Dumdum doodlings

Brexit: well, so much for plebis*ites.

“What the fuck just happened?” exclaimed one observer. “Inept, embarrassing, horrible, clueless,” said another. And a third: “It’s a sad time to be English.” But were they speaking about losing to Iceland – or to Brexit?

So The Three Stooges (Boris, Michael, and Nigel) and have gotten us into another fine mess on the model of Laurel and Hardy (Tony and Dubya): no (Br)exit strategy.

Shock, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are stages in the grief process. We have just learned that they are also stages in the Brexit process. Except that with Brexit, the bargaining comes last; in fact, it’s just about to begin.

Let’s ditch the highfalutin language of “pilgrimage”: we’re a mass of migrants, (in ecclesial imagery) a bunch of boat people, an ethnic salmagundi. God help us if St. Peter is a Brexite or a Trumpeteer.

You’ve got to hand it to Trump on his cunning necropolitical disguise: an angel of darkness impersonating an angel of darkness.

“Why, some people might lose their faith looking at that picture” (Prince Myshkin, in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, on seeing a photograph of The Donald). Unless, of course, you’re an American evangelical.

Why should we doubt Trump’s religious convictions? If asked for a faith-statement, I’m sure he’d say, “I like crucifixion a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough.”

There’s a lot of celebrity gossip in both the UK and Hollywood about Idris Elba being the next James Bond. And I’m thinking: if Bond, why not Superman? Why not an African American embodying the struggle for “truth, justice, and the American way”? Well, two out of three.

Why, of course racism is a pathology for whites to resolve, not blacks, just as domestic violence is an issue for men to resolve, not women. Oh yes, and an issue for the church to resolve too, for it has been – and still is – complicit in both.

Yes, Jesus spoke truth to power, but first he spoke truth to ordinary people. After all, the powerful get away with telling lies only because ordinary people like hearing them.

“Jesus said, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’” (Revelation 3:20a). No he didn’t. With respect, allow me to correct John’s Pelagianism: “Jesus said, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock it down.’”

What makes God laugh? Eulogies.

As soon as Judas took the bread, Nike entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Just Do It!” (John 13:27, Original Autograph)

If you’ve ever wondered about the way Jesus called the first disciples with an imperious “Follow me!”, taking them from their families, then ran them ragged, constantly hounding, intimidating, and rebuking them, indeed risking their lives, yet still they stayed with him, defended him, identified with him – what is the explanation for the disciples’ behaviour? Stockholm syndrome.

Listening to a bad preacher is like listening to a good umpire when the pitcher can’t find the plate: what you hear is mostly balls, with perhaps the occasional strike.

As far as the 18th-century political debate between Right and Left goes, you’re either a Berk or a Pain.

Some mothers are matriarchs, others nags, others my “best friend”. The church too – for conservatives, legalists, and liberals respectively.

God is not needy. Certainly God does not need me or my love. Which is precisely why I can trust him and his.

“We are not enough. We are none of us enough! Including the man who does everything right!” Thus screams the character Jerry Levov to his brother Seymour (the Swede) in Philip Roth’s American Pastoral. I would have said, “Especially the man who does everything right!”, but otherwise it’s as good a description of the person “sold into slavery under sin” (Romans 7:14) as you are likely to find. And from the pen of a ferocious atheist.

Why are young people leaving conservative evangelical churches? Here’s a theory: it’s due to the stiff competition that their virtual Jesuses now face from the multitude of virtual presences in social media.

Of course I wouldn’t say that the theology of Karl Barth has any normative authority. Nevertheless, tolle, lege.

I recommend reading great theology aloud. Just make sure you stutter.

Everything important you try to say is like the first two bowls of porridge that Goldilocks tastes: it’s either too hot (you say more than you intended to say) or too cold (you say less than you intended to say). Alas, there is no third bowl.

The last words of the Wicked Duck of the West: “I’m molting! molting!”

The Parable of the Two Good Guys

A young man who knew his Bible, could cite chapter and verse, was sent by his pastor to question this new teacher in town, name of Jesus, to see if he was “sound”. “Jesus,” the lad was told to ask, “how do I get eternal life?”

“That looks like a Bible you’ve got there, young fella” Jesus said.

Waving the black book to which Jesus had pointed, the lad declared, “Yep, it’s the inspired and inerrant Word of God, infallible and perfect in every way.”

