Blog on the Lillypad
Saturday, July 10, 2004
 | The Wicked Index is Updated For readers who drop in occasionally, and for those who are doing research on the topics I cover in this blog, check the updated index. Since the last time I updated it, there has been an effort to explain to fundies that there is no real thing called "linguistic porn," and some more typical fundybot errors. Dr. John R Rice's daughter scolded the SWORD OF THE LORD for departing so radically from what her father intended, and I have started working out again. |
 | More Adventures in Yoga (picture not representative of anything I can actually do)
The second Yoga class was more difficult than the first, mostly because I was corrected more. I was able to hold my legs with better lift in the down-facing posture shown to the left, but there is no ways those heels of mine are going to touch the floor, not any time soon. Once you get stretched enough so that you can stand flat footed in this posture, it actually becomes a restful posture. But if your heels are up, then your arms and shoulders are carrying more than their share of the weight. |
We took on a one-footed stance for two of the postures, and I could see that my teacher was surprised that I could maint this pretty well overall, with only a few moments of unsteadiness. That's from years of martial arts katas.
| But the only posture I showed any real ability to imitate (and then it was still pretty amateurish) was what yoga practitioners call "the bridge" and martial artists call "half a bridge". It requires strong legs and stable shoulders, and I have those. I still could not hold it for a fully minute, but I did a better approximation of this than any other posture. |  |
Still, it was good to sweat and just work out for 90 minutes. And afterward ir had the same effect as last time: i was completely tired and relaxed. My back felt better, and I was asleep by ten. The next day I had to drive up to Mt. Airy to meet friends. I woke up much refreshed and ready to go! As the car trip on the way back home turned out to be four and a half hours long instead of two, I was very glad I had done yoga the night before!
 | John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath
I read The Red Pony and The Pearl in high school and came away from them with a distaste for John Steinbeck. Not that the stories were not enlightening. In some ways, they were. But his depiction of mankind as being the object of his own drives disturbed me then and annoys me now. However, in Grapes of Wrath, while Steinbeck still pays homage to his theory that people must act according to their drives without conscience taking a role, he does create a masterpiece of human dignity as well as a vivid snapshot of the hard lives of the "Okies" during the Dustbowl Era. |
Don't mistake my admiration for the literary grandeur of Grapes of Wrath for slavish devotion. Steinbeck does capture the culture, the language (and it is extremely blasphemous language), and the stoic quality of the dirt farmers who went bust. He provides an admirable analysis of the decline of a certain accepted "common decency" in society as men grew more and more remote from the land. Steinbeck combines moral analysis with a lyric prose that captures the reader.
And Steinbeck makes it clear that harming another human being, rich or poor, is wrong. Violence is a swipe at the dignity of mankind, which---in the perspective of the novel---is really the only valuable thing that mankind has.
However, Steinbeck fails to indict the main characters---the Joads---for their own incredible stupidity. Granted, they suffer more for their stupidity than most people do, but it doesn't diminish that the Joads are incredibly stupid.
The land they farmed has been dying for several years. The father of the family and the uncle acknowledge it. The passing apostate preacher also comments on it. Yet with a farm eroding and dying under his heels, Pa Joad goes to the bank to get a loan to preserve a farm that is producing disastrous failures instead of crops. He knows the cotton that was once planted here has sucked the life out of the land. Yet he keeps planting crops on exhausted acreage. He acknowledges that when the wild grass used to be permitted to grow among the furrows, that the soil stayed in place. Yet he burned out the grass anyway and never tried to replace it when erosion took place.
Steinbeck indicts the banks and the bankers for the plight of the farmers, but a hard and cold fact of life is that if you are stupid with your resources, you will starve. And the Joads have been stupid. They kept cutting into dying land, waiting for a "good year" when the soil would miraculously get them out of debt. One real truth of the novel (which Steinbeck ignores) is that the Joads would have suffered bankruptcy, poverty, and hunger even if they had stayed on their land, because they destroyed their land.
