The only slightly creepy animated Paul Bunyan statue at the Paul Bunyan Amusement Park in Brainerd. I did not visit this attraction during my recent visit. Photo credit: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
I’m back from Brainerd. Just a tad over a two-hour drive either way. Not that far compared with other trips I’ve taken this summer.
My hosts asked me at one point whether I (like many other people) had the idea that Brainerd is a town in northern Minnesota. I had to admit I did. Brainerd is, in fact, they explained, just about at the geographical center of our state.
I have a vague idea that I made a visit or two to Brainerd in my youth, but I can only pin one memory down. I know my family visited there when I was a kid, and we saw the animated Paul Bunyan statue (photo above). I also traveled a lot with my musical group, and I have an idea that Brainerd fell victim to at least one of our visits.
But now I’m in a position to recommend the place unconditionally. A beautiful little city in lake country, wooded landscape… and very nice people.
The president of Sagatun Lodge, Sons of Norway bought me a hamburger at a local place first of all (great burger), and then took me to the church where they meet. And here’s an amazing thing – nothing went wrong. I’ve learned to regard it as an inevitability that there will always be some glitch in any PowerPoint presentation. It’s like a law of nature – that’s why I always bring my own projector as a back-up. But their tech guy was there waiting for me, everything ready. I plugged my laptop in and it all worked straightaway. This seemed wrong in some existential way.
The crowd was interested and attentive. Some of them bought books. Then I followed my hosts to their home, where I was shown into a “mother-in-law apartment” that I had all to myself. We had a long conversation before I turned in. I got one of the best night’s sleep I’ve had in some time, and in the morning some neighbors joined us for a delicious brunch before I left. I suspect they may have formed the erroneous impression that I’m an outgoing person. What might have confused them is that I can act outgoing when I feel welcome. And I did feel welcome there.
Another amazing thing – the lodge president, a Subaru owner, explained to me the secret protocol that allows you to unlatch the tail gate with the key fob. As a new owner of a used Forester, I had not known this. Ever been gobsmacked? I was gobsmacked.
Many thanks to the Sagatun folks for their hospitality.
“They’re Taylor Swift fans,” the woman cleaning the floor beside me helpfully explains. “They’re very nice, but they leave glitter everywhere.”
Is County Highway, the new newspaper for America written and edited by living human beings, selling out in its second issue or weeding out its readership by publishing a five-page article on Taylor Swift’s Eros concert in Seattle? I can’t say I was prepared to read it, but I did, and taking two pages before getting to Swift herself was helpful. (I shouldn’t say that, because I don’t dislike I’ve heard of her music. I can still a few lines, but as a 50+ year old man, I feel I have better things to listen to, like maybe K-pop.) Writer David Samuels contrasts the messaging in Swift’s concert with the reality of living in Seattle, where cops have no power to handle public harassers and residents learn to ignore all humans around them in an effort to Do No Harm to the ones who’ve intended harm to themselves. The mostly female concert audience affirmed they were cute and deserved better—yeah, that’s the message the city needs to hear. If only music would get them there.
What’s in the rest of this issue? There’s a lengthy piece on Mule Days, “The Greatest Mule Show on Earth,” in Bishop, California, which used to be “one of the biggest agricultural festivals in America.” There’s an essay on logging in July, another on the equinox, and one about a 1986 cookbook called White Trash Cooking–“A Confederate general and a gay man who liked cole slaw have more in common with each other than with a Yankee.”
There’s an article about interviewing one of the men who claim to know Many Important Details about extraterrestrials and UFOs and is both eager and reluctant to share. If you watched some of the congressional hearings on UFOs several weeks ago, you probably saw this guy. Yes, he knew critical details; no, he couldn’t share them openly.
There’s an interesting piece on how GPS changes the way we understand our environment, our local world. Alex Perez has a humorous story about professional wrestling in Puerto Rico. There’s a chilling account of corrupt dealings with Columbian presidents and the Clinton Foundation.
Perhaps the heart of County Highway can be seen in this quote from the essay, “The Bull Calf,” by Sage Radecki.
Trying like hell to fix something we saw as a problem, when in reality, it wasn’t ours to fix. Nature, in all its beauty and sorrows, is something we cannot overcome. It’s simply something we need to make space for. I’m learning this daily here, on the ranch, in our work in the field and my time tending to the garden.
