PZ's Podcast: Bishop Bell's Play

EPISODE 42
 

A fascinating play exists about Bishop Bell. Well, actually, the play is more about Winston Churchill. But in this play, entitled "Soldiers" and first performed in Germany in 1967, Act Three ("The Garden") stages a confrontation between Churchill and George Bell on the ethics of 'carpet bombing'. Although such a meeting never took place, "Soldiers" carries the emotional truth of the Bishop's costly public stance.

"Soldiers" was written by Rolf Hochhuth, who also wrote the controversial play "The Deputy", which was made into a movie, Amen (2003), by Costa-Gavras. The writer studied Bell's speech and letters well, and his life. The play is hard on us who have been taught differently to see the P.M. portrayed on stage as an exponent of Power Politics, and of unscrupulousness in the name of a great cause. Not only is Churchill seen as the power behind the murder from the air of countless non-combatants, mostly young mothers and their small children, and seniors; but it is also claimed that he engineered the assassination of the Polish Prime Minister, General Sikorsky. You could skip most of that, and just read act three.

Toward the end of the play, Bishop Bell is 'bested' by Churchill and ushered out of the Great Man's presence. Here is the playwright's stage direction at that point:

"BELL turns away, he is forced to, overcome by despair, and the trembling in his voice. ... -- his voice fades like that of mankind in the tumult of the massacre of history....

CHURCHILL, alone, sunk in thought, gives himself up, unobserved, to the impression BELL has made on him."

The play's last words concerning Bishop Bell are these:

CHIEF OF STAFF: Well -- did the P.M.

        silence the old demagogue?

SECRETARY (sighs, smiles) :

       If he ever got to be Archbishop of Canterbury ... !

CHIEF OF STAFF: I expect that will be taken care of.

P.S. The first English-language production of "Soldiers", which was in Toronto, was well cast:

Winston Churchill was played by John Colicos, whom we know as 'Baltar' from the original Battlestar Galactica. George Bell was played by Chris Wiggins, whom we know as 'Jack Marshak' in Friday the 13th: The Series. How did they know?

Listen here.

PZ's Podcast: Bishop Bell's Speech

EPISODE 41

If we ever needed Bishop Bell again, we need him today!

George K.A. Bell (1883-1958) was Bishop of Chichester in the Church of England during the Second World War. Bell became controversial -- highly unpopular -- because of a speech he made in the House of Lords on February 9, 1944, opposing RAF Bomber Command's 'carpet bombing' of German cities. Winston Churchill's War Cabinet regarded such bombing as the way to end the War. Bishop Bell regarded it as a war crime.

Today Bell's speech is regarded as one of the high points of Christian witness in England during the Twentieth Century. At the time, not one colleague of Bell's in the Lords supported his stand. Not one. He was also pilloried by the press -- which proves that journalism can swing with the times, 'like a pendulum do'. As one result of his speech, the Bishop received no further preferment in the Church, and was famously blocked as the most qualified candidate to succeed William Temple as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Today's episode of 'PZ's Podcast' exposits Bishop Bell's speech. It is a wonder! Remember, although the speech is canonical today, it was universally abhorred at the time.

I wonder how George Bell would have regarded the use of un-manned drones to conduct targeted assassinations from the air. For his sake I'm glad he's dead.

Listen here.

PZ's Podcast: No Popery!

EPISODE 40

Religious partisanship is something I know about. It is something Charles Dickens knew about, too.

In his 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge, Dickens sought to understand religious strife from the inside out,

taking the "Lord Gordon Riots" of 1780 as his occasion for a cautionary tale.

The "Gordon Riots", also known as the "No Popery" riots, were a flash of mob violence, ostensibly ignited against legislation to relax the laws against the practice of Catholicism in England, which shocked Britain. George Gordon, a sincere but insecure Scottish nobleman, put legitimate fears about the Catholic religion, rooted in vivid historical memories of the reign of Bloody Mary, into a giant petition to turn back the repeal.

Lord George's delivery of this petition to the House of Commons triggered a wave of hysteria, soon fueled by alcohol, which resulted in massive arson and pillaging. Only after three days of dithering did the Army finally take charge, and restore order. Many of the instigators were hanged. Lord George was acquitted of treason, but soon converted to Orthodox Judaism, which is an interesting story in itself.

