In a conversation with a professor of mine about a paper assigned by another professor, he and I drew parallels between Roman emperors and  Tolkein's Denethor. Specifically, Denethor claims in his conversation with Gandalf that he is the only bastion against the darkness of Mordor. He, like Rome, builds his power on the claim that Gondor is the only hope for civilization in a terrible struggle against all the powers of ignorance, darkness, and barbarism. Denethor claims to be culture and light, he claims that Gondor is peace. 


"If you understand it, then be content," returned Denethor. "Pride would be folly that disdained help and counsel at need; but you deal out such gifts according to your own designs. Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men's purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, is mine and no other man's, unless the king should come again."

"Unless the king should come again?" said Gandalf. "Well, my lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom still against that event, which few now look to see. In that task you shall have all the aid that you are pleased to ask for. But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor, nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything else passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I am a steward. Did you not know?"


return of the king, chapter 1


Notice that Gandalf doesn't tell Denethor he's wrong. Not in so many words. He grants that Gondor is a key player, and that the steward is important. Yet he offers a counter-story to Denethor's. The Steward claims exclusivity because without the exclusivity he has no reason to demand what he does of his people. Either he must appeal to a higher authority or he must be that authority. And as we see later, his pride cannot stand the return of the king. Gandalf tells him, quite plainly, that while Denethor must steward Gondor, Gandalf is too a steward, and over a greater charge. Gandalf is responsible for this world. 


Like Gandalf, Christians offered to Rome a story that subsumed their own. Rome claimed exclusive rights to civilization: they were the only source of peace. Christians chuckled and said sure, but only because our Prince of Peace lets you stay there. 


In an interesting twist, Rome when the Christians show up is very much like Gondor when Gandalf shows up. Threatened by a great power in the east (Parthia, one of the only nations to ever defeat a Roman Emperor in battle), they are faced with mounted men from the east (the famed Parthian archers), wild men from the north (the Germanic tribes), and corsairs from the south (there were already pirates basing themselves in the Tunisia). The salvation of Rome, eventually, would come in the form of royalty from the north: Charles Martel's Frankish armies. So all that to say, weird. Or, because it's Tolkein, wyrd. 

[The New Testament] is a Jewish book, telling Jewish-style stories, yet telling them for the world. It is a book of the world, retelling the story of the world as the story of Israel, and the story of Israel as the story of Jesus, in order to subvert the world's stories, and to lay before the world the claim of Jesus to be its sovereign. It is a Christian book, pouring new wine into the old bottles of Judaism, and new Jewish wine into the old bottles of the world, intending that this double exercise should have its inevitable and explosive double effect.

bishop n.t. wright, the new testament and the people of God, p.469

"If in one sense the camera never lies, we can see that in another sense it never does anything else. It excludes far more than it includes."

bishop n.t. wright, new testament and the people of God, p. 83

this is, i think, both the power and the peril of film. it's perilous because, as wright says, film is a lie in a very important sense, an intentional blinding to the rest world in order to create a story. it truly is a moving picture -- a capsule of life no bigger or more encompassing than a normal picture frame can be, yet it allows us to tell a story. and this is the power, because in that snapshot, in the distillation and intentional limiting of our vision, we can inspect much more closely character, plot, motif, theme, metaphor, in short, we can more fully realize who we are in our own grand story by comparing that story to the director's limited one.

while wearing white flannel trousers i cry out

so. sometime in a humid January night
(it was, after all, Florida) a child was born.
he made his father miss the championship,
though the crimson tide were, in fact, defeated.

the earth danced its merry way around the sun 19 times.
something like 1,075,343,646 people died, and
something like 2,660,000,000 people were born.
and that one child got skinny and grew arm hair.

some plastic, some copper, some melted dirt,
a little bottled-up lightning,
and now you're reading that kid's mind,
whether you're 3,000 miles away or 3 arms-lengths away.

this blog is about poetry. the title comes from the love song of j. alfred prufrock by t. s. eliot, one of the great modern poems and, incidentally, one of my favorite. as i was saying, though, this little cobwebbed corner of cyberspace is going to be a collecting ground of quotes, art, and poems that i say, write, or come across. feel free to go haywire in the comments. dissect, destroy, discourage. no holds are henceforth barred. the telos, the goal, the point of this whole grammarless mess is to shine light on facets of Christ's creation. anything else is accident.

a few caveats ...
- i don't do capitals while writing. i'll put them in if i quote something (unless it's by ee cummings), or if something's important. sorry. you oh so totally signed up for that the moment you entered this slackwater of a blog.
- there might be some language. i reserve the right to say what i want to. as someone said, "there aren't bad words, only bad places for words." if the word isn't necessary, feel free to tell me in the comments. public sins deserve public rebuke. i will try to keep it clean.
- some of the art that i post pictures of might be nude. not naked, nude. there's a difference.