Thales’ triangles

self-presentation and social media

2011-10-09T22:50:00.004-04:00

So, am I supposed to hate Facebook now or not? I’ve been thinking about the question for a few weeks, once the last round of big changes started coming out and Zuckerberg announced the upcoming Timeline format at the f8 conference (which, given everything that was going on, I couldn’t help reading as “fate”, as in the doom of Web 3.0 approaching). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to change in principle. I have throughout my life embraced it. I can even adjust fairly well to changes in the interface of a website I use. But I have trouble seeing how any of these changes are for the good (while acknowledging that many past changes have in fact been improvements).

Here’s the thing: the day the latest changes began, a friend pointed me (via Facebook) to the video of a TED talk in which the speaker explained how many of the major websites most of us use all the time to interact with the world are trying to create custom-fit filters for each of us, guessing what we’re most interested in and what, for the sake of their advertisers, will best capture our attention. When you think about that last point, it makes total fiscal sense, but when you think about “what they’re not telling you” that you would really like to hear—especially if, like me, you relish encountering differing viewpoints and ideologies and hate that the greater interconnectedness of the world has led, in part, to greater insularity of certain like-minded segments—it’s pure frustration. Here we are, well into the Information Age where you should be able to say, “Tell me everything about BLAH and I’ll sort it out”, and instead the response is, “How about we tell you just what we think you want to hear about BLAH?” Then a few days later I read a couple of op-eds about how Facebook keeps making it easier to slip into sharing everything you’re doing. Both of these problems have workarounds, but they’re not transparent, and my conclusion from the defaults to filter incoming information and amplify outgoing information is that I Have Seen the Dark Underbelly of the Information Age That I Love So.

On the other hand, these things can be managed, and some of the features hold their own, nouveau kind of excitement. One friend linked to a rave review of Timelines and said he was jumping into it before he got forced. Then there’s the brilliant video (which was tweeted by a celebrity I follow) that depicts Mad Men’s Don Draper presenting Timeline as the ultimate nostalgia product. “Let us help you present yourself to the world, to your friends and family!” Facebook—and a host of other social media sites—are saying. “We’re experts!” And I expect they are. With the data from half a billion people clicking links daily, I’m sure they know to a fraction of a second what each of us—or rather, each algorithmicized abstract person like us—is drawn to. They know, to a high level of accuracy, what my grandparents want to know about me, what my high school teachers want to know, what about my life interests my church members and my colleagues. Reorganization is not disorganization; these folks aren’t dummies, and when they overhaul the interface, it’s likely to streamline the reception of pertinent information.

But I don’t want to be managed that way. Give me the tools to present myself, sure, but don’t make the decisions about what I want to show, like you’re already doing with the things I want to see. 15 minutes of micromanaged fame are not made sweeter by coming effortlessly…

Where was I? Oh yes, stuck, because Facebook holds the digital ties between me and many of my friends from throughout my lifetime, which are not duplicated elsewhere. I’ve been increasingly active on Twitter and Tumblr, but the former is mostly a way to follow Big Events in the world (or the humorous life stories of those creating Big Events), and the latter seems almost entirely unknown to anyone over 25. Google+ just isn’t picking up the way one would hope, although it is there I keep in touch with several members of my profession with whom I otherwise have little contact apart from occasional conferences and seminars. In short, I can abandon Facebook, but only at the cost of many sustained, if small, connections with people I care about. And I’m also angry, in part because I feel like all the faux claims of “privacy protection” and “user control” cover up the fact that they’re deceiving most of their users into thinking their life online is more private than it is. I’ve always expected that anything I post on Facebook, or anywhere else, is essentially available to the entire world. It’s safer that way, and more accurate. (Think of all the shocked reactions to the existence of websites that crawl through everything you’ve posted online, in whatever location, and assemble a profile to sell to companies.) But mainly I feel like those who would be guardians of our access to the World Wide Web—a stunning idea if ever there was one—are acting as pure marketeers. Sure, everything can be commodified, but give me the free flow of information before you start monitoring which bits of it I select. And don’t expect me to jump at the chance to have you take over presenting me. If I want that help, I’ll ask for it. And when it comes to who I am online, I don’t want it.

marriage equality in NY

2011-06-20T14:39:00.004-04:00

This post is a little unusual for me, but I’ve just recently realized what kind of affirmation I’m willing to publicly make on such a divisive political issue. On Facebook I posted a link to this article with the comment “Looking forward to seeing this get passed.” A friend wrote, “Not sure… (and not judging), but are you for or against gay marriage?” Here was my response.

Short answer: For.

Longer answer: I'm for marriage. I'm for giving people the right to choose their life partner and closest kin. I'm against bigotry and parochialism. I'm against rhetoric that amounts to unsubstantiated prophecies of doom. I'm for recognizing that we have much to learn, and have learned much, about sexuality and our own prejudices. I'm for treating our fellow citizens with respect. I'm for faithfulness and holiness in relationships. I'm for encouraging and supporting committed partnerships. I'm for making this intermediate step in our society's inclusiveness (not permissiveness) and equality (not special treatment). I believe that if we fail at this step (by which I mean the broader movement to recognize same-sex marriages, not just today's vote), it will make many people's lives worse, and our country's struggle to continue to be a land of freedom will be harder.

I'm for passage of the Marriage Equality Act.

Hadestown: a folk opera in three acts

2011-01-16T18:16:00.003-05:00

It may seem silly or presumptuous to try to impose a three-act structure on a 57-minute album, but I think doing so is useful for understanding its operatic nature. I spent some time debating whether there is a two-act or three-act structure at work, but there are really far more arguments in favor of the latter, so that’s what I’ll present here.

Act I takes places outside of Hadestown. It opens with the courtship of Orpheus and Eurydice (“Wedding Song”) and ends with Orpheus seeking a way to follow Eurydice to the underground (“Wait For Me”).

Act II begins at the wall of Hadestown (“Why We Build the Wall”), which is known as the River Styx. It ends with an instrumental number (“Papers”), during which Hades discovers both Orpheus’ presence and the speakeasy Persephone has been hiding from him.

Act III opens in the bedroom of Hades and Persephone, as they discuss what is to be done with Orpheus (“How Long?”). The piece ends with Eurydice and Persephone remembering and honoring Orpheus (“I Raise My Cup to Him”).

This subdivision of the work makes evident several pleasing parallels and overarching features.

With regard to setting, Act I takes place in the “world of the living”, away from Hades’ supreme control, while the events of Acts II and III occur in or near Hadestown. This format is almost exactly the same as in the legend recounted by the D’Aulaires, the main difference being that it ends in the underworld rather than following the rest of Orpheus’ life.

Thematically, Act II is institutional and Acts I and III are relational. Act II begins by showing Hades’ power as lord of Hadestown and ends by uncovering the challenges to that power. In between Eurydice and Orpheus struggle (separately) with the isolation imposed by being in Hadestown. Eurydice’s aria “Flowers” in this act is the only number she sings solo, without interaction or commentary from other characters. The two numbers that start this act are not solos, but the only interaction is simple call-and-response, with a single strong personality (Hades or Persephone) speaking to a faceless audience (the workers of Hadestown, who replace the dead of the original myth), who dutifully give the elicited replies.

On the other hand, both Acts I and III open with duets—between Orpheus and Eurydice in the first case, Hades and Persephone in the second. Each of these songs is a conversation, in which a couple tries to sort out how to handle some difficulty presented to them. These duets are both followed by narrative sections (“Epic” parts 1 and 2); here Orpheus is showcased as the master poet and storyteller as he tells the tale of Hades. The crowd responds, either in a discussion of the merits of living in Hadestown (“Way Down Hadestown”) or in support of Orpheus and Eurydice being together (“Lover’s Desire”). (This latter number is again instrumental, and so it’s less clear what is happening. But at the end of the previous song, the workers have joined Orpheus in singing, and in the following Hades complains that they have begun rioting when the lovers kissed. It seems reasonable to infer that the entire town is responding to Orpheus’ plea, as in the legend.) In Act I, the attention then turns to Eurydice’s shifting loyalties, as she is seduced by Hades in another duet. In a twist, Act III instead leaves Hades alone with his thoughts. For the first time, he is forced to reflect on the fragility of his lordly status and to contemplate how to overcome Orpheus’ destabilizing presence. Human weakness impinges on the relationships: Eurydice feels she must escape poverty in Act I, and Orpheus cannot bear the uncertainty that his love might not be following him in Act III. Tragically, the lovers must be separated at the end of both these acts, and each must find aid from another companion. Orpheus calls “Wait for me” to the absent Eurydice as he follows Hermes’ directions to Hadestown. In the end, Eurydice toasts Orpheus “wherever he is now”, and she is joined by Persephone at the table.

Act III also sees another shift in the characters’ relationships. In Acts I and II, both Orpheus and Hades are supreme in their respective crafts. No one can sing so divinely as Orpheus, and no one can challenge Hades’ role as boss. Their conflict, until the end of Act II, is indirect. Orpheus is clearly the hero and Hades is the villain. Starting in Act III, their conflict becomes more direct and ambiguous. Orpheus uncovers Hades’ humanity and threatens to overturn Hadestown’s society. Hades, on the other hand, knows that he must maintain control of the town, at least in part to benefit its residents by providing them with work. He becomes a kind of antihero. As in the myth, the question is raised whether Hades is bad or simply fulfilling a necessary role in life (and death). The battle of wills is begun.

Hades, of course, is victorious. But the opera refuses to admit that Orpheus has utterly failed. Just by presenting his case to Hades in Hades’ own domain he proves his virtue. There is something of the existential here, but that is a topic for another post.

Two tellings

2011-01-16T13:39:00.001-05:00

Here is the complete story of Orpheus as told by the D’Aulaires:

Orpheus’ music was joyful and gay, for he was in love with Euridice, a sweet young maiden, and she loved him in return. On the day of their wedding, his songs swelled out, filled with happiness as his bride danced on her light feet through the meadow. Suddenly, she trod on a snake and sank to the ground, dead of its poisonous bite. Hermes gently closed her eyes and led her away to the underworld. No more songs came from Orpheus’ throat, no more tunes rang out from his lyre. All joy had gone out from his life. He had to have Euridice back.

Weeping and grieving, Orpheus wandered about searching for an entrance to Hades, and when at the end of the world he found it, he did what no living man had ever done before: he went down to the realm of the dead to beg for the return of his beloved. His music had the power to move hard rocks; it might also move the cold heart of Hades. Hope gave him back his songs, and, playing and singing, he walked down the dark, steep path.

His silvery voice floated down through the dark like a gentle summer breeze and its magic moved the iron gates of Hades. They sprang open and let him in, and Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog, lay down at his feet and let him pass. The whole dark underworld stilled and listened to Orpheus’ music as he entered the realm of the dead singing about his great love, begging to have Euridice back. The fluttering souls hushed. Those condemned to eternal pains stopped groaning, and their torturers, the avenging furies, the Erinyes, dropped their whips and wept tears of blood.

Hades, the pitiless king of the dead, sat on his black marble throne with Queen Persephone at his side. Even he was so moved by the music that tears rolled down his sallow cheeks and cold Persephone sobbed. Her heart was so touched that she turned to her husband and begged him to let Euridice go back to the sunny world above. Hades gave his consent, but he made one condition: Orpheus must not look at his bride before they reached the realm of the living. She would walk behind him, but if he turned, and looked at her, she must return to the underworld.

Overcome with joy, Orpheus started up the dark path, and as his music faded into the distance, gloom again descended over the underworld. The way was long, and as Orpheus walked on and on, doubt began to creep into his mind. Had Hades deceived him? Were the sounds he heard behind him really Euridice’s footsteps? He had almost reached the upper world, and could already see a dim light ahead, when he could bear his doubts no longer. He had to turn and see if she really was there. He saw her sweet face, but only for an instant, for again Hermes appeared at her side. He turned her about and led her back to the dark gloom below. Faintly, Orpheus heard her whisper farewell. He had lost her forever through his lack of faith.

Orpheus never again found joy on earth. He wandered into the wilderness to grieve in solitude. He sang, but now his songs were so mournful that tears trickled down the cheeks of wild beasts and the willows wept.

A band of wild nymphs stormed through the woods shouting to Orpheus to join them. They yelled and carried on so loudly that they could not hear his silvery voice and were not touched by its magic. They wanted him to dance with them, but he had not heart for their revelry, and in a fury they threw themselves over him. They tore him to pieces and tossed his body in a river. The river stopped its gurgling to listen, for the haunting voice of Orpheus still issued forth from his dead lips as he floated down to the open sea.

The Muses grieved over him. They searched the sea till they found his body on the shores of the island of Lesbos. There they gave him a proper funeral, and at last he could rejoin his beloved Euridice as a flitting ghost in the underworld.

For comparison, here is the story included in the liner notes of Hadestown (the words in braces are the titles of tracks on the album):

Hadestown begins in the open air, in a world of poverty. Eurydice asks her lover how he will provide for her in these dark times—Orpheus is sure that the world will provide {Wedding Song}. Orpheus sings, and his singing draws a crowd {Epic Part One}. An old train depot, and everyone’s talking about Hadestown, the walled city under the ground {Way Down Hadestown}. There’s Hermes, the hobo guide and messenger; Persephone, in transit, suitcases in tow; Eurydice, who is more than curious about Hadestown; and Orpheus, who wants no part. When Hades calls, Eurydice receives him {Hey, Little Songbird}. He seduces her: she should leave Orpheus and join him in the wealth and security of his underworld. Eurydice succumbs {Gone, I’m Gone}—was she pushed, or did she jump? The Fates provide an explanation {When the Chips Are Down}. Orpheus is determined to follow Eurydice, and Hermes gives directions {Wait For Me}. Meanwhile, in Hadestown, Hades indoctrinates his worker-citizens {Why We Build the Wall}. But when he turns his back, Persephone presents another side of the underworld, in a speakeasy where she plies her contraband and takes an interest in the newly arrived Orpheus {Our Lady of the Underground}. Eurydice, unaware that her lover is near, laments her decision {Flowers}. Orpheus moves toward her, but is intercepted by the Fates. The rules are the rules—there’s no going back for Eurydice—it’s better not to struggle {Nothing Changes}. Orpheus challenges the Fates {If It’s True}. A fight scene: Orpheus and the speakeasy are exposed {Papers}. In the royal bedroom, Persephone appeals to her husband on Orpheus’ behalf {How Long?}. Orpheus sings again, and this time, Hades hears him {Epic Part Two}. An uprising begins, in Hadestown and in the heart of the king {Lover’s Desire}. Hades comes up with a plan: Orpheus can have Eurydice back if he can walk out of the underworld a few paces ahead of her and not turn around to make sure she’s there {His Kiss, The Riot}. Orpheus and Eurydice begin their ascent {Doubt Comes In}. Later, Eurydice and Persephone sing a reverse elegy for Orpheus {I Raise My Cup To Him}.

The D’Aulaires’ illustrations to go with the story are of course beautiful. I will again emphasize that if you don’t have this book, you should. You can see some illustrations of the Hadestown characters here (also contains the above synopsis). The characters along the right, from top to bottom, are Eurydice, Orpheus, Persephone, Hermes, Hades, and the Fates. I’ll talk more about each of them later.

Hadestown: a folk opera

2011-01-15T14:00:00.001-05:00

The album Hadestown astounds me at practically every level. It has stellar performances, poetry, and musicianship. But for me, it bears relistening (at the rate I've been doing so recently) because of its structure and storytelling in addition to those other elements, which one expects from any good album. Not only do I find myself singing the songs over and over, out loud or in my head, I keep thinking about them—how they unfold and how they tie together. I’ve had enough thoughts about this album that I decided to start writing them down, in what I expect will become a series of blog posts. I consider myself more of a music analyst than a music critic, however (an amateur one in either case), and so most of my thoughts are about the construction of the work and the execution of the storytelling. I won’t be trying to assess the quality of the performances or suggest potential improvements (I will point out flourishes I particularly like), even though as I said before they are enough to recommend listening by anyone with even a casual interest in folk rock, blues, or spirituals. (You can get the whole thing streamed via Quicktime here, and hopefully you’ll decide to buy it.) Instead I wish to study what this piece accomplishes in a narrative and poetic sense, and details of the recording will mostly be mentioned only to underscore that focus. Some things I’ll say will be obvious; hopefully some will be less obvious.

The concept of the album is simple: it is a retelling of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice in the setting of a fictional post-apocalyptic Depression-era America, through the medium of American folk music. Orpheus is an impoverished poet and songster who has found the love of his life in Eurydice. She, rather than being poisoned by snakebite as in the original, is seduced by Hades and the promise of lavish comfort to journey to the underground mine of Hadestown. Orpheus follows her and pleads with Hades to let Eurydice return above ground with him. Hades, struggling to maintain control and order in his domain, is eventually persuaded to let them go, but only on the condition that Orpheus walk alone with Eurydice behind him, and he cannot turn to look at her. As in the original tale, Orpheus is plagued by enough doubt that he cannot help turning near the end, and the lovers are separated permanently by Hades' decree.

(It’s worth mentioning that I learned the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, which will always be for me the definitive telling of all the stories it covers. Less well-known but just as enjoyable and informative is D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths, which I credit with providing me the only chance I have of understanding the setting of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.)

The “folk” element in the subtitle is evident, but why “opera”? It’s more than just because this piece tells a story set to music over the course of several songs. The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice has appeared again and again in opera and theatre. Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607) was arguably the first true opera, and it was cited in my music history class as an indicator of the beginning of the Baroque era in music. Subsequently, the story was also used as the basis for operas by Gluck, Offenbach (who used the occasion to compose his famous Can-can music), and Glass, in addition to a ballet with music by Stravinsky. By the time Anaïs Mitchell came along to give it a new treatment, it couldn’t be as anything but an opera. The force of musical history is too strong.

Still, I’m not sure anyone had heard anything quite like this album before. It’s an opera in an American musical medium, like Porgy and Bess before it, but it draws on a somewhat different set of elements—Appalachian ballads and traditional call-and-response numbers and folk songs of the 1960s. I personally had not heard of any of the performers (including Mitchell herself), apart from Ani DiFranco (who plays the part of Persephone, Hades’ wife and queen), before receiving this album (it was a gift from my in-laws), although they seem to be well-known and well-respected in the folk music community at large. In any case they come together and tell the story masterfully. It may just as well be described as an oratorio, because the musical setting stands on its own without any staging. The styles of the songs are immediately familiar, but like any great storyteller, Mitchell has imbued every level of the work with layer upon layer of additional meaning. This is what captivates me, and what I want to explore.

musical reasons to go to church

2010-07-04T17:44:00.006-04:00

I have in mind a longer post about all the times we’ve been to church since we got here, and all the different places. But other things (i.e., work, World Cup, sleeping and eating) have gotten in the way of writing. So I just thought I’d share some of the pieces I heard today during the two services I attended.

At St. Cyprian’s (with the Old Catholics): the youth group had a band that was helping lead some of the worship. As a response (after the sermon or communion, I don’t remember which), they sang “Ain’t No Rock”. Been a long time since I heard/sung that one.

At the Münster Cathedral (the centrally-located, largest church in town): today was the “Tag der Kirchenmusik”, and all of the church choirs (the program says there were four, but most were in the organ loft, so I can’t confirm that) joined in to assist the mass. Among the pieces were a lively “Gloria” (I haven’t been able to confirm the composer—maybe Rutter? Except you know how well looking for Rutter’s Gloria online works when it’s not the BIG one), Mendelssohn’s “Denn er hat seinen Engeln befohlen über dir” (“For God commanded angels to watch over you”—I mostly know this one through the St. Olaf Choir, so I was pleased that the choir carried it off admirably at the psalm), Barber’s “Agnus Dei” (quite a bit faster than it’s usually performed, but it worked well for the smaller chorus and for the length of time communion took), and a setting of the Magnificat to end the service, Richard Shephard’s “Song of Mary” with all the choirs participating (hadn’t heard this one before—it was wonderful!).

It’s great when the church functions, at least in part, as a bastion of great music. (Also when parentheses function as a crutch in place of actual structure to an essay.)

zweiter Samstag in Bonn

2010-06-19T10:54:00.004-04:00

The main conference of the summer is done. This week, dozens of mathematicians from all over the world gathered to discuss their interest in flat surfaces (think of polygons from high-school geometry on steroids), foliations (think of layers piled on top of each other to fill up space in different ways), mapping classes (think of “how many different ways can I, or my kid, put clothes on, rightly or wrongly?”), expansion constants (think of how much a balloon stretches as it inflates), moduli spaces (think of how many different shapes a single kind of object—say, a rectangle or a person—can have), and many more topics. Believe it or not, these things are all related. And most of the talks were very good. It was well-paced, with only four lectures a day (I've been to some conferences with seven or eight!), and the organizers deserve a great deal of credit.

I would also count “living in Bonn” as a success so far. Let’s talk food for a moment. I’ve had my spargel (twice, once at home with lemon-butter sauce and once at a restaurant with hollandaise), and schnitzel, and pizza with schinken (ham), and currywurst, and… What’s that? You want to know what currywurst is? Well, I definitely plan to have more. It’s a bratwurst sausage served with curry powder and ketchup sauce. Also French fries (here, called “pommes”, as in “pommes frites”). And beer. Because the thing I’ve had more often than anything else, even strawberries, is beer. (I mention the strawberries because they’re my favorite fruit, they’re even more plenteous than spargel right now, and, ironically, they are called “erdbeeren” in German—“beer”, of course, being German for “berry”, since “bier” means “beer”. Now I want to see if I can find, or invent, beerbier.) My favorite beer to get here is weizen, which invariably comes in the largest (half-liter) size, and which I get to myself because Hannah doesn’t like wheat beer.

Anyway, back to the wurst. We made that lunch today after shopping at the Marktplatz, because there’s a popular currywurst stand right there. According to Wikipedia, it’s been around since the late 1940s, when ketchup and curry powder first arrived in Germany. It’s both amusing and yummy. Another import Germans seem to adore is ice cream. Soooo many gelaterias around. I’ve only indulged in that once. And the moment I really realized I was not in France (I know, you’d think the black-red-gold flags painted on everyone’s faces would give it away, wouldn’t you?) was when I tried to buy bread at 8:00 at night and all of the bakeries were closed. I guess at that time of night you should only being eating meat. Or ice cream. With beer in either case.

(Funny how being around another language will affect you. At the end of that last paragraph, I typed “schould” about three times before I got it right.)

One last food comment before moving on: we of course consumed lots of coffee during the conference. So once this morning arrived, the first thing I wanted to do was get coffee. We went to Einstein Kaffee, a coffeehouse I pass each morning on the way to the institute, which had intrigued me. Turns out to be a very American-style coffeehouse, a couple of steps up from Starbucks, not like a French café at all, with lots of seating inside and out, and hip background music. There are two Starbucks nearby, but we’ll probably go to Einstein while we’re here if we want that ambiance. In the meantime, biergartens it is!

In the middle of the week we went on a hike with several of the conference participants. One of the organizers, who has a bit of a reputation for leading people on far lengthier and more strenuous hikes than they expect, clarified that in his terminology this was just a “walk”. We covered about 10 km in all, and reached the top of Löwenburg in the Siebengebirge. This is very nearly the highest point in the area (one of the other peaks in the Siebengebirge is just a few meters higher), and the view was spectacular. Hannah spent most of the hike talking with other opera buffs, and together on top of the mountain they attempted to trace out the geography of Siegfried’s journey from Wagner’s Ring cycle among the valleys and other peaks below. They had hoped to visit the Drachenfels, where Siegfried was supposed to have slain a dragon, but since we didn't make it there they decided that the ruins of the castle we reached was the home of the dwarf Hagen. We could see the Drachenfels from our location, and there was also much discussion as to which mountaintop had held the sleeping Brünnhilde. (If you’ve heard Anna Russell’s summary of the ring cycle, you are probably fighting to withhold laughter by now. If you haven’t, you should. Or perhaps schould.) By the end of the trip, Hannah was lecturing on the sources and symbols of the Lord of the Rings, and getting quite an audience in the process. Male mathematicians, it appears, enjoy discussing culture with an intelligent, pretty woman.

A few other random things about this week… The country has had an up and a down thanks to the World Cup. On Sunday night, after their team defeated Australia 4-0, the streets were filled with cars and noise. Everyone became much more subdued yesterday when they lost to Serbia 0-1. But all of the restaurants and biergartens have several flat-screen TVs set up, and when any game is occurring, you can hear how it’s going from anywhere in town.

As we wandered around the market this morning, we were surprised by the activity in the Münsterplatz (just a couple hundred meters from the Marktplatz). Whereas last Saturday we found an artisanal fair full of sculpture and fountains, today there was Bonn’s “Energietag”, with all sorts of companies showcasing their products for conserving and preserving energy and water. There were a solar cooking demonstration, a couple of different kinds of solar panels (the first time I’d seen any up close), a system for funneling sunlight inside using something more like a periscope than a skylight, and that’s just the stuff I could figure out without reading German.

We still need to find some concerts to attend. I thought seeing a play might be another option; however, the nearby theatre is showing Der Fremde (L'Étranger) by Camus, in German, and I realized that apart from that sounding incredibly depressing, we’re not yet ready to see a play performed auf Deutsch. Going to be searching for organ and chamber recitals in the area.

So that’s a little about what’s going on here. I may post another, more mathematically focused entry for anyone interested in some of what went on in the lecture hall.

Spargel, spargel, spargel

2010-06-12T10:20:00.000-04:00

It means “asparagus”. Bonn is in high spargel season, and it's everywhere. My strongest first impression of Bonn comes from walking through the vegetable market hearing gravelly voices calling, “Spargel, spargel, zwei kilos drei euros!” The spargel that's available, by the way, is fat white asparagus, unlike any I've seen. Hannah claims that in the US white asparagus is generally considered a luxury. All of the restaurants are serving it; some are even announcing a “Spargelfest” and have their entire placards advertising dishes based on spargel (usually with hollandaise sauce). Hannah and I have invested in our own spargel and plan to cook it tomorrow. More on that when it happens.

First things first (or second, since I seem to have allotted first place to the supreme pleasure of the word “spargel”, spoken either aloud or internally). So, first things second, and we left for Germany late Thursday afternoon. All aboard Aer Lingus, where the uniforms are the color of clover and the planes are named after Irish saints (Hannah noticed this in Dublin). It was a relatively short flight from JFK to Dublin—only about five hours of air time. Once the taxiing and waiting on the runway time was factored in, about seven hours on the plane. So there wasn't a lot of time for sleeping. I watched Shutter Island up through dinnertime. (It is a good movie, which I would recommend for anyone who likes drama with a dose of suspense and just a tinge of horror, without really being horror-genre. Also for anyone who thinks that Leo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley sounds like a good pairing. Once again Martin Scorcese proves his love for Leo.) After that, I tried sleeping for a while but was awake again after about a half-hour. Tuned in to “Big Bang Theory” (which I only ever watch on planes, but do so whenever possible) and “Mad Men” (which I had heard many good things about, but not seen before). Enough about in-flight entertainment…

How could we tell we were in Ireland from inside the Dublin airport? All the Jameson whiskey in all of the stores. One entire hallway was covered with it, the way one might see a string of windows showcasing diamond necklaces in the chic part of the mall. Also the fact that all of the clothes in the shops were green. Bright green. The same color as Aer Lingus uniforms. And we were reminded that Ireland uses the euro instead of the pound for currency, which was fortunate since we had euros on hand. Got some proper coffee. That was the reminder that we were in Europe, and happily were going to be in Europe for some time.

It wasn't a long layover in Dublin, and we were shortly on the way to Frankfurt. A couple of days ago, when I was checking the weather for packing purposes, I learned that this region gets a lot of rainfall in the summer, so it wasn't too much of a surprise when we got on the plane that it was announced thunderstorms in Frankfurt were delaying our departure. The pilot came on several times and explained how she was arguing with the Frankfurt airport control to push up our push off time as much as possible. This was great for two reasons. One, our pilot was a woman! Neither Hannah nor I recalled that happening in some time. (Additionally, I think I heard her say the co-pilot was a “Sir”. Sometimes it seems too bad we don't have knights in the US. Or royalty, for that matter, as I read a opinion columnist recently suggesting we have a titular king and queen who could take care of the photo-ops while the president takes care of actually fixing things. But I digress…) Two, our pilot was totally taking on the entire Frankfurt air system! Well, that's what it sounded like to us, anyway. We might have been a bit punchy at that point. I spent most of the time between landing and taking off in Dublin pestering Hannah with my chipperness, and promptly slept over all of England and France (and Belgium, perhaps?).

The Frankfurt airport has a train station attached, so after some wandering about and getting (English) directions from a friendly official, we ended up at the Fernbahnhof with tickets to Bonn. The train was punctual, and once we got on, we discovered it was stuffy and un-airconditioned. This would have been much less tolerable had there not been a team of young, drunk, male athletes who sang the entire trip. The times they sang in English was to wish happy birthday (twice) to their teammate Markos, and when they broke into John Denver's “Country Roads, Take Me Home” (which was a little surreal). Most of their singing was words they made up to short tunes they knew. Most memorable was when a women's soccer team boarded the train and the guys sang “Jetzt kommen die Frauen! Oh oh-oh-oh-oh!” The two teams proceeded to have singing competitions at each other. The men's team won, I think, but they also failed to capture as much attention from the women as they would have liked.

