I can’t come anywhere close to covering all the points in favor of social dance, or refuting the many arguments against it– but I’ve given a shot at some of them today. I know most of our readers and most of the editors share my opinions on this (as I have danced with many of them) but I’d like to hear what you think of how I come to my conclusions.

In 1848, in his book ‘A Fable for Critics’: the poet James Russell Lowell published these sarcastic words:

He who esteems the Virginia reel
A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal,
And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery
Than crushing His African children with slavery,
Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon
Are mounted for hell on the devil’s own pillion,
Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows,
Approaches the heart through the door of the toes.

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Evgeny Kissin, 38-year-old concert pianist, debuted with the Ulyanovsk Symphony Orchestra at the age of 10. At 13, he gained international recognition for playing and recording both Chopin’s piano concertos with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra. He was, reputedly, able to hum a Bach tune along with his sister, who was then playing it on the piano, at the age of 11 months. So much for Wikipedia.

On YouTube, you can look up an interview with Kissin, who relates the instance of receiving a good review from a critic when he was 17, but with this barb at the end of the article – “In general, one gets an impression that, up till now, everything has been easy for Kissin in piano playing – sometimes even too easy. Both plusses and minuses of his art come from that fact. Now we only hear in his playing what comes from his great natural gift. This is, of course, wonderful, but in future, something definitely has to change. What? When? In which way? Everything will depend on that.”

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If we are preaching the gospel faithfully, we will clash with the various, proliferating religions of the “postmodern” world — with Mormons, Hare Krishna, Moonies, and Scientologists. But, we will also be clashing with other “competitors”. The Church’s competitors are nation-states and international political bodies like the United Nations. The Church’s ethos and culture are not just a challenge to other “religions,” but to the ethos of Americanism and the culture of globalization, insofar as such an ethos and culture exist. (Against Chrsitianity, Peter J. Leithart, pg. 34)

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She entered the elevator after my grandma and I. I was shy, and looked down as I said hello. If I saw her face again I would not recognize it. But her hands, her hands were where my eyes rested, and they still stand out to me.

The rest of her was all wrinkles. All sagging, all stooped. But that wasn’t what made her old. Anyone can hunch, and even I, at eighteen, have wrinkles. It was her hands that made her old. It wasn’t that they were wrinkled– the skin was stretched tight and smooth, a mottled and discolored skin on shriveled claws. View Full Post

Hannah Roorda writes:

Well, I know I promised more poems– but as soon as I said that, a large number of other poems turned up on this blog. I’m not used to that, and it threw me off. I said, surely no one wants to read that much poetry all at once? So my Wednesday night poems are still just scribbled on the back of church bulletins in my car, and you’ll have to keep waiting. But, if you are one of those who starts to get dizzy after a few attempts at amateur verse, find relief, dear friend.

First– this is the blog’s 100th post! A significant milestone I am sure.

And second, the actual posty bit:

When I got there, she explained the problem. Her neighbor had called to let her know the sheep were out– but we didn’t know where they were. I threw on a pair of her younger brother’s boots and followed her and her dog out to the lower pasture. We scanned the fence, but didn’t see any breaks, so we had to walk down to both ends of the pasture. The fence on the west end was intact, so we knew they must down at the east end, across the creek. It took us a few minutes to walk down there, but when we did, the little escapees were easily spotted. They were standing in the neighbors’ soybeans, contentedly eating. They didn’t look like they were suffering from any pangs of conscience!

We easily rounded them up and chased them back towards the barn and the other pasture. When we got there, Lauren opened the gate into the upper pasture– the sheep were almost there– but we had rejoiced too soon. Half of them headed for the other end of the pasture we were in, and half of them ran back towards the creek. I didn’t react soon enough, and the creek-bound half easily made it past me and started high-tailing it down there. I ran after them in exasperation, the mud boots slapping against my legs.