Dickens anchors his complex novel around the character of a good Protestant, 'Gabriel Varden', a middle-aged locksmith who goes some several extra miles in the cause of mercy and loyalty; and a bad Protestant, 'Martha Varden', Gabriel's wife, who exemplifies the pharisee and whose obtuse self-righteousness almost succeeds in destroying her life and the life of her family.  Fortunately, Mrs. Varden is saved -- by her husband !

There is also the title character, Barnaby Rudge, an autistic man of 25, whose insights -- and insight into the nature of God -- are to be listened to; and a vicious villain, Hugh, who himself experiences a conversion to grace in the catastrophe of the ending. Listen to Hugh at the end of the novel.

Barnaby Rudge, which I had delayed reading for years because I feared to read it, is an x-ray into the good of the Gospel, and the "devil in the details', i.e., the danger of putting secondary things in first place, and first things in second.  

Episode 40 of 'PZ's Podcast' exposits the shattering conversion of Martha Varden.

Listen here. Or subscribe to PZ's Podcast here.

P.S. For Mockingbird enthusiasts, George Gordon's sudden jump from Reformed Christianity to Orthodox Judaism will offer some delightful grist for the mill.

PZ's Podcast: The Phoenix Club

EPISODE 39

Here is a memory I've kept under wraps for 40 years, and it's not a bad one.

The success of The Social Network has put The Phoenix Club of Harvard College so boldly on the map, that if I didn't talk about it now, the "very stones would cry out". PZ was there.

The Phoenix Club, properly known as The Phoenix Sphinx-Kalumet., is an undergraduate Final Club of Harvard that is described in The Accidental Billionaires as "the king of the hill" in undergraduate social life.  Is it?  Was it?  Ever?  (We're speechless.)

What it was was a delightful expression of adolescent dissent, within the great flood of late Sixties attitude. We were about humor, stingers, the bon mot, Oscar Wilde, and a required reading of Brideshead Revisited. We laughed our way through as serious a period as you could imagine. Then, the seriousness concerned the Vietnam War. Now, as fashion has changed, the seriousness concerns identity and predicate. One thing we weren't, is serious.

PZ's Podcast this week tells a story, a tale attached to "The Social Network".  This story's been dying to be told.

One other thing, and it's painful: Why could I not talk about this chapter of my life 'til now? Was it the influence of Christian equality? Was it "class warfare", or something like that? I did find out, soon on in the Church, that any talk of Harvard College dropped like a lead balloon. So one didn't.

Now if the Faith can't handle a thing like that, which is a part of you like anything else, why not? What's wrong about 'the way we were' -- if that's the way you were. I often wished I'd never gone to Harvard. And The Phoenix, that delightful repository of fun and games?: Keep it big time under wraps. Like The Yardbirds, this makes me tremble.

Podcast 39 is in loving memory of Page Farnsworth Grubb, '71. 

Listen here.

PZ's Podcast: The Yardbirds (For Your Love)

EPISODE 37

This is about The Yardbirds, the British Invasion avant-garde band that brought us hope, instinct, and, finally, a Stairway to Heaven. The band, which existed from 1963 to 1968, was our first exposure to
Eric Clapton, then Jeff Beck, and then Jimmy Page -- all guitar gods, but Page had worked with Joe Meek, so he really was touched with deity.

My talk gives the basic facts about The Yardbirds, scores their searing songs, such as "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", "I Ain't Got You", "Heart Full of Soul", "You're a Better Man than I", "Shapes of
Things", "Evil Hearted You", "I'm a Man", "Over Under Sideways Down", "Stroll On" (sublime!)), "Little Games", and "Goodnight Sweet Josephine"; then tries to understand what made them great.

I believe several of The Yardbirds' best songs live at the edge of insanity. These songs, especially their guitar breaks, are always just about to go out of bounds. With the exception of "Stroll On", which actually does go out of bounds -- just like the Joe Meek production, his wildest, entitled "Crawdaddy Simone" -- The Yardbirds get right on the verge of wild and uncontrolled chaos.  I think you have to love them for this.  But don't take my word for it. The songs are all a kiss away, a click away. The material's been out for years.
[CONTINUE READING]

From W. Somerset Maugham's "The Happy Man"

The opening lines of the great author's (very) short story: 

"It is a dangerous thing to order the lives of others and I have often wondered at the self-confidence of politicians, reformers and suchlike who are prepared to force upon their fellows measures that must alter their manners, habits, and points of view.  I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows oneself?  Heaven knows, I know little enough of myself."