Let’s see. Where am I? I did a Zoom interview with a student from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay this morning. Some kind of history class assignment. She was supposed to speak with a more impressive Viking reenactor, but had to settle for me due to a glitch in the system. It was nice. She was an intelligent young person. Gave me hope.
I’m trying to figure out Adobe Indesign (not Light Desk, as I erroneously termed it last night; I saw the I and D logo in my mind, and they looked like an L and a D, so I vamped). I was referred to a YouTube video for an introduction, but that created as much confusion as it cleared up for me. I bought a book, which I shall try out this evening. I intend to learn this irrational, user-unfriendly mouse maze of an app, or die in the attempt.
Packed for my trip to Brainerd tomorrow. Paid my bills a day early, because I’m flexible that way. Walked to the post office for stamps.
But what shall I blog about? I think, on consideration, that I still have things to say about Story as a key to the universe, as if I didn’t overtalk my intelligence in my previous post on the subject.
Dale Nelson, in commenting on that post, noted that our Lord, when He came to earth, did not come as a philosopher, but as a storyteller. This is an excellent point, one I wish I’d thought of.
So I’ll double down. When God chose to reveal Himself to us in written form, He did not give us a book of systematic theology (I’ve often wished He had, but oddly He did not consult me). Instead, He told us a story.
Wouldn’t it have been a relief if the Bible had begun with The Book of Epistemology? We could have a Book of Trinitarian Doctrine, and a Book of Soteriology, and it would all end up with a Book of Eschatology.
The Quran is kind of like that, as best I understand it, based on my limited examination of the book, though it’s not very organized. The Quran is essentially a book of doctrines and commands. It’s not what you’d call a gripping narrative.
The Bible we’ve been given, however, is a narrative. God chose to tell what is essentially a story. There’s other elements in there – poetry, and law, and wisdom literature, etc. But it’s all set within an epic dramatic narrative. The world is created, Man is created, Man falls, Man runs berserk, God begins calling out a series of individuals, then a family, then a nation, through whom He will – gradually – reveal His purposes for redemption. Finally the Hero – God Himself in human form – appears and – through great sacrifice – undoes the Fall, conquers death and the devil. Finally, we’re given a glimpse of Christ’s ultimate triumph and the eucatastrophe.
A lot of church schism and religious war could have been avoided if we’d had a divine book of unambiguous theology instead of the Bible we got. But God hasn’t chosen to reveal Himself that way, either in His written Word or in His incarnate Word. He seems to prefer stories. And stories tend to be so… ambivalent. The better the story, the harder it is to explain.
During my recent long road trips, I decided to splurge on a couple audio books. Both were by Andrew Klavan – books I’d read before but wanted to revisit. My Minot book was The Truth and the Beauty, Klavan’s manifesto of art-oriented theology. My Green Bay book was The Great Good Thing, his spiritual autobiography.
I found The Great Good Thing easier to grasp. It’s a straight memoir, with its lessons fairly obvious. Great story, too.
But The Truth and Beauty, though fascinating and inspiring, eludes me at some points. Even after two readings, I still have a hard time articulating what the point of the book is. It’s mostly about how the Romantic poets followed their perceptions of beauty, which led them (in some cases not very far) towards the truth of Christianity in a world gone apostate.
But I can’t grasp the nub. I can’t tell you what Klavan is trying to say we need to learn from the Romantic poets.
And it occurs to me that’s the whole mystery of the thing.
Great art generally can’t be reduced to a formula or a moral. It leads you to a place where you confront an idea that is a Person. And persons can’t be defined – not within the limits of human reason. (God can define it all, I have no doubt.)
It’s a little like Zen, where you sit around and meditate until you “get” some irrational concept. I reject Zen, and I reject the irrational too. But the Buddhists have an inkling of some truth there.
Stories can lead us to an encounter with God. Reason can too. But neither the story nor reason automatically produce faith. The faith comes from an encounter with Jesus Christ. That encounter is a miracle; St. Paul knew, and the theologians have agreed, that it’s nothing either our imagination or our reason can produce. It comes from outside. It’s something you receive.
And you can’t always put it into words. You can only tell stories about it.
