All posts by Lars Walker

Religion

Conversions and reversions

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The Conversion of Saint Paul – painting by Spinello Aretino (Spinello di Luca Spinelli) (MET, 1975.1.11)

It is, I think, a function of my essential pessimism that I worry too much about celebrity conversions. Celebrity conversions, I’m sure, ought to be treated like any other conversions. Good news. Pray for them. But do not impute to them too much significance. In the parable of the sower, for instance (Matthew 13), only one seed out of four survives to bear fruit. And that, in my experience, is a pretty fair (possibly generous) rule of thumb.

The latest celebrity conversion I’ve been hearing about is the English actor, comedian, and media personality Russell Brand. I knew nothing about him before this news, aside from hearing his name and seeing his face online. He seems, according to Wikipedia, to have had a troubled life (imagine that – a comedian with a troubled life!), and has experienced drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and dabbling in various religions. But now he’s been baptized, and he claims to truly believe.

I’m all for him. Less promising converts have proved out to be great blessings. John Newton, for instance, was a foul slaver, insufferable even to other foul slavers. But God took hold of him, and he ended as a minister and a powerful abolitionist. He left us with the hymn, “Amazing Grace.”

I’ve reminisced about the 1970s before, the heady times we called the Jesus Movement. They made a movie about the Jesus Movement not long ago, starring Kelsey Grammar. I couldn’t get excited about it, though, because my memories of that time suffer in retrospect. Of all the people I prayed and evangelized with in those days, only one or two (out of my own circle) have persevered in anything that looks to me like the same faith.

As a cultural phenomenon, the Jesus Movement seems to me almost a complete bust. No doubt it suffered from the biblical illiteracy and theological ignorance of a bunch of young people gushing about their “experience.” In the long run, my perception is that the Jesus Movement simply got swallowed up in the wave of subjectivity that is still washing the pilings out from under our civilization.

In my mind, the Jesus Movement was too cool, too popular for a season. Luke 17:20 says that the Kingdom of God does not come in ways that can be observed. Which means (as I see it) that it doesn’t come in any way that we see coming. Jesus Himself didn’t come as expected. The stone that the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone (Psalm 118:22). God loves to blindside us.

I’ve seen lots of celebrity (and other) conversions in my time. The most promising often fell short. The least promising sometimes amazed us. Russell Brand could go either way. It’s not up to me, and it’s not my place to judge.

The most remarkable celebrity conversion I’ve observed was the one I expected the least from. I remember reading about Charles Colson’s conversion back in 1973, while I was in college. I think I read about it in Time Magazine. Congressman Albert Quie, who came from my home area and to whom I have family connections, helped lead him to Christ. Colson said reading C. S. Lewis had influenced him greatly.

“Oh great,” I said at the time. “That’s just who we need on our team. Colson.”

Chuck Colson was one of the most hated men in America in those days. Beyond the general contempt being rained on President Nixon, there was special derision for Colson, “Nixon’s hatchet man,” the guy who’d said he’d run over his grandmother for political advantage. I remember a college teacher bringing it up in a class, and I cringed on behalf of all Lewis fans.

But what do you know? Colson rang true. He served his sentence. He devoted himself thereafter to self-sacrificial ministry. He always spoke honestly, and he cared for the lost and the least.

There were plenty of people who never stopped hating him, of course, and he acquired new enemies as he went on. But he was a blessing, and he walked the walk.

In other words, let’s pray for Brand and wait and see.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Road to Eden Is Overgrown,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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Detective Chief Inspector Thurstan Baddeley (hero of The Box, which I reviewed a while back, and which takes place later in his career) has just taken over the Major Crimes unit on the Liverpool police force, as The Road to Eden Is Overgrown begins. A recent widower, he gets on well with his colleagues, and is excellent at his job.

Meanwhile, there’s a killer out there. His name is Nickson (“Nicks”). He’s smart, professional, and efficient (and, like Baddeley, a recent widower). He only hits selected targets – the worst of the worst, depraved criminals who, for one reason or another, the police can’t touch. Serial murderers, sadists, child abusers, human traffickers. He gets his assignments from a shadowy organization with the influence to cover up his killings and facilitate movements and false identities.

DCI Baddeley’s job is to find and arrest Nicks. But he isn’t terribly broken up about the death toll among psychopaths.

Nicks always seems to be one step ahead of the police. But he’s never come up against a cop like Baddeley before. He may have met his match.