Episode 36 of PZ's Podcast, which talks at length about Maugham and the nature of Unconventional Thinking is up now!

PZ's Podcast: Conventional Thinking, and Unconventional (Alan Watts and Somerset Maugham)

EPISODES 35&36

Just because Alan Watts said it, doesn't make it wrong. Or, putting it another way, just because Alan Watts said it, doesn't make it right. He is not the point. But he did say some interesting things in the course of an interesting, morphing life.

Here is something Watts said in an essay prompted by The Dharma Bums. (He was not happy with Kerouac's portrayal of him in that book.): "Conventional thought is the confusion of the concrete universe of nature with the conceptual things, events, and values of linguistic and cultural symbolism."

He is talking about abstraction, which is 'conventional thought', versus concrete observation, which is unconventional thought.

When this quote begins to make sparks inside you, you begin to see that a lot of your everyday thinking is putting things, people, and events into categories; rather than letting them exist in their uniqueness, or on their own terms. When we set particular things into an intellectual 'frame' or grouping, we are working to deny them their individual reality. Whenever you say of a thing, 'This is that', rather than 'This is this', you're adding to the thing, and thereby really detracting from it. You're seeing it in terms of something else, such as a category you already have or an interpretation through which you already see things, rather than seeing it as it is, right there in front of you.

Conventional thought, if Watts is right, is a way of controlling reality. His theme relates to our upcoming Mockingbird Conference in New York City (March 31-April 2).

In case you think this sounds abstruse or unrelated to what you're interested in, think the late Medieval struggle between the philosophers who called themselves Nominalists and the philosophers who called themselves Realists. It was the essential background for Luther.

Episode 35 of PZ's Podcast considers the nature of things if they don't have names.

Episode 36, which will be released Thursday, gives some examples of un-conventional thinking, the thinking which eschews categories.  An instance of this, and quite hilarious if you've been exposed to what he is lampooning, occurs in Somerset Maugham's 1938 novel Christmas Holiday. There we are given a tour through the Louvre that is conducted by a pompous parent for the edification of her two young children. That painful tour represents 'conventional thinking'. But then, immediately afterwards, we are given a tour conducted by a most afflicted young worker in a Paris bordello, as she guides a befuddled and supposedly intellectual young man right to the spot where they can both appreciate a somewhat hidden still-life unconventionally. The whole thing's a hoot, but it's also moving.  

I hope you'll hear me out, as we begin with that 'genuine fake' Herr Watts, survey the punctures of abstraction in the wheel of reality, then allow suffering 'Lydia', in Christmas Holiday (who was played by Deanna Durbin in the movies), to bring us straight to the hem of a specific beautiful thing.

Listen here. 

PZ's Podcast: "Mr." Priest and The King's Speech (Cosmo Lang)

EPISODES 33&34

You can usually tell when things aren't going well for an institution, when professional titles become inflated. Great academics in this country used often to be called by the title 'Mr.' rather than 'Professor' or 'Doctor'. Or take the United States Navy. Then, too, in the Episcopal Church and the Church of England, ministers were always called 'Mr.'. That is, until recently. As with other things, no one believes you when you point this out. It is simply inconceivable to the great majority of church folk that the rector of their parish should have been known as 'Mr.' Smith. 'Mr.' is heard today as if it were a devaluation of the office somehow, or a less religious form of address. But back then, in those distant days before the 1979 Prayer Book, the title 'Mr.' was normative, just as the word 'minister' was normative, rather than 'priest' -- not just for the Eisenhower era but for the 400 years up to the Eisenhower era. 'Mr.' Smith for the parson was a democratization of the clergy, a welcome expression of Jesus' own repeated injunction, 'Call no man father'.

In Episode 33 of PZ's Podcast, the story is just told, the story of titles for clergy in England and America. Novels are the chief evidence, from Fielding through Forster. It's always 'Mr.' -- right up through the era of "Mad Men". I know this, because I was there.