Once we got off the train, we only took a couple of wrong turns in getting to the apartment where we're staying. Our apartment is just north of the Marktplatz, which is full of fruit and vegetable stands. There is a large pedestrian section of town with cobbled roads lined with all sorts of shops and biergartens. There will be more to tell about the town once we've seen more and gotten more familiar with it. But I just want you to know, we have great access to a lot of spargel merchants.

sonata in the key of calculus

2009-01-08T18:06:00.002-05:00

I have been reading The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross’s chronicle of the 20th century through the lens (or perhaps microphone) of music. I just completed the section about Duke Ellington and the origins of jazz. Much was made of Ellington’s proclivity towards collaboration (so much so that he never finished the opera he undertook, because it was such solitary and large-scale work), and I was reminded of how I’ve been doing math recently. Whenever I've had some time with someone I thought would be interested, I’ve pulled out a pet project and gotten their perspective on it. I have thereby garnered, synthesized, and built upon a variety of useful insights and motivations.

Then I began to reflect on certain analogies that are often drawn between mathematics and music, as well as between their histories. One compares Euler with Mozart and the Bernoulli family with the Bachs. There are notions of what is “classical” and what is “for amusement” in both mathematics and music. More modern comparisons are less frequently made, and so I thought it would be nice to have a notion of a “jazz mathematician”. Someone with a distinctive sound, but capable of improvising on a thousand different themes with hundreds of collaborators. Based on that description, I guess the nearest mathematical equivalent to Duke Ellington would be Paul Erdős, although many mathematicians fit the profile.

Given how many mathematicians are music aficionados, I wonder that more such analogies between contemporaries in these two fields haven’t been drawn. Who would be paired with Messiaen? Or with Grothendieck? Is Cauchy or Gauss more like Beethoven? There is an increasing voice in the Western world for Eastern music and mathematics. Do these two influxes share distinctive aesthetic qualities, or is one or the other merely another source of human labor for doing “more of the same”? Twentieth century music is characterized by experimentalism and division among radically different movements. One can discern echoes of the same in the mathematical world—neo-classicism and minimalism and stark modernism—so, again, are there pairings that indicate shared aesthetics? Or are all such comparisons in the end folly, because the roots of such tendencies lie in unique individuals and historical paths?

things you never thought you'd see #2112

2008-12-03T09:44:00.004-05:00

Your fiancée’s father’s workplace shows up in a popular comic.

Girl Genius has high production values for a webcomic; in fact, it started as a graphic novel and then moved to the web. Right now they’re in between acts of the main storyline and so they’re running a retelling of Cinderella just for fun (the story starts here). There are of course lots of inside jokes based on the main strip, but just think “mad science” and “fictionalized late 19th century Europe” and you’ll get the gist.

The story of Cinderella has princes. Princes need a castle. The castle should look science-y, to fit with the theme. So the castle appears in the fourth panel of today’s strip. And what did they choose as a model? The high-rise office building of Fermilab, where Hannah’s dad works.

the ambiguity of pride

2008-11-28T10:15:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of a story by Kahlil Gibran, entitled “The ambitious violet”. The entire story is of course worth reading, particularly for Gibran’s beautiful use of language, but I will summarize for the sake of this entry.

A small violet is in a garden, among other violets, lovely but low to the ground. She is happy with her lot, until she sees a rose rising majestically among all the other flowers and displaying a glory like the violet had never imagined. Then the violet begins to lament her lot in life, consigned to such a humble place when she wants to lift her head high like the roses do.

She is heard both by the rose and by Nature, who try to convince the violet that her place is fitting. The rose says that the violet has a unique beauty and should be content rather than try to exalt herself. Nature asks why the violet has suddenly become so greedy and warns that ambition will lead to disaster. The violet wants nothing more than to become a rose for one day, and Nature grants her wish.

That night, a storm sweeps through the garden. All of the tall flowers are torn up and thrown about, and only the patch of humble violets is spared. They look about, grateful for their salvation; then they see the rose that had been a violet dying on the ground, and they mock her for the result of her greed.

The dying rose replies:

You are contended and meek dullards; I have never feared the tempest. Yesterday I, too, was satisfied and contented with Life, but Contentment has acted as a barrier between my existence and the tempest of Life, confining me to a sickly and sluggish peace and tranquility of mind. I could have lived the same life you are living now by clinging with fear to the earth.... I could have waited for winter to shroud me with snow and deliver me to Death, who will surely claim all violets.... I am happy now because I have probed outside my little world into the mystery of the Universe.... something which you have not yet done.

I could have overlooked Greed, whose nature is higher than mine, but as I hearkened to the silence of the night, I heard the heavenly world talking to this earthly world, saying, ‘Ambition beyond existence is the essential purpose of our being.’ At that moment my spirit revolted and my heart longed for a position higher than my limited existence. I realized that the abyss cannot hear the song of the stars, and at that moment I commenced fighting against my smallness and craving for that which did not belong to me, until my rebelliousness turned into a great power, and my longing into a creating will.... Nature, who is the great object of our deeper dreams, granted my request and changed me into a rose with her magic fingers.

She concludes:

I have lived one hour as a proud rose; I have existed for a time like a queen; I have looked at the Universe from behind the eyes of the rose; I have heard the whisper of the firmament through the ears of the rose and touched the folds of Light’s garment with rose petals. Is there any here who can claim such honor? I shall die now, for my souls has attained its goal. I have finally extended my knowledge to a world beyond the narrow cavern of my birth. This is the design of Life.... This is the secret of Existence.

The rose passes away, but with a smile of hope and fulfillment, “a God’s smile.”

The proper balance of humility and pride is a difficult one to achieve in the Christian life. The difficulty is compounded by the dual meaning of both words, particularly pride. We try, without much linguistic success, to laud the pride that leads to good and productive work while deploring the pride that leads to arrogance and damaged relationships. Humility, meanwhile, is a quality we seek as we approach God, even as we know that self-deprecation can be detrimental to our well-being (and we have faith that God desires our well-being).

Gibran himself was a Christian (a Maronite), and much of what I have read of his work is sharp in distinguishing what one learns from the teachings of Jesus and what one encounters in the church. A principal theme of his writing is to speak out against oppression, especially when done in the name of religion. He knew what many people suffer when they are kept ignorant and cattle-like, not just physically but spiritually. This is imposed humility; this is the suppression of pride. One feature of oppressive philosophy is that it exploits the ambiguity of language to confuse the mind to believe that what is good is bad, and vice versa. We may think we are being good for not wanting anything better in life (doesn’t Paul say we should be “content in all circumstances”?), forgetting that God also requires that we give our best back to Him, that we “invest our talents” in a “good and trustworthy” manner.

When I read the story of the violet, amid a collection of other stories and poems, several of which address Gibran’s longing for the people he loves to be released from economic and psychological slavery, I interpreted it primarily as a social commentary. At the beginning, when the rose tells the violet that she should be happy where she is, the violet responds, “How painful is the preaching of the fortunate to the heart of the miserable! And how severe is the strong when he stands as advisor among the weak!” The rose may have thought that her words were comfort, but the violet, already reaching beyond her current place, tells the rose that instead the words are wounding. They are falsely pious and, in the end, contemptuous of the notion that the violet could ever be anything greater than what she is. Notice the word “yet” in the violet’s speech to her sisters the night after the storm: even as she chastises them for not realizing what greatness she herself has experienced, she lets them know that it is still possible for them to reach for the same heights and to know, before they die, what it is to live. She is, in a way, very nearly a martyr.

When I told the story to Hannah, who has read less Gibran but has a keen sense of the meaning of text qua text, her first question was, “Do you think Gibran was an existentialist?” She saw the point of the story less as overcoming oppression and more as finding purpose and meaning in life. It is rather existentialist, in that sense. The rose’s life is richer than that of the violets, even though it only lasted a day. Victory is gained not by pushing away the end of life, but by ceasing to fear it.

Let us not seek quietness and contentment simply because it is easier and safer. Let us be daring and humble; let us find all that is good in the meaning of pride and humility and life and existence. Let us not merely consume, but let us find the richness of life and enjoy it and develop it. I will not say that if we have been violets, we should become roses, but instead that we should seek freely and joyfully, without constraint, to live life fully. We should praise those who have reached what they desired, and we should work to lift the hindrances to others’ achievement. The tempest will not cease, but it is no reason for us to remain small.

how it happened

2008-08-28T19:24:00.004-04:00

Hi, all.

Many readers of this blog already know via other means of communication that Hannah and I became engaged last night. Quite reasonably, it was suggested that I tell the story here in full detail so that it could be easily shared. (I love the information age.)

My main goals in the design of the proposal (obviously, my main goal in the proposal itself was to make official and public our pledge to marry each other) were as follows: surprise Hannah, include a certain piece of music she had requested on a previous occasion, and get it done in time for classes to begin. Clearly the last one was a success by dint of the date; I am happy that the other two worked out just as well.

Let me start with the piece of music, because it came first chronologically in the plan (and essentially at the beginning of the proposal). One day, almost two years ago, we were sitting in Hannah’s apartment listening to Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Symphony. The third movement of this piece is a breathtaking Adagio, starting with a clarinet solo and passing through several swells and some of the loveliest melodies in the orchestral repertoire. While we listened to it, she said “You should play this piece when you’re going to propose.” Thus the kernel was planted. I immediately knew that, when the time came, this piece would have to emerge from somewhere unexpected as a first clue of the event to come. Later, I began thinking of having a band or small ensemble appear as we were walking around campus or out on the Arts Quad. I started thinking about what instruments are played by my friends around here. And I began to converge on a woodwind quintet. As it turned out in the end, I only knew one of the musicians that came to play for us, but she assembled a fine quintet that made the experience a great one.

Last night, at the end of a long day of other activities, we were at Anabel Taylor Hall (for those who don’t know, this building houses the Cornell United Religious Works) for a start-of-year Graduate Christian Fellowship event: the annual ice cream social. I had worked out ahead of time that the social would probably be wrapping up around 8:30, so that’s when I asked the musicians to arrive. Except instead of coming into the meeting space, they set up in the chapel down the hall. I tapped Hannah (who was in the middle of a very interesting theological discussion that normally I would have loved to see continue) and asked her to come check on something with me.

We began walking down the hall, and I stopped by the office, where I had stashed some flowers earlier in the day. When I brought them out, she began looking at me suspiciously, and the musicians (whom we couldn’t yet see) began to play.

Now, Hannah knew I was going to ask her at some point—indeed, I already had and had just warned her that I wanted a chance to make it “official” in a special way. In her mind, however, that point was still some weeks off. I had a “deadline” of Fall Break, which takes place in the middle of October. However, she also mentioned recently that, when we first began dating the day before classes started two summers ago, she delighted in the sudden change in our relationship at a time already so full of change; she appreciates liminal times in life, as she put it. And although the calendar date of our anniversary was last Sunday, the “day before classes” seems more intimately related to the start of our relationship than August 24.

The music drifted towards us as I pushed Hannah (with her increasingly pursed lips) towards the chapel. We walked through the doorway, first halting just a few steps in, then proceeding to the middle of the room. We said only a few small things as the music was playing. (Did I mention I wrote the arrangement for the quintet? The original movement is about 20 minutes long, and I don’t think it had been arranged at all for a small ensemble. I took about a four minute selection and spent several mornings pulling parts together.) After it ended, I spoke with Hannah for a few minutes, talking about the last two years and how just in the last few months we really seemed ready to commit. I got down on my knee, as she deserves, and presented her with a ring. People have asked what exactly she said. Mostly I remember there were at least four “Yes”s. (As she reads this, she says her answer was “Yes, yes, forever yes.”)

After I had stood up again, the quintet began playing a waltz I had written for her a long time ago. We danced, and applauded when they were done. The musicians all seemed glad to have been able to help, particularly since it seems to be a rare opportunity for wind players to be part of an engagement proposal.

And that’s how it went, as I remember it. Since then, we’ve been happy and gleeful and tired and making plans and basking in each other.

another friend abroad

2008-08-28T19:20:00.003-04:00

Hannah’s friend Jessie (who graduated from Cornell last spring) has started blogging about her studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. There’s a link in the “Friends’ Blogs” section of the sidebar now. Should be some interesting stories to read coming up…

flavors of summer

2008-06-29T08:37:00.005-04:00

Yesterday, a week after the “official” start of summer, Hannah and I joined in one of the quintessential summer activities in Ithaca: we went strawberry picking. I feel like we managed to join some kind of club, too, because whenever I have spoken with other friends who go out and pick strawberries, the ones who get the largest amounts almost always come back and say they picked 18 pounds. And so did we, this time. Hooray! We went out with one of Hannah’s friends from church, then went back to the friend’s house and prepared all of the strawberries, cutting off all of the tops and freezing eight quarts’ worth in the large freezer at the house. The rest we brought back and made into a wonderful strawberry-basil soup for a potluck last night. I recommend this dish highly. Take the strawberries, boil them for a bit (don’t add much water, if any, as the strawberries will produce copious amounts of liquid on their own—this is a technique we learned from cooking squash). Then add some heavy cream and chopped basil. Puree the whole thing. We put in sour cream and a small amount of sugar; some recipes we saw also suggested milk. We chilled it for a couple of hours, and served it with fresh (non-sweetened) whipped cream. Yum. It seemed quite successful.

In other exciting news, this year’s Ithaca festival was moved back two weeks to be held last weekend, so I got to attend it for the first time. Melanie was in town, visiting and working, and we went down to the parade on Thursday afternoon. Lots of local organizations participated: schools, housing programs, the Ithachords (barbershop singing), the SPCA (puppies!), and so on. There was an (apparently traditional) Volvo ballet: several Volvos dressed in tutus and dancing around each other in the street. That was bizarre. The commons were in a fair-type atmosphere for the next couple of days, with food stands and performances and boutiques in tents. There was rain at some points, of course; the theme for the year was “I am Ithaca”, and I suspect the rain felt it needed to make an appearance. In fact, the rain arrived on Saturday afternoon just as we were supposed to be folk dancing in Dewitt Park, where there are no shelters of any kind. One dancer/musician pulled out her pipe and played some familiar tunes as we danced very simple steps under our umbrellas. On Sunday, crowds in Stewart Park made an immense human peace sign, in an attempt to set a world record for the largest such sign. We didn’t make it to this event, but you can see videos of it on YouTube. We did go down to the park on Sunday evening to see a circus and walk among the crowds. It was a beautiful day.

renewal

2008-03-23T00:00:00.003-04:00

Holy Saturday ends the fast of Lent, which has been a fast with a purpose. Many people may not understand fasting, since it’s not making a statement like a hunger strike does. It’s devotional. It focuses one’s consciousness and makes one mindful. The purpose of the Lenten fast is to prepare to welcome Christ as king once again, to acknowledge that we continue to fail at our duty but that we are grateful for God’s mercy. Rejoice! The bells and the hallelujahs sound. Death in all its forms is not lasting.

I am, it turns out, too tired to develop this theme further tonight. Let me, then, share part of tonight’s Easter Vigil service. The Book of Common Prayer leads the congregation, with the pastor, through the following vows:

Do you reaffirm your renunciation of evil and renew your commitment to Jesus Christ?
I do.

Do you believe in God the Father?
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
I will, with God's help.

Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
I will, with God's help.

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
I will, with God's help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
I will, with God's help.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
I will, with God's help.

Simple questions. The answer is harder—“with God’s help.” If we learn anything from Lent, it should be this: that is the only way to say “I will,” the only way we can do anything. Yet we must strive to do it all, persevering, loving, and respecting.

were you there

2008-03-21T23:30:00.004-04:00

They took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”

—from the Gospel of John, chapter 19

I thought about what Pilate wrote during the Good Friday service we attended this evening. For the gospel writer, it seems important that Jesus was publicly declared “king of the Jews”, even while he was being executed, and even by the foreign occupying power that Pilate represented. The verses preceding this selection indicate that Pilate was very nervous about Jesus and what he might be. But he was also troubled by the threat of unrest on the part Jesus’ accusers, and I wonder if part of his purpose was to write, “This is what happens even to the kings of unruly peoples in the Roman Empire,” so that other would-be leaders would be discouraged. Either way, there were objections: for those who wanted to discredit and dispatch Jesus, the inscription gave him too much credence.

I mused earlier this season about whether it was inevitable that Jesus would be killed, and if in fact all good people in dire situations are bound for martyrdom. The hope of the world is that the light of good deeds shines even through death. My favorite text that I have “happened across” in the Project Gutenberg files is Thoreau’s “Plea for Captain John Brown”, written in defense of the abolitionist John Brown after the raid on Harper’s Ferry led to his arrest. It is eloquent, powerful, convicting, and uncompromising. It elevates Brown to a stature above the other great men and women America had theretofore known. The ideas of the following passage reach their pinnacle in Jesus as he is led to the crucifixion:

This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death,—the possibility of a man’s dying. It seems as if no man had ever died in America before; for in order to die you must first have lived. … Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began. Do you think that you are going to die, sir? No! there's no hope of you. You haven’t got your lesson yet. You’ve got to stay after school. We make a needless ado about capital punishment,—taking lives, when there is no life to take. Memento mori! We don’t understand that sublime sentence which some worthy got sculptured on his gravestone once. We’ve interpreted it in a grovelling and snivelling sense; we’ve wholly forgotten how to die. … These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man’s acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do.

And still the world plods on, murderously and indolently. The real hope lies in the days to come, when all glory shall be restored, and only the deeds of light shall withstand exposure to the light. Until then, we must learn how to live.

abide with me

2008-03-19T22:58:00.001-04:00

Mammoth Cave preserves everything. The statistics were cited to us a dozen times in the last two days: 54° Fahrenheit, 87% humidity, all year round. Things stick around. We saw a log leaning against the wall that was dated at 2000 years old. Archaeologists working at the site told us that they had found shells of sunflower seeds from prehistoric times. And we heard about the mummified bodies that, in the early 19th century, cemented Mammoth Cave’s place as a tourist attraction.

The first one was found among a set of stone slabs that were set up as a rudimentary coffin. As more were found, some became traveling curiosities to advertise the cave, while others were set up in glass cases or on stands inside the caves for visitors to see. Our guide today told us about one mummified body that was found by a pair of explorers—it was a man that had been crushed under a rock. In the 1930s, while teenaged boys were working on laying out the trails through the cave that are still used today, they lifted the rock off the man, using a cable and tripod, and extracted the body. His was one that was shifted from room to room and put on display. Eventually, it was decided that showing off the corpse might be too disrespectful. Because it had no proper burial place, it was returned to the tunnel “near” where it had been found, so that it could be left undisturbed, with not even the guides knowing where it was.

I commented to Hannah at this point in the tour that humans sometimes have strange notions of respect for the dead. At times we put bodies on display, study them, or amuse and shock ourselves with them. Other times we treat them with the utmost reverence, hoping that giving rest to the bones will give rest to the spirit. One reads of Achilles dragging the body of Hector around the walls of Troy to dishonor his remains and dishearten the inhabitants. Why should these feelings be so powerful?

For one thing, memory is powerful. We remember the deeds of our ancestors, and we are grateful for their efforts that have led to our being here. Being good to their earthly remains seems to equate with being good to these people who are no longer with us in consciousness. For another, I think the hope of resurrection is embedded in us. It would be a strange superstition that the dead could walk again, because nothing natural suggests that it’s remotely possible. I suppose one, or a group of people, could find evidence that some personality is still at work even after their passing. Still, the desire to see certain people again, or the fear that we might see them again, is hope working beyond reason and stretching past the reality of loss. Respect for the dead is humane because we are connected to each other by more than physical interaction; the greater reality of our selves imbues dignity and meaning even to dry bones.

I’ll close tonight with a short passage from Psalm 73:

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

deep river

2008-03-18T23:30:00.001-04:00

During today’s tour of Mammoth Cave, the discussion turned to the formation of the caves and where the water sits now. As Hannah and I learned on a trip to the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis a couple of months ago, there was a time when most of North America was covered in a shallow ocean (as I recall, the main exception was the Appalachian Mountains, because the Rockies hadn’t formed yet). The tour guide, Joe, said it’s believed that’s when the cave was formed. There are five (explored) levels to the cave, and our tour descended to the third. The water table sits about 360 feet below ground level; during floods it can rise about fifty feet about that. We got down over 200 feet below the ground, and someone asked if the cave ever floods. After explaining the levels and depths, Joe said, “We have a book we really respect, and it says that the rest of these caves aren’t ever going to flood again.” That was one of my favorite examples of the guides’ blend of humor and frankness. We also saw a cave cricket, and some amazing canyon-shaped passages, and the “flowstone” of “frozen Niagara”, which looked in some ways like a rank of organ pipes cascading to the ground and in others like a fleet of fins of some gorgeous aquatic creature. It was a stunning trip, if exhausting (over four miles of walking up and down, after already being somewhat tired from short nights of sleep). Tomorrow we’ll take the lantern-lit tour.

still let the spirit cry

2008-03-18T00:05:00.002-04:00

Before going to bed tonight, I was flipping channels in the hotel room. I came across Joel Osteen’s (best known for his books Your Best Life Now and Become a Better You) broadcast, where he preaches to 30,000 people in person and likely millions more via TV. He seems to be a fabulous motivational speaker and self-help author, but as far as pastoring, he doesn’t use the Bible much except as a source for illustrative examples. I figured this method of preaching would get some people riled up, so I went searching. Indeed, there are plenty of people willing to vent at Osteen and call him a “false teacher” and, frankly, something of an inconsistent coward (most prominently referenced is his appearance on “Larry King Live”, where he dodged questions King knew many ministers had previously taken head-on).

The second part of the program I saw was a member of Osteen’s ministry team broadcasting from Israel and explaining the clear signs he sees that we are definitively in the world’s last days, according to Biblical prophecy. The formation of Israel as a nation in 1948 was familiar evidence to me; unfortunately, the Six-Day War has apparently also become a mine for signs and a lens for interpreting prophecies, such as in Hosea and Daniel. The list of signs continued with passages from Isaiah describing how God would call his people out of all parts of the earth to return to the promised land, and followed somewhat predictable lines of selective interpretation.

Everyone who knows me knows I’m all for encouraging people, and even for using the Bible as support and authority and inspiration in those times that comfort and encouragement are needed. I’m also not given to rants in what should be a meditation. The promise of success is a powerful force for hope, but how unbalanced is the message “You can do it, because you’ve got greatness in you!”? It’s even true, but there’s some denial of the reality of life embedded in it. …I really shouldn’t go on with this, because it could take a long, painful time to sort out in a public forum my issues with “prosperity gospel” preaching and “end times” prophecy.

* * *

The title of this entry is taken from the hymn “Soldiers of Christ, arise” by Charles Wesley. Here are three excerpted verses:

Soldiers of Christ, arise, and put your armor on,
Strong in the strength which God supplies through His eternal Son.
Strong in the Lord of hosts, and in His mighty power,
Who in the strength of Jesus trusts is more than conqueror.

Leave no unguarded place, no weakness of the soul,
Take every virtue, every grace, and fortify the whole;
Indissolubly joined, to battle all proceed;
But arm yourselves with all the mind that was in Christ, your Head.

From strength to strength go on, wrestle and fight and pray,
Tread all the powers of darkness down and win the well fought day.
Still let the Spirit cry in all His soldiers, “Come!”
Till Christ the Lord descends from high and takes the conquerors home.

The main Scriptural basis for the imagery comes from Ephesians chapter 6, where Paul describes the battle that is part of being a Christian. The call is not to war against unbelievers, but to battle corrupt spiritual powers. This is a hard notion to swallow in today’s Western world, but many of us have had times when we feel we are not wrestling with ourselves alone. Endurance is key, as is preparation. We “soldier on”, to use a relevant idiom. And when our strength fails, even before then when we still feel like we can stand firm, our hope is in God. As Psalm 121 says,

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

That trust is what will carry us into next Sunday, and through the rest of our lives, until we meet God.

who in the lord's name comest

2008-03-17T00:30:00.004-04:00

It is now less than a week until Easter dawn. Six days until the bells ring and rejoicing begins afresh. All the world waited expectantly over the ages for the birth of Jesus; it did not even know to hope for his resurrection. Yet in that morning is all of our hope for more renewal, more glory, more joy and peace.

These past few days I’ve been spending time playing hymns in the evening rather than writing. There are so many depths to plunge in meditation, but as I found the ordinary work days more and more tiring, I needed to spend time in simpler, more prayerful worship—music revives me, while writing draws a lot of energy out of me. It has been a good week.

This week Hannah and I are in Kentucky, visiting Mammoth Cave National Park with both sets of parents. It is Cornell’s spring break, and a good chance for us all to come together. I will try to write at least briefly each evening; it is Holy Week, after all, and holiness comes from devotion.

question of the day

2008-03-08T22:46:00.001-05:00

Hannah, while sorting laundry: “Do you think socks go to heaven? Do they find their mates there?”

come, almighty, to deliver

2008-03-07T09:15:00.004-05:00

I’m making a couple of corrections to a choral piece I wrote several years ago, which never got performed, but will be sung by my church choir this spring. It’s based on (portions of) the text of Psalm 18 (which is a very long psalm overall). In the score, I include the preface of the psalm, even though it’s not sung, because I find it a striking situation and a marvelous context in which to compose a poem:

A Psalm of David, the servant of the Lord, who addressed the words of this song to the Lord on the day when the Lord rescued him from the hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul.

For those not familiar with the setting, Saul is the king of Israel and has become angry with David, who is anointed to be the next king, and has been pursuing him through the wilderness (even though David provided great comfort to Saul during some periods of what appears to be mental illness). The chase ends when David is hiding in a cave, Saul and his men come in to rest for the night, and David sneaks up to Saul and cuts a piece off of his cloak; in the morning he calls out to Saul and shows him the piece of cloth. Saul sees that David had a chance to kill him, yet spared his life, and so he repents and stops seeking to kill him. David, rejoicing, writes this song of thanks and praise.

Here is David’s description of God’s intervention:

Then the earth reeled and rocked;
the foundations also of the mountains trembled
and quaked, because he was angry.
Smoke went up from his nostrils,
and devouring fire from his mouth;
glowing coals flamed forth from him.
He bowed the heavens and came down;
thick darkness was under his feet.
He rode on a cherub and flew;
he came swiftly on the wings of the wind.
He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him,
thick clouds dark with water.
Out of the brightness before him
hailstones and coals of fire broke through his clouds.

The Lord also thundered in the heavens,
and the Most High uttered his voice,
hailstones and coals of fire.
And he sent out his arrows and scattered them;
he flashed forth lightnings and routed them.
Then the channels of the sea were seen,
and the foundations of the world were laid bare
at your rebuke, O Lord,
at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

He sent from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of many waters.
He rescued me from my strong enemy
and from those who hated me,
for they were too mighty for me.

Amazing! We have the story; we know exactly what happened, and there were no storms and hailstones and lightnings involved. This gives some insight, I think, into how God’s people respond poetically to God’s faithfulness. By God’s might are we able to act, they say. We would have been overwhelmed, but for God’s help. And that help is magnificent. Even if we are surrounded by darkness, God breaks through the clouds and raises us up. That has always been his plan: to raise up his people, and through them the whole world.

how we watch and struggle, and now we live in hope

2008-03-05T23:22:00.002-05:00

The weather here has been, if not fickle, at least suspicious lately. Monday was a glorious balmy day, and by Tuesday morning the snow and freezing rain had returned. This is no unfamiliar experience to anyone living in a northern temperate region, but it led to an image this morning that prompted some thinking.

Yesterday evening it was just warm enough to rain, but the temperature dropped slightly overnight. You know what that means: ice accumulating thickly on the branches of trees. Outside our apartment is a large shrub, which normally stands some ten or twelve feet tall. This morning its branches were bowed so low that they covered the sidewalk on the way to the bus. As far as I know, the freezing rain was not such that trees were damaged (I experienced the gravest such damage in Memphis’s 1994 ice storm). This bush simply couldn’t hold up to the burden placed on it. It would be fine once the weight was lifted, but for the moment it was struggling and thereby inhibiting my own passage.

I thought about the shrub as I walked to the bus, and how it reminded me of a person leaning over in harsh labor. So many people feel and have felt a weight almost as physical as the ice on the bush pressing them down. They may break, or they may just need for the time of oppression to pass. And while their burden remains, the world is held back in its progress. It seems a silly thing to think on the oppressed in such a trite manner while looking at a bush, but the analogy sprung to mind. Perhaps the rest of these thoughts will justify what appeared to be idle musing.

Historically, religion (at least its political side) has been used as a tool for power and oppression. I can think of two ways in which this happens. First, as a “trump card”: this order is the way God established it, and by God we (the rulers) will uphold it, even if that means dehumanizing the rest of the populace. Second, as a sedative, Marx’s “opiate of the people”: there’s no need to worry about bettering your life here and now, because the afterlife has a much greater reward waiting for you. I am sorry for this. I am sorry that words of hope led to feelings of resignation. I am sorry that divine order has been co-opted and misconstrued to pervert divine justice. To my brothers and sisters throughout the world and throughout time who have suffered at the hands of my church or governors who claimed to speak on its behalf, I am sorry. Your burden should have been lifted by those who should have been serving you. And now, in our silence, we may be pressing down on that yoke when we should be aiding you.

