Monthly Archives: October 2018

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Miracles and Blessings

A 3-budded rose

Elaine Jakes always pronounced the word miracle “myuracle.” I’ve rarely heard another person do so, and I honestly can’t recall whether Lizzie Ann Jones Evans (Elaine’s grandmother and my great-grandmother) or Blanche Evans Jakes said “myuracle.” It has been too many years since Lizzie died (1968) and, I suppose, too many since Blanche passed away in 1982. But my mother’s pronunciation rings in my ears just as Lizzie Ann’s blessing does.

Lizzie Ann’s blessing was as simple one: “God,” she said to me when I was but five years old, “has chosen you for a very special purpose in this life.” I think that, though a five-year old may not remember how that person pronounced miracle, that same five-year old could hardly fail to remember, throughout his life, the blessing of his great grandmother only four years before her passing at the age of 94.

I suppose that blessing is, for me, writing, and that’s why I write. And part of why I write is because I wish simply to chronicle everyday miracles (or should I say myuracles?), for it was not only my mother’s pronunciation of the word miracle that was striking but rather it was her inclination to see miracles in everyday events. Someone, perhaps a proper theologian, might be annoyed by the practice of seeing miracles in practically everything, for he or she might argue that it debases the value of the term miracle. A miracle, someone might say, really should be a spectacular event, something, well, miraculous, like a child being rescued from a burning building, someone recovering improbably from a disease or other condition, or someone whose life situation changed so dramatically that no other word than miracle will do. While I don’t disagree that all those things are miraculous, I think, like my mother, that day-to-day miracles can be just as telling, maybe even more so.

Telling? Telling of what? That is the question for any miracle, big or small: what story is it telling? And, all this came up at a pub the other evening, just briefly, as I sat there having a beer with a famous archaeologist (who will remain nameless) about his improbable career and meteoric rise in the profession and just the many strange—in fact, were I to tell his whole story, surpassing strange—things that had to have happened for him to be the outstanding professor (for his command of the ancient languages outstrips nearly any other archaeologist that I’ve ever met) and stellar field archaeologist that he is. And while any one of those things could be fobbed off as mere coincidence, the sum of them, well, it amasses to a ponderance of circumstantial evidence of a miracle.

And that is what this blog is about: it’s the small “myuracles” that really add up that are, in many ways, far more spectacular than the big ones. Of course, we all rejoice when trapped miners are rescued from deep in the bowels of the earth. Or when a child falls three stories and survives, or when our friend recovers from an aggressive form of cancer. And we should, for those miracles are wonderful things, and I always feel sorry for the atheist who says to me, “If I only saw a miracle first hand, I’d believe there is a God” and then often adds, “but I haven’t seen one, and I never will.”

My response isn’t, “Well, I have, many times.” I think that, but I don’t say it. Rather, I say, “Have you ever seen a baby nestled in its mother’s arms? If that’s not a myuralce” (and here I deliberately mispronounce the word in honor of Elaine), “I simply don’t know what is.”

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Mahler Maul

One of the more delightful notes that my mother, Elaine, the subject and in many ways principal author of The Curious Autobiography of Elaine Jakes, wrote on the small chalkboard in the kitchen of her lovely house that she dubbed the “Lizzie Ann” in honor of her grandmother, was the short and simple “gone to maul.”  Of course, she meant “gone to mall,” specifically the Oxford Valley Mall. I was in high school then, and I chuckled thinking about the fact that she was a teacher and a part of her daily repertoire was to teach fourth graders spelling.

And I thought of that incident when this week I read a piece by Isaac Stanley Becker in the Washington Post on a surprising fracas that occurred in Malmo, Sweden during a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. A woman, so it seems, was eagerly unwrapping some gum during the performance and this enraged the person next to her who then yanked the bag from the woman’s hand.

Gustav Mahler Œuvre d’Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) Vers 1909 Bronze.

At the end of the Adagietto, which, Becker divulges in his article, was one and the same as that conducted by Leonard Bernstein at RFK’s funeral in 1968, the woman struck back, slapping the man on the face. Her male friend then slugged the bag grabber, too, and a skirmish ensued, fortunately to be swiftly broken up by those nearby.

And this incident befits, it seems to me, the work of Gustav Mahler, for he was a deeply passionate human being. In his article for the Guardian entitled, “Big Bang Theory: Discovering Mahler” (10 Jan. 2010), Tom Service writes of his experience as a 12 year old lad discovering and, at first hating, Mahler. Later, however, a more mature Service falls in love with the composer and writes, “A Mahler symphony is an experience that should be as disturbing as it is life-affirming. That’s what we need to remember … as we all immerse ourselves in thrilling, terrifying, dangerous and occasionally consoling Mahler-mania.” The last hyphenated word here, I think, really says it all, for music, particularly that of Mahler, really can stir one’s emotions.  

But so can candy wrappers. Witness the Malmo mauling. But I know this personally, too, because, getting back to Elaine, she, it seemed to me, was often that person who was digging through her purse desperately seeking a mint. And had some man knocked her purse from her hand in a similar situation, I imagine that I might just have taken a poke at him. And in that case, I would have been no less aggressive than the mauler of Malmo, with or without the emotive inspiration of Mahler.

 

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: A World without Kids

In California especially but also, if to a degree less-pronounced, throughout America a new trend is arising: deferring or permanently putting off, i.e. not having, kids. I am writing about this trend for two reasons: first, a world without kids scares the life out of me. Second, I wish to advance the notion that a child is not a thing, like a house or a car or a Ski-Doo, that one expects to be able to accessorize at a certain income level. Those items are useful or, in the case of the Ski-Doo amusing. A kid, conversely, is a remarkable blessing and a constant reminder to do better.

My thinking about this all started in roughly 1990 in the backseat of a car. I was sharing a cab with a new acquaintance who then taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey.  A German with perfect English, she minced no words. “So, I see” [but she meant ‘hear’] “that you have children, qvite [so she pronounced quite] a lot of them.” (We had three at the time.) “They must be very pleasurable.”  Now kids are a lot of things, but pleasurable is not exactly at the top of the adjective pile used to describe them. They are challenging, delightful, cute, mischievous, even highly innovative. They bring joy and, sometimes, sadness, hope and disappointment, laughter and tears. But pleasure? And no, the acquaintance in question did not then, obviously, nor did she ever, to my knowledge, have any kids. And if she were looking for pleasure, perhaps it is good thing she never did have kids, for pleasure is, more or less, what a Ski-Doo is for.

But why is a world without kids scary? Here’s why: kids are the only sensible people left on the planet. They are, it seems more and more these days, the only folks who will actually admit they are wrong when they are and say that they are sorry. They express love the right way. They are sincere, cute, and affectionate. They know how to play appropriately. They genuinely like each other. They don’t see color or think in terms of race or other ethno-socio-political differences. They are great. They are adults’ best role models.

Yet people want children less and less. Or if they want them, they want them like they want a Ski-Doo. They want them for the wrong reasons. And, I am sorry to say, they treat them like a Ski-Doo, too, pulling them out from time to time for fun, but then just putting them back on the shelf—in the case of the Ski-Doo a rather sturdy shelf, I suppose—until the next time. The idea of a family qua sacred bond, nurturing trust, blessed haven—that ideal is fading fast. And it is doing so in the name of economic prosperity, aka lucre, filthy lucre, and, ultimately, pleasure. Money can’t buy you love—I heard that somewhere—but it can buy you a Ski-Doo. A kid can do, and indeed is, much more.

 

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: The Things You Hear at Conferences

It will be a great disappointment to you, I’m sure, to know that I finally went to a conference without my friend, the philologist, whom I often accompany to philological congresses. I enjoy going with him to those meetings in no small part because every time I do something exciting happens. I would write about that now, but frankly you would probably not believe me if I did write about it, as the events that follow him around are, frankly unbelievable. There has been gun fire, mad pursuits in swiftly driven automobiles, occasional fisticuffs, vel sim. And, add to that, an acute awareness of what vel sim. actually means.  One can guess based on etymology; and one does guess, of course, for rarely would one hazard looking up such an abbreviation in a dictionary, as 1) there’s a decent chance it won’t show up there; and 2) even if it did, there’s a better than decent chance it will be exactly what you thought it was: “or similar” or “or the like.”  But having him around obviates the need for a dictionary or even guesswork, and obviates, too, the need to look up the word “obviates.”

But that is off the topic of my particular congress, one that I went to quite on my own, one for writers; thus, to return to that topic. I am writing to respond obliquely to one of the papers that address the YA (young adult) audience.  I’m not even sure now why I wandered into that session, but I did; and when I got there I got an earful about Generation “Z”.  That’s the latest generation, the one that was born in the year 1995 or later. And what I learned was that they are a generation that expects service, particularly individualized service, and a generation that has a deep sense of solidarity.  The speaker saw this as a strength; could it not be argued that it is as indicative of a herd mentality? Populist movement? Probably the latter is, admittedly, going too far.

The speaker disapproved of, for example, the University of Chicago, where there has been, on the part of the administration, a deliberate move to coddle students no longer. His point had some validity: if students of Gen Z are expecting certain things—individualized treatment (what used to be called, disdainfully, “special treatment”), then it is a rather stark slap in the face not to give them what they are used to.  And he might be right.

Conversely, might it not, someone could ask, be good for them?  But this is not why I am writing about this topic. Rather, it is the fact that I think that what I’m concerned most about is the idea that, as they are used to being affirmed, we need to act around them and, more germane to me as an author, write YA Afiction that affirms them in whatever position they might wish to adopt.  In short, we should encourage them to believe something, even if it is something we don’t agree with.  Just “believe.”  And act on that belief. That’s enough.

But it is, I’m afraid, not enough.  If we write just to affirm having an opinion about something qua telos in and of itself, we are no different than the fifth-century sophists who said that what really counted was the ability to argue any side of an issue. Put simply, they affirmed style over substance.  The issue itself meant nothing compared to the capacity to argue for it.

The great anti-sophist, Socrates, however, held quite the opposite point of view.  He argued that what you say is more important than how you say it.  He chose questioning via dialogue (the “Socratic method”) because he felt that driving an argument like a lawyer was, in the end, less convincing. You might gain a temporary victory—convince your listener for a season—but in the end, the issue that you “convinced” him does not become his own.  It only does so when he or she dialogues about it and understands it from the inside out and, in the end, makes it his own.

Okay, where does that leave us with the things you hear at conferences, spAecifically about Gen Z? The same place as with the Millennials, Gen X and the Boomers, and, I suppose the Silent Generation and anyone else who will listen.  Let’s dialogue about something real.  Let’s challenge, not coddle, and love on but not simply cheer on each other of any generation.  And, as different as the generations might be, let’s remember this. We’re all in this together.

Tan y tro nesaf…  (“until next time…” [in Welsh])…

 

 

 

 

 

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Kool-Aid and Other Beverages

I don’t know about you but sometimes, when I engage someone in conversation, it seems that he or she has really drunk deeply of the Kool-Aid of this world. I say this meaning that the person would seem to have bought into whatever the most current trend is, or rather trends are, as there are always more than one trend trending at once, many of them closely bound, by certain sets of presuppositions, to others. To take but one example, marriage has become so flexible that it seems that it no longer has any real meaning. Some people say it’s archaic and unnecessary, others that it can be between a man and an animal, others that it can be monogamous in the most thoroughgoing sense: a person can even marry himself (in which case I fancy even no-fault divorce is impossible).

To get to such a point in one’s thinking one must have imbibed a deep draught of this world’s Kool-Aid, specifically that flavor that assumes meaning is entirely assigned, not inherent. I have a friend who has decided simply to go through the process of having a baby with his long-term girlfriend now and worry later about whether or not to marry. The unstated reasoning is, I think, that we live in a modern world nowadays where standards have been relaxed and the order in which we do things is not really that important. To view things otherwise is old fashioned and outmoded, and probably even sexist or racist or culturalappropriationist, or imperialist or some kind of -ist. (Little do people know that the suffix -ist means “believing in”; thus a feminist believes in women, a racist believes in race [qua superior distinction], a papist believes in the Pope, a spiritualist in spiritual things, and a sexist—well, you figure that one out).

The reason I am pondering thus is in part because I have just returned from visiting another friend, one very dear to me and whom I have known for quite a long time. He recently hosted a conference on old fashioned things: education and philosophy during the Reformation. I attended a bit of that conference and witnessed something distinctly different from the world that my other friend walks in. The first friend is modern, accepting some form of the relativism of this world, and quite easily, I think, adapting that relativism to his lifestyle. That isn’t all that lofty of an accomplishment, as there are few things less flexible than relativism. Kool-Aid is sweet, it tastes good, yet it has no nutritional value, and with the wrong hidden elixir, can produce dire, to say the least, results. I say nothing at this point of wild Georgetown Prep parties and the allegedly spiked drinks allegedly offered to alleged party-going young women: I would allege that you can judge for yourself.

Blood, by contrast, tastes pretty awful. My other friend, the one who held the learned and quite wonderful conference, does not drink of this world’s Kool-Aid. Rather, he drinks blood in the form of wine. That drink is not at all of this world, but of the one to come. He calls it the Cup of Salvation, and with it he eats the Bread of Heaven. There is no moral relativism for him, just justification won on a nasty instrument of death with the most unlikeliest of victories, one in which the Victor dies. He thinks of that every time he takes that wine chalice that carries the blood to his lips. The effects of that cup do not erode values, but rather engender, refine and reinforce them.

From my unique perch as a writer, and therefore an incessant, if sometimes reluctant observer of the world around me, it is very interesting, poignant, touching, and even dolorous to watch the effects of the distinctly different draughts of my two friends upon each of them, one ennobling, even sacred; the other, well, normal by worldly standards, and thus vulgar or profane, in the truest sense of those adjectives. I hope that the Kool-Aid and its contents don’t leave too lasting an effect on the latter. I know that my other friend’s sanguine and salutary drink will leave a lasting effect, permanent in fact. And I hope to share that cup with him many years from now, on the far side of the Jordan.