In this issue, A. Trevor Sutton writes on our physical bodies in the act of worship and the problems a digitally limited, merely mental congregation can cause.
The feet, mouths, ears, hands, eyes, and hearts make it clear: Worship and the wonder of the human body come together in Luke’s Gospel. . . . The resurrection of Jesus forever altered our understanding of the human body and the way that our bodies respond in worship. Because the Divine Physician is risen, our organs cannot remain silent—they cry out in worship with hope and rejoicing.
Today’s theme has been transition. Not a major transition in life, though that’s pretty much an everyday occurrence at my age, but a change of internet service, which in perspective shouldn’t loom as large as it seems to.
My old internet provider (which shall remain nameless) is cravenly withdrawing service from my area in a few weeks. So I went over to a cooler, more fashionable ISP, which shall also remain nameless, because if they want a plug they can pay for an ad.
They sent me a box with a modem, and told me about an app I could install on my cell phone, which would – they assured me – walk me through the installation process in about 20 minutes.
I knew it was a lie, of course. Surely they knew it was a lie too.
I floundered with the process for a while before figuring out they were telling me how to hook it all up through a coaxial cable. But I had no coaxial cable. I’ve never had cable in this house.
They don’t make it easy to contact an actual human being through their customer service page, but eventually I bulled my way through. That person, who communicated through online chat and seemed to be equipped with a pre-assembled list of positive affirmations (“I’m on this!” “I won’t fail you!”) soon deduced that I needed a technician to come out and drill a hole in my house. Amazingly, one was available today.
Long (and dull) story short, I now have cable internet. I had hopes of much faster speeds, but so far it seems about comparable to my old DSL service. I could get something better if I were willing to pay for it, of course, but that’s crazy talk.
In other news, I discovered yesterday, to my rapturous delight, that you can watch the old Ian Carmichael Lord Peter Wimsey productions from the BBC on YouTube. The first episode of “Clouds of Witness” is embedded below, for your convenience and cultural enrichment.
At the start of the new year copyrighted works from 1923 will become public domain after a twenty year hiatus. That’s because Congress listened to corporate arguments for extending copyright restrictions and put a hold on anything entering public domain. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 attempted to say, “I’ve got you, babe,” to American artists by making 1922 the cutoff for public domain for the last twenty years.
The novelist Willa Cather called 1922 the year “the world broke in two,” the start of a great literary, artistic and cultural upheaval. In 1922, Ulysses by James Joyce and T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” were published, and the Harlem Renaissance blossomed with the arrival of Claude McKay’s poetry in Harlem Shadows. For two decades those works have been in the public domain, enabling artists, critics and others to burnish that notable year to a high gloss in our historical memory. In comparison, 1923 can feel dull.
Starting next year we’ll see more works on Google Books and other digital libraries for use in rebuilding western civilization, reviving our sagging economy, colonizing Mars, and making shepherding great again, and other worthy goals long held by the readers of BwB.
