The Ark and The Dove

Cleverest Comment I've Read All Day

Comments on news sites are more often than not pretty painful affairs. They seem to draw out the worst in people, invite trolls, and give me ulcers.

Occasionally, however, there is a diamond in the rough.

You might have seen the Telegraph article announcing that British Health Care providers are now to inform their pregnant patients that abortion is in fact safer than carrying their pregnancy to term.

In the sea of typically depressing comments was this pearl by "londondave":

I guess the NHS just doesn't get how crappy it must be, that as "healthcare providers" they are more successful at killing than at preserving life. Then providing the stats to prove it.

There is a shrewdness and wit to this comment. It requires an analytical, critical observation of the data in the article to take the information being offered and turn it on its head. The real story isn't just that medical professionals have become absurd by recommending the safety of death over life...it suggests that the medical community is acknowledging an incompetency in its primary function of healing.

It would be like writing a resume indicating that I am much better at failing students than I am at teaching them difficult material.

Two Scoops of Herbert

Another Eucharistic poem by George Herbert....

 

The Invitation

COME ye hither, all whose taste
                        Is your waste;
Save your cost, and mend your fare.
God is here prepared and dressed,
                        And the feast,
God, in whom all dainties are.

Come ye hither, all whom wine
                            Doth define,
Naming that you not to your good:
Weep what ye have drunk amiss,
                            And drink this,
Which before ye drink is blood.

Come ye hither, all whom pain
                            Doth arraign,
Bringing all your sins to sight:
Taste and fear not: God is here
                            In this cheer,
And on sin doth cast the fright.

Come ye hither, all whom joy
                            Doth destroy,
While ye graze without your bounds:
Here is joy that drowneth quite
                            Your delight,
As a flood the lower grounds.

Come ye hither, all whose love
                            Is your dove,
And exalts you to the sky:
Here is love, which, having breath
                            E'en in death,
After death can never die.

Lord, I have invited all,
                            And I shall
Still invite, still call to Thee:
For it seems but just and right
                            In my sight,
Where is all, there all should be.

Not a Catholic, but not too Shabby

For Christmas, my mom gave me a facsimile reprint of a Victorian reprint of George Herbert's poetry. Herbert, if you aren't familiar, was a 17th Century clergyman in the Church of England and a poet. He is one of the leading figures in what is called "metaphysical poetry" -- the lofty, usually religiously oriented stuff that uses unexpected or discordant metaphors for its subjects. If you were taught using a Norton Anthology, you probably read his "Bunch of Grapes" and spent most of your time trying to figure out how the footnotes relate back to the poem. Anyway, as a clergyman, Herbert spent a good bit of his verse contemplating worship...leading to the following poem on Holy Communion which could just have well been written by a Catholic priest. It makes me miss being able to get to daily Mass...

via http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Communion.html

HOLY COMMUNION

NOt in rich furniture, or fine aray,
	              Nor in a wedge of gold,
	              Thou, who for me wast sold,
           To me dost now thy self convey;
For so thou should’st without me still have been,
	              Leaving within me sinne:

But by the way of nourishment and strength
	              Thou creep’st into my breast;
	              Making thy way my rest,
           And thy small quantities my length;
Which spread their forces into every part,
	              Meeting sinnes force and art.

Yet can these not get over to my soul,
	              Leaping the wall that parts
	              Our souls and fleshy hearts;
           But as th’ outworks, they may controll
My rebel-flesh, and carrying thy name,
	              Affright both sinne and shame.

Onley thy grace, which with these elements comes,
	              Knoweth the ready way,
	              And hath the privie key,
           Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms;
While those to spirits refin’d, at doore attend
	              Dispatches from their friend.

 

Give me my captive soul, or take
	       My bodie also thither.
Another lift like this will make 
	       Them both to be together.

Before that sinne turn’d flesh to stone,
	       And all our lump to leaven;
A fervent sigh might well have blown
	       Our innocent earth to heaven.

For sure when Adam did not know
	       To sinne, or sinne to smother;
He might to heav’n from Paradise go,
	       As from  one room t’another.

Thou hast restor’d us to  this ease
	       By this thy heav’nly bloud;
Which I can go to, when I please,
	       And leave th’earth to their food.

Left4Dead

This year's academic job market has pretty much come to a close, and neither Isabel or myself received any offers of employment.

It's like I'm watching the military evac helicopter fly off in the distance, while I can hear the horde of zombies shambling behind me.

One or two teaching gigs might open up in the spring, although these are usually high-labor, low-salary types. And, of course, we'd still be competing with everyone else who didn't get jobs.

Did I mention the zombie metaphor, yet?

According to several of the many, many rejection letters that we received, somewhere between 150-300 people were applying for about 20 positions -- just in our specialization. In other words, it would be possible to be in the top 10% of candidates in our field and still not make the cut for a job.

If outnumbered by zombies, how many zombies could the average person take out before becoming overwhelmed?

After twelve years of training to teach college, I feel a little bit foolish that I wasn't able to land a position teaching in one (and more foolish still for having turned down permanent jobs before now).

Do people who survive the first wave of a zombie outbreak ever feel as though they would have been better off if they had been infected with the others? Is it better to be a zombie than to be a zombie's dinner?

I've published. I've attended conferences. I've taught a heckuvalot of classes. My main weakness is perhaps that I still have not landed a book contract...but, of course, there was I time that I had been offered a tenure track position before I had even been published. In my classical tragic hubris, I suspected I would be more competitive with a longer c.v..

Who knew?

Actually...

When I was waiting in a hotel lobby for an interview last month, I was getting pretty agitated. It was going to be an ideal position, and I didn't want to blow it. I was also pretty exhausted. The transcontinental flight had left me jetlagged, Isabel and I had spent about eight hours going over interview questions and answers, and I had a throbbing headache from clenching my teach. About an hour before the interview, Isabel passed me a copy of Imitation of Christ that I had stuck in my luggage.

I'll never find the precise passage again, but it was precisely what I needed to read before the interview. I was still a little jittery, but the headache passed, and I was on the whole more at peace with whatever was about to happen.

What I do remember, however, is that it was one of those countless passages about surrendering oneself to God's will and the folly of human planning.

So that's where we are right now. Twelve years of planning according to worldly systems have abruptly proved fruitless; now we just have to buckle down, look at available means of putting food on the table, and trust that God puts me where the world needs me to bring Him most...even if that isn't in a college classroom.