Why is this footnote to history important? It is important because it tells us something interesting: When churches go on the defensive in relation to the outside world, titles become inflated in relation to their inside world. First, I was 'Mr.' Zahl. Then I became, against my will (but there was nothing I could ever do about it) 'Father' Zahl. Then -- O frabjous Day! Calloo! Callay! -- I became 'Father Paul'. Paging Bing Crosby, which was the only way I could reconcile myself to this. Funny thing, the higher the title, the lower one's rep in the community. The more dirty looks I got, out on the avenue, the more fixated 'my people' became on my title.

Episode 34 (to be posted on Thursday) is inspired by "The King's Speech", but sadly, not by the wonderful teacher who helps a future king, but rather by the film's portrayal of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang. Cosmo Lang's famous 'teaching moment' in December 1936, by which he sought to use the abdication of King Edward VIII to 'recall' the nation to religion, not only backfired, but caused the whole Church of England to be regarded as judgmental and pharisaical. The Archbishop, acted superciliously but accurately by Derek Jacobi, played right into the hands of a culture that desires to see the Church identified with Law, in the negative sense, and Free Thought identified with emancipation. This podcast tries to understand why Christians have such a hard time expressing the very Grace we've been given, ironically packaging it in terms of its opposite.

Listen here.

A Sympathy That Predominates: Some Anglican Evangelicals in Literature

A companion piece to this week's episodes of PZ's Podcast, which deal with the Protestant (architectural) face of Anglicanism:

There are few sympathetic portrayals in literature of Anglican or Episcopal clergy who are Evangelicals. Most novelists have described Anglican Evangelical clergy as self-righteous, puritanical, and hypocritical. The classic portrayals are 'Mr. Slope' in Trollope's Barchester Towers, 'Mr. Honeyman' in Thackerey's The Newcomes, and 'Mr. Chadband' in Dickens' Bleak House (tho' Mr. Chadband may be a Dissenting Minister rather than a Minister of the Established Church). There is also a devastating portrait of a young 'Simeonite' (i.e., Evangelical) clergyman at Cambridge in Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh. This last one you'll almost think you have met.

One of my favorite Victorian clergyman in literature, a higher type of Anglican Evangelical, but also from Cambridge, is The Rev. Theophilus Cardew. 'Mr. Cardew', a character in 'Mark Rutherford's (aka William Hale White's) novel Catherine Furze, is a self-deceived and quite selfish young clergyman who is also sincere, so far as he knows himself. He comes very close to getting into the hottest water he could possibly get into, but is spared, by another character; and oddly saved, mainly from himself. Theophilus Cardew becomes a lesson for all who believe they are called to Holy Orders. The novel in which he figures is also a rare study of Christianity in truly local terms, for better and for worse, in which there are both entirely credible and admirable Christian characters as well as misguided ones. Catherine Furze is almost always a favorite among students.

Yet, "we look for another" (Yoda) ! There is another.

The most sympathetic portrayal of an Anglican Evangelical minister in nineteenth-century English literature must be The Rev. Edgar Tryan, the hero of George Eliot's novella "Janet's Repentance", which is the third of her Scenes of Clerical Life (1858). Scenes of Clerical Life is a book you simply must read. Tender, clear like an old black-and-white movie, full of heart, full of reality, imbued with personal experience of her subject, Scenes is one of the most beautiful first-novels ever written. Although Middlemarch is probably the great one, Scenes of Clerical Life lights up the night, and especially in terms that will speak to Christian readers. Take, for instance, the following passages, which take place when Mrs. Dempster, aka Janet, encounters Mr. Tyran making a house call to a sick member of the parish:

[CONTINUE READING]

PZ's Podcast: Protestant Interiors (Whistling Dixie)

EPISODES 31&32

You can say all you want about a certain thing, yet people won't believe you. They will simply not believe you. You can present old documents and ancient photographs, accompanied by diaries and essays by people who were "there"; and they still won't believe you. For whatever reasons of their own, they won't believe you.

That's the experience I have had for almost 40 years in trying to convince people that Anglican Christianity is a Protestant phenomenon, or at least was once Protestant.

The fact that this is an empirical fact, which can be proven from the evidence and with no difficulty, seems to make no difference. It 'can't' be true because most people don't want it to be true.

