweden, in Norway, and in Finland, and probably in Iceland. Certainly there was a major movement in Denmark. Careful research could probably turn up a few of these artists who remained faithful to our God.
There is an enormous page with over a hundred names of famous Lutherans at
http://www.hope-elca.com/famous/
I think that possibly Dr. Seuss is probably the most like a Lutheran Surrealist. His pictures are somewhat surrealist (the surrealists often accepted cartoon artists and popular comedians generally) but there is also a Christian component to many of his works. For instance, in Horton Hears a Who, it is said, "A person is a person, no matter how small."
Dana Carvey (is this right) is the only popular stage comedian I can find.
The only important poet is Robert Bly. I am also certain he no longer attends a Lutheran church but there are many indicators that he has a two kingdom's theology in parts of his work.
Looking through the original surrealists it seems that some of those who joined from Germany may have been Lutheran. Max Ernst, or Hans Arp. Arp would be a real coup, as he maintained a rather saintly demeanor. People who met him spoke of his simplicity and decency. I met Josine Janco (Marcel Janco's daughter) and she said that growing up around the surrealists wasn't easy because they were lechers and weren't generally very pleasant. She made an exception for Arp, who took a kind of grandfatherly liking to her, and spoke with her often with humor and kindness.
Namibia in Africa is well over 50% Lutheran at this point. There may be some interesting artists in that community. Of course there were surrealists in Sweden, in Norway, and in Finland, and probably in Iceland. Certainly there was a major movement in Denmark. Careful research could probably turn up a few of these artists who remained faithful to our God.
Abbie Hoffman on Castro
"Castro is like a mighty penis coming to life, and when he is tall and straight the crowd is immediately transformed."
From Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (HarperPerennial 1997), 866.
Johnson uses the quote to illustrate leftist adulation of Castro among young Americans in the 1960s. I doubt however if Hoffman was ever this completely straightforward in his relish for Castro. Could he have been being self-parodical, or at least funny about the "femininity of the crowd" as Hitler termed it?
Does anybody know the origin of this quote. It's listed as having been in a book called Political Pilgrims, by Holland, p. 273.
"Castro is like a mighty penis coming to life, and when he is tall and straight the crowd is immediately transformed."
From Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (HarperPerennial 1997), 866.
Johnson uses the quote to illustrate leftist adulation of Castro among young Americans in the 1960s. I doubt however if Hoffman was ever this completely straightforward in his relish for Castro. Could he have been being self-parodical, or at least funny about the "femininity of the crowd" as Hitler termed it?
Does anybody know the origin of this quote. It's listed as having been in a book called Political Pilgrims, by Holland, p. 273.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Friday, January 14, 2005
Reading David Bentley Hart's Aesthetics of the Infinite along with most of the Christian world it seems. It's a whale of a book.
He tries to argue that at bottom the only way we judge anything is through taste. He claims Nietzsche is tasteless, and therefore out. But I don't think taste is enough for moral judgement. Or to create law. What we have in our society is a crisis of law. Who will determine law?
Christians claim that God did this. He did it in Leviticus, and he did it through the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses. They are written in stone, so to speak. To some extent they are perhaps arbitrary, which is what the left argues. And yet, the left wants to be God, and lay down its own laws. Laws that are reasonable, and that make sense. But on what basis does anything make sense?
Christianity is not a humanism. Christians believe that God is the father and has laid down rules that are eternal. Of course there is a left wing within the churches that wants to overturn all this. But on what basis are they going to be able to find a law that still functions? Taste?
While I love Hart's book, and am only half-way through, I think the pressure on him when he asks us to revive aesthetics within the church as the ground on which we stand, is to show how this new aesthetic ground is better than the commandments already laid down in terms of understanding how we are to behave. How do Hart's aesthetic criteria help us to resolve the massive social problems with which we are confronted? How are we to judge abortion, homosexuality, murder, euthanasia? Can these be judged solely on the grounds of whether or not we consider them to be beautiful?
There isn't any absolute ground of opinion on which anything can stand. And so to some extent it is taste that matters. But taste shifts. What I liked at 10 years of age (Batman, playing baseball) no longer matter to me.
Rather than chaos, it is perhaps better to have some arbitrary judgement at least within the church. Then to remember the odd mollifying influence of Jesus when he allowed the adulteress to go free. Only he was allowed to throw a stone, and didn't, since he was the only non-sinner.
It is quite baffling to think of law, or of any kind of standard. And nobody likes to be told what to do. As Lutherans, we humbly kneel before the Creator in obedience. As surrealists we have no ethics whatsoever but only the aesthetics of the marvelous. And so Lutheranism adds a body of law and tradition to clarify our actions, and give us a way in which to judge our own actions. This is why I originally added Lutheran as a hedge on surrealism. It would add a body of arbitrary law, and a sense of an ethical tradition which was entirely lacking in surrealism.