“Sorry?” Jesus said.

“It’s the inerrant Word of God,” the lad repeated.

“Let me see,” said Jesus.

The lad handed the Bible to Jesus, who took it, opened it, shook it, smelled it, then returned it to the youngster. “Who says it’s inerrant?” he asked.

“God says,” the youngster replied.

“Where does God say that?” asked Jesus.

“In the Bible,” the youngster replied.

“But that doesn’t answer the question,” Jesus said, “it begs the question. It’s circular reasoning to say that the Bible is inerrant because in the Bible God says that the Bible is inerrant. What you claim to be true you’re assuming rather than proving. Which is a logical fallacy, which is bad apologetics, which shames our faith.”

“You what?” said the lad, completely discombobulated. “Are you trying to trick me?”

“Of course not,” said Jesus. “It’s just that you’re brandishing that book like it’s an assault weapon rather than a surgeon’s scalpel, and I suspect that you read it rather unimaginatively, one-dimensionally, as if it were a cook book rather than a love story, and listen to it as if it were a collection of notes rather than a magnificent symphony. You search it for answers, but you don’t allow it to probe you with questions. You look for closure when you should pray for critique. God certainly speaks to us through the scriptures, but interpreting the Bible is rarely a simple matter, let alone an open-and-shut case. We should expect to be surprised and disturbed, to have our fixed views challenged – and our settled selves changed.”

But the young man had that impatient, I’m-not-listening-to-a-thing-you-say look on his face. “Just answer the question,” he demanded: “How do I get eternal life?”

“Ahem,” sighed Jesus (not “Amen”). “Let’s turn to the Bible then. What do you say it says?”

“It’s obvious,” replied the youngster (rather smugly, it must be said): “You must love the Lord with all your heart and soul, mind and strength, and you must love your neighbour as yourself. Leviticus 19:18 and Deuteronomy 6:5. End of.”

“Excellent. So all you need is love,” said Jesus, pretending to be impressed and persuaded. For he suspected that the lad had an agenda, that he would try to embarrass and expose Jesus as an unreliable teacher. And Jesus was right.

“Ah,” the lad said, “but who is this neighbour I must love?” Of course he knew the answer: according to Leviticus and Deuteronomy, the neighbour is my fellow believer. But rumour had it that Jesus was mixing with all sorts, pervs and quislings and folk of other faiths, so how would he answer the question?

But Jesus didn’t answer the question, or at least he didn’t give a straight answer. Instead he told a story. “One night a man was walking to town when he was attacked by some thugs. They beat him up, took his wallet and iPhone, then ran off, leaving him half-dead. A minister happened to be walking along the same road, but when he saw the man, he checked his watch and hurried past him. A priest followed a few minutes later (he and the minister had been at a conference on theological ethics). He also saw the man, left some change, but stepped around him. Then two strangers to the area, oddly dressed, came upon the man, and when they saw the state of him they were overwhelmed with pity and compassion. They held him in their arms, stopped the bleeding, called a cab, took him to a local public house, and stayed with him all night. The next morning, they gave the landlord £100. ‘Look after him,’ they said. ‘Call a chemist and get some bandages, Savlon, and Ibuprofen. We’ll be back in a few days and reimburse you for any extra expense.’ Now,” concluded Jesus, “who were the good guys?”

The youngster was nonplussed. “The ‘good guys’? What’s that got to do with getting eternal life?”

“I’ll get to that,” Jesus replied. “But first, answer my question.”

“Well, the minister and the priest – what denominations were they?”

“Who cares?” said Jesus.

“And were they born again?”

“Does it matter?” asked Jesus

“And those two other guys – are you sure they weren’t gay?”

“And if they were?” said Jesus.

“And why didn’t they call 999 for the cops and the paramedics?” the youngster continued his third degree. “Had they been drinking? Were they on drugs? They sound like foreigners. Were they migrants, even illegals?”

“What is this, a sketch from Life of Brian?” suggested Jesus.

“And the man who was mugged – where was he going, what was he doing? It all sounds very suspicious to me.”

“I …” began Jesus, quite flabbergasted.

“And …” interrupted the youngster.

