music out of nothing

by Rupert M. Loydell
The shadow seemed to move, but didn't.
What was surprising was that that group
went away together and managed
to get along when here they hardly speak.
Adrift in a sea of footnotes and cross-references,
everything brings back memories of something else.
I wanted to speak my mind, wanted to scream,
but nodded instead, let it go. Yes, I would
like another drink; no, I am not on the wagon
although the steam has gone out of my engine.
I used to write and read, cycle, run and skateboard,
now I am more likely to succumb to television
and the books by my bed are from last year.
Can we be sure of anything? I'd like to think so
but the sacredness of questioning always intervenes.
How is it that now there is nothing more than words
the eternal is all around? If you peer through
the curtains you can see it outside. We are not
needed now but at least the rain has stopped.
Conspiracy theorists always blame somebody else,
it is easier and simpler that way. This is pop
and we can make music out of nothing.
It feels like we are at the end of a journey
but we've only just left home. 'Are we there yet?'
'No, sit still and be quiet.' Today has been long
and fraught. Look into the distance and
try to find the outline of promises and aspiration
as tables of green fields lead the eye away
into summer confusion. At the moment
wind and rain and tide conspire to flood the valley.
This is what the world was then but I am only human,
have run out of wonder, am dancing on the edge
of where I am probably not meant to be.

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always in squint

by Zach Kincaid
Trace back. Cain and Abel began the dance with great flare. What follows? The drunkenness of Noah; Abram’s lack of faith; the sin of Lot’s daughters; Isaac and Rebecca playing of favorites; the neglect of Jacob for his other sons; God’s rebuke of Eli for he honored his sons above his faith; the spear that divided Saul from Jonathan; the mess of David that his crafty eye began, that included rape and murder, that had Absalom hanging from a tree by his jealous hair, that brought the wisdom of Solomon who offered several songs about relationships despite a life riddled with misplaced priorities.

In Job there is hope. The Scripture explains that he regularly sacrificed burnt offerings for his sons and daughters. “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts,” he reasoned. His account concludes, “And Job saw his children and their children to the fourth generation.” I suppose Hannah provides the chief Old Testament example of a faithful mother as Mary and Elizabeth offer similar examples in the New Testament. Others may be pieced together, but for much of Scripture, family relations are seen- for sin is blinding- through an eye always in squint.

But the story is redemptive as all stories can be. Who was Terah that Abram became the father of many nations (despite his setbacks); who was Amoz that allowed Isaiah the eyes to see the prophesy of Messiah; who was Hacaliah that gave Nehemiah the charge to rebuild the wall and prompted the return of Israel from exile? Trace back and find a patient God who embraces time with love and a people who desperately pull away from that embrace.

How about it? Faithfulness has a lineage but it is speckled. Maybe this promotes “real life.” Are David’s deceits a reassurance for our own unfaithfulness, or do we cry out with naked vulnerability, torn and diseased before a God of cures?

It is far easier to sympathize and rationalize our behaviors than to hear what prophets Samuel, Nathan, or John the Baptist might say? The purpose of Scripture is not first to promote reality but to exhort truth in which reality can be confirmed.

May our days be marked by his faithfulness, not by our excuses; may our affections be for his cross not for our philosophies that cuts sin’s sting without reconciling it.

(Genesis 4:8; 9:20-21; 16:1-4; 19:30-38; 25:28; 37:3; 1 Samuel 3:13-14; 20:30-32; 2 Samuel 11:4; 13:11-12; 13:30; 18:9; 1 Kings 3:12; 11:2-6; Job 1:5; 42:16; 1 Samuel 1:21-2:10; John 19:26; Luke 1:57-58; Genesis 11:27-12:3; Isaiah 1:1 and, e.g., 9:1-7; Nehemiah 1:1 and 11:1-2.)

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christ beside me, christ before me...

by John F. Deane
“Christianity in a thousand ways has shaped the history of Ireland”, (De Paor, 3).

This is fact, and it must not be forgotten when the Irish look at themselves in the contemporary world, or look at the state of Christianity today. Liam De Paor was speaking in terms of his study of Ireland around the beginning of the fifth century. He concludes that our St Patrick may indeed not have been the first to bring Christianity to Ireland. Before 432 there were Christians in the country as the chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine who lived in the fifth century, tells us; in 431 Pope Celestine sent one Palladius to be “the first bishop of the Irish believers in Christ”. This suggests there were believers already in the country and that they needed guidance.

Patrick, when he came, clearly had far greater success in spreading Christianity and it may well be that the facts and legends of both Paladius and Patrick have conflated into the one we now know as our Special Patron Saint. There are writings by St Patrick, this is clear, and they are written in Latin as it was used in the fifth century. However, the “Lorica”, (the Latin word for cuirass or breastplate), has an uncertain authorship, though there are indications that it may well have been greatly influenced by Patrick’s teachings, if not actually written by Patrick himself. Fact and legend merge into one glimmering pearl of great price to which we Irish hold, with enthusiasm and with genuine love.

