A Christmas Miscellany

The Christ-child lay on Mary's lap,
His hair was like a light.
(O weary, weary were the world,
But here is all aright.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's breast
His hair was like a star.
(O stern and cunning are the kings,
But here the true hearts are.)

The Christ-child lay on Mary's heart,
His hair was like a fire.
(O weary, weary is the world,
But here the world's desire.)

The Christ-child stood on Mary's knee,
His hair was like a crown,
And all the flowers looked up at Him,
And all the stars looked down.

-G.K. Chesterton, A Christmas Carol

Puer natus in Bethlehem, alleluia;
unde gaudet Ierusalem, allueluia, alleluia;
in cordis iubilo, Christum natum adoremus
cum novo cantico.

-16th century

Good news: but if you ask me what it is, I know not;
It is a track of feet in the snow,
It is a lantern showing a path,
It is a door set open.

G.K. Chesterton, Xmas Day

Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem.

Virgil, Fourth Eclogue

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Gnostic Chocolate

Examining the wrapper of a Dagoba organic chocolate bar, one encounters slogans such as these:

Chocolate is sacred.

There is an art to the alchemy of flavor infusion,
an art we explore with mystery and integrity.

We invite you to uncover your senses and explore a moment of indulgence.

Higher sensory atonement meets primal fulfillment in this exotic chocolate bar.

The conclusion is inevitable. A bite of Dagoba organic chocolate is a bite of heresy! Yes, the folks in the advertising department are clearly in the throes of Gnosticism. Disturbing as this is, you might think this a relatively trivial detail- after all, as long as the chocolate tastes good, who cares if the wrapper reads like Secret Gospel of Quetzalcoatl? But if you think this is just a harmless fantasy on the part of Dagoba chocolate employees, chew on this for a minute:

You can deprive the body, but the soul needs chocolate.

Every true chocolate lover should be appalled by the mind-body dualism implicit in that statement. Shouldn't it be the other way around? I for one don't spend a lot of time worrying about filling my soul with its daily quota of chocolate, and frankly I doubt that's even possible. I mean, we've all heard of "soul food" but who ever heard of the soul taking material sustenance? But now Dagoba comes along and says that as long as the soul is nourished it's perfectly fine to deprive the body of chocolate. I beg to differ! I resent some chocolate company coming along telling me what I can and cannot do with my body where chocolate is concerned. But for their sake I shall deprive my body of their chocolate by taking my business to a confectioner who has no such illusions about what to do with chocolate. Someone who knows that chocolate surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the universe together...


Image copyright 2004 by Dagobah Organic Chocolate

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The Ridiculous and the Sublime

Patrons of the David and Joyce Milne Public Library in Williamstown were shocked and slightly disturbed yesterday morning to see an escaped lunatic dressed in outlandish attire prancing about the bookshelves in the company of about ten or fifteen children. The lunatic, who was tall and perhaps twenty years of age, with an unkempt reddish beard and brown curly hair (as far as could be seen under his fluffy red hat and its trailing blue feather) was piping a tuneful and plaintive ditty on his recorder and acting in general as if whatever little dignity he may once have possessed had fled in shame long ago. In fact, as you may have guessed, this bizarre character was none other than the Pied Piper of Hamelin, sprung to life from the pages of the children's book of the same name. Any resemblance borne by this character to a certain yours truly I leave to the idle speculations of my readers.

The latest from Diane via my mother:

I went to the post office yesterday and left Diane in the car with Felicity. When I came out she made a point of telling me that she didn't cry while I was in there. So I said, You are really growing up." And she said, "Yes, soon I will be a belly-button flower."

And in her own words: "ut6u8phytujhyiuyhblijl yuh,bjg.lgl.y tkg.lot g.ik5g.ki t655.irv e.p5r 4. ;5.p45ol. 6596yto;i 56n6 p i 6 bp xp65xxxxpx56 xpi95e606yh"

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Feast of the Immaculate Conception

A Little Litany
G.K. Chesterton

When God turned back eternity and was young,
Ancient of Days, grown little for your mirth
(As under the low arch the land is bright)
Peered through you, gate of heaven- and saw the earth.

Or shutting out his shining skies awhile
Built you about him for a house of gold
To see in pictured walls his storied world
Return upon him as a tale is told.

