A July 4th Reflection – “something more than common”

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese
Weems “Life of Washington”

In 1861 the newly elected 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was slowly making his way from Springfield, MO to the nation’s capital. On this journey Mr. Lincoln stopped at various points to make speeches to the people who came to wish him well (or ill – he only received 39.8% of the popular vote in the previous November’s four way race.

Here are his words spoken to the New Jersey State Senate in Trenton on February 21, 1861:

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Senate of the State of New-Jersey: I am very grateful to you for the honorable reception of which I have been the object. I cannot but remember the place that New-Jersey holds in our early history. In the early Revolutionary struggle, few of the States among the old Thirteen had more of the battle-fields of the country within their limits than old New-Jersey. May I be pardoned if, upon this occasion, I mention that away back in my childhood, the earliest days of my being able to read, I got hold of a small book, such a one as few of the younger members have ever seen, “Weem’s Life of Washington.” I remember all the accounts there given of the battle fields and struggles for the liberties of the country, and none fixed themselves upon my imagination so deeply as the struggle here at Trenton, New-Jersey. The crossing of the river; the contest with the Hessians; the great hardships endured at that time, all fixed themselves on my memory more than any single revolutionary event; and you all know, for you have all been boys, how these early impressions last longer than any others. I recollect thinking then, boy even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for; that something even more than National Independence; that something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world to all time to come; I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle. You give me this reception, as I understand, without distinction of party. I learn that this body is composed of a majority of gentlemen who, in the exercise of their best judgment in the choice of a Chief Magistrate, did not think I was the man. I understand, nevertheless, that they came forward here to greet me as the constitutional President of the United States — as citizens of the United States, to meet the man who, for the time being, is the representative man of the nation, united by a purpose to perpetuate the Union and liberties of the people. As such, I accept this reception more gratefully than I could do did I believe it was tendered to me as an individual.

There is much to ponder in Lincoln’s address to the New Jersey Senate, especially in these days of turmoil and divisiveness in our land and in the world. How gracious are his words when compared to the frequent bombast we are subjected to from podiums, Twitter screens and news outlets. But I would focus our thoughts on the oft quoted lines:

“there must have been something more than common that those men struggled for; that something even more than National Independence; that something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world to all time to come; I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.”

A Happy and Blessed Fourth of July to All!

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What will remain?

Posted on June 17, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

Poems from a Diary

1974

Who will last? And what? The wind will stay, 
and the blind man's blindness when he's gone away,
and a thread of foam - a sign of the sea -
and a bit of cloud snarled in a tree.
 
Who will last? And what? A word as green 
as Genesis, making grasses grow. 
And what the prideful rose might mean, 
Seven of those grasses know.
 
Of all that northflung starry stuff, 
the star descended in the tear will last. 
In its jar, a drop of wine stands fast. 
Who lasts? God abides - isn't that enough?

Abraham Sutzkever

In these uncertain times the question often comes to mind, “What will remain?”. I learned of this poem and poet only recently in a podcast from Tikvah’s The Stories Jews Tell by Ruth Wisse. The life story of the yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever is an amazing tale in itself. Enduring the brutal Nazi occupation of the Vilna ghetto in 1943 and surviving to testify at the Nuremburg trials against the murderer of his mother and newborn son; ultimately arriving in British Mandate Palestine shortly before the birth of the state of Israel.

One may imagine out of such an experience the poet could have produced a more nihilistic view as other survivors of the holocaust had. For those whose lives are being shattered and destroyed in Ukraine our enduring inflation with its high gasoline prices and mortgage rates and impending recession may seem of small consequence. The world I knew over the past fifty years is indeed falling apart, and I ask myself “What will remain of the world I knew?”. Faith, hope, and love – as St. Paul reminds us (1 Cor 13), will always remain, and the greatest of these is love.

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Remembering with Gratitude and Sorrow

Posted on May 30, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

Amid the aftermath of the most recent episodes of civilian slaughter we come to our National Day of Remembrance for the lives given in service to our country. With so few in America now serving in the armed forces, and with the ignominious end to our long military engagement in Afghanistan only months behind us, we may not be in a mood to give much thought to this day.

So, let us try on this day to find a few moments in which we may pause and give thanks for all the sacrifices made on our behalf by those we may never know. The sorrow of their families whose losses are immeasurable is heartbreaking. And so is the sorrow we feel for the current state of America. May God grant us repentance for our sins and healing for our sin sick land. God have mercy.