I just spent some time searching for Christian human rights organizations. Not surprisingly, many of them are devoted to helping Christians around the world who are persecuted for their beliefs—and there are many places where this happens. I applaud their work, and I pray that God will protect his people. Finding general human rights organizations that are Christian-based took some more doing. But I did find the International Justice Mission, whose information page includes the following paragraph:

In the tradition of abolitionist William Wilberforce and transformational leaders like Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., IJM’s work is founded on the Christian call to justice articulated in the Bible (Isaiah 1:17): Seek justice, protect the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

To illustrate their work, here is their “Justice Agenda” for 2008:

Protecting vulnerable women and children from illegal property seizure
Protecting vulnerable women and children from sexual violence and rape as a risk factor to AIDS
Securing citizenship documentation for vulnerable populations
Building a justice system that protects children
Working to end slavery by increasing perpetrator accountability
Fighting trafficking of women and children through capacity building and training

These are goals I can support wholeheartedly. I had not heard of this group before tonight, but I want to find out more about what they do and how I can help. Does anyone want to join me?

refresh Thy people on their toilsome way

2008-03-04T23:44:00.003-05:00

One has to wonder, as one gets older, whether one is simply becoming more interested in the political process, or whether this time around is actually more interesting than the analogous events in the past. During previous election years, I would hardly have given any heed until after the major parties had chosen their candidates. But this time the entire nomination process has been charged and vibrant and visible. A collection of historic conditions have brought intense scrutiny to this early part of the season, particularly on the Democratic side. I heard on the radio the morning of Super Tuesday that many network producers were treating it in their scheduling like the ultimate reality show (a special boon since the writers’ strike was still on). Now the votes of Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island are being counted, and it seems the furor will continue, as the support of Clinton and Obama remains relatively balanced. I am still afraid, though I think not in the same way as the pundits and analysts, that the more protracted this battle is, the more vicious it will become, and the more difficult it will be to heal any hurt and divisions it may cause. I can pray that the competitiveness will have a strengthening effect on our national dialogue, as well as our resolve to act justly as a country. So far, the campaign seems to have been about as civil as one could hope. May it remain so, so that when we emerge, having chosen based on our consciences and our candidate’s convictions, we are again a whole country, ready to speak with each other and with the world around us.

for all gentle thoughts and mild

2008-03-03T23:38:00.004-05:00

There’s so much to find in William Cowper’s poetry, that I’m going to quote from “The Task” again tonight:

I would not enter on my list of friends
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
Yet wanting sensibility) the man
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertent step may crush the snail
That crawls at evening in the public path;
But he that has humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.
The creeping vermin, loathsome to the sight,
And charged perhaps with venom, that intrudes
A visitor unwelcome into scenes
Sacred to neatness and repose, the alcove,
The chamber, or refectory, may die.
A necessary act incurs no blame.
Not so when, held within their proper bounds
And guiltless of offence, they range the air,
Or take their pastime in the spacious field.
There they are privileged; and he that hunts
Or harms them there is guilty of a wrong,
Disturbs the economy of Nature's realm,
Who, when she formed, designed them an abode.
The sum is this: if man's convenience, health,
Or safety interfere, his rights and claims
Are paramount, and must extinguish theirs.
Else they are all—the meanest things that are—
As free to live and to enjoy that life,
As God was free to form them at the first,
Who in His sovereign wisdom made them all.
Ye, therefore, who love mercy, teach your sons
To love it too. The spring-time of our years
Is soon dishonoured and defiled in most
By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand
To check them. But, alas! none sooner shoots,
If unrestrained, into luxuriant growth,
Than cruelty, most devilish of them all.
Mercy to him that shows it, is the rule
And righteous limitation of its act,
By which Heaven moves in pardoning guilty man;
And he that shows none, being ripe in years,
And conscious of the outrage he commits,
Shall seek it and not find it in his turn.

I’ve often felt that “gentleness” is one of the virtues I’m “good” at. At least, in reading these lines of poetry I’m reminded of a time, when I had just taken a spider outside and placed it on a bush instead of squashing it, that a friend of mine said, “Josh, you’re so gentle.” And I think I can and do treat people with gentleness as much as possible, though I may be becoming sour in my old age.

Gentleness is way down on the list of the fruits of the spirit. It doesn’t show up often in hymns, except to describe Jesus or Mary; the only reference different from these I know of that occurs in a familiar hymn is in the title of this entry, from “For the Beauty of the Earth”. It just doesn’t get the “air time” that, say, love or patience does. So self-assessment on this attribute doesn’t occur all that often. It may have to come, as it recently did for me, at a time when the word itself isn’t mentioned.

Just a few weeks ago, the Chesterton House in Ithaca held their annual Institute of Biblical Studies program. The theme was “Gospel Freedom: Ancient Words, Modern Wisdom”, and each session focused on one of the Ten Commandments. I went to the morning sessions on Saturday. The first session dealt with the sixth commandment: “You shall not murder.” The speaker said he had once been invited to speak to an audience of clergy and seminary students. One of the attendees had joked beforehand that there shouldn’t be too much to say on that topic to this particular crowd. And it’s easy for most people, Christian or not, to think that they’ve got this commandment under control. (Incidentally, the ESV’s footnote says, “The Hebrew word also covers causing human death through carelessness or negligence.”)

The story continued with the speaker pointing out that Jesus’ take on this commandment is much fuller than a cursory read would lead to:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.

As many church leaders, including Luther and Calvin, have pointed out, the proscriptive commandments come with (perhaps implicit, but Jesus is drawing them out in the Sermon on the Mount) prescriptive commandments—in the case of “do not kill”, the converse “love your neighbor” is implied. Even more, as the speaker told his clerical audience, Jesus’ words above show us that we must recognize we are all at times murderers in our hearts. Hatred and indifference are ways we denigrate and dehumanize others; he spoke at length about how the phrase “says to his brother, ‘Raca’”(above translated by the ESV as “insults his brother”) means calling someone worthless and beneath contempt. If we do not acknowledge the dehumanizing tendencies we harbor, we will not be able to take hold of the gospel of grace.

I think gentleness is part of the solution to indifference. A proverb says, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” I can certainly discount people, either secretly or blatantly, intentionally or carelessly, and so I ask God to guide me to recognize, acknowledge, and respect the humanity of everyone I meet.

stamp thine own image

2008-03-02T23:20:00.002-05:00

One of Hannah’s and my favorite pastimes, when we’re not going out, is watching Fraggle Rock. Recently we watched the first-season episode “I Want to Be You”, in which Red becomes jealous of the attention Mokey gets from her poetry, as well as the peaceful way she has of enjoying the world, and decides she wants to be like Mokey. She bemoans:

And how I wish I could change myself.
Change to somebody new.
And how I long to exchange myself.
How I wish I were you.

Now, Red is the impulsive, daring, spotlight-grabbing member of the group, and although Mokey is her best friend, she just can’t pull off the laid-back, hippie, artistic lifestyle. Her friends realize that she had been feeling neglected, and she realizes that she can’t win approval just by mimicking someone else, and the episode ends happily and affirmatively. It’s important to realize that making ourselves a mirror image of someone else won’t really succeed in changing our place in the world, or before God for that matter.

Except that often we speak or sing in words that echo Red’s:

O to be like Thee! blessèd Redeemer,
This is my constant longing and prayer;
Gladly I’ll forfeit all of earth’s treasures,
Jesus, Thy perfect likeness to wear.

Those words are Thomas Chisholm’s. More recently, Kathleen Thomerson wrote:

I want to walk as a child of the light;
I want to follow Jesus.
God set the stars to give light to the world;
The star of my life is Jesus.

We may wonder as we sing these hymns—what do we mean? Once we cast off this “old man” (or “sinful self”, or “flesh”, as it is variously translated), what will be left? How much of myself will I lose if I become more like Jesus? The answer: everything and nothing.

A sort of trivial example: the Enneagram personality test has become popular in recent years, and I remember when I was introduced to it, the resource I was reading tried to specify one personality type or the other for Jesus (I can’t now remember which); fortunately, in my brief internet research just now I found no such hard-and-fast claims, though a few speculated 5 or 8 or 2. Others claimed that Jesus had the perfect aspects of all the personality types. In either case, where Jesus falls squarely on some vertex of the enneagram or epitomizes all of them, it’s easy to wonder what will happen to our personality as God takes over our lives. Will we switch from a doer to a lover? Will our distinctness be obliterated?

This is where we lose nothing. I mentioned last week that things gain their fullest character by belonging to God. There will be darkness in our lives and in our past that will be stripped away, but God will use the mettle he has put in each of us to glorify himself in ways peculiar to our gifts and position. As Paul explained to the Corinthians: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

But there are many times we fail to be ourselves, by which I mean we fail to be free in the sense that Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. … Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” That phrasing makes it sound appealing, but we all know the difficulty of believing in and following the truth. Thus we must lose everything: our pride and willfulness, our timidity and slothfulness, our anger and covetousness, which are not marks of any healthy personality. We must give ourselves up so that we can be remade, and though we may not recognize ourselves at the end, it will only be because of added glory, not because of lessened selfhood.

When we want to be like Jesus, it is because we want to be closer to God and better servants of others. Our guilt has already been exchanged for his righteousness; now we long only for his strength in exchange for our weakness.

take the dimness of my soul away

2008-03-01T23:31:00.005-05:00

This morning, I alluded to Cowper’s use of the “theology of contentment.” That’s a somewhat loaded phrase, and I wanted to clarify what I meant by it, and why I claimed to find it in Cowper’s writing. One place in the Bible where this topic is discussed is in Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, where he thanks them for being concerned about his well-being. He is truly grateful, but he takes the opportunity to teach them about the sufficiency of God:

Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Kierkegaard stretches out the description a bit further, describing his “knight of faith” in Fear and Trembling:

He takes delight in everything, and whenever one sees him taking part in a particular pleasure, he does it with the persistence which is the mark of the earthly man whose soul is absorbed in such things. He tends to his work. So when one looks at him one might suppose that he was a clerk who had lost his soul in an intricate system of book-keeping, so precise is he. He takes a holiday on Sunday. He goes to church. … He lives as carefree as a ne’er-do-well, and yet he buys up the acceptable time at the dearest price, for he does not do the least thing except by virtue of the absurd.

So this same character is recognizable in “The Task” when Cowper writes:

He is the happy man, whose life even now
Shows somewhat of that happier life to come;
Who, doomed to an obscure but tranquil state,
Is pleased with it, and, were he free to choose,
Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content indeed to sojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.

These examples have many other parallels in Christian literature, particularly within monastic writings. (One is also reminded of the folktale—told and retold, from what I can tell, in cultures all over the world—of the melancholy king, who is told that the cure for his sorrow is to find the happiest man in the world and to wear his shirt; when he finds the man, he has no shirt, and the king learns that he will never find contentment in riches or power.) Often, however, the additional point is made that contentment should not be confused with complacency or slothfulness. Cowper in particular says:

He serves his country; recompenses well
The state beneath the shadow of whose vine
He sits secure, and in the scale of life
Holds no ignoble, though a slighted place.
The man whose virtues are more felt than seen,
Must drop, indeed, the hope of public praise;
But he may boast, what few that win it can,
That if his country stand not by his skill,
At least his follies have not wrought her fall.

Paul says often that each member of a community should contribute as they can and as they have ability.

I do not have much to add to these writings; right now I mostly find it useful to have them collected. Even as we work to praise God and to serve our fellow creatures, we should be mindful that every aspect of our lives comes by God’s grace, and indeed God alone is sufficient for us to find peace in the world.

his wonders to perform

2008-03-01T12:20:00.000-05:00

William Cowper was a man who looked for hope. He was afflicted by severe depression and anxiety throughout his life, often leading to the conviction that he was thoroughly damned. His association with the Unwin family and John Newton helped bulwark him, as did the devotion to God that he developed during a period in an asylum. I knew of him before today through his handful of hymns that have become standards. This morning I was reading through the Norton Anthology of Poetry and came across their selection from his monumental work “The Task”.

This section, taken from Book VI “The Winter Walk at Noon”, blends the imagery of English carols, the psalms, the Hebrew prophets, Revelation, the letters of Paul, and the theology of contentment to describe the hope of God’s renewing work:

Oh scenes surpassing fable, and yet true,
Scenes of accomplished bliss! which who can see,
Though but in distant prospect, and not feel
His soul refreshed with foretaste of the joy?
…
Thus heavenward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restored.
So God has greatly purposed; who would else
In His dishonoured works Himself endure
Dishonour, and be wronged without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shattered world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! We would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate His laws,
And suffer for its crime: would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,
How pleasant in itself what pleases Him.
…
Come then, and added to Thy many crowns
Receive yet one as radiant as the rest,
Due to Thy last and most effectual work,
Thy Word fulfilled, the conquest of a world.

This hope, I think, is our key to Christian living. We have no excuse for failing to benefit the world when our God is so constantly working to restore it, and has given us the honor of working with him. Again, it’s not that we work to be good in God’s eyes; God makes all things good, and our hope in his efficacy inspires us to live well. We are always unsuccessful at making ourselves good, though we strive for it. Our hope is in Jesus (I still need to go back and reflect more on the crucifixion and resurrection) and the connection he gives us to God the Father, as well as in the promises of restoration God made before Jesus came to earth. Even when we are feeling dark and adrift, we can assert our confidence in the eternal source of light and strength.

I have heard thy voice

2008-02-28T23:37:00.003-05:00

Each time I pray these days, I make sure to pray that what I do, I do to God’s glory. That’s a pretty frightening prayer, actually, since I spend a lot of time not really being “good” (not being “bad” per se, but sort of neutral). For example, as a grad student, I spend some portion of my day surfing the Internet. Unless I stick with strictly enriching/edifying websites, how does that give glory to God? And what about the time that I spend trying to work but just getting frustrated? I am not sober enough in temperament to spend all my time intensely goal-driven. I generally find self-help books annoying. Am I missing something?

I remember quite well one moment in a church in 2003, when I had just finished my Peace Corps service and was traveling before returning home. One spends a lot of time reflecting on how the service went and what it revealed about one’s character in that situation. I realized I had been struggling with increasing anger and self-doubt. I had nowhere specific I was going, and I needed to take some time to pray. I told God, “Whatever I am or become in the next few years, I am yours.”

Which reminds me of another story I enjoy telling. A friend several years ago asked me her favorite conversational question: what one word would you use to describe yourself? It posed an interesting, theretofore unencountered, challenge, because I had had opportunities (say, in English class) to describe myself in three words or something like that. One word is an entirely different issue. After thinking for a while, I replied, ”God’s”. Which really is the only answer I can give, because whatever else I am, I owe to him.

It’s not only to myself that I enjoy applying this adjective. I drew a sketch in my youth of all the pieces of the universe I could then conceive of, and included a “quote” which I attributed to God: “Man cannot describe the wonders of creation—the sun and moon, the planets and the stars—with his mortal words. I can. It is—they are—mine.” When something belongs to God, it isn’t constricted by anything. It becomes fully itself. God will bring glory to himself, and if we make ourselves his, then what we are becomes a reflection of and a testament to his glory. So perhaps a better way to phrase that prayer I’ve been trying to get at is, God, please make us yours.

in cloud and majesty and awe

2008-02-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

I wasn’t sure what to write about this evening, so I went over to Sacred Space for inspiration; this is a website run by a group of Jesuits in Ireland, intended to guide daily prayer through contemplation of a Bible passage. Today’s passage was from Matthew chapter 5:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

Each passage comes with an optional aid in understanding the message. This one included the following:

The law is good only because it leads to Christ. All of religion is good only insofar as it leads us to God and through Christ.

This comes back to something I’ve mentioned before but haven’t had the chance to properly develop: namely, that religion isn’t about making us look or feel good, or beating ourselves or others down. It is about connecting with God. If God gave us a law, it wasn’t to provide a gauge of spiritual superiority; it was to bring us closer to him. Arbitrary? Hardly. We sort through the legal minutiae of the Old Testament to try to determine “what still applies today.” But if we’re simply arguing over whether or not to wear clothes of mixed fabrics to prove our dedication, we’re once again missing the chance to ponder what God has in mind for our way of living. How do we give glory to God?

I can’t say this is the most comfortable selection from Jesus’ words. For one thing, what does Jesus’ fulfillment of the law have to do with our keeping it? And how firm is this dichotomy between being “least” and “great” in the kingdom of heaven? At least a little law-breaking doesn’t seem to cast us out of the kingdom, although it does change our standing there. In a place where faithfulness is the ultimate expression of love—where God, who alone is perfect, alone is perfectly loving and faithful, having already demonstrated how far he will reach to fulfill his promises—our faithfulness will shine like silver, our weaknesses having been burned away (like dross in a refiner’s fire, as an image from the Bible suggests). If we are faithful with what God has given us (as I wrote about on Sunday), then we may be rewarded with the words “Well done, good and faithful servant”—back to the parable of the talents.

What’s clear is that we are not immune from responsibility after Jesus’ coming. Our freedom cannot come at the cost of our faithfulness, or we are building up lives of chaff. God gave us the law to chasten us, but also to save us through and from the law. Much goes into that statement; I hope it has some kind of clarity, since I don’t have the energy to expound more. I hope you all have a good night, and find a way to honor God by being faithful.

phone call from abroad

2008-02-27T09:19:00.004-05:00

At 4:00 this morning, I received a phone call. From “Unavailable”. The first time, the rings cut short and I thought it was a mistake. The second time, I picked up.

“Hello?” I said.

“Allo? Daouda?” came the response.

“Oui! C’est Daouda!” I exclaimed.

You see, Daouda was the name given to me by the people in Kérouané. It’s quite common for Peace Corps Volunteers to adopt or receive new names from their village as part of the welcoming process. “Daouda” is just the Arabic form of “David” (it’s a palindrome in Arabic, too, just three letters da-wa-da, which is exciting). My new family name was Camara, which is one of the dominant family names around there.

The phone call was from Sery, the father of the family I had lived with. He is a blacksmith and farmer; his forge, a low hut with a bellows in the middle, was just behind my hut. Since today is Wednesday, I expect he was about to head down to the market to sell the tools he had made. Annie had told me she would try to arrange a phone call from Sery, when she described the weird alternate-reality Kérouané where everyone carries cell phones, old men in their boubous and kaftans shouting “Inike!” into their (or their grandchildren’s) phones.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, the notion of a rural town in a third-world country suddenly becoming equipped with cell phones, consider the following: when phones first started being used, there was a lot of physical infrastructure that had to be installed. Precisely the sort of thing developing countries had no manpower or use for. Now it just takes building and powering the appropriate kind of tower—no digging to lay down cables or anything like that. Why did cell phone use arise so much more quickly in Guinea (or, say, India, where some of the same effects held)? They weren’t already invested in the old technology. Plus, there are lots of people working right now to bring the “information gap”, which has been predicted to be at least as important in hindering development in this era as the “income gap”.

Sery sounded quiet and tired. We just talked for three or four minutes, mostly exchanging greetings. Greetings are an essential part of maintaining relationships in West Africa. At the time Annie and I were serving there, it seemed like such superficial conversation. But every society has glue, and some vocabulary that forms part of that glue. It’s just rude to cut the greetings short. I wanted to be able to talk more, but I hope the time we had was meaningful to him. He said he received the notes I had sent (via Annie), and he asked about Hannah, whom I had mentioned in my letters. He said his family was doing well. He asked if I could still speak Malinké (which I probably could, but not well enough to use it over a phone). It was sort of an incredible experience. I just thought I’d share it with you.

the birds their carols raise

2008-02-25T23:24:00.006-05:00

We’ve been talking about creation in our Monday night Bible study. It’s led to some very broad and challenging topics—the nature and character of God, the problem of evil in the world (viz. Job), the Fall, the resurrection, evolution, predestination, eschatology, and so forth. Tonight we touched on most of those. At the end, we spent time in worship with the hymn from which the following verses are taken:

This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

This is my Father’s world, dreaming, I see His face.
I ope my eyes, and in glad surprise cry, “The Lord is in this place.”
This is my Father’s world, from the shining courts above,
The Beloved One, His Only Son,
Came—a pledge of deathless love.

The first of these two verses is often the concluding verse in hymnals. The latter I had never seen until I searched on Cyberhymnal (somewhat justifiably, because although the text isn’t bad, it doesn’t scan well with the traditional tune).

When I was younger, I thought the phrase “though the wrong seems oft so strong” meant that, when we are making choices, the wrong option is frequently attractive. “God is the ruler”, and so we should take that into account when we are trying to make the right choice. The context of the verse shows that, rather, a fundamental question is being addressed: why are things still going wrong all around us? It answers only with hope: we have plenteous evidence of God’s presence, not least in the natural world, and we have faith that Jesus’ sacrifice and God’s sovereignty will conquer at last sin, and death, and sorrow. (Another line reads, “This is my Father’s world, should my heart be ever sad?”) This is the constant problem one finds people in the Bible facing, particularly in Job, Ecclesiastes, and the psalms: why do the wicked prosper? And usually the only answer we receive is that God is waiting for the proper time to intervene and stop the world with its suffering. Not good enough, we want to say. But when we turn from the question of why is God allowing these things to why are we carrying them out, we have to face some dark features of ourselves. We can’t fix them; somehow, we can’t stop ourselves from being bad. We will need God. Maybe he’s just waiting for us to realize that. Once we do, we realize that all we ever needed was God.

small things

2008-02-25T01:17:00.003-05:00

It happens time and again, naturally and often quite correctly: dreams start out small. Which is to say, their fulfillment does. The folks who won Academy Awards tonight got them for deeds small (e.g., the musical duo that won the “Best Song” award) and great (e.g., Robert Boyle’s “Lifetime Achievement” award), all done well. Doing a job well is what earns you respect and professional trust. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as I draw nearer my graduation. I have a few phrases from the Bible posted in my office; the main one is simply a printout of Psalm 103 (which I read a meditation about some years ago at a time that made it particularly touching):

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
…
As for man, his days are like grass;
he flourishes like a flower of the field;
for the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place knows it no more.
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.

These are reminders I need daily.

But lately there’s been a quote from a parable of Jesus that I’ve thought about adding to the wall (almost certainly the thinking is more important than the putting up the words):

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?

To be honest, I had remembered this in my head as a paraphrase: “If you cannot be trusted with small things, how can you be trusted with great things?” This question is simple and direct, and very useful for a struggling grad student. Jesus’ question is more complex, particularly given the context. This, too, I had slightly misremembered, thinking it came from the story of the talents, which instead has the exchange:

And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’

And later:

‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.’

Already this is a bit puzzling, but it is at least clear that we will be accountable for what we have done—how we have “invested”—the gifts and resources God has given us.

The actual story from which the quote I had in mind is taken is even more confusing:

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

Here is a man who has been lazy and careless, yet when he finds himself at risk, through “shrewdness” (which seems like even more mismanagement and cheating) he gains his employer’s approval (although it’s not clear whether he gets to keep his job). This story seems to pick up thematically where the other left off (despite appearing earlier in Luke’s gospel than the parable of the talents). What it seems to be telling is that we should prove ourselves trustworthy of the worldly goods we are charged with, and that we should learn to be cunning (while remaining honest).

My work is time given to me, entrusted to me by God, but more directly by my university. If that’s not encouragement to use it well, I don’t know what is. What it leads to is how you can be trusted with greater things—higher posts, more prestige, better tasks—once you’ve shown how you handle the lesser ones.

There are other aspects to the phrase ”small things,” as well, such as in understanding. One grasps the greater things only upon a firm foundation of more elementary matters. Sometimes the genius of a master’s work is in making what seemed far off and distant more immediately accessible. But my devotion for today and for always in my work is to try to live up to the potential of what God have given me. Goodness knows I find it hard, and I feel inadequate plenty. But let me at least turn back some interest to my earthly and heavenly investors.

word of the eighth day

2008-02-22T00:54:00.004-05:00

For no good reason (nor do I have a good reason for still being awake), I came across the word zenzizenzizenzic. As a service to those who collect such words (you know who you are), I now make it available to you. If you don’t want to read the essay I linked to, then I’ll sum up: it means the eighth power of a number; it’s so antiquated that it only has one entry in the OED (from 1557); and its root is “zenzic”, meaning “squared”, which comes from the Latin “census”, through German, as a translation from Arabic, with an implication of area (the way one measures property).

my lord is near me all the time

2008-02-22T00:25:00.001-05:00

Inspired by my previous post on the moon, I’m going to use it as the focus of my Lenten meditation this evening, too. It appears pretty early in the Bible, by any reckoning:

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

(That passage still reminds me of one of my favorite sections from Copland’s “In the Beginning”, which we sang in the Chorale last spring.) The Israelites were not, I think, very good astronomers. That phrase—“the lesser light to rule the night”—echoes through dozens of conversations I’ve had with people who don’t understand how the solar system works and think the moon is only/always out at night. Even in Guinea, which is the closest situation I’ve been in to ancient Israel, and where people’s schedules depend immensely on the phase of the moon, most people had no idea that when the moon isn’t out at night, it can be visible in the day. I don’t blame Moses, or whoever authored Genesis, for not saying something more precise about the nature of the moon; they had much more important things to discuss, like the fact that God is an amazing creator.

Once you do know something about the moon, though, it becomes a wonderful metaphor. It’s like the mirror Robert Fulghum wrote about in It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It: not producing any light of its own, it takes the light of the greater light and shares it when the sun is inaccessible. It’s a physical manifestation of grace in the darkness.

This light is also genuinely the most peaceful place I’ve ever found to be. The expanse of stars is terrifying. But the moon is a neighbor, and it feels that way. While the Guineans would dance during the full moon, because it allowed them to stay up all night without fear of darkness, I would stand in awe. Moonlight feels like forgiveness. Debussy’s “Clair de lune” is gorgeous and almost captures it, but walking in moonlight gives an immense feeling of calm and starkness and security.

Tonight I just thank God for the moon, for all the dreams it has inspired and joys it has supported, for its beauty, and for the challenges it poses. May we treat it well, and may it always be a firm stepping stone to the rest of the cosmos.

will we find Alice there?

2008-02-21T23:02:00.001-05:00

This evening, a friend asked if I saw the lunar eclipse last night. No, I said, because I didn’t know about it. This was actually an unheard of state of affairs for me; for a few years, I caught every lunar eclipse I could, some unexpectedly. Here’s an email I sent to a friend after the last one I saw (October 2004):

Well, although it seems somewhat unfair to me, I only got to watch about the last 20 minutes of eclipsing. To make up for it, I think I have to stay up past midnight to watch the emergence of the moon from Earth's shadow. I missed the first part because I was teaching. Ah, well.

This is, I think, the sixth total lunar eclipse I've seen since 2000, but right now I can't remember where I was for one of them:

January 2000: Minnesota. A group of friends (who were still attending college in a town a little over an hour from Minneapolis) organized a eclipse-watching bonfire. Which is a good thing to have around when one plans on spending two to three hours outside on a January night in Minnesota.

January 2001: Guinea. This one was completely unexpected. I was sitting around with my host family having dinner, when we noticed it was time for the moon to be out yet remained quite dark. A few minutes later, we realized the moon was rising and eclipsing as it rose. It was incredible. I was super exciting [sic—but not inaccurate as you’ll see], hopping around and shouting in English, French, and Malinke how excited I was. The Guineans were afraid: their story for an eclipse is that a cat is eating the moon, and you have to play drums and beg for the moon to come back. I got to explain the process to a few people, however. It was not only a great astronomical experience, but a great cultural exchange.

May 2003: Memphis. My dad and I went out to a field to watch. On the way there, just a few minutes into the partial eclipse, our tire blew out, and we were changing it as the moon grew darker. We arrived at the field about halfway through the process, and stayed basically until it was done. The other time I went out to that field with my dad was when the Leonids were especially bright, in November 2002.

November 2003: Ithaca. I talked my friend Matt into driving out to Varna, where Cornell has an off-campus observatory. We figured there would be someone there manning the observatory, but no one was. About twenty or thirty other people showed up with the same idea, so we just enjoyed being out there together. I played resident astronomy expert for some folks, which was easy since I was basically explaining rotation and revolution. Also, of course, I took the opportunity to point out my favorite constellations. :-)

May 2004: ? This is the one I don't remember, even though it's the most recent. I figure I must have made an attempt to see at least part of it, but I can't for the life of me remember now where I was.

Tonight: I guess this is the last one until sometime in 2007 or 2008. I'll still be here then.

“2007 or 2008” seemed so far away back then. And now I’ve missed the last three I had a chance to see (since I was in Europe last March I could have watched that one—although as I think back, I may have known about it but it was cloudy—and I didn’t get up last August; see the link above for the list of eclipses this decade). The next one for me will I guess be in 2010, unless I’m in Africa this August.

A bit perturbed at myself for being so ill-informed, and remembering that I used to know when these things were coming because I used to visit Space.com much more often, I hopped over to that site and signed up for their RSS feed. Here’s the first headline I came across: Private Race to the Moon Takes Off. It turns out, Google and X Prize (the latter of which awarded a $10 million prize in 2004 to the creators of a privately-funded spacecraft that successfully reached >100 kilometers altitude twice) are jointly offering $20 million to anyone who can send a privately-funded robot to the moon and complete a set of tasks. It’s called the Google Lunar X Prize, and—to express the obvious—it’s awesome. It’s another example of how Google really is working to make the world of technology better in all the ways we’ve dreamed about. The competition is in the Space.com headlines right now because nine teams have just joined the competition, to join the first team that entered back in December. I imagine there are a few Cornell students aching to make their way onto one of these teams.

There has been a spate of moon-related media lately. Last fall, Hannah and I went to see In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary that interviews the astronauts who were on the moon, which at this point in history was certainly essential to accomplish. (This movie, inexplicably, is not nominated for an Academy Award. Seriously, this is a fantastic movie. In the metaphorical, not the literal, sense, because it’s not fantasy.) It made Hannah want to watch Apollo 13. Almost everything makes Hannah want to watch Apollo 13. In 2005, Tom Hanks released Magnificent Desolation, an IMAX quasi-documentary that, while it had some good moments, was not the best IMAX film I’ve seen, mainly because so much of it was CGI and sound stage stuff rather than actual footage. (We just saw it this past winter in Memphis.)