PZ's Podcast this week is an exercise in futility, and I give it no hope of success. But I really was asked to talk about this, or at least one more time before keeping silent forevermore.

Episode 31 relates the Prayer Book history of Anglicanism, in England and America, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to about 1980. This episode tells that story in terms of the interiors of church buildings: where the pulpit was positioned in relation to the altar, the arrangement of the seating, the color of the glass in the windows, the Sunday service that was customary (i.e., Morning Prayer with Sermon), the position of the clergy during the service, the location of the galleries, and so on.

Episode 31 offers some examples of the "Prayer-Book church", which is the formal term to describe the 200 or so protestant interiors that survived in England after the Victorian-era Oxford Movement swept them all away. Almost every church mentioned PZ has visited in person, often with other members of the Mockingbird team.

Episode 32 (up on Thursday) takes a little trip down the East Coast, from Boston to Charleston, surveying the Prayer-Book churches, almost all of them dating from the Colonial period, which survive in this country. They are fascinating survivals and tell an interesting story.

But look, it's really not important. You can bay and whinny and hold up books and pictures on this subject 'til you are blue in the face. No one will believe you. Whenever I used to talk about The Protestant Face of Anglicanism, I felt like the man in CCR's "It Came Out of the Sky (Landed just a Little South of Moline)". No one really believed me. In fact, the vision of what had once happened -- Anglicanism as an inherently Protestant phenomenon -- became divisive. I felt like the little boy in the classic 'Twilight Zone' episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street". He saw the saucer, no one believed him, but then they started killing each other. (See that one!: It's vintage and will never date.)

Please don't listen to these two podcasts. They're a little funny, but you won't like them. Next week I'll return to something important, like maybe the 1997 Viennese musical "Tanz der Vampire". Nothing funny about that -- "Total Eclipse of the Heart".

Preliminary NYC Conference Schedule

Some details subject to change (slightly). To pre-register go here.

P.S. We've heard that people are getting great deals on hotel rooms in the vicinity via booking.com. Also, word has it that AirTran is having particularly good sale this week, and Delta is matching the price points. Just sayin.

P.P.S. For a great and provocative discussion of keynote speaker Mark Galli's recent work, check out InternetMonk!

PZ's Podcast: The Circle and Shock Theater

EPISODES 29 & 30 (Parts three and four of the four-part Moviegoer series): In which our man begins to emerge from "The Black Sleep" and lift his eyes to the quiet hills. He discovers foreign films!

There was a theater on Pennsylvania Avenue between Georgetown and Foggy Bottom known as 'The Circle'. The Circle began to show foreign films in the early 1960's. All of a sudden, names like Sergei Eisenstein, Francois Truffaut, and Federico Fellini began to compete with Roger Corman, Glynis Johns, and "The Vampire and the Ballerina". My friend Lloyd and I became hooked after "Battleship Potemkin", and with a little help from Parker Tyler. Now it was about... montage.

The Circle was a hoot.  We were usually the only people in the theater on a Saturday afternoon.  Or at least it seemed that way to us. We knew we must be on to something.  And so it was.

Gleichzeitig, however, the child was still father to the man. When "Shock Theater" started on Channel Nine -- always after midnight Saturday nights -- we were drawn by an invisible tractor beam. 

What were we drawn to? We were drawn to the Universal horror cycle of the 1930's and '40's.  We were drawn to "The Bride of Frankenstein" (1935) and James Whale, to "House of Frankenstein" (1944) and Llona Massey, and to "The Wolf Man" (1941) and Maria Ouspenskaya. We know now that we were being drawn to fairy tales in the Bruno Bettelheim meaning. But then it was just really, really cool. With our "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazines in hand -- that was all we had to learn about these magical movies -- we stayed up every single Saturday night, to our mothers'  chagrin, since it fell to them to wake us up for church.

What an education: in abreaction!

 

Listen to "The Circle" here. "Shock Theater" goes up on Thursday! 

PZ's Podcast: The Crawling Eye

EPISODE 27

Here is the childhood memory of a conversion.

An eight-year-old boy attends his first Saturday matinee and his world is changed forever.

He and his little friend Marty walk twenty blocks of the city's streets in order to see The Crawling Eye. The title alone, with visions of a slithering alien eye, is guaranteed to ignite interest, at least among little boys, and not so little boys. The movie delivers what it promises.