Before I had come close to reaching that group of sheep, I heard more little hooves running along behind me. I turned around, and there was the other half of the herd, chasing their friends and I. I stood my ground, more out of desperation than determination, and yelled at them, “So help me, if you don’t turn around and go right back where you came from, I WILL get an ax and slaughter you all!” I don’t think they understood all the words, but the tone was clear, and they headed back to Lauren.

I turned my attention to the original group. By now they were nearly at the creek, and my window of catching them without having to jump the creek again was narrowing. I ran along the fence line, trying to ignore the way my feet were beginning to hurt and the thought of how badly I’d smell if I ever made it to choir. I eyed the gap between us– if I beat them to where the fence turned a corner, I could circle around, stop them from crossing the creek, and get them headed back towards the barn. I managed a final burst of speed– but they beat me. But I wasn’t going to cross that creek again, no way! I was yelling again: “You dumb sheep! Don’t you cross that creek! Oh, I’ll make you regret it!” With an inhuman speed, I ran around them and was now between them and the creek. They looked at me. I looked at them. If they’d wanted to, they could have split center and gotten around me– but I was counting on their herd mentality– and it came through. I dashed at them, and they turned around and finally were running towards the barn.

I started to holler at Lauren as I ran along behind them. “We’re coming, I got them, get ready!” As they approached the fence, she swung wide the gate to the other pasture, and with a bit of cutting them off as the dashed first too far right, then too far left, we got them inside.

Except for one.

One little sheep decided she’d be better off down at the creek, and she was headed there again, ignoring the rest of the herd in the other pasture. I took a deep breath, rolled my eyes, and pursued, Lauren running along the other side.

Fortunately, at this point Lauren’s dog decided to intervene, and she scared that little sheep back towards the barn. I turned around and chased it away from the creek while Lauren got the fence ready again. We zig-zagged around the pasture awhile– the sheep crazily turning left, right, backwards, forwards again– anywhere but inside the gate. I followed along behind, guarding the way to the creek. But after a few tiring minutes of this, I eventually cornered it in the barn. I glared at it. I was out of breath, my feet were beginning to blister, I smelled like the pasture, and I was late to choir. The sheep glared insolently back. All my epithets forgotten, I merely stood, staring, until Lauren rounded the corner and tackled the straying sheep. It collapsed, sincerely offended, and had to be dragged into the other pasture.

After we finally pulled the gate shut, the sheep still lay on the ground, motionless. Lauren prodded it, checked it for injuries, pleaded with it– but it wouldn’t get up. We agreed to come back later to check on it, but as we climbed out of the pasture, it at last got over itself and got up.

As we changed into clean clothes (a must!) and made our way to choir, at least half an hour late, we were both thinking the same thing: God calls us sheep, and boy, it’s a good thing grace is free.

John Ahern writes,

In light of the fact that Regina’s already reviewed the Dark Knight, Jeremy Sauder intends to (or intended to the last time I talked to him), and that Mark and Nick have talked to me (separately) about the various profundities behind the Joker, I think perhaps he (the Joker) would be an interesting subject to bring up in a little more depth.

Oh, there are spoilers here. I’m not going to put it in all caps and italics, because if you’re the sort of person who refuses to read anything that isn’t in all caps and italics, then your happening to see spoilers down there isn’t the least concern of mine.

My argument overall is about negative capability through the portrayal of the devil. The devil ran across my mind the morning after the midnight showing of DK as I thought back on the Joker, searching for some Biblical archetype. Earlier that morning (3:00ish), a friend of mine had leaned over to me during the credits saying, “That’s not your average film.” It stuck with me, and that’s why I was searching for something close to the Joker elsewhere. He was obviously something that didn’t show up often. I dismissed the Joker-devil connection because I thought the devil had a motive behind his sin – ostensibly pride – and the Joker obviously had no such motive.

But then – I think he was the first to suggest it – Sam Thielman expressed what I’d been thinking about the Joker and then convinced me I was wrong about the devil.