By the fifth century the Irish language was established everywhere: “The unity of speech was reflected in a unity (not perhaps complete uniformity) of culture throughout the country” (De Paor 24). The culture was a rural one, with cattle and sheep vital to survival. Irish chieftains were used to leading plundering expeditions into the Roman world, mainly into Britain and from these they brought slaves and goods back into the country. Many of these slaves would already have been touched by Christianity and they formed their own groups throughout Ireland. All of this brough a “new wealth” into the country, and with it a loyalty to one’s chieftain who doled out generous portions of the plunder to those who rode the seas alongside them. These chiefs, or local “kings”, had a semi-sacral status; they were protectors and were inaugurated in a pagan ceremony of mating with a local goddess. “The inauguration of the king of Tara was a symbolic mating (feis) with the goddess” (de Paor 28). Connected to the king’s court were the filid, the poets, who were believed to have supernatural powers, and the druí, druids, who were believed to have access to wisdom and arcane knowledge. There was a pantheon of local gods and goddesses, the latter mainly spirits of place and, of course, of motherhood and fertility. Spells and incantations were common. “Christian teaching had to find a way through a labyrinth of feaar, superstitious observance and worship (ultimately of the elements of nature) – which included some form of sun worship” (de Paor 29), and St Patrick’s Breastplate echoes the natural fear that wizards and incantations imposed.

March 17th; it began, of course, with a special Mass and we dressed accordingly, ensuring that we wore something green about us. We children wore a green badge of some sort, with a golden harp on it, or a grey high tower, a spring-green ribbon dangling. At Mass we sang, or hum-hawed our way through Hail Glorious Saint Patrick dear saint of our isle. . . or pretended we had some idea what we were murmuring as we glossed and glozed our way through Dóchas linn Naomh Pádraig Aspal mór na hÉireann. . . The feast day often occurred during Lent and for that special day we were allowed break our fasting and eat sweets and chocolates to our hearts’ content. Afternoon, when we had eaten our green cabbage, our green jelly, our roast lamb with rosemary and mint, we took the car and joined many of the island folk back in Keel, listening to the bands, perhaps cocking an ear to the commentary on the radio of the games going ahead up in Dublin, making ourselves slowly sick on an overdose of sweets. And forgetting all about St Patrick’s great prayer that we had only vaguely registered in school for the many days leading up to that great day.

St Patrick’s Day on Achill Island was celebrated with special glee and enthusiasm, however chilly the winds were coming in off the Atlantic, however wet the weather at this vicious turning of the seasons. The harsh winds seemed always to have come slicing in from the Ocean on that particular day, racing across the sandy banks like Norse Invaders wielding swords, or whipping salt spray and stinging grains of sand against face and body as we stood huddled, watching the wonderful pipers’ bands as they paraded and played their few and rousing tunes. They came marching down from the church in Pollagh, and you could hear the lift and urgent cries of their sharp high notes suffering against the low and throaty insistence of the chanters, all against the steady and unrelenting wham wham wham of the big drums. And the men came, proudly clothed in their tartan kilts and blazing jackets, their golden sporrans, their ghillie brogues, such polished mighty brooches and their caps with jaunty feathers, seagull feather, peacock feather, black feather of the chough. . . But were these not our neighbours, the fishermen, the small farmers, the sons of small farmers, the boys in the higher classes in the schools? All changed, utterly, and beautifully.

The tunes they played were patriotic tunes, Faith of Our Fathers, A Nation Once Again, and for those cold hours we stood proud and tall as Irish men and women, who had survived centuries of oppression and had held on to that old faith, that holy faith, to which we would be true to death, and all of that in spite of dungeon, fire and sword. Deep into my soul sank the great knot of Irish sentiment with a powerfully dominant Roman Catholic faith, never to be shaken, never to be questioned, and our hearts beat high with joy, oh yes we will be true to that faith till death.
And what of those hymns we sang, lustily and greedily, in chapel on Patrick’s morning?

Dóchas linn Naomh Pádraig
Aspal mór na hÉireann
'Ainm oirirc gléigeal
Solas mór an tsaoil é
'S é do chloígh na draoithe
Croíthe dúra gan aon mhaith
D'ísligh dream an díomais
Tré neart Dé ar dtréanfhlaith

Sléibhte gleannta maighe
's bailte mór' na hÉireann
Ghlan sé iad go deo dúinn
Míle glóir dár Naomh dhil
Iarraimid ort, a Phádraig
Guí orainne Gaela
Dia linn lá 'gus oíche
's Pádraig Aspal Éireann
Your aid to us St Patrick,
Great Apostle of Ireland
Name all brightly shining
Powerful light across our life
It was he destroyed the Druids
Hard of heart they were and worthless
Flung out that dreadful crowd
Through God’s power, our Hero.

Mountains, glens and valleys
And the mighty towns of Ireland
He purified for us for ever
A thousand glories to our darling saint
We beg you now, dear Patrick
Pray for us the Irish
God be with us day and night
And Patrick Apostle of Ireland.

This was our special saint, and we were a specially favoured people because of him. We believed in those times that when the end days of the universe were coming upon us, Ireland would be granted the grace of sinking gently beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea, and we would avoid the fire and brimstone that a thundering God would pour down on the earth in His judgmental rage and fury. We believed, too, that the safest place on earth, when and if those days came in our time, would be back on the high slopes of our own mountain, Slieve More, “Big Mountain”, some three thousand feet above sea-level. We were innocent. We were willing. We believed.

Hail, glorious St. Patrick, dear saint of our isle,
On us thy poor children bestow a sweet smile;
And now thou art high in the mansions above,
On Erin's green valleys look down in thy love.

On Erin's green valleys, on Erin's green valleys,
On Erin's green valleys look down in thy love.

Hail, glorious St. Patrick, thy words were once strong
Against Satan's wiles and a heretic throng;
Not less is thy might where in Heaven thou art;
Oh, come to our aid, in our battle take part!

In a war against sin, in the fight for the faith,
Dear Saint, may thy children resist to the death;
May their strength be in meekness, in penance, and prayer,
Their banner the Cross, which they glory to bear.