But I never saw it!  I was so undone by the first two minutes -- "Didn't you see?  He didn't have a head!" -- that I ran out of the theater, shaking with fear.  I never actually saw the crawling eye. For I couldn't stand to sit there another second. Shaking, on the sidewalk outside, I gasped out some words to Marty: "I can't stay.  I've gotta go home.... That was   so   gross."

Yet here was the start of an Unchained Melody.  I couldn't believe the Power of the thing, this movie, sitting in the dark.

So I recovered, and lived, in order to die, another day.  

As it happened, next Saturday they were showing The Alligator People.  There was a God.

Listen here. 

PZ's Podcast: P.E. II

EPISODE 26

High-Church Christianity is an interesting phenomenon. You have the ultimate High Church: the Church of Rome. But then you have High-Church Lutherans, High-Church Anglicans, even High-Church Methodists and High-Church Baptists. Yes, really. It all starts to get relative, though the gold standard will always be the Roman Catholic Church. (There are Low-Church Roman Catholics, interestingly enough.)

This is the second and final podcast concerning the portrait of Episcopalianism as found in the novels of James Gould Cozzens (for the write-up of the first, go here). First, there is an Episcopal funeral as remembered by a thirteen-year-old boy whose mother has died. The service gets hijacked by an acquaintance of the deceased, a lesser mezzo-soprano from the Metropolitan Opera, who shakes the place to the rafters during her solo rendition of "The strife is o'er". No one will be able to remember a thing from the service beyond the upstaging heights of those triple 'Alleluias'. Any parish priest has been there!

Then there is the long description of 'Canon Conway' in Morning Noon and Night, whose particular form of Anglo-Catholicism makes him inwardly embarrassed that he is a married rector with a daughter. The Canon's embarrassment -- he would rather be a Roman Catholic priest but cannot face the requirement of celibacy -- is taken out, unconsciously, on his child and his wife,  without anyone knowing what's going on. Cozzens has no wish to criticize Canon Conway's religion, but he is interested in understanding why the daughter, Judith, becomes so mixed up in relation to men.

I don't remember anyone talking with inside knowledge of these things except maybe Sinclair Lewis, who pilloried revivalists; or Samuel Butler, who caricatured an Evangelical Church of England clergyman in The Way of All Flesh. Cozzens is more interested in understanding his character, Judith, than in judging her (sincere) father.

Listen here. 

Now "P.E." is finished, and I hope it might have shed a little light. Next week, hang on for...  "The Crawling Eye".

A Couple Doozies from Grace in Practice

p. 6: "But the law, no matter where it comes from, is always the law heard. I hear ‘you shall’ and 'you shall not’ as adversarial. This is the key to understanding human psychology and human action. All ideals and all delineations of what is absolutely good are heard and understood as accusatory statements… Say what you will about its idealistic intent, about its being the ultimate ‘design manual’ for men and women, the law is always heard as an attack. I learned this as a child living in a family. My sister might say to me, “How do you like my dress?” and I would answer, “It looks fine.” She would say back, “What's the matter with it?!” I was mystified. Any judgment, any evaluation – even if it approves and speaks a blessing – will be heard as a negation.”

p. 28: “The principle of the divine demand for perfection upon the human being is reflected concretely in the countless internal and external demands that human beings devise for themselves. In practice, the requirement of perfect submission to the commandments of God is exactly the same as the requirement of perfect submission to the innumerable drives for perfection that drive everyday people's crippled and crippling lives. The commandment of God that we honor our father and mother is no different in impact, for example, than the commandment of fashion that a woman be beautiful or the commandment of culture that a man be boldly decisive and at the same time utterly tender."

If you're in or around Charlottesville, VA, we're teaching an eight-week course on Grace in Practice at Christ Episcopal Church. From now until Lent, from 10-11am on Sunday mornings, we'd love for you to join us.

PZ's Podcast: P.E.

EPISODE 25

I used to get mad that no one introduced me, during 35 years of being an Episcopal minister, to the writings of James Gould Cozzens. Here was a man who wrote in detail and insight about the inner workings of Episcopal parishes, Episcopal clergy and Episcopal people. In novels like The Last Adam, Men and Brethren, By Love Possessed, and Morning Noon and Night, the Episcopal Church figured, again and again and again. And the portraits were accurate.