“The film’s early reviews have been gently quizzical about the late, lamented Heath Ledger’s magnetic performance as the Joker. It’s obvious that he’s doing a superb job, but nobody seems to know what he’s doing. Let me clear things up: He’s playing Satan. Ledger flicks his tongue like a snake, tempts people to kill one another, and is gleefully sloppy with bullets, bombs, and knives. Everyone else plays gangland archetypes; Ledger’s Joker has escaped to the movies from Milton, or C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra.”

Among my friends who all read WORLD magazine, for which Sam Thielman reviews movies, it became the accepted interpretation – Heath Ledger was playing the devil. If you don’t believe it, watch the scene where Batman is being tempted to torture the Joker by the Joker. This is a person who’s so sadistic he’s willing to be a masochist to get there. Perhaps the Joker even knows he’s going to be beaten in the end, but he’s there to twist as much fun out of the situation as he can while he goes. To quote Thielman’s review again, “Terror is not his means, it’s his end.”

Two things are essential to understanding the Joker’s character. One – he’s a liar. The Tolkienist, in commenting on Regina’s post, cited the fact that the Joker says he’s “a man of my word”. But that can only be irony – he’s so obviously not a man of his word. He only uses truth insofar as it’s conducive to the spreading of lies. Think how he got his scars (something I’ll bring up later). He tells two stories, both of which are obvious lies. He says he’s not a man with a plan, but Jason Bourne couldn’t think as far as the Joker could. The Joker tells Batman that Rachel Dawse is at this address and that Harvey Dent is at that address. Batman grunts to Gordon that he’s going for Rachel, but he arrives there to find Harvey Dent. Then, bang. Batman should have remembered the time-honored truth that, when talking to dragons, always treat what they say as a lie.

Second, the Joker is eerily perceptive. He’s always dealing with people on a soulish level. The effective tactic that the Green Goblin always uses against Peter Parker (capturing his girl) looks shallow in comparison with the way the Joker can see through people’s emotions. The Joker knows almost too well how people are going to react. As he tells one cop, “I know your friends better than you ever did.” And, the fact that the Joker’s story of his scars to Rachel Dawse is vaguely symbolic of her relationship to the Batman I don’t think is coincidental. I think he’s being a perverted Aslan – he’s telling everyone their own story. In a way, he’s too omniscient to be just a character. His knowledge is almost authorial.

Two central themes recur. First – Batman’s maculate fight against evil wouldn’t be complete without the Joker’s contribution. “You just couldn’t let me go could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible aren’t you? You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness, and I won’t kill you, because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever.”

Second, the Joker is willing to do anything he can – including pain not only to other people (a clichéd villain tactic) but pain to himself – to win “the battle for Gotham’s soul”. I think he actually wins (here’s where I slightly disagree with Regina) in the end by converting, if you will, Harvey Dent into a monstrous Nietzschian villain, 2face. Harvey Dent represents Gotham’s bright future. A bright future, by the end of the movie, that’s a little burnt. But the film has a hopeful ending, somehow.

But this first point is the important one – it’s another of the Joker’s lies. C. S. Lewis talks in “the Invasion” in Mere Christianity about the lie of duality, which he says “is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market [besides Christianity]. But it has a catch in it.” Duality is basically the idea that there is a good God and an evil God who are equal in power and competing for control over the universe. That’s what the Joker wants us to believe – that Batman’s goodness really wouldn’t be complete without the Joker’s evilness. The “catch” in it is something Christopher and Jonathon Nolan seem to recognize – that if you have a dualistic universe, there’s no law higher than both of these equal powers that would determine if one was Good and the other Bad. Or, as the Joker says, “[The one rule is that the] only sensible way to live in this world is without rules. And tonight you’re gonna break your one rule.”

