Isaiah Handel

In 1741, George Frederick Handel composed a magnificent musical oratorio, which is known as "Handel's Messiah."

After a very baroque musical overture, in which you can hear and feel the sacred gravity of the message about to be presented, a strong tenor voice opens the scriptural words by singing these words from the 40th chapter of the Jewish prophet Isaiah:

"Comfort ye. Comfort ye, my people," says your God.

"Speak kindly to Jerusalem;

And call out to her, that her hard service has been completed,

that her iniquity has been removed,

that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins."

A voice is calling,

"Prepare ye the way for the Lord in the wilderness;

make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.

Let every valley be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill made low;

and let the rough ground be made plain,

and the rugged terrain a broad valley. Then,

the glory of the Lord will be revealed. . ."

Was Isaiah prophesying about geography, highway construction, infrastructure development, wealth distribution, income inequality, justice, or . . . or what?

You may want to listen to the links above, or to the entire two and a half hours of Handel's "Messiah" to contemplate what our God is up to, or at least Isaiah's, and Handel's presentation of what our Lord has in mind for his people.

Smoke

The Money Bowl

I entered into the Money Bowl last night, and there I saw the great Florida State football lean, mean, passin' machine shred Duke's ACC hopes into scrap.

I say Money Bowl because it was the first time in many a year that I have entered into the great, gleaming gridiron realm of state-of-the-art stadium excellency that Bank of America/Panthers Stadium certainly is and will always be in the minds of Charlotteans, although they tell me that now Dallas is building one for the Cowboys that puts Charlotte's colossal Collosseum to shame.

Yes, it hath been many a year since I saw such a bright sight as the inside of big stadium all lit up like that, because you see, I grew up down on de Mississip at Baton Rouge, where Huey Long had, back in the 30s, mustered all the mud of south Louisiana politics and all the dust of north Louisiana hot air into a brand new Tiger Stadium at LSU, where Billy Cannon ran the 97-yard kickoff return to beat Ole Miss back in '57, and where all my people and me studied and earned degrees and all along the way went on Sat'dy nights to what was, back in the day, the shrine of Tiger football, Tiger Stadium, where I sold concessions when I was in junior high back in the 60s and then went on to actually live in that great edifice because they had made the north end of it into a dormitory that overlooked Mike the Tiger's cage over which I would sit on the wide sill of that dorm room during freshman year, looking down at Mike's little caged domain and listen to Abbey Road and dream about maybe leaving' Louisiana in the broad daylight.

Which of course I did, later on, leave Louisiana after matriculation in '73, and went to Florida where I got humiliated for driving on revoked license and then doin five days jail time, sentenced by a Judge Rasmussen, and then leaving that state, home of those crazy Seminoles and their Gator cousins and I wouldn't give you a nickel for the whole dam state now anyway.

'Specially after last night, and what the Seminoles did to Duke, where my son did university, and there we sat last night in the cold in the Money Bowl, with Duke Energy Tower flashing big diagonal neon stripes throught the mist in the background and Bank of America Center over there with its spiky litttle shafts of light on top and Wells Fargo-used-to-be-Wachovia-back in the day somewhere in that sparkly skyline still doin their thing out in the Golden West.

You see Charlotte is new money, not old money like New Orleans was with its Superdome, or Houston, which was old-new money and its state-of-the-art AstroDome back in the day, down where I come from, and because Charlotte is such new money, not old money like New Yawk or Boston, and so Charlotte had to erect the Panthers pantheon-home state-of-the-art or so they say in order to show the world what new money is really all about because you see the queen city has always been a wannabe and always will be, ever since the gold diggers out in California eclipsed the Carolina gold find back in 1848, when the California discovery made Carolina's little gleaming vein look like a flash in the pan, which it actually was comparatively speaking, as it all turned out. So Charlotte had finally made it, and there we were last night sitting in the cold and watching all those Seminole fans in their maroon and gold doing their obnoxious chop chop thing and rubbin' it in after they had absconded that chant from the native Americans and still got away with it, and it really is a case of the new money down there in Tallahassee shredding the old-new money of Duke, chopping it into smithereens, and there we were having to watch all this as the third quarter ended and Florida State waltzed into the end zone again for the umpteenth time, but then we went to Denny's somewhere out there in the vast suburban money land and it wasn't so bad after all, although there was no joy of course over in Durham because might the Blue Devils had struck out.

I mean Panthers Stadium is a lot like Tiger Stadium used to be back in the day, except you know, better, and also excluding what happened there last night.

Glass half-Full

Mandela

Every now and then in history, a man comes along who finds a way where there was, until he found it, no way. Such a man was Nelson Mandela.

Like David of old, who declined to put on Saul's heavy armor, Mandela refused to take on the stultifying bondage of conventional 20th-century political role-playing. His joyfully legitimate leadership defied ideological stereotypes; in the end, he was as close to being beyond reproach as any great man can be. There will never be another like Nelson Mandela.

