Religion is bliss

Because of the ignorance thing

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. (Gen. 3:7)

It must help to lack self-awareness. Surely self-awareness is a trait that would severely handicap the helpful god-botherers who manage to peer past the beams in their eyes while seeking motes in their neighbors'. A perfect example of this blinkered perspective showed up in an anti-abortion flier that came into my possession. It contained an account of its diligent distributor's efforts to paper high school and college campuses with her “pro-life” literature. It also contained an example of her poetry. Her rhyming isn't particularly bad (of course it rhymes; poetry has to rhyme!) and the message isn't especially insipid for a composition of this kind. Not especially. No, just the usual level of insipidity: an anti-Obama rant that equates him to a “king.” This is nothing more than your typical modern-day right-wing hand-wringing.

But read to the end. That's where the pay-off is:

HUMPTY OBAMA

Humpty Obama sat on a wall;
Humpty Obama had a great fall;
All the “king's” media and all the “king's” men
Can't put Obama together again.

Polls in the thirties predict his demise;
People now see through the maze of his lies;
All broken promises—Obama's schemes
Fell on a people to shatter their dreams.

God will be with us to keep us from fear:
Let's look at a hero of yesteryear!
Washington crossing the Delaware—
Hope to a people in dark despair.

Crossing the Delaware of broken schemes,
Someone will rescue our broken dreams;
Humpty Obama in November will lose;
Out by a people with power to choose.

Read that last line again. The anti-abortion activist is singing the praises of people having the “power to choose.”

I swear. No self-awareness at all.

Wherein I fail

The Impostor Fantasy

My friends and acquaintances are very helpful in keeping my ego in check. They are ever ready to assure me, especially recently, that I am no good at false modesty. As someone who strives to excel in every endeavor he undertakes, it is understandably greatly disappointing that my self-deprecations are so unsuccessful. For some reason, friends and family do not accept my frank admission that I am a dilettante and poseur. It is a puzzlement. I ponder wearily how to remedy the situation, but inspiration fails me. I confess that I do not know what to do.

I felt like a fraud.
So I learned to fly an airplane.

When did this all begin? I am not certain. Perhaps the most recent spate of failures began when I told some friends I had stumbled into writing a novel. It was a purgative event, rendering the pent-up demons of old family feuds into a fictional form, exorcising ancient controversies by reducing them to narrative form. Much-told tales had been written down where others could see them and smile. Tragedy had been tamed into a tragi-comic story, which I shared with several friends.

At 50,000 feet I thought:
“A fraud is flying an airplane.”

I explained to people that I wasn't “really” a novelist—just someone who had written a novel-length manuscript. After all, I'm just a math teacher and not a littérateur. People scoffed. One particularly sly friend pointed out that using a word like “littérateur” was a dead giveaway. Clearly I fancied myself an author. In response, I confessed that I was an author: an author in the field of expository mathematics, with contributions enshrined in a number of texts and supplements and magazines—and a couple of writing awards to my credit—but not really a fiction writer.

So I crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.
I docked at Cherbourg and thought: “A fraud has crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.”

This was deemed evasive. Did I not intend to seek a publisher for my quasi-memoir? I confessed that I was interested in shopping it around. The first readers had been extravagant in their praise (of course, they were friends), raising my expectations and causing me to dare to think the story had commercial prospects. I had even sought an agent. This was, clearly, proof positive that I was now a fiction writer—and my biggest fiction was my pose that I was not.

So I took a space shot to the moon.
On the trip home I thought: “A fraud has circled the moon.”

I failed at finding an agent interested in my manuscript, but instead I found a university press that was eager to look at it. Several months passed while their reviewers read it, but eventually my novel was accepted for publication. When I met the professor who was the editor-in-chief, I ever-so-modestly mentioned that it was an extraordinary stroke of good fortune for a non-novelist—a math-teaching non-writer—like me to get his manuscript accepted. The good professor scoffed at my characterization: “You wrote a novel. It's being published. You are, by definition, a novelist. In fact, you should be thinking about future writing projects.”

I had to grin. A professor of foreign languages was lecturing a professor of mathematics about what is true “by definition.” He had me there.

So I took a full page ad in the newspaper and confessed to the world that I was a fraud!

One of my colleagues dimpled when I recounted my recent failures at modesty. “Oh, Zee,” she said. “Don't you know about ‘fishing for compliments’? You're just trying to get people to tell you how wonderful you are.” I would, of course, have denounced this vile calumny, but it seemed to hit pretty close to home. Yes, perhaps I protest just a little too much. If I'm really anxious about being a dilettante in foreign fields of endeavor (and risking embarrassing pratfalls), wouldn't it make more sense to stop drawing attention to it? If only I were a naturally taciturn person—

I read the ad and I thought: “A fraud is pretending to be honest.”

During the late seventies, I had a Jules Feiffer cartoon posted in my graduate student office. The “impostor fantasy” amused me greatly, as well as speaking to deep-seated fears. Naturally I was reminded of it and was pleasantly surprised to discover it still resided in my decades-old files. It gave me renewed inspiration:

I felt like a fraud, so I wrote a blog post...

I think that I shall never see

Sic transit gloria arboris

The house was nearly ready. The front yard was nothing but dirt, but it was already cleared of most of the construction debris. Paulinho had planted a small evergreen tree that he intended to use as a local landmark when it grew larger. “The house with the fig tree” was his father’s. His would be “the house with the evergreen.”

—From an unpublished novel

The sentence of death was announced on Thanksgiving. The decision had been made earlier, but it was revealed only when I was present to hear it in person. One more eternal verity is about to hit the dust—quite literally in this case.

The pine tree in my parents' front yard was planted the month before I arrived on the scene. The family photo album is full of pictures of the first-born standing next to it. The tree's growth quickly outpaced mine and soon it towered over everyone and everything. For many years my siblings and I referred to it as simply “the Christmas tree,” in honor of its once-a-year decoration with lights and in recognition of its uniqueness. No other house on the dairy farm was so adorned. Deciduous trees and spindly palms dominated the landscape, while our evergreen stood out in singular splendor.

For all I know, the execution has already been carried out. My parents and their friendly neighborhood tree surgeon were simply waiting for a mutually convenient date to do the deed. My Christmas visit will tell the tale, and I will know the outcome while still several miles from the family farm. The tree's absence on the horizon will be more than obvious. The loss of the lifelong landmark will be acutely felt.

My parents did not make a casual and unfeeling decision to raze the tree. The decades had inflicted significant damage on the evergreen. A dangerous crack in the upper reaches of the trunk had already forced a hasty topping of the tree before it dropped its crown on the house. No other remedy was possible. The truncated tree was still taller than anything other than the oldest palm trees (it's framed by the two tallest in the above photo), but its glory days were now clearly over. The loss of its upper third caused the tree's remaining branches to spread out in renewed vigor, extending them to the point that they began to sag and threaten to break. The old tree required either a serious and continuing pruning regimen or ... removal.

My parents made an economical and prudent decision, so the tree's fate was sealed. I passed the information along to my manuscript editor, who was aware of the tree's supporting role in my novel. He quickly replied to my message with a painfully apt poem by Seamus Heaney:

Clearances VIII

I thought of walking round and round a space
Utterly empty, utterly a source
Where the decked chestnut tree had lost its place
In our front hedge above the wallflowers.
The white chips jumped and jumped and skited high.
I heard the hatchet's differentiated
Accurate cut, the crack, the sigh
And collapse of what luxuriated
Through the shocked tips and wreckage of it all.
Deep-planted and long gone, my coeval
Chestnut from a jam jar in a hole,
Its heft and hush became a bright nowhere,
A soul ramifying and forever
Silent, beyond silence listened for.

The old man and the squid

Happy birthday to PZ!

It finally happened. PZ Myers has turned 50. In celebration of his attainment of the half-century mark, PZ's friends, acolytes, and minions are showering him with propitiatory poetry. The celebration is going on over at PZ's Pharyngula. Some of the poetry is pretty bad, of course. In that spirit, I offer the following:

There was a squid lover named Paul,
Whose obsession made others' flesh crawl.
“The spineless,” he said, “dance about in my head.
To their tentacles I surrender my all!”

---

More divine inspiration

The Catholic poetry smackdown

It was a long time coming, but at last I have found a real competitor for “Theresa” of Catholic Radio, whose poem The hardest choice seemed sure to reign unchallenged as the worst doggerel of modern times. I am clearly lacking in imagination, because Daniel in the Lion's Lair is more than equal to the task. With an evident tip of the hat to former U.S. attorney general and singing sensation John Ashcroft, Daniel calls his poem Where Eagles Soar. Brace yourselves:

Where Eagles Soar

Where eagles soar 'midst bill'wing cloud,
O'er canyons deep 'neath sheerest cliff,
Though airs be chill, though winds blow stiff,
“Excelsior,” their battle cry, rings proud.

Where eagles soar t'wards cosmic stars,
Not cow'ring from nor doubting life,
Their winged path is fraught with strife
and every freedom earned with scars.

Where eagles soar, blotting orbed sun,
Such brief ordinance do they obey
As blind Justice in scales doth weigh,
“Live free. Seek peace. Fear but The One.”

Where eagles soar to pierce clear skies
On paths no craven e'er can see,
Bright goal of glorious destiny
Not base defeat before them lies.

Where eagles soar 'neath vaults of azure,
Clutching olive's branch, arrow's sheaf,
Tasting naught of guilt nor grief.
To “Life” not “Death” their wings perdure,
Brave cry remains, “Excelsior!”

---

Daniel's composition bears all of the stigmata of earnestly conceived poetry: a rhyming scheme (ABBA, in this case—at least until the last line—because poetry must rhyme, you know), mysteriously missing letters (marked by a generous sprinkling of apostrophes—you can't go wrong in poetry if you leave out lots of letters), and some obscure vocabulary (tell the truth: Have you ever used “perdure” outside of poetry?). No doubt, this is a poem. It is too bad, however, that Daniel missed a sure bet by forgetting to place the accent mark that turns “winged” and “orbed” into two-syllable words; surely “wingèd” and “orbèd” are the way to go. (Would the extra syllables throw off his painstakingly constructed rhythmic scheme? Oh, please!)

Daniel says it's dedicated to anti-abortion activist Judie Brown (the political lobbyist who heads up the American Life League) and John Paul II. For some reason, Daniel left out Mother Teresa, which is probably a sin of omission.

If Daniel would like some positive strokes for Where Eagles Soar, he should call up Barbara McGuigan on EWTN's Open Line talk show. She will heap unstinting praise on him if he reads it to her (after all, she loved The hardest choice), especially if he mentions it's supposed to be pro-life and anti-abortion. Intention counts for a lot more than talent or execution. He'll be a Catholic Radio star! (Assuming that God doesn't throw Barbara off the air again.)

Divine inspiration

God is kitsch

The California high school exit exam has started to exact its toll on students who now face the possibility of ending their senior year without a diploma to show for whatever effort they put in. No doubt this has lead to higher levels of prayer in school, which—despite the propaganda of the Christian right—has never been banned from public education. (Students can pray whenever they like as an act of personal freedom, but it's not your teacher's job to lead you. Simple as that.)

For many years religious conservatives have been a major part of the back-to-basics movement. Those who haven't fled to home-schooling want public schools to drill students relentlessly on the classic three R's. They are all in favor of rigorous standards and strict accountability.

As a math teacher I am accustomed to maintaining pretty strict standards with my students. Nevertheless, I account myself a skeptic of the back-to-basics movement, the push for high-stakes testing, and the resurgence of rote learning. It strikes me as a reactionary campaign to return to a past that never really existed, when “all” students were eager and successful learners—well, at least those who were in school in those days instead of in the fields and factories.

Still, it had not occurred to me until recently to question the sincerity of those who argue the fundamentalist educational cause. But it turns out that some of these rigorists are eager to make excuses or exceptions for their fellow travelers. I am not talking about smarmy little prevaricators like the recently fired NASA public information employee who lied about his college drop-out status while injecting his sectarian point of view into government research on the Big Bang and the age of the universe. No, my epiphany came during EWTN's Open Line broadcast last Tuesday. It turns out that the most miserable dreck passes for divinely inspired art when churned out by one of their own.

On Tuesdays it is Barbara McGuigan's turn to host Open Line. I've mentioned her before. Her shtick is pro-life activism. McGuigan likes to encourage her listeners to lobby against abortion without fear of ineloquence because God “gives us the words to say.” This past week, on February 7, a caller named Theresa shared with Barbara a poem she had written, no doubt under divine inspiration. Brace yourselves, folks. Here is the whole thing:

The hardest choice

Did you buy that lie?
It's not just an apple anymore.
We've turned it into a pie
Overflowing and growing with sweet knowing
In which the words are changed and all rearranged.

So do you get this trick on the rhetoric?
Don't buy a pie with a lie.
Get a pie with no lie,
One where all is growing with humble, meek knowing
With grace from above that comes with selfless love.

So never quit when you find you're not fit
And don't fall apart, just open your heart.
Get into the right story that's filled with mercy and glory
For you, for me, for all.

So choose to seek and live the wisdom from above
On the way to the kingdom of love.

---

McGuigan was delighted with the poem and squealed, “That's beautiful, Theresa! I love it! That's wonderful. Wonderful poem!”

A few possibilities suggest themselves. Perhaps Barbara was merely being polite (I doubt it). Maybe Barbara has a tin ear (quite likely). Possibly Barbara gives high marks to anything—no matter how dreadful—that follows the party line (Bingo!). It was a moment of cognitive dissonance.

I listened to the recording of the poem several times while transcribing it as accurately as I could for your edification. Several times. Please pray for me!

Postscript: I regret to inform you that the figurine of Jesus playing football is part of a series.