Once on the road in their worn and overloaded truck, the two Joad boys demonstrate astonishing skill in keeping the aged contraption alive. They bore out the engine themselves with makeshift tools. Yet Pa Joad, once again demonstrating his stupidity, declines every opportunity, right in the bustling dawn of the automotive age, to learn anything about car mechanics from his sons. He's looking for farm work.
The boys also assume (until the end) that they will look for farm work too. With cars zooming around them on Route 66, and mechanized tractors galore out on the huge farms in California, the two gifted mechanics of the Joad family keep trying to get work as pickers. It never occurs to them to walk up and down among the tents of the camps and ask people to trade food or pay cash to have their vehicles fixed. They knock on doors to look for work as pickers but never offer to look at engines or motors.
Steinbeck's handling of human dignity has a few caveats as well. The apostate preacher, Casey, is as bad at genuine faith as the Joads were at farming. He preached well but kept seducing young girls and then discarding them. This sin, in the eyes of the Joads, is pretty minor. Tom Joad, the eldest son, acknowledges that he raped a prostitute, and Casey finds such sexual violence completely permissible if a fellow has got it bad enough. The younger brother goes out in the camps and seduces young girls with promises of marriage. And then, similar to Casey the fallen former preacher, he discards them. Nobody ever reproaches or corrects him for this or points out the plight of the duped young women. When Rose of Sharon loses her baby to stillbirth, blame is laid at the door of the wretched Connie, who deserted her. The same blame is never laid at the door of the youngest Joad boy, who has deserted so many others to whom he promised marriage.
Crimes against the family as a whole, or crimes against humanity, are indicted in Steinbeck's book. But crimes against women---even young girls---are not. It's a relief, when the father threatens to beat the mother, that she threatens him right back. And he calms down. But the fact that the Joads cannot live up to their own creed of not harming their neighbors or each other is not belabored. Increasingly, the book makes clear (even though it is trying not to do so) that the Joads are just as corrupt, just as short-sighted in their morality, and just as quick to gain an advantage as the ruthless bankers that have driven them from their land and are keeping the wages so low that the family cannot live.
The bankers look down on people like the Joads, and the Joads look down on people not of their culture and mindset: prostitutes and girls from families who do not keep a careful watch over them, and anybody foolish enough to physically attack a Joad or their friends. The morality of the Joads, like everything else about them, is short sighted, focused only on the present moment, and stupid.
When the local Californians are incensed to hysterical and angry fear because one batch of pickers goes on strike over wages that are impossibly low and unjust, they strike out in their hysteria and kill Casey. Tom Joad's hysterical and frenzied response is to kill Casey's killer. For some reason, Casey's killer comes off as wrong, but Tom is not wrong. Yet both men were driven by a hysterical frenzy as they felt that their core way of life was endangered by strangers. This scene, to me, shows most vividly that the Joads are the same as their persecutors---driven by the moment and by the passion to hold on to what they possess. They recognize loyalty to family; they do not recognize loyalty to any idea of sanctity of life or self control for its own sake.
Nobody in Grapes of Wrath really rises to what I would call a heroic quality, or even an insightful quality of wisdom, from what they have suffered. The Joads learn that they must survive in a world that has changed forever. By the end of the book, they still have no idea of how to actually do that. And they realize that their values (those values that they possess) are what give them dignity. This is a moving and powerful truth. But many of the values of the Joads make many concessions to their weaknesses.
The other aspects of their ignorance and lack of ability to improvise, to rise above the moment, and find new resources within themselves make the Joads seem---to me---to be too incredibly passive before their fate. They let circumstances drive them, and they actually take on the roles that have been pushed upon them: underpaid pickers. Ma Joad predicts that they will survive because that is what they have always done. Perhaps, but it is almost certain that the Joads will never rise above being pushed around by circumstances. Their fortitude and stoic courage have made them like powerful oxen. They can endure a lot. But like oxen, they know only one skill---to walk slowly and steadily in a straight line, never lifting their heads nor considering a better way for themselves. The only things that give them any momentary power are overpowering lust and frenzied rage.