He traveled, successfully, on a difficult, rutted road of unprecedented grassroots authority. That self-imposed path was a trail of great suffering, but he also wrangled it into a way of boundless joy, which was often reflected in his smiling face. Blazing a precarious trail between the exploitive institutions of established human power, and the revolutionary demands of people rendered powerless by racism and colonialism, he managed to emerge in history as a man of peace, not a man of war. This is no small accomplishment for any man whose role will be perpetually recorded in history as "liberator."

Today, the day after his death, the worldwide web is filled with praise and accolades for this unusual man, so I will mention but a few of his accomplishments that have favorably impressed this Christian (me.)

These four milestones of Mandela's life inspire me with hope. Hope that it's possible, in the dismally tragic trail of human history, for a man born into casted injustice and ruthless apartheid, to divert history itself into paths of, not violence and bloody revolution, but Reconciliation and Forgiveness:

~ He patiently endured 27 years of political imprisonment, emerging with forgiveness instead of vengeance, wisdom instead of bitterness.

~ He guided strife-torn South Africa to elections, with voting, in 1994, instead of violent revolution.

~ After his 27-year prison ordeal, Mandela worked constructively with his Presidential predecessor, Frederick W. De Klerk, in a peaceful transition toward a fully representative democratic government, rather than permitting violent groups to wreak vengeance against the purveyors of apartheid.

~ Like our American founder George Washington, Nelson Mandela refused a king-like role among his grateful people. Instead of aggrandizing his own unique position of merited strength, he stepped down from Presidency after one term, thus facilitating a transferral of South African governmental authority to a leadership base broader than himself. Also like George Washington, he forged a decently pragmatic path between military and political revolutionary impulses among his own people.

In a century of polarizing ideologies, this was a man neither a communist nor a capitalist, although one of those simplistic terms was erroneously attached to his name for awhile. Rather, he was a President, elected by his people. In light of what he endured to achieve that role, he is worthy of the the world's respect. There will never be another like Nelson Mandela.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress

From earth Mining to bitcoin Mining

There was this earth and it had rock underneath, stratified thick n thin, and air above, stratified thick n thin, thick down low and thin up high.

Folkses lived on the earth, and they were distributed throughout, thick here and thin there, here and yon, to and fro. Folkses hunted some animals and raised others, and they tilled the earth to gather food and they mined it to get gold and iron and whatnot and what have you.

Now as the earth itself is stratified, so the folkses themselves got stratified, not that they tried to do it that way but it just happened and so they classified themselves into castes and classes and income brackets and so on and so forth, some with thick wallets and some with thin, thick n thin, and then. . .

By n by long about hunderd fifty year ago this old boy Marx figured out a thing or two bout the stratifications of them folkses, and he determinated that them that owns the means of production to make all the goods gets all the gold and all the assets and all das kapital and so forth and so on and dem proletariat and dem bourgeoisie jez get what dey can while dey can get it.

By n by just up the street from where Marx used to sit in the round room of the british library and figure out all that bout the means of production and who owns it and how all that power accumulates to them 1%ers and how maybe the proletariat could get stirred up and take the means of production unto themselves and then foment a dictatorship of the proletariat. . .

Well, jez few blocks up from where ole Marx used to sit in the round room of the british library, somewhere like bloomsbury or doonesbury or what not, this ole boy Keynes figured out that money was circulatin all around between the thick and the thin and it was just kinda going by itself and if you took the gold or whatever basis for value out from under it the whole dam thing would jez. . .

keep goin round and round, like it didn't need no backin.

By n by the Fed got cranked up and started crankin out money from thick assets outa thin air, thick n thin, you know,

and dips come and peaks go and capital gets invested dontcha know and after bout a hunderd years of that up n down high n low thick n thin hi and hi de ho,

By n by, long after jethrotull played thick as a brick and twiggy got thin as air, the blame got thick and the money got thin and global warming or climate change as their calling it now became the new sin,

the Global Warming degenerators got together in Warsaw to implicate the Global Warming developators for high crimes of casting carbon spells on mankind, and to milk their guilt for damages and to blame them developators for all the shit thick thats goin down and the thin hot air carbon that be goin up,

and so jez like Marx back in the day rappin bout the means of Capital production and dictatorship of proletariat and so on and so forth, now be the time for the 1%ers to ante up for their culpability in the means of Carbon production

jez like wall street and them 1%ers together with dem hot air politicians blowin up balloons inflatin the stratosphere with derivatives and CDOs CreditDefaultSwaps and MBSs and generally BS,

jez as the 1%ers was pullin some serious thick money out o thin air, inflatin all the value of fiat currencies and so on and so forth. . .

Jez about dat time, along come Satoshi Nakimodo and he come up wid idea, like Keynes wid de money thang, dat folkses can mine bitcoins out of thin air, or from their algorithms and online electrons, all charged up like their bankcards, and so on and so forth, jez like back in the day when dey usa mine gold and iron and whatnot and what have you and so forth, but no matta what happen dey still be stratified and de rich get rich and de po get po, and so forth an so on.

And that's the way it was, November 20, 2013. Now, where it go from here who knows, but we do know this: the thick gets theirs and the thin gets theirs and all is still stratified, but who is satisfied? You gotta go out an get it honey cuz it aint gon jez come to ya. But hey, God bless the child that got his own, cuz in de long run God be de only one dat can give satisfaction, so pray bout it.