I am still at a loss to understand my fascination with Daniel Wheatcroft’s novels. His prose is nothing special, occasional shoddy (we’re told a character “reversed back” in his car, and he has trouble conjugating the verb “sat”). The Road to Eden Is Overgrown seemed to me less complex than the other Wheatcroft novels I’ve read, which I appreciated, though I still had some trouble keeping plot threads straight (not unusual for me). I think I like the characterizations best. The characters drew me in.

This book is the first in a trilogy called “Leveller.” I’m going to read more.

Oh yes, there’s a mention of the Narnia books, almost always a good sign.

Religion

Sermon: ‘The Ruthless Love of Christ’

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I don’t preach very often, but I was invited to do so yesterday, at Faith Free Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. The sermon has been posted on YouTube, and can be viewed above. I fumbled the service itself a bit (the Prayer of the Day, which I couldn’t find, was actually in my suit coat pocket, mistakenly put away with other papers I thought I didn’t need. That’s how my efforts at efficiency generally work out.) But the sermon itself, I believe, went okay.

This is a sermon I’d delivered before, in a slightly different version, at the Free Lutheran Bible College chapel. I think it’s not entirely contemptible.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Forever and a Day,’ by Anthony Horowitz

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For Bond, the casinos at Beaulieu and Le Touquet were less ostentatious and more welcoming. He was comfortable there. At Monte Carlo, he always felt as if he were auditioning for a part in a play he would never actually want to see.

I recently reviewed a book by Anthony Horowitz, an author I’d never heard of. Turned out that just showed my ignorance. Horowitz is quite a big noise in the world. He created Midsomer Murders, and has written bestselling Sherlock Holmes novels in addition to series of his own. He’s also done authorized James Bond books. I got a deal on Forever and a Day, a Bond prequel, and purchased it out of curiosity.

Full disclosure – I’m not a great James Bond fan. The movies have occasionally been amusing, if you didn’t think about them too much. I’ve read two or three of the novels, and I can take them or leave them. I find the literary James Bond hard to care about.

I have to say, though, that I did care about Anthony Horowitz’ Bond.

The book is written in period – it’s shortly after World War II. James Bond is a veteran spy, now an assassin for the British government. We observe him in Stockholm, cleaning up some leftover trash from the war – killing a Norwegian resistance traitor who thought he’d gotten away with it.

Back in London, he’s informed he’s been selected for the coveted “00” designation, the license to kill. Agent 007 has been murdered in Marseilles. Bond is to go and find out who’s responsible, and to complete his mission – looking into the activities of a Sicilian gangster who controls the drug traffic in the south of France. He is permitted to take over the 007 designation.

All the elements are present here for a classic Bond adventure – a colorful supervillain (actually, two), a mysterious, beautiful woman who may or may not be friendly, a casino interlude, fights and torture scenes.

But there was some quality in Forever and a Day that I never found in Ian Fleming’s books. Horowitz’ Bond is recognizably the same man, but he’s somehow more human. I could relate to him (to the extent that I can ever relate to somebody brave and handsome).

I must confess I saw the big twist at the end of the book a mile off. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ride very much. I need to check to see if there are any more of these books in the public library.

Recommended.

Reading

Njal’s saga, on the ground

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Another post in between reviews. I searched for “Icelandic Sagas” on YouTube and came up with this video by Dr. Matthew Roby of the University of Iceland. I’ve posted one of his other videos, about Egil’s Saga, here before. What I like about these videos is that he describes the action on the actual historical sites.

This one is about Njal’s Saga, which may be the greatest of the genre. It certainly deserves the attention it’s gotten.

I’m bemused by the Icelandic pronunciations. I was never aware before that Icelandic words ending in “L” get a “K” sound added. That’s just the sort of thing you’d expect from the Icelanders, who do their best – it seems to me – to make their language as unlearnable as possible.

This situation creates a problem for people like me, who produce what is (laughingly, in my case) known as “popular” literature. I’ve maintained the custom of including a character list in my Erling novels. In that list, I include my suggested pronunciations. These pronunciations, you may have noted, bear no resemblance to how Dr. Roby pronounces them.

It’s essentially an insoluble problem from my point of view. If I went to the trouble of learning how to pronounce Old Norse as Dr. Roby does (something I’m not inclined to do in my limited time), I’d be offering pronunciations that a) nobody would bother with, b) listeners would not understand, and c) are not even precisely what the Vikings used, as scholars admit the language has changed somewhat in the last thousand years.

So I give my suggested pronunciations, based (more or less) on contemporary Norwegian speech. This is mostly the way English-speaking scholars pronounce them in lectures, and they’re more or less comprehensible to other English speakers.

It’s a makeshift.

So much of fiction is a makeshift.

So much of life is a makeshift too, if it comes to that.

Fiction, Reviews

Reading report: ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ by Arthur Conan Doyle

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“Poor devil!” he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. “What are you up to now?”

“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”

“That’s a strange thing,” remarked my companion; “you are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.”

“And who was the first?” I asked.

“A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital….”

Back in 1886, Arthur Conan Doyle was a struggling physician in the London suburb of Southsea (I’ve always understood that he was an ophthalmologist, but his Wikipedia bio says he didn’t turn to eye medicine until a few years later). Lacking patients, he devoted some of his abundant leisure time to writing, with some success. He sold a detective story called “A Study in Scarlet” to Beeton’s Christmas Annual, a publication remembered today almost solely for that story. It was a one-off; Doyle took the modest fee and went on to other things.

But the story came to the attention of the editor of Lippincott’s Magazine in the US, and he commissioned a sequel. This would be “The Sign of the Four.” Doyle’s fictional detective, based to a large degree on the analytical methods of his medical teacher Dr. Joseph Bell, was off like a galloping horse – one that would eventually (in Doyle’s view) run away with its owner.

Having, as I mentioned before, started re-watching the excellent BBC Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett, I decided it would be pleasant to re-read the stories – something I haven’t done, I think, since the 1970s. I was right. I enjoyed “A Study in Scarlet,” which I read in this inexpensive Kindle collection (they’re all out of copyright now) immensely.

If you’re not familiar with the story (it’s never been properly dramatized, for reasons I can understand), it’s narrated by Dr. John H. Watson, an army surgeon recently returned from Afghanistan, where he was wounded in action. He’s living on his medical pension while recovering, and starts looking for a roommate. (See the extract above.) He soon finds himself living at 221B Baker Street with the eccentric Sherlock Holmes, whose profession is a mystery to him for a while. Finally, Holmes reveals that his frequent visitors, Lestrade and Gregson, are Scotland Yard detectives. He himself is the world’s first “Consulting Detective.” When the policemen ask Holmes to come view a body found in an empty suburban house, Holmes asks Watson to come along.

I’ll leave it at that. The story is to get hold of, and easy to read. Doyle’s prose is certainly Victorian, but not stuffily so. His characters are vivid; his dialogue is sharp, even after all these years.

I’ve always rated “A Study in Scarlet” as one of the weaker stories, mainly because of the “back story” chapters, where the murderer – arrested (he uses the delightful Americanism “snackled” for it) after being lured in by Holmes, explains how and why he came to commit the terrible murders he is confessing. The story takes us back to the American Wild West and the Mormon state of Utah. This back story works better than I remember, though (although I have no time for Mormon theology) I still think the Mormons are portrayed pretty harshly.

But taken all together, I found “A Study in Scarlet” more entertaining than I expected. And I have even better stories to look forward to, as I move into Doyle’s stronger work.

One caveat about this edition – it appears that, in scanning, the OCR software incorporated the page numbers into the text. So you’ve got to ignore those when they show up.

Fiction, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘The Saga of Hord and the People of Holm’

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Southeast across Hvalfjörður toward the mountains north of Þingvellir (left) and Esja (right), November 21 09:00 Iceland, November 2007 Photo by me user debivort (or friend, with permission given to upload and license freely). CC BY-SA 3.0.

Back to the sagas, from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. Today’s report is on “The Saga of Hord and the People of Holm.” This is one I’d never heard of – perhaps because it’s so perfectly typical of the form that it doesn’t stand out a lot. This is a saga of which we only have late copies, and it certainly shows the effects of generations of artistic embroidery.

Hord Grimkelsson is a young man of good family, living in the neighborhood of present-day Reykjavik. We’re told that he was a late bloomer in terms of his development, but eventually he grew into the kind of tall, strong, handsome figure a saga demands. He develops a close relationship with his foster-brother, who is his constant companion to the end. And he has a sister with a strange background – rejected by her father, forced to live with beggars for a while, then finally returned to her own family with a chip on her shoulder. She will impact the story eventually, in a bloody way.

Eventually, Hord joins a merchant expedition. One interesting element of the story is an encounter Hord’s friend Geir has in Bergen, Norway (which did not actually exist as a town, I’m pretty sure, at that time). He runs into one of King Harald Greycloak’s men, who tries to steal his vararfeldir cloak (vararfeldir was a woolen cloth with short threads woven through the fabric, to produce a fleecy appearance). Defending himself, Geir kills the king’s man, which forces the whole crew of Icelanders to flee to Gotland, where Hord marries the jarl’s daughter. (This sounds like a romantic invention, but may actually have been true, as the wife returns to Iceland with him and bears his sons.)

What’s interesting about this cloak incident is that it seems to be inspired by a famous episode in Heimskringla, the kings’ sagas – a much more genial anecdote explaining King Harald’s nickname. In that story, the king himself chats with an Icelandic merchant, who complains that no one is buying his wool cloaks. The king then asks him to give him one of them. He wears it, and of course it becomes the height of fashion. The merchant is then able to sell off his whole stock at a good profit.

In any case, Hord and his companions finally return to Iceland, where he proceeds to live prosperously for some years, until he gets involved in a feud. His enemies use witchcraft to ruin his luck, and he and his household end up holding out on an island in the Hvalfjord, until their final violent end.

Some sagas, such as Egil’s and Grettir’s, seem to be written by authors with enough honesty, or understanding of human nature, to admit that their heroes are partly responsible for their own tragedies. But more commonly, the hero is portrayed as pretty much blameless, victim to either fate or witchcraft, the only things that could overcome so outstanding a man. That’s how I read “The Saga of Hord.” The unvarnished record looks pretty ugly – to survive on a desolate island, Hord and his people steal valuable supplies and foodstuffs from the people in the area – and this is in a marginal economy. Hunting Hord down was a matter of survival for his victims.

Sagas are commonly loaded with characters, many of whom come complete with genealogies. This makes it hard for English readers to keep track of the players. I found this one heavier loaded than most in that way. Hord fills out most of the conventional saga tropes – he digs for treasure in a grave mound and overcomes the revenant there, who curses the sword Hord takes from him. He visits foreign courts where the lords entreat him to stay with them because of his noble qualities. And all his failures are blamed on bad friends or supernatural forces.

In fact, I’d say “The Saga of Hord” probably qualifies as a good representative saga. It’s not the cream of the literary form, but it checks most of the boxes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Summer of 75,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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I’m quite enjoying Dan Wheatcroft’s offbeat espionage novels. I wonder if other people have the same reaction. I honestly see why some wouldn’t like them.

The Summer of 75 takes place (obviously) nine years after the previous book, The Summer of 66. Our hero John Gallagher, now an experienced counterespionage agent, gets his first overseas assignment. An East German government official, whom he met in the previous book, wants to defect. It’s Gallagher’s job to help him. The government, always tightfisted, stretches to the expense of issuing him a gun and a few bullets.

Of course there are wheels within wheels. There’s a British agent in the pay of the Russians, who very much does not want the defector to be debriefed in the west. There’s the secret police, who know a lot of secrets, but don’t know which ones are red herrings. Not only are all the characters playing games with the others, they’re second-guessing them and doing their best to manipulate reactions.

I can’t claim that I followed the plot of The Summer of 75 all the way through. As is customary with Wheatcroft’s books, it’s pretty complex, all the threads densely packed together. This is a story with very little free space in it, like the roots of a pot-bound plant.

Yet somehow, I found the book relaxing to read. I can’t account for that reaction.

There are a few odd grammar lapses. The author doesn’t know how to conjugate the verb “hang.” He says “X hung him/herself,” more than once. He also has trouble with “sat.” He writes quite professionally otherwise, so that’s peculiar.

But I enjoyed The Summer of 75 – rather more, in fact, than I enjoyed the year itself when I lived through it.

Bookselling, Music, Religion

Book plug: ‘Pain In the Belly,’ by Thomas E. Jacobson

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Last Saturday I ventured outside my comfort zone to make the perilous drive to downtown Minneapolis (one of the still unburned parts), to hear a lecture. The lecture was delivered at the Mindekirken, the Norwegian Memorial Church (there’s one in Chicago too), where they hold a Norwegian language service every Sunday. You’d think I’d go there all the time, but they’re not really my kind of Lutherans. However, they offer cultural and language programs too, and I lectured myself there once, at one of their regular lunchtime events.

One reason I don’t go there more often is that it’s an awful place to drive to. The conservative Center Of the American Experiment, based here in Minnesota, has documented the fact that our city planners have it as an explicit goal to make driving around here as inconvenient as possible – so we peasants will be compelled to use buses and the wonderful light rail they’re forcing us to pay for. I don’t think I’ve ever driven to the Mindekirken without getting turned around in some way – even with GPS.