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Spring Newsletter – Reflections on Sophocles’ Antigone & Changes Ahead…

Posted on April 22, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

We are celebrating this Easter season of Resurrection by offering to all who stop by our dusty corner of the internet the complimentary downloadable MP3 audio file of Gil Bailie’s Reflections on Sophocles’ Antigone. Follow the link below to download a complimentary copy of Part One. In this first part of the series Gil shows how Sophocles expands the horizon of the play from what appears to be a conflict between duty to the state and duty to god to include the vast scope of human endeavor whose only limit is our mortality. Sophocles is asking his 5th century BC audience what it means to be human.

There exists a gospel/musical rendition of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus featuring Morgan Freeman and the Blind Boys of Alabama. The original play was written at the end of Sophocles’ life and only performed after his death. The musical is a late 20th century AD update on the story that I believe those interested in our work will enjoy. A video recording of the entire performance is posted on YouTube. The player below starts at the point in the play where the specific choral ode from Sophocles’ Antigone which Gil highlights in his talk has been incorporated into the later work. I’ve also linked to an online English translation of the Greek text. It would be best to listen to Gil’s unpacking of the main elements in this story first. Enjoy!

Reflections on Sophocles’ Antigone Pt 1
Link to Text of Sophocles’ Antigone

As an added perspective on humanity’s mortality, our 21st century technological world manifests still more wonders than Sophocles could ever have imagined, even challenging our mortal limit by proposing a vision of a deathless disembodied existence in some metaverse – while, at the same time, scenes from the war in Ukraine, along with drug overdose deaths of despair, and shootings in our cities (not to mention the continuing COVID plague) underscore death’s continuing limit to human endeavor, presumption and pride. God help us!

Changes coming down the road…

I have been making noises about finding younger and more competent hands to guide this work for a few years. Now into my seventh decade it is time to welcome new talent and energy even as I remain enthusiastic about the work Gil Bailie has done and continues to do. These days I am less able to keep up with the rapid changes in our primary means of disseminating that work via the internet. Over the course of this year, I will be working with our board to bring into our small enterprise new hands to keep the plates spinning. At the same time, we will also be giving our website a complete overhaul. It has been seven years since our current website was published, and while it still functions, it has become less friendly for sharing our work on social media sites.

Additionally, we are coming to the end of the project begun in 2009 to bring all of Gil Bailie’s audio materials into the digital age. With the completion of Reflections on Sophocles’ Antigone and Reflections on Homer’s Iliad later this year we hope to focus on providing Gil Bailie’s audio presentations as free podcasts and downloadable audio files rather than items on our store. We will still retain the opportunity for those who find our work of value to support us through donations, but we will no longer be selling items on our store. This will also greatly simplify work required in the business office. This also means that we will not be selling CD versions of Gil’s presentations. However, once I have mailed out the last CD copies of the Sophocles’ Antigone and Homer’s Iliad series later this year, we will continue to offer CD versions from Gil’s audio catalog to all who materially support our efforts.

Our hope is that with a redesigned website and fresh hands on the tiller the work of launching and promoting Gil’s new book, to be published by Angelico Press early next year, will be facilitated. If possible, as a bonus, we will attempt to have audio book versions of the new book as well as God’s Gamble available by the release date. This is very ambitious, I know! But with God’s help and yours we will try our best to make it happen.

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The Quieting of Mary with the Resurrected One

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

What they felt then: is it not
above all other mysteries the sweetest
and yet still earthly:
when he, pale from the grave,
his burdens laid down, went to her:
risen in all places.
Oh, first to her. How they
inexpressibly began to heal.
Yes heal: that simple. They felt no need
to touch each other strongly.
He placed his hand, which next
would be eternal, for scarcely
a second on her womanly shoulder.
And they began
quietly as trees in spring
in infinite simultaneity
their season
of ultimate communing.

Rainer Maria Rilke
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Pascha – Death is not the end

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

It may be difficult for denizens of the 21st century to appreciate the hopelessness felt in the presence of death by their distant ancestors prior to the experience of that first Easter in Roman occupied Judea circa 30 BCE. Among the Jews of that period there were disagreements about whether a righteous person after death could expect to be resurrected on the day of judgement or not.  The Hebrew concept of Sheol never was well explicated. In any case, Sheol was not a place where a living person might wish to end up. Except for followers of the Zohar, among the traditions of the Jews much more emphasis had been given to the ethical implications of the tree of knowledge than the metaphysical implications of the tree of life in humanity’s Edenic home. Having seen the gruesome execution of Jesus, his disciples clearly did not expect their Lord’s returning to life. They had witnessed Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb. But Jesus was now dead and, in their eyes, there was no one who could raise him from the tomb. Hopeless, they cowered behind locked doors fearing that they might be the next to be arrested and tortured by either the Romans or the mobs of Jerusalem.