Thy people, now exiles on many a shore,
Shall love and revere thee till time be no more;
And the fire thou hast kindled shall ever burn bright,
Its warmth undiminished, undying its light.

Ever bless and defend the sweet land of our birth,
Where the shamrock still blooms as when thou wert on earth,
And our hearts shall yet burn, wherever we roam,
For God and St. Patrick, and our native home.

How lustily we sang, “On Erin’s green valleys. . .” for in those days they were green indeed, unpolluted, pristine, and lovely. This was our faith, this was our patriotism. We would fight the good fight against sin, guided infallibly by our special saint and by our mother Church. Because, as the hymn insists, we are at war with sin, we are in a battle to save our souls, and we are in an ongoing fight to save our faith. Our banner was “the Cross” and under it we would prevail. And we stood strong and emotionally stirred by it all.

It was many years later before I came across the other hymn, Christ be beside me, Christ be before me, Christ be behind me, King of my Heart. . . I love the tune still, and I relish the sentiment. So I sought out the original and found a poem that must be one of the very first in these western islands to so encapsulate the sense of the all-pervasive and guardian presence of the Christ in our lives. Duns Scotus Eriugena (810-877) who left Ireland to take up important work abroad, worked towards a reconciliation of faith and reason; his relationship to Celtic piety helped him with the idea that “God alone has true being; he is the essence of everything that partakes of this. Every one of his creatures, therefore, is a theophany, a sign of God’s presence”. (Armstrong 199) This rings beautifully true throughout the poem.

The Trinity, it appears, was vitally important to St Patrick’s teaching, and the presence of Christ being close to the people. He knew the Scriptures and brought the story of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity to a people already disposed to think of some higher Presence on our earth. The faith flourished under his ministry and the Celtic awareness of sacred things allowed great commitment to the new faith throughout Ireland, our “Land of Saints and Scholars”. Rome and its authority seemed then very far away and the Church in Ireland took upon itself the spreading of the faith amongst its nearest neighbours, in Wales and Scotland.

Patrick had spent six years in captivity where he acquired a knowledge of the Celtic tongue; his master, Milchu, was a high priest of the druids, and Patrick grew strong in his own faith, and in his wish to rid Ireland of what he saw as evil in the Celtic Druidic beliefs. Ultimately it was Pope Celestine I who entrusted Patrick to return to Ireland to gather the Irish into the Christian fold. The rest is history – and legend.
Amhairghin, “birth of song”, is the name given to our first poet, Amergin. He it was who first claimed in verse that his is this glorious island, to his soul Ireland belongs. Here is a poet who does not merely claim dominion over all of creation, but kinship with creation in all its aspects. Here is a poet for whom living is being part of the cosmos, and the cosmos is part of his living.

The Song of Amergin
I am a seven-antlered stag,
I am a flood of waters on the plain,
I am a wind on the deep wide ocean,
I am a gleaming tear shed by the sun,
I am a hawk on the high cliff ledge,
I am the fairest among the flowers,
I am the roaring of high tide and low,
I am the fire burning on every hill,
I am the fierce and charging boar,
I am the salmon of wisdom in the black pool,
I am the spear in the battle-fray,
I am a wave upon the ocean,
I am a hill aflame with poetry,
Who else is tree and the lightning on the tree,
Who else is the unhewn darkness of the dolmen,
Who else is aware of the sun’s track, the seasons of the moon,
Who else directs the mountains, the rivers, the folk,
I am the queen of every hive,
I am the shield upon every breast,
I am the grave of every selfish hope,
I invoke the land of Ireland.

Echoes of this poem sound through the prayer attributed to St Patrick. Centuries later, after Amergin, after Patrick, William Butler Yeats wrote, in 1929:

I Am of Ireland
'I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland.’

One man, one man alone
In that outlandish gear,
One solitary man
Of all that rambled there
Had turned his stately head.
'That is a long way off,
And time runs on,’ he said,
'And the night grows rough.’

'I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’

'The fiddlers are all thumbs,
Or the fiddle-string accursed,
The drums and the kettledrums
And the trumpets all are burst,
And the trombone,’ cried he,
‘The trumpet and trombone,’
And cocked a malicious eye,
‘But time runs on, runs on.’

‘I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’

The woman speaker of the poem is not only a woman “of Ireland”, she is Ireland herself, and urges everyone to follow her ideal Ireland. There is only one listener, however, and he cynically finds the “times to be out of joint”, discovering expedient ways of moving towards the ideal. It was Yeats, too, who wrote, “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone. . .”

St. Patrick's Breastplate is contained in the ancient Book of Armagh, from the early ninth century, along with Patrick's authentic "Confession." St. Patrick is said to have written this prayer to strengthen himself with God's protection as he prepared to confront and convert Laoghaire, high king of Ireland. In Ephesians, chapter six, St Paul wrote

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armour of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

St Patrick is said to have offered this prayer when he and some of his followers were being pursued by the king’s men; they were all turned into deer and escaped, hence the title, “The Deer’s Cry”. In the poem the soul girds itself with the armour of Christ’s presence to face into the day, a prayer suitable for beginnings, suitable for the start of any journey, suitable for the ongoing pursuit of that journey of life. It breathes awareness of how Christ cared for the soul on its journey, and how the battle the soul has to fight is rich with a sense of the great wonder and beauty of that world, a freshness and blessed presence that remains centered on Christ and fused to the beauty of all creation. It remains in the Irish consciousness as a morning prayer, as a prayer of protection, and we breathe it out with great pleasure.