When talking to Nick Embrey about this (who adamantly disagreed with this interpretation), he pointed out that the Joker, as a character, is an actor – he’s playing out a part. I thought this was a dazzling insight and it just so happens to fit my argument perfectly. If you’re like me, you’ve always wondered, “Why is the devil so stupid if he knows God is more powerful than him and he’s going to lose in the end?” I think Nick answered it perfectly. There’s a persona the devil has to put on and he puts it on just to be evil.

Now, did the Nolan brothers consciously think of all this? No, probably not. I hope my post can convince you of one thing though – these are authors who have created such a vivid character that he developed intelligible profundities beyond what they might have intended. That happens with other similar villains, like Richard III or aristocracy from Robert Browning, and I think this is negative capability in startling form.

John Ahern writes,

A while back, Philip and I were arguing about beauty. Or rather, that’s exactly not what we were arguing about. I was saying that everything on some level reflects the Trinity – even and especially the grotesque things. He disagreed, and I won’t explain why because I won’t do it justice. And I’m throwing this out here in hopes of a response from him. But here are my ruminations, put better in the words of others with my entirely unworthy elaboration.

“My own feeling is that writers who see by the light of their Christian faith will have, in these times, the sharpest eyes for the grotesque, for the perverse, and for the unacceptable.”

Flannery O’Connor explains this further on down the paragraph – “Redemption is meaningless unless there is cause for it in the actual life we live, and for the last few centuries there has been operating in our culture the secular belief that there is no such cause.”

Secularism denies original sin, as human evil and human deformity are both things to be evolved out of. The Christian is playing into the hand of secularism’s condescension of the idea of original sin whenever it denies the existence and even the necessity for dark, grotesque, ugly things in art and writing. Plato never, to my knowledge, imagined making ideals out of the dark, the grotesque, and the ugly, perhaps because they are deeply material. But that doesn’t mean they’re not spiritual – the Cross is just as spiritual as it is material.

And the Cross is the crux of the matter – interlinguary pun intended – as it is the most grotesque and ugly. As for return to the Platonic, Neo-Platonic, and gnostic duality between spirit (good) and matter (evil), O’Connor comments on the Manicheans.

“The Manicheans separated spirit and matter. To them all material things were evil. They sought pure spirit and tried to approach the infinite directly without any mediation of matter. This is also pretty much the modern spirit, and for the sensibility infected with it, fiction is hard if not impossible to write because fiction is so much an incarnational art.”

Here O’Connor’s trinitarianess comes right through – that, for the fiction writer, the Incarnation gives fiction its boundaries. Its essence. And, according to herself, she is counter-modernity. She is fighting with “an incarnational art” against the lie that the grotesque has no place in the religious.

But is that ugliness simply a process to get through, a process discarded so that we reach the beautiful? Is childbirth only ugly until it brings forth beauty as a child? Is ugliness never an end in itself?

The lesson to learn from grotesqueness isn’t just something we meditate on and then continue. The Cross has long-lasting effects: the holes are still in His hands after the Resurrection. And to hear about Thomas sticking his fingers in them is kind of gross. The unacceptable is very close to the infinite, in this case, and it isn’t a stain that becomes magically zapped-free of ugliness once all the darkness is over.

I don’t deny that there is a certain extent at which we must see beauty in the ugliness of scars and perverseness and deformity, but that is what O’Connor and her intellectual mentor, Jacques Maritan, would call Mystery. Perverseness is not something to be avoided (and it certainly isn’t avoided in O’Connor’s short stories), but it isn’t necessarily revealed as beautiful. Hence the Mystery. O’Connor’s refusal to shy away from this is shown in a scene in Temple of the Holy Ghost as the hermaphrodite shouts, “God made me thisaway and if you laugh He may strike you the same way. This is the way He wanted me to be and I ain’t disputing His way.” I doubt he was the first to suggest it, but Douglas Jones wonders if any other author would have thought that Christ could appear “as a carnival hermaphrodite?”