One of the most powerful proofs of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection is the change that came over his disciples in the days following the discovery of the empty tomb on Easter morning. From fearful and hiding to fearless and openly proclaiming Jesus as Lord on Pentecost the disciples with the help of Paul of Tarsus began to spread the gospel around the world.

When Jesus, in agony nailed to his cross, spoke to the thief dying on his cross, “today you will be with me in paradise”, Our Lord opened for us the way of hope through repentance into the boundless mercy of God, leading us back to the tree of eternal life.

In the sad statistics about the dramatic increase in drug overdose deaths and suicides over the past years, perhaps it is not hard to understand the hopelessness our contemporaries experience as our culture, especially in the West, rejects its Christian heritage. Desperately seeking a material solution for a spiritual problem, we are offered….what? A deathless existence in some kind of silicon based metaverse? It is not surprising that many end up in despair. God help us.

We began this paschal journey 40 days ago on Ash Wednesday. I offered then a song of the late Leonard Cohen, who was a sort of Hebrew prophet to our age. Today I turn again to another contemporary Hebrew prophet, Bob Dylan:

Death Is Not the End

When you’re sad and when you’re lonely
And you haven’t got a friend
Just remember that death is not the end
And all that you’ve held sacred
Falls down and does not mend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

When you’re standing at the crossroads
That you cannot comprehend
Just remember that death is not the end
And all your dreams have vanished
And you don’t know what’s up the bend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

When the storm clouds gather ’round you
And heavy rains descend
Just remember that death is not the end
And there’s no one there to comfort you
With a helpin’ hand to lend
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

Oh, the tree of life is growing
Where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation shines
In dark and empty skies

When the cities are on fire
With the burning flesh of men
Just remember that death is not the end
And you search in vain to find
Just one law-abiding citizen
Just remember that death is not the end
Not the end, not the end
Just remember that death is not the end

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Another look at Auden’s Museé Des Beaux Arts

Posted on March 24, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

We recently announced our offering of Gil Bailie’s two part series Reflections on the Poetry of W. H. Auden. The New York Times has also recently published a richly formatted piece by Elisa Gabbert in which she presents her own exploration of one Auden’s more well known poems, Museé Des Beaux Arts, and a painting by Bruegel mentioned in the poem. I found both the dramatic formatting and the insightful critique helpful in appreciating this poem on suffering. The techniques involved in the presentation might be something we could utilize in our work. Click on the link below to fall into this immersive experience.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/06/books/auden-musee-des-beaux-arts.html

This might also be an appropriate time to reprise a post from a couple of years ago on approaching Holy Week in which other paintings of Bruegel were the focus of attention, The Fight between Carnival and Lent, and The Procession to Calvary. The latter being an imaginative visual narrative immersion into the painting and story.

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New in our Store…Reflections on the Poetry of W.H. Auden

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

We have added an new item to our catalog of recorded presentations from Gil Bailie’s audio archives – Reflections on the Poetry of W.H. Auden. This 2 part series recorded in January 1990 explores a number of Auden’s poems beginning with selections from the War Sonnets (or Sonnets from China). In the 1930’s W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood visited China under the auspices of their British publishers to report on the Sino-Japanese war. 

Mr. Bailie also provides insights on the poem September 1, 1939 (the date of Hitler’s invasion of Poland). The current war in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion lends a stark backdrop to Auden’s poems in this series. Gil Bailie quotes the critic A. T. Tooley that, for Auden…“faced at the end of the decade (of the 30’s) with the full horror of power, even in what he felt to be a just cause (like the Republican cause in Spain) the only road for Auden away from his ambivalence towards power was acceptance of humility and self-effacement as higher values. And the way to this was through Christianity.”   

(Note: W. H. Auden frequently edited, often making substantial changes, the text of his poems. Gil Bailie is using in these talks a published collection that contains earlier versions of some poems.)

Listen to an excerpt:

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Ash Wednesday, Armageddon, and Apocalypse

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

Lent begins this year, as always, with the imposition on worshiper’s foreheads of the ashen remains of burnt palm fronds that at a previous Palm Sunday waved hosannas to the Messiah. The words “remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return” are spoken over us. As we hear these words this year the war in Ukraine rages. Many fighting in the conflict have died or will soon die and in time return to dust. No one knows when the carnage and destruction will end, or where the Russian aggression will stop. Some fear this could be the beginning of WW III.

