Archives for March 2016
HOLY WEEK: CHRIST’S ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM (Luke 19:29-40)
This poem introduces a series of Holy Week sonnets that I wrote out of a desire to follow Jesus through his Passion with a focus on his humanity. Classical Christian teaching has always insisted that Jesus was fully and truly human and fully and truly God. But Christian spirituality has tended to take the “God” more seriously than the “human.” What does it mean to see him as a person of extraordinary integrity, courage, and determination—but also as finite and uncertain and caught in the politics of his time and place like the rest of us? It’s my hope that that kind of Jesus comes through in these poems.
A GARDEN SHOWS ITS GRATITUDE FOR THE RAINS
After twelve days of cold, stormy weather, the sun has come out again; and it’s a day to inspect the garden. I find a little damage: one basket of orchids (I don’t know what they are, but they have small purple flowers in late winter and early spring) was blown from its moorings. It’s gotten very heavy over the years, as one small plant morphed into quite a mass of foliage; and the storm winds exerted enough force on it to pull its wire hook straight and send it and its resident ant colony plummeting into the plants below.
It has a younger clone in another hanging basket, where it was protected from the winds, but not from the scrub jays,. They have ripped out almost all of the wire basket’s coconut fiber lining—I suppose for nest material. What’s left is some bedraggled little plants hanging on for dear life among the remnants and a lot of orchid bark littering the ground below—one of many things to tend to now that the weather favors getting into the garden again!
Of course, the weeds have also taken advantage of the weeder’s cowardly retreat during the storms. On the whole, however, the garden seems to be showing nothing but enthusiastic gratitude. The wisteria flowers are just emerging, even as the elegant blossoms of the quince tree are fading. But bulbs are providing the primary show. There are little species tulips in yellow, orange, and red. There are red freesias. There are ranunculus in reds, pinks, and yellows.
And one of our winter pleasures continues into spring. White cyclamens that came to us as Christmas plants over the years have found homes to their liking, a larger-flowered one in a back corner, but visible from the house, and three tiny ones in the shade of the garden bench.
Our garden’s guage this season (starting from September) has measured about 28″ of rain—a good sum even for a whole rainy season, though we still hope for more after years of drought. The surprising thing is how quickly the plants have responded. The most extreme example is the octopus agave, the last of a group that we planted here soon after we
moved, probably in 1999. It has decided that its time has come and is throwing its all into reproducing this year. In less than five weeks, its flower stalk has reached as high as our second-floor windows. I expect it will grow a little taller before it wraps itself in a spiral of yellow flowers.
Since I am far from the really capable sort of gardener who can actually predict results, I get the benefit of experiencing every spring’s successes as a kind of marvel. “Oh, hey, it actually worked!” Although I would like to feel more competent, I’m not sure I want to give up that element of surprise.
SONNETS FOR MARY: CRUCIFIXION (John 19:26-27)
SONNETS FOR MARY: THE WAY OF THE CROSS (Mark 15:21)
SONNETS FOR MARY: TO JERUSALEM (Mark 10:32-34)
INFERNAL GOVERNMENT DENIES INVOLVEMENT IN REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES
Note to the reader:
Odd things do turn up on the web. Their source is typically impossible to validate. The following essay, however, makes sense only if we read it as a chance escapee from some underground website—very far underground. Perhaps it comes from the op/ed page of a newspaper read by aficionados of foreign policy or from a political newsletter addressed to those convinced that government officials, in Hell as on the “Surface” (to use our author’s term), seldom tell the truth. I would guess that it must have been written shortly after the US “super Tuesday” primaries on March 1st of this year.
Malvolia Kakodaimon, Secretary of Terrestrial Affairs, responded to journalists’ questions yesterday about the US Republican primary elections by reaffirming the government’s stance against interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. “We continue,” she said, “our age-old policy of working with individuals and non-governmental organizations such as churches, stock markets, and infant football leagues. I have nothing to add to this statement.”
Nonetheless, rumors persist that officers of Subterranean Intelligence have been assigned as advisers to the principal candidates. There may even be some involvement in so-called “dirty” operations. The astonishing ascendancy of Donald Trump, who seems remarkably devoid of qualifications other than egotism and a complete lack of shame, has perplexed many both on the Surface and in the Hadean sphere. And some claim to have glimpsed SIA operatives “behind the curtain,” casting spells of fascination over audiences or introducing aerosolized chemicals thought to cripple the critical faculties.
Dubbius Phoné, spokesdevil for the SIA, dismissed such claims as “the daydreams of old demons who want to bring back the era of the Inquisition when we ruled the Surface more directly than we do now. That era is over. Get used to it!” Some old Inquisition hands, however, are said to be involved with the Cruz campaign as policy consultants.
One analyst at the Imperial Subversion College (who spoke with us on condition of anonymity on account of being “off message”) noted that he sees at least some interest in the capacity of Evangelical voters to reinstate something like the medieval alliance between the Infernum and the church. “This could be the best prospect of reinstating direct methods since the McCarthy Era,” he said, “though there is concern that the Evangelicals may be peaking prematurely.”
Invidia Weesil, Professor of Temptation Theory at the Hadean Institute of Technology, on the other hand, doubts that the government is actively tampering with the election. “If there were an overall strategy,” she said, “we wouldn’t expect to see energy divided among so many dubious candidates. This looks more like the free-lance efforts of junior tempters, competing with each other for the limelight.”
If that is indeed all that is going on, Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Cruz’s personal demons have a right to feel very proud of their work. Both candidates have done an outstanding job of arousing free-floating anxiety and turning it to their advantage. Without question, that produces a climate favorable to Infernal interests. Mr. Rubio’s companion, by comparison, could be doing a better job—or perhaps just needs better material to work with.
In any case, rumors of official involvement persist, and this columnist will continue to dig more deeply into them. For some, at least, the present moment seems a good opportunity to move toward more intensive Infernal engagement with the United States. Such schemes have been working well in Iran and North Korea, and they are showing promise in places like Syria, Libya, Somalia, and northern Nigeria. There is no reason to think that a place like the United State could not benefit from more attention. The promotion of distrust, anger, arrogance, greed, and general bloody-mindedness is, after all, the bread and butter of our economy and can only do us good.