“Look,” counter-interrupted Jesus, “Leviticus and Deuteronomy don’t have the last word on defining ‘neighbour’, and eternal life isn’t a matter of your church, theology, or religious experience, nor do you ‘get’ it, you live it, starting now, with simple human decency: being truthful and thoughtful, kind and generous, acting justly, practicing mercy – and not just to your own, to fellow citizens and co-religionists, but to anyone in need, especially strangers, whatever their ethnicity, faith, or sexuality. If they’re hurting, they’re your neighbour, and if you help them, you’re their neighbour. We are called to help even those who hate us, and one day you might find someone you hate helping you. Eternal life is another life, but it’s hidden in this life.”

“Well,” harrumphed the youngster, “I’ve heard enough. You’ve said nothing about getting saved. You’re clearly unsound.” But feeling sorry for Jesus, he added, “I’ll pray for you.” Then he handed Jesus a leaflet and started to walk away.

Suddenly, however, he stopped, as if struck by lightning. But the sky was blue, though a cottony cumulus cloud had just passed the sun, which winked, flashed, then glowed benignly, like a huge egg yolk, on the two people below. The young man turned around: “I’ll think about what you said.”
Jesus waved and picked up his fishing rod.

Sacrifice and atonement in Origen

Yesterday at the ANZATS conference in Melbourne I gave a paper on sacrifice and atonement in Origen (focusing on Origen's Homilies on Leviticus). This was an attempt to develop some of the ideas sketched out in my earlier paper on the patristic atonement model. It was a special pleasure to have O̶r̶i̶g̶e̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ John Behr in the audience. At the same conference Behr gave an amazing paper discussing his new critical edition and translation of Origen's First Principles (forthcoming from OUP – it includes a 40,000 word introduction!). Anyway here's an excerpt from the end of my paper on sacrifice:

So to return to Gustaf Aulén’s alternatives: was Christ’s sacrifice the propitiation of an angry God, or was it a ransom offered to the devil? Is Origen’s model proto-Anselmian, or is it proto-Lutheran (i.e. christus victor)? Generations of theologians have addressed patristic authors with this kind of anachronistic and untheological question. Once the question is posed in those terms any answer will be false and uninteresting, because the alternatives are both wrong. Both options assume that sacrifice has a predominantly negative function: it averts the wrath, or satisfies the demands, of higher powers. It is an unfortunate solution to an otherwise insoluble cosmic dilemma. But for Origen sacrifice is a matter of joy. It is done for the sake of God’s delight. It is a festive offering in which the whole of humanity acts with one heart and one mind through the agency of one high priest, Jesus Christ. The logic of sacrifice is not fear but love.

I admit that this does not look very much like a theory of salvation. But that is my point. Sacrificial language in early Christian theology tends to serve other purposes. It is not primarily soteriological. It is used not so much to answer the question, “How does Jesus save?”, but a different question: “What does the proper response to God look like?” Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus give an answer: the response to God looks like joy, like a holiday, like the transformation of all things into one enormous festival offered up for the delight of God.

Doodlings Dolce far Niente

A Sketch of Origen’s Theology: Principle #21: To sum up: live and learn, learn and live. See, for example, Origen’s lost text Cut and Chaste: The Pedagogy of Orchidectomical Procedures.

The church is a school of character. Among totally depraved Calvinists, make that a Reform school.

The unexamined life is not worth living. Mind, the alternative also sucks.

Then Jesus and his disciples went away to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. “Who do you say I am?” he asked them. Thomas answered, “Hang on, lads: it’s another one of his trick questions. Better keep shtum and look stupid than open our mouths and remove all doubt” (Mark 8:27ff., Original Autograph, later plagiarised by another Mark – the Twain, not the Twin).

Then Jesus and his disciples went away to the villages near Caesarea Philippi. “Who do you say I am?” he asked them. Peter answered, “You are my personal Lord and Saviour.” Jesus wept (Mark 8:27ff. and the misplaced logion John 11:35, Another Original Autograph).

How can you tell if you lack imagination? Take Genesis 2:18ff., the scene where Adam names the animals: if you think “tiger, moose, cat, dog”, rather than “Hobbes, Bullwinkle, Sylvester, Snoopy”, you’ve definitely got an imagination deficit.

“The parents ate sour grapes, the children got the shits real bad” (proverb cited in Ezekiel 18:1, rephrased to cover Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr.).

Malcolm Turnbull has condemned Australian Opposition leader Bill Shorten for saying that Trump is “barking mad”. A barksperson for the National Federation of Dingoes has condemned Shorten’s language as “an insult to our members”.

The most chilling thing that his supporters say is “Trump has a point.”

According to Ted Cruz, Donald Trump is utterly amoral, a narcissist, a pathological liar, and a serial philanderer. Perfect presidential material then.

Now that Trump will be Republican candidate for president, no doubt his PR people will give him a makeover for the campaign. So a pig with lipstick. Or rather a boar with bouffant, bronzer, and balm.

Electing Donald Trump President of the United States would be like appointing Thomas Sweatt Chief of the Washington, D.C. Fire Department.

New book on hold until November: First as Farce, Then as Tragedy: The Presidential Campaign of Donald Trump.

Who will Trump select as his running mate? Pick a Kardashian – any Kardashian – and victory is his.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to think that they know all that is necessary for the triumph of evil.

Question: Who said, “I had no sense of peace, no joy, no conviction that what I was doing was right. It was just something that I had to do, a task to be gotten through”?
(a) Dorothy Day, on being baptised and received into the Catholic Church.
(b) John Tavener, on attending a Hillsong Easter service.
(c) Stanley Hauerwas, on singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on Opening Day.
(d) Ben Myers, on reading Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology.
Answer: Probably “Yes”, but definitely (a).

Blessed are those who never pray but simply find themselves praying.

It’s been said that women think with their whole bodies. That sounds right to me. I think there is something inherently gnostic in male cogitation. (And male copulation, for that matter.) I can just see Descartes boasting of the cogito to his mistress Helena – and hear her reply: “Ne fais pas l’idiot, René!”

Asked when he was 76 whether he had any regrets, John Betjeman replied, “Yes, I haven’t had enough sex.” So that’s 9 years and counting …

I recently took a Dodd-Schweitzer Personality Type Test. After analysing the results, my minister told me that I suffer from eschatological schizophrenia: apparently I’m both an “already” (A) and a “not-yet” (NY). “But what if I’m a ‘never-will-be’ (NWB)?” I asked anxiously. “Less Calvin, more Barth,” she comforted and counselled me: “There are no NWBs. But be careful about becoming a ‘can’t-wait’ (CW).”

Beware the moral high ground: it’s the perfect place for launching your opponent onto the rocks below (cf. Luke 4:28ff.).

“On Self-preening and Self-pruning”: a sermon on the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14).

The martyrs are like stones thrown into a pond: as they sink, the waters ripple.

The Sermon on the Mount – it ain’t for extra credit.

My wife often tells me that my study looks like a building site. “What else should it look like?” I tell her back. “It is here that I construct sentences.”

On the strangely graced lives of Christians: a book launch talk

I had the pleasure of speaking at the launch of a fine new book of essays on George Whitefield on the weekend. The volume arises from a conference held in Oxford at the tercentenary of Whitefield's birth, and is edited by Geordan Hammond and David Ceri Jones. 

The editors must have exhausted all of their good judgement on the construction of the volume, since they asked a theologian to launch a book of historical scholarship. I gleefully accepted my charge, and waxed rhapsodic about the lives of strange Christians. Here is a sample taken from the talk, for those who are interested.

George Herbert describes the Christian life as a colour-stained window: itself “brittle crazy glass” that is brilliant only as it is illuminated by the sun. Such windowed lives release the divine colour into the world as they are transparent to God’s light. We have sometimes called such lives “saintly”. But our conception of “saintliness” sometimes gets in the way of our appreciation of the Christian past.

Historical study has two cardinal sins: anachronism and hagiography. Anachronism is an aberration in historical methodology, but the problem with hagiography is entirely theological: the hagiographer doesn’t understand sainthood. The saints are not blandly impeccable. As G. K. Chesterton observes, a saint is simply someone who knows that they are a sinner. Perhaps there is something of this in Whitefield—though it's not always visible. The editors note in their introduction that Whitefield drew “audacious comparisons between his own life and the life of Christ” as he published his own hagiographic autobiographical journals (in his twenties, no less!). It was only later in life that he removed some of the more purple-tinted passages from these journals. We won’t understand our saints by overlooking their faults, as this book makes plain.