If it isn’t obvious how this relates to the Trinity, then why not get Dorothy L. Sayers to set your minds at rest? “I will go so far as to maintain that the extraordinary confusion of our minds about the nature and function of Art is principally due to the fact that for nearly 2,000 years we have been trying to reconcile a pagan, or at any rate a Unitarian, aesthetic with a Christian — that is, a Trinitarian and Incarnational — theology.” It should be obvious how this relates to the Trinity because central to the Trinity is a “death” to self (Psalm 110), from which, as the Nicene would have it, proceeds the Spirit. And, not simply a metaphorical or spiritual death, but a real, unplatonic, tangible death. But this, as Hans Decker would hasten to point out, is only another divine joke.

L. C. Russell writes,

This is a response to Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”, found here: http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/marvell/coy.htm

The poem will be familiar to the graduates of English lit. I also included one allusion to another E-lit author’s poem (read: stole good meter and rhyme) in each verse. The first one is easy, but I’ll give twinkie points to whoever can come up with the other two. I’m too lazy to point out all the delicate echoes and contrasts to the original poem. Besides, it would make reading it horribly dull. Enjoy!

Had you but truth enough, and spine,
These words, my suitor, were no crime
We would sit down, and think which way
To talk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the honesty of thy words
Shouldst my love mine, I am assured
Though it’s been said, where words abound
Much sense beneath is rarely found.
But you should, if you wish, then construe
That what Pope says cannot be true
With words and wit, ‘till all do sleep
In a most attentive heap
A hundred snores shall be thy praise
From somnolent corpses in thy gaze;
Two hundred twitches for each line
Of sparkling charm and perfect rhyme;
An age at least to form each verse,
Thrusting forward logic’s hearse.
For, suitor, you deserve this fate
Nor could you write at slower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Truth’s winged chariot hurrying near;
Bidding me flee before your lies
Shall chance to take a captive mind.
Thy words shall no more be found
Nor thy rocky voice shall sound
Like a Siren’s whining wail
Bidding me come, and thee to hail.
Shall my honor turn to dust
Burnt to ashes by thy lust?
If thou doth love me, in truth adore,
Thou should love my honor more.

Now, therefore, while youthful lies
Sit on thy lips in sweet disguise,
And while thy spineless flesh transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Thy words shall wither, soon forgotten,
In folly ripe, in reason rotten:
No more than a shepherd’s vow
With the strength of beauty’s power
Each shall change with equal weight
One to age, and one to hate.
Shall I suffer in pleasure’s strife
Through the vineyard of my life?
No, I shall not let thee come
Rather, I shall bid thee run.

Hannah Roorda writes

It being the end of the school year, life is changing by leaps and bounds. Our group of young people at church, realizing that we are about to be scattered to the edges of the earth (Iowa, Texas, Oregon, and Minnesota are the edges of the earth, right?) quickly organized a farewell bonfire party. We played the dumbest game on earth (Capture the Flag in the dark) and sat around the campfire talking and singing Psalms and hymns. We also took the opportunity to offer toasts and wishes, although I don’t know that they took, since all we had to toast with was lemonade. Anywho, in searching for good toasts, I came across some good quotes appropriate for departures. Enjoy.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. ~Henry David Thoreau

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning. ~Ivy Baker Priest

No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth. ~Robert Southey

In the hope to meet
Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
~Ben Jonson

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire. ~Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld

The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart. ~Elisabeth Foley

A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a man without trials. ~Chinese proverb

Why should we hesitate to say “good-by” to each other? Are we not Pagans, to think that a word has power over God’s quiet purposes, and that saying “good-by” smells of death? Must men die intestate because they think that making their wills is cutting out their shrouds? If we were old Romans, who thought “vale!” meant “forever,” we might be shy of such a word, but “good-by,” even if it should be for the last time on earth, is only the difference between “good-night” and “good-morning.” Say it, then, like a Christian, and, if it still comes hesitatingly, stretch it out into the loveliest of wishes, “God be with you.” ~Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Never give up. Never, never give up! We shall go on to the end. ~Winston Churchill

Piping down the valleys wild
Piping songs of pleasant glee
On a cloud I saw a child.
And he laughing said to me.