And just in the last couple of days, with the landing of Atlantis just in time for the U.S. government to shoot down a potentially dangerous satellite, space activity in general has gotten a lot of news. I personally am still thrilled that we have a permanent human presence in space with the International Space Station. (I along with many others was nervous back in 2003 that the Columbia disaster would abruptly end that promise of a permanent presence.) And who wouldn’t be inspired by the immense success of the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which are still chugging along (and providing images processed by—guess who—the Cornell Pancam Team).

I believe this work in space has to remain a priority. And I’m pleased Google has taken it on, as well. As usual, I don’t have any dreams myself to make it into space, but I will cheer and in fact support in any way I can.

lift me up and let me stand

2008-02-19T23:49:00.000-05:00

I have heard that non-Christians may complain the Christian faith is overly simplistic. It gives too many glib answers without taking into account the way the world really is, they say. Yet as I read the Bible and talk with pastors and other believers, it keeps coming up that the record we have of Christianity considers all aspects of human life. Take the Psalms: not only do you find devotion, trust, and piety, you also find fear, hatred, and accusations. The heroes of the Bible are sometimes the most fantastic sinners—proving that God really can work his will through dire circumstances, and that we have hope he can work in us, unworthy though we are. Questions are raised, such as in Job or Ecclesiastes or Romans, and left unanswered. What is constant, and miraculous, is the assurance that God loves us and wants to bless us. If we don’t wrestle with the questions of how God’s love is revealed, how we should share it with those around us, and why God doesn’t operate the way we expect him to, then that is our own shortcoming, not the religion’s. Faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” says the writer of Hebrews. It is not a blindfold. We can trust and still inquire. We can pray and still not understand. The benefit in this life of being a Christian is that we gain, sometimes slowly but always in increasing measure, the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; as Paul points out, “against such things there is no law.” And we have the story and the promise of a God who is carefully involved in our history and our lives. There’s nothing simple about that.

because he lives

2008-02-18T23:40:00.000-05:00

Somehow, things seem to keep coming back to Romans…

In our Bible study tonight, we began reading parts of Job. We’ve been discussing creation this semester, and the claim from Romans 1 that “what can be known about God is plain … his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” led into a proposal that we discuss the final chapters of Job, in which God speaks to Job in response to Job’s desire to face God with an accusation of injustice. If you haven’t read those chapters recently, I recommend them as an exceptionally rich depiction of God’s hand in creation and his continued work in the natural world. It is good fodder for discussion, too, as God’s rhetoric is tinged with sarcasm and indignation, while still revealing his great care for the world and the majesty of which he wants Job to be aware. Job has been asking for a chance to accuse God; God reveals that there are so many things in the world that Job can’t understand, he can’t begin to grasp the place and the justice of God.

After the study, I asked about another passage from Job, related more to the theme of justice than to creation. In one of his earlier discourses, Job complains that he has been abandoned (he has friends there with him, but at this point in the book he is finding less and less comfort in their words, which weren’t terribly comforting to begin with) by everyone in his family and household. Then he makes the declaration, using the words Handel chose to open the third part of the Messiah: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.” Who is he talking about? I asked. Who is it, when he has been abandoned by everyone who should defend him, that will come and save him, will stand with him before God? The standard Christological interpretation (the one used by Handel) is, of course, that the Redeemer is Jesus. But even if you don’t assume that from the outset, it’s hard to interpret the text as indicating anything other than that Job knows he needs God to intercede with God. He must be asserting someone supernatural, or at least not an ordinary human, will come and rescue Job from his suffering, and take him so that he can “see God.”

Which brings me back to Romans. Because, if the good man Job (and he was emphatically good, no question about it, not at a single point is it even hinted that he did anything wrong, except perhaps to question God’s wisdom and justice) was left by all he loved and cared about, what shall become of us, who are so much less good? Paul answers: “one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” This must be the Redeemer that Job looked forward to. The one who gave Job hope can give us hope, too, even when we feel worthless or abandoned.

Coda: if you’ve made it this far, then as a reward let me lead you to the MySpace page of a musical based on Job. You can hear selections from the musical on the site.

wait

2008-02-17T23:59:00.002-05:00

I could use some running and not being wearing about now…

Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
(Isaiah 40:30–31)

I know what it is to be exhausted. I have faced that in my life, primarily in my college and Peace Corps years. I am not now exhausted. I am tired. I am productively busy. I am keeping up with most things, and falling behind on others. I am, in these aspects, leading a normal life, as far as I can tell. I go to church, and I yawn a bit from not sleeping in, but I focus on the sermon and I pray. Except that these meditations have been making me more thoughtful during the day, I may not seriously pray much by myself during the week. I want that strength Isaiah spoke about. How do I get it? By waiting? What does that mean?

In fact, this whole chapter of Isaiah, despite being beloved and well-known, is perplexing in its logic. It begins with comfort and the proclamation that God will even out the ground, making rough places plain, and his glory will be known throughout the earth. Then it talks about how fleeting human life is, no more enduring than the grass of the field. Next, a return to good news: the shepherd of Israel is returning! He is coming with strength and compassion! There follows an extended discussion of how no other god or creature is worth comparing to the Lord, the God who is. And because of that, we are nothing before him. Nothing we do can be hidden from him. He is all-powerful and inscrutable. Yet that means he knows us intimately, and he can and will uplift those who are struggling. This already is good news and a promise: that God saves his people from their struggles; later he will save them from their guilt.

So can we wait for the fulfillment of our hope? That we will know God and his immense power? I guess that big picture can lift us from any dreariness we might find in daily living. I want that promise. I have it. I will wait, and hope, and maybe with that I’ll find my feet moving more lightly in the present. I can tell that I barely even understand the promise, because my faith is so small. I’m glad God is more patient than I am, and that he will continue to pursue me to give me blessings.

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.

a wonderful savior

2008-02-16T23:22:00.001-05:00

To pick up where I left off last time (and yes, I know I’ll have to catch up a few days sometime; I started this entry on Wednesday, and have been hung up finishing it)… Here’s an excerpt from the second chapter of Philippians, which I linked to last time:

…being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name…

Jesus’ martyrdom (and resurrection, which I’ll address in a different entry) is qualitatively different from the others I mentioned before. Everything in Jesus’ life was supernatural, in the sense of stretching beyond what what is possible for each of us. I can imagine he had charisma (that’s part of what I think was meant when people said he “spoke with authority”) and compassion (favorite verse for elementary school kids to memorize when required to choose one: “Jesus wept.”), but that he displayed them in ways just enough subtly different that every act was miraculous.

At this point, to further contemplate who Jesus was requires a bit of mysticism. I generally make no secret of the fact that I spent several years, at the end of high school and the beginning of college, holding onto anti-Trinitarian theology. I couldn’t make sense of Jesus being God incarnate—not just from an essential perspective, but from a redemptive perspective. I mean that I wasn’t just confused about how Jesus could be both God and man (that’s a mystery never to be explained), but why Jesus could be a savior if he was something so different from us. In one of Paul’s most meaningful but most perplexing metaphors, he describes Jesus as the “last Adam”, exactly paralleling Adam in that sin entered the world through Adam while the world is saved from sin through Christ. For that to be so, I reasoned, Jesus had to be just like Adam in the beginning—wholly created, without any mark of wrongdoing—so that he could choose the right way on behalf of humanity and lead us back to God. (Which reasoning, at the time, obliged me to believe in an historical Adam.) Jesus was still to be exalted as our eternal ruler (good, just, and able to perfectly instruct and uplift us) and our intermediary with God (only the righteous can be in God’s presence and live). But it made no sense for him to be God, as well. (The time when I began to turn from a strong anti-Trinitarian position was when my dad explained to me that Trinitarianism isn’t an answer to the question of God’s nature—it’s simply a statement of that question.)

That position doesn’t really stand up to other parts of the Bible, however. The opening of John’s gospel and the opening of the letter to the Hebrews, among other places, acknowledge that God (the Father) made the world through Christ. I have no idea what that means, but it at least means Jesus is eternal. And Isaiah prophesied that his suffering and death would in fact take the place of our punishment; he humbled himself, then was humiliated.

So much more to say, but it’s gotten late once again and I’ve taken too many days off. So I’ll pick up some of these threads later.

skaters and flying saucers

2008-02-14T14:40:00.000-05:00

This one isn’t about Lent; it’s about math. I’m going to describe some excellent examples that came up in Thurston’s seminar this morning. To do so, I’m going to have to assume some pretty sophisticated manifold theory, so this isn’t really a “general interest” post. For those who have some knowledge of manifolds, however, these examples may prove enlightening.

We were talking about different kinds of admissible structures on a manifold $M$—specifically, what kinds of local homeomorphisms can be used to define structures. The last two we discussed were symplectic and contact structures. The former is fairly well-known: you have a non-degenerate, closed 2-form on $M$ that lets you do things like Hamiltonian mechanics. Thurston’s examples of symplectic transformations were flinging a chair around (position + momentum of an object gives a manifold, called the phase space of the object, with a canonical symplectic form) and light passing through lenses (presumably also a phase space-type manifold, but my grasp of Hamiltonian mechanics is relatively weak, having been acquired almost entirely in symplectic geometry classes).

Contact manifolds are less well-known. They’re often brought up to illustrate a “sister” geometry to symplectic geometry: symplectic manifolds are always even-dimensional, while contact manifolds are always odd-dimensional. Here’s the definition: a contact manifold $M$ has a non-degenerate 1-form $a$ whose exterior derivative $da$ is non-degenerate on the kernel of $a$ in each tangent space to $M$. Okay, flung that all out there at once. Here’s the geometry: since a 1-form restricts to a linear functional on each tangent space, its kernel (if it is non-degenerate) is a codimension 1 subspace of the tangent space—i.e., a hyperplane. So a contact manifold has a special collection of “tangent hyperplanes”, and the condition on $da$ tells in what way this field of hyperplanes is special. Here I’m not really interested in the technical reasons this definition is chosen. I just want to give the examples Thurston described.

The first was of an ice skater. On a skating rink, one has both position and direction: that gives a three-dimension manifold $M$, which can be thought of as (rink)x(circle of directions), or can be unfolded into $R^3$ if, as Thurston put it, you keep track of the winding number of the skater. However, at a given position and direction, you can’t move arbitrarily in $M$; the skate can move forward and backward in the direction it’s facing, or it can change direction. So you have a hyperplane $H_x$—i.e., a plane—in the tangent space to $M$ at $x$, which describes these possibilities of movement: one direction in $H$ points in the direction you’re currently facing, and one points in the “direction of changing direction”. This is a contact manifold. Skating a path around the ice rink means tracing a curve in the contact manifold that always remains tangent to the hyperplanes.

The second example shows how the first might be generalized. Suppose you have a jet, or a flying saucer, which can be at any point in $R^3$ and can take any orientation at any point, but can only move to a different point in a direction of the plane of its current orientation. The position-orientation manifold is a product of $R^3$ and $RP^2$ (the real projective plane)—or $S^2$ if you keep track of which way is “up” for the flying saucer—and hence 5-dimensional. The contact structure at a particular pair (position,orientation) is the product of the plane in $R^3$ corresponding to the current orientation and the tangent space to $RP^2$/$S^2$, which corresponds to the fact that you can roll either up-and-down or side-to-side.

Thurston went on to remark that many physical systems with some sort of dynamical possibilities can be described by contact structures, and the dynamics of the system are represented by diffeomorphisms that preserve the contact structure. I know more can be found in his book Three-Dimensional Geometry and Topology. I’m going to have to go look that book up soon.

keep me near the cross

2008-02-13T00:15:00.002-05:00

I am currently listening to Messiaen’s organ piece L’ascension. I first heard this piece in a cathedral in England—I believe it was in Canterbury—in the summer of 1998, while I was traveling after the St. Olaf Orchestra tour. I already loved Messiaen at the time. It is a cycle of works essentially about prayer and the presence of God. It seemed appropriate as I try to think more about the cross and drawing close to Christ.

As I said before, for Jesus’ death to have the meaning we impart to it, it matters that we know who he is/was. I cannot hope in the death of a martyr or any other merely good man. I can only mourn them, and be inspired by what blessings they may have left behind. I may work to right injustice that led to their death. I may study their lessons more closely, having been brought to a realization of my own mortality and shortcomings. But I do not obtain hope from it.

What led to Jesus’ death? Lots of answers here; I’m going for the ones that don’t just appeal to God’s inscrutable wisdom. It seems that he garnered the ire of community leaders in two ways: firstly by challenging their authority, and secondly by raising genuine concern that he was blaspheming. As one of my pastors has pointed out, he didn’t just set up new rules or tear down old traditions, he “loosened what had been made too tight, and tightened what had been made too loose.” Thus by definition he had to be acting against the establishment. It turned out that in the process he had to lift the burdens of the common Jewish believer while chastening the leaders who had become lax in their morality. The prophet Micah had reminded the people generations before: “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

The example of Jesus has led me to wonder if it is inevitable that a truly good man will be persecuted and perhaps killed. I know this idea is influenced by my reading of both Kierkegaard—for whom true belief and morality are impossible unless they stand in sharp contrast to the milieu—and Gibran—who writes many tales and poems about the oppression of people and the insistence of leaders, political and religious alike, to maintain their power by oppression. If so, it would add a different spin to the statement that “Christ died as a victim because it was God’s will that he do so”—namely the nuance that God willed Jesus to come to earth not only in order for him to die, but in spite of his inevitable death. He foresaw it, but declared that Jesus would come anyway; “the cup” would not pass from Christ untasted.

It is a bleak view of the world that it would be unable to restrain itself from killing a good man. It is not so far from the world we know, however. Consider Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK, Benazir Bhutto, Thomas Becket, Thomas More, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Itzhak Rabin, and so on. I could certainly list many genuinely good men and women who were not killed by either an individual or a government, but being good is no bullet-proof vest, and indeed often draws unwelcome attention due to one’s unwelcome message.

There is more to Jesus than this, however. Something in the way he humbled himself in life and death makes those unique; there is also the resurrection. These will probably be the things I reflect on in later days.

my hope is built on nothing less

2008-02-11T23:05:00.000-05:00

The crucifixion makes very little sense to me. It is the emotional and theological core of our religion; it simultaneously echoes pagan myths and completely contrasts with them in import; it is the basis of our hope for salvation, yet for all we depend on it, even as great an event as it was seems at times insufficient. Whole sermons, whole weeks and years and lifetimes of sermons, are devoted to what it means that the Son of God came to earth and died for you and me. Paul writes in one of his letters:

[W]e preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

I still get stuck on the stumbling block sometimes.

Here’s the thing: yes, it was terrible. Yes, it may have been the greatest evil ever perpetrated by humankind. But you can’t tell that from the externals. Jesus suffered a unfair trial and half a day or so on the cross. Plenty of people have been tortured way beyond that since. One can look at either the individual or the cultural level and find grotesque acts of violence, hatred, contemptuous murderous evil. We as Christians claim the murder of one good man is the hope for our forgiveness. Every evil deed ever done by any one of us, we claim, can be struck from our record because of the crucifixion. For this to make any sense, it matters who Jesus was.

I’m trying to avoid the “churchy” language, and put these things in my own terms (the way I do with math ideas I barely understand). The language we use shapes our understanding and perception of any topic. Talking (or writing) about our records before God or the perfect sacrifice to redeem humankind seems to dismiss the issue, just because it’s talking with a different set of vocabulary. I want to know how it is that I can hope in the death and resurrection of Jesus—His “blood and righteousness” as the hymn from which the title is taken continues. That means, for now, I don’t have any way to wrap this up, and I’ll probably be dealing with this in writing over a few days.

it is finished

2008-02-09T18:05:00.000-05:00

To finish up this first week of writing for Lent, I want to return to a hymn we sang during the Ash Wednesday service. The text is a poem by John Donne, “A Hymn to God the Father,” and is better than the tune, so that’s all I’m going to write about.

I.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Three main ideas here (as in each of the stanzas). First, Donne starts by inquiring about original sin. This is the guilt of Adam and Eve’s first sin, which is imputed to each of us as their descendants. Nothing to do for it except ask God’s forgiveness. Theologically, I don’t believe in original sin, although I do find the story of the Fall of Man a useful narrative. Let me briefly argue against St. Augustine. He famously declares (in the Confessions, Book I, chapter 7) that infants must be sinful, because they demonstrate such wanton selfishness. In support, he quotes David in Psalm 51: “I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Conception, therefore, is the point at which we become guilty of sin, hence Donne’s phrase “where I begun”. But infants are not moral beings. They are entirely dependent, and if they don’t cry out, they will suffer neglect. (Augustine mitigates his argument with the acknowledgment that he can’t remember his infancy, so he can’t remember what it was like to be that selfish.) And I don’t think Adam was a historical person. He represents our right relationship with God, which becomes spoiled by our self-worship. No sooner does consciousness arise but we start rebelling, which is where Donne turns next.

The second point of the poem gives more convincing evidence of what Calvinists call “total depravity”—we want to be good, we even try to be good, but we consistently fail at it. As St. Paul says in Romans (quite extensively, but a single sentence sums it up), “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” This seems to be the main (extra-Biblical) argument put forth for the doctrine of original sin: why, if we are not naturally born to sin, would we keep doing it? Even if one posits the existence of a Satan, an arch-devil (which I do), this does not remove the responsibility and the guilt we bear for our persistent wrongdoing. I do not know why we do this. Paul doesn’t give an answer, either; he simply asks and answers, “Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! … For the law of the Spirit of life has set [me] free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”

But Donne isn’t there yet in this poem. Even once those persistent or occasional sins of which we are aware are forgiven, more remains.

II.
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt Thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When Thou hast done, Thou hast not done,
For I have more.

We are all gateways. I don’t think even the most reclusive of us has no affect on other people. We are encouragers, for good or for evil. Jesus taught that when we tempt others, we are guilty if they sin: “Stumbling blocks are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble. Pay attention to yourselves!” Jesus declared Himself to be a door, as well, through which those who enter are saved, and the good shepherd who enters by the door. He guides us, His sheep, in good paths. We can do either: lead people rightly or wrongly. And when our sin leads others to sin, we are doubly guilty.

Perhaps we have made amends. Perhaps we have turned from some particular evil behavior. Or maybe we gave something up during some past Lent, had a good year where we were on better behavior, “proved” we could give it up and don’t need to prove it anymore. It’s still incredibly difficult to overcome the guilt of these sins. If even a moment of weakness can haunt us years later, what about protracted obstinance of which we eventually repent, but still can’t bear to think about the damage done? I think the Catholics and Orthodox are on to something in the human psyche with ritualized confession and absolution. If a human can hear our deepest secrets and forgive us, it’s conceivable that God will, too. Jesus said that we cannot love God, who is unseen, without loving our brothers and sisters, who are seen. Conversely, it is easier to feel loved or forgiven by God when we know we are loved or forgiven by people.

But again, even if these particular transgressions are lifted from our record, something remains. We are not good enough; our actions continuously make this clear. If we depend on ourselves to earn God’s grace, we are lost. If we depend on asking God at each moment to forgive each sin, and thereby show that we’re sufficiently sorry, we are lost. And we know it.

III.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by Thyself, that at my death Thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, Thou hast done;
I fear no more.

Disbelief, lack of faith, doubt that God has fulfilled His own promise to us to save us—this is our final error and our final separation from God. It is interesting that at this moment of fear, Donne harks back to the pagan image of the spinning Fates, though he casts himself as one of the weavers. Paul tells us to run the race so as to receive the prize, but our strength is never enough. An athlete may deliver a perfect performance. We cannot deliver a perfect life.

Forgiveness—complete, eternal, and effective—is the light of Christ’s life and message. It is the “good news” after which the gospel is named. Jesus teaches us to live better lives, and we owe Him obedience to those teachings, but “what you should do to be nicer to people” isn’t news. That you are made holy by no work of your own—that is news. It is a glorious radiance for us to enjoy. It is the greatest sign of God’s love. I can hardly believe it. Indeed, on my own strength I can’t believe it. I need God’s illumination. I have the promise of it. I have God’s sworn oath that Christ will remain “a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek,” and the author of Hebrews adds, “This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.” Better than the law, which condemns us, that is. The law (“do unto others” and all that) is not abrogated; it is fulfilled, just not by us.

Donne makes the usual wordplay on “Son” and “sun” as Jesus shines His light. It has been noted that the entire poem could be viewed as wordplay on “done” and “Donne.” (A weaker wordplay may be present in the word “more,” because Donne’s wife’s maiden name was “More.”) In the end, God has the poet, and the believer, and fear along with death and hell is cast away.

new mercies

2008-02-08T09:57:00.000-05:00

Last night’s events led me to think about God’s faithfulness. And the more that happened, the more that seemed the right course for this reflection. Once when I gave a selection of hymns, I included Chisholm’s “Great is Thy faithfulness.” The inspiration for that hymn comes from one of the darkest books in the Bible, Lamentations (3:22-24). The author (probably the prophet Jeremiah), weeping over the destruction of Jerusalem, knows to look for God’s mercies at all times. Last night was not at all bleak, however, and it along with other times in my life leads me to contemplate another aspect of God’s faithfulness.

The events. (First, a notice: nothing here is as epic as the destruction of a city. My point will be to have an awareness of God even in small things in life.) Following dinner, Hannah needed to drive to the Lansing girls’ detention center for their weekly Bible study. I needed to go to the store to get ingredients to make a dish for a potluck tonight. My car isn’t working, so I was going to get dropped off at the grocery store, and would either have to walk (~25 minutes) or catch the bus (~5 minutes) home. Hannah and her comrades in the ministry had planned for an Ash Wednesday service with the girls. Time was rather important in all this. When we got out to Hannah’s car, however, we found the trunk was frozen shut. It contained the usual items for the Bible study—a basket holding a bell and an icon (it’s a Catholic study)—as well as Bibles they were taking to the girls and the ashes for the special part of the service. We tried for ten or fifteen minutes to get it open, which meant we were quickly getting late.

Finally, we gave up. Trying to pry the trunk was only bending the metal, and we had no idea where it was stuck. So we left; Hannah picked up the other woman going out to Lansing, and I was left at the grocery store. I did my shopping in about six minutes, and ran out to the bus stop—just in time to catch the bus to my house. No walking home with heavy bags for me that night. Now, I know that’s coincidence. But the fact of coincidence can obscure, I think, common grace. “Common grace” refers to God’s general work in the world, not for the individual or the church in particular. It is well summarized by saying, “God causes it to rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” Sometime God’s grace comes in rain, sometimes in not rain (like when that window of sunshine opens just long enough for you to walk home). Like I said, I don’t think all this is any sign of God’s favor (most of the time); these are signs of God’s love. Conversely, when things go badly, it’s not that God doesn’t like you. God wants you to be mindful of Him. In those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days, there is something else to be thankful for: that we only need God for contentment, not opportune weather. These different kinds of times are all jumbled up and come at random, it will be argued. But I ask, can grace not come even through randomness?

Hannah arrived at my apartment a couple of hours later and told me what happened with the rest of the evening. When they arrived at the detention center, she tried the trunk one more time, and it opened. They went inside, and a staff worker (whom they would not have encountered if they’d gotten there earlier) saw them with the ashes and asked if they were going to have an Ash Wednesday celebration; she had not been able to go the day before, she said. They said yes, and she was able to join them for a short while. Before telling me all this, Hannah prefaced with, “God is faithful.” And that sealed my decision to meditate on that phrase this morning.

holy, holy, holy

2008-02-07T07:30:00.000-05:00

Today, I can hardly start any better than with the sermon we heard last night at Cornell’s Episcopal service. The priest, Barb Schmitz, spoke on “observing a holy Lent,” in keeping with the conclusion to the preface of Ash Wednesday:

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word.

She never defined “holiness,” so let me try to begin with that.

Etymologically, the word “holy” is related to the German “heilig” and the Greek “hagios” (as in “hagiology,” the study of the life of a saint). It doesn’t appear to be directly related to the word “whole,” but it does in origin mean that which must be kept whole, or must not be violated. I was raised with the teaching that “holy” simply means set apart and devoted, specifically to God.

Barb began by telling about an interview she heard a year or so ago with Nancy Pelosi. When asked if her parents would be proud that she was going to be the first woman Speaker of the House, she responded,

They'd be proud, but they didn't raise me to be the speaker. They raised me to be holy; they raised me to care about other people.

How many parents, she asked, would have holiness as their primary desire for their children? And what do we know about God’s desire for us? God has made us into “a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” St. Peter makes this description after talking about how Christ sets the foundation and the standard for the church, but it is still easy to reject Him. He lived a perfect life in this world, and we should seek to be holy as He is holy (as God commanded the people of Israel long before).

Barb pointed out that the Book of Common Prayer lays out the ways for us to practice holiness in the season of Lent: see the first quote above. The preface of the day also mentions that, historically, the penitential nature of Lent was in preparation for the celebration of Easter. That, for anyone who wonders, is why we have six weeks of fasting. But there is a greater resurrection ahead—the time when God will make all of us perfectly holy—and we should strive in the interim to become more like Jesus. Not to “prove” ourselves to God (or, for that matter, the world), but in awe and gratefulness.

orange crosses on the Cornell arts quad

2008-02-06T08:17:00.000-05:00

When I got home last night, I hoped that phrase (the title above) would produce some results on Google. I was walking to choir rehearsal along the diagonal path that goes from the clock tower to Goldwin-Smith Hall, and saw the crosses resembling roadside markers where someone has died in an accident. (Except they were orange.) They had names written on them; the ones I read appeared to be Hispanic in origin—Sanchez, Morena, etc. They were clearly temporary, as a few were already fallen into the muddy ground. But I found no indication of what they were placed there for. Google, it turns out, didn’t help. So I don’t know their purpose and can’t share it with you.

Is it ever helpful just to be mindful of people? Not issues, but people you’ve never heard of, nor know anything about? I can imagine a half-dozen reasons for those crosses to be there, although I won’t post those particular speculations. If the crosses really were orange, and that aspect wasn’t just the result of my walking past them in the dark and rain, them there is conceivably a connection with orange ribbons, although I don’t see many convincing ideas in Wikipedia’s list. In the absence of such information, what do I do with those crosses and those names (besides internally chastise whoever organized to put them up with no additional information)? I can enter into prayer.

My regular prayer life is spotty, but since middle school I’ve tried to take time during brief flashes when I am made aware of the lives of others to pray for them. Each time I hear a siren going by, I pray for those involved: whose houses or lives may be endangered; who may be confronting a violent situation as police, victim, or perpetrator; who have come to a point I imagine must be confusing, terrifying, or infuriating. I don’t even have a name, just a noise, and I know they need God’s presence. Last night I had a whole collection of names before me, names that I couldn’t fully take in and whose unifying feature I couldn’t identify. Is it helpful for me to pray for them? I have to believe so. I have to believe God is wise enough to intervene magnificently in situations I can’t adequately address; I am of course strengthened in this conviction knowing that the Holy Spirit speaks for me when I can’t speak.

That said, if anyone knows why these crosses were there, please let me know.

Lenten writing

2008-02-06T08:13:00.000-05:00

Today begins this year’s (very early) season of Lent. I’ve decided to pick up the discipline of writing something reflective here every day. Becky did this last year, with some really great results, and it seems very appropriate to spend time each day this month/40 days plus Sundays thinking intentionally rather than idly and sharing those thoughts in a hopefully productive manner. So here goes.

where to go part 6

2007-12-19T18:35:00.000-05:00

On Monday night, Hannah’s family and I went to the Lyric Opera in Chicago to see Doctor Atomic, by John Adams. This is a recent opera, premiered in 2005 in San Francisco, about the first test of the atomic bomb; Chicago is presenting a revised version of the work. Major characters include the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, his wife Kitty, his colleagues Edward Teller and Robert Wilson, and General Leslie Groves. Both Adams and the librettist/stage director Peter Sellars were present at the performance and took a bow at the curtain call.

The setting is June 1945, a month after V-E day but still a long while before V-J day. The bomb is hoisted onstage towards the end of the first act and remains present throughout the second act. (Compare the images from the article about the test and the article about the opera, linked above; the bomb looks exactly right.) The introduction of the bomb to the stage leads into the emotional (and, in a sense, Shakespearean) climax of the work, Oppenheimer’s soliloquy based on the text of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV. This poem has long held deep import for me, and it’s somewhat surprising that I haven’t mentioned it here before:

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,
Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely’I love you,’and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie:
Divorce mee,’untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

It is well-known that Oppenheimer struggled with the consequences of creating an atomic weapon. He later recalled being mindful of a passage from the Bhagavad Gita immediately after the test was completed: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” The whole first act of the opera portrays the moral struggle of the physicists—and the fear they held that all might go awry. In the staging of this aria at the end of the first act, at the phrases “to another due” and “betrothed unto your enemy”, Oppenheimer is kneeling and gestures back to the horrible globe suspended upstage. Whether or not Oppenheimer was religious (I don’t think he was), this shift from the devil to the bomb (by extension, the quest for violent power?) as enslaver was striking. (Some sources indicate that Adams and Sellars intended Oppenheimer to be a Faustian character.) I was reminded of the image from Asimov’s short story “Hell-fire”, where the face of the devil appears in a photo of a nuclear explosion. (The story is more of a position paper than a narrative, and essentially only lasts long enough to present this image.) Oppenheimer writhes under the text “knock, breathe, shine” and again at “break, blow, burn”. He flings his arms over his head in surrender at “o’erthrow me”. These small gestures were just a tiny contribution to a marvelous piece of dramatic music (which is much harder to describe than physical movements, and which I heartily recommend hearing whenever possible). I wish I were a baritone, so that I could sing it sometime.