The Deer’s Cry
I gather strength today
through invocation of the Trinity;
the Source and Sustenance of our being,
the Name and Nature of the Source
and the Breath that gives it being.

I gather strength today
through power of Christ’s birth and baptism,
through power of His crucifixion and His burial,
through power of His resurrection and His ascension,
through power of His coming on the Final Day.

I gather to myself today
strength in the love of Cherubim,
strength in the obedience of angels
and in the service of archangels,
strength in the hope of resurrection,
in the prayers of patriarchs
and the foretelling of the prophets,
strength in apostles’ preaching
and in confessors’ faith,
strength in the innocence of virgins
and the actions of prudent men.

I gather strength today
through the great power of heaven,
light of the sun
and radiance of the moon,
strength in the lightning flash
and splendour of the fire,
in the swiftness of the winds
and in the depths of ocean,
stability of the earth
and steadfastness of rock.

I gather to myself today
the strength of God to guide me,
the power of God to uphold me,
wisdom of God to lead me,
the eye of God to watch for me,
ear of God to hear for me,
the word of God to speak for me,
hand of God to guard me,
God’s way to stretch before me
and the shield of God to shelter;
the Godly hosts to save me
out of the snares the devils set
and out of temptations of viciousness,
out of the clutches of those who wish me harm,
however far they be, however close,
singly, or in multitudes.

I call to myself today
God’s strength against all evil,
against all cruel force and merciless
that may attack my body and my soul,
against incantation of false prophecy,
against the black laws of the heathen,
against the false laws of heresies,
against the lies and shams of idols,
against the spells of women, smiths and druids,
against those webs of knowledge that entrap the souls of men.

Oh Christ I pray protect me
against poisons, burnings, drownings,
and against all wounding powers
that I may reap abundant harvests of rewards.

Christ be with me, Christ before,
Christ behind and Christ within me,
Christ beneath and Christ above,
Christ on my right hand, Christ on my left,
Christ in my sleeping, and in my rising,
Christ in the courtyard, Christ at the wheel,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of all who speak of me,
Christ in the eye of all who see me,
Christ in the ear of all who hear me.

I gather strength today
through invocation of the Trinity;
the Source and Sustenance of our being,
the Name and Nature of the Source
and the Breath that gives it being.

Our ideas of early Celtic Ireland bring us epic stories of kings and warriors, strange gods and learned Druids. There are hillforts for defence against marauders, invaders, neighbours, some of which appear to have been magnificent places. There were complex religious tenets and their standing stones, their incised patterns, attest to that. Their “bards” were thought to have skills of prophecy and counselling as well as other powers; many and varied were the gods and goddesses. Their dead were important to them and were buried with great care and ceremony, the souls being transported to an Otherworld that appeared very similar to their status on earth. There were rules and customs of personal honour, loyalty and hospitality, festivals of fire, festivals to mark the change of seasons, of darkness and light, of birth and rebirth. Overall, the Celtic imagination is elusive, it twists and turns through a sensuous spiritual energy, an asymmetrical symbolic language; it is always anti-classical, anti-representational, anti-rational; all is flux and becoming. Patrick seems to capture this and steady it, placing it in the care of Christ and the Trinity. Here are the Trinity brought close, here are the phalanxes of the angels and here is creation, called upon to be a saving part in the living of the human being. In this view of living, to be is to become, and Celtic spirituality is the furthest from the static, it is a surging stream that brought its life and vitality out into a turgid Europe.
“The Deer’s Cry” begins with an invocation of the sources of our being, in the move to Christianity, this was, of course, the Trinity. It goes on to call upon the events of the Incarnation, and invokes the aid of all those who have achieved holiness in the new faith. The poem then moves to a call on the powers and forces of creation itself, a call for aid, for partnership, for presence and consolation; sun, moon, lightning, fire, wind, ocean, earth and rock:

I gather strength today
through the great power of heaven,
light of the sun
and radiance of the moon,
strength in the lightning flash
and splendour of the fire,
in the swiftness of the winds
and in the depths of ocean,
stability of the earth
and steadfastness of rock.

This echoes the poetry of Amergin, and the corresponding poetry of the Welsh original, Taliesin. Calling on all the strength and watchfulness of God, the poem moves on to a very special awareness of Christ’s presence throughout creation, glorying and finding hope in the Incarnation, in the fact that God became incarnate through his Son into the very veins and bones of His own creation and therefore will offer grace and help to humankind.

No wonder then that I found settling within myself a religion and pride closely associated with the physical world in which I was born and raised, and to the Christ who knew everything I did and thought, and who guarded and watched over my every path. Except that in those days it was a thundering God the Father who was mostly taught to us, and a God the Father jealous of His authority and apt and keen to punish every inclination away from that authority. Achill Island is one of the glories of God’s creation and its beauty and wildering grandeur entered through every pore of my being. It is an attempt to clarify, to expedite, to Christ-ian-ate my whole being in this world that urges me to look often at “The Deer’s Cry”, and to explore its graces and promises through the centuries.

----
Read more for John Deane at www.johnfdeane.com and contact him at johnfmdeane@gmail.com. His latest works include A Little Book of Hours (Carcanet, 2008), From the Marrow-bone (Columba Press), The Heather Fields and Other Stories (Blackstaff Press).

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the death of the author

by Rupert M. Loydell

A Review of Field Notes from Elsewhere, Mark C Taylor (Columbia University Press, $26.95)

If, like me, you know Mark C. Taylor from his brilliant media philosophy or postmodern theology books, then his new book Field Notes from Elsewhere will come as a bit of a shock and a surprise. Instead of taut critical thinking, we get a journal-cum-biography written on the back of Taylor surviving a critical illness and the arrival of cancer. The 'elsewhere' of the title can be taken in several ways: the place of illness, death, or the place Taylor now finds himself - alive and well, but acutely aware that the end of his life is not too far off.

