Some 7 Takes of Temerity

The Christmas Pageant, An Everlasting Name, David French, Demonic Legalism, That Hideous Strength, Saint Sans, and Tweet of the Week

File: Master Of The Saint Lucy Legend - Legend of St Lucy - WGA14615.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

Sorry I didn’t get to Takes last week. I can’t even remember what happened, except that Matt is rearranging the way the Church Staff works—hopefully, so that everything runs more smoothly—and I’m trying to work it through in my small cosmos. Anyway, let’s see if I can get all the way to Seven this morning, the number of perfection.

one

One thing I do every year, as many of you know, is run the Christmas Pageant. The script is a mash-up of Luke and Matthew, the music is a predictable selection of the usual Christmas carols like We Three Kings and Silent Night, there’s a closet full of many generations of costumes, we have a manger, a bench, a few backdrops, and last year we added some huge, lit (in the literal battery sense, not the metaphorical ‘that’s fire’ sense) angel wings for the Angel of the Lord and two “Support Angels” who have to sing (along with the choir) a section of Vivaldi’s Gloria (is that the actual name for the piece?). As you can see, I am interrupting myself at a furious rate because in spite of it being the exact same thing every year, there is still so much to do.

Which is to say, I’m really hoping to catch a moment to go see The Best Christmas Pageant Ever which is one of my favorite books of all time. If you have seen it, don’t spoil it for me, unless it’s so bad I shouldn’t bother.

two

The lections for Morning Prayer today quite took my breath away. I don’t know how many of you pray the Daily Office, but there are a couple of choices you can make on the 2019 App. You can do it in One Year or Two Years, you can read the Psalms in 30 or 60 Days, and you can choose your Canticles based on season or by a fixed rotation. Too often my phone resets and I am discombobulated because all of my preferred settings have been erased and I have to go back in and choose them all again.

This morning, though, once everything was put to rights, we read this (from Isaiah 56) together on our Zoom Morning Prayer Service (see how ancient and modern meld together into some kind of clanging harmony):

³ Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
“The Lord will surely separate me from his people”;
and let not the eunuch say,
“Behold, I am a dry tree.”
⁴ For thus says the Lord:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
⁵ I will give in my house and within my walls
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.

⁶ “And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant—
⁷ these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.”

I have often gone by this chapter and thought, “Oh that’s nice,” and moved on with my life. But, like so many too online people, I keep scrolling past the stories of young people who are approaching adulthood in desolation because a series of unjust and mad cultural assumptions coalesced around the hideous notion that boys could become girls and girls could become boys. It is impossible to evade the heartbroken stories of the young who are, effectively, sterile because their parents and doctors and teachers and healthcare professionals dabbled in darkness. Or, in the words of Isaiah, people who have been made “eunuchs.”

What astonishes me every time is that God knew long before now that our generation would be as bad, if not worse, than every other one. Therefore, from a long way off, though we were strangers and aliens, he made a way for the most broken of us to come back to his holy hill and to his dwelling. Anyone can, in the words of the Gospel reading for today, “come to himself” and be restored to everything that is good, and perfect, and beautiful.

three

A lovely friend who is trying to enrage my passions sent me a David French column from this week. It’s called “The Tennesee Trans Treatment Case Is About Age, Not Sex.” It starts out this way:

I cannot begin to imagine the pain of feeling that your body does not match your gender. I cannot imagine the pain of parenting a child in such distress. Americans should feel immense sympathy for individuals in those circumstances, and we should feel an urgent necessity to treat children’s pain in the safest and most effective way possible. We should not, however, require states to permit treatments of dubious effectiveness, especially when those treatments carry risks of serious side effects. But that’s exactly what the plaintiffs are requesting in United States v. Skrmetti, a case argued Wednesday at the Supreme Court that challenges Tennessee’s ban on “medical procedures” that permit “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex.” This ban includes the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. It does not apply to adults.

I am a little amazed that Mr. French “cannot begin to imagine the pain of feeling that your body does not match your gender.” Is this a lack of empathy? Perhaps it is because Mr. French is not a woman and has therefore not had to endure the misery of being trapped in a body that does things over which one has no control. There are all kinds of horrible experiences that make it very hard and uncomfortable to be a person in a body. These are all a common, usual part of human existence. The point is that we endure them until, through patience and lovingkindness, they ease off and the sufferer gets to feel more comfortable, by turns, though the misery always returns at points and gets worse in the face of death.

More than that, however, I feel like approaching the question of the transing of the children in this way, legalistically, as if he is determined to ignore the essential issue, that we are dealing with a spiritual problem, as well as a material one. It is not wrong to trans children simply because they haven’t turned eighteen yet, it is wrong to trans children because they were made by God. It’s wrong to muck around with the human person in this way regardless of age or desire no matter what the laws of any land have to say about it.

four

Speaking of legalism, this article by Mary Harrington about Lily Philips is sheer brilliance. Gosh, I wish I could be Ms. Harrington when I grow up. I adore how she stuck the landing on this piece.

You should read the whole thing, but this bit popped out and me especially:

Dreher was reviewing a recent book by Father Carlos Martins, on his experience as a Catholic exorcist - in which, per Dreher, Martins describes how entities of this kind (egregores) are intensely legalistic. Once you “consent” to their presence, he says, you’re stuck with them - even if you later regret it and want them gone: “Demons live and breathe legalism. As long as the demon enjoys the legal right to possess, he is not required to leave because he is inside a dwelling that is his.”

That’s the problem—we can’t see very far. We think we can, but we can’t. If only there was some kind of Being who could help us all!

five

I’m listening to That Hideous Strength one more time quickly before the year is out. Last time I found it excessively funny. Lewis was obviously enjoying himself through many of the Belbury passages—poor Mr. Studuck. This time, however, I am again horrified by how stupid people are who want to indiscriminately cut down trees and make things more efficient. On the whole, I am completely sympathetic to Musk’s hope that he will be able to make the Government more efficient. DOGE, as a name for something, is pretty funny. But I am also stressed by how much he loves AI and wants to go to Mars. I hope there’s a cosmos between the N.I.C.E. and DOGE but I feel queasy. Also, someone with one of those tanks has moved in one street over and it is so odd driving passed it in the twilight, or walking through the winter mist and coming on it suddenly plugged in in the park.

six

Lucy the Cat, whose namesake’s Feast is today, is walking up and down me and making it impossible to type so here is the piece of music I listened to yesterday, even though it’s not Christmas yet:

seven

And here’s the Dumbest Tweet of the Week:

I’m so sorry I haven’t done Read the Comments in a bit. I have them all heaped up and plan to get to them soon. In the meantime: Have a lovely day!