For Whom the Bell Tolls: A Fun, Themed Entry

'Tis always fun and sometimes helpful to play within a theme, with its many intersecting embodiments. To-day's theme is: death (or dying). -This is not a sort of 'mood' indicator (i.e. Rick is feeling: sad), but rather a funny little note about two items within a common theme. And the theme just happens to be 'death', incidentally. 1. I'm about to leave the land of the living, metaphorically speaking. I have already departed in many ways. Dr. Green sent back my comp propositions on Monday, and between that and usual classwork, these next two months are going to be . . . contemplative. Most of my friends do not yet realise the severity of this situation despite my goofy attempts at a warning, and hopefully the reality will land softly enough when it strikes. 2. Around the time of the presidential election, my mind became a maelstrom of many intersecting realities. For one thing, we all stood witness to the indignant 'religious Right' screaming about Obama's abortion stances - even from the same people who, a few decades ago, were (and are) quite apparently oblivious to His Holiness Pope Paul VI's encyclical warning against the 'open door' danger of incorporating artificial birth control into societal practise; it is eternally frustrating for me to note the blatant historical short-sightedness of most persons calling themselves 'Christian' in our culture. Also, at the same time, my church's schola (chant choir) was busy practising chants for the All Saints Day and All Souls Day Masses, which included a Requiem setting. I began thinking about a poem idea: a Requiem Mass (a Mass for the repose of the dead) said on behalf of the currrent generation, whom we often call 'the living.' Words from Chesterton's poem 'Mediaevalism' rang in my mind like the proverbial tolling bell: '. . .Therefore these dead men mock you, that you the living are dead: / Since ever you battered the saints and the tools of your crafts were blunted, / Or shattered the glass in its glory and loaded yourselves with the lead . . .' The resulting poem (not finished, not anywhere near completion, and not likely to be taken up anytime soon) is a private gift to three of my friends, and so will never be published or bugled in any sense of entirety; however, it only seems fitting to share a bit of it since I have in fact mentioned the poem. This bit is from the first movement, which is a resurrected ol' curmudgeon's journey through the hell/shadowlands of present-day Nashville; these lines in particular deal with the deceptively subtle horrors I explored and witnessed in the 'emergent' church movement shortly before my final 'departure' into the oft-scoffed-at harbour known as the Catholic Faith. What struck (and strikes) me most about the myriads of novel protestant movements is the frenetic energy that seems, in theory, to outdo any other 'rendition' of Christianity; yet upon closer inspection I personally found that the disorderly neon signs screaming 'ALIVE!' betrayed the self-consciously superficial and . . . dare I say it? . . . old nature of these movements, while the elderly Church organically and quietly raged on (and even now rages on) as the breaker of Bread. '. . .Now (ever now) a gong resounded at the head of the hip sanitarium, And an incense-bearing Pastor Joe brought out cheese-crackers and flavor aid to put on the altar Which, as I now had expected, looked like AGNOSTO THEO ("to the unknown principle") in gilded gold runes, And a cheer arose– An era passed, yet, and Pastor Jo(e) lost the form, and the children-turned-jackasses ate the crackers and watched him fizzle And knocked the front wall out and moved back the altar and built a new nave– And then (only then) my eyes traced beyond the veneer of the room, turning slow gaze To take in the view of this room that stretched beyond all comprehension backwards with Marks like rings in a tree–each new paradigm and epiphany, Remnants of endless old front walls knocked out, Old altar stains retelling each ninety cubits back. There (only there) I understood the nature of this futility– Traditions traditions Frozen into themselves in A pile of old walls, filters, and altar fragments, Ancient relics rescued from themselves without themselves. Words fail me: a hole at hand, in the floor, draining– “Welcome: a temple,” quipped Pastor Joe, drifting ethereal. “Wait–what? what ‘temple’? which? where?” I coughed to his ear. –Now no one answers.' -r