The book is beautifully produced, and is organised in 52 chapters, each with their own A.M. and P.M. sections, though despite rereading I have yet to find any sense of morning or evening within them. Perhaps they are simply when he wrote them, although this is in no way a diary. Any biographical story here is gradually revealed once the initial premise of and reason for writing the book is given. But Taylor is definitely present in this book, along with his family, relatives and friends, as well as some strangers and colleagues who have been significant to his life. The reader meanders through various encounters, friendships and situations, with constant reminders of immortality and death, and some short, often mundane, philosophizing.

The only book I can think of that bears any similarity to Taylor's is Philip Toynbee's End of a Journey, but Toynbee's volume is much more contemplative and more traditional in it's ideas of 'faith' and 'belief' and how to cope with death. Taylor's is more removed because Taylor is way removed from the notion of a personal, loving God, let alone any idea of afterlife, but also because Taylor is more used to exploring cognition, social dynamics and philosophy; there's a real sense of distance here, however personal Taylor gets.

Toynbee's book ends, in effect, with his death; with final diary entries and of closure, a story ended. Taylor's ends with a rather maudlin set of aphorisms, rooted in ideas of community and the realisation that death comes to all who live. Like a lot of this book, it can seem trite if you're not in the mood, exceedingly obvious even when you are. Do we need another book articulating the fact that we are all going to die, or is it simply another author indulging himself on the back of a number of groundbreaking and authoriative books?

I don't know the answer to this; at least I don't want to dismiss this book if other people find it useful. As everyone does, sooner or later, I've had to deal with death close-up and at a distance, and am all too aware that I am middle-aged and gradually getting nearer the end of my life. Faith and doubt have always gone hand-in-hand in my struggle to believe, and I've always found theologians and thinkers like Mark C. Taylor challenging and useful to read. Life doesn't get any simpler as we get older, and most of us realise that in some way family and/or community are all that we have to leave the future.

Field Notes from Elsewhere articulates these familiar ideas in perhaps an all-too familiar way. It's the one book of Taylor's I felt ahead of, that I'd read before, with little surprise or newness to be found within it's pages. I didn't feel challenged, surprised or that interested. In the end, with no wish to disabuse Taylor, who has clearly struggled to articulate a very personal engagement with the idea of mortality, these aren't notes from elsewhere, they are notes from exactly where we all are, from here.

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the storm

A sketch of a story by Zach Kincaid

Bufford Jones went outside on the steps and sat down. He couldn’t sleep. It was four in the morning. The lights didn’t work. “Storm’s on its way,” he said to himself seeing the dark clouds piled up atop the night sky. “No doubt about it.”

Sarah Prather’s trailer next door didn’t have its usual porch light on. Perhaps the whole park lost power. He didn’t know. He went back inside and lit a candle he had rummaged up from under the sink. It was stuck behind the bucket that caught a drip from the leaky kitchen pipes. He wondered if all the guts underneath his mobile home could actually move. He guessed the whole thing would if it wanted, move clear over to Birmingham or all the way up to Chicago. That’s what his son said. Here Bufford was, shacked up in a cardboard-nothing on wheels that wore a bastardly disguise of faux stucco. “Faux stucco, Joseph,” Bufford shouted last he saw his son two Easters ago,
“Whose ever heard of faux stucco?”

Joseph was a banker. That’s about all Bufford knew. “He’s making something of himself,” he said to Sarah one day when she asked why he lived alone. “Joe likes the big city and I told him I wouldn’t get near it - that I was staying put. And put I am and I don’t have to put up with him, you know? All that bank talk. He’s making something.”

Sarah just listened. She always did, and Bufford liked that about her. They both sat on his front patch of grass, rocking slowly in their chairs, back and forth like two pendulums making time. The park kept tiny dirt lanes down each side of the trailers and small flaps of grass at the front, just enough for a couple of old cathys like themselves, chatting from can’t see to can’t see.

The closeness of neighbors only mattered when Deacon Fry came out. Deacon was a big black oak of a man who layered himself with new rings of fat each season. Now, with a railcar-sized berth, he blustered out of his trailer like an untamed elephant booming his voice with some gospel hymn; tapping his right foot:

O my good Lord's done been here
Blessed my soul and gone away
My good Lord's done been here
Blessed my soul and gone

Over and over again. Sarah and Bufford had only enough warning to hobble inside and adolescently hold their breath. If Deacon didn’t knock on Bufford’s door, they knew it took him four times through the spiritual to clear the way from front door to vehicle, a used up Honda that sank low when Deacon wedged his body inside. And if Deacon knocked on Bufford’s door it was because of some pronouncement or dream he “received from the Lord” the night before. “Ever since Mama Fry died,” he explained to Bufford one day, “ever since, the Lord’s been using my mind as his canvas, paintin’ the richest stories of how he’ll do it... he’s gonna do it.”

“Do what?” Bufford asked, full well of what Deacon might say.

“Do what? Mister Jones. Are you kiddin’ me. The do was already done and the what is just being carried along like sweet Moses in his basket of reeds.”

“I swear,” Sarah said, “Deacon Fry’s going to announce one day the skwooshing of God.”

“Either that, or the fact that he ate him one night,” Bufford said getting up from his chair. When he stood up he raised his hands high and bellowed, “And now we must wait three days. Yes, God has been eaten by the whale!”

