Silver on the Tree

He accepted everything that came into his mind, without thought or question, as if he were moving through a dream. But a deeper part of him knew that he was not dreaming. He was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that.

Thus Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising: Will Stanton has woken into a dream, with all of the sudden shifts of place and inexplicable certainties that a dream has, but a dream that is more real --- closer to the truth, about the world and about himself --- than what he has taken to be his waking life.

For it is Will's eleventh birthday, and he is finally, truly awake: seventh son of a seventh son, he has woken into his powers as an Old One, an immortal warrior of the Light, fated by birth to take his part in the Law-bound struggle with the Dark. He is the last of the Old Ones, completing the Circle, and is bound to play the central role in the final struggle between the powers: the Dark, seeking to swallow up human agency by means of its own weakness; and the Light, fighting to preserve the world free, and at last give it back to man. It is a frozen, oddly static kind of struggle --- no-one gets killed, at least not directly --- but the stakes are high, the Dark truly terrible, and the Law and the High Magic within which all is bound are merciless; and even the Light can be cruel. "This is a cold battle we are in", says Merriman Lyon, Will's mentor, first of the Old Ones, the historical Merlin, "and in it we must sometimes do cold things."

It is a humourless vision of the world: not lacking in joy, perhaps, but excluding all play. "In this our magic," Merriman scolds Will after a heedless act, "every smallest word has a weight and a meaning. Every word that I say to you --- or that any other Old One may say." From that point onwards, Will accepts his responsibility without complaint, and (for the most part) without regret. It's a measure of the writing's power that you still believe him as a pre-teen boy: a boy with normal tastes and habits who can nonetheless step, at a moment's notice, into a vast timeless struggle where everything is freighted with significance. The contrast with the Earthsea books, written around the same time and themselves pretty serious, is signal: "a mage", Le Guin says, "is a trickster", and the (original three) books are full of delight in the lesser enchantments. The exultation and danger of the great spells, and the concern with Equilibrium, are visibly continuous with the ordinary pleasures and risks of life. But, of course, the mages of Earthsea are mortal men. It's to Cooper's credit that she doesn't just tell us, she shows us that Will and Merriman and the others are "not properly human".

The Old Ones are a triumph; Will's compatriots Simon, Jane, and Barney are another matter. They are drawn well enough, and believable in their way, but there is something Enid Blyton-ish about the Drew children, and it jars with the high seriousness of the books. You really do not miss them in The Grey King; in Silver on the Tree they are a positive intrusion. And in the Trewissick scenes, where they are joined by the (otherwise unexceptionable) red setter Rufus, the dread spectre of Timmy the Dog does rather haunt the proceedings.

The books have other flaws. They are quest stories: searches for a grail (Over Sea, Under Stone), for six Signs of Power (The Dark is Rising), and for a vital, lost piece of parchment (Greenwitch); the winning of a harp, to wake immortal warriors (The Grey King); and a vertiginous race across space and time to final confrontation with the Dark (Silver on the Tree). Few real decisions are ever made, although one scarcely notices this, as one event follows another, fulfilling old prophecies in the long waking dream. Our real world intrudes --- and it does feel like an intrusion --- in the final book; and the ending is rushed. (Let the reader understand: why did there have to be a boat? Why, why, why?) As with any story where the characters slip about in time, there are plot holes through which one could drive a truck. And so on; and so forth.

They are children's books. Written for older, serious, literate children, who can cope with long sentences and complex clause structures. They are Celtic. They are pagan, although pleasingly free of anti-Christian posturing. And they are assured: what sells them in the end is their almost-unfailing assurance of tone, their conviction that the dream is real. One of the few times that assurance slips, the narrator makes a defensive comment on the childishness of the two prophetic rhymes that summarize the action. She need not have bothered, for here is the last verse of the simpler poem, which is surely effective enough:

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold;
Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree.

Easter for grownups ...