It was not, however, the opera as a whole nor this musical setting in particular that prompted me to post this. It was the reference to a letter by Leo Szilard, read in the opera by Teller and included with a petition to be sent to President Truman:

Many of us are inclined to say that individual Germans share the guilt for the acts which Germany committed during this war because they did not raise their voices in protest against these acts. Their defense that their protest would have been of no avail hardly seems acceptable even though these Germans could not have protests without running risks to life and liberty. We are in a position to raise our voices without incurring any such risks even though we might incur the displeasure of some of those who are at present in charge of controlling the work on “atomic power”.

I’m not sure I agree with Szilard’s conclusion (or “inclination”) regarding the German people’s guilt. But this kind of situation keeps happening. We are again at a time when governments are acting in ways that are at best incautious and at worst reprehensible (I am concerned most particularly with ours at the moment), and the question of how culpable we are as citizens again arises.

I am appalled at the duplicitousness, arrogance, and incivility of our national behavior. Forget our unflagging support for Israel, which seems determined to uphold unstable and unfriendly relations with its neighbors. Forget the opportunism that accompanied the invasion of Iraq, or whether we should even have gone there. These are matters about which I know little, and which as far as I know could be justified or at least comprehended. Here are the actions to which I object: that we seem to have entered Iraq precipitously, with little idea of what to do afterwards, so that it now is smoldering in unrest and terror; that we cannot bring ourselves to acknowledge the rules of combat and the proper treatment of prisoners, so that we find words to excuse torture and means to obstruct due process (viz. Gitmo); that we frighten and abuse even ourselves with the threat of further terrorism if we fail to comply with arbitrary and superficial ways of addressing the problem. (Another blog last year phrased it well: “It’s easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it’s shortsighted.”)

In principle, these actions have been in the name of security and self-defense, but in practice they have mainly appeared to be displays of a kind of national Übermenschheit. During a recent gathering at my apartment, we pulled out a collection of Dr. Seuss’s political cartoons from World War II. Many are still relevant. I indicate in particular October 1, 1941, in which “America First” tells a tale of destruction of foreign children, but with the comforting moral that the listeners suffer no loss. We have lost much—I cannot rightly say whether it has just been in the last decade or over the last half-century—even on our own soil, even after 9/11. We have lost dignity and respect. We have lost soldiers. We have betrayed trust. I remember how after the attacks of September 2001 I wanted nothing more than to see and hear my president speak to rally our country. But they did not merit this thrashing about that we have done, like some wounded monster. Even if we had lost nothing material in the last seven years, we must seek the welfare of those “foreign children” and pay heed to their humanity. As Donne has written elsewhere, “[A]ny man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.” May we, please, return to the fundamentals of civilized life, and act in such a way that our consciences will be clean and our world will indeed be safer.

where to go part 5

2007-11-24T21:45:00.000-05:00

Guinea’s back, so to speak. Not everything got resolved—it never does—but the worst of the protests stopped, Peace Corps went back (some of the Volunteers, but not all, who had been serving returned, along with a new crop), and along with that is the excitement of my friend Annie traveling back to our village! Annie served with me at the Lycée Almamy Samoury Touré in Kérouané (the name of the town possibly comes from the Maninka word “kayira”, meaning happiness; the school is named after a Guinean national hero). I taught math; she taught English. Now she and her boyfriend Matt, another RPCV (returned Peace Corps Volunteer) have returned in the other direction, to work on some writing projects. Just thought I’d direct you to her blog. Just the effort of getting into the country has spawned some good stories, and the writing is quality stuff. (Here’s hoping you can get some of it published, Annie!)

what it is is

2007-10-31T23:00:00.000-04:00

Haven’t written much about language here. Not that I don’t have plenty of opinions on the matter (look at my Blogger profile, and you’ll see I have language listed among my interests). I just haven’t felt any prompting to do so. And now that I do, and I begin thinking about all the related minutiae I could bring up, I realize that I must restrict myself to the one phrase that made me think of writing this. Else this entry would vastly balloon; after all, the subject of language and grammar has filled more than one book (most of these links are to classic or recent popular texts I have enjoyed).

The phrase that has piqued my pen is “What it is is”. I only recently began noticing this phrase. I don’t think it’s old, and I don’t think I’ve heard it used by anyone under 40, but I’ve been hearing it all over the place: in daily conversation, in lectures, in radio interviews. I figured someone else must have noticed this phrase and thought about it, so I did a quick Google search. Most of the links that came up are merely appearances of the phrase in one context or another. The first one, however, is a message from a linguists’ listserv. My favorite example contained there is a quote from a Crossfire transcript:

S: … isn’t the Bush policy a continuation of the Clinton administration's policy vis-à-vis Iraq?
B: No, what it is is it’s jacking it up on steroids and taking us into a war that I think we can win without putting our troops in harm’s way.

That response is jacked up on steroids, at least vis-à-vis “it”s and “is”s.

I was also planning to mention at the beginning of this post that I’m not trying to be William Safire (note: the biography should be updated; he is no longer a political columnist for the Times). When I did the search, however, I found a column of his on a closely related (but syntactically complete) phrase: “It is what it is.” He commented on the meaning, function, and curiously tautological structure of that phrase. I shall do similarly.

Part of what intrigues me about the phrase is that it’s filler, without actually being incorrect (as far as I can tell). “What it is” is a complete clause, capable of acting as a noun, although its use as an object is much more established than its use as a subject (e.g., “We want to know what it is.”) Hence it can certainly fill the role of giving the verb something to hang on to, but it does so more verbosely than strictly necessary (e.g., “Let me tell you about mathematics. What it is is the study of numbers and patterns”, instead of just “It is the study of numbers and patterns.”)

As for being “correct”, I place this property in relation to another phrase that jumps out at me: “The reason is because”. This phrase has generated a lot more ire and commentary. This is due to the flat-out grammatical incorrectness of the phrase. I don’t want to harp on the reasons here: those interested can go look at the links from the search. (It’s a conversation that’s been going on since the early part of last century, at least, based on the texts among those links.)

Now, I’m less of a grammatical prescriptivist than I might once have been. I hold that the function of language is to communicate, and so “good” and “bad” grammar are established on the basis of how well they aid communication. But communication, in some sense, can only happen by convention, and so we must allow for the conventions of meaning, both in denotation and connotation. My favorite example along these lines is “hopefully”. Look at that word. The “-ly” ending should tell you straight off that it’s an adverb. Its most frequent use nowadays, however, is as a replacement for the phrase “I hope that” or “it is to be hoped that” (e.g., “We’re planning on having a picnic tomorrow. Hopefully, it won‘t rain.” How could “it” (whatever is doing the raining, another interesting convention of language) do anything in a hopeful manner, whether raining, not raining, or otherwise?) And I’m perfectly happy to use the word this way, and to enjoy hearing others use it this way.

“Because”, on the other hand, is a logical connector. It has always been a logical connector between two otherwise independent clauses. “Hopefully”, in my previous example, has the benefit of sitting slightly outside the main syntax of the sentence. Putting “because” in the unfortunate position of being a relative pronoun (which is what “that” would be in its place) muddles the structure of the whole sentence. Is the meaning obscured? Not in the slightest. So I can’t get too upset with it, but I avoid it nonetheless.

I avoid “what it is is”, too, but mostly because I’m amused by it and not sure where I stand on its rhetorical effectiveness. Let me finish by comparing it to certain structures in French. (When I learn that some superficially awkward or suspect construction has corroboration or analogue in French, I tend to relax about it.*) One of the first general constructions one learns in French class is how to ask what something is: “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” or, more generally, “Qu’est-ce que… ?”. Translated verbatim, the first of these means “What is it that it is?” The latter appears in questions such the following, which one might hear upon entering a store or restaurant: “Qu’est-ce que vous désirez?” (“What is it that you desire?”). This last inquiry could be phrased more tersely as “Que désirez-vous?” (“What do you desire?”) without sounding right-out rude, but as a college professor of mine pointed out, it would seem affected or pretentious to ask “Qu’est-ce?” (“What is it?”). The phrase est-ce que (“is it that”) is the boon of French students everywhere who can’t remember how to invert subject and object in a question: it’s much easier to ask “Est-ce qu’il y a des devoirs?” for “Is there any homework?” instead of “Y a-t-il des devoirs?” Nor do I think anyone would bat an eye at a sentence beginning “Ce que c’est, c’est…” (“That which it is, it is…”). With French calling ceaselessly upon these phrases, which if consistently translated would sound like so much filler, we can certainly forgive the English equivalent.

It doesn’t seem that there’s actually anything to forgive. “What it is is…” is not only syntactically correct, it calls the listener’s attention to the fact that the speaker is trying to give an accurate representation or account of the topic at hand. In that sense, it’s almost a 21st century “verily”. And who can fault the return of that rhetorically necessary sentiment?

* For example, I think the French get right the use of personal pronouns in predicates of sentences. Louis XIV’s immortal “L’état, c’est moi”—translated verbatim as “The state, that’s me” and more justly as “I am the state”—exemplifies this phenomenon. The French say “c’est moi”, while we have somehow convinced ourselves that we should say “That is I”, because the verb “is” for some inscrutable reason means “I” should be in the nominative case. It would be just as reasonable to argue ourselves into saying “That am I” and properly make the verb match that presumptively nominative “I”. (Because that is clearly unreasonable, it follows by some logical principle/fallacy for which I have no name at this time that is unreasonable for us to say “That is I.”) It could not possibly be right to say “C’est je”—that sentence, if it can be called such, sounds incredibly tortured. Perhaps this difference between French and English in what is “standard” is due to our calling “me” a strictly object form of the pronoun, while the French call “moi” a pronom tonique, capable of multiple functions (including, to mention another grammatical structure we should allow in English yet still try to ban, placing greater emphasis on a subject: “Lui, il est sympa”—“Him, he’s nice”).

what it's like to be 30

2007-10-28T01:49:00.000-04:00

No way can I actually give a satisfying description commensurate with the title (wouldn’t that be the subject of a novel?) Nor will I try to fully explain that I am aware how small and skewed is my perspective—how I do not understand the lives of most 30–year–olds, and I don’t think they would understand mine, and how my being 30 is in some ways like others’ being 25 or even others’ being 40. But recent days have led me to think much about where I am, to no particularly productive end, but I feel like writing anyway.

I feel like it would be nice to start all over again, to try out my life in a more focused and engaged way. To not worry so much about what people (particularly those in authority) think of me. To find something to be really passionate about. “If I had known then what I know now…” But, barring a real reincarnation, it might even be nice to start from here, and change everything. I’m thinking in particular of the opening lines from John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High”:

He was born in the summer of his 27th year
Comin’ home to a place he’d never been before.
He left yesterday behind him; you might say he was born again,
You might say he found a key for every door.

I’m not quite sure what the fourth line means, but the first two deliberately use paradox in an attempt to describe discovering a fresh new life. The third line takes the familiar Christian image of rebirth and gives it a different flavor. The hero of the song seems to restart his life as a hermit: “they say that he got crazy once and he tried to touch the sun.” No search for success or fame (not that those have ever been my preoccupation), no indication that he’s fleeing some deeply troubled time (again, while I’ve had some setbacks, I haven’t gotten in serious trouble). Just a feeling, a thought that there’s peace to be found somewhere. And he finds it; it turns out to be a pretty good life for this guy, in relative solitude and communion with nature:

Now he walks in quiet solitude the forest and the streams,
Seeking grace in every step he takes;
His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand
The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake.

I don’t think Denver’s singing about himself, but about some idealized mythical mountain man who represents all of the good things Denver had found in the majesty of the Rockies. And he certainly captures what one would hope to find in leaving yesterday behind.

I’m at a strange place. I’m very nearly halfway through my time of being 30. Many people my age have a closet full of suits to choose from and lots of nice shirts and shoes. I wear mostly jeans and t-shirts (with the weather getting colder, I get to wear sweaters, too, which I like) and have to make sure I do laundry every two weeks or so or I just run out of clothes. On the other hand, many people my age (sometimes the same people) have gotten stuck in jobs they hate, and in which they don’t get to interact with or touch people. I can’t say I really like grad school, but I enjoy the people in my office, and teaching is almost always a rewarding experience. (Friday I taught numerical integration methods, and that wasn’t so pleasant.)

When I was younger, I thought I was special. Not in the Harry Potter sense (a more apt analogy would be Garion from the Belgariad series, but I’m not sure how many people would know that means someone who’s grown up on a farm and suddenly learns he’s destined to become a great king; what better-known story captures this narrative?), but in the sense of being a good kid. Good = special, right? My teachers would say I could do anything I wanted, and I figured at some point I would be struck by what I wanted to do. No such luck. To continue the comparisons of the previous paragraph: I’ve done more than a lot of people with my life, I guess, but not as much as the ones who make real masterful creations. (John Denver, for example, released his first greatest hits album before he was thirty; this example is to show that I’m not just thinking about mathematics, infamously referred to as a “young man’s profession”.) Surely it’s not too late, however, right? I may not be on the ball with getting a nice household put together, but I still have talent and I’m still young and can achieve… something… of merit.

I feel like I need something to slap me and get me moving.

This evening I went to a concert by a folk singer who had been at St. Olaf at the same time I was. She’s a wonderful performer; I could tell several of her songs really touched some in the audience, and a slightly different set of songs resonated with me and some of the things I’m thinking (and trying to write) about. (Her name is Ellis, by the way.) The first was “Doin’ Fine”, talking about being on a long, late drive, acknowledging the challenges, and finding ways to enjoy the trip. Later she sang a new song, “Who Am I”, about doubt (”if it were water I would drown in it”) and fear (“if it were fire I would be ash”) and reflections on how really great we might end up being if we could remember who were are (she creates the image of a star that’s forgotten the sky, or a river who’s forgotten the sea, and speculates that that’s why we feel such awe and joy looking at them). Less seriously, she sang a love song to coffee (“I cool you down when it’s hot; I heat you up when it’s not. I’ll treat you right, oh, you know that you’re the one”). As the resident coffee snob in certain of my circle, although far from the only coffee lover, I felt obliged to lay hold of this song.

No conclusion here. I can’t even really vouch for coherence. Just thoughts, and the desire to be writing again. I should be writing more. I have several topics that have been playing in my head. For a while I’ve been thinking about essays on angels and faith. I still need to finish the narrative of our trip to the convent. A couple of stories I started and missed finishing were about picking strawberries over the summer and the death of another dear man just recently. There’s still more time to write. For now, time for bed.

cum sancto spiritu, part 1

2007-10-10T22:01:00.001-04:00

This past weekend was my first stay at a convent (community? ecclesiastical farm? it’s a little hard to describe succinctly). Hannah and I went with a couple of friends to the Community of the Holy Spirit in Brewster, NY, where we spent two very restful days and nights, in part to visit Suzanne, a priest we knew through Cornell. The Melrose Convent is an outgrowth of St. Hilda’s House in NYC and comprises six or eight women who work, farm, pray, and occasionally teach in a lovely, somewhat secluded spot. There is a school, the Melrose School, on the grounds, but no classes were going on, even on Monday because of Columbus Day. We very much enjoyed our time there, and over a few posts I plan to give a relatively thorough account of the weekend.

We set out from Ithaca late Saturday morning. The first couple of hours in the car we spent singing (what delight!), sharing favorite hymns and songs from our youth. Although Hannah didn’t grow up in the church, the rest of us had very varied backgrounds and could cross-pollinate a lot. Jessie teaches Sunday school and looks for good songs to teach kids. I presented my perennial favorite, “The Fruit of the Spirit”:

The fruit of the spirit’s not a cantaloupe (nope!)
The fruit of the spirit’s not a cantaloupe (nope!),
So if you want to be a cantaloupe,
you might as well hear it,
You can‘t be a fruit of the spirit, ’cause the fruit is:
Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Jessie was raised Quaker, and taught us a song about Lucretia Mott to the tune of “The Battle-Hymn of the Republic”. Try it:

Thank thee kindly, friend Lucretia, (repeat twice)
Thy light still shines for me!

Did that refrain work O.K. for you? Then try making this scan to the tune of the verse:

Throughout the town of Philadelphia she hid the fleeing slaves;
For the freedom of her sisters she did cross the ocean waves,
And she asked Ulysses S. Grant to grant a pardon for the brave.
Her light still shines for me!

We worked on that over and over, marching around the kitchen as we made meals at the convent.

We stopped twice on the way to the convent. The first was for lunch. There was some debate as to whether we should stop at a familiar fast food outlet or press a little deeper to find a local restaurant. Realize that this was a car full of people who really like eating fresh food and supporting local business, and so the latter option was preferred. We ended up at Last Licks in Liberty (exit 101 off of highway 17). The friendly manager welcomed us and explained that everything was served on sandwiches—subs, hoagies, paninis, and the like. We all had a bottle of one of Boylan’s products (I had my first birch beer, which was a lot like a root beer, but independently very good); I recommend these, when you can’t get hold of Ithaca Sodas. There were quaint posters of olden-days Pepsi advertising (“Worth a dime, costs a nickel!”). The manager told us how he had just flown in from Florida and was just stopping by the store to check how things were going, when he learned that they were understaffed, and so he was working. When we told him we were from Ithaca, he said they had some regular customers from Cornell who would stop by on the way to Yankees games.

The second stop was at a fruit and vegetable stand. Hannah had made the proclamation, “It’s not really fall unless we do something to a pumpkin,” and so we had been watching for pumpkin stands. A hand-written sign on the side of the highway alerted us to the appropriate exit, and we pulled into the driveway of a house with an elderly man sitting under a tarp. He had a piece of corn in his hand, ready for us to sample (I have not been getting nearly enough corn this season), and told us a smattering of dirty jokes. He tried to convince us to buy his book of jokes. We managed to get away with just the pumpkin we were seeking and some corn, carrots, and broccoli (which became dinner the next night).

Once we arrived at the convent, we were promptly greeted with a wealth of treats and an invitation to Vespers. In fact, there wasn’t much time at all before the prayers began. We went into the small round wooden chapel, and we visitors spread ourselves out among the residents who knew what was going on. (We’d all been to evening prayers before, but the peculiarities of the prayer books at the convent required some guidance.) Much of the Vespers service is occupied with reciting psalms on a chant tone. One verse is chanted by the officiant to establish the tone, and thereafter the two sides of the chapel alternate chanting verses. For the first few psalms, I sat quietly, listening and not quite ready to break into the chant myself. There was only one other man there besides myself, and he had decided not to chant along. So my voice would have been the one to break the sound of the women. Now I love the sound of women’s voices (usually in harmony, which chant is not) but that’s not quite what was keeping me from singing. A true unison has a certain kind of purity. Splitting the octaves creates an essentially different sound (and I was not about to try to sing in the women’s range, particular since I’d been sick all week). So just as some people relax by popping in a “Chant” CD to hear the soothing baritone of monks, I was enjoying the piping clarity of women chanting together.

But within a few moments, I developed a strong sense that something was wrong—not just that I was isolating myself from my fellow congregants, or holding back from singing. I’ve studied chant, in the context of music history. I’ve listened to plenty of recordings, made available for the benefit of scholars and consumers. I’ve read about how it tried to strike the balance between emotion (rejoicing, mourning, awe, or penitence as necessary) and removal from the secular realm. About how composers expanded chants to reflect the text (even on the simple word “Alleluia”), then moved them from the meditative to the musical realm. Once I joined in, I realized what had felt wrong. Chant is not meant to be listened to. It has elements of song and elements of speech, but it isn’t either. It’s meditative, certainly, for both those chanting and those “listening”, but it’s nearly meaningless until you participate. It’s deliberate, ancient, immediate (be glad I’m not going off into another Kierkegaard digression here on the immediacy of music), transcendent, spiritual, physical, perplexing, focusing, and holy (in the sense of being set apart from other things in the world).

I’m making this point a bit strongly. There is real musical merit in, and real “outside” appreciation possible for, the hymns, antiphons, and sequences of the liturgy. But a psalm is mostly just intoned; from a melodic standpoint, it’s almost entirely a single repeated note, with a concluding burble up or down. Listening to it may put you in a trance, but I can’t imagine how it would help you worship. I don’t think I can explain more than that how important it is to join in chanting the mass, or service, or whatever, whenever it is possible to do so in place of just listening.

After dinner, we got set up in the guest house, known there as the “longhouse”. We had our own kitchen, stocked with fresh organic goodies (from eggs to raw milk to cookies), a sunny sitting room (directly adjacent to the school; apparently previous residents could hear homeroom or French class going on), and several private rooms to disperse to. Suzanne provided us with her Eddie Izzard DVD collection (which we didn’t manage to watch, however; as a first inkling of what the community was like, if you’ve never met nuns before, the sister who was showing us around the house also declared herself a big fan of Izzard).

We returned to the main house and looked around as dinner was being prepared. Hanging in the hallway was the following prayer. Now, the deliberate vagueness of the authorship, along with the style of writing makes the purported source of this text somewhat suspect. In fact, I searched the internet once I got back and could get no more information; the prayer was always presented in a vacuum (or list of other inspirational texts), except on a couple of occasions when attention was drawn to some anachronisms in the writing. So I include it as an example of how the nuns at the Melrose Convent see themselves and their calling, not any sort of historical document. It’s also still full of useful things for all of us to think about:

17th Century Nun’s Prayer

Lord, Thou knowest better than I know myself that I am growing older and will someday be old. Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody’s affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody: helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all, but Thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.

Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others’ pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessing cocksureness when my memory seems to clack with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a Saint—some of them are so hard to live with—but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so.

AMEN

Dinner was a veritable feast. Apparently excited about having us as guests, the nuns had prepared several courses, and had sent out specially for hot dogs (they don’t usually eat meat). Hannah and I were, as expected, exceeding happy about the presence of kale. (Over the summer, as we were picking up vegetables from our CSA farm, we would ask with increasing intensity, “Are we getting kale this week? We really hope we are, because we really like having kale.” The first time we did this, the farmers responded in perplexity, “We’ve never actually had a reaction like that from anyone about getting kale.”) And here before us was a new yummy way to prepare it! (They call it “killer kale”.) We also had homemade ketchup, mustard, and tomatillo salsa; “apple leather”, the real version of what Fruit Roll-Ups always dreamed of being; fresh grape juice and grape jelly made from wild grapes in the area; a mix of beans from the garden; and other courses. Apparently when you make all your food fresh from the garden, living with a vow of poverty isn’t so bad.

Lots more I could share about the humor of the sisters and the stories that came out about convent life (such as tales of mass hysteria, or the three nuns who got in a fist-fight), but this is getting a bit long. Moving on to the evening…

Back at the longhouse, we sat around reading for a while. Hannah was reading poetry by Elizabeth Bishop. I was reading hymns (because there was no piano in the house for me to play them on). For some reason, “Lead On, O King Eternal” was going through my head:

Lead on, O King eternal,
The day of march has come;
Henceforth in fields of conquest
Thy tents shall be our home.
Through days of preparation
Thy grace has made us strong;
And now, O King eternal,
We lift our battle song.

I was reading from the Pilgrim Hymnal, of which I have four copies but hadn’t examined too carefully yet. Christian hymnody has plenty of texts with battle imagery (with good Scriptural reason), and many of them are collected, along with other exhortations to fortitude, in the Pilgrim Hymnal’s section on Courage. But I was struck by the end of the second verse, which I’ll use to close this entry (as always, the whole text of the hymn is available at Cyberhymnal). In a way quite consistent with the verses I linked to above (q.v.), it emphasizes the means of winning the battle to be our acting in love:

For not with swords’ loud clashing,
Nor roll of stirring drums;
With deeds of love and mercy
The heavenly kingdom comes.

short story 3

2007-09-12T21:11:00.000-04:00

On Monday morning, I joined Hannah at her apartment and we walked into school together. Standing next to the Thurston Avenue bridge was a girl holding a sign that read “Free Hugs”. Ever curious about such things, I asked her what the free hugs were for. “It’s the day before September 11,” she replied, “so they’re a sign of hope.” Hannah and I both accepted hugs before walking on. I don’t know how many people the girl (and perhaps others) were able to share hugs with for this occasion, but I thought I’d spread the message around at least.

just finished

2007-07-25T08:52:00.001-04:00

Last night, around 11:00, Hannah and I completed reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I won’t give away any “spoilers” here (not that it would matter to anyone reading this). I’m mostly writing this because I’m pleased with my own cleverness in coming up with what would make a good cartoon (say, in the New Yorker) this week in our post-smoking-or-non era: a restaurant divided into “Finished Harry Potter” and “Not Finished Harry Potter” sections. I mean, I know I didn’t want people discussing it while I was around until I’d gotten through it (which took all of four days past the release date).

Finishing the book (which we were reading aloud), along with a nice Japanese dinner, is how Hannah and I celebrated our eleventh mensiversary, by the way.

Addendum: I should clarify that it took about 18 hours of reading time, because we were reading aloud. We certainly could have finished on Sunday or Monday, having purchased the book Saturday around noon, but with church and extra social events, Tuesday evening became a nice time to finish it up.

What HP events did people attend?

pre-4th outdoors trip

2007-06-30T17:49:00.001-04:00

Hannah and I have just successfully camped out for the first time. We drove to Treman Park, just a few miles south of Ithaca (we called Taughannock first, but they had no sites left open) and stopped by the office to find out what spots were available. We’d both been picturing (separately to ourselves, and somewhat naïvely) a little isolated spot where we would set up a tent and see no one else all evening, but instead we found a slew of campsites all lined up next to each other. This is actually somewhat different from the camping I used to do as a Boy Scout. But we quickly realized that it’s not so bad to have other folks around; indeed, it creates a small sense of community. Plus, we had a water spigot right in our site, and a bath house a couple hundred feet away. So it was a very nice but not-so-rugged introduction to camping together.

For dinner, we made the finest cuisine I have ever known or experienced anywhere: despite the potential political incorrectness, I generally insist on calling these “hobo meals”. Make a fire, get a good bed of coals going, and lay out a sheet of aluminum foil. Place thereon small pieces of potatoes (tater tots work very well, too), carrots, onions, any other vegetables you’d like (we added some beets that came in last week’s CSA share), and a bit of beef. Season with salt, pepper, perhaps some seasoned salt. Fold up the foil into a package. Now place on the coals, and let your sixth sense kick in to tell you when it’s done. (Seriously; I don’t know how to tell anyone how long to cook these. I just know when it’s ready and perfect.) Remove from the coals with sticks (yay, balancing act!). The odor that emerges upon opening the foil inspires prayers of thanksgiving. And every bit of deliciousness you eat is joy. The only way to properly follow a hobo meal is with s’mores. Most everyone knows how to make those, so I’ll just comment that a few years ago I had the insight to start putting peanut butter on my s’mores. I know some people (like Hannah) just don’t like peanut butter, but for those who do, this is a beautiful addition. Not only does it have a flavor that mixes well with every other ingredient, it holds the chocolate on the graham cracker. I dropped so many pieces of chocolate in my youth trying to get the marshmallow sandwiched in. Peanut butter: the perfect addition to your chocolatey, marshmallowy goodness.

If I ever am about to be executed and am offered a last meal, this would be it. Make a campfire and give me a hobo meal and s’mores. I’ll die happy.

Zacatecas

2007-05-24T23:21:00.000-04:00

No, you probably haven’t heard of this town. It does have a Wikipedia entry, however, and it is a UNESCO world heritage site, settled right in the center of Mexico, about 400 miles northwest of Mexico City. It’s also the site of the 7th joint meeting of the American Mathematical Society and the Sociedad Matemática Mexicana, running from Wednesday through Saturday of this week.

This is my first time to Mexico. And it’s beautiful. Zacatecas is in a valley, and it’s astonishingly clean. As you drive along the road surrounding the valley, you look out and see a wash of colors. About half of the buildings are standard brick color, but the rest are brightly painted blue, red, yellow, orange, so that the dominant impression is of jubilant pigmentation. The Cathedral is just outside our apartment, and although it’s not as grandiose as what one might encounter elsewhere, it sets a tone for churches all around the area: its dome and towers seem mimicked everywhere. There’s a cable car between two of the hills nearby, and we plan on trying it out at some point.

There is apparently some kind of festival going on around town. Bands—generally composed of trumpets of some variety, valve trombones, and a battery of percussion—wander the streets, with crowds of youths trailing behind, until they stop in some open place (in a local square, an arcade, or even just an intersection) and everyone dances. The attendees range from the clean-cut to the punk-ass, and they wear shotglass-sized clay cups on ribbons around their necks, from which they drink Mezcal when a supplier arrives. Occasionally the liquor rides in on a donkey.

Earlier this evening two bands, one clad in gray, the other in red, were dueling in the plaza next to the cathedral. I followed various bands around, hoping at some point to get up the nerve to ask for a dance partner (either in really broken Spanish, or maybe even in English, hoping they’d find it cute). As the evening continued, however, the proportion of peripheral males to females grew substantially, so I just watched. This is an awful time not to have Hannah here.

A concert stage is currently being set up in the plaza by the Cathedral, which is just outside our window. What are we in for tomorrow night?

The conference is going well. My particular crowd isn’t really represented here, but I’ve picked up some things in the conformal dynamics and differential geometry sessions. Meeting this city is well worth the trip.

how awesome is family?

2007-05-18T03:19:00.000-04:00

Today was a wonderful day. Hannah and I have been in Tennessee since last Saturday night. Today (Thursday) we went with my dad to Nashville. Unfortunately, my mom couldn’t come because of work. As soon as we arrived, we picked my granddad up for lunch. We went out to an old family restaurant called Dotson’s, although it was apparently sold by Mr. Dotson to another family some years back. We had Southern vegetables (i.e., everything was either fried or boiled for a long time) and meringue pie. Afterwards, we took Granddaddy to get his beard trimmed, then Hannah and I took the car to go shoe shopping while Dad and Granddaddy rested.

I’ve been wanting a new pair of sandals for some time. We drove through all of the nearby malls, failed to find a shoe store, and ended up at REI. I found a good pair of hefty sandals on sale, making it one of the easiest clothes shopping trips I’ve had in a long time.

Next we went to the grocery store and got food to grill at my aunt and uncle’s house. They just acquired a new grill for Mother’s Day. My little three year-old cousin was adorable as always, and still demonstrating phenomenal competence at everything from language to arithmetic to manners to physical prowess (for a while she pretended to be a bear, about to come out of its cave and devour us). She also made fun of Hannah and me for apparently liking each other.

My brother arrived a little late, having flown in from Los Angeles. We made a great and happy crowd around the dinner table. Finally, before driving back home, we stopped by my brother’s house and met up with some of his friends there.

I’m leaving out so much, of course—all the small but marvelous details that really make a day like this special. Perhaps I’m only recording the bare sequence of events to remind myself later of what happened, and I’m too nervous (or too tired) to write down the personal things. Sorry about that. I will mention that my aunt showed us a video that’s being created by the company she works for, focusing on their projects to provide safe places to raise children in shelters. The photos and interviews are heart-rending. I’ll post a link once I get it. But I simply want to convey that this is a day Hannah and I will cherish, and that I hope all of you are still finding such moments and days with your families.

walking around Cornell right now is like playing Myst. except that instead of solving puzzles, you’re waiting for construction to finish

2007-05-07T00:40:00.001-04:00

Yes, this is meant to parallel my description of Marseille as being like Labyrinth. Myst is pleasanter than Labyrinth; even greater is the difference in niceness between Ithaca and Marseille. Normally I don’t approve of describing things in real life as being like virtual things (e.g., “Hey, this is just like that time in that movie!”), or natural things as being like artificial things (big example, one that has occurred more than once: “Oooh, those fireflies look just like Christmas lights!” Huh? Fireflies have been around a lot longer, so shouldn’t the comparison go the other way? Wouldn’t it be terribly poetic to think of Christmas lights as fireflies decorating our trees?) This is possibly something I need to get over. After all, we use our experiences, even those with virtual or artificial origins, to make sense of life. Books have played this role for centuries. I just think we need to pay attention to what piece gives meaning to the other. The Orion Nebula does look like something out of a Star Trek sequence. But the reason Star Trek backgrounds are so evocative is that they have copied the heavens, not the other way around. Perhaps this Myst analogy will help me overcome this aversion. The worlds of Myst really are beautiful; construction sites are not.

Okay, didn’t really mean to get onto that rant. This topic came up because of my walking to campus one morning last week. I had dropped off Hannah’s car to get an oil change and decided it was nice enough weather to walk in from Community Corners to Malott. When I got to North Campus, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice, instead of just taking the footbridge across the falls, to take the path behind the observatory and walk along Beebe Lake for a while?” So I did. And it was nice. I like the wooden staircases. But then I started walking along the road, and quickly found it closed, including the sidewalk. There is a staircase down to the lake, but at the time it was sealed off by gates and by the lack of the remaining steps at the bottom. I walked past it and started down Forest Home Drive, which should lead back to the stairs at the near the bridge, and quickly discovered that the whole thing, sidewalk and all, was closed off. So I walked back to the as yet unusable stairs. A grounds worker was in the process of removing the gates and told me that it would be ready in about an hour. I was perplexed, however, because I had seen people walking towards us down by the lake, and despite the lack of stairs they had somehow joined us on the road. I looked a little to the side of the stairs and saw—aha!—a somewhat steep but definitely well-established path. Entirely not obvious from when I first walked past.

On the very first island one encounters while playing Myst, there is a generator that powers the door to a spaceship. You have to get just the right amount of current running to the door. And if you run too much, you trip the breaker switch and the current no longer runs out. Of course, none of this is clear at first, like anything in Myst, and you’re bound to trip the switch several times before you figure out what to do. But the very first time you trip it, suddenly all hope of getting the power to go out again seems lost, because the switch is nowhere to be found. So you poke around the island some more, and eventually come back, and find a small, barely visible path beside the door to the generator controls. That path is exactly what this path beside the gated off staircase reminded me of. If I had actually been playing Myst, however, I would have gotten to the bottom and had to put together the staircase myself to make future ascending and descending easier.

The parking lot in front of Malott is being turned into a pedestrian area, so the sidewalk and which entrances are accessible from which directions are thoroughly in flux. Certain routes which were closed when I left due to construction on the Thurston bridge have opened up, but the bridge itself (now completely naked and skeletal) remains an unsolved problem. Maybe if we can get the rocks in the gorge below to spell out the right word, it’ll open. Or perhaps the solution is entirely somewhere else in Ithaca. Pull that lever beside the Dewitt Mall and the bridge will return?

After being in Marseille, I will no longer complain about certain features of Ithaca. Construction is a perennial mocking point, however. The beauty of the surroundings makes it totally worth living here.

return

2007-04-24T13:44:00.000-04:00

I’ve been back in Ithaca for just under two weeks now. I feel restored. It is unbelievably refreshing to be back here. I love this town. I love this department. I love the opportunities. Just this afternoon Hannah and I went down to Ho Plaza near the Cornell store, where Israeli independence day is being celebrated: my attention was caught by the free camel ride and the falafel pitas. We also made necklaces with our names in Hebrew and learned about the Birthright trip to Israel (for which we are ineligible, not being Jewish). Tonight we go to rehearsal for the Chorale, preparing for the concert on Sunday. Tim and I have been discussing lots of math, leading me to increase my notes and my understanding. Jonathan and I are making plans for me to move back into my old apartment in June.

Before I left, I feared I was falling into too many routines here in Ithaca. Now that I’m back, I just find that I appreciate amazingly all the activities and people. Once I’m more settled, I’ll get back to writing more often. Take care, y’all.

please, please let Congress be smart about this

2007-04-05T17:03:00.000-04:00

An op-ed piece in yesterday’s New York Times led me to learn about the proposed Lautenberg–Lott bill, S. 294, which since January 16 has been in the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee. Its purpose, in short, is to improve the state of Amtrak (see Wikipedia article for more information) so that it can provide better public transport. I am a strong believer in public transportation, and the U.S. is far behind Europe in providing good, regular, comfortable train travel. Service between major cities has spotty coverage. As for high-speed trains (defined as reaching speeds of at least 125 mph on conventional rails), France has the TGV between multiple major cities, but the U.S. has only Amtrak’s Acela route from Boston to Washington, D.C. (Seems like the best place to start, but only a start.) From a technological point of view, the TGV broke its own speed record just this week, at 574.8 kph (357.2 mph), while the Acela putters along at a top speed of 150 mph. Now, the U.S. is a larger country than France, and it’s arguable that Americans need to travel by airplanes more often. But for distances less than 400 miles (not quite the length of the Acela line), once one accounts for all the trouble of getting through airports, train travel takes about the same amount of time; it’s also consistently cheaper and less stressful. (The distance from Paris to Marseille is about 485 miles; the TGV covers that in three hours, and the train stations in Paris and Marseille are both closer to the center of town than the airports are. Three hours is the time it takes me to drive the 200 miles from Memphis to Nashville.)

The two major forms of transport in the U.S. right now seem to be automobiles and airplanes. Both have their uses—cars for very short distances, planes for long. As I began arguing in the previous paragraph, trains fulfill a vital intermediate role. (I could also talk about the importance of good intra-city public transport, i.e., city buses, but let me deal with one level at a time.) Trains seem to have been long out of favor with many Americans, but several concerns have recently underscored their importance: pollution and fuel availability at the level of cars, and security at the level of planes. All reports on last year’s train travel show that it was a record year in terms of income and number of passengers.

What would happen if a luxury six-hour train ride for the 720-mile trip from New York to Chicago appeared, for less than the cost of a plane ticket? (Taking into account intermediate stops, that would just barely be a high-speed rail trip.) The shortest flights last from two to two and a half hours, and with the needs to arrive early at the airport, to pick up luggage afterwards, and to deal with airport pedestrian and vehicular traffic, plus the fact that you’re sitting on a plane for (at least) three hours, not the most comfortable place to be, you see that such a train ride becomes very appealing.

On a less grandiose scale, what if I could go from visiting my parents in Memphis to my brother in Nashville via train instead of driving? When I’m with one or the other, I’m not likely to need the extra car that driving to my destination would provide. Gas prices now mean that trip by car costs me $50, and there’s no reason a train shouldn’t cost less than that. So why would I want to drive? (Incidentally, there’s currently no Amtrak service to Nashville at all.) I could take the bus, and I have, but a train would be more expedient, and use less fuel (at least, if it runs on electricity as most European trains do). Plus, trains don’t get stuck in traffic.

… except when they do. One of the major points of the op-ed piece to which I referred at the beginning is that too many passenger trains are getting delayed by freight trains. Apparently the current legal code provides “preference” for passenger trains over freight trains, but in such a way that’s nearly impossible to enforce. I was fortunate not to have such a problem on the overnight train I took from Memphis to Chicago last December, but as I was searching for the ticket, I definitely saw warnings on Amtrak’s website that trips might be signficantly delayed on certain routes due to freight movement. Part of the Lautenberg–Lott bill would provide oversight of passenger train performance, and give greater authority to the Surface Transportation Board for handling priority disputes, for purposes of improving performance. I doubt train travel will become popular until it is demonstrably more reliable than air travel (“as reliable as” won’t be sufficient), so I strongly approve of any measures to improve performance.

It’s interesting to me that this issue came up in the news right now, because during our recent travels Hannah and I were discussing how great it would be if the U.S. had a train system like France’s or Switzerland’s. (Not Italy’s; that one is substantially dirtier, less comfortable, and less reliable. We may already have them beat in quality, although not likely in amount of service.) It’s clear to me that no effort to increase and improve train travel in the U.S. will succeed without either government support (Amtrak itself was created by Congress, and is essentially run by the government) or the participation of some already-existing large transportation company (such as airplane manufacturers, which would otherwise have strong reason to act against the interests of train travel). I hope today’s practical, social, and visionary forces will bring about this much-needed balance in American public transport.

(Also check out the National Association of Railroad Passengers: narprail.org.)

(Should I also point out that Lautenberg is a Democrat, Lott a Republican, and the rest of the bill’s co-sponsors also include a mix of senators from both parties? That’s even more heartening, given how sharply divided most issues have been recently.)

news flash

2007-04-03T21:28:00.000-04:00

Not quite so very new, but possibly useful…

If you’re a reader of the New York Times and a student or faculty member with a .edu address, as of last month you can get access to Times Select for free. At last, I again can get my doses of Maureen Dowd’s snarkiness and Nicholas Kristof’s pathos.

By the way, apparently Kristof is running an essay contest (one college or graduate student and one middle or high school teacher will be selected) to accompany him on a trip to Africa this summer. I think this is awesome. The deadline for applications is April 6; sorry I didn’t find out and post notification sooner.

communicating digitally

2007-04-03T10:42:00.000-04:00

I think too much about what I write. Everything that I write. Seriously. :-)

This post is coming because I was thinking, when writing the last, about emoticons and their ubiquity in aiding or confusing our plain ASCII text communications. So I searched and found this historical recounting of the origins of the smiley. Includes primary source citations!

bientôt la fin

2007-04-03T10:28:00.000-04:00

I’m returning to the States next Thursday, 12 April. That’s a bit earlier than I had planned. It’s been a hard year in many ways, most of which I haven’t written about here: Marseille can be a lonely place, and being away from Hannah has made it many times more difficult. Despite that, this year has been productive in many ways, with lots of new contacts, directions, and information to guide and support my research. At this point, however, I have no ongoing projects that tie me here, and I’m very excited by the prospect of being back in Ithaca, back in the math department at Cornell, and back with Hannah.

For many of you reading, this means I’ll see you sooner than expected, too. So don’t be too surprised. :-)

abstinence dispensed

2007-04-03T10:14:00.000-04:00

This is an amusing phrase Hannah told me about earlier in Lent. I imagine most of those reading and intimately familiar with church liturgy know what this means: “abstinence,” the precise meaning of which varies with context, is encouraged or required on certain days, unless some cause such as illness or a superceding church holiday arises, in which case the requirement is dispensed with. To the rest of us, it sounds like a machine that gives out abstinence, carefully placed next to the condom dispenser.

This has been another fun jaunt through the Book of Common Prayer.

Klein’s quartic and me

2007-03-26T16:30:00.000-04:00

I’ve been chattering happily to lots of people over the last few weeks about Klein’s quartic curve and how it might (and probably will) provide some very interesting and fruitful directions for my research. So I figured it would be worthwhile to post a little about all that here. There is no shortage of websites about this surface (it’s called a curve because it only takes one complex parameter to describe it near a given point, but one complex parameter looks like two real parameters, so it looks like a surface to us); two places in particular to go for more information are John Baez’s page, which he based on several entries of his column This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics, and MSRI’s online version of The Eightfold Way (you can either order a paperback, or download most of the essays in the book), which was commissioned in honor of the unveiling of Helaman Ferguson’s sculpture “The Eightfold Way” (a picture of the whole sculpture is available in Mathworld’s entry on Klein’s quartic). I’ve been inspired a great deal by the essays in this book. I’m going to take a slightly different approach to introducing the surface, which may help to illuminate some of what my area of mathematics deals with.

Start with a regular heptagon (7-sided polygon). Already this is interesting, because this is the first regular polygon that can’t be constructed by the Greek straightedge-and-compass method. Gauss and Wantzel proved exactly which polygons could be constructed by this method; Gauss showed that an n-gon could be constructed if n has certain kinds of factors, and Wantzel showed that the only constructible polygons were those satisfying Gauss’s condition. Now consider all the triangles you can make whose vertices are vertices of the heptagon. Of these, exactly one has three different side lengths, if you consider congruent triangles to be the same. The heptagon is (almost) the unique polygon with this property. (The “almost” is because the hexagon also has this property, but the triangle you get from it is just the familiar 30–60–90 triangle.) The triangle you get has angles of π/7, 2π/7, and 4π/7, and acquired the illustrious name of the heptagonal triangle in a 1973 paper by Bankoff and Garfunkel. I’ll call it H.

This is where my people come in. Because the angles of H are rational multiples of π, we can assemble a bunch of copies to make an interesting surface. Do this by first reflecting H across its longest side, then rotating both H and the reflected triangle by multiples of 2π/7 around the vertex of their smallest angle, to get the picture below.

Already pretty, isn’t it? Now notice that as I’ve numbered the sides of this nonconvex 14-gon (tetradecagon, if you want to get fancy), sides with the same number are parallel. This parallelism is important to people like me. Now you build the surface in a way that’s difficult to actually manage if you’re doing this with, say, a piece of cloth. “Glue” each pair of parallel sides; if we were making this from cloth, this would mean simply sewing those edges together. All of the “innie” vertices end up coming together at one point, as do all of the “outie” vertices. This surface is flat almost everywhere; the two points obtained from the innie and the outie vertices are the only points that can’t be flattened out. These are called cone points; however, unlike the cones we learned about in high school geometry, the angle at each of these points is more than 2π. In fact, we can just count up what the angle is for each. Each outie vertex has the 2π/7 angle of two copies of H, which makes 4π/7, and there are seven such vertices, so this point has an angle of 4π. Likewise, the point where all the innie vertices come together has an angle of 8π. Notice that the π/7 angles of the copies of H all ended up in the middle of the picture, and there are fourteen of them, so they just make up a regular point with an angle of 2π around it. We say this surface is obtained by unfolding H.

This process of “unfolding” a polygon with angles that are rational multiples of π is important in the study of billiards in such polygons. Billiards here just means an ideal abstraction of the game we all know; instead of a ball, you have a point, which moves in a straight Euclidean line inside the polygon (which is the “table”) until it hits a side, at which point it follows the law often stated “the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.” This is a very nice situation to study, but it would be even nicer if we could get rid of those kinks in the point’s path where it hits a side. We do this by reflecting the polygon instead of the path. If the angles of the polygon are rational multiples of π, then any such sequence of polygons, obtained by reflecting as we follow a billiard path, will eventually come back to a polygon that’s a translation of the original. Since from this perspective the point has just been moving in a straight line in the plane, it will enter this translated copy going exactly the same direction as it would be going if it had just been bouncing around inside the original table. So, instead of making that last reflection, we glue the side the point crosses over along this path to the corresponding side of the original triangle. Do this starting in enough different directions, and you get a surface like we did above. A theorem proved by William Veech in the 1980s says that by studying certain features of the geometry of the surface we can conclude a great deal about the behavior of billiard paths in the original polygon (such as which ones are periodic, i.e., eventually come back to the same point with the same direction, and which ones eventually “fill up” the table, i.e., come arbitrarily close to any point of the table).

Now maybe it doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten to anything deserving to be called “Klein’s quartic” yet. But it turns out that the flat geometry above comes very naturally from the geometry of the surface we’re looking for. In the paper by Karcher and Weber in The Eightfold Way, they show that this geometry can be used to derive the equation x³y + y³z + z³x = 0 , where x, y, and z are complex variables, and that any of the coordinates x, y, or z can be used to construct this flat geometry. This equation, of degree four, is where Klein’s quartic gets its name. (There’s some projective geometry at play here, too; if (x,y,z) provides a solution to the equation, then so does (ax,ay,az), because the polynomial on the left of the equation is homogeneous, so we consider any solutions related by a multiple in this way to be the same point. This is going a bit farther than I’d really like to explain here, so I’ll hope you’ll either know exactly what I’m talking about and can make the necessary adjustments, or you’ll take the fourth degree equation and just trust that it gives the name “quartic” to a certain surface representing its solutions.)

A surface described by an equation like the one we’ve got can be given many different “flat structures” resembling the one we started with on Klein’s quartic. All of these different ways of making the surface flat form an interesting collection of objects to study. I’ve chosen to study Klein’s quartic in particular because it has many beautiful internal symmetries, and these are reflected (no pun intended) in some of the flat structures on it. For example, the flat structure coming from H has a clear 7-fold symmetry. But another, composed of one large cylinder and three equal small cylinders, shows a 3-fold symmetry, visible in the equation by permuting x, y, and z.

I’ll leave the description at that for now and get back to studying the surface.

l’arrivée

2007-03-16T19:00:00.000-04:00

Hannah arrived safely this morning. Her luggage didn’t, due to a tight connection in the JFK airport, but it should be here soon. We went to the usual Friday events: the Teichmüller seminar and pizza lunch. We’ll be taking the next few days to enjoy Marseille and various cities and towns in Switzerland and Italy. It’s going to be awesome! I should have plenty of stories to post.

I’m also working on an entry about an interesting surface I’ve started studying. I might not finish that entry until after Hannah leaves, but I thought I’d let y’all know I haven’t completely dropped writing things.

my suggestion

2007-03-13T08:33:00.000-04:00

Never, ever, ever, if at all possible, have anything to do with France Telecom.

I hope they’re not reading this now and decide to cut our internet connection again just to spite us.

hexamensiversary

2007-02-24T10:20:00.001-05:00

Those of you who figured out what enneadecahebdoversary meant, or caught some other clue I’ve given about timing, or know Hannah and me well and have a knack for dates, will realize that today Hannah and I are celebrating six months together. (Yes, I know “hexa” is a Greek prefix which I’ve stuck on a Latin-based neologism. But I decided a while back that the Greek numerical prefixes are almost always cooler and even more natural-sounding than the Latin ones. “Seximensiversary”? Does that work at all? Plus, it has too many overtones in English.) Honestly, I did more for Valentine’s Day than I’m doing for today, partly because I completely lost track of the dates and didn’t realize this was coming up until yesterday when it came up in conversation. (Right now, all time is measured strictly by the number of days remaining until Hannah comes to visit—three weeks from yesterday—rather than by Gregory’s ancient decree of quotidian nomenclature.) If I were in Ithaca, however, it would be different. We would have gone out to dinner on Valentine’s Day, certainly, and I would have brought Hannah flowers. But today, were I there, I would take Hannah on a walk in the snow, perhaps go down to the Carriage House and have a hot drink and a nice brunch. We’d spend the afternoon inside, keeping warm, perhaps working some because we’re students and there’s always work to do, but we’d take time in conversation to remember how lucky we are to have grown so close and to have the promise of so much more. (We had part of this conversation yesterday, as we recalled our histories. We’ve both changed a lot over this time, becoming more and more suited to each other. But in the days before I left Ithaca, before we were dating, we were desperately trying to make sense of our situation. I didn’t think it would be a good idea for us to start dating; I wanted to give her freedom for the year. But as Hannah has pointed out, I still wanted to be the closest man in her life.) I’d sing her a love song…

Moi je t’offrirai
Des perles de pluie
Venues de pays
Où il ne pleut pas
Je creuserai la terre
Jusqu’après ma mort
Pour couvrir ton corps
D’or et de lumière
Je ferai un domaine
Où l’amour sera roi
Où l’amour sera loi
Où tu seras reine

We’d make dinner together. And we’d kiss each other good night, preparing for the morning when we’d go worship together.

Why should this be any different from how we’d spend any other Saturday? I guess in many ways it’s not. Days can be made special by either event or intent. Six months into a relationship is something of a hurdle; a lot has happened by this point, and while things can remain fresh (as they can throughout a lifetime), the relationship isn’t pristine any longer. Many of the complications of depending on another person and having lost some measure of independence have been brought into relief. Six months isn’t a moment to fear, but it is a moment to mark, and maybe marvel. The work has been done, and will continue. The intent of today is to declare that the decision made half a year ago, in such doubt and anxiety and excitement, is now sure. “Happy six months” doesn’t mean that every moment or even every day of those six months has been happy, because that’s simply not true. We have had pain and confusion and sorrow. It means that today I’m happy we’re still together, and I want to remain that way. It means this time has been incredibly wonderful and joyful, despite the hardships. It means, for us, that when I return to the States and a full nine months will have elapsed since the spurt that pushed us into this, the time will not have been lost. It means thank you for being willing to live this experience with me.

Happy six months, Hannah.

a tale of two spaces

2007-02-16T23:47:00.000-05:00

Well, in some ways this week was spent studying three spaces, but two of them made their way into the title of the conference: outer space and Teichmüller space. Teichmüller space has a long history in the study of Riemann surfaces; outer space is much more recent, and the conference was organized in part to celebrate the 20th “birthday” of outer space: in 1986 the definition and fundamental properties of outer space were published by Culler and Vogtmann (the latter of whom is a professor at Cornell). At Thursday night’s bouillabaisse dinner, the two of them blew out the candles on a birthday cake. The third kind of space mentioned this week was symmetric spaces; the study of these goes back even further than Teichmüller space. Several talks described the fruitfulness of thinking of these three kinds of spaces jointly, to see what analogues and differences there are.

Part of the idea in the study of these three spaces is to link geometric and algebraic objects so that each can cast light on the other. Generally, the algebra comes from looking at symmetries in the geometry. Theorems arise which describe the restrictions one side puts on the other: that is, if your geometric object looks the same in a lot of places, then there are a lot of ways to move the points of the object around on itself while keeping the same structure, and vice versa. (Think of how a sphere can be rotated around any axis through its center by any amount to give the same sphere, because it looks exactly the same at every point. A cube, while it has lots of pretty symmetries, is less symmetric than the sphere, which you can see by the severe restrictions on which axes you can rotate around and by how much to leave the cube looking as it did before. A highly irregular object looks different no matter how much you rotate it in any direction; this is called having a trivial symmetry group, which is an algebraic way of describing a geometric property.) The basic geometric objects in Teichmüller theory are surfaces with metrics, i.e., ways of measuring distances on the surfaces. The distances can make little patches on the surface look either flat or curvy (for an explanation of what “curvy” means here, see Tim’s entry about bugs on a hotplate). The symmetries of such a surface can be described roughly (almost always) as ways to cut the surface up and glue it back together so that it looks the same. Outer space looks at graphs, which in this context means not plotting a function or the year’s earnings, but taking points and connecting them with edges of various lengths. (A common example here is a single point with several curves that leave and come back to it; this is called a rose.) The symmetries come from ways of exchanging pieces of the graphs. But whereas Teichmüller space interests itself mainly with the geometry of the surfaces, outer space was created specifically to study the ways of moving the graph around—that is, the focus is on the algebraic aspect. This means the study of outer space falls under “geometric group theory,” using the geometry of an object to glean algebraic information about the associated symmetries. (Indeed, it is called “outer space” because the ways of moving things around form the outer automorphism group, an algebraic object that was studied long before the introduction of outer space.)

This was a fantastic week to be in Marseille (or more properly, in Luminy where the conference center is). For those interested in the conference webpage itself, you can find it (containing a description of the week, a list of participants, and summaries of the talks) here. I could throw around the names of some of the top-notch mathematicians who were here, but everyone who cares probably already knows. I made and strengthened a number of good contacts, and got some good references and discussion for the projects I’m currently working on. Congratulations and thanks to the organizers, and to all the speakers, and to my colleagues with whom I met. I look forward to continuing in this field, at the intersection of so many interesting parts of mathematics and drawing on the skills of so many generous and talented mathematicians, for many years.

where to go part 4

2007-02-16T22:31:00.000-05:00

I don’t know what to say. Things have gotten worse in Guinea. Conté has declared the country to be in a state of siege, and is entirely ignoring the fact that it is his appalling leadership, self-absorption, and reliance on sycophants that have provoked the violent unrest. Martial law has been in effect since Monday. The International Crisis Group has issued a strongly-worded assessment of the situation and list of recommendations for all parties involved, including ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States), the African Union, and the international community (the U.S. and France in particular). Anything more I could say would just be repeating the Friends of Guinea reporting, so I recommend you look there for a summary of news reports.

I never imagined this happening. But I guess the potential has always been there. Where do we go from here? What possible recourse do we have other than to pray the demonstrators, the looters, the government, and the military will shore up what’s left of decency and find a better solution than ceaseless turmoil?

for all you literary types

2007-02-16T22:24:00.000-05:00

Hannah has begun a blog of her own: Poesy and Poetics. The idea is to share poems she likes and finds interesting to analyze. Ask her about her philosophy on analyzing poetry sometime. It’s one of those things she’s happy to talk about just about any time, and you’ll get a taste of the vibrant way she approaches many academic subjects. She started on Wednesday, which was Valentine’s Day, which of course meant a discussion of one of Shakespeare’s love sonnets. It’ll definitely be worthwhile just to see what selection she makes as she goes along.

where to go part 3

2007-02-08T11:07:00.000-05:00

This isn’t about the strikes in Guinea (which look like they may begin again, incidentally). It’s about the strike happening here in Marseille, with a parade of protesters marching at this moment down the Boulevard d’Athènes and the Cours Julien, starting from the train station, and going presumably all the way to Castellane, if not further. I would have remained entirely oblivious to it had I not gone out to do some errands this morning. On my way back, I noticed the strange traffic flow and the red flags with yellow symbols flying and the early rumblings of a voice on a loudspeaker. So instead of taking a shortcut home, I walked up to the Place des Capucines, where the head of the parade was just about to get underway.

Protest rallies are great places to obtain flyers about all sorts of causes. I got four, and I don’t think I got everything available. The principle one is entitled 8 février : Toutes les raisons d’être dans l’action et la grève (All the reasons to be in action and on strike). The umbrella organization in this activity is the CGT (Confédération générale du travail) of the Bouches-du-Rhône. You can find “Toutes les raisons” as a Word document on their website. Today the call was sent out to all public employees to join in the strike and demonstrations. And, as you can see from the pictures below, many different groups are represented.

If you go to the main CGT page for all of France, you find that this is in fact a nation-wide campaign. The complaints are both that salaries are insufficient (the demand is that the minimum be raised to 1500€, presumably per month) and that jobs are being destroyed, not created, while the population (especially here in Marseille) is growing. The unions are addressing the European Commission, seeking increased security, increased salary, and increased availability of public services.

You might also notice what is marked on those red flags that caught my attention. The Jeunes Communistes took the occasion to make an appearance, which is where my second flyer came from. The header on one side declares “Avec les communistes : unir, lutter, vaincre!” (“With the communists: unite, fight, vanquish!”) I was particularly interested by their discussion, in a single sentence, of contemporary French politics: “By imposing, with incessant propaganda, the rivalry between Nicolas Sarkozy de Naguis-Bosca and Marie Ségolène Royale as the political issue, they leave us to believe that we will have no other solutions except to choose between a dangerous reactionary and a pale conservative. LIE!!!” And they present their candidate, Marie-George Buffet, along with their demands: the sharing of wealth, power, and information. Not a bad presentation, overall. Sufficiently and simultaneously indignant and informed.

The third flyer came from supporters of Roland Veuillet, a teacher and active union member who has been on a hunger strike for 47 days. From what I can gather, in 2003, during a proctors’ strike in Nimes, he “opposed” the school’s (apparently illegal) practice of placing older students in charge of watching the exams. (I haven’t found exactly by what means he opposed this.) Soon afterwards, he was sanctioned by the minister of education De Robien, and was relocated to Lyon. I’m taking all this information from the materials of Veuillet’s supporters, so I have no idea what the other side of the story is, but the hunger strike is real. Several students and other teachers have joined this strike in solidarity at one point or another.

The remaining flyer was less ambitious. Just half a page, printed on one side only, it declares, “Housing is not just the problem of the homeless!” Then it speaks of drawing on public funds to build “social housing” (“logements sociaux”) and improving rights of tenants. The language of this flyer catches my attention; they use the phrase “Exigeons” rather than “Nous exigeons”—that is, “Let us demand” rather than “We demand”, effectively supporting their claim that solving this problem shouldn’t be left to those we’d like to believe are the only ones it affects.