I look like this, according to legend, when I lecture.
From time to time, events in what’s laughingly known as my working life mean I have to alter my habits on this blog.
Or, to put it less pompously, I’ve got work (some of it even for money) that may – occasionally – keep me from posting here, without notice, for a while.
This Thursday, at 7:00 p.m., for instance, I’ll be speaking on Viking Legacy to Sagatun Lodge of the Sons of Norway, Brainerd, Minnesota. I think they meet at Trinity Lutheran Church, though such information is surprisingly difficult to learn from online sources. (The reason I don’t have the address myself is because someone’s generously taking me to dinner beforehand, and we’ll drive from there. But I think it’s Trinity Lutheran.)
I expect that if you’re in the area you’ll be welcome, even if you’re not a member of the lodge. Or Norwegian. Or all that good-looking.
What else am I doing? Oh yes, I have an agreement to write an article on the new Norwegian Nobel Laureate for Literature, Jon Fosse. It’s for a periodical which I will not name at this point, in case they don’t want to be publicly associated with me. But I have to read Fosse’s Septology, which is a very long book. I have no idea what I’ll blog about while I’m working my way through that unusual (but fascinating) work. We’ll see.
Also, I have to learn how to use Adobe Live Desk so I can produce a newsletter for the Valdres Samband’s (an organization of descendants of immigrants from the Norwegian region of Valdres) newsletter. Also a paying job.
And I have some translation to do for the Georg Sverdrup Society. They don’t pay money, but I think I go to Hell if I don’t deliver.
I’ve been loafing all summer, trying to drum up work, and now the stuff is falling on my head in the manner of Burt Bacharach’s raindrops. I just translated 11 pages of Norwegian for an author on a two-day deadline, and I got paid for that too.
And someday, like King Arthur, the script translation work may return from Avalon.
“How many orchids are there in the Amazon? Trillions? They’re beautiful. No one ever sees them, but they’re there. Value is independent of recognition. It must be. If a tree falls in the forest, of course it makes a sound. What kind of idiot would think it wouldn’t? A sound is not defined by its being heard.”
“This may be the most difficult and perhaps for some the last thing you will ever do. You’re doing it for others, for principle, for decency, and, in essence, out of love. Our actions and imperfections will always be with us. It’s impossible to kill a man, no matter how evil he may be, without a perpetual debit to one’s own conscience and a trespass against God. Anyone who tells you otherwise is blind to himself and the world. But we take on such a burden so that those at home need never bear it, nor even understand that for the sake of the innocent we protect, we accept the stain….”
Mark Helprin has released a new novel, and it hardly needs saying that it’s wonderful. I think The Oceans and the Stars may be one of my favorites from his pen.
Stephen Rensselaer was once a staff officer under the Secretary of the Navy, but he couldn’t resist telling the president what he really thought. So he was demoted and condemned to serve as commander of the innovative small ship whose design he defended to the commander in chief – the PC, a fast, nimble, heavily armed vessel intended for coastal service. When war breaks out with Iran (it was weird to read this in the wake of recent events in the real world), Stephen is assigned to the Athena, the only PC in existence, and dispatched with his crew to the Middle East.
This is awkward, because Stephen, in middle age, has just found Katy, the love of his life. But duty is in his blood, and he must go to war.
Under Stephen’s inspired command, the Athena punches well above its weight, even destroying a much larger ship. It takes a while for his crew to warm to him – they think him old, they don’t understand his jokes or his Shakespeare quotations, and sometimes his actions make no sense to them (as when he forbids porn aboard his ship). But when a group of Somali pirates hijack a French cruise ship off the horn of Africa, and begin executing prisoners at the rate of one per hour, Captain Rensselaer and the Athena meet their destiny. Because their orders are to stay out of it, but there’s a higher law – a law that may demand the highest price from a warrior.
I saw echoes of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in The Oceans and the Stars, and also of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. No doubt there were other references I missed. The book engaged me entirely, keeping me up when I wanted to go to sleep. It bears comparison with Helprin’s excellent earlier anti-war novel, A Soldier of the Great War. But that book focused on the futility of war, where the finest souls and most heroic deeds were thrown away in a meaningless cause. In The Oceans and the Stars, the cause is not meaningless, but the souls and the deeds are unappreciated or even punished. Nevertheless, there is no question that right is right, and that moral choices matter in a Higher Court.