Bufford stumbled around to find the weather radio and went back outside. The report said the storm would pass through Hickory Creek within two hours and the wind would sail through in a ravishing speed. Bufford didn’t believe it but he decided to knock on Sarah’s door anyway. He thought he’d let her know the danger.

“Sarah,” he whispered into the door’s crack. “Sarah, are you up? A storm’s coming.”

Sarah didn’t come to the door so Bufford went around to the back of the trailer to see if he could wake her up. He felt like a kid sneaking around, anxious and hopeful in the same breath. She never answered.

He went on around and then remembered that Sarah left the day before for Tulsa to visit her sister.

He went on inside to start his Tuesday routine. Three days a week he went to Huddle House - Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Biscuits with gravy, side of eggs and bacon - that was on Bufford’s mind when he heard a knock at the door.

“Bufford, Bufford, Bufford - you in there?” said Deacon Fry.

Bufford opened the door.

“The sky - did you see the sky?” said Deacon, with enough huffs and puffs to blow down Bufford’s trailer.

“Deacon, what are you anxious about?” said Bufford. “It’s just dark clouds.”

“Yeah, but them, they amassin an army up there, fur sure, and they’re ready to attack.”

“Maybe the day’s here,” said Bufford facetiously.

“You funny, Bufford Jones, you’re real funny, but I tell you something, it’s your soul the maker’s hungry for. He’s already got mine.”

“OK, Deacon,” said Bufford diverting a sermon, “What do you want to do about the sky?”

“You need to get out of here, straight away,” said Deacon.

“Me? I’m staying put.”

“Where Sarah? She’ll knock some sense into you.”

“She’s with her dying sister. And besides, are you heading out somewhere?”

“For sure, I’m staying, Mr. Jones. I done run enough. I’m not running from no clouds even if they be brought down to slurp me up like the mighty prophet Elijah.”

“Why not? And why do you think I want to leave out?”

“You hear that?” Deacon asked as thunder rolled around in the sky. “That’s the devil. He’s beating his wife with a frying pan and the fight come to Hickory Creek. You ready? I don’t think you ready to fly from your nest.”

“What are you talking about?”

The sky began to drip down. Morning light barely had the chance to wake up before the thick clouds punched it back down. Deacon’s screen door blew open. By now several neighbors had come out in their bathrobes to measure the temper of the storm by staring up at it. They quickly went back inside.

But Bufford and Deacon didn’t. They stood there looking up from the grassy nook in front of Bufford’s trailer. No one talked anymore. They both knew it was too late to go anywhere; instead, they wanted to see what came to them.

“Cats and dogs,” said Deacon. “It’s about to unload them. We need to get inside.”

With that, Deacon - the trailer of a man he was - tumbled off to help weigh down his home. If Bufford still had hair, it would be clear to the side of his head. He knew it was time to go inside, but he staying there, the rain beginning to pound down.

“Joseph! You hear me?” he said, yelling at the wind. “I’m stuck here in the middle of a raging fury and... all I have is faux stucco! That’s it! And Deacon Fry!” He reached out to embrace the rain and laughed like a lunatic. “I got nothing else. No barriers. Nothing.”

The wind picked up and Bufford slowly walked inside, beaten by the rain. His candle had long since gone out. The darkness was interrupted by the firestorm of lightning outside. He stripped off his wet clothes and found his way to the bathroom and sat down in the tub. He’d wait it out there as if a character in the miller’s tale, waiting for what may never come.

Deacon Fry was in his kitchen. He held onto the pipes under the sink. “Don’t you know that the trailer can move but those there pipes under your sink are sunk way deep into God’s soil below,” he told Bufford once. “If ever you need to hold on, hold on there and pray. Don’t forget to pray.”

Bufford wasn’t praying. He didn’t believe in it. “Why would you send out a message into the same sky that was about to drop on your head anyway,” he thought to himself. His home started shaking but he didn’t budge. “Joe’s probably watching the radar,” he said out loud. “‘I told you Dad. I told you it wasn’t safe.’ That’s what he’s saying. But who wants to be safe? I’d rather brave it out. Deacon’s right. If the end is coming, why tuck yourself away? Step out in the gunfire.”

Bufford went on with his monologue as his trailer heaved and howed with the wind and rain that swept through Hickory Creek that morning. He felt quite a bit older as he struggled to get out of the tub and unstick his body. He didn’t bother putting clothes on because he forgot he was naked. He went outside to assess the damage.

The tornado had ripped through the park, touching down and throwing about trailers on either side of Bufford’s and Sarah’s row. He walked further on toward Deacon’s way. There wasn’t a trailor to speak of nor Deacon’s car. All he could see was Deacon.

“Deacon!” he called out, “Are you OK?”

“Is that you, Mr. Jones?” he asked, still gripping the piping from his kitchen. He was unwilling to let go and turn Bufford’s direction.

“I think the storm’s over,” Bufford said.

“Sure is. Oh Jesus, it sure is. But you a storm in your own self. You need to get some clothes on straight way, my friend. You’s naked.”

Bufford just stood there looking at the wreckage and Deacon, who seemed untouched in the incident.

“Let me tell you, Bufford Jones, God had his hand on my ass,” Deacon said, slapping himself, “right there on my ass, so two-hundred mile winds whispered by like Jesus in the garden - like the Lord God sleeping in the belly of the boat with the seas tizzyin’ outside. I told you he’d do it - take this earthen dwellin’ right out from under my feet and take me home.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t take you home,” Bufford said. “You’re right here. And he didn’t touch me. I was as bare as born and the storm ”

“That’s cause God had his hand on me,” Deacon said. “And God’s been lookin’ for you, Bufford. Alls it is, is that he missed. That’s it. He’s looking for you.”

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he moves into place

by Zach Kincaid

He moves into place and pushes off the uterine wall, lodging his head in the cervix. He sinks lower, ready to break out, or in, like a thief.

Nine months ago it happened. 46 chromosomes and 30,000 genes gathered inside Mary. At day 14, a heartbeat thumped and 40 days brought fragile brain waves. All appeared normal. Arms and legs, fingers and toes replaced buds as he was woven together, fearfully and wonderfully. He kicked his legs and sucked his thumb. He slept and woke with his mom, and he knew her voice and her touch before he saw her face.

He pushes and pushes again, tunneling his way down the canal. He hears voices and sees a light pulsing in and out of site. His head feels a tinge of cold and Joseph gently pulls at him. Joseph cuts the umbilical chord and holds the swaddled clothes close to stop the bleeding. It's finished and it's just begun. Mary sits up, expecting. Joseph places Jesus in her arms. The baby roots to find his mother's breasts and collapses into her security.

Divinity draws a deep net. Though Jesus would be born into Jesse's shoot, he'd not be of it. Wrapping God up in the embrace of woman is one thing; forming God from single cells, through the gestation cycle is another. The profound mystery is that Jesus, fully God and man, of whom we borrow breath, breathes in and out, in and out, born inside of time and place. At that moment, the ancient myths came true: God grew legs and lungs and eyes and ears and heart and head. God became flesh and bone.

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the life of christ

by Rupert M. Loydell

A Review of The Life of Christ, James Tissot (304pp, £39.95, Merrel)

A few weeks in to living with this book and I still don't quite know what to make of it. Like most people brought up in nonconformist churches in the 1960s, I have more of a soft spot than I usually acknowledge for Authorised Version Bible illustrations, as well as for those Victorian paintings which still tended to be hanging in the darker corners of church buildings then (Holman Hunt's The Light of the World spring to mind). I also genuinely love many Renaissance and pre-Renaissance works with biblical stories as their subjects. Only last night Sister Wendy Beckett was on prime time BBC television discussing a Fra Angelico and two other nativities in the National Gallery - it was fantastic to have them shown, even so briefly, even in reproduction, to us again.

But back to Tissot. The book contains reproductions of all the 350 watercolours which constitute the artist's version of the gospels. Having been partially exhibited in Paris, reproduced in a single bestselling gospel narrative, the completed work (ten years work!) toured America and since 1900 has been in the possession of the Brooklyn Museum. Only recently has attention been returned to this work, resulting in the publication of this beautifully produced volume with its three informative biographical and cultural essays.

But, as I said, what to make of it now, in 2009? What to make of this very literal version of Jesus' life? Some detailed scenes are frankly, plain boring, full of people and details that simply clutter the frame. Further scenes are creative interpretations of some of the stories Jesus told, but executed in an ever so unexciting and formally composed manner. Other scenes are depictions of angels and the supernatural; what to make of angels as mundane and ordinary as Tissot's? To be frank, the text of this book makes the work sound far more intriguing than it actually is! There is none of the visionary originality of, for instance Blake's religious paintings, none of the fervour and majesty of John Martin's apocalyptic art, nothing as sublime and restrained, as spiritual, as works by contemporary artists such as Agnes Martin or Craigie Aitchinson. This is at times reinforced by the examples of similar paintings on biblical subjects reproduced herein.

Truth be told, Tissot's watercolours seem merely illustrative, and reading this book reminds me of nothing as much as dipping into my Children's Bible when I was young. Tissot's paintings are as strange and distancing as those pictures remain to me, if occasionally exotic or sometimes bewildering and confusing. Whatever one believes, something as amazing as the life of Christ deserves images far more surprising, revelatory and original than these accomplished but dull works. This book is fascinating as social history, as a document of an extraordinary project, but the actual subject of the book, the work itself, remains inert and uninvolving.

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orange love

by Zach Kincaid
It began in the orange grove. They were too young to realize that their curiosity had blind-alley eyes. The earth tone pickup truck melted into the turns and weaves of squatty trees that dripped its fruit. Michael’s adolescent senses naturally hunted for a solace space to take his girl. He was a hound sniffing out the chase.

Citrus oils sting the eyes and make bitter the first bite of an unpeeled orange. He didn’t think about that. Jodie sat next to him in the cab, a little restless from the ragged path that brought them to the middle of the grove. If film can modify your perspective, think zoom out and up. There sits a small truck, its naked bay stuck out, an odd duck in a neighborhood of a thousand trees. You can see the crooked spine of Michael’s path inward. It probably won’t be his getaway. Creativity precedes lust; it never follows it. There’s a straight shot back and right of screen. Jodie didn’t know it. She would have run it down, scared, if she had. The orchard hemmed her in and quickly ate up the outside world.

The sun grew tired of the whole affair and said good night as Michael rigged makeshift quarters in the back of his truck. Blankets, pillows, a few candles soon to be lit. He knew what he wanted. He planned it out. Jodie was not limp in the exchange though they hadn’t talked about it; that would have shamed the event for sure. She put on delicate attire, and giddy, asked, "Where are we going? Where are you taking me tonight?"

Neither one knew the details of how it would play out; two teenage Baptist virgins wanting to embrace the forbidden.

First times happen once; hunger follows then routine sets in. The spaces between are anxious or boring.