Pipe a song about a Lamb:
So I piped with merry chear,
Piper pipe that song again–
So I piped, he wept to hear.

Drop thy pipe thy happy pipe
Sing thy songs of happy chear,
So I sung the same again
While he wept with joy to hear.

Piper sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read–
So he vanish’d from my sight,
And I pluck’d a hollow reed.

And I made a rural pen,
And I stain’d the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear

This is the introduction to Blake’s Songs of Innocence, which are coupled with the Songs of Experience and published together as one work.

It is in trochaic tetrameter: -. -. -. -(.) which is often used for nursery rhymes (e.g. JACK and JILL ran UP the HILL). So the style has a sentimental air; and the diction’s just as bad. It’s bubbling over with wide-eyed bliss, and it’s full of piping and merry cheer and joy. (Some of it’s a little idiotic sounding — “the water clear”? Oh, yes, isn’t it marvelous that the water is clear?) In any case, if anyone thinks there’s any value in this fluff in and of itself, please keep it to yourself.

But against this background of sentimentality, it seems to me there’s something really interesting going on. The shepherd, since he is in the first person, can best be taken as Blake himself. He begins as a simple minstrel boy. Now, the laughing child on the cloud is an important image. The cloud is a clear sign of divinity, so the first thing that comes to mind is that this is the baby Jesus. This is supported by the fact that Blake mentions the baby Jesus elsewhere in the Songs of Innocence (The Lamb, Cradle Song). The baby Jesus is characterized by two things. First, as mentioned, the infant is divine; God is being specifically conceived of as a little child in the Songs of Innocence. Second, the infant’s nature is to be joyful; even before the minstrel begins his singing, the babe is laughing on his little cloud.

Here I think it’s important to understand that Blake wasn’t a traditional Christian. He probably didn’t believe in the trinity as most Christians do. For him, Jesus was not so much God the Son, as God the Man. He was, if you know anything about Hinduism, like an avatar. So the babe’s physical appearance does not symbolizes the nature of God the Son (in whom Blake didn’t believe). Rather, for the purposes of the Songs of Innocence, Blake is portraying the the one-personed God as childlike and joyful.

Anyway. This child-God makes three requests of the minstrel, one after another. First, he asks the minstrel to pipe a song about a Lamb. This capitalization of the L is significant. It suggests that the child-God is requesting that the minstrel pipe a song not just about any old lamb, but about the Lamb of God; the child-God himself. He’s asking the minstrel to make music for him and about him (how you’d pipe a song about a lamb is beyond me, but whatever). The child-God’s second request is that the minstrel put this song to words, and then sing it. Note that the child is very touched by both the piping and the singing — this kind of open emotion would have been approved of by the Romantics.*

The third and final request of the child-God is for the minstrel is to write a book with happy songs for everyone to read. Think about this one last one; the child-God is asking the minstrel to compose songs expressing the child-God’s nature for the world. In this commission, the minstrel becomes a prophet. And so this poem establishes what a prophet’s function is — what Blake’s function is — from the point of view of the Songs of Innocence. It demonstrates the point of the rest of the Songs of Innocence: to express the divine nature, which is childlikeness and joy. It’s a key and a lens to the whole rest of the work.

Since Blake was a masterful artist and symbolist, it’s worth taking a look at his illustration to his poem. I’ve linked it for you here. The shepherd raises his eyes to the child-God on his cloud, who shines heavenly light down on the face of the shepherd. The shepherd’s sheep are in the background; on the left is a tree, and on the right are two trees entwined. I don’t understand the symbolism of the trees; any insight would be appreciated.

Anyhow, hope you were interested.

*I’m not sure Blake can be considered as a Romantic himself, although his thoughts on Romanticism were mostly supportive. Regardless, though, I think here he’s not trying so much to sell Romanticism, as to identify it with Innocence.