Just one glance at pages 289-294 of "The Last Adam", published in 1933, offered the exact insight I needed to get through the funerals I kept being called upon to perform. Why, I kept asking, do these funerals seem to be all the same:  one dead Episcopalian, a tribe of adult children who are hippies or Buddhists (and sometimes both), and a generation of grand-children who have never been inside the church of their ancestors? Through reading Cozzens' explanation of why the character 'Virginia Banning' would never go to church again, I found the answer.

So I began to get a little mad, in a kind of "why didn't they tell me this stuff before?" way.  

Had no one read Cozzens, that mole, who declared himself an agnostic during early days at the Kent School but went on to become a unique chronicler of Episcopalian culture and its inner game of tennis?

Well, no one said anything to me about it, that's for sure. Only a man, a most seasoned and delightful Episcopal clergyman in Manhattan, now many years dead, understood the way things were, I mean, really knew; and possessed the wit, the charm, and the love to help me along.  One week's study of "Men and Brethren" could have had the same effect. At least I had the Rector of St. Michael's, Upper Broadway to instruct me. Thank God for him!

But you may not have a Mr. Hill.  You may have to settle for a writer who knew it all, from the inside out. You're able to have his excellent novels, with characters such as 'Mr. Cudlipp', Rector of St. Ambrose on the Upper East Side; 'Dr. Lamb', Rector of Holy Innocents four blocks west; "Canon Conway", that 'hell of an Anglo-Catholic' (the quote is from "Morning Noon and Night"); Mrs. Banning of the Altar Guild in New Winton, Connecticut, together with her Senior Warden husband; Elmer Abbott, the dedicated but underpaid organist/choirmaster of Christ Church, Brocton, PA; and 'Dr. "Whit" Trowbridge', Rector of Christ Church. You've got those people -- we've got those people -- to instruct us.

They'll instruct us about vestries, clergy ambition, flower arranging Saturday mornings, diocesan investment trusts and parish endowments, church staffs and sextons, episcopal elections 'out West', priests who live -- who live! -- to turn 'Morning Prayer' parishes into "Eucharist-Centered" parishes (and always succeed), 'liberal' curates in relation to 'conservative' rectors (and vice-versa), and church organists on collision courses with 'micro-managing' rectors.  Cozzens' characters will teach you a lot of what you need to know to understand The Episcopal Church, or what used to be known as The Protestant Episcopal Church.  

This podcast is one of two concerning the old "P.E.", which really doesn't exist anymore, but sort of does. Underneath the new norms and the new forms, it's not really changed very much. Except that its former constituency has become mainly Buddhist. Just attend a funeral at St. Whoever's-in-the-Fields next week. If you listen to the eulogies -- which the old "P.E." did not countenance -- you'll see. You don't have to take my word for it.  Then go home and read Cozzens' late short story "Eyes to See". There it is, everything you need to know.

To listen, click here. 

2011 NYC MOCKINGBIRD CONFERENCE: PRE-REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!

Control and Freedom. Two words that dominate the emotional, spiritual and cultural landscape. Also two words that many of us spend our lives chasing after, mistaking one for the other, or believing they go hand-in-hand. Yet how friendly are these terms? What is the actual relation between freedom and personal control? Please join us this Spring in NYC as we explore how God’s grace calms our fears, upsets our controls, and inspires freedom in the way we live, work and love.

Our keynote speaker this year will be Mark Galli, Senior Managing Editor of Christianity Today. Other speakers include Jady Koch and David Zahl of Mockingbird, with a series of devotions from conference chaplain Paul Zahl. There will also be eight breakout sessions, from a number of other Mockingbird contributors, covering a wide range of topics, from film, music and literature to parenting and aspects of life in local churches. Full schedule coming Feb 1st.

If the past three years are anything to go by, the conference is sure to be a time of warmth, fun and maybe even a little emancipation. Needless to say, if you enjoy our site, you will love our conference! It is open to anyone and everyone – our hope at Mockingbird is always to keep things as down-to-earth as possible – just be sure to pre-register ASAP, as space is limited.

For information about cost, accommodations and to pre-register visit www.mbird.com/conference.

