Friday 27 January 2012

Got to doodle

by Kim Fabricius

If posts are getting longer, that might be because bloggers are spending less time writing them.

I’ve got the attention-span of a mayfly.  That’s why I pray: to upgrade to a gnat.

That’s also why I write.  If I didn’t write, I wouldn’t notice a damn thing.

On Moby-Dick: Does Moby-Dick symbolise God, evil, chaos, blind fate? Yes. Here’s how great a book Moby-Dick is: God symbolises the White Whale.

In his memoir Nothing to Be Frightened of, Julian Barnes says, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.”  Shoot, I believe in God because I miss him.

It has often been observed that Milton’s God in Paradise Lost is insipid, his Satan grand and dynamic.  And that, of course, is because it’s much harder to draw enthralling virtuous characters than wicked ones.  Compare the main problem that pacifists face: namely, convincing people that nonviolence is more noble and compelling than the inferno of war.

Flannery O’Connor, describing her literary style, famously said that for “the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”  Her mentor was the Creator: hence Moses, Elijah, Jesus and the saints.

Mary Magdalene: Hey, Jesus, what’re you rebelling against?
Jesus: Whadda you got?
(From The Wild One, 1953.)

Hastening and waiting are the two poles of Christian existence.  Waiting prevents hastening from becoming hurrying; hastening prevents waiting from becoming loitering.

For the pastor, preaching is the hastening, praying the waiting.

Any preacher who doesn’t think he’s a fraud is – a fraud.

I like the idea of Liquid Church – as in liquid lunch.  And Messy Church has got to be better than the usual anal retentive one.  But the church patterned on saints I love and admire is Circus Church (William Stringfellow) – a travelling freak show. 

In the Roman Catholic Church, the issue of women priests is gynaecological, in the Orthodox Church pogonological.

Basically, the Church Dogmatics is two things: Barth’s album of love-songs to Jesus, and a long pastoral letter to Christians in via, his Epistle to the Roaming.

The tragedy of much Christian witness is that the accused seem to think they are the Judge.

The demons recognise Christ when they see him.  Which can’t always be said of Christians.

What are the debates of presidential candidates if not demonic forms of glossolalia?

The optimising of the optional is as old as Judges 21:25.  Except that in Israel it was a sign of national chaos, whereas in the US it’s called freedom.

Beware the patriot who doesn’t have a passport.

I once heard someone say that if you want some idea of the reality of systemic racism, consider a woman in a wheel chair on the fourth floor of a hotel who sees a sign by the elevator: “In Case of Fire, Take Stairs”.

What is Facebook but a form of mass electronic cosmetic surgery?

Have you observed that while bad times may drive a person to lose faith, good times rarely move a person to gain it?  And that while undeserved misfortune may drive a person to lose faith, underserved good fortune never seems to have the same effect?  That’s lose-lose, Lord.

How does one prevent oneself from lying to oneself?  Sages say by trying to lie to oneself.  Bachelors all.  More effectively, try lying to your wife.

Tim Tebow claims to be an evangelical, but I reckon he’s half-way to Rome.  After all, the quarterback prays on one knee, and every pass he throws is a Hail Mary.

Poor Tom Eliot clearly didn’t care for baseball, otherwise he would have chosen a different month than April for the first line of The Waste Land.  As his family was originally from the Boston area, surely September.

3 Comments:

Jason Gardner said...

"Tim Tebow claims to be an evangelical, but I reckon he’s half-way to Rome. After all, the quarterback prays on one knee, and every pass he throws is a Hail Mary."

As an American football fan and evangelical, I can appreciate this!

Geoffrey said...

I look forward to your doodlings, Kim. Epigrammatic theology is a dying art.

roger flyer said...

Kim is...
(roger scurries about, searches for adjective)
Brilliant!

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