Anyway, I arrived at last, only a few minutes late. I came in during the introduction, so I didn’t miss any of the lecture.

The lecturer was my online friend, Pastor Thomas E. Jacobson, who has recently had a book released. It boasts the surprising title, Pain In the Belly: The Haugean Witness In American Lutheranism. I’ve written about the Norwegian lay evangelist Hans Nielsen Hauge many times before in this space – just do a search in the box up above if you’re curious. We Haugeans (I still identify as a Haugean) have been called a sect, but we never separated from Lutheranism or denied its basic tenets. In Norway, the Haugeans in any parish tended to pool their money to build a “bedehus,” a prayer house. There, after having attended regular services in their local Lutheran churches, they could gather among themselves and hold “edification meetings” and other social and educational functions. Many bedehuser still exist in Norway, and continue to be used for something like their original purpose.

I haven’t read Tom’s book yet, but I thought I’d give it a plug here anyway. It focuses on the influence of the Haugeans on Lutheranism in the USA. The title comes from a comment made by a Haugean leader when the old Hauge Synod at last agreed to join a church merger. When told that a theologian in one of the more conservative groups entering new church body had said that he rejoiced that the Haugeans would now be “swallowed up” in mainstream Lutheranism, this man said he expected to cause them “a pain in the belly.”

Sadly (in my view), in the long run the new church body and its successors turned out to have a pretty iron digestion.

In any case, we sang a hymn that Hans Nielsen Hauge wrote in 1799, “With God in Grace I’m Dwelling.” He wrote it during one of his imprisonments for illegal lay preaching.  I looked for a video of somebody singing it, but as far as I can tell nobody has ever been bold enough to perform the hymn and leave a permanent record. So I’ll just transcribe a couple verses here. A common tune used for it is “Passion Chorale,” the one we use for “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”

With God in grace I’m dwelling, 
What harm can come to me  
From worldly pow’rs compelling  
My way thus closed to be?  
Though they in chains may bind me  
Inside this prison cell,  
Yet Christmas here can find me;  
Within my heart ʼtis well.
Our God has promised surely  
To free each seeking soul,  
Who walks in spirit purely  
With truth as way and goal.  
Whose heart the world’s deceiving  
Can never lead astray,  
Who, constantly believing,  
Will walk the Kingdom’s way.
God grant us now His power,  
And help us by His might  
To follow truth this hour,  
All guided by His light;  
And may we work together  
As one in mutual love,  
Forsaking self and gather  
At last in heav’n above.

(Translation: P. A. Sweegen, 1931)

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Summer of 66,’ by Dan Wheatcroft

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The novel, The Box, by Dan Wheatcroft, which I reviewed the other day, turned out to be a continuation of an existing series of two books about British counterespionage in decades past. I was intrigued enough to pick up the first novel, The Summer of 66, whose hero (he only appears briefly in The Box) is agent John Gallagher.

The story begins with young Gallagher, formerly of Special Branch, being transferred to the Home Office Statistical Unit, a suitably dull cover for an intelligence operation. In contrast to our ingrained images of James Bond’s world, Gallagher’s new workplace is notably dull. It looks like a slightly shopworn small business operation, not very well funded. (The not very well-funded part, at least, is true. When John eventually gets outfitted with a weapon, it’s no state of the art armament from Q, but a standard revolver. The budget is too tight to allocate him as many cartridges as he’d like.)

The first operation John is involved in concerns the problem of a suspicious number of cryptologists involved in a certain secret project having recently committed suicide. Do the Russians have a method for inducing depression and despair? The group’s investigations uncover a ring of ruthless deep-cover agents.

I’m not entirely sure why I enjoy these books as much as I do. They have noticeable weaknesses. The prose isn’t top-shelf (misplaced modifiers are sometimes among the problems). I can only describe the plotting as dense – we’re bombarded with information, and it’s often difficult to follow the many story threads.

But I think it’s that very denseness that makes the books compelling – for me. There’s an authentic sense of real life here – the way I myself feel when multiple stimuli threaten to overwhelm me. (Author Wheatcroft confesses in his bio to being on the autism scale. Since I believe I’m low-level autistic myself, that may be what attracts me.)

A genuflection is made to the altar of gay rights in this book, but the author demonstrated himself un-Woke in The Box, so I let that go by.

I’m not sure if normal readers will enjoy The Summer of 66 as much as I did. But I certainly did enjoy it.