From the Desk of Will Banister

My Plan to Save the European Union: U2 Plays the Roman Colosseum

U2 should perform in the Roman Colosseum.

This is something I have decided. I had this epiphany while we were in Rome earlier this year. As you can see, this stage is perfectly designed for such an historic concert peopled by a Bonothirsty crowd.

Sure, you would have some logistical hurdles: zoning laws, noise pollution tariffs, construction permits, trafic re-routing committees, international visa thingamajiggies, angry protestors and outcries from European history professors all over the world, not to mention plenty of palms to grease and politicians to shmooze. But I'm sure it could be done. Paul McGuinness, U2's manager, is up to the task. It's time to set things in motion.

Here it is: the grainy blue spotlight panning back and forth where the lions used to pace in the stadium. Or Bono crouching down on the edge of a gladiator pit, where bones were crunched long ago. Or amplifiers stacked on top of each other, sharing the limelight with ancient megaliths and cranking out decibels for the greater Rome area. Or, and this is a good one, the rosary of the late John Paul II swinging from Bono's microphone, right over the place where martyrs made their bones.

We might have to forego the massive claw, though. That would be too much. Not sure what that is anyway. The paraphernalia of Zoo TV made more sense than that claw, but whatever.

The point is, this could happen. Hire an Olympics committee. Do the math. Get your people to the boot of Italy. Also, shoot emails to Beyoncé, Jay-Z and Kanye West, all of whom you know would back the historic cause for a piece of the action. You could donate your share, U2, to The One Campaign to get those history purists off your back. Don't they know history is "past plus present?"

By the way, didn't recently ousted Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, just cut an album entitled True Love? (Yes, it's no joke. He used to sing on cruise ships, I think). You could promise him the opening act. Of course, you'd have to drop him at the last minute, given all of the corruption charges and lawsuits and the Italian economy in shambles, but it could get your foot back into area politics. And the beauty of this is, Bono, you've already partied with Berlusconi at George Clooney's villa at Lake Como. And if he isn't your cup of tea, just invite the new Italian Premier, Mario Monti, to Clooney's pad for a photo op with tigers on the porch. He could give you fresh access to the levers of power in Rome.

Just think, "Peace on Earth, "Vertigo" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in the same arena where St. Augustine's friend, Alypius, got swept up in the passions of a bloodthirsty crowd, as chronicled in Book VI of Confessions, before he found God and stopped the nonsense. The Edge could pay homage to Alypius with a new guitar solo. Surely that's worth a few guitar licks.

Tell me Larry Mullen Jr. wouldn't love pounding the skins in the seat of the Old World. Tell me he isn't bored out of his goard drumming "Pride (in the Name of Love)" in the same old arenas in the same old cities. The same for Adam Clayton's thumping bass. They never get to do the fun stuff.

What a welcome jolt to the local economy! Such an historic event could unite the Left and the Right, shore up banker support for an over-leveraged country and save the European Union. The Germans and the French would agree to assume all outstanding debt. Standard & Poor would upgrade everyone's credit to AAA. The U.S. markets would respond. Jobs would be created and the spike in consumer spending would boost our G.D.P., and the Federal Reserve would respond by boosting interest rates, which seems like a bad thing but is really a sign of a healthy economy, and we will pay off our credit card to the Chinese without having to refinance with Costa Rica.

Yes, this would be a great thing. Headlines all over the world: U2 Performs in the Roman  Colissium, wrapped in a bundle and thrown onto your doorstep. Zipped over the wires. It's as simple as that.

The thing is, my wife Christa and I probably wouldn't be able to afford the tickets and everything else attached to them. Besides, it would be wasteful. I would have to YouTube it, which is kind of like kissing your sister. Don't you hate it when reality crashes in on your dreams? I'll settle for a reboot of the global economy instead.

A Pre-Prayer Prayer

My goal in my devotion this morning was to strip away all of the ancillary junk in my thoughts and focus on what C.S. Lewis put forth as the necessary legwork to prayer:

“The prayer preceding all prayers is ‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.’”

Implicit in this prayer is that we are (even at our best and brightest) fraught with delusions—delusions about self and delusions about God.

For instance, delusions on the self side:

I am no more than a jumble of atoms in the metanarrative of evolution.

I am a cat in a tree.

I am a worm without a hole.

I am God’s gift to His Kingdom.

I am okay nibbling at the edges of God's Kingdom.

Cynicism is okay.

My faith is too strong to ask for a sign.

My faith is too weak to ask for a sign.

I am a sophisticated fish flopping on a beach in the center of a cold, lonely universe.

I need to have all my ducks in a row before I take a leap of faith.

...

Or delusions on the God side:

God is not great.

God is not good.

(Ask David Hume about those first two, who said the problem of evil cannot coexist with both premises)

God is not all-knowing or clairvoyant about the future.

God cares about my life in terms of the big picture of salvation but does not really care what I do in  the day-to-day.

Scripture is a relic of the past. Just man's wish fulfillment (Freud) and weakness (Nietzsche) and anthropomorphic fantasies (most of 19th century Liberal Protestantism).

God bled for us but does not want intimacy with us.

God in all His glory is not sufficient for my enjoyment.

God does not have a plan for my life.

Again, here is the above meditation:

“The prayer preceding all prayers is ‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.’”

