it was the above named author that put me in mind of new zeland, the book erewhon...which I read in a very tumultous time a few years back. i was soothed by it and intrigued by the author, who lived about hundred fifty years ago and I know nothing of him. it appears he was a 'serious' satirist'. i suppose the clowns who now write for saturday night live would do well to study him a bit...I again exposed myself to the humor of snl. it again defeated my laughing whereas the purloined video tape (yes, Mrs Woolf, we still have them about) of Adam Sandler doing a takeoff of his sabbath singing would have been the kind of humor to toast my gabotchniks. there's no depth to humor on snl. the little fatboy 'big k' doesn't do it. well he never did. he's still a kidnik, what do they call those? boychicks? yeah, that's him...lemmee see...the last macro of the corpse of john belushi...something like that
I sound kind of putzki myself making fun of a show still trying to be on the air
well yeah, we used to write for it, in black humor at 3 am on yahoo chat on sat/sun mornings, sat eve sun morn and laughed until we fell out of our chairs
where's the ability to do that anymore? can I find humor in the fact I'm staring the financial stew with a twisted stumick? nah..I was writing about the Butler book 'the way of all flesh' which kind of rung true, although it too smacked of the worry over one's pitiful financial picture (I look like the grim reaper in the mirror on that one, ishh)
butler's book, the way of all flesh, expounds on the limits of child abuse, in the educated...it was a good thing thought by this narrowminded minister who married a woman he couldn't hardly love but he did and had three children with her once he figured it out...I came away from the book, because it was hardly bearable to read that this minister assaulted his oldest boy for having a lisp, he couldn't say his 'c''s...it was painful to read and quite shocking
i could think in butler's day that the presentation of this child abuse would have been the thing to think on if one were looking toward the victorian era and the happy family of victoria and albert..that this righted the path to that end and thus a family was endowed with the graces it was intended
i would think also that love comes naturally if all else is in place and that such ideas as whaling on a child for speaking as a child wouldn't even have been a consideration...ah, but it was the father/minister himself that had been born without a good cause..that he came into the world was possibly to contain the essence of his wonderful grandpapa..who, as butler tells it, was one of those lights of the world that lands just in the middle of a common everyday settlement of people, individuals of all sorts, to whom his light spreads and things are good...he gives (the grandpapa) by his being among us, the joy of our existence...let's us know, here's why we're here...so his vessel of soul is maintained by his progeny, of whom he only had the one son..who was a prig, a bore, a bastard at heart and so on...according to butler
but, as we bear on in the book, and we do, we can't be putting it down because we're stuck in airports the long day, all day, from early on, we're reading it to find out a little on the advent of victorianism, which it is...and it does create the very fecund environment of victoria and albert and their many children...I do n't want to know about them, but I do know that if anyone read butler's book in his day, they would have thought the child beating passage most cruel..and also the alcoholic wife of the beaten son...who never seems to cut a break in his life until he's grown past most of it, including the raising of his own two lovely children (better off without me, he says)...bummer
what is life if you have kids and aren't there...I dunno, I figure I am, somehow, most of the time, but I'm me too and perhaps that's it, that's the sacrifice of the past centuries that we would now know ourselves a little better, go to a psychoanalyst of some sort and get our rages, dispossessions and so on, ironed out...I should hope that's what we've learned...It's kind of like treading familiar ground, this butler book, kind of peeping in the window and listening to incessant yammering of the quasimodo sort, where the dragons of no faith are ever in the cobwebs and the dust bunnies of life...
he doesn't go in for that sort of detail, butler, he tells a little of a house the beaten son occupies for a time, but only at the onset of the habitation (I'm talking in the vernacular of the book here), rather he goes on a mile about faith, belief in faith, faith as a constant, faith as a moral bankruptcy that it is so poorly interpreted
certainly we had lovely books on the saints growing up - oh yes, my catholicism is coming up like a newly forming volcano here, but I leave it aside to examine the fortitude of the epistle (the way of all flesh)...I also pad away a moment to investigate my own hearth..
there, situation adjusted, fingers a bit stiff with cold, certainly that is the season, it's dribbling rain outside - we're used to it but it is dreary, so the thoughts about this book are of that sort, that its issues with theology lie buried in the attitudes of the family explored. there is no joyousness in this family, and I don't recall its name other than it was of the cloth, throughout, the beaten son even ordained into it but not a minister, at last, rather a newborn theologian asking his readership (if there was) to qualify their beliefs in the foundation of his own thought. That I had a challenge with.
