Eric The Blue

Spiritual advisers

I remember, in the misty past of the Democratic presidential nomination struggle, when Obama's minister problem was much in the news, I was home ill from work one day and watching with Amanda "The View."  Elizabeth, dressed fetchingly, kept referring to Obama's spiritual adviser, how his choice of Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his spiritual adviser exhibited very poor judgment, because after all Rev. Wright was not just his pastor but also his spiritual adviser, and you can tell a lot about a person by the spiritual adviser they choose, and Obama's spiritual adviser shows he is not to be trusted.

It seemed to me an odd way of talking--for some reason, it put me in mind of a supermodel, dressed to the nines, sauntering down the runway with the head of a very small poodle peeking out from some outlet in the bodice: spiritual adviser = very small poodle.  I thought all this business about spiritual adviser showed that Elizabeth is daft, which she is, but I have since realized that she is daft in the same way as a lot of her think-alike pals in the God-wing of the Republican party.  Indeed, such is the cachet of spiritual advisers that there is a cross-over appeal: some new-age Democrats, especially if they have a Hollywood address, are apt to keep a spiritual adviser among their attendants.

So there is no reason to be surprised that Governor Mark Sanford has a spiritual adviser, and I was pleased, when reading of his troubles, finally to have some light shed upon the duties associated with this position.  Sanford's spiritual adviser accompanied him on a trip to New York, the purpose of which was to break off the affair with his South American soul-mate. Apparently the three of them went to church and dinner, then parted, one in one direction and two in the other.  Really weird, and James Wolcott, in his inimitable way, heaps on cheerful derision:

I'd love to sign on as someone's "trusted spiritual adviser." That strikes me as a pretty sweet gig. It's true that my spirituality isn't orthodox mainstream jiveass Billy Graham Judeo-Christian, consisting mostly of koans gleaned from the Buddhist magazines I subscribe to and old Alan Watts talks, but I'm sure I'd have as much to contribute with my thoughtful nods and arm pats as Reverend Whozit from the Church of the Weeping Disciples. All I ask is that someone who's recently screwed up his life consider reaching out and giving a rookie like me a chance to prove himself in the spiritual-adviser racket. Your secrets would be safe with me, unless of course the check bounces, at which point all bets are off.

Amen, James.  You're my soul-mate.

Netflix: "Gran Torino"

Begins with a funeral, then a pastoral call to the decedent's surviving spouse, played by Clint Eastwood, who tells the earnest young priest that he (the priest) is nothing but a 27-year-old virgin who enjoys holding hands with the old ladies to whom he promises eternity.  But the priest continues paying visits to the old man, who is meanwhile implausibly playing a dirty-Harry-like part in his gang-plagued neighborhood.  In the end, the priest wins, and the Eastwood character, speaking of "light" and haloed by gunfire, gives up his life in an act of self-sacrifice.  Then there is another funeral, the same priest officiating, a nice circle of pious sentiment.

The movie succeeds mainly as an answer to the charge that Hollywood is hostile to religion. 

Googling the clergy

Thirty years ago I studied theology at a Lutheran seminary for one turn of the academic calendar.  Amanda asks me what I could have been thinking and I really don't know what to say.  I was raised Lutheran, went to a college affiliated with the Lutheran church, and, upon graduating, spent a good part of my 20s studying first this and then that, never anything for too long, so maybe that explains it to a degree.  On the other hand, I never studied any number of things that now seem considerably less outlandish than theology.  Biochemistry.  Landscape architecture.

Anyway I got to know some people who are now ordained ministers, and the other night on a whim I googled a couple of them.  Oh, my.  One, in White Plains, New York, sermonizes against abortion, "the silent holocaust," then berates Iraq war protesters who unfurl their banner in a side pew.  "You have no right to disrupt Christian liturgy with politics!"  Why not?  The president can be interrupted but not you?

Clicking on hyperlinks, I land on the website of Lutheran CORE, a group of clergy and concerned lay persons who are quite worried that the biblical injunctions against homosexuality are about to be overturned by church committees. A key distinction seems to be the one between "homosexuals" and "active homosexuals."  Of course these taxonomic categories are not universally relevant.  No one, for example, would call the governor of South Carolina "an active heterosexual," though he evidently operated on more than one continent.  I see now that the leader of Lutheran CORE is to give a talk, "Right in Whose Eyes--Ours or God's?"  I guess he is not one of us and therefore can speak for God.

My general impression is of earnest hobbyists, humorless, self-important, and educated, though not over smart, who take a dim view of those who don't share their peculiar enthusiasms. 

Two poems

Our six-year-old has been enjoying, at her bedtime, the poems in Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends.  And not only she.  Here is my favorite, of the ones we've come to so far:

Poor Angus

Oh what do you do, poor Angus,
When hunger makes you cry?
"I fix myself an omelet, sir,
Of fluffy clouds and sky."

Oh what do you wear, poor Angus,
When winds blow down the hills?
"I sew myself a warm cloak, sir,
Of hope and daffodils."

Oh who do you love, poor Angus,
When Catherine's left the moor?
"Ah, then, sir, then's the only time
I feel I'm really poor."

It reminds me of this one, by Robert Pinsky, who I suppose was not thinking of children when he wrote

Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

Employee engagement

The philosophic question (if that is not too elevated a way of putting it) most urgently confronting most of us ordinaries concerns the proper relationship between our jobs and the rest of our lives.  We need some money, that is clear, and the way to get it is to have a job.  But it is not at all clear that having a job in any other way advances our cause.  If you take public transportation (I do), check out the faces all around you on the commutes.  It sure doesn't look like what they're headed to, or taking leave from, promotes health, vitality, or overall well being.

And yet, working their Blackberries and laptops, the commuters appear willing participants in the theft of their own lives.  Does it stop when they disembark and enter their own houses?  Most likely it doesn't have to.  Exhausted at the end of the long work day, they eat a fast, bad meal and medicate themselves with television before starting all over again the next day. 

Some people, the relatively enlightened ones in my view, make a conscious decision not to play.  They need the money, poor slaves, and, in exchange for it, are happy to show up, put in their time, and lend their talents to the cause, probably not a very important one, for eight hours a day.  I call them "the relatively enlightened ones" but more often it is probably just circumstances that compel them not to give too much away.  The most stressful things in life are discouragingly common.  People use up all their energy coping with problems--marital discord, illness in the family, infirm parents, troubled kids--that are their problems, not their employers', and therefore have nothing much left to give beyond half their weekday waking hours:  a considerable contribution, it would seem, given what they may be up against on weekends and after 5 p.m. on weekdays.

Nevertheless it is in the interest of employers to get even more.  They are aided in the effort by the fact that people need the money and so if put to the wall will cave to demands, threats, and quiet pressure.  It helps, too, to keep people very busy.  They tend to be persuaded by their own industry that what they are doing must be very important.  Else why would they be so hard at it?  Reward them with a promotion and, impressed by their new title, income, and social prestige, they'll work even more.  

Where I work, "employee engagement" is the favored phrase for the task of persuading people to give more of their lives to work.  An Employee Engagement Survey reveals, according to the Employee Engagement Specialist, that 70% of our people are disengaged.  How can she tell?  Well, when asked, for example, whether "every day at work I have a chance to do what I do best," they circle a number less than 5, which signifies "strongly agree," and also less than 4, which signifies "somewhat agree."  Consequently we are all to meet with our supervisor to develop an Employee Engagement Action Plan.  Since twelve people on earth are referring to me when they say "my boss," I have to convene one of these absurd meetings myself. 

What is to be done?  The problem begins with the need for money, so a first step would be to cut back on the need for it.  Most of what's for sale is useless anyway.  You don't sleep better in a big house, and travel is overrated.  Save, keep your own counsel, comprehend that what you do to get money is not in any long view of things very important.  Do you seriously believe that, coming to the end of your days, you'll wish you'd been a more engaged employee and logged more hours on the job?  We are, as Thoreau wrote, too desperate to succeed--and in such desperate enterprises! 

Happy Bloomsday!

On June 16, 1904, James Joyce had his first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle.  Perhaps as a tribute to her, he chose to set the action of Ulysses, his monumental novel depicting a day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, on that date, and almost ever after June 16 has been celebrated by Joyceans as Bloomsday. 

My legions of loyal readers know that formerly I marked Bloomsday each year by rereading "The Dead," the story that closes Dubliners.  But it is more than 50 pages long in my paperback Portable Joyce and I am pinched for time, not to mention happily sunk in Bleak House, so today I read again the third story in the book, "Araby," about a young boy who realizes something about himself and life when he goes to a deserted bazaar to buy a gift for a girl he likes.  The story, only 8 pages long, is available online here.

Certain sentences seem set off from the prevailing gray of the story.  For example, the boy, surrounded by the hurly burly of a Dublin street, reports: "I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes."  Chalice.  It reminds you that the house the boy lives in was formerly inhabited by a priest, now dead, and has a "musty" smell. The whole notion of the sacred takes a beating in the fiction of James Joyce.  What he puts up opposite it is on display in Ulysses, nowhere more brilliantly than in Molly Bloom's closing ruminations. 

Happy Bloomsday!

Netflix: "Revolutionary Road"

Sam Mendes, director of 1999's feted American Beauty, returns for another look beneath the smiling, rogued face of American suburbia.  It's as ugly as before.  I was sleepy, so only the shouted speeches came through, and my impression is that neither half of the unhappy couple, played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, is a soft-spoken sufferer: I never had time to fall asleep between eruptions.  Amanda says it's good.

One loud, gushing speech reminded me of a scene I love in The Sun Also Rises.  The Winslet character has hatched a plan to relocate the family to Paris, where she will work as a secretary in the civil service and her husband will have time to "discover himself."  As she breathlessly described her idea to the DiCaprio character, I thought of Robert Cohn, who did live in Paris, complaining to Jake Barnes that his life was half over and slipping away without being lived.  In another thirty-five years, Cohn says, we all shall be dead.  "What the hell," answers Jake, "what the hell?"  Cohn proposes a trip to South America.  Jake says, "Paris is a good town.  Why don't you start living your life in Paris?"

Update: I am proven wrong

In my last post I predicted that the Power Line philosophers, having defended their friend Ed Whelan in his dust-up with publius, would be mum about their friend's apology for a deed they defended.  But not so.  They probably would have been wise to remain silent, however.  Mirengoff now adds an incoherent coda to the incoherent "analysis" of his original post.  He says his friend Whelan is a better man than he for issuing an apology that he, Mirengoff, would for very good reasons never have issued. 

What are we to conclude?  That if Whelan were as good a man as Mirengoff, who coyly pretends to think he is not as good a man as his friend Whelan, then he (Whelan) would comprehend as well as Mirengoff that real men do not apologize?

Powerline weighs in with timely post

Two of the Powerline Philosophers weigh in on the Whelan-publius controversy.  Shockingly, they take the side of "our friend" Ed Whelan, the NRO commentator, former Scalia law clerk, and Bush legal advisor.  Mirengoff''s analysis is incoherent.  Hinderaker simply impugns the manhood of publius.

A few hours later, Whelan apologizes to publius.  I think it is safe to assume the Philosophers have spoken their last word on this topic.  It seems not even their friends are as crazy as they are.

Netflix: "Sunset Boulevard"

A Hollywood movie purportedly about Hollywood.  It's reputation is in the stars but a sense of place seems absent.  Oh, sure, the scene with Cecil B. DeMille is shot on the actual set of Samson and Delilah, the movie he was actually at the time making.  That, however, is just a fun fact and a trick.  A better trick would have been to join film noir with the prevailing pleasant weather of southern California to create for the screen a bright, sunlit hell.  Despite all the movie talk, the silent film star's dilapidated mansion could have been in Faulkner's county instead of on Sunset Boulevard. 

Everyone knows that Billy Wilder directed William Holden and Gloria Swanson.  But is that Jack Webb, of Dragnet fame, as the young love interest of the wholesome studio reader who pans the script the Holden character is hawking? 

Pawlenty of our governor

Here in Minnesota, our governor, Tim Pawlenty, an aw-shucks wingnut who has served two terms despite never receiving fifty per cent of the vote, announced Tuesday that he will not seek a third term in 2010.  So maybe I'll never again have to hear my mother say, "He's such a good advertisement for Minnesota!"  She means he doesn't wave his arms around, like Wellstone, or drink and cuss and dress weird and criticize religion, like his predecessor Jesse Ventura.  Since she hates reading signs on church doors to the effect that guns are banned in the pews, I slyly remind her she can thank her governor for that and then enjoy the way her face darkens, a big cumulus cloud floating past the sun.

"Well, I don't like that," says she, "but he's been such a good thing for Minnesota."  The part about "not liking that" is the puffy cumulus cloud.  How he's nevertheless "been such a good thing for Minnesota" is the sun pouring through again after the cumulus cloud has drifted past.  Where else can you enjoy such polished, poetic prose illuminating the political scene?

The game with mom may not be over yet, for Pawlenty means to run for president.  I don't see it.  The Republicans' electoral strategy is apparently to hope for a terrorist attack and then blame it on Obama.  If it works, it  will work for someone other than Pawlenty, who has no credentials in national security.  No-new-taxes-no-matter-what is not going to distinguish you in a field of Republicans attempting to appeal to The Base.

A few years ago, when a state Democrat complained about being "shut out of the process," Governor Pawlenty indulged himself in a public taunt.  "If Democrats want to have some input, they should win some more elections," he smilingly sneered.  The Democrats have since won a lot of elections and now have large majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. But it hardly matters: having failed to override the governor's veto of their budget plan, they are apparently reduced to watching him exercise his dubious prerogative to "unalot."  You don't need the murky details.  The big picture is that Pawlently is king, and it can't be good for my state that he'll be wielding his power with an eye toward impressing Republican primary voters across the country instead of ones less easy to read residing in places like Moorhead, Anoka, and Winona.