Thank you, Clives Davis. That is a worthy preamble to prayer. To jettison the barriers that come between the real me and the real God and to chip away at the masks I have erected for myself and for God.

After all, what is the point of prayer without a true meeting of the minds, sinful and otherwise?

To read more of what I'm talking about on my blog, click here.

 

Two Gentlemen from Utah

Two Gentlemen of Utah

 

Persons of the Play

Will, sitting on a bench in Southlake town square, on a rare day off from work.

Mormon first, well-fed but not blimpish, rosy cheeks, ELDER emlazoned on his name tag.

Mormon second, suave, chiseled jaw, moves like a tiger. Sure of himself. Could be in the movies or an iPod commercial.

Act I

Will sits on a bench facing the fountain in the town square. Enter Mormon first, stage right.

 Mormon first: How art thou on this fine day?

 Will: Exceedingly well, thank you, good sir.

 Mormon first: And how is thy cigar?

Will: Aye, quite smooth. It is indeed a cheap one, but strength of the tobacco belieth its price, which would stoke any pauper of the field. A rare find, I should say. 

Mormon first: Excellent. I find it rare a man who enjoyeth his smoke.

Will: I concur, good sir.

Mormon first: Dost thou live around here?

Will: Aye.

Mormon first: Hast thou habitated here long, in the lake of the South?

Will: Aye and nay. Mine umbilical chord wast severed not far from here, two hundred crossbow shots perhaps, in crisp succession, to the east, in a park up in the Highlands. Anon, I lived in the tumbleweeds of Abilene, TX, and anon, in the deep snows of Russia; anon, in the cities of Nashville and St. Paul, respectively. Thou?

Mormon first: Utah.

Will: A fine country. Teeming with game. Fish abound, like in that movie with Brad Pitt.

Mormon first: A fine thespian.

Will: A fine one indeed. A master of his craft. A sharp ear for regional dialect. Many babies from Africa, and the entire hemisphere of the east.

Mormon first: And in what industry dost thou labor in this cosmopolitan nook of the cosmos?

Will: Currently I labor in the world of commercial banking. I lend a friendly hand to merchants of the land—young impresarios and old tycoons alike, in their quest for mammon, the love of which we all know is the root of all evil, yet the hate of which leadeth to abject penury, and television without the flat screen or the cable. A luminous playwright once wrote: "neither a borrower nor a lender be," but, alas, such a playwright did not live in the 21st century, where everyone dreameth to invest their lucre for sport, legacy and family.

 ACT II

Mormon second enters stage left and approaches within earshot of Will and Mormon first. Mormon second steps forward into the circle of conversation.

Mormon first: Doth thou enjoyest thy trade?

Will: Aye, it pays the bills and it is interesting, and it is a fair trade to learn. Yet alas, it is not my first love.

Mormon first: And what is thy first love, if I might query?

Will: Theology.

Mormon first: Ye don’t say?

Will: Aye. I did say. And I shall say it again: Theology. One of my favorite words in our fair tongue.

Mormon second: And what doest theology mean to thee?

Will: A definition?

Mormon second: Aye.

Will: I shall be happy to try. Yet here are many others better equipped to answer such a question.

Mormon first: Indulge us.

Will: Well, for lack of time and sufficient wit, I shall happily lapse onto Anselm’s classic definition: “faith seeking understanding.” One cannot go wrong with such a definition, other than to say “discourse on God." In short, ‘tis the stuff of the sacred, especially when we talk and think about it.

Mormon second: Faith seeking understanding?

Will: Aye. I pray thee not think I’m an ass if I quote the Latin of it: Fides quarens intellectum, which is one of the few Latin phrases I doth knowest. Dost thou think me an ass for quoting a dead language in a live discourse?

Mormon second: Nay, not at all. I think thee not an ass, and if I did perchance think ye an ass, saying ye wish not to be one makes me think less an ass of ye still.

Mormon first: I also think thou art not an ass.

Will: If I were a man of many tattoos I should burn such a phrase onto mine clavicle.

Mormon first: What? That we think thee not an ass?

Will: Nay. Fides quarens intellectum. In medieval scrawl, right on mine left clavicle.

Mormon second: Well. Please enlighten us. What dost thou love about theology, if we might query?

Will: Well, let me see. For starters, ‘tis honey for the soul. A discipline that is rarefied to some, yet accessible to all that prize her beauty.

Mormon first: Aye. Theology is indeed a thing of pulchritude.

Will: Aye. 'Tis more brilliant than suns, many suns in the palm of thy hand, only less dense. ‘Tis milk and honey for the soul, only better, nigh impossible to disgorge.

Mormon first: What meanest “disgorge,” pray tell?

Will: To vomit, pray tell.

Mormon first: I see. And with that, I agree.

Mormon second: I concur. Yet we sometimes do disgorge such honey. For alas, we humans are tainted and besmirched by our own sin.

Mormon first: More rotten than Johnny.

Will: More vicious than Sid. Our hearts are but sticky floors in a forgotten pub. Crushed under the weight of the Fall, we are frail and massacred souls.

Mormon second: In that dim light, is theology even possible?

Will: Methinks aye. Yet as a result of our sticky-floor-in-a-pub ways, our theology, even at most clear and most most eloquent, is like the workings of a tongue under anesthesia.

