Rinkitink

King Rinkitink of Gilgad, by John R. Neill, from Rinkitink in Oz, by Frank L. Baum, 1916

From The Sacred Journey, Frederick Buechner:

For reasons that I can only guess at now, no one I came to know during that first year in Oz left a deeper mark on me than a plump, ebullient king named Rinkitink. He was a foolish man in many ways who laughed too much and talked too much and at moments of stress was apt to burst into unkingly tears; but beneath all that, he gave the impression of remarkable strength and resilience and courage even…

Rinkitink was a very vulnerable man, silly and unstable in numberless ways, but in his fatness he seemed also somehow solid and substantial, eccentric and yet reliable with his slippered feet planted heavily on the ground and his heart in the right place. Like a tree that has been blown for years from so many directions by so many winds that none of them can ever quite blow it down, he seemed strong in his very vulnerability. In his capacity to laugh and weep at the drop of a hat and in general to make a fool of himself, he seemed wise with the wisdom of a child who sees better than his elders that the world is indeed something to laugh and weep about and who, more realistically than the rest of us, accepts his own foolishness as part of the givenness of things. Frightening and terrible adventures befall him in the course of Baum’s book, but somehow he always manages to come riding out of them on the back of his faithful goat Bilbil. The world can wound him and scare the daylights out of him, but never, you feel, can it destroy him. It is only the world of the fairy tale to be sure, but nonetheless he has overcome that world, and I have remembered him with admiration and love ever since.

In different guises (though always fat) and under different names, Rinkitink has haunted me always…

… these books were all childhood or early boyhood reading – but certain patterns were set, certain rooms were made ready, so that when, years later, I came upon Saint Paul for the first time and heard him say, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,” I had the feeling that I knew something of what he was talking about. Something of the divine comedy that we are all of us involved in. Something of grace.

Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey

It is by its content rather than its duration that a child knows time, by its quality rather than its quantity–happy times and sad times, the time the rabbit bit your finger, the time you had your first taste of bananas and cream, the time you were crying yourself to sleep when somebody came and lay down beside you in the dark for comfort. Childhood’s time is Adam and Eve’s time before they left the garden for good and from that time on divided everything into before and after.

Fra Beatus, 8th C., Spain

from the Beatus Escorial

Easter in Brooklyn

St. John’s Park Slope: wonderful! Alleluia! The Lord is risen!

Beauty now begins the final movement

Malcolm Guite:

The Anointing at Bethany

Come close with Mary, Martha, Lazarus  
So close the candles flare with their soft breath  
And kindle heart and soul to flame within us  
Lit by these mysteries of life and death.  
For beauty now begins the final movement  
In quietness and intimate encounter  
The alabaster jar of precious ointment  
Is broken open for the world’s true lover,  

The whole room richly fills to feast the senses
With all the yearning such a fragrance brings, 
The heart is mourning but the spirit dances, 
Here at the very centre of all things, 
Here at the meeting place of love and loss 
We all foresee, and see beyond the cross.

The Vocabulary of the Heart

Six years after my dad died, three after my mom died, and this year, when my first two grandchildren are born, this resonates. Frederick Buechner, The Eyes of the Heart.

Each time members of the tribe die, the self we were with them dies too, which is to say that the kind of words we spoke only to them, were only to them, and the kind they spoke only to us are spoken no longer. But if outwardly our language is thus impoverished, inwardly it is enriched because when members of the tribe die, the words they were are added to the vocabulary of the heart, where we have more than just ears for hearing them. And each time a member of the tribe is born, a new word comes into being, and nothing is ever the same again.

Grateful

I planted 200 of these suckers last November, and am so glad to see them coming up. God grew ’em, not me. But I did participate in the project.

Let’s Talk About Sex

“Anora” – a movie about a sex worker and her client – won a bunch of Oscars this year. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t comment on the movie. But it struck me that both the lead actress and the writer/director made a point to express solidarity with sex workers. What might they have been trying to convey? And what did they convey without trying? As with almost all human endeavors, I suspect there were a bunch of motivations, some of which contradict each other.

First, they seem to have been holding up the truth that prostitutes are, indeed, real human beings, not types, and therefore are worthy of respect as humans. Excellent. Count me in.

They may also have been endorsing the idea that prostitution should be freed from old, outworn stigmas that a repressive society traditionally associates with the oldest profession. Maybe they think women and men should be free to provide sex (safely) in exchange for money, especially if the money translates to power that’s traditionally inaccessible to sex workers. This notion views sex as a good or service tradeable for money (aka power), the same as any other commodity.

Here, we part ways, because this misunderstands the right purpose of sex. My understanding that there even is a right purpose of sex necessarily arises from the notion that God, as the giver of the gift that is sex, attaches an intent to it. I hold that God’s intent for sex is to nurture intimacy between the lovers. Undoubtedly, God has additional intentions, such as the gift of children; but here I’m concerned with intimacy. Also, I quite understand that sex certainly can be used as a means to an end, and that’s a very old story (see, e.g., Lysistrata). But that’s not OK in my book. Also, it can be just plain fun. But, it’s meant to be fun that’s shared, ideally with someone you care about.

It’s no accident that at its best, sex is something we do naked. Nakedness is a stripping away of pretense as a way to truly see and be seen by the one you love. Opening our bodies to each other is emphatically not intended as a tool to wield power or extract payment. Using sex for those purposes instrumentalizes sex and commodifies one’s self and one’s partner. It’s the antithesis of nurtured intimacy. (For the same reasons, I don’t like “using” as a verb in this context.)

The “Sex-as-ATM” idea is a manifestation of what Alan Jacobs (@ayjay) calls “Metaphysical Capitalism,” which treats all creation and the entire human condition as elements of a vast market. (See, the discussion of Kant’s view of sex and marriage in this post.)

What’s particularly poignant about viewing sex in this way is that it subverts the humane and tender motivation to understand prostitutes as human beings deserving of respect. I don’t know that many in the “pro-sex-worker” cohort see it, but the idea that our bodies and our intimacies are tradeable commodities is truly, sadly, deeply inhuman.

Are You Sure About That?

Faith is not the absence of uncertainty. I’m a person of Christian faith, but I admit I’m not certain of anything – God’s existence, Jesus’ resurrection, the presence of the Holy Ghost. Yet, I have [uncertain] faith in all these things. That faith – together with the evidence of my own experience and, more importantly, what I’ve seen in other faithful people – means my uncertainty doesn’t cause anxiety. *

When Hebrews says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” the author may seem to speak of certainties; “assurance,” “conviction” – those are certainty words. But, there’s also uncertainty in “things hoped for” and in “things not seen.” I feel that tension. And yet, even in the face of uncertainty, I’m not anxious about these things. Perhaps, that’s a gift that Hebrews speaks of as “assurance” and “conviction.”

*I reckon that like St. Paul (in the KJV), I am persuaded of the truth of the Gospel. “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Practicing Blessing

From Canon Victoria Heard of the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas:

As I walked down the hall, I found myself, by chance, behind a nurse with beautiful braided gray hair that tumbled down her back like a waterfall. I told her it was beautiful. She was startled, and smiled, and ever so slightly straightened her shoulders. I was intentional. I meant to give her a blessing.