I came away from this book sobered by the fact that we all pay for our stupidity and rigidity of outlook: some more and some less. But there is no guarantee on how much a person might suffer from being stupid. So the best way to manage in life is to use foresight, remain flexible, and always keep a back door open.
 | A Day in Mayberry
If traffic is good, I live two hours away from Mt. Airy, NC, the home of Andy Griffith and the original basis of Mayberry. On Friday I met two old friends and their two sons, Matthew and Jesse at the Comfort Inn on 601. After a breakfast at the local Biscuitville, we caravanned into the heart of Mt. Airy to see the sites. Of course we got lost at first, and more by accident than on purpose, we drove past the original home of Andy Griffith up on one of the residential streets. |
| Once in the town, we found the Visitor's Center, which includes the museum of Andy Griffith's life. We then set out on foot to find the Snappy Diner (where one of the cooks was frying up pork chops in the window for their famous pork chop sandwiches), and Floyd's Barber Shop (still in business). We saw the city's two 1962 Galaxy squad cars, now used to take visitors on paid tours. |  |
On a grimmer note, we visited Mt. Airy's real local jail (no longer used), and it was not the friendly, well-lit jail depicted in the television series. Matthew and Jesse had a good time posing behind the bars (actually an ironwork lattice that kept the tiny cells pretty dark). But the place gave me the creeps. It's a good thing Barney Fife was on hand to clean up the crime.
everybody we spoke to was friendly. Main Street of Mt. Airy is recognizable (though much changed) as Mayberry's main street, and we stopped in at the hardware store. They had traps there, and the kindly store manager showed us how to set a trap and demonstrated (with a long nail) how they spring shut with instant and deadly strength. I asked what the people trapped, and was told that there are no fur bearing animals worth trapping, but gophers are the bane of the gardeners, and traps are an age-old cure.
We chatted very amiably for a few minutes, and gave and returned the age-old courtesies of saying goodbye and wishing each other a nice day.
I had to get back to work to check in by 3:00, so I bid my friends goodbye at 1:00 to get on the road. But the curse of Highway 52 settled on me in the afternoon, and because of constant traffic jams (owing to a record setting THREE accidents all in one day and all minor), I did not arrive at the office until 4:40, and everybody was gone. I got home by 5:20. So it took me twice as long to get home as it did to go.
Still, it was a great day. I was happy to see my friends and their growing (and highly energetic) sons. And the tour of Mt. Airy reminded my of a sweeter and gentler day, one that existed---if not in real life, at least in the minds and hearts of people who worked to make it so.
 | Straight Dope on Bush
As I have reflected on the president that disappeared during 9/11, the vice president who remains in the shadows and has fingers in some deep and oil-soaked pies, and the current fiasco in Iraq, where troops are now surrounded by hostile indigents and nobody has a coherent plan on how to maintain safety and order, I have wondered if any Christians have yet come to their senses about trusting conservative politics to be our deliverance. |
I don't hate George W. Bush, but I do have trouble with despising him. I have to remind myself that this man is not a kingpin of villainy. I'm not sure what he is, but as our consitutional rights are ever more threatened by anti-terrorist legislation, and as stem cell research is continuing with only a few restrictions in place (placed there by Bush as lip-service to the conservative Right), I have to recgonize that George W. Bush is what many conservative Christians want in a politician. They want the right words to be said. They want the invocations of God to be made. They want prayer services in the Cathedral in Washington.
But they also want to be comfortable in their homes. They want to remain middle class respectable. They want safety in American skies, even if that means bombing the livelihoods of Iraqi people to flinders as an example to the Middle East, when their only crime was being born in Iraq. They want low gas prices, even if that means a regime of tyrannical despots remain in power in Saudi Arabia. They want to see the age of "Israel restored" ushered in, even if we have to usher it in by displacing and robbing innocent Palestinians of their homes and lands and livelihoods. They want the Moslem world punished for 9/11, even though a handful of extremists were the ones responsible (and those extremists were financed by our "friends" the Saudis). They want to say we have freedom of religion but they want Moslems to leave the USA or be frightened into second class citizen status.
So really, George W. Bush is just riding a wave of what the conservative Christian right expects. If he is full of contradictions, it is because we are full of contradictions.
For a thorough analysis of the contradictions of George W. Bush, check this link.
For the real truth on where the deliverance of the Christian lies, you'll have to go to a larger work, the Bible. Christ is our life; the kingdom of heaven is our kingdom. We are put on this earth to bring in His kingdom, and that requires giving (and living) the good news of salvation to mankind: the gays, the communists, the feminists, the pro-abortionists, the Moslems, the atheists, the drug dealers, etc. We cannot convert the world by trying to make it behave. We convert the world by taking up the cross of Christ, following Him, and living with our expectations placed in Him.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
 | Brave words that clarify things
"Another characteristic of historic fundamentalism that we saw in our Dad was his constant study of the Word of God." So writes Joy Rice Martin, daughter of John R. Rice, to Shelton Smith, current head of SWORD OF THE LORD, in an open letter. Mrs. Martin takes Shelton Smith to task on the shameful isolationsim, paranoid autonomy, and incredibly stupid doctrinal blunders all endorsed by the SWORD in its current state. |
If you are an oldy like me, you may rememebr when the SWORD ran articles on church history, detailed analyses of doctrine, and sermons by truly great preachers of history. I was saved out of Roman Catholicism, and the day that the SWORD was delivered to my house always meant an afternoon leafing through the tiny newsprint pages. Each journey into that small newspaper was a journey of learning. When they had articles that were to be continued, I kept track and read the successive articles as the new issues came out.
As time went by, the minor points of dress code and church building became more prominent, and then took over. Squabbling replaced the doctrinal content. I outgrew the SWORD because the SWORD got more juveile as I grew up. It was a tragic loss. In a homne where my parents were not sympathetic with my beliefs, the SWORD was a friend and a lifeline that I held to because I knew there were people out there who valued these precious doctrines like I did. But those people got left behind too as the SWORD became the rag of Jack Hyles and Curtis Hudson.
This letter from Mrs. Martin is about 20-30 years too late by my reckoning, but at least it has come. Better late than never. And she writes an articulate and clear assessment of the transformation of the SWORD OF THE LORD from the well reasoned, representative, doctrinal and instructional news magazine it once was as it was turned into the dumbed-down, KJV-only, man-centered rag it is today.
Her open letter will give you a good read on how Fundamentalism has turned into something else. Click here to read the full article by Joy Rice Martin
Monday, July 05, 2004
 | Announcing: SECRET RADIO Version 2!
Last August I started posting the Secret Radio blog, a story of a girl's senior year at a Fundamental Baptist Bible College. This blog lasted until May of this year, when the final episode was posted. I then archived the entire site and presented it in narrative order at the Secret Radio Archive. This archive will only remain in place until this Friday. |
The reason that I am bringing down the archive is that after collecting comments and suggestions from readers, I am releasinging the SECRET RADIO Version 2 blog The first episode was posted today, and I plan to post episodes on a Monday-Friday basis, taking the weekends off.
SECRET RADIO Version 2 is the same story with revisions and improvements. It's not a sequel. There are new episodes, new characters, and a stronger emphasis on Christ at work in His own people in an IFBx school. I also have added a stronger sense of the day to day lives of the students. Plus I fixed up some logic errors and problems in "flow". To make the story more understandable to non-Fundamentalists, one new episode explains the roots of Fundamentalism.
So oldtimers, if you want take a second read, please do so and let me know. And newcomers, if you want to get an eyes wide-open look at Independent Fundamental Baptist sub-culture, please stop in for a read.