Also, we'll be sending out the hard-copy invitations next week to everyone on our mailing list. If you would like extras, to distribute at your church/Whole Foods/street corner, please email us at info@mbird.com.

Hope to see you in NYC!

PZ's Podcast Double-Feature, Part Two: Here or Nowhere

EPISODE 24

Stoicism, anyone?

Well, I think there's something to it, in the light of selfishness and sorrow, which is to say that stoicism -- which is just a term, from Classical Antiquity -- acknowledges the tenacious changelessness of the human world, and poses the question,

What can we do?

Given the impasses of temperament and the impasse of the social order -- things aren't changing, from millennium to millennium -- what's a person to do? If there is nothing we can do, then what ought we to do?

There's a memorable expression of stoicism in the long inner dialogue within the mind of 'Colonel Ross' toward the end of Guard of Honor. I try to unpack this speech in today's podcast.  Note the pervasive Biblical imagery. But is Colonel Ross right, at the end of the day?  Or rather, is this the whole loaf of a realistic response to life's transiency, and fretfulness and fruitlessness?

As a Christian, I don't think so. 

But then we go to that 'final' stoic, the Arthur Winner, Jr. of the miraculous conclusion to By Love Possessed. Arthur Winner gets confronted with the truth not only of life in general, but himself in particular. The 'mirror up to nature' is what the novelist places in front of his character. The compassionate strategist and understander Arthur Winner is left in the lurch. He has to find a solution then. Without a solution, only suicide will 'work'.

Let's talk about the given (not achieved) stoicism of Arthur Winner's drowning answer. It's close to telling the full story of life. And if you look carefully at the justly celebrated final sentence of that book, there's a little light, real light, this little light of mine, The Light That Has Lighted The World.

To listen, click here. 

PZ's Podcast Double-Feature, Part One: Inside Looking Out

EPISODE 23

So I was standing in line at the Hess Station the other day and began to be critical of everyone else who was standing in line with me. I thought about lottery tickets and poor people, Jerry Springer, obesity, 'Joe Six-Pack', the few free individuals who were purchasing cigarettes, Little Debbie, Black Coffee (in Bed), the Spanish language, the excellent Mexican restaurant I frequent Mondays because of the Lunch Specials, the ads blaring from the gas pumps themselves, and so on and so forth.

Talk, Talk ("It's My Life"); and What is the Meaning of Life? (I even got that far in my talk.)

This week's podcast attempts to understand what's going on with this inner dialogue.  Or is it monologue? It is actually a "conversation", to use the dreaded word, and it's between me, myself, and I.

The text for the podcast is the passage from By Love Possessed in which Arthur Winner is 'interviewed' by Mrs. Pratt. Mrs. Pratt is a fearsomely articulate Roman Catholic who, with her pleasant questions, has an agenda for which even the 'man of reason', Arthur Winner, is unprepared. We come in on his inward realization that she is beginning to stir some deep waters.  First, a yellow flight begins to flicker.  Then it turns to red, going quickly from 'a whisper to a scream' (Icicle Works).

In a second passage,  Cozzens takes us from the squadrons of inward associations which go on in human beings during such difficult conversations, some of them unconscious; to the great questions of purpose and meaning, and God.  The second passage is taken from the climax of Guard of Honor.  

"What Goes On (In your Heart)?  What Goes On (In your Mind)? It is tearing me apart. " 

This is all in service of understanding better the divided man of Romans, Chapter Seven.

To listen, click here. 

Ring in the Good: It's Journey Time!

Announcing PZ's First Podcast of 2011

Time to "Escape" on that "Wheel in the Sky", time for some "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' ", time to "Open Arms" and "Send Her My Love', maybe even time to "Be Good to Yourself".
One thing they've taught us, and we'll never stop knowing it, because we've been "Raised on Radio" : "The Girl Ca(h)n't Help It".
(That was their greatest song, by the way.)

Journey's been on my mind for so long.
They render all other rock 'n roll music after, say, 1985, superfluous.
After Journey there's nothing more to say, nothing more to be said.

I really believe this, and believe I can prove it.

Come with me, and take a Voyage, to the Bottom, of the Sea.
Whether I can make my case -- it really doesn't matter. But I'm going to try.
I won't stop believin'.

For their classic, uproarious Behind The Music moment, watch from the 10 minute mark: