Sunday Sermon

This post is but a poem, a poem with asides. For example, this first aside will tell you the post began as “Sunday Morning Sermon” because that’s when it started in an email sent by reader, MA.

But then The Interruptions began when the Baron came through the front door to say the hickory nuts are falling early and thus the “Morning” aspect of this sermon became moot.

Oh dear. Those hickory nuts are following this year’s pattern where everything has arrived or left out of season, as though someone stole the music of the spheres off the stands, forcing them all to take wild guesses as to the proper sequence of their own tunes in the larger season’s hymnal. Thus, the B was taken by surprise at the unexpectedly early sounds of hickory nuts following the law of gravity (at least that one is still in place). He stopped by my computer to give me the news from the front yard. Among his many talents he can imitate the sounds of falling hickory nuts. They are arrhythmic dull percussions – an intermittent series of sssws-thunks – that surely set little squirrels hearts to beating faster.

I must admit to a certain pleasure when the B display yet another heretofore hidden talent. Has his failing eyesight caused his hearing to sharpen so that he can now discern the first sound- the soft sssws – from the note of closure – that dull thunk?

A second aside: it is a good and fitting thing to have one’s mental furniture re-arranged from time to time. This task is not something one can do for oneself; it is undergone rather than scheduled or arranged ahead of time. Sometimes it’s annoying and inconvenient, isn’t it? Like a minor earthquake rattling the place settings as your guests arrive at your dinner party – the one you were forced to give as part of the exigencies of your husband’s continued employment because if they were your customers, it would be pizza and beer at the local…

This poem sent by MA is just one more rearrangement. Knowing where to have Oscar Wilde is convenient. But when he shows up out of order, saying things you didn’t know he considered at all, well…it’s…it’s what exactly? Disconcerting, maybe? But in the long run, salutary. Whenever my vast ignorance about things literary is even slightly reduced, ‘tis a salutary thing indeed.

Another aside follows after Mr. Wilde’s appearance with his sonnet.

ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA

Christ, dost Thou live indeed? or are Thy bones
Still straitened in their rock-hewn sepulchre?
And was Thy Rising only dreamed by her
Whose love of Thee for all her sin atones?
For here the air is horrid with men’s groans,
The priests who call upon Thy name are slain,
Dost Thou not hear the bitter wail of pain
From those whose children lie upon the stones?
Come down, O Son of God! incestuous gloom
Curtains the land, and through the starless night
Over Thy Cross a Crescent moon I see!
If Thou in very truth didst burst the tomb
Come down, O Son of Man! and show Thy might
Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!


Yes, it’s a sonnet.

Anyone whose native language is English is at least potentially a sucker for sonnets. This is true even for the anxious who haven’t the patience to slow down to sonnet speed for the purposes of grasping the endless malleability of language. Sometimes letting English speakers in on the secret that they often speak unknowingly in iambic pentatmeter’s cadences…sometimes that helps.

Especially is this the case for engineers and mathematicians. Once they grok the flow, they get the whole thing at once. Mathematicians and engineers have a well-developed aesthetic sense, though it is often occluded or ignored. Once exposed to it – say in a college class called “Applied Aesthetics for People Who Like to Build Stuff” – they acquire this as naturally as the nuts fall from hickory trees in September with their sssws-thunks…All engineering schools should have such classes. Some, like MIT, do. Check out Dr. Singer’s book:

Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Reflections on His Creativity (The Irving Singer Library)

Alcantara BridgeOne has only to look at a bridge to know that anyone who could do that could hold a sonnet together and it would never fall from his fingers.

11 thoughts on “Sunday Sermon

  1. I think this is as fine a Poem as I have ever read. I am a person who enjoys Byron , Coleridge and Robbie Burns. This one though speaks of a deep problem we have yet to feel entirely as in “JIM”.

  2. The essential, strange paradox of Christianity. By the law, all men are damned to death and hell, with no possible escape from their own moral imperfection. Christ offers a path to salvation, that we love Him enough to discard our sins and willingly obey the commandments of Love rather than the Law of Death.