Strikes are painful. They wouldn’t really be effective if they weren’t. France is well-known for frequently having strikes of one form or another. Somehow, in the States, we’ve avoided most of the pain of these events in recent times. (I’ve heard some opinions on why this is the case, but I don’t think I should bring them up here.) I know I’ve been traveling at times when some part or another of an airline’s necessary workers were striking (I think it was the luggage handlers), and I hardly noticed any difference at all—the main thing was the flyers that appeared. But a well-managed strike can bring everything to a standstill. They’re a method of either asserting power or trying to grasp it. Such power may well be merited, and I suspect the causes are usually just. I doubt I’ll ever be in a situation where I’ll have to go on strike with a union. Before today, I hadn’t thought about it. But I believe if the time came, there are conditions under which I would join in approvingly, either for the sake of ameliorating the state of my fellow workers or in protest of an outrageous policy or action. I wish these times weren’t necessary. But that goes back to how the world doesn’t really change, injustice remains, and we have to keep fighting collectively and individually to stamp it out.

moving along

2007-02-06T14:42:00.000-05:00

I gave my first seminar talk in several months last Friday. It was on work contained in a preprint which isn’t my own, but which is closely related to some of my work, and which I could enlighten relatively well for the seminar attendees. Both Dr. Hubbard and Pascal, who organizes the seminar, seemed quite pleased with the exposition.

I’ve been spending most of my time lately working, not going out much. I’ve started tutoring three daughters of an Egyptian family in math and English. This week, a number of Cornell folk are in town for a conference at the CIRM in Luminy, which is where Dr. Hubbard’s birthday celebration was held in summer 2005 (our first time to come here). Melanie (co-creator of Abstractionary) came early to visit over the weekend, which was nice. Unfortunately, I’ve managed to get sick (from all this excitement? not sure) and am trying to both heal myself and get more work done. Next week CIRM hosts a conference on outer space (not what you think) and Teichmüller theory, which will bring lots of interesting people to talk with.

I have ideas for a couple more long essays, hopefully to come along soon. Hope y’all are well.

where to go part 2

2007-02-06T14:39:00.000-05:00

The strikes in Guinea were ended at the beginning of last week. The union leaders apparently felt the government had met sufficiently many of their demands. But the news stories since then tell that Conté has not named a new prime minister to start taking some responsibility for the nation, as he had agreed to do. Peace Corps Volunteers’ blogs tell of hanging out in Bamako, waiting to hear if they’re going to get to go back. I still doubt it. I briefly hoped when the strikes were over, but I’m back to my skepticism.

where to go from here?

2007-01-27T00:57:00.000-05:00

Peace Corps Guinea was evacuated this week. I’ve been anticipating this for a while. It still upsets me. The Volunteers are now in Mali, hanging out, waiting to see if the turmoil will blow over and they can go back to their sites, or if things will get worse and they’ll have had their services yanked out from underneath them. I don‘t know what to expect or hope for. But now that the Volunteers are out of the country, I suspect it’ll be a while before PC goes back. Côte d’Ivoire was evacuated shortly after I ended my service in Guinea; over the previous year, if I recall correctly, there had been a couple of in-country evacuations, i.e., the PCVs gathered in Abidjan. But once they were moved to Accra, Ghana, that marked the end. They haven’t been back since.

Some background: things in Guinea are bad. They weren’t good when I was there, and they have steadily declined since. Inflation and unreliable salaries have made both gasoline (hence transport and travel) and rice (hence eating) almost entirely unattainable. The state of affairs is blamed on President Lansana Conté, who for his part doesn’t seem to have had his country’s best interests in mind. He came to power in 1984 via a military coup following the death of the first president, Sékou Touré. He was officially elected in 1993, under a constitution that was supposed to limit the president to two five-year terms. But I recall November 2001, when a “national referendum” vote removed these term limits, allowing Conté to run again in 2003. I remember hearing the stories of soldiers watching people’s votes, and telling them, if they voted against the proposal to remove the limits, “Are you stupid, or did you just forget what to mark?” (We need to take the problems with voting in the States seriously, but we should also recognize how incredibly fortunate we are to have as reliable a system as we do.) Conté is a diabetic and has been taken to Paris multiple times while in a coma, and I don’t think anyone expected him to live out a third term. Problem is, no one knows who’ll fill the vacuum when he leaves, either by passing away or by finishing out his term.

On January 10, a “general strike” was begun, which as far as I can tell means just about everyone stopped working. No teaching. No bauxite mining (which is Guinea’s primary source of income). No transport. PC admin gathered up the PCVs from up-country, because (as you’ll all be grateful to know) Peace Corps really does make great efforts to care for its Volunteers. But things got bad before that. I found a blog by a current Volunteer, serving in Siguiri, which is one of the towns where I visited some friends during my service. She tells the events of when the street protests reached Siguiri on Tuesday. She reports that two people died in those protests. Many more have died in Conakry. Everyone in the country is suffering and stagnating and scraping by in this awful, awful situation. I taught over 200 students there, some of whom are probably at universities now.

You can find more about the strike, including the reasons for it and the terms to end it which the union leaders published, by looking at the Friends of Guinea blog, linked in the sidebar.

I’d like to say more, but I don’t think there’s anything we ordinary people can do Stateside (or even from here in France, former colonial power in Guinea), except perhaps petition for the president to step down? How on earth would that work? And even though that’s what most of the people of Guinea seem to want, it’s certainly not a good or sufficient solution. But I’m writing about this because the events really upset me and I feel the need to bring them up. I hate the state of affairs across most of sub-Saharan Africa. I’ve said to many people before that it seems somehow the colonizers convinced the entire continent that black people are inferior to white people. And the divisions among tribes and the selfishness of the rulers exacerbate what are already miserable situations. I will vouch that the people of Guinea are generous and rich in culture, but they are also frustrated. They do not see justice, and they do not see progress. The strike is a symptom of a nation deeply troubled, but it is also becoming a new source of destruction. How do we escape from this vortex?

a short story 2

2007-01-21T19:37:00.000-05:00

I took another walk at sunset today. As I returned from the plaza I spoke of yesterday, I saw a baby stroller running up the hill at me. Now, I just watched The Illusionist last night at the theater, so I had thoughts of magic tricks in my head. As it got closer, I observed a pair of very short legs behind the wheels. I suppose this child got tired of being in the chair and decided to take over. He stopped right even with me and gave me a big smile. I hope he keeps surprising people with his magic stroller.

something amazing every day

2007-01-20T19:33:00.000-05:00

(This essay is dedicated to Hannah, who encourages me, especially when I feel lonely, to find something amazing every day.)

You might think, as I used to, that among locations near our apartment, the harbor is a good spot for watching the sunset. You’d be mistaken. The harbor is downhill and surrounded by forts, so what you’ll see from there is a not very satisfying vision of the sun vanishing behind buildings some time before it actually settles beneath the horizon. So while I’ve described before how fun it can be to people-watch at the Vieux Port, it’s not where you want to be au moment du coucher du soleil.

Tonight I walked to La Canebière and turned away from the harbor, up towards L’Eglise des Réformés. I believe I’ve already told how La Canebière is under construction all the way from Les Réformés down to the Vieux Port, but the worst section is towards the harbor, where the sidewalks are reduced to tiny passages, and if you stop to try to watch natural events you’re likely to get swept up in the tide of people. However, due to the curious diagonal intersection of La Canebière and the Allée Léon Gambetta (along whose length I photographed Les Réformés while standing in the Place des Capucines), there’s a sizable plaza right at the foot of the church. It’s substantially uphill from the harbor, so the view of the sun in the evening is superior. Presumably it’s even better to climb into one of the towers of Les Réformés and watch from there. (The doors of the church were closed, however.) Most of the construction of the tramway is done here, although the fences remain up, and there are lines of trees through whose branches the sunlight becomes laced as it reddens. The crowd is thinner, particularly in the square, which isn’t on the way to anywhere as it juts out into the intersection.

The amazing thing I found today was a monument in this square. A monument whose original engraving stated that its purpose is to honor those soldiers from the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône who died defending la patrie in the War of 1870–1871. Wait, which war? I had to look this up when I got home. Those were the dates of the Franco–Prussian War. Léon Gambetta, it turns out, was a statesman during that period who organized an army in Tours during the war, and who continued to fight for a brief period even after Paris surrendered to the Germans. The monument was erected in 1894 and is known as the “Monument des mobiles.” Since then, it has acquired plaques commemorating soldiers lost in wars throughout the 20th century, from the World Wars to the Algerian War to the Korean War.

At the base of the monument are twenty names of locales in the Bouches-du-Rhône that contributed soldiers. Four are distinguished at the corners with theirs coats of arms, crested by miniature stylized fortresses: Marseille, Aix, Arles, and Tarascon. The coat of Arles bears a lion carrying a staff whose top is the chi-rho symbol (superimposed X and P, for the first two letters of Christ). The coat of Tarascon has the city’s castle on the top half and a dragon devouring a person on the bottom. Aix’s coat has vertical stripes on the bottom, a crusader’s cross in the top left corner, and various arrangements of fleurs-de-lis in the top center and top right. Marseille, the department capital, simply has a large cross covering its entire shield.

Marseille can be beautiful in the twilight. I expect that in five or ten years, by which point hopefully the larger part of the construction will be done, it will be a marvelous place to visit. For now, since I’m living here, I need to continue to search out these gems. It’s easy to turn the wrong direction when you walk out on the street. Persistence is key.

kilts and auld lang syne

2007-01-17T08:47:00.000-05:00

The last major event of my trip to the States was the New Year’s Ball of the Chicago branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society. This was my first time to go out Scottish dancing (I’d attended a couple of evenings of practice before), and I was rather pleased with myself by the end of the evening. No, I didn’t get all the dances right, but I did dance all of them (18 in all, plus the waltzes) and I never felt like I was struggling much more than the average dancer. It was a lot of fun. It’s a dance form that’s occasionally demanding intellectually, and it’s not as accessible to the casual dancer as some other styles of social dancing (contradance in particular), but I think I’ve developed a taste for it.

The conventional wisdom, as explained to me by Hannah and Mike (who loaned me the outfit I wore) is that every man looks better in a kilt. So that you can decide for yourself, compare this image with other times you’ve seen me:
(It’s no fair to point out that Hannah still looks better than me, even though conventional wisdom is also supposed to hold that Scottish events belong to that rare category of times in which the men shine and strut while the women accessorize them.) That’s a military jacket I’m wearing. The blue tassles near the tops of the stockings are called “flashes”, and they’re held on by a band that actually functions to hold the stockings up. The pouch in front is called a “sporran”, and it functions as a purse. Quite useful when one wants to inconspicuously carry around the directions for the dances. The kilt’s a bit longer than it should be (not bad for being borrowed, however), because the knees are supposed to be visible.

Despite being nearly a fortnight past December 31, this was a New Year’s event (scheduled as it was to allow other year-turning activities to run their course and not interfere with the dancers’ attendance), and so we sang “Auld Lang Syne” at the end. Also, that’s just appropriate for any time a group is celebrating Scottish culture. They sang two verses, skipping about on the second, which I didn’t know at all (I saw a couple others “loo-looing” with me, as well). The evening ran much later than Hannah and I expected, but was exhilarating the whole time, so I never felt tired. My calf muscles took a couple of days to relax, though; Scottish dance requires you to be on your toes, pointing and bouncing incessantly. The styling is part of the fun.

I heartily encourage all to get out and dance (in whatever style) when the opportunity arises. It’s social, it’s fun, and it’s great exercise.

marseillais once more

2007-01-17T08:22:00.000-05:00

I’ve just returned from my travels to the States for Christmas and New Year’s. I spent the last three weeks with Hannah, which is the longest we’ve seen each other since the end of classes last spring. (Of course, that’s mostly due to the fact that we didn’t start dating until the beginning of classes last fall, which was five days before I left Ithaca.) We shuttled between our two families, danced and talked and kissed a lot. More details later. But now my clock is set back to CET, my verbal communication will be done via Skype rather than cell phone (I was having to use Hannah’s phone anyway, because I suspended my service for the school year while I’m gone), my coffee is espresso from a cafetière italienne rather than brewed in a French press (which, despite its name, I’ve only seen used in the States and the Copenhagen airport), and it’s time to get back to work. I’m not yet sure what I’ll be doing this spring, since a calculation I made before leaving in December reduced our hopes of obtaining the result we were looking for to essentially nothing. I’m preparing a talk for the Teichmüller seminar on other topic, however, and questions abound that require addressing.

Happy New Year to all.

enneadecahebdoversary

2007-01-05T02:38:00.001-05:00

Hannah and I had our third date tonight. We went to the Memphis Pizza Cafe and got a medium vegetable supreme (olives, mushrooms, green peppers, onions, tomatoes, spinach, broccoli) with pepperoni, then drove down to the riverfront. We looked at the Pyramid with the replica of a Rameses II statue out front and walked through Tom Lee park, named for a levee worker who saved the lives of 32 passengers when a steamboat capsized. There was a superb metal sculpture of him riding out in his dinghy “Zev” and reaching to a man holding to a broken piece of wood. Before heading home to watch an episode of “Firefly”, we stopped by Perkins for some pie. It was a great date, very relaxing, but different in character from our previous dates, which were also lovely but involved dressing up and going out for a nice dinner. Even though it’s only our third time to go out, I think I can affirm that we like each other and this’ll work out. Tonight’s events were pleasant in themselves, but almost more importantly they formed an unobtrusive backdrop to several hours of conversation alternating between light and philosophical, as any good date conversation should. We’re looking forward to the time when we can have dates on more than a bimonthly basis.

faire du ciel part 2

2006-12-22T10:49:00.000-05:00

Just arrived in Memphis last night for the Christmas holidays. Travel again was not so bad: I got here about 23 hours after I woke up in Marseille, which was only a couple hours later than originally planned. The fog in London was extremely thick, and I’m grateful we weren’t delayed further. The ciel is still a pretty nice place to be. Despite the delays, the ground was, too.

London’s Gatwick airport gets pretty crowded during these times of travel trouble. The waiting lounge (full of duty-free shops of all kinds and a few restaurants) had nary a seat open. I had breakfast at Garfunkle’s, which advertised itself as “legendary and loved.” I was impressed with how they manage such a hectic time. Service was prompt; food was good. I had the vegetarian British breakfast. Two things struck me about this meal: first, it’s hard to find places in Europe that specifically make options available for vegetarians, so that was nice to see. Second, I think this is the first restaurant I’ve ever seen to declare on their menu that their eggs are free-range. Excellent. It was pricey, of course. Just the previous night at dinner I had been hearing from one of the Hubbards’ children, who lives in London, just how expensive life there is. Apparently for $10 one can usually only expect a mediocre meal, and if one wants to eat well, one has to consider the $50 range. I spent $14 on eggs, beans, toast, hash browms, mushrooms, a tomato, and a cappuccino, which in light of the dinner discussion seems entirely reasonable. I’m just glad I didn’t have to stay there longer.

I was intrigued by a poster I saw, advertising all the destinations you could reach from the airport via rail. “The easiest way to get to and from Gatwick is by train,” it declared. Unfortunate, I thought, that it’s an airport and not a train station, then.

a constant sense

2006-12-20T09:55:00.000-05:00

I have a feeling this is going to turn into another series of posts… It’s also another topic I didn’t really think I’d broach in this forum. But the love and dating essay didn’t bring me any flames, so I figure I’ll take another shot at something potentially controversial.

Let’s talk about faith and religion. Except not much in depth right now; I’ll get to that later. What I really want to talk about—or rather, share with you directly—are some of my favorite hymns. These are hymns that keep coming to mind as I plan a larger essay. Once I had three or four in the queue, I realized they merited their own entry.

One observation is that faith has two meanings in this context, which I think sometimes gets forgotten. (And I’ll definitely be oversimplifying for now. I’ll oversimplify less later.) A person can have faith in God, which is some kind of belief in the existence and trustworthiness of God. She or he can also be faithful to God, meaning they abide by that belief through the various hardships and joys of life. And this sort of faithfulness is carried out by God, too; God is faithful to us, in ways we can’t fathom.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see.
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth
Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

The text above is by Thomas Chisholm. It reminds me a great deal of Psalm 90. That psalm was written by Moses, which is really rather amazing. I’m particularly struck by his testimony to God’s faithfulness “in all generations”, when Israel had just come out of four hundred years of slavery. Isaac Watts wrote a deliberate versification of Psalm 90 (in fact, of most of the psalms), which is another perennial favorite:

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

Thy Word commands our flesh to dust,
“Return, ye sons of men:”
All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,
And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering ere ‘tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

Another hymn by Chisholm, but less well known, starts towards what I’d like to discuss about religion—namely, that it’s about relating to God, not about beating people over the head with one holy book or another. This one is much less well-known. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it outside of a Church of Christ hymnal. (The composer of the tune was L.O. Sanderson, whose son Leon was the song-leader for the church in which I grew up in Memphis.)

Be with me, Lord, I cannot live without Thee;
I dare not try to take one step alone.
I cannot bear the loads of life unaided;
I need Thy strength to lean myself upon.

Be with me, Lord, and then if dangers threaten,
If storms of trials burst above my head,
If lashing seas leap ev’rywhere about me,
They cannot harm or make my heart afraid.

Be with me, Lord, no other gift or blessing
Thou couldst bestow could with this one compare:
A constant sense of Thy abiding presence,
Where’er I am, to feel that Thou are near.

Be with me, Lord, when loneliness o’ertakes me,
When I must weep amid the fires of pain.
And when shall come the hour of “my departure”
For “worlds unknown,” O Lord, be with me then.

To close, we come to my absolute favorite hymn, another by Watts. Whatever religion one subscribes to, I think there has to be some heartfelt recognition of the goodness of the God one worships. That’s a pretty general statement; more precisely, I find in this hymn an expression of one’s utter disbelief and gratitude at the work God has done for our sake.

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

His dying crimson, like a robe,
Spreads o’er His body on the tree;
Then I am dead to all the globe,
And all the globe is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

The last verse says, I think, why faith and religion are so important: they draw from us the most profound recognition of meaning and duty in life. In the end, however, when we recognize it, we follow God not from duty, but from love.

world-travelers, we

2006-12-15T07:48:00.000-05:00

Sarah just left this morning for the States. I was going to drive her to the airport, but the car we were borrowing wouldn’t start. She took a taxi because her flight was at 6:45 and the first bus from the train station doesn’t arrive at the airport until 6:00. I’ll have this same problem next Thursday when I go home. I’m not sure I’ll take the same solution, but we’ll see.

I tried to go back to sleep after she left, but didn’t quite manage it… partly I was thinking about things I need to write and post here. So I signed on, and found that Blogger has been updated (it’s better integrated with other Google services now), and discovered that there’s a blog being written by a current Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo. Excellent! I thought. It’s even better than I thought, because he has videos! Here’s the latest one, of the market in his town.

From YouTube, you can look at “More from this user” to see other videos. I highly recommend watching the school visit. The conditions of the schools in West Africa are often hard to describe to Americans. Somehow learning gets done, despite the remarkable challenges and lack of resources.

I haven’t read through all the archives yet, because he’s been there for almost a year and a half. But I’m always in favor of resources that can give people a better idea of what it’s like to live there. This (the ability to blog easily) would indeed have been awesome six years ago when I was there. He mentions in a few early entries that there’s far too much going on to effectively choose what to write about. It’s true; every single week, every single day of Peace Corps is charged with experience and activity. For the first several months of our service, Annie and I would meet for dinner every night to debrief and decompress. I’m looking forward to reliving some memories through Aaron’s online records.

I do have things I want to write. All in good time. I hope the Advent season (Christmas shopping season, end-of-fall-semester season, whatever applies) is treating you all well.

Friday mix

2006-12-05T09:12:00.000-05:00

Original post: November 11.
Reposted with photo: December 5. (Cheap way of making it look like I’ve worked on the blog, huh?)

In the academic world, each semester brings its own rhythms, which depend on classes, seminars, who’s around, and numerous other small factors. Sometimes we feel the standard workweek tides, but more often we just get together whenever seems appropriate and settle down to work or socializing. (Contrary to popular stereotypes, most mathematicians really enjoy social activities. It’s possible that in a large fraction of cases they only know how to socialize with other mathematicians, however. It’s difficult to avoid making math jokes through an entire meal or party.)

This fall Friday is the fullest day of the week, normally. It begins at 9:00 in the morning with the course Dr. Hubbard is teaching on Teichmüller theory. This is aimed at a broad graduate student audience. It meets just once a week for two hours. From a review of the definitions of manifolds, differential forms, and cohomology, we have progressed through the proof of the uniformization theorem for Riemann surfaces and are now studying plane hyperbolic geometry (one of my favorite parts of the whole theory), which can be transported to Riemann surfaces (with only a few exceptions) via uniformization (most Riemann surfaces have the unit disk, i.e., the hyperbolic plane, as their universal cover). Most of the students seem to like Hubbard’s teaching overall; he almost certainly teaches in a way they’ve never seen before.

After the class we go to a seminar on Teichmüller theory (loosely speaking; other areas of interest to the participants pop up from time to time). This is where Douady and Roland spoke while visiting Marseille. The audience is quite active. It’s more or less a lecture format, but the peanut gallery is quite happy to interject with questions or points they feel should be clarified. I’ve spoken with some of the organizers, and they claim that they try to encourage an atmosphere where questioning is permitted, because it’s so incredibly frustrating to sit through an entire lecture and have no idea what the speaker said after the first couple of minutes. Apparently at some universities (especially in France, according to their accounts), questioning is actively discouraged. Only the most distinguished attendees may dare to make a remark before the end of the seminar. (In truth, it’s often helpful to younger or less bold audience members if one of the senior members asks a question, because it makes them feel more at ease—you mean there were others for whom that wasn’t totally clear? Oh, that’s a relief.)

If those morning activities weren’t enough fun, then just wait until lunch. We all hike over to a pizza restaurant called Le Racati. It’s run by a matronly woman who is known simply as “la patronne” (the boss). Various members of the seminar vie for her favor. She takes good care of “les garçons” (as the seminar members are called, since until this year it’s been almost exclusively men). There are usually ten or twelve of us, and we go through four or five pizzas, four or five carafes of wine, a bowl of salad, and whatever other gifts la patronne bestows (sometimes fruit, sometimes desserts). Conversation usually centers around upcoming seminar talks, current mathematical topics of interest, and cultural exchange. This week, following the U.S. elections, politics was a hot subject. Whether any more work gets done by any particular individual the rest of the day depends on how many glasses of wine he or she had. Friday lunch is a highlight of every week. Here’s a photo of la patronne with Prof. Hubbard:

I haven’t quite figured out Friday nights in Marseille. For the first few weeks, we were having dinner with the Hubbards. One week soon after we finally moved into our apartment I took a stroll by myself and treated myself to a nice couscous dinner. There was the party at our place the night before I left for Ithaca a month ago. Twice Sarah and I have gone out to the cinema. There’s nothing consistent, like the choir rehearsal / contradance combination I had in Ithaca. But it hasn’t been bad, for the most part. Movies are relatively inexpensive, fine restaurants are plentiful, and it’s a chance (as always, in any location) to break from the demands of work. I think we should have another party soon. And I should find someplace to dance.

Just to let you know that we do actually work around here, at least for four hours a week on Friday mornings. :-) Now we just need to work on finding folk in the office in the middle of the week, too …

Remember how things kept changing in "Labyrinth"? It's like that, except without the Jim Henson characters.

2006-11-30T13:55:00.000-05:00

Time to give a bit more of a description of Marseille, now that I've had a few afternoons and evenings to walk around.

Whether one travels to Marseille by plane or train, one generally arrives at the Gare Saint Charles, since that's also where the navette (shuttle) from the airport drops you off following the half-hour ride into town. ("Gare" means "station". "Garer" is the verb "to park", whence the word "garage". Yep, it's not just geography, it's etymology! I love languages.) The front of the gare is actually quite beautiful, with lovely statues and ironwork. I don't have pictures facing the gare, but here you can see the view from the top of the stairs leading down from the station into the city:

The main road leading straight out from the escalier is the Boulevard d'Athènes. Just to the right of center you can see Notre Dame de la Garde. Brilliant location, yes? The Vieux Port is just outside of the scope of this picture, off to the right. The golden statue atop the tower is supposed to represent Mary (la bonne mère) watching over the ships in the harbor and at sea. You can read more of the basilica's history (including speculations as to that hill's religious and military use in ancient times) on the website linked above.

Behind the gare is one campus of the Université de Provence, the one where we spend our Friday mornings in Dr. Hubbard's class and the Teichmüller seminar. Describing the path to the campus is how I can begin justifying the title of the essay. If I had turned around from where I was at the top of the stairs and taken a picture in that direction, you would have seen a plastic wall zoning off a construction area. All along the western side of the gare (the stairs face south, by the way) is a hefty amount of construction. The plan, I think, is to add stores and a parking area. Somehow this construction is taking over the entire street along that side. What should be wide pedestrian areas have been transformed by metal fences into a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. On the far side of the street, more construction walls abound, and in recent weeks have begun diverting pedestrians farther and farther away from various intersections, thus necessitating the introduction of more crosswalk signals. I'm convinced that eventually the entire area will be construction, with no room for either walking or driving.

If instead of going around the gare to the campus you begin walking down the Boulevard d'Athènes, you'll reach the Place des Capucines:

This is not far from where we live. There's a patisserie we're fond of just a few meters back up the street from the Place des Capucines. Once you're there, turn left and you'll see the Eglise des Réformés:

(I have to take a picture of it at night sometime, when the rose window is lit up from inside.) Despite what its name might suggest, it is a Catholic church, and was named for a Reformed Augustinian monastery which existed on the site previously.

Here is where my pictures end. I'd like to keep walking down the Boulevard d'Athènes just a bit, however, until we get to La Canebière. This is the major road leading down to the Vieux Port (on the right); to the left, it also leads to Les Réformés (the street I showed you isn't parallel to La Canebière). La Canebière is a mess right now, with massive construction again encroaching on pedestrian areas. "Encroaching" is perhaps not the right word -- "engulfing" might be more accurate. Marseille is in the process of installing a new tramway system. This involves a complete redesign of the sidewalks along with the basic work of laying down the rails. Along this road, the effect has mainly been squeezing the traffic. In other places around town, the construction involves frequent changes in the routes and direction of traffic. As one postdoc who's working here said, "I ride my bike around here a lot, and it's like the topology changes every day."

Enough complaining about construction. (Mostly it makes me glad not to be driving.) I want to describe the Vieux Port, because it's a nice place for evening walks. I wish I had pictures of it right now. I've been down there twice by myself (in very different moods), and a couple of times with friends. It's a popular gathering spot; one finds many couples and groups of friends chatting on benches along the waterfront. During the day lots of fishmongers line the waterfront.

At night a few people fish in between the docked ships. Once I saw a couple struggling to get their fishing line to work, and they asked another man to help them out. By working together, they discovered that the casting mechanism just didn't work well. So they just kept the line in close to the shore. I believe they and the other fisherfolk I saw were using bread as bait. A couple small schools of perhaps twenty or thirty fish moved mysteriously about. The man in the couple watched a small fish dart towards and away from his hook, until he pulled the line out and the hook was stripped clean. His wife/ladyfriend chortled, and they began discussing what kind of bait would be better. Crevettes (shrimp), one proposed. Then the man who was helping walked over to a nearby puddle of standing water, and pointed out that it contained a handful of tiny fish, which could be used as bait for the larger fish. He caught one for them, and they gave it a try. While their new bait bobbled in the water, I walked over to the puddle, as well. The man noticed my somewhat bemused air, and explained that when boats come in and dump fish on the quai, these little fish are left in the puddles after the rest are taken away. The woman came over and pleaded for him to catch another piece of bait, because the one they were using had died and stopped wriggling. He did, and the guy in the couple exclaimed, "Putain! Tu es plus rapide que le poisson!" ("Putain" is the mild vulgarity of choice in Marseille.) The new bait secured, he dropped the line back in the water and started saying, "Viens, viens, grand poisson, mange le petit poisson." ("Come, come, big fish, eat the little fish.") That was enough of that story for me. I sort of wished I had stayed to see if they caught anything, but I wanted to move on and see other things.

One of my favorite sights at the Vieux Port is a massive school of silver-scaled fish swimming about just at the top of the harbor. In sunlight or lamplight, their writhing motions occasionally turn each of them so that they reflect light off their sides to the observer. It's like watching aquatic fireflies. Also at night, Notre Dame de la Garde is brilliantly illuminated and stunning from the harbor. (I tried to get a picture of that one night, but the battery in my camera was worn out.)

Out past the mouth of the harbor rests the Château d'If, a former island prison made famous by Dumas when he unjustly imprisoned his Count of Monte Cristo there. I do have a picture of this from a distance, taken from a spot where the Hubbards often like to swim:

I certainly plan on making it out to visit the château sometime.

The population of Marseille is dominated, at least in our neighborhood, by North Africans. You're as likely to hear Arabic on the streets as French. Lots of stores had special offers and special hours while Ramadan was happening a couple of months ago. A fortunate side effect of this demographic is the presence of lots of couscous restaurants. In about a four block radius of our house, I've found at least a half-dozen, without really looking hard. The two nicest ones I've been to are Le Femina, on the Rue du Musée, and one down by the Vieux Port whose name I don't know (although inside they have posted a brief story on the 7th century Berber princess Kahena). I've tried a handful of others, and there are two in our neighborhood that I like and are reasonably priced to eat there once a week or so.

The major type of restaurant one encounters on the streets here serves kebab sandwiches. A kebab in this case is an immense amount of lamb skewered, roasted, and left to rotate next to a heating grill in the storefront for who knows how long. It's the sort of thing Americans might find slightly sketchy, but delicious once you try it. My favorite is near the Eglise des Réformés; their sauce and seasonings are the best, and the seating area is spacious and clean.