Whereas we may all at some point be recognizable as churchgoers, when the chips are down, we have only our faith to turn to. Do we? would we if we knew what I now know about this particular English family?
Well, in a quick moment I recollect that we're never going to be the supreme being that God is. If anything, The Way of All Flesh makes this a graphic presentation. Here is the main church in England, I don't think Butler even calls it 'Anglican' though I suppose it must be, what else would it be? I came away not knowing for sure if it was the Anglican church, but I guess if one attends Cambridge and becomes a minister from it, then that must be what he was ordained to be serving in..hmm
What the book does is tell all that is without foundation in belief. It comes up with the platitudes of belief - that God serves the daily prayer, but we don't see the characters being sustained by this, rather that they survive somehow in spite of it. Only the original patriarch, the grandpapa early on in the story, has any joy of being in him. Only he recognizes the true worth of life, that it is to be lived to the fullest. Butler suggests this grandpapa may have been steered a bit by taking a wife it would appear to be not the most satisfactory spouse, but even this the man makes a good sort from, and they have a child. It is this child that raises the ugly head of the best of our existence, our original sin in not recognizing life as a state of paradise. Grandpapa knows well that life is this paradise. He lives his life out in this joy as Butler tells it. Further on his family would have disappointed him no doubt, but had he been there to sort it out, surely it would have been a better thing. Each child would have known his place in that man's heart one feels assured of it.
In the end the beaten child, whom I now feel confident (again the language of the story) to name as Ernest, whom he was. Ernest lives to share with the rest of us, through Butler, how we may accomplish our life to the best of our ability. We may be like a boat at sea in many storms, but if we listen to our inner voice, which we wou ld probably define as 'our soul', we may achieve the peace of knowing our place. To reflect on how we got here, well, if it doesn't s uit, why bother. That we are, and shall be, that's what we must do. The book is an exercise in this achieving element. To be saddled with a set of behavior tools that don't suit us, as Ernest was at his father's knee (again and again) may take away our awareness of the essential goodness of being, most of it being compromised by situations that confound us, we may also know that having been born as Ernest was, in the bosom of the church, we may learn from it what not to take away from it. That while God may be with us from the moment we are born, he does not sit idly by letting us be coddled by his presence. Rather if we are the people in his service, we may be challenged beyond our ability to actual be human, and become as automatons of the written word of those with whom we share this life. Did they know heaven on earth, could they understand suffering and death, were they not vile greedy sorts that consumed all in their path? Some of them, perhaps, but they stand as effigies of the wrong way, and if they are the ones representing what He wants for us, then we know from that it is not what He wants for us. So that is why Butler wrote the book for his time and for those after, that we may understand from it that we can choose our way, we can be strong, or we can crumble.
Certainly some of those characters in the story did crumble, or were made into clay statutes of their time, like Ernest's parents, who were outwardly the ones we would look up to, as minister and his family, their behavior was exemplary. This is what also called them to be so cruel to their children as they thought it was called upon them to do so. Their nature was not allowed to flourish and respond to the light of faith but rather to carry it out as some sort of dire military service, which in their recklessness was never made obvious to them. They didn't squirm other than to respond to the base needs of their personalities. As such, you can only surmise to get through it, the story, that this is faith on the surface when confronted with the choice to do evil. I should survive it even if it calls to me like a siren. Butler does reflect on Scylla and Charbydis a bit, in the case of Ernest and his choices as a youth, but we know that these are only for him signposts and he learns what the wrong turn can lead to.
my fingers are still cold and I don't hear the fire crackling...I shall return momentarily
here's momentarily...fingers again cold...fire is absolutely NOT cooperating, although I've finally made it go..
well...lots to think about with butler's book, but it boils down to live the life you've been given with as much good grace as you can give it..don't dwell on shortcomings but make the most of your opportunities, be enthusiastic, innocent and yet, trust in the Lord, for he knows all and will sustain you in spite of the major obstacles that a person like Ernest must face..to retain one's niaevete in certain danger is to be vindicated, however long that takes, it shall happen...and whatever theology one encounters, temper it with the experience of life for there is where you shall see love and grace in their element, and in no other place, however fine the speech...hehe, like here, haha
I sound kind of putzki myself making fun of a show still trying to be on the air
well yeah, we used to write for it, in black humor at 3 am on yahoo chat on sat/sun mornings, sat eve sun morn and laughed until we fell out of our chairs
where's the ability to do that anymore? can I find humor in the fact I'm staring the financial stew with a twisted stumick? nah..I was writing about the Butler book 'the way of all flesh' which kind of rung true, although it too smacked of the worry over one's pitiful financial picture (I look like the grim reaper in the mirror on that one, ishh)
butler's book, the way of all flesh, expounds on the limits of child abuse, in the educated...it was a good thing thought by this narrowminded minister who married a woman he couldn't hardly love but he did and had three children with her once he figured it out...I came away from the book, because it was hardly bearable to read that this minister assaulted his oldest boy for having a lisp, he couldn't say his 'c''s...it was painful to read and quite shocking
i could think in butler's day that the presentation of this child abuse would have been the thing to think on if one were looking toward the victorian era and the happy family of victoria and albert..that this righted the path to that end and thus a family was endowed with the graces it was intended
i would think also that love comes naturally if all else is in place and that such ideas as whaling on a child for speaking as a child wouldn't even have been a consideration...ah, but it was the father/minister himself that had been born without a good cause..that he came into the world was possibly to contain the essence of his wonderful grandpapa..who, as butler tells it, was one of those lights of the world that lands just in the middle of a common everyday settlement of people, individuals of all sorts, to whom his light spreads and things are good...he gives (the grandpapa) by his being among us, the joy of our existence...let's us know, here's why we're here...so his vessel of soul is maintained by his progeny, of whom he only had the one son..who was a prig, a bore, a bastard at heart and so on...according to butler
but, as we bear on in the book, and we do, we can't be putting it down because we're stuck in airports the long day, all day, from early on, we're reading it to find out a little on the advent of victorianism, which it is...and it does create the very fecund environment of victoria and albert and their many children...I do n't want to know about them, but I do know that if anyone read butler's book in his day, they would have thought the child beating passage most cruel..and also the alcoholic wife of the beaten son...who never seems to cut a break in his life until he's grown past most of it, including the raising of his own two lovely children (better off without me, he says)...bummer
what is life if you have kids and aren't there...I dunno, I figure I am, somehow, most of the time, but I'm me too and perhaps that's it, that's the sacrifice of the past centuries that we would now know ourselves a little better, go to a psychoanalyst of some sort and get our rages, dispossessions and so on, ironed out...I should hope that's what we've learned...It's kind of like treading familiar ground, this butler book, kind of peeping in the window and listening to incessant yammering of the quasimodo sort, where the dragons of no faith are ever in the cobwebs and the dust bunnies of life...
he doesn't go in for that sort of detail, butler, he tells a little of a house the beaten son occupies for a time, but only at the onset of the habitation (I'm talking in the vernacular of the book here), rather he goes on a mile about faith, belief in faith, faith as a constant, faith as a moral bankruptcy that it is so poorly interpreted
certainly we had lovely books on the saints growing up - oh yes, my catholicism is coming up like a newly forming volcano here, but I leave it aside to examine the fortitude of the epistle (the way of all flesh)...I also pad away a moment to investigate my own hearth..
there, situation adjusted, fingers a bit stiff with cold, certainly that is the season, it's dribbling rain outside - we're used to it but it is dreary, so the thoughts about this book are of that sort, that its issues with theology lie buried in the attitudes of the family explored. there is no joyousness in this family, and I don't recall its name other than it was of the cloth, throughout, the beaten son even ordained into it but not a minister, at last, rather a newborn theologian asking his readership (if there was) to qualify their beliefs in the foundation of his own thought. That I had a challenge with.