Glass Chimera

Innocent Blood drones from the Ground

About a year ago, October 24, 2012, a 67-year old midwife grandmother was slain when an American drone death machine struck her to the ground. She had been gathering okra to feed her grandchildren.

This happened in Waziristan, Pakistan.

Momina Bibi's grandchildren were standing nearby: 13-year-old Zubair Rehman, and his 9-year-old sister, Nabila. They saw, heard and felt the whole thing.

Now a year later, on Tuesday of this week, October 29, Congressman Alan Grayson conducted a Congressional hearing to discover more facts about the killing. Five Congressman and a few other people present heard testimony from the children, and their father, Rafiq Rehman, son of the deceased Momina Bibi.

So in Washington, two days ago, in the Sam Rayburn building, Rafiq and his children explained to Alan Grayson, and to our nation and to the world, what had happened in that okra field back in Pakistan a year ago. Rafiq testified to us that his mother was dead, but he could not say why.

Neither can I say why. How about you?

When I heard about this, I was reminded of an old scripture:

And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

And the Lord said unto Cain, 'Where is Abel thy brother?'

And he said, 'I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?'

And the Lord said, 'What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.'

Now here is the 21st-century version of homo sapiens' depravity scenario:

And Uncle Sam watched over a grandmother of Pakistan who was picking okra in the field. And it came to pass that Uncle Sam shot off a drone against the old woman, and slew her.

And a year later, the Congressman raised the question to Uncle Sam, 'Where is this innocent Pakistani woman?'

And Uncle Sam said: 'I know not: Am I a Pakistani okra-gathering grandmother's keeper?'

Now this American citizen (I), hearing of it, said, 'What the hell hath our Uncle Sam done over there in Pakistan? The voice of this woman's blood crieth unto me, and yeah, even unto the Lord, from the ground.'

It was not so much the news report of this killing that caught my ear, but rather:

the cry of Momina's innocent blood from the ground, half a world away.

Glass half-Full

The Perfect

How difficult it would be for a man

to form, with his hands,

a perfect anything.

And yet, this child

in one moment

with her breath,

suds and wand,

blows a bubble,

perfect

sphere.

Selah

The deja view of Deja Vu

Today I had a flashback of when I first heard Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's Deja Vu. This little blast from the past occurred while I was listening to Terry Gross interview Graham Nash on the radio.

The memory is this: I was in Ironton, Ohio in the summer of 1971. Ironton is a small town on the Ohio River. I had finished freshman year at LSU, and was trying to make some money selling dictionaries door-to-door. I felt like a stranger in a strange land, because this Louisiana boy had ventured, for the first time, away from the flat, hot humid delta where I was raised, to make a few bucks in a hilly, backwoods industrial town where folks said "you-uns" instead of "y'all."

I was a pretty good salesman I guess but nothin to write home about. And to tell the truth I wasn't really into selling door to door, so maybe there was a little escapist streak deep inside of me that responded to the deep experience of hearing Deja Vu.

That music became an important part of my life. Now, fast forward 42 years or so.

Today, I heard Graham Nash telling Terri that Deja Vu was a "dark" album, as compared to the first CSNY that they had done before they recruited Neil Young.

That explains a lot. All four of those guys were having a hard time, dealing with major life-setbacks when they came together to record that music in 1971 after their initial successes.

So that Ohio flashback is the deja view memory that triggered this blog, but Graham's interview with Terri today was actually much more upbeat than the "dark" Deja Vu record album. For instance, a couple of Terry's song selections, chosen to prompt their fascinating exchange, were very beautiful love songs that Graham Nash et al had sung back in the day: Bus Stop, which Graham had recorded early-on with The Hollies, and the CSN Our House.

Both songs are very precious memories for me. And both songs represent the outcome of my life much better than the angsty existentialism of Deja Vu. Because, you see, in this life I chose love instead of a trippy pursuit of music and free love and all that bohemian blahblah, even though . . . even though I carry with me, as CSNY have, the curse of musicianship.

I'm happy for them that they could do such incredibly creative work in music. But I never would have been able to get through that minefield of distractions and temptations without going crazy, like, as Graham explains, Crosby almost did (go off the deep end.)

So I chose love instead--one woman, for 33 years, and three grown young'uns. I wouldn't take nothin for my journey now. We actually have a really Our House, which just got paid off last month, and the music schizo stuff--well, it has always been on the back burner.

Graham's old flame, Joni Mitchell, once sang "something's lost and something's gained in living every day."

So true.

The trade-offs we make as we go along--we don't know really know what they are until we look back on them. I traded a pursuit of the wild music scene and hippie love for true love and family life. This probably saved me a lot of pain and trouble.

"The sweetest thing I know of is spending time with you," is a line in an old John Denver Song. It expresses well how I feel about my wife, Pat, and our long married life together, and watching our kids grow up and go out and do their own thing. And I still feel for her that fresh, newly-hatched love that Graham was describing in Bus Stop.

What it was that kept me on track and faithful all this time was certainly not anything that I could muster. It was only by the grace of God. Thank you, Jesus.

Glass Chimera