Mormon second: A tongue under anesthesia?

Will: 'tis how I see it.

Mormon first: On the whole we are more dumb than brilliant.

Mormon second: Are we damned because of our dumbness or are we dumb because of our damnedness?

Will: Ask Adam, I should say. We are not dumber than him, and we are all equally damned.

Mormon first:  Alas, we are a foul lot.  In need of a thimble full of grace.

Mormon second: Fie!

 ACT III

Mormon first and Mormon second stand wider and wider apart from each other. Will now moves his neck back and forth when conversing with them, much like watching a tennis match from mid court.

Mormon second: Hast thou heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?

Will: Aye, I have. (Will playeth it coy)

Mormon first: And what hast thou heard?

Will: Well, I have heard a lot of things. Yet I have read more than I have heard, and on the whole I trust what I read more than what I hear, if that maketh sense. 

Mormon second: It doth. And hast thou read the book of Mormon?

Will: Aye, I have. Although, I must confess, not in its entirety. Yet enough of it, methinks, to catch the spirit of the author, Joseph Smith. I did research the Mormon faith, though, years ago, in leafy pages that smelled of mildew.

Mormon first: Mildew?

Will: Ah, and aye. Those are the best kind.

Mormon second: E-readers such as Kindle hath no mildew and that maketh me angry.

Mormon first: Me too.

Will: Thou speakest the truth so far. Anyway, in my attempt at due diligence, I read books both pro and con the Mormon faith. I even didst attempt to find books that sought a middle ground betwixt the two, yet I concluded that such a book exists.

Mormon second: Aye. ‘Tis true.

Mormon first: Aye. None such a book truly exists.

Mormon second: And what is thy impression of what ye knowest of the Mormon faith?

Will: Well, for starters I admire the Mormonic — is that a even word? I remember not.

Mormon second: Certainly. Our critics might remove the middle "m" from the word, but we prefer three m's. That is how such a word is spelled. 

Will: I thought so but I wanted to make sure. I do not wish to offend. I admire the Mormonic emphasis on family, which is sorely lacking in this land of moral turpitude. I also admire the Mormonic passion for circumnavigating the globe and the quest to imbibe from the marrow of other cultures, which I didst evidence whilst I was a missionary myself years ago in Russia.

Mormon second: Thou wert a missionary?

Will: Aye, for two years. Of the evangelical persuasion. A stint that was full of adventure, and most piquant to my soul.

Mormon first: And didst thou know Mormons there?

Will: Thou bettest. I met them on the cobblestone streets of Rostov-on-Don, which is a full-day’s train ride south of Moscow, near the sea they call Black but is not really black. They were friendly folk, I must say. I enjoyed their company, and even met some of their friends and we went back to their temple and I studied with them there.  

Mormon second: And what didst thou study?

Will: First, they shared their point of view with me. Anon, I mine with them.

Mormon second: And what didst thou think of what they didst share?

Will: A group of them prayed for me, that I shouldst have a burning sensation in my bosom. And they asked me if I didst feel such a burning in my bosom, but, alas, I did not, and I had to break such news to them.

Mormon first: That thy bosom wast not burned?

Will: Aye.

Mormon first: This was in their temple?

Will: Aye. In the heart of it.

Mormon second: And what didst thou talk about?

Will: I mostly shared my reservations about the character of Joseph Smith.

Mormon second: And what wert thy reservations, pray tell?

Will: Well, I wish not to offend thee, even as I didst wish not to offend them at the time. But I mostly talked about the historical record, that Joseph Smith wast essentially a Casanova who died in a gunfight. This fact would not be so bad if he wert, say, Billy the Kid, yet when one presumes to care for souls and expatiate on celestial things and receive fresh revelations from on high, then that doth become problematic not in the slight. The question of moral authority loometh large. May I say more?

Mormon second: Aye.

Mormon first: Certainly.

Will: Furthermore, methought then, even as methinks now, based upon mine former research, that Joseph Smith was a lover of strange medicines. A second-rate magician who dabbled in the occult. A quack. I pray thee overlook my mettle, for it cometh from an honest tongue, yet in addition to being religion’s answer to Billy the Kid and Merlin the Magician all wrapped up into one, I daresay his protégé, Brigham Young, fared no better in mine eyes. Although, historically, with him there wast no gunfight and thus no subsequent bloodbath.

Mormon first and Mormon second: No response. They stare at Will. 

Will: Also, it is my belief that on the whole Joseph Smith wrote slipshod theology, to put it kindly. Methinks skullduggery is a better word. And I am not of the mindset that slipshod theology is better than none at all. And skullduggery is definitely worse for the eternal soul.

Mormon second: Thou speakest in riddles, sir.

Will: Nay, it was Sir Joseph who spoke in riddles if I may so boldly say. One conundrum on top of another. One opaque teaching on top of another.

Mormon first: Perhaps thou didst not understand what thou didst read?

Will: Truer words were ne’er spoken. I absolutely didst not understand what I read. I found his words to be muddy and opaque, with a lack of coherence that was staggering, to be forthright. Did his writings slake my thirst? Not in the least.

And the teachings of the prophets? I remember not the details, for I doth not have memory of the photograph. But I do remember that their prophets often contradicted one another in their teachings: First they said "yay," then they said "nay"; then "yay," then back to "nay"; they zigged they zagged and the yayed and they nayed. And just when you thought they would nay they would yay, with utmost contradiction.

Mormon first: Dost thou relish the role of the skeptic?

Will: Nay.

Mormon second: Then why doest thou speaketh such?

Will: One is a skeptic only relative to the one with whom one is conversing.

Mormon first: True enough.

Will: Were I to sup with the devil, then I would hope to play the skeptic; with an angel, a starstruck believer. And I am not accusing thee of being in league with the devil, by the way. Only to make a point, not to offend thee.

Mormon second: And what point is that?

Will: That I am not a skeptic for skeptic’s sake. And neither are thee, I suspect. 

Mormon second: Perhaps.

Mormon first: Yay. I mean nay. Or yay to the nay.

Will: Again, I must say that every Mormon that I have met, elder or otherwise, has been largely agreeable and friendly as a person can be, present company included. Please do not take my strong opinions for lack of respect for thee.

Mormon second: We respect thy honesty. Wouldst thou like a tract?

Will: Aye.

Mormon second: Inscribed upon this tract is one address to a website. If thou hoppest on this website, thou might downloadeth a copy of the Book of Mormon. Dost thou currently own a copy of the Book of Mormon?

Will: I used to have one. At the striking of the clock, though, I do not know where it is, only where it is not.

Mormon second: Please hoppeth onto this website, where thou might downloadeth a copy.

Will: Gratis?

Mormon second: Gratis.

Will: Why thank thee, sirs. It was a most enjoyable chat.

Mormon second: Well, it is nigh supper time. We must make posthaste to our next appointment.

Will: Posthaste?

Mormon first and second: Aye. 

Will: Supper indeed sounds good. I myself shall repast before I repose.

Mormon first and second: Fare thee well.

Will: Fare thee well. 

Mormon first and second exit stage right. Will throws the butt of this cigar (which is fat and brown and now soggy) into the bed of the flowers. Will exits stage right.

THE END

Postscript: This was an Elizabethen interpretation of my encounter on Saturday. Of course, I was not half as eloquent as the Will in the above play. And neither were my interlocutors. Alas, we fumbled and mumbled our way toward an agreement to disagree.  If I had the chance again I would have shared my faith more, rather than taking easy shots at theirs. But, alas, it was my day off, and I was cranky.

What if Adam Never Sinned?

Here are a couple of questions regarding the primitive freefall of humankind: 

First: Was Adam’s sin sheer coincidence, a flukish happenstance of history? Or was it more or less inevitable, the crunch of the apple the result of freewill, where sub-angelic creatures (that would be us), and daft ones at that, were thrown into a carnival world of “epistemic distance,” where both God and the devil were in proximity to Adam only relative to his desire for them?

In other words, was the Fall a tragic contingency of history or an anthropological necessity?  This question is older than Methuselah...literally.

Also, and this borders on the nonsensical, but it bugs me nonetheless, what if Adam had obeyed his conscience and refused to taste the apple or even look at it after Eve had offered it to him as an afternoon snack? How would that have played out among their offspring? Would we have been half-fallen, quasi-sinners? If our inaugural papa chose not to sin, whereas our first mother did sin, which flawed gene of devilry wins out down the line? Would we have inherited the legacy of semi-original sin (whatever that may be)? This is so-called “middle knowledge” I’m glad I’m not privy to.

It’s also pub talk. Beer babble that involves a couple of conundrums that cannot be solved by the intimations of Scripture, much less brandy and cigars.

Yes, the above questions border on the nonsensical, but the assumption that these questions make is anything but nonsensical. Which takes us back to our original question, which was not: Was there a Fall? Yes, there was. Rather: Did the Fall have to happen or did it not have to happen?

I don’t know. If the Fall was a necessity then Adam needs an apologist. If it was a fluke of history then Pelagianism isn’t quite so pseudodox. Feel free to think about that one and get back to me.

Here’s a medieval joust of sorts that looks at the above question from a salvation perspective: Thomas Aquinas taught that if Adam had not sinned then the incarnation would not have happened, chiefly because there would have been no logical need for it. John Duns Scotus, one of his contempories, argued just the opposite: Had Adam and Eve not sinned then Jesus’ incarnation and death on a cross would have happened anyway, as a pure act of divine love.

What I love is what both men believe in reality. We are flawed creatures with warpes senses of ourselves. This is the non-hypothetical state that affords us the unique perspective to pose the above hypothetical questions.

The upshot is this: We Christians believe that the devil snaked his way into the garden. And Adam was duped. Ergo (and much ink hath been spilled on this ergo alone; see Paul and Augustine), we were duped. Whatever the answer to above questions regarding the necessity of the Fall, the fact is we are flawed creatures: less mischevious than demons, more angelic than snails, and more tragic than the extinction of dinosaurs. We are equal shmucks relative to one another.

We all need a way to crawl out of the dark hole of the underbelly of the cosmos (i.e. our sin nature), which is what the cross is for. This is the denoument of our faith story. Some theology is too rarefied for the Church to draw adequate breaths of oxygen. Welcome to the halls of Academy, where some corridors lead to a house of mirrors and others lead to a logical Black Hole. Black holes and houses of mirrors can be fun, granted you know what you look like and have a sense of gravity. 

The upshot is this: We sin in spades and then we sin some more. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. And he was raised so that we might have life. Turns out, Adam has an apologist after all. And hypothetical “middle knowledge” is relegated to the pub.

Rock 'n' Roll Time Jump

In the spirit of playful anarchy and magical rock ‘n‘ roll, here are a few bands I would see if space and time (not to mention gobs of cash) were like soft, preternatural putty in the palm of my hand:

1. The Replacements in their rabble-rousing heyday. Anywhere. Mid-eighties. Those were the days when a thankless shove from Paul Westerberg was like being kissed by the Pope. Authentic raw blabber and non-linear bass lines pulsating off sticky floors. This was post-punk brilliance at its finest, and the overrated Wilco should thank their lucky stars Westerberg ever breathed into a microphone, probably with bad breath.

2. The Beatles. The Cavern, 1962. Nothing like seeing a chubby John Lennon sweating like a pig. And the cherubic cheeks of Paul McCartney through the smoke of English fags (i.e. cigarettes) and mindless donnybrooks in this raucous Liverpool pub. This was long before Paul became a poet laureate and John a skeletal waif with the crazy wife.

3. U2 in Ireland, circa 1981. Well before I proposed to Christa in Chicago before the Vertigo tour in 2005 (I had to upstage Bono somehow) U2 was already big, way too big; they're bloated now, on a global scale, and the poor Irish leperchaun thinks he’s Robin Hood or Ghandi or something. Of course, he is, but it would be nice to see the spotlight shine on an earlier incarnation of this singular munchkin—the chubby one with the bleeding heart and Napoleonic streak, full of pluck and megalomania, gabbing up a storm about the mystical and the mundane and how famous U2 would be someday. Those were the days when you could enjoy an earthquake of rock ‘n‘ roll without having to save political prisoners with your cell phone.

4. Bob Dylan. Anywhere in Greenwich Village, New York, circa 1961. This would be the chubby (are you sensing a theme here?) baby-faced, homeless urchin with the corduroy cap and Woody Guthrie husk on his voice, cadging money with a paper cup in Washington Square Park, or the Gaslight, or sleeping on Dave Van Ronk’s couch. These were the pre-genius days, pre-psychotropic drugs, pre-ranconteur days, when Zimmerman was just another wandering pudknocker on the streets of New York, just as likely to sing you a folk song as to pick your pocket. He was also a natural salesman—he could sell a dead cat to your grandmother and you’d thank him for it. Oh, to have one's wallet stolen by Dylan in exchange for a folk song and a dead cat! 

   (photo: the little urchin in the flesh, probably wondering what kind of goodies are in his photographer's wallet)

5. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in some gritty honkeytonk in Austin. While we're at it, we'll go ahead and throw Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash in the mix. Must be a Saturday night deep in the heart of Texas. They will not sing "The Highwayman" in this scenario, though. 

6. A folk/blues songwriter-in-the-round campfire session with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Muddy Waters in Mississippi. Again, I don’t really care where this would take place. Lucinda Williams can sit in too.  It would be an honor if Ella Fitzgerald would also grace us with her presence with "strange fruit hanging from the trees," perhaps through the flames of a dancing campfire. Michelle Shocked can come too. Shawn Colvin, I wouldn't be bummed if you happened to be there with your acoustic Martin D-28 as well.

7. Bob Marley and his funky son, Ziggy in Jamaica. I’ll pass on the grass, though.

8. A gyrating Mick Jagger doing his wild and interpretive dance of St. Augustine’s “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee” (i.e. “I can’t get no satisfaction”). I love it when rock stars, or philosophers for that matter (please see Sarte and Ecclesiastes), preach the Gospel without even knowing it.

  (St. Augustine in deep thought: this would be the moral high point of this particular blog.

  (St. Mick in hypnotic snake-dance mode. He looks too zonked-out to be satisfied.)

9. Ryan Adams, any time when he doesn’t walk offstage in one of his bratty, primadonna, Westerberg wannabe, hey-look-at-me, mercurial mood swings; especially after only forty-five minutes of rifling through obscure songs, like he did when Christa, Casey (Christa’s brother) and I saw him in Minneapolis last year at the State Theatre. This was our birthday present for Casey and all we got was musical swill and a swift exit. There’s a reason you’re last on my list, oh bratty one.

So that’s all for now for my musical utopia scenario thingy.

Next on the blog docket….more funky G.R.E. words, my favorite Bible character of the moment (it changes all the time), 2nd Timothy and the prison epistles, and anything else that strikes me as blog-worthy way up here in cold and snowy and always-wintery St. Paul.

Insights From the Land of G.R.E.

In my quest to knock the stuffing out of the G.R.E. (Gargantuan Rectal Exam) rather than the other way around, I’ve been studying lots of words—words, words and more words: dry root words in dead languages, sexy French words, barbaric German words, old English words that have moth balls all around them, Slavic words that make you want to toss back the vodka (fond memories from living in Russia) and fiesty Greek words that make you want to swim in the blue Aegean sea and then ride a sweaty donkey up a volcanic island in the sun and then shower with Irish soap.

All in all, I’ve had a blast studying all of these words.

I’ve found that some words are sexier than others. And some words sound flamboyant but in reality denote something boring. Take the word “jejune” for example. Sounds very Euro-chic, right? It sounds like this word should be dressed up in white go-go boots and a baby doll dress and smoking a cigarrette in some pulsating nightclub at 2:00 a.m., doesn’t it? Not so. Jejune means boring, blah, dull, vanilla, as in “My…these stale crackers are so jejune.” The sound of the word totally belies its literal meaning. It’s a syntactical tease, promising a brilliant star but delivering a drab pebble. I find this odd and it makes me angry.

Second, some words are good but you could get your arse kicked at a party if you use them. Or at least your friends probably wouldn’t want to be your friends any longer if you dropped an “appellation” instead of “name,” or a “salubrious” instead of a “healthy,” or if you casually mentioned that your jello is looking especially protean this evening (i.e. amorphous and wiggly); and this goes double if you’re experiencing a dash of dyspepsia from a deleterious substance in your lobster, or if your puerile cat has necromorphous tendencies, or if your nom de plum  for your smashing new novel is Sebastian Tiger.

(That’s actually not a bad pen name, Sebastian Tiger. Hmmmm. I've got dibs on it now.)

The flip side is true as well I suppose. If another person at a party or a gathering casually mentions that "the pith of Einstein's theory of relativity was obviously outside of Newton's bailiwick" (I've actually been at "parties" like these), or that their brand new spanking BMW outside is a donatia mortis causa, or that they once had an incandescent metanoia (i.e. spiritual conversion), or that they currently struggle with papaphobia or necromancy or necrophilia, or any of the necros for that matter, then it’s time to leave for several reasons that go beyond mere word choice. At best your party could potentially upshift to a massive ministry opportunity. At worst you should be prized from such a bedraggled and fustian scene.

Some words are sheer fun because they sound so graphic and edgy (i.e. titillate, asinine, pusillanimous) yet they’re so...um...in the dictionary. (I used to throw these in my theology papers just for fun). Other words seem clinical and harmless, but they’re pottymouth and supremely naughty (no examples here).

I was struck by how many words—an army, really—there are to denote trickery or missing the mark of truth: dissemble, dupe, blandish, inveigle, cozen, chicanery, legerdemain, bilk, canard, skullduggery (please nobody take that word…that’s my favorite new word), causuistry, specious, meretricious, verisimilitude and I’m sure there are many others but these are the ones I remember.    

I love the word splenetic and I don’t know why.

Some words are like clouds that float above you way up in the sky as they slowly move past wherever you are—amporphous blobs of syntax. You’re not sure what they mean because they’re always changing shape and people sometimes misuse them and then you wonder if they know they’re misusing them or perhaps they’re adding their own subtle twist to a secondary definition—or maybe you missed out on that memo that said “diaphanous” means glorious and vague instead of thin and flimsy...or maybe you should quit reading the New Yorker altogether. That magazine kind of sucks anyway.

I also love the words sodden and slugabed. Desuetude is currently in a state of desuetude, though, it has to go; it’s so jejune and all.

And don’t forget: You can be demotic without being demonic, you can be imperious without being impervious; heck, you can even be quixotic without being quotidian…but you cannot (and I can’t stress this enough) simultaneously have simian cheekbones and an aquiline nose and a bovine jaw. People need to get that into their human skulls. Maybe I’ll work that into my G.R.E. essay. 

What else? I’ve got to go to work at my non-sinecure position at a bank. So this is my penultimate sentence.

And this is my valedictory paragraph...so long.

Blessed are the Meddlers

Check out my baby's book, Blessed Are the Meddlers. It's a humdinger, and my standards are fairly high when it comes to novels.

She’s out west of the Mississippi and somewhere south of purgatory (i.e. Colorado Springs) promoting her phenomenal book, Blessed Are the Meddlers, to all who will come and listen.

Here’s a copy of the thing:

(An impish Wynona Rider lookalike—perfect for the slighty mischevious Sydney)

And since I wrote her official bio (yes, the one about the loquacious author who loves to talk talk talk but who is also literary enough to write write write—a rare combination in any solar system), it’s no secret that I’m a proud fan of her work. Her wholesome-yet- flirty heroine, Sydney, deserves to be on the silver screen in the following cities: L.A., Chicago, London, Moscow, Coca-Cola, Dallas, Bucksnort, Paris, Rekjavik, Seattle, Irkutsk, Abilene, St. Paul, Nashville, Glascow, Scranton and a whole host of other cities and towns that show sparkling and wholesome films.

Of course the rights need to be optioned first. In the meantime, buy this book for your daughter. Two for your cousins. Five for a rainy day. A baker’s dozen for all of your lovelorn, cynical friends who are sick and tired of dating Joe the Plumber (no offense, Joe, I think you’re way cool, but I’m a guy) again and again and again and again and again. 

(Blog intermission: Poor Joe, he’s being lionized and lampooned all over the country, and now I’m riding the plumber wave all the way to Amazon.com and back again on behalf of a worthy book, down the swirling vortex of an Ohio toilet and sideways through a pipe and up and into the belly of your local water cooler scuttlebutt, just in time for the weekend zeitgeist. I repent in dust and toiletries.)

I have no idea what any of that meant.

As I was saying, buy a whole bunch of books (i.e. Blessed Are the Meddlers books) for a whole bunch of people. You’ll find a good friend in Sydney and a unique literary voice in Christa.

And if you happen to be aimlessly wandering around south of purgatory, stop by your local Barnes & Nobles. It's Saturday (as in tomorrow, the 18th) @ Barnes & Noble (across from Citadel Mall) 2:00 pm in Colorado Springs and on Sunday 19th (as in day after tomorrow) @ Barnes & Noble 2:00 pm in Littleton, Colorado.

So get your weekend arse out there and say hello and buy a book or twenty-seven thousand.

* Postscript: It's been several days since I first published this blog, and I must say that I don't like the way Joe the Plumber has been pilloried by the press. For the record I think he's a stand up guy. I like him a lot. So, please forget the above implication that he's a lumbering Neanderthal. In other words, if you're a single gal, then please go getcha some of that. Make posthaste and date Joe the Plumber!!! You can thank me later.

 

Things I Learned While Watching John Mayer Perform

You can play the blues if you’re black and poor (i.e. Blind Lemon Jefferson), black and rich (B.B. King), or even white and poor (a young, coked-out Stevie Ray Vaughn)…yet if you’re white and flush with cash (i.e. John Mayer), it lacks a certain gravitas and just looks silly.

Please, John, stick with teenage pop ditties, that’s your forté.

I loved John Mayer’s rendition of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” though. That’s worth the price of the new video, entitled “Where The Light Is: Live in Los Angeles.”

Also, there is minimal froggy-face action in this video, and that is a good thing;there is also the added bonus of Jessica Simpson's maltese puppy, Daisy, riding shotgun in Mayer's car while Mayer pontificates about the lumbering burden of superstardom and the weight of ten thousand girls on his hapless soul.

Check it out!

Into the Bowels of a Strange Movement: My Investigative Brush with Scientology (Part II)

As Christa and I descended into the bowels of the church of Scientology we both had queesy pits in our stomachs. We held hands. We do this a lot, actually, but we squeezed even harder now—fear of the unknown, perhaps…or in this case, fear of the known; we were in no mood for a financial fleecing or a theological lobotomy. 

As we opened up the jingly door I had many questions swimming around in my skull, such as: Do Scientologists really believe that Jesus was a false dream implanted in our minds (billions of years ago) by an evil galactic warlord named Xenu? Did founder L. Ron Hubbard once hook up a lifeless tomato to his infamous e-meter? If one of the chief tenets of Scientology is not to seek attention or approval of any kind from another human being, then why do people like Tom Cruise seem to seek nothing but…as evidenced by his clownish antics on Oprah’s poor couch? Is it troublesome at all that the founder of Scientology was a sci-fi writer before he came up with his global brainchild? The point is that the goal of my project was not to go on a wild theological goose chase; I had to be disciplined and stay focused on the subject of medical ethics…and perhaps hit some theology along the way.

Suffice it to say lots of questions were swirling around in my head when we opened up the door to the Church of Scientology. We were greeted by a swift “hello” from a receptionist as we strolled in, strawberry frappuccino’s still in hand (we thought this might be a nice “spontaneous” touch) as we proceeded to enter into the foyer. A cornucopia of L. Ron Hubbard books decorated this foyer—an eponymous shrine—as we made our way into the jaws of the church itself.

A receptionist came out to greet and then led us into a large room, the décor of the which was spartan; the walls were drab and nondescript, all white. A massive bookshelf partitioned the large room into two sections: one section was clearly for visitors, the other was not. Toward the back of the room I noticed a bronze statue of L. Ron Hubbard, a bust of his chest and neck and head and exceedingly large lips; these lips were portruded out and frozen in time, as if he were defying grafity with his deep thought. Needless to say it was not a very flattering bust. He looked like a bass-fish mount: A frozen torso of an odd-looking man who looked at once smug and fishy, cocksure and befuddled, princely and eccentric.

Our receptionist handed us off to a nice woman named Lucy (a bottle-blonde, middle-aged; I changed her name), who led us toward a simple wooden table next to the sidewalk window. After meaningless chit-chat we told her that were interested in their free stress test. Within minutes I agreed to be hooked up to the notorious e-meter, which is a low-voltage box (it looked like it was made of fiberglass) with two metallic receptors for gripping with one’s palms. It looked like a cheap Tonka Toy—only slightly more ominous. At first I was somewhat skiddish. Lucy told me that a mild current of electricity would go through my body as it pinpointed my level of stress, specifically, any negative thoughts that I had. The needle on the e-meter would jump (it looked like a polygraph machine) at any sign of stress or negativity. Still somewhat tentative, I asked Lucy to show me how: Bottom line, if this Tonka Toy somehow zapped electricity through people and fried them like bacon, then I wanted to know...and I wanted Lucy to go first. She obliged and picked up the receptors and held them and pressed a button on the machine. She then gripped the arms of the e-meter as the needle on the window of the-meter jumped slightly, then moved back to the left where the needle had originated. I asked her why the needle had jumped for her, a card-carrying Scientologist? She explained by saying that she wasn’t entirely “clear” (more on this term later) yet.

Now it was my turn. I gripped the metallic arms of the e-meter. Lucy told me to think unpleasant thoughts. I specifically did not. I thought about lying in the sunshine at Malibu Beach on the Pacific Ocean—the waves gently lapping onto the shore while I sipped an adult beverage. Immediately the needle started to vacillate wildly. “Looks like you’ve got some stress,” Lucy informed me. “What were you thinking about, just now?” Since I was not in the mood for any kind of therapy (after all, I was supposed to be asking the questions), I sort of wiggled out by saying something to the effect of “I’d rather not say,” which was the most honest answer I could think of. I changed the subject by asking her how the e-meter could capture negative thoughts per se. She answered that the mild currents flow through your body, and any negative thoughts or memories (“engrams” was the term that she used) would hinder that flow, so the energy bounces back and forces the needle to jump.

Lucy, by the way, was very friendly and easy to talk to. She exuded motherliness, which, I suppose, is why she has the job that she has. Yet as maternal as she was, Christa and I sensed something broken about her, something that yearned for someone else to throw her arms around and baby them in order to alleviate her pain. We liked her. Yet there was something about her eyes that was zonky and glazed over. We made a mental note to pray for her.

Up until now there had definitely been a strange vibe in the visitor room. The bust of Hubbard kept staring at us. Now it was time for some of my questions for Lucy.

Turns out, the evening was only beginning to get strange...

(Please stay tuned for third installment, entitled: “Lucy in the Sky with Dianetics”)

Into the Den of Xenu: My Investigative Brush With Scientology

The sunset over Minneapolis skyline was streakish and purple and mad-with-colors, as if someone had spilled a Bloody Mary onto an apocalyptic storm cloud, very epic and odd and bizarre. As I walked toward this mad sunset I hoped that my upcoming pow-wow with the Church of Scientology would be less apocalyptic and less bizarre than the mammoth star that loomed before me. Unfortunately it wasn’t, yet we’re getting way ahead of ourselves. 

(It just hit me that I am probably the only thinking mammal in the history of thinking mammals to ever compare the Church of Scientology to a colorful, breathtaking sunset. Odd analogy, I know. For the record the Church of Scientology gets the better of this comparison. Little did I know that within minutes upon entering their center I would agree to be hooked up to a low-voltage box and be pumped through with electricity—by a glazed-over, bottle blonde, no less. Yet again we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.

Here is my official report, in blog-sized installments of course…

The Church of Scientology in Minneapolis is located on the south end of the outdoor Nicollet Mall—right across from Chipotle and 9-iron stroke away from Macy’s, not far from Starbucks; in other words, it is nestled smack dab in the epicenter of the after-work martini crowd of downtown Minneapolis. In fact one can flip through magazines at Barnes & Nobles, grab a strawberry frappuccino, and casually stroll past the bonhomie on the sidewalk until one stops at what appears to be a bookstore—lots of colorful books on window display, all written by a pompous-looking fellow named L. Ron Hubbard—all the while still sipping on those creamy strawberry frappuccinos, all the while awkwardly gawking at the “Come Take Our Stress Test” sign that hangs so prominently in the window; all of which is exactly what my wife and I did. We strolled. We gazed. We gawked.

(Props here to my beautiful wife, Christa, who chose to be right by my side during this covert operation—theological espionage, we called it. She was there to help me fight off any freaky dragons that came out of the wordwork.)

Suffice it to say, this was no happenstance encounter. I was on a research outing on behalf of my ethics class at Bethel Seminary. My mission was unique. For this project I was interested in exploring the rationale behind the medical ethics of Scientology: Why is Scientology so fiestily anti-medicine? What are the roots of this belief? What does Scientology have to say about things like cancer treatment, or coping with genetic illness? What is the crux of the “Come Take Our Stress Test” signage in the window? And how does this “stress test” hold up to the rigors of academic psychology and/or medicine? First off a necessary caveat: My wife and I are both journalists by trade (my wife more so than me, as she is one full-time; I, part-time—which means that I write whatever I want whenever I want for whomever will hire me) and as such it is worthy of note that this turned out to be somewhat of an unorthodox interview, to say the least. Due to the very nature of Scientology, which on the whole is very media gunshy—it’s no secret that they have been horsewhiped by the media in every city where they hang their hat—I did not feel right about walking into their Minneapolis headquarters only to blithely pull out my digital recorder and start asking a bunch of questions. This would have surely shot my project in the foot. Also, I did not want to draw attention to this encounter by setting up an interview and perhaps jeopardizing its content (like I said, Scientology is very skiddish with the media, especially in the wake of a massive protest last April outside the center here in Minneapolis). Bottom line: I wanted to get the skinny as a man off the street. My wife Christa came along for three reasons: First, she wanted to; Second, we thought that as a couple we may somehow gain a more welcome access into “front lines” of this singular cult. Third, sans digital recorder and without the subsequent crutch of a transcript (which is how I normally do interviews) I needed all of the memory help that I could get in lieu of a transcript. Christa graciously agreed and was a smashing assistant I might add. 

One more caveat: We did not take this project lightly. We were entering into the den of Xenu (more on this galactic warlord below) so to speak, and as such, we prayed that somehow God would use us to be a light in such a dark place. It is my firm belief that as a believer one should never, ever undertake a project of this kind without ample prayer for God’s protection and grace. We needed God’s help to be as savvy as snakes but as innocent as doves. Turns out, we needed those prayers.

Please stay tuned for the next blog, tentatively dubbed (for the scatalogically inclined): My Brush with Scientology: Into the Bowels of a Strange Movement.

(Part II of this blog series will follow next week)