We have before us the many Whitefields. Here stands the superficial Whitefield: the dramatic and tearfully flamboyant preacher, afflicted with a “squint” since childhood, and endowed with a resonant voice. And beside him see the self-important Whitefield: convinced of divine calling, capable of discerning divine will, illusioned with notions of greatness, who at one time shared that he was predestined by divine fiat for the episcopacy. Behold here the evangelical Whitefield: with a certain formula for salvation, convinced of humanity’s great need of divine grace. Meet Whitefield the controversialist: picking fights with theatre groups, denouncing rationalists, and attempting to moderate John Wesley’s aversion to Calvinism. Know the travelling Whitefield: fostering the revivals in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and traversing North America and allowing his heart to settle in its towns, eventually releasing his soul there. And contemplate the difficult Whitefield: a failure at familial relations, terrible with friendships and women (once proposing by asking “Can you, when you have a husband, be as though you had none?”), finally unhappily married, and unreconciled with his Mother before her death. He was an uncomfortably ardent supporter of slavery, controlled by the belief that the institution of slavery must be refined rather than abolished by the Christian gospel.

A hagiography could never be so interesting—and a life is never so simple as being merely an example of impeccable spiritual performance. Just like the saints, Whitefield’s life can only speak to us if it is a human life. How can we understand grace, if we have never allowed ourselves to see the gaps in nature?

The real gift of this volume is the way that the perceptible texture of Whitefield’s life comes across in some of the more surprising essays. Braxton Boren studies the acoustics of Whitefield’s voice—just how accurate are those reports of crowds in the tens of thousands? As one who’s always thought that these scenarios are either highly unlikely, or would be ripe for misunderstanding— producing something like the confusion of the sermon on the mount in the Life of Brian (“blessed are the cheesemakers”)—the results of this chapter were quite a surprise. It seems that Whitefield had an able voice. In a chapter that can only remind one of the rough and impassioned preacher from Moby Dick, Stephen Berry writes of Whitefield’s relationship with the Atlantic. Added up, Whitefield spent three full years at sea. “He was”, Berry writes, “a wandering sailor awaiting his final harbour.”

My favourite chapter is Emma Salgård Cunha’s piece on Whitefield’s use of literary technique to stimulate the affections. “Whitefield’s primary activity… was to preach”, she writes. He even wrote a sermon on how to listen to sermons—an idea that we should seriously consider filching. Whitefield saw some connection between the material mechanics of the sermon and divine grace. And yet, he was keenly aware of the distinction between genuinely graced affection, and human emotional manipulation—exploiting it crucially in one particular sermon by bringing his congregation to tears and back, only to show them how moved they are by human tragedy while yet remaining unmoved by Christ’s passion.

Tears, you might know, are a common theme when discussing Whitefield. He is a man always on the verge of embarrassing himself by weeping. Tears, as Whitefield himself knew, are not always pious and admirable. They can be petty. Whitefield, in this volume, weeps both kinds of tears.

This book is mostly historical, and we are told that the good historian will not insert themselves into the past, but that is not to say that the past won’t rush forward to meet us in the present. My discipline is sometimes called “systematic theology”, which sounds like an orderly and tidy discipline. But if my profession is marked by anything, it is an ardent disrespect for boundaries. The systematician doesn’t want to leave the past in the past, but wants to see it come alive in the present. I want to see all the great Christians of history standing before me: I want to see Ignatius before the lions, hear Origen reading scripture, observe Macrina instruct her brothers, hide behind the pear tree as Augustine sins, sit in the cells across the centuries with Evagrius and Symeon and John and Theresa contemplating the darkness, witness the storm with Luther, and live in the city with Calvin. And I want all of this so that I can learn what faith is, so that I can know how to pray.

We look to our Christian forebears to see the cracks in our nature, and to find where grace fits. And we have to thank Geordan Hammond, David Ceri Jones, and all the contributors to this fine volume for lifting up the window of George Whitefield’s life, so that we can examine the brittle glass in the hope that the sun might strike it and shine through into our dark halls.