    But you cannot obey the commandments of Love out of fear of Death. If we follow Christ simply because it is the only escape from Death, then we are still subject to the Law of Death, and there is no forgiveness or mercy under that law. To truly qualify for the divine gift of Grace, not just God’s mercy and forgiveness but also the guidance of the Holy Spirit to strengthen our hearts, we must become subject to the commandments of Love out of genuine devotion to Christ. We must be filled with perfect love rather than fear.

    That is why we all are commanded to take up our cross and follow Christ to the place of crucifixion. Those that seek to save their lives only lose them, because they are still looking to the Law of Death to command them, but that law demands more than any human save the Begotten Son of God could ever fulfill. Those that lose their lives, for love of Christ, will find the Grace of God which is made possible by the commandments of Love.

    When we love Christ so much that we are willing to die rather than betray Him, no matter the odds, then Death will have no power over us. But to seek Christ merely as refuge from being called upon to die is to submit to fear rather than love. That is why our confidence in ultimate victory must be based on faith in Christ rather than in the evidences of the material world. We must be able to distinguish clearly between our fear and love to choose between them. For Death will claim his lawful price from all those who do not clearly reject fear and choose love.

    We must see death. We must not look away from the reality of evil. But our love for Christ will enable us to see past the shadows and darkness, to the light of His love for us.

    Or so I’ve heard.

    • When you say

      But to seek Christ merely as refuge from being called upon to die is to submit to fear rather than love

      You’ve described in one sentence Augustine’s spiritual trajectory. When the American evangelical tradition asks “have you met Jesus” they are restating that perennial *individual* struggle.

      The paradox of the Christian experience is akin to meeting the Buddha on the road. Not identical, but similar.

      As Aquinas said in the end, after his vast Apologia, the rest is silence.

    • Do not forget Jesus’ work on the cross on our behalf. Our sins were so great that nothing less than the sacrificial death of God Incarnate could pay for them, for the wages of sin is death. Jesus bore our sins in his body on the tree as the just dying for the unjust to bring us to God (I Pt. 2:4 and 3:18). Jesus himself said that he came to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). On top of this, Jesus’ resurrection shows our sins left behind in the tomb, while the living Jesus himself (body and soul) ascends to heaven to represent us. This is our way out of our predicament. How do we lay hold of it? By faith (see Romans and Galatians).

      Here is the precise place where I cannot ever accept Islam’s account of Jesus Christ–or the “Liberation” theologist’s, either. If there is no cross, there is no salvation. If all Jesus did was exhort us to our own feeble struggles, we remain hopeless and damned.

  3. I assume you know this is a conscious echoing of Milton: On the late massacre in Piedmont.

    • Ol’ Oscar was famous for his “borrowings”. He even admitted them.

      This was written in the early 1880s when he was considering converting to Roman Catholicism. But in the end, like Henry VIII, he couldn’t bear the idea of obedience to Rome.

      It is a sticking point.

  4. While claiming no creative talent, I think it no coincidence that I love classical music and
    architecture.

    • That aesthetic discernment can be learned. Unfortunately it is no longer taught, though the Teaching Company has many fine courses on offer. Their wonderful idea for developing the auto-didact may be killed off in this economic disaster, though.

      The Great Courses

      Their original idea was pure genius. Now as the world moves from CDs to downloads, I hope they have the flexibility to develop along with the changes.

  5. Thanks for the Wilde sonnet and the fresh insight into the abilities of STEM types to appreciate the sonnet form.

    By the way, is the bridge Trajan’s over the Tagus in Spain?

    A highly dramatic image and wonderfully apposite.

  6. Christ is alive indeed: the character of rock-hewn
    Where Mankind straightened backs from prayer and rupture
    Casting off the declares of Lust in Rapture
    Your life returned; your own.

    For here the air is dense with drones
    Their priests call forth The Imam of Shame
    Dost Thou not hear Aisha wail in pain
    Those children lined up upon the stones?

    Come down, O Sub-Men of God! incestuous boom
    Curtain the lands fed by starless night
    Over Thy Crescent Moon I see a Cross of Light
    If Thou in very truth didst not hate thy womb.
    Come down, O Son of Vain! and show Thy Right;
    Lest Mahomet be crowned instead of Thee!

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