Father’s Day
June 19, 2008
each day my Papa girds the Jesus-Armor and
takes to fight on prayer-worn-knees that
Kingdom come to me and mine
and us and ours
to here and now
even as it is in heaven, Amen.
my daily pillow fights in Washington
with pen and pad and shiny suits and shoes
seem oh, so silly when on my own prayer-worn-floor
I lift to heaven’s hands the warrior, the giant, the man, my Dad.
JDR
Soccer Hooligan
June 19, 2008
** Hi, my name is Jonathan, Jo’s friend; I met Josiah while studying abroad in Israel. **
I have a picture of my grandfather Erich and his soccer pals from when he was a young teenager in Germany, in the early 1920s. He and his friends look exceedingly fierce in their poses, and I would add, quite unintentionally hilarious. It’s not enough that the boys decided to put on the airs of soccer hooligans, it’s the notion that in the 1920s, they would have held these affectations for at least ten seconds to prevent blurring, that makes me laugh and cringe.
Or, maybe they were soccer hooligans? What scares me mostly, to tell you the truth, is that I have no idea. I never met my grandfather, and yet in my recent years, he has taken up a sizable residence in my psyche.
I used to only know the facts about Erich. I knew that he fled Germany in 1933, much the same young age as I am now, taking with him also a young wife. I knew that he was the first refrigerator engineer in Israel, something I regarded with an admittedly lackluster respect as a child. As I aged and realized how bad milk might smell after just a few hours in the sun (pungent!), his successes took on more importance.
I knew that he had unmanaged diabetes, and a curious bald spot that my while father attributes to a fridge that fell and dented his head, my aunt affirms is male pattern baldness. I knew that although he was a barrel chested bear of a man, he loved a peewee dachshund hot dog as his child.
I knew that when he had a stroke at age 60 which paralyzed half of his body, he was nevertheless strong enough to sit up in the hospital bed. Always bullish, I imagine that he flirted with the nurses, albeit with only half a mouth. I knew that when he died a few days later, my grandmother, who I’ve also never met, loved him so much that she killed herself, presumably to be with him.
These were the facts, garnished and embellished upon by family members, that I absorbed. But in the past few years, as I’ve explored and interviewed my family, I’ve tried to unravel a bit more about Erich as more than just my grandfather of legend. My family, not being the objective types, nonetheless still describe him as an almost mythically perfect man. It is hard to shed light on his negative qualities.
Except for the photograph of soccer player Erich, every other image of my grandfather finds him aged over 45. His features resembles mine a good deal, and I wonder what he looked like at my age. I like to think that sometimes, I model my actions based on what Erich, aged 23, would do. I try to inflect my words as he might, and tell the same kind of folksy jokes he might regale others with at dinner. How much of his personality is conjured, and how much real, seems to blur together a bit more every passing year.
Erich Mannheim; third from the right. Fierce.
from www.toothpastefordinner.com
June 18, 2008
Narnia lovers behold this book. Michael Ward’s revelatory work is too edifying to ignore. For half a century we read (or had read to us) C.S. Lewis’s magnificent Chronicles of Narnia. We love them because they captivate us.
The series has a mystery, however. Disparateness clouds the atmosphere; a lack of thorough artistry found in Lewis’s other fiction. Lewis’s mind is consistently meticulous and lucid, a chief trait of the medieval authors he taught professionally, and therein lies the secret.
More than allegory, yet nothing obviously more, Planet Narnia contends that Lewis made it so intentionally. Ward argues that each chronicle corresponds to one of the seven planets of medieval astrology. As a whole, they (the chronicles infused with the characteristic traits of the planets) create an atmosphere that is both honest to the human experience and consistent with the loveliness and sovereignty of Christ the Lord. The subtlety, an atmospheric quality, is consistent with Lewis’s pneumatology, which maintains that unawareness of the Holy Spirit is a common condition in our human experience. Ward’s case focuses on the peculiarities in The Chronicles, of which there are many, like the supposedly discordant appearance of St. Nicholas in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Suddenly they make sense – the jovial saint’s laughter resonates like guilt forgiven.
Many critics mistook Lewis for slopping together a menagerie of characters and plots without a guiding principle, argues Ward. Rather, it seems that a combination of an allegorical element teetering the brink of believability and dissatisfaction, a well-known pejorative judgment by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Lewis’s deliberate imaginative subtlety kept readers orbiting the astrological inner meaning without fully understanding that which pulled them.
Planet Narnia is and claims to be a scholarly work. It is formidable, but as a reader I was pleasantly surprised by how cogently the argument runs. The Chronicles of Narnia are, after all, no Ulysses or Shakespearean play: the story is easy and the prose style is perfectly clear for everyone to enjoy. A work of literary criticism on such a matter-of-fact story lives or dies by its success in drawing out the facts or else garbling the matter. Ward excels in the former. Furthermore, Ward has not fluffed a Procrustean bed. Every proper literary question such as those of occasion, composition, and reception is considered thoughtfully and convincingly. Narnia is not scathed like the Planet Narnia cynics I know feared. Planet Narnia opens our eyes to something we already sensed: the kingly robes that the series has worn all along.
Ward does not argue that The Chronicles of Narnia fail at spiritual edification unless you accept his conclusion. He affirms that Narnia animates our moral imaginations with the glories of landscape, adventure, and righteousness whether or not readers recognize what (or Who!) is acting on them. Planet Narnia is merely a vestibule between the shade of a purblind enjoyment and spiritual convalescence – a sort of enjoyment that draws you further in and higher up. Narnia is a spiritual place that ought to be discerned spiritually. Lewis might add: heavenly, for the heavens do the declaring.
Out from the Darkness by Tyler Blanski
June 12, 2008
Unless you are addicted to watching MTV and perpetually throbbing in lubricious delight from the latest club pop song, you should check out Tyler Blanski’s new album “Out from the Darkness” on Ezekiel Records. For many of my mates and our gals, these songs were nestled in the food group pyramid with black coffee & hand rolled cigarettes – the songs by which we remember the pleasures of our Hillsdale days – the music in our souls.
Ty writes good songs like paleontologists dig around in the dirt. The labor is love, people who don’t care for dinos can still recognize the beauty, and at the end of the day, they’ve got a pile of bones.
He is steeped in the rhythms of Mason Jennings, Old Crow Medicine Show, Bob Dylan, Charlie Parr, Trampled By Turtles, Amy Grant, Storyhill, Iron & Wine, and the like. But don’t mistake him as anything but his own man. The album includes 20th Century minor poet Robert Hayden’s poem “Sundays” made song, a American spiritual slave lament, a song Ty claims God made called “The Sparrow” and his most requested, “Black Bottom.”
If yer on Facebook, you can become a fan and listen to a sampling. The album is $13 and can be bought on the website at www.tylerblanski.com
This album is one to listen to straight through, but it’s unlikely you’ll make it six songs in without becoming obsessively compelled to put a track on repeat.
“oh ragged love, oh patchwork love, i will wear you out, i will wear you through the streets and ride you through the clouds….”