On experiencing time travel while reading the morning paper

 Ordinarily I am a slave to the alarm clock. But even slaves deserve a holiday, and it is my custom on Sunday mornings to sleep in. When Nature has gently roused me from the world of dreams, I pull up the blinds and lie in bed a while longer with the sunlight pouring in through the window. It is the one day of the week when the sun is up before me and the birds are already awake and singing, sweeter by far than the mechanical chirp chirp chirp of an alarm clock in the dark. When I have enjoyed all this for a while, the sun and the birds and the bare branches of the maple tree against the sky, then I stumble out of bed and down to the kitchen and return with coffee and the weekend paper. Now comes the most important part of my Sunday ritual. I prop myself up with cushions – now I can see straight out over the rooftops and the powerlines and the distant trees and the very wide blue sky – and there, as comfortable as any king, I drink the hot black coffee and read the paper, looking up from time to time to bestow appreciate glances on the world outside my window.

But today something unnerving happened. I suffered a bout of time travel and I want to tell you about it.

I was in that dreamy state when you have just opened the paper and the first sips of coffee have just started to permeate the mind. I was not so much reading as letting my eyes slide passively from one news column to the next. I couldn’t say what it was about, I suppose the usual stuff, taxes and interest rates and people killing each other in far away places, when all at once my attention was seized by a particular phrase. It shocked me into a heightened state of awareness. Here are the words that had this electrifying effect on me: “earlier this month, on 6 July.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I remind you that we are now in the month of June. But the paper said “earlier this month, on 6 July.” How could any date in July be “earlier” when July is still a month away?

The words on the page disturbed me deeply. My skin prickled. Something very cold spread outwards from the pit of my stomach. I felt the bony fingers of the uncanny tightening their grip on my mind. I thought: I am in the wrong month; I have gone to sleep in the middle of June and woken up in the middle of July; I must have travelled through time; I have lost the month of June, it is gone forever. I thought: How could this happen? What could it mean? What will become of me now?

It took only a second for this unseemly chain of reasoning to develop. Then in the very next second the simple, reassuring truth dawned on me: It is a typo in the newspaper: a simple mistake: they said July when they meant to say June.

What a relief! Instantly the dread of time travel evaporated. I was back on the solid ground of Reality. I could almost have kissed Reality, I was so happy to see her again!

It is hard to understand how my imagination could concoct such a fanciful interpretation of a few words in the newspaper. Even harder to understand when you consider that newspaper typos are not a rare occurrence. In fact, I never read the morning paper without noticing ten or twenty small mistakes, a combination of typos and grammatical errors. I do not obsess about such things. I do not go out of my way to detect errors. I do not write letters to the editor filled with reproaches for misplaced apostrophes. I just happen to notice them, that’s all.

So you can see what baffles me. I have come to expect a certain level of error on any page of the newspaper. Why then did my imagination seize upon the most fantastical, most unlikely, most other-worldly interpretation of the mistaken word “July”? Why did I rush headlong to the conclusion that the paper was presenting me with evidence of time travel? It is too strange, I cannot explain it.

But the next part of my story is even stranger. I hesitate to speak of it at all. The contemplation of what comes next disturbs me. Again I feel a cold dread in the pit of my stomach. After I have written this confession I will have to take a walk, clear my head, try to forget the whole thing.

Here, then, is what happened. Explain it to me if you can.

Consoled as I was by the realisation that it had only been a typo after all, a simple misunderstanding, that there had been no time travel, that the paper had merely said “July” when it meant to say “June” – consoled by all this, and smiling a little at my own foolishness, I glanced back at the page. It said: “earlier this month, on 6 June.”

June?

I cleaned my glasses and looked again. I scrutinised the words with the utmost care. There it was, as plain as day. “Earlier this month, on 6 June.” There had been no typo at all, no mistake, nothing of the kind. There was no mention of July anywhere on the page. All my speculations about time travel had been based on – nothing! I had not misinterpreted a typo in the paper. I had created one. It was a projection of my own imagination. I saw a word that wasn’t really there and then supplied its fanciful interpretation.

I cannot say what any of this means, I cannot guess. Is this what madness is like, to fabricate interpretations around symbols that are not really there? Is this what it is like to be one of those ideological critics who project imagined grievances on to everything they read and then spin webs of meaning out of those projections? Is that what reading is always like for some people, a cold self-referential Gnosticism that sees July (and runs away with it) where the page says only June? Or should I learn a simpler moral lesson from my experience, not to have that last slice of pizza before bed on Saturday night?

Whatever it all means, I can only say that the mind is full of surprises. It is fearfully and wonderfully made. We tell ourselves that it will do our bidding. But it is the mind that bids and we who must reply.