At the same time, we are into the third year of the Covid pandemic which has taken the lives of millions worldwide, having sickened many millions more and drastically altered our lives. Thankfully it is on the wane. Or so we dearly hope. Much of what we in the comfortable Western world assumed was stable from international norms to prices at the grocery store now seems uncertain.

Thirty-eight years ago, the Czech author Milan Kundera wrote an essay in the New York Review of Books entitled The Tragedy of Central Europe. The first paragraph read,

“In November 1956, the director of the Hungarian News Agency, shortly before his office was flattened by artillery fire, sent a telex to the entire world with a desperate message announcing that the Russian attack against Budapest had begun. The dispatch ended with these words: “We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe.”

Mr. Kundera goes on to ask, what did that man mean by saying he and his compatriots were about to die for their homeland and Europe? He concludes, after a detailed review of history and culture, by asserting that for many ethnic groups living on the periphery of the then USSR under totalitarian puppet regimes (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, East Germany) their cultural aspirations caused them to look to the West as a model, but the soul deadening reality of living under autocratic communist rule negated any hope of realizing this desire. Scenarios like the Hungarian revolution occurred in many countries until five years after that essay was published the Soviet empire began to implode.

The current Ukrainian conflict holds the possibility that having had respite from Soviet domination for a generation, the Ukrainian defender’s hope for freedom from tyranny has been deepened and fortified. Whether they will be able to withstand the Russian army’s onslaught on their own is doubtful. So much for the rude return of history to the world stage.

One thing Mr. Kundera alludes to, and then only in passing, is the Judeo-Christian religious influence in Central Europe. It is a common slight of our enlightened, secular, literate and educated class to overlook the role of faith since it may only play a perfunctory role in their own lives, if any at all. However, as others more astute than I have pointed out, what we understand as the ‘West’ would never have come into being without the transmutational work of the Christian church on the heritage of Greece and Rome as well as Jerusalem.

But today much of the West seems to have lost or perhaps discarded its defining Judeo-Christian cultural inheritance. Perhaps the shock of the Russian invasion and war in Ukraine will awaken a renewed appreciation for the foundational values the West was built upon. Absent a great awakening of religious faith and fervor among the people of the West, however, it is unlikely that current appeals to ‘democracy’ will stop the decline of the West’s fortitude and confidence in the face of the likes of Russia and China. The eschatological vision of the Church has always understood human history as apocalyptic, as revelatory. What it reveals is Jesus Christ, without whom we can do nothing.

Milan Kundera ended his essay with the following:

“The real tragedy for Central Europe, then, is not Russia but Europe: this Europe that represented a value so great that the director of the Hungarian News Agency was ready to die for it, and for which he did indeed die. Behind the iron curtain, he did not suspect that the times had changed and that in Europe itself Europe was no longer experienced as a value. He did not suspect that the sentence he was sending by telex beyond the borders of his flat country would seem outmoded and would not be understood.”

Leonard Cohen’s song/poem The Future should provide us added words to ponder as we stagger from one shock after another. Consider, in a few months the SCOTUS may, it is to be hoped, declare the 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade void.

Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my secret life
It's lonely here,
There's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That's an order

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I've seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul
When they said repent, repent, repent
I wonder what they meant

You don't know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I'm the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I've seen the nations rise and fall
I've heard their stories, heard them all
But love's the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold
It's over, it ain't going
Any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil's riding crop
Get ready for the future
It is murder

Things are going to slide
Slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul
When they said repent, repent, repent
I wonder what they meant

There'll be the breaking of the ancient
Western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
There'll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing
You'll see a woman
Hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets
Coming round
Tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson
And the white man dancin'

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby
it is murder

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has overturned
The order of the soul
When they said repent, repent, repent
I wonder what they meant

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Songs from Jesus and the Woman at the Well

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Randy Coleman-Riese

Last week we reposted a piece Gil Bailie wrote in 2009 for Valentines Day. His reflections brought to mind a traditional gospel song on that theme that Bob Dylan has covered at different points in his long career. There are many versions of this song by various artists, but I thought I would offer here a selection I found on YouTube that reflect interesting interpretations of the song that may assist us in hearing and learning from the Gospel text.

Mahalia Jackson

Dave Von Ronk 1976

Bob Dylan 1961

1979

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