... courtesy of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury: here's his sermon for Easter Day. On facing the inevitability of death:

Maturity lies in accepting the truth - and then making the most of every moment of sensation so that our response is as deep and wholehearted as may be. 'This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long', as Shakespeare has it at the end of one of his most memorable sonnets (no.73).

Yet here comes the Easter gospel, apparently determined to upset this stoical maturity and to promise us just that eternal life we are urged to leave behind as a childish fantasy. Death will be 'overcome', 'swallowed up in victory'. (I Cor 15.54) Is the Christian gospel just a version of that popular but problematic passage sometimes read at funerals, beginning 'Death is nothing at all' and talking of it as just 'slipping into the next room'?

That's not quite the tone of what St Paul or any of the other New Testament writers is saying - nor of some of the ancient hymns and prayers of the Church in this season ...

Kermode on Vermes on the Resurrection

In the current London Review of Books, just in time for Easter, the critic Frank Kermode reviews Geza Vermes' book "The Resurrection". Sadly, it's not in the publicly-accessible section, so if you're a non-subscriber you'll need to content yourself with snippets, or shell out for the full article. (Or maybe just subscribe: the LRB is an excellent read.) The article, and apparently the book, is an example of informed, reasonable scepticism concerning Christian claims: the sort of thing local author John Dickson was calling for in Friday's Herald.

Of course, one has always been able to find literate discussions in journals like the LRB ... but popular discourse lately has been dire. When I was an undergraduate, one ran into lots of on-campus criticism of Christianity that was complacently ignorant: rather like on-campus talk on some other subjects. One expects people to grow out of such posturing, but it seems some folk never did; and in recent years it has become acceptable, for whatever reason, to dismiss the Christian faith in ill-informed and wholesale terms.

By contrast to this, both Vermes and Kermode are concerned to take the New Testament seriously; this is not to say that they "agree" with it, or with Christianity more generally. Vermes, writes Kermode, is interested in

the inconsistencies, the flaws in testimony, the narrative faults, of the New Testament record, treated as evidence, however flawed, of something that happened. As he remarks, he feels his responsibility to be judicial in character; his main business will be to see whether the stories told by the witnesses stand up in court [... for the] Christian creeds emphasise the presence in their accounts of an undoubtedly historical character, Pontius Pilate [... whereas in] a different sort of narrative he might not have a proper name but be simply the Governor, the Procurator or the like, and we should not need to be told as much as we are about him ...

They go on to disagree on what to make of the Pilate material in John's Gospel, as well one might.

Christian scholarship and advocacy should likewise know what it is talking about, acknowledge other competent interpreters, and avoid claiming too much. For a Herald article, Dickson's piece was very good in this way, and was even willing to take some small swings at his own side. Too often in this town, there seems instead to be a "not in front of the children" attitude about public statements: an idea that one must avoid saying anything that might dismay or confuse the humble believer; an anxiety about always staying on-message. Statements and articles of this kind (some of which can be found on the Sydney Anglican website) either leave me cold, or leave me infuriated ... and since I'm conservative enough that I believe the Nicene Creed, it's not as though this is a question of orthodoxy.

So if Dickson's piece reflects a renewed willingness for conservative Christians here to talk on something other than our own, zealously guarded home turf --- a willingness to communicate --- then three cheers for it.

[Thanks to The Blogging Parson for pointing out the Dickson article.]

(2) the o-furo

Number 2 of "Ten things I love about Japan".

Taking a bath in Japan is a pretty big deal. As you might expect in a country blessed with hot springs, there is a whole culture and way of bathing, and in ordinary (and entirely modern) homes you will find a bath quite unlike the ones we use in the West: short, very deep --- one can sit in the o-furo immersed up to the neck --- and with a recirculator that can maintain or modify the temperature of the water for as long as you please. Think of a hot spa, without bubbles, built for one person ... or for two people who know each other very, very well.

Let's get something straight: the bath is not for washing in. No, no, no, no, no. When you get into the