Whereas we may all at some point be recognizable as churchgoers, when the chips are down, we have only our faith to turn to. Do we? would we if we knew what I now know about this particular English family?
Well, in a quick moment I recollect that we're never going to be the supreme being that God is. If anything, The Way of All Flesh makes this a graphic presentation. Here is the main church in England, I don't think Butler even calls it 'Anglican' though I suppose it must be, what else would it be? I came away not knowing for sure if it was the Anglican church, but I guess if one attends Cambridge and becomes a minister from it, then that must be what he was ordained to be serving in..hmm
What the book does is tell all that is without foundation in belief. It comes up with the platitudes of belief - that God serves the daily prayer, but we don't see the characters being sustained by this, rather that they survive somehow in spite of it. Only the original patriarch, the grandpapa early on in the story, has any joy of being in him. Only he recognizes the true worth of life, that it is to be lived to the fullest. Butler suggests this grandpapa may have been steered a bit by taking a wife it would appear to be not the most satisfactory spouse, but even this the man makes a good sort from, and they have a child. It is this child that raises the ugly head of the best of our existence, our original sin in not recognizing life as a state of paradise. Grandpapa knows well that life is this paradise. He lives his life out in this joy as Butler tells it. Further on his family would have disappointed him no doubt, but had he been there to sort it out, surely it would have been a better thing. Each child would have known his place in that man's heart one feels assured of it.
In the end the beaten child, whom I now feel confident (again the language of the story) to name as Ernest, whom he was. Ernest lives to share with the rest of us, through Butler, how we may accomplish our life to the best of our ability. We may be like a boat at sea in many storms, but if we listen to our inner voice, which we wou ld probably define as 'our soul', we may achieve the peace of knowing our place. To reflect on how we got here, well, if it doesn't s uit, why bother. That we are, and shall be, that's what we must do. The book is an exercise in this achieving element. To be saddled with a set of behavior tools that don't suit us, as Ernest was at his father's knee (again and again) may take away our awareness of the essential goodness of being, most of it being compromised by situations that confound us, we may also know that having been born as Ernest was, in the bosom of the church, we may learn from it what not to take away from it. That while God may be with us from the moment we are born, he does not sit idly by letting us be coddled by his presence. Rather if we are the people in his service, we may be challenged beyond our ability to actual be human, and become as automatons of the written word of those with whom we share this life. Did they know heaven on earth, could they understand suffering and death, were they not vile greedy sorts that consumed all in their path? Some of them, perhaps, but they stand as effigies of the wrong way, and if they are the ones representing what He wants for us, then we know from that it is not what He wants for us. So that is why Butler wrote the book for his time and for those after, that we may understand from it that we can choose our way, we can be strong, or we can crumble.
Certainly some of those characters in the story did crumble, or were made into clay statutes of their time, like Ernest's parents, who were outwardly the ones we would look up to, as minister and his family, their behavior was exemplary. This is what also called them to be so cruel to their children as they thought it was called upon them to do so. Their nature was not allowed to flourish and respond to the light of faith but rather to carry it out as some sort of dire military service, which in their recklessness was never made obvious to them. They didn't squirm other than to respond to the base needs of their personalities. As such, you can only surmise to get through it, the story, that this is faith on the surface when confronted with the choice to do evil. I should survive it even if it calls to me like a siren. Butler does reflect on Scylla and Charbydis a bit, in the case of Ernest and his choices as a youth, but we know that these are only for him signposts and he learns what the wrong turn can lead to.
my fingers are still cold and I don't hear the fire crackling...I shall return momentarily
here's momentarily...fingers again cold...fire is absolutely NOT cooperating, although I've finally made it go..
well...lots to think about with butler's book, but it boils down to live the life you've been given with as much good grace as you can give it..don't dwell on shortcomings but make the most of your opportunities, be enthusiastic, innocent and yet, trust in the Lord, for he knows all and will sustain you in spite of the major obstacles that a person like Ernest must face..to retain one's niaevete in certain danger is to be vindicated, however long that takes, it shall happen...and whatever theology one encounters, temper it with the experience of life for there is where you shall see love and grace in their element, and in no other place, however fine the speech...hehe, like here, haha