Michael went over and opened Jodie’s door. He spent some time organizing the props just right. Jodie strolled down the path that brought them here, hands in her pockets.
She reached up and picked an orange. It was just right.

“All ready now,” Michael said with a motion for Jodie to come.

Jodie walked back. She felt herself moving in slow motion caught between the now and then, the lost and found.

They climbed onto the truck's back and looked up at the stars.

“Mike, you see the big dipper?” Jodie asked, pointing. “It’s right there.”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Did you know that it points to the North Star? That’s what the slaves used to make sure they were heading the right direction.”

Paying little attention, Michael jerked up and lit some candles. He had balanced them on each side of the cabin roof. “Forgot that part,” he said.

“Follow the northern star; follow the northern star. That was their song,” she said.

“Who put all those up there anyway?” Michael asked. “And why?”

“You know the answer to both those questions,” said Jodie. “Maybe they’re not stars at all, just holes people poked out in the floor of heaven to see out.”

“Why would they want to see down here?”

“To remember, perhaps.”

“Maybe.”

Michael paused and looked over at Jodie. “Come here.”

Jodie scooted closer, putting her head on his chest.

Michael didn’t waste any time in reaching down and slipping his hand inside Jodie’s shirt. Jodie obliged, Michael thought, because she didn’t resist him. And besides, that’s what they came out to the orchard to do. Even though they never voiced it, they both knew it.

Jodie turned and kissed him. It was a signal to start their exploration. They unpeeled each other of their clothes and ducked under the blankets as if they were a cave overhead - as if they believed there really were voyeurs behind the stars.

The moment was too sensual for Michael. He forced himself inside Jodie and within seconds he had released all those inhibitions and haunts.

He felt free; Jodie just hurt. She was a exposed and sticky. She sat up and looked down at her body.

“Blood!” she burst out. “Look at this blood.”

“Let me help you,” Michael said with little triumph, but more embarrassment than anything else. He took the pillow out from under her and tossed it out of the truck.

Jodie lay back down and pulled the blankets up over her head. From underneath them she said, “I hope I’m not pregnant.”

“You’re not. It’ll be OK.”

“Yeah, you’re not bleeding.”

“I love you, Jodie.”

After a minute, Michael picked an orange. “Want one?”

“No thanks.”

He bit into it and cooly began to peel it open.

“I hope I’m not pregnant,” she said again.

“You're not, Jodie. It'll be okay. I love you.”

Jodie struggled to sit up. She fell into Michael’s lap which was full of orange peels. Love seemed to be exchanged between them though she never said anything. Her thoughts were on the northern star.

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earth child

by David Grubb
Neolithic
Did they dance
as they laid you in earth
ready for future time,
or were they ashamed
of the large head and
strange sounds?
Laid down in darkness
beyond snow and wind,
a silence suspending all
that they might know,
these cautious rituals
of dream and bone.
What words did they
give their gods
as you lay forgotten;
and what words do
we greet you with
and why no name?
It is the same moon,
the same way of winds
and when snow comes
we are silent and alone
and nobody enters
the place you inhabit.
Sometimes you appear
in rain or when cloud
cuts across sun and there
are always people who
attempt to tell your story
giving you a date and name
which will not work,faltering
like prayers to unknown gods
and their forged territories,
even when we have hollows
and scatterings and places that the
sun will not let alone,our seasons
sensing lost songs of your hiding.
Were they ashamed of the large head
or the way that the flames entered you?

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Oh South Carolina

by Ed Derby
Matthew's House has graciously allowed me to say a few words about the United States and the political world. Although my comments might cause some to side one way or another, my main observation is an historic one, rather than the want to lose one's head - namely mine- in the drivel of American politics today. I hope you'll oblige a reading and a discussion.

Last month Joe Wilson failed in his politicking and picked the pocket of honesty. But his, "You lie!" is not the first South Carolinian cry that challenged the federation and the president that is its head. South Carolina is the whip that calls out such abuses. For example, it is South Carolina who leads out in the succession of states that will form the Confederacy. And if we step back further, it is South Carolina that is so anxious about Andrew Jackson and his woeful tariff control that John Calhoun (who was Jackson's former vice president) leads out a rebellion. Yes, Jackson wraps himself around it and takes care of these would-be rebels but the first breaths of confederacy are inhaled... and that air is crisp and dangerous at the same time.

Now, Joe Wilson received disciplinary action for his "breach of decorum." Has "Mr.President" become "His Majesty"? John Adams tried to make it so and it didn't happen. Washington preferred a simple title and one that echoed a certain humility (along the lines of his 1783 resignation as a war hero and "retirement" to Mt Vernon after beating the most powerful nation in the world.) No, only Mr. President, please. And the title suggests a leveling that is unlike other nations. The president will be a regular person and his respect will be a regular respect, they said. Perhaps Wilson crossed the lines of common etiquette. That certainly can be argued. But he did not cross lines that infer the executive branch in a propped up manner.

What lies inside of South Carolina that coals at the idea of federalism run amuck? What is absent in her fellow southern states that they sit silently?

It's encouraging to see South Carolina cycle around the same block, whether it's Wilson's blast or DeMint's angst. At the same time, it's discouraging to hear the media connect the concern only in the theater that's called today. If we have a longer view, we recognize that "You lie!" is an echo that needs to be heard, even if it be mere rhetoric. It's the voice that has marked out statehood versus a united blob and it's a voice that might be willing to have another go at country status if the federation breaks the back of friendship for which we share our union. In the end, are we not part of a democracy that serves to be free and open, even when it means a union that is vulnerable?

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