Or found his mirror there; the only glass
That would not break with that unbearable light
Till in a corner of the high dark house
God looked on God, as ghosts meet in the night.

Star of his morning; that unfallen star
In that strange starry overturn of space
When earth and sky changed places for an hour
And heaven looked upwards in a human face.

Or young on your strong knees and lifted up
Wisdom cried out, whose voice is in the street,
And more than twilight of twiformed cherubim
Made of his throne indeed a mercy-seat.

Or risen from play at your pale raiment's hem
God, grown adventurous from all time's repose,
Or your tall body climed the ivory tower
And kissed upon your mouth the mystic rose.

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Updates

Elizabethans Concert has been updated as promised.

Joe's First Organ Recital has been updated with recordings.

The picture at the left has not been digitally altered, at least not in the way you might think it was. Other signs of the coming apocalypse: the installation of a plasma TV in Mission dining hall, the disturbing persistence of the same dining hall in serving O'Brien potatoes for breakfast nearly every day, and the marked absence of several feet of snow which ought to have been covering the ground for the last several weeks.

Oh, you want to know about that? Don't worry, it washed out.

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It's Natural?

While perusing the selection of bagel accessories at breakfast the other day, my eye happened to pause on a seemingly innocuous container labelled "Natural Peanut Butter." Not being a particularly avid consumer of peanut butter myself, I don't know how many times I have passed it over and failed to fully register its significance. This time, though, I stood for some time pondering the implications of this startling discovery. I had never imagined that peanut butter could be anything but artifical, but here before me was natural peanut butter- straight from Nature, untouched by human hands. I imagined great lakes of molten peanut butter seething deep below the surface of the earth until they burst forth in cataclysmic eruptions, or flowed forth like lava in creamy streams to be harvested and collected in jars by brave prospectors. Or perhaps great peanut butter swamps lay hidden deep within the jungle, engulfing unwary travellers like quicksand. In front of me, the peanut butter bubbled.

Sed magna est veritas et praevalebit. The Blue Potato, as usual, was one step ahead of me. I recalled an article dated January 11, 2000:

"PEANUT BUTTER DEPOSITS DISCOVERED BENEATH SANDS OF SAUDI ARABIA'S VAST DESERT REGIONS"

For years Saudi Arabia's vast Rub 'al Khali, or "Empty Quarter', has remained largely unknown and unsettled except for the nomadic Bedouins who travel this area, the largest expanse of sand in the world. However, just as Saudi Arabia has the largest oil reserves in the world, especially in its eastern province bordering the Persian Gulf, its empty southern region has also proven to contain a treasure: jars upon jars of peanut butter, just several feet below the surface of the sands.

Of course, upon further reflection it's unfortunate that just when modern technology has allowed us to synthesize artifical peanut butter, these culinary Luddites insist that we be dependent on Middle Eastern countries for our peanut butter. No good can come of that.

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Elizabethans Concert

Friday, December 3 in Thompson Chapel at 8:00pm.

A smashing success, featuring (among other things) a capella bagpipes as a surprise ending to "Loch Lomond", Elizabethans performing as their own guest group "Blue Mist" in a rendition of "Body and Soul", and the exciting adventures of our new frosh in Star Wars: Episode Pi, a galactic battle of Tenor versus Bass:

"Fear leads to bad breath support. Bad breath support leads to bad intonation. Bad intonation leads to lower notes. Lower notes lead to the Bass!"

and featuring such characters as Hamarnath Solo, Jodahannes, and of course Luke Rosenswalker.

"The son of Rosenswalker must never develop his falsetto range."

The Elizabethans are currently at work on a new CD to succeed their previous chart-topping album Madrigal Inferno. To my knowledge, we haven't agreed upon a title yet, but I am advocating "Madrigal Purgatorio" in hopes of an eventual three-disc collector's edition a la Dante's Divine Comedy.

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Campion's Brag

An excerpt from the apologia of St. Edmund Campion written to the Privy Council of Queen Elizabeth in defense of his underground ministry to English Catholics during the persecutions.

Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness' Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholic Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed [revealed], and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes. And touching our Society, be it known to you that we have made a league—all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practice of England—cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: So it must be restored.

Arrested and imprisoned, Campion refused to apostatize and was martyred at Tyburn on December 1, 1581.

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