Breton tried to supply it by hitching his wagon to Marxism. But nothing is more unethical than Marxism, in which one party -- arbitrary and generally run by an aberrant dictator -- who seem to have no compunction about throwing stones. Marxism has been the greatest threat to Christianity throughout the twentieth century and it is far from over. It is down for the count after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I fully expect it to revive and give us another century of bloody horror.
He tries to argue that at bottom the only way we judge anything is through taste. He claims Nietzsche is tasteless, and therefore out. But I don't think taste is enough for moral judgement. Or to create law. What we have in our society is a crisis of law. Who will determine law?
Christians claim that God did this. He did it in Leviticus, and he did it through the Ten Commandments handed down to Moses. They are written in stone, so to speak. To some extent they are perhaps arbitrary, which is what the left argues. And yet, the left wants to be God, and lay down its own laws. Laws that are reasonable, and that make sense. But on what basis does anything make sense?
Christianity is not a humanism. Christians believe that God is the father and has laid down rules that are eternal. Of course there is a left wing within the churches that wants to overturn all this. But on what basis are they going to be able to find a law that still functions? Taste?
While I love Hart's book, and am only half-way through, I think the pressure on him when he asks us to revive aesthetics within the church as the ground on which we stand, is to show how this new aesthetic ground is better than the commandments already laid down in terms of understanding how we are to behave. How do Hart's aesthetic criteria help us to resolve the massive social problems with which we are confronted? How are we to judge abortion, homosexuality, murder, euthanasia? Can these be judged solely on the grounds of whether or not we consider them to be beautiful?
There isn't any absolute ground of opinion on which anything can stand. And so to some extent it is taste that matters. But taste shifts. What I liked at 10 years of age (Batman, playing baseball) no longer matter to me.
Rather than chaos, it is perhaps better to have some arbitrary judgement at least within the church. Then to remember the odd mollifying influence of Jesus when he allowed the adulteress to go free. Only he was allowed to throw a stone, and didn't, since he was the only non-sinner.
It is quite baffling to think of law, or of any kind of standard. And nobody likes to be told what to do. As Lutherans, we humbly kneel before the Creator in obedience. As surrealists we have no ethics whatsoever but only the aesthetics of the marvelous. And so Lutheranism adds a body of law and tradition to clarify our actions, and give us a way in which to judge our own actions. This is why I originally added Lutheran as a hedge on surrealism. It would add a body of arbitrary law, and a sense of an ethical tradition which was entirely lacking in surrealism.
Breton tried to supply it by hitching his wagon to Marxism. But nothing is more unethical than Marxism, in which one party -- arbitrary and generally run by an aberrant dictator -- who seem to have no compunction about throwing stones. Marxism has been the greatest threat to Christianity throughout the twentieth century and it is far from over. It is down for the count after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I fully expect it to revive and give us another century of bloody horror.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
American History
Reading through Paul Johnson's A History of the American People I am struck by all the odd details which complicate my picture of American history. For instance Johnson argues that the south never had a true popular vote regarding whether or not to prosecute the Civil War. It was done by fiat by an upper class of slave holders. Of the nine million in the south, only some 1000 held more than 100 slaves. Eight and a half million had no slaves at all and many of these were against it, as they were afraid that if the logic of slavery continued they themselves might end up as slaves.
Then there are the truly odd details. I was aware from previous research that there were only five Chinese soldiers in the war (some accounts go up to 45), and most of these fought for the south, but at Gettysburg there were a few on both sides and may have even shot at one another. The first Chinese in America arrive in the 1850s.
On p. 462 of Johnson's history he notes that there was a Norwegian-speaking Christian colonel who fought with the north and who was responsible for a Norwegian regiment from Wisconsin. Hans Christian Heg was shot in the abdomen at Chickamauga in 1863 and died. His regiment had been sorely beaten during the battle of Chickamauga -- losing some 60% of its men in one day's engagement.
Reading through Paul Johnson's A History of the American People I am struck by all the odd details which complicate my picture of American history. For instance Johnson argues that the south never had a true popular vote regarding whether or not to prosecute the Civil War. It was done by fiat by an upper class of slave holders. Of the nine million in the south, only some 1000 held more than 100 slaves. Eight and a half million had no slaves at all and many of these were against it, as they were afraid that if the logic of slavery continued they themselves might end up as slaves.
Then there are the truly odd details. I was aware from previous research that there were only five Chinese soldiers in the war (some accounts go up to 45), and most of these fought for the south, but at Gettysburg there were a few on both sides and may have even shot at one another. The first Chinese in America arrive in the 1850s.