I've already talked a bit about the open fruits and vegetables market, of which I still highly approve. The metro system is convenient for us (since we live so close to the train station). Lots of little things make this a good place to live. Lots of other little things make it really hard, but I'm not going to share those here right now. This hopefully gives you a picture of what I find fascinating about Marseille.

le vent souffle

2006-11-29T23:10:00.000-05:00

A week ago, Sarah and I were outside the prefecture's Bureau des Etrangers shortly before 7 o'clock in the morning to stand in line for our cartes de séjour, documents that serve as extended-stay visas for several kinds of people, notably students. Our three-month visas with which we entered won't last until Christmas, so this was a necessary trip. It was also surprisingly painless once we got in the office. In that sense, it was rather like our trip to the consulate in New York to get the original visas. (It's still not clear to me why the French government has decided this process of getting a short-term visa in the States, then applying for a different document once in country, is good for either them or the students.) We had been quite nervous that the process would be painful, since the last time we went to the prefecture, in the late morning, we found an incomprehensible mess of lines, signs, and windows inside. We learned then that applicants are called in a very orderly manner from numbers they pick up on arrival, and one must arrive early in order to get a number. Hence our arrival before 7:00 at an office that opens at 8:15. It was another windy day in Marseille; when we arrived, it was still cold and well before dawn. We also weren't the first there; about fifteen or twenty people were ahead of us. (It's hard to tell exactly, even though we went up in order to pick up numbers, because the line was a bit porous for a while--not quite as amorphous as it would have been in Africa, nor as rigid as it would have been in the States.)

The line formed among snaky railings labelled "Séjour" at their entrance. By 7:30, we were at about the halfway point of the line, and by 8:00 sixty or seventy people were there. For a while, people strung themselves out a couple of meters apart, until sufficiently many people (a half-dozen or so) took advantage of the space to pleasantly say "Excusez-moi" to those who had been waiting and to fill in the closest gap to the head that they could. This is an activity I don't think most Americans would even consider; we have been socialized remarkably strongly to have a innate sense of "FIFO" and to place ourselves behind those who arrived earlier--we call it "respect". But from a certain point of view, one understands those who just want to get as close as they can. What advantage is it to them to stand at the end of the "line", especially if that line is essentially ficticious (which it is when people are so scattered), and the people in that line aren't expressing a particularly firm interest in holding their positions? It was actually somewhat amusing to watch as those waiting collapsed into a densely packed formation following a notably egregious application of this principle of self-advancement. Despite this newly-found physical camaraderie, it seemed to get colder as the time went on and the sky got brighter. I didn't quite reach the point of doing jumping-jacks to warm up, but I was bouncing on the balls of my feet for a while.

Wisely, police appeared at the doorway ten or fifteen minutes before it was time to go in. They made sure the stairway of the sortie was clear (it could easily have been a means to forming a new line to merge with ours, the real line) and cleaned up the queue so that everyone had a clear sense of his or her place. Once the doors were open, they acted as valves, permitting eight or ten applicants to proceed at once. We headed upstairs and got the requisite number tickets. We ended up numbers 20 and 21.

From there, things were easy. The numbers went by quickly; so quickly at times that it seemed some people had taken a number and just left. A young man approched Sarah and me, asking if we wanted to take his number 19, which we did. Never figured out why he wanted to move back a couple of places. He just kept hanging out in the waiting room. After only a half-hour or so, we went in to guichet 8. We weren't sure at first if Sarah and I could go up together and get all the information simultaneously, but that worked out. We showed that we had all the necessary papers, and learned that we only had to photocopy them, fill out a couple of brief forms, put all that in an envelope they provided with four identity photos, mail it off, and our cards will be sent to us in a month or so. We don't even have to go back to the bureau. All we need in the meantime really is evidence that we've submitted the applications, for which our receipts from the post office count. Not bad at all.

Our experience with the préfecture is to be completely contrasted with the treatment we got from France Télécom. Whereas the government office gave a stern front initially until we reached the end and received friendly assistance, our dealings with France Télécom started with warm smiles and passed into misinformation and incomprehensible stalling. We were attempting to get internet access at our apartment. This story has a happy ending, too, since we now have said access, but the customer service left much to be desired.

We made no less than five trips in four weeks to the France Télécom store before we had everything worked out. First, a friendly young lady (who apparently had little experience dealing with non-native French speakers, because she was clearly amused by how I didn't understand certain things) explained that we could get internet, telephone, and TV all in a package with a machine called the Livebox. We knew we wanted internet, of course, and unlimited telephone over the 'net sounded like a good deal. Whether or not we get a TV remains to be seen. It would cost more to get just the internet and phone, however, because of a special deal being made, so we opted for Madame la Livebox. We were told we'd have access within ten days. It was suggested we go ahead and set up the Livebox with the enclosed CD and wait until the "error" messages went away.

A week later, we went back. I had tried to set the thing up using the CD, except the CD didn't work on either my or Sarah's computer. Turns out Macs need a different CD format. I'm fairly certain I had said on the first trip that our computers were Macs. So the salesperson called some technical assistance line, and they said they'd mail us a new CD, which should arrive the following Tuesday. We never got the CD.

So the next week I went back again. I explained the problem with the CD again. The man with whom I was speaking went and got me another one, which naturally didn't work either. So he tried to get another. At this point I began to realize that the people in the store were purely salesfolk, with no technical knowledge whatsoever. (I should have realized that on our first trip, when I completely shocked the women behind the counter by knowing what their credit card machine was doing better than they did. First, they didn't know how to handle the magnetic stripe; most cards in France have a chip on one end that is inserted into the machine. Okay, that's just lack of familiarity and I can excuse it. They tried swiping it several times, then watched fervently for the result on their computer screen. I was just reading the display on the machine itself. And so when I suggested they swipe the card in the other direction, and announced immediately that it had registered, they asked in awe, "How did you know it worked?") I also said it had been two weeks since we had applied, and so we should have service, which according to the lights on our box, we still didn't. (Now I have to turn the tables on myself, because even if the service had been established, we couldn't have known from where our box was plugged in. There are three phone line outlets in our apartment. Two of them are non-functional. Those are the two I tried. The third was hidden behind our couch, and we found it eventually. But more troubles would have come anyway...) This was when I discovered that the waiting period was not ten days, but three weeks. Huh? How did that manage to get so completely miscommunicated? The one piece of useful information the man gave that day was that the CD, despite all the warnings on the instruction packet, was not strictly needed to access the Livebox. Later in the day, when I was talking with Dad, he suggested the same thing, so I just plugged in and found they were right.

One major problem was still occurring: the Wi-Fi on the Livebox wasn't functioning. The instructions declared that by pressing a certain button on the back, the wireless would be available. I pressed, and nothing happened. A little light was supposed to start flashing indicating broadcast. It didn't. And I certainly couldn't find the box with my AirPort. This became a big contention point the next week, on my fourth visit.

We finally found a salesperson who at least acted sympathetically towards our situation, even if her answers weren't always consistent. At this point, it had been three weeks, so they couldn't give us that excuse anymore. It was decided that the best thing was for us to come back on Tuesday when she would make a phone call to the technicians who would check our line from a distance. Many times when one chooses a service, one has to decide whether it's worth investing a little more on hope, or if one should just cut out and find a new provider. We decided to stick with it for one more chance.

What about the Wi-Fi? Well, I asked why it wasn't working. The fantastic response I received (this time from another man in the store, who looked remarkably like he should be a techy geek) was that it was because we weren't connected to the internet. The communication between my computer and the Livebox doesn't depend on whether the online connection is working or not, I explained. Oh, this is a completely different kind of technology from a modem, he claimed. The box has to get online to initialize itself before that stuff will work. I pointed in the instruction book to where it said I could connect to the box via wireless in order to give my id and password to start the internet connection. He stared blankly at the page, presumably trying to come up with some other explanation. He took me over to one of the computers in the store and brought up the homepage of the Livebox (what you get at 192.168.1.1) and said that once the box was online, I'd be able to get to that page and adjust everything. I'd already been to that page, I said. That's not online. That's on the box itself. He was looking more and more confused, and decided to stick with his answer that the problem with the wireless was the lack of internet access. Well, it didn't make much difference as long as we didn't have internet anyway, so I left it at that.

Tuesday morning we went back. The lady had already called the technical people, who claimed that everything should be working. She checked several times that on their end they had done everything necessary. For a while, there was a struggle to get them to understand and accept that we had no telephone, because we were waiting for their service. The usual thing to do would have been to call their service line 39 00, but we couldn't. So what should we do? No answers. I asked if no technicians were available, and was told that they are, but that it would be expensive for them to come over. If their service wasn't working, I asked, why should I have to pay for the technician? Once again I was assured that from their end, all was in order and the service should be available. Who knows if it was? We were still plugged into a dead outlet, which again I admit was my fault (gotta make sure the next tenants know about those useless slots). But I pressed them to consider that there might be something wrong with the box. There was, of course; the wireless wasn't working, so at least it was worth asking them to change it. At last she did give us a new box, as an "exceptional case," she said, because normally a technician would have to decide that a new box was necessary.

This new box had wireless that worked as soon as it was turned on. And once we found the real line phone line, we were hooked up. At last.

So this story definitely has points of foolishness on my part. But the representatives of France Télécom were for the most part ill-informed and quite unhelpful. I had the distinct impression throughout that they were making up answers. Our internet access, in the end, was probably only delayed by a few days by the whole mess, because it did take nearly three weeks to get established, according to what we learned from the phone call Tuesday morning. And now, we denizens of this information age feel at last like we have a normal home, because we have internet.

Along with getting registered as students at the university, these were the last of our "settling-in" tasks. The length of time to accomplish all this seems entirely typical, based on what I've heard from others. Next semester we'll not have these distractions. We'll come back from Christmas and New Year's break and have an established location. It'll mean a different and hopefully more productive situation. And we'll know the city already. That's what I'll write about in the next essay: a few things I've learned about Marseille.

got it made

2006-11-17T23:59:00.001-05:00

This entry is partly by special request. Hannah’s opinion is that I don’t write enough about her. She has a fair point, since any kind of accurate description of my life here must include the fact that I talk with her and write to her every day. Let me begin by quoting a song of the blues artists Paul Rishell and Annie Raines:

When that girl starts tellin’ you
The things that she wants you to do,
Buddy, you've got it made.

In that spirit, I fulfill Hannah’s suggestion.

Actually, I wanted to write this anyway to share with you two pictures I really like.

The first is from the gorge at Treman Park outside of Ithaca. It was taken (by Hannah’s mom) the week Hannah was moving back into Cornell at the end of the summer. We were at the time (at the very moment of the picture, I think) discussing how we didn’t think we were going to start dating. So much for that conclusion. I remember distinctly Hannah’s reaction to the falls at the park: coming from a suburban background, she didn’t believe one could actually live so close to such natural beauty.

The second photo was taken at Pangea, one of the nicer restaurants in Ithaca, while I was back visiting Hannah this fall. It is now one of about four pictures taken of the two of us since we’ve been a couple. It’s also currently the background for my computer screen.

(In an attempt to echo the title of a previous entry and to tie this title with the above photos, I considered naming this entry “she and he, hanging out at Tre–man…” or “she and he, eating at Pange–a…” Because, y’know, it’s cute and it uses the “e” sound in each of those words. But it turns out that’s not just cute, it’s far too cutesy for my tastes, and besides I could only have used one. In fact, forget I came up with those names.)

One of the wonderful things about our relationship is that we have lots of overlapping interests, but different specializations. I majored in mathematics and music; she’s studying mathematics and English. She adores poetry, which I like but haven’t taken much time to read on my own, and I like 20th century music, some of which she’s begun appreciating. (It’s essentially entirely due to her that I have any interest in learning more about opera, however. That’s one genre that fell outside of my tastes for a long time. But last spring, after we had discussed Der Ring des Nibelungen for several weeks, she basically handed me the disks and said, “Here. Listen to these at home.” I enjoyed them a great deal, much to my surprise. Let this be a lesson that brief selections of four hours works can’t in general give you a notion of what experiencing the whole thing is like.) We’ve filled up substantial portions of our Gmail accounts with poems and mp3s. (Thank goodness for modern communication.) And, of course, we talk about math. I’m a geometer; she’s leaning towards becoming a topologist, which makes for overlapping but not quite identical interests there, too. It’s marvelous to share things you love with people you love.

Hannah was a student in a class for which I was the teaching assistant last fall. So she developed the habit early on of challenging me to explain mathematical ideas well and to her satisfaction. She’s not easily satisfied: she has very high demands on her level of understanding before she’ll admit that she’s mastered a topic. I, naturally, being a teacher (I’ll always be a teacher, even if it doesn’t stay my profession), am happy to explain, to search for new explanations, to examine an idea from several perspectives until we fall on one that she approves of. In the process, of course, she pushes me like no one else to seriously engage with every single detail, and in the end my understanding has grown nearly as much as hers has. I know she’ll be a stupendous researcher.

Hannah is a dancer. She’s been dancing her whole life, mostly folk dances and almost always with her mom. I like to dance. I aspire to learn all that she’s learned. I was never good at sports growing up, but this sort of coordination I have. This sort of movement makes sense to me. And it’s another way to participate in art. Have I mentioned I’m a liberal arts student at heart?

I’ve said before that’s it’s hard to be so far from her for so long. Of course it is. Who would think it should be otherwise? That, indeed, was one of the frustrations I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. Though it hasn’t gotten easier to be apart, recent days have granted us an easier time going about our lives and studies. We look forward to our reunion with great hope and joy. I would never recommend this kind of separation, nor deciding you’re going to start dating someone five days before one of you is about to leave for a long, long time. But I wish this kind of love for everyone. I am completely and totally (and apparently pleonastically, as well) in love with this woman. That’s why we talk for at least an hour per day, and send messages back and forth as often as we can. The above description I’ve given doesn’t begin to explain why I love her, or how wonderful it truly is to have her in my life. These are just the things I imagine you would like to know about her, and special treats we get to enjoy from being together.

And that, I think, is the sappiest essay you’ll get for a while. Unless, of course, Hannah insists I write another one. In any case, I am exceedingly happy.

Adrien's funeral

2006-11-11T11:10:00.000-05:00

We returned Thursday night from Paris, where we spent all day visiting with others who knew Douady, sharing stories, and trying to process the events. The day began at the Institut Henri Poincaré, where approximately 25 mathematicians, mostly from the field of holomorphic dynamics, gathered. Roland, Sarah, and I took turns explaining what had happened. Two editions of Le Monde were produced, from last Wednesday and Thursday, which between them held five announcements of Douady’s death: they were placed by the family, l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, l’Université de Paris-Sud (where Adrien was a professor), SUNY Stony Brook, and Nicolas Bourbaki (the famously secretive French mathematical society, of which Douady was a member). Someone brought a great number of photos from the past couple or three decades, mostly amusing, and all capturing the conviviality of Adrien and his friends and students.

The funeral ceremony was held in the crematorium of the Père Lachaise cemetery, perhaps the most famous cemetery of Paris. (Their website has a virtual tour. You’ll find the crematorium towards the north-west corner; it’s the largest building on the site.) I’m not usually good at estimating numbers of people, but having discussed it with a few others, I can claim that there were about 250 people in attendance, nearly half of whom were standing in the back of the hall.

In my mind, the ceremony had four major pieces. First, the response of the mathematical community. This included childhood friends, collaborators, and students of Douady, as well as some who had simply felt his influence. Roland was the first to speak, and related the story of our visit to Les Arcs. He found a beautiful way to express the final hours. Adrien had told us, as we were contemplating going swimming that day, that it was for each person to decide if they would find it pleasing, and if so, then they should plunge in and enjoy it. Roland said perhaps Adrien was talking about all of life, too; one doesn’t hold back from doing what one loves. And Adrien loved to swim.

After the words of the mathematicians, the casket was carried to the top of the stairs at the front of the hall and placed in the furnace. There was a long respectful pause, during which was played music from Don Giovanni. (Hubbard has told me Douady liked singing the part of the Commendatore.)

Next the family members and other friends spoke. Adrien had three children, eight grandchildren (of whom four gave brief speeches), and four siblings (one of whom spoke on behalf of them all).

The final piece, which occurred somewhat in the middle of the family’s words, was the presentation of four brief film clips Adrien had been part of. Two were from the biographical film Adrien Douady, mathématicien, and the other two were from films intended to popularize mathematics. In all, Adrien’s humor and love for the sea were well-represented. One scene showed him on a staircase, singing heartily his setting of Baudelaire’s “Le vin de l’assassin”. Another watched him dive into the water, and subsequently to arrive on the boundary of the Mandelbrot set, which he clambered along barefoot just as he would the rocks of l’Esterel. A recurring image was the rabbit fractal, a Julia set given its name by Douady.

In the evening, Régine hosted all those interested at her and Adrien’s house. We were there briefly before we had to catch the TGV back to Marseille. Work has continued since Adrien’s death, even if it has slowed a bit to accomodate the necessary arrangements, travel, and memorial. Hubbard gave his class lectures both of the last two Fridays, and so we had to be back Thursday night. He says he believes continuing to do math even at this time is completely in the spirit of Adrien. Plans for conferences in Douady’s honor have already been born. He was loved, and he will be missed, but I believe those who worked with him and knew his passions will pay him due respect by carrying out those passions to the benefit of future generations.

the end of a good man's life

2006-11-06T12:33:00.000-05:00

Adrien Douady, professor of maths at the University of Paris, and friend and advisor to Dr. Hubbard, died on Thursday. Sarah, Roland, and I were with him on an outing to see the region near his vacation home in Les Arcs. It was while swimming near a rocky shoreline at the base of l’Esterel. Roland was in the water with him and brought him into shore; I helped pull him from the water onto the rocks. I don’t feel at liberty here to share more of the details, but I would like to describe the time we spent with him (which I would have written about anyway).

Adrien picked up the three of us at the train station in Les Arcs in the mid-afternoon on Wednesday. He promptly drove us to the Medieval City in town and dropped us off at the bottom. He instructed us to climb the labyrinthine streets and to meet him at the top. Once we rejoined him, he began indicating some of the plants around the area: an olive tree, a rosemary bush, a prickly pear cactus. He indicated a balcony from which the Queen of the Night aria was sung in a performance of The Magic Flute, and persisted in humming that tune for the rest of the afternoon.

Once we arrived at the Douadys’ house, he led us through the surrounding woods, pointing out where boars had rooted in the ground and making us try to guess what a certain plant was (it was thyme). We became convinced we had heard a boar and began tracking it. We eventually came to where we thought it was, and discovered that most of the sounds we’d been hearing were made by trees rubbing against each other in the wind.

We returned to the house, and began cutting wood. Adrien had cut down a tree he thought was too near the house. Roland picked up the chain saw and worked on cutting up the tree. Sarah and I moved the wood over to a pile. It was nice to be outside, enjoying nature and doing some manual labor.

Adrien and his wife Régine invited a few of their neighbors over for dinner. Régine made a marvelous traditional Algerian couscous meal. It was a pleasant repast, with conversation topics varying among house construction, the arriving mistral, wind power, tides in Normandy, and voting in the States.

In the morning, at breakfast, I reminisced about singing “L’amant de Saint Jean” with Adrien in Denmark. (I meant to post the pictures above earlier.) They started teaching me another chanson, “Le vin blanc”. We headed out and saw some of Adrien’s favorite swimming places.

I knew Douady as a brilliant, supportive, fun-loving man. He loved to sing and to swim. He loved doing all sorts of mathematics, and people loved having him in talks for his insight and humor. He was here at the Université de Provence the week before he died to give a talk on the work of two of his students, Buff and Chéritat, of whom he was very proud. We were fortunate to hear his final lecture. He was always full of character, life, and passion. Sarah and Roland knew him better than I, but everyone who met him knew he was a special, wonderful man.

Rest in peace, Adrien.

patience

2006-10-30T18:38:00.000-05:00

Hi,

I wanted to keep updating two or three times a week. But it may be a while before I get back to that schedule. Life's been rather frustrating lately, involving things I don't really want to post here. So I'm having to be patient until it sorts itself out somewhat, and I ask for your patience on updates. I have photos from previous entries still to upload, and events to talk about. I'll get to it. Or if not, find me when I'm back in the States and hit me up for stories and pictures.

Just in brief, from this weekend: we had the Hubbards over to our apartment for dinner Saturday night. Sarah planned out a spaghetti dinner. On Sunday I tried one of the local couscous restaurants. There are plenty, due to the great number of north Africans in Marseille. I've learned how not to get spines in my hands while handling prickly pears. (I guess that's all food-related. For a bit of math---) Dr. Hubbard and I got back to working on odd cohomology and complex structures. Turns out (and I should have realized this earlier), this is a perfect occasion to actually work in the Grassmannian of something to work something out. Maybe I'll give more details on those "somethings" another time.

Take care, y'all. I'll be back soon.

she and he, sitting in a tree...

2006-10-24T04:31:00.000-04:00

I can’t believe I’m about to get into this. This is precisely the sort of thing I thought I’d avoid posting. But occasions arise, thoughts coalesce, so here goes…

Let’s talk about love and dating. These are not topics I approach lightly, as anyone who has spoken with me about them can tell you. Even the times I’ve tried dating just for fun, serious consideration has gone into it. As for love, I’m mostly talking about romantic love here, but such love is incomplete without elements of the more universal agape love. (For those of you who didn’t grow up in the church, or are otherwise unfamiliar with the term agape, it’s one of the Greek words for love, and it’s used consistently throughout the New Testament to describe sacrificial love—the kind of love that is as much doing as feeling; the kind of love God has for the world.) I’m going to leave sex aside for now; it’s probably impossible to explain or understand my opinions on sex without all the background here first, anyway. And I’m going to write entirely from the gentleman’s perspective, because as much as I’d like to think I understand women, I probably don’t have a bloody clue what goes on in their heads and hearts.

I’ve had several girlfriends. More than I expected to, actually. I won’t embarrass them or myself by listing them here. They’ve shaped my life, as all friends do. They have given me some of the most challenging and satisfying relationships I’ve had. I’ve been realizing lately how much I learned from those relationships, how much they helped me mature and learn how to treat people well, to compromise, and to work towards common goals. Most of those romances ended well; at least eventually it became clear to both parties that ending was the right decision.

Now, for the sake of clarity in case anyone reading didn’t yet know, I’ll announce that I’m dating Hannah. She is not in France with me; she’s back at Cornell. We’ll be apart for most of the next eight months. I’ve been through separations before while dating; I’ll get into that more later. And it’s events in our relationship that have prompted me to sort out my thoughts on these matters and write this essay. That doesn’t mean I’ll be talking about us exclusively; most of “us” is definitely more private than I want to post online. In fact, even though I’ll mention her a few times, my musings are much more general. I want to find out what I think about being in love. You get to watch part of it.

There was a time, in college, when I didn’t actually believe the state of “being in love” existed. I was quite certain anyone who thought they were in love were deluding themselves. I’m not the only one to have felt this way, I’m sure. The Monkees even have a song about it, written by Neil Diamond. (My brother and I watched the Monkees avidly when we were younger. I don’t remember the plot of a single episode, but I remember a lot of the songs.)

I thought love was only true in fairy tales,
Meant for someone else but not for me.
Love was out to get me;
That’s the way it seemed.
Disappointment haunted all my dreams.

Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer.
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love, I’m a believer;
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

It took a bit more than seeing someone’s face to convince me I could be in love. It took soul-searching. I said once to Annie back in Peace Corps that, given my propensity towards stoicism and self-reflection, my piling layers upon layers of intellectualization on top of my emotions, it would take some powerful affection to overcome all that and convince me that I had, finally, been caught up in that delusion of love. (I didn’t quite use those words, but that was the sense. I am usually wrapped in principles and convictions, which direct rather than obey more visceral impulses. And the main point is that I would not have to convince myself; something beyond my own reasoning would force me to acknowledge my own enamoring. Besides, what principle is there in love except desiring the happiness of the beloved?) Maybe most people have these kinds of passions more easily than I do. I’m no longer as stoic as I was in high school; I have strong emotions on a number of subjects (music and theology high among them), which I vent with no particular compunction. I am somehow inherently skeptical of eros, however. I can only be convinced it’s real when it is completed with rapture and joy. And those are experiences one does not easily find.

One of my homonyms, Joshua Harris, came out with a book a few years ago that quickly rose to great popularity among Christian singles. It may still be popular. I’ve never read it, but I can describe its basic principle. The title is I Kissed Dating Goodbye. As a young man, Harris determined that dating, “just for fun” so to speak, would eventually be detrimental to his marriage. That is, if he spent his pre-married life giving parts of himself and his heart to different women, those parts would come back to haunt him on his wedding day. He sought a real purity in his relationship with his wife (whom, of course, he had not yet met, but when he did and began courting, he wrote another book about it).

I have some sympathy with Harris’s point. Mostly that’s because I don’t think the modern world (probably the world at any point in time, actually) takes marriage seriously enough. I’m not just talking about the appalling divorce rate, or the common belief that somehow a series of hook-ups can lead to finding the “right person”. I’m talking about a lack of awareness of the spiritual component of relationships. All right, I’m something of a mystic, so my language may be a bit far out for some. But something truly significant happens when two people decide (or acknowledge) that each is so important to the other that they will live together throughout their lives, and this significant something happens not just within or between the people involved. I believe almost every encounter or relationship we have on this earth is meant to mirror in some small way our relationship with God. And the utter self-giving of love is certainly a facet we may struggle to understand when we conceive of ourselves before God.

Hannah mentioned one time that she had come across the “controversial” passage about marriage in Ephesians (5:22-33). She said, “It sounds like the husbands got the raw end of the deal.” Here’s a piece of the passage she’s referring to:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

She made a comment along the lines of… submitting is easy when you love someone, but loving your wife as Christ loved the church? How can anyone possibly be expected to do that? The trouble (well, one trouble) with this passage is that people often can’t get past the first part. And in isolation, that first paragraph certainly sounds oppressive. (To be fair, anytime I’ve heard a sermon on this passage, the emphasis has been on the fact that the whole scripture together implies humility for both members of the couple, i.e., mutual service. There’s not really any other interpretation that could be remotely correct.) But Scripture is not intended merely to guide our actions: it directs our desires, as well. What husband, in loving his wife, does not want to make and keep her clean and holy? Those may not be the words he uses, but he should cherish the woman he loves and seek to protect her—not because she is incapable of supporting or protecting herself, but because it is the best gift he knows how to give and the truest expression of his devotion to her.

Somewhere C.S. Lewis describes how one’s love for one’s wife is augmented rather than diminished by encounters with other women. (No, I don’t mean “encounters” to be a euphemism. I mean normal, everyday meetings.) I’m probably badly misrepresenting his position, since I can’t find the citation now, so take this as my own opinion, inspired a bit by Lewis. Also, I should mention, inspired by a sermon I heard once about how marriage is the epitome of human relationships. Therein one finds ultimate commitment combined with some of the broadest gaps to reach across—as the pastor mentioned, the couple has to deal with one of the most basic divisions in humanity: the gender gap. A spouse is a friend, a lover, and a partner, but to some extent she or he is also a representative of the rest of humanity. By learning to love his wife well, a man learns to love others well, and by loving others, he can better love his wife.

So help me, I’m about to make about the most absurd pop culture reference I could at this point. Only because the words of the script are appropriate, well put-together, and in tension with much of what one “learns” about love in the movies. In one scene of Spiderman 2, Peter is visiting Dr. Octavius and his wife. The conversation turns to relationships. They say (I’m not going to bother separating out who said what, because they’re basically speaking with one voice here):

I finally got lucky in love. We both did. But it’s hardly perfect. You have to work at it.

I’ve thought about those lines a lot lately, actually. Not because the scene itself is a great revelation, but because the reality is so pithily described by those words.

Love may have a component of luck. It certainly feels that way sometimes. I was originally planning to argue against this point, but it doesn’t seem worth it. The main thing is that, however you get into love, to stay there takes work. Shall I mention some details? Take the trial of separation. This I have experienced multiple times. It gets harder each time. Particularly as my love grows. This last month and a half has been the most painful ever. Hannah has introduced me to a Portuguese word and song by Lui Collins: saudade. It means a kind of bittersweet longing for one’s beloved who is far distant, mingled with hope for reunion and joy from memories. I think I know what that feeling is now. I’ve just spent the last week in Ithaca to see Hannah. The sense of relief from that trip is immense, because of some challenging moments we’ve had. But I know that it’s good to learn now how to deal with trials, and how to deal with each other through trials. We will continue to push each other and challenge each other, and we are growing together even while we are apart. Work. Love is not all joy, but the moments of joy one reaches, knowing that both people involved have committed to the relationship’s success, are beyond compare.

A refrain that appears several times in the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon) is:

I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
by the gazelles or the does of the field,
that you not stir up or awaken love
until it pleases.

There’s apparently some ambiguity in how this passage should be translated or interpreted. It could refer to a personification of Love, that one should not force the matter. Love brooks no spurs. Or it could mean that the beloved himself is sleeping (read “until he pleases” instead of “until it pleases”), and should not be awakened while he rests. The latter is sweet. The former is the interpretation I lean towards. We have so many pressures to drive towards fulfillment in some strange notion of “love”. It is a good thing to seek love, but I don’t think we should be too quick to believe we have found it. Once it’s there, and known, however, it should be cultivated and stimulated, and it should be the passion of one’s life. It’s not part of fairy tales; those stories leave out too much anyway. Love is one of those universal experiences that touch us most intimately. Wake, Love, in each of us and at your pleasure, and teach us to serve, to trust, to work, to uplift, and to become more fully whole and united.