I loved it. I recommend it highly. Cautions for chilling descriptions of terrorist atrocities.
Today’s hymn is a traditional one on returning home. The arrangement above is by Alice Parker and Robert Shaw. The text below is from the 1916 National Jubilee Melodies, which includes two more verses than the recording above.
“Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, just as I promised to Moses.” (Joshua 1:3 ESV)
1 Our bondage it shall end, By and by, by and by; Our bondage here shall end, by and by; From Egypt’s yoke set free, Hail the glorious jubilee, And to Canaan we’ll return, By and by, by and by, And to Canaan we’ll return by and by.
2 Our Deliverer will come, By and by, by and by; Our Deliverer will come, by and by; And our sorrows have an end, With our threescore years and ten, And vast glory crown the day, By and by, by and by, And vast glory crown the day, by and by.
3 Tho’ our enemies are strong, We’ll go on, we’ll go on; Tho’ our enemies are strong, we’ll go on; Tho’ our hearts dissolve with fear, Lo, Sinai’s God is near, While the fiery pillar moves, We’ll go on, we’ll go on, While the fiery pillar moves, we’ll go on.
4 Thro’ Mara’s bitter streams We’ll go on, we’ll go on; Thro’ Marah’s bitter streams, we’ll go on; Tho’ Baca’s vale be dry, And the land yield no supply, To a land of corn and wine, We’ll go on, we’ll go on, To a land of corn and wine, we’ll go on.
5 And when to Jordan’s floods, We are come, we are come, And when to Jordan’s floods, we are come; Jehovah rules the tide, And the waters He’ll divide, And the ransomed host shall shout, We are come, we are come, And the ransomed host shall shout, we are come.
6 Then with all the happy throng, We’ll rejoice, we’ll rejoice; Then with all the happy throng, we’ll rejoice; Shouting glory to our King, Till the vaults of heav’n ring, And thro’ all eternity, We’ll rejoice, we’ll rejoice, And thro’ all eternity, we’ll rejoice.
The harassment was passed down; the rumor was set into circulation among my colleagues. That was the worst. You can defend yourself against an attack, but there’s nothing you can do against libel. Every day I prepared myself for anything, including death. But I couldn’t cope with this perfidy. No preparation made it bearable. Libel stuffs you with filth; you suffocate because you can’t defend yourself. . . .
Since now I really had to make sure I came to work, but no longer had an office, and since my friend could no longer let me into hers, I stood in the stairwell, unable to decide what to do. I climbed up and down the stairs a few times and suddenly I was again my mother’s child, because I HAD A HANDKERCHIEF. I placed it on one of the stairs between the second and third floors, carefully smoothed it out and sat down. I rested my thick dictionaries on my knee and translated the descriptions of hydraulic machines. I was a staircase wit and my office was a handkerchief.
Sometimes I have Big Thoughts, which seem to me important. It would appear self-evident, though, that if these ideas are any good, someone must have come up with them before me. And if nobody has, it’s probably because they’re not as good as I think they are.
But I forge ahead, in all the boldness of the simple-minded. I have a sort of an answer to the problem of Theodicy.
No, make that a proposal for an answer.
No, not even that. An approach to a proposal.
In any case, I’ve written about these matters here before, but I think it’s been a while, perhaps quite a long time.
The problem of Theodicy is familiar to many of you. It’s one of the really big questions – if God is good, why does he permit such horrendous evil to exist in His world? (Recent events in the Middle East have given us ample cause to contemplate this question, when we’re not weeping, tearing our hair, and stocking up on ammunition.)
My proposal for thought is that we ought to look at the universe as a Story.
Every writer knows that there’s no story without conflict. And conflict means pain. One of the hardest disciplines many writers must learn is how to torture their characters. Although I love reading exciting stories, I often fear I can’t bear the stress when a good author turns the dramatic tension (which means fear and pain) up to 10. When I’m writing, I’d much rather be nice to my characters (most of whom I quite like), but I know my stories would be degraded.
Does this help explain why there’s suffering in the universe? Is God telling a great story?
Now I can hear the objections – “That’s obscene! When we contemplate the evil suffered by innocents in places like Gaza, it’s simply an insult to suggest that God is using those people like toys in some cosmic story-telling game.”
To that I reply – very tentatively – suppose it’s not just a game. Suppose stories aren’t actually trivial?
Suppose stories are the most important things there are?
Suppose our universe is not just “a” story, but “THE” story – and that story is the glory of God, the music of the spheres, the liturgy of the Great Throne, the song of angels.
If that still seems trivial to you, I ask this question – “What can you suggest that’s more serious than a story – if you’re in it?”
And suppose – just suppose – you had an assurance from the Author that somehow – in some way you can’t comprehend – the ending would be happy?
I am embarrassed to admit that up until a few days ago I had never heard of Norwegian author Jon Fosse, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature last week. He is a novelist and a playwright – reportedly the most performed Norwegian playwright in the world after Henrik Ibsen. He was born in Haugesund (the region where my paternal family came from) and passed through a period of atheism and alcoholism before becoming (like Sigrid Undset) a Roman Catholic.
According to this article from CNE news, Fosse does not write explicitly Christian fiction, but his faith informs his work:
…Both he and his third wife, Anna, are Catholics that have explored their faith together. Fosse says that it is important to keep away from noises. He never watches TV nor listens to the radio. He rarely listens to music. In the midst of pursuing solitude, Fosse sees writing as a confession and a prayer.
“Writing is in itself a way of asking for forgiveness. I think so. And it’s probably prayer, too. When you pray, it is not the satisfied person in you who prays. Not the smug one in you. Often, I think that the worse a person has it, the closer they are in a certain sense to God,” he said.
I am planning to get acquainted with Fosse’s work, and will be writing more about him in the future.
I’m old enough to remember when the late Arthur Hailey was riding high on a string of bestsellers, some of which (like Airport) were made into big movies. I never read any of his books myself, though. When his final novel, Detective, became available cheap, I figured I’d give him a try.
Final judgment: By all accounts this is his weakest novel, but even so it leaves me with no desire whatever to read any more of them.
Malcolm Ainslie is a Miami police detective. He’s headed out of the station to start a much-needed family vacation one day, when he gets an urgent call. Elroy Doil, a convicted serial killer Malcolm helped to put away, is scheduled for execution that evening. He’s announced that he wants to make a confession, but he’ll only talk to Malcolm.
The timing is terrible, and it demands a long, fast drive up to the prison in Raiford. But Malcolm can’t resist going. When he and his partner arrive, they have just a half hour to talk to Doil, who admits he committed most of the vicious torture killings he was accused of. But he swears one of them wasn’t his work.
Before being led to execution, Doil begs Malcolm for absolution, knowing that Malcolm is an ex-Catholic priest. Malcolm no longer has any faith, but he says a few words to comfort him.
This sets Malcolm on a course of investigation to learn whether one of the killings was actually a copycat. The answer to that will be a shock to the city and the nation.
Okay, what was good about Detective? I guess I’d have to say it’s educational. This is a police procedural and a half. Hailey was famous for researching the bejeebers out of a profession and then describing all its facets in detail in a book. He does this here.
And that’s about all I have to say positive about the book (though I did finish it). First of all, Hailey was a dull stylist. There’s not a spark of wit or lyricism in the whole manuscript. There were moments of excitement, but that was pure plotting, without the benefit of prose effects.
The fulsome, overstuffed quality extends to character descriptions. Whenever a character of any importance is introduced, we get treated to a few paragraphs of info dump about them. We learn, all in one gulp, about their childhoods, their careers, and what traumas made them what they are. This is an industrial, interchangeable-parts approach to storytelling – and it’s boring.
The big thing that annoyed me was that the book was preachy – from the negative side. The author has satisfied himself that all religion is bunk – though important, for some reason. But all sensible people have rejected organized religion. He wants you to understand that. The one priest in the book who actually believes the Faith is – of course – a strident caricature.
Also, the self-conscious political liberalism of the narrative is kind of amusing, considering what’s happened in the decades since the book was published in the 1990s. We’re treated to a sort of old Disney fantasy of an egalitarian society where racial integration is succeeding beautifully, and everybody coexists happily. Little did Hailey expect that this model would not satisfy the Left, who’d soon be calling for the whole cultural edifice to be incinerated.