On p. 462 of Johnson's history he notes that there was a Norwegian-speaking Christian colonel who fought with the north and who was responsible for a Norwegian regiment from Wisconsin. Hans Christian Heg was shot in the abdomen at Chickamauga in 1863 and died. His regiment had been sorely beaten during the battle of Chickamauga -- losing some 60% of its men in one day's engagement.
Monday, January 10, 2005
In the January 2005 issue of First Things, a review of a new book on Kierkegaard is titled The Laughter of the Philosophers. David Bentley Hart reviews Daniel Oden's new book in saying that far more humorous than Kierkegaard is the oddball Lutheran sexologist and linguist Johann Georg Hamann and Hart says that Kierkegaard said that Hamann was the funniest philosopher in the world. I came across Hamann in graduate school while researching Pierre Klossowski. Klossowski had written a wonderful but rather obscure essay entitled Le Mage du Nord. It turns out that this is a common description of Hamann -- used by Hegel, Kant, and more recently by Isaiah Berlin.
I can't say exactly what Hamann is about.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hamann/#1
Provides a brief overview.
Hamann thought that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason left sexuality out of our relationship to God, and that in the sexual relationship was a symbol of the trinity. "God was the word," and "Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race," gives some semblance of a linguistics that could take us far beyond the simplicity of Saussure. Passion and commitment in interpretation do not obfuscate either the pole of the author or the reader -- the sexual relationship is Hamann's guiding metaphor. He had four kids and loved his wife. He never got a good academic position because of a speech impediment but he was considered by Goethe, Kant, and Kierkegaard as essential to their thought.
What's available in English is scarce. There is more in French. Hamann wrote in German, so the best sources are in that language.
I can't say exactly what Hamann is about.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hamann/#1
Provides a brief overview.
Hamann thought that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason left sexuality out of our relationship to God, and that in the sexual relationship was a symbol of the trinity. "God was the word," and "Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race," gives some semblance of a linguistics that could take us far beyond the simplicity of Saussure. Passion and commitment in interpretation do not obfuscate either the pole of the author or the reader -- the sexual relationship is Hamann's guiding metaphor. He had four kids and loved his wife. He never got a good academic position because of a speech impediment but he was considered by Goethe, Kant, and Kierkegaard as essential to their thought.
What's available in English is scarce. There is more in French. Hamann wrote in German, so the best sources are in that language.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
Yesterday I was sledding in the backyard with my five year old and my three year old. We went on one particularly long glide and somehow unearthed a mole or a mouse which went berserk when our sled knocked off his snow cover. Suddenly it ran up my daughter's leg. I knocked it off with my hand and then stomped on it and it made a tiny squeak and died. I took my foot off and saw the poor frail thing surrounded by a nimbus of blood. I heard the voice of Christ in my head. He said, "What do you do unto the least of these -- you also do unto Me."
I would like to put the life back into the mole or mouse (I think the mice are asleep at this time of year?) but once the life is taken out of something you can't put it back in. That's the difference between a machine -- a clock can be fixed and get going again -- but anything with the precious thing called life -- once you knock the life out of something it is gone forever.
Whenever I walk past the meat aisle in the grocery store I feel I am going to faint. It's a strange world -- the pneumatic food chain -- in which life feeds life. The world as a 24-hour open grocery store. I prefer not to go out into nature. I realize there is this huge Sierra Club which worships nature for some reason. For me it's pure terror and suffering and incomprehensibility.
I would like to put the life back into the mole or mouse (I think the mice are asleep at this time of year?) but once the life is taken out of something you can't put it back in. That's the difference between a machine -- a clock can be fixed and get going again -- but anything with the precious thing called life -- once you knock the life out of something it is gone forever.
Whenever I walk past the meat aisle in the grocery store I feel I am going to faint. It's a strange world -- the pneumatic food chain -- in which life feeds life. The world as a 24-hour open grocery store. I prefer not to go out into nature. I realize there is this huge Sierra Club which worships nature for some reason. For me it's pure terror and suffering and incomprehensibility.
Friday, January 07, 2005
The poor have a luminous beauty -- why photographers are always taking pictures of alcoholics on park benches can have no other rationale. Children have it, and others who are not yet used to the "ways of the world" -- the mad, the great poets, the saints. When the soul appears all that we see is a luminous and almost blinding beauty. It can also be seen in the injured and dying.
Breton and Luther saw this, and it is part of why they frame a brotherhood of agape love.
Breton and Luther saw this, and it is part of why they frame a brotherhood of agape love.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Sunday, January 02, 2005
The tsunami of French theory that swept through the humanities two decades ago is largely a thing of the past. I was caught up in it, but I would like to think of myself as a survivor.
Today I am much like Christopher Hitchens, I suppose, in my disbelief regarding those who equate W. with Hussein or even with Bin Laden. Have all standards of judgement been lost? It seems that in the humanities the only remaining standards for those behind me are race and gender. Class is still given lip-service, but only as a gesture of respect for the spectre of Marx.
Slowly an opposition has formed. The front of this is probably the Catholic twin towers of O'Reilly and Sean Hannity on Fox News. Behind this is a huge and growing phalanx -- FIRE, which is suing colleges for infringements of first amendment rights (they're liberal lawyers, believe it or not), and then there's the turncoat David Horowitz who was so disgusted by the behavior of the Panthers (rape and murder) that he's become one of the leading stalwarts of the new right. There's also Victor Davis Hanson whose classicism allowed him to remain high and dry among the tsunami of anti-intellectualism represented by French theory.
In France the theoretical left has long been demolished by the new Kantians, but no one in America that I know of aside from myself has much read Luc Ferry and his cohorts, or has any high regard for them. Perhaps this is because of the lack of translations, or because there is almost no one in academia who has a taste for moderation. I honestly don't know. They're not very interesting in terms of being paradoxical or ingenious. It's mostly common sense. Luc Ferry asks in terms of the eco-left's bizarre respect for all forms of life whether they would even grant rights to the AIDS virus, or whether they would put a baby's life above that of bacteria.
It's kind of ridiculous but this sort of question has to be asked after a decade of Deleuzian madness in which the tick and the flea are raised to the level of philosophers. What happened to values? Only that of the strong, only that of life (life at its most disgusting and bullying).
I would like to think that Lutheran surrealism is raising a tiny flag for common sense. It's not that we have any. We've been swept by hippie charms such as LSD, and later by French theory. Somehow we've survived. Most of our friends haven't -- suicide and madness and AIDS has taken most of my friends through my life. We've tried to find dry land in Shakespeare, in Roger Shattuck, in the village church. In all humility I fully expect to be sucked screaming into hell at the end of my life. But I would like my children to know that there are other standards than those by which I have lived and thought. The ten commandments, the decency of democracy, the idea of human rights. They took thousands of years and many generations.
Today I read John Dewey, Martin Luther, Marianne Moore, and new generations of theologians. They make better sense to me than French theory or LSD. I'm getting older and as I wander in the no-man's land between theoretical camps I have a white flag of surrender and do hope that common sense (whatever that is, because I have very little) will prevail.
Today I am much like Christopher Hitchens, I suppose, in my disbelief regarding those who equate W. with Hussein or even with Bin Laden. Have all standards of judgement been lost? It seems that in the humanities the only remaining standards for those behind me are race and gender. Class is still given lip-service, but only as a gesture of respect for the spectre of Marx.
Slowly an opposition has formed. The front of this is probably the Catholic twin towers of O'Reilly and Sean Hannity on Fox News. Behind this is a huge and growing phalanx -- FIRE, which is suing colleges for infringements of first amendment rights (they're liberal lawyers, believe it or not), and then there's the turncoat David Horowitz who was so disgusted by the behavior of the Panthers (rape and murder) that he's become one of the leading stalwarts of the new right. There's also Victor Davis Hanson whose classicism allowed him to remain high and dry among the tsunami of anti-intellectualism represented by French theory.
In France the theoretical left has long been demolished by the new Kantians, but no one in America that I know of aside from myself has much read Luc Ferry and his cohorts, or has any high regard for them. Perhaps this is because of the lack of translations, or because there is almost no one in academia who has a taste for moderation. I honestly don't know. They're not very interesting in terms of being paradoxical or ingenious. It's mostly common sense. Luc Ferry asks in terms of the eco-left's bizarre respect for all forms of life whether they would even grant rights to the AIDS virus, or whether they would put a baby's life above that of bacteria.
It's kind of ridiculous but this sort of question has to be asked after a decade of Deleuzian madness in which the tick and the flea are raised to the level of philosophers. What happened to values? Only that of the strong, only that of life (life at its most disgusting and bullying).
I would like to think that Lutheran surrealism is raising a tiny flag for common sense. It's not that we have any. We've been swept by hippie charms such as LSD, and later by French theory. Somehow we've survived. Most of our friends haven't -- suicide and madness and AIDS has taken most of my friends through my life. We've tried to find dry land in Shakespeare, in Roger Shattuck, in the village church. In all humility I fully expect to be sucked screaming into hell at the end of my life. But I would like my children to know that there are other standards than those by which I have lived and thought. The ten commandments, the decency of democracy, the idea of human rights. They took thousands of years and many generations.
Today I read John Dewey, Martin Luther, Marianne Moore, and new generations of theologians. They make better sense to me than French theory or LSD. I'm getting older and as I wander in the no-man's land between theoretical camps I have a white flag of surrender and do hope that common sense (whatever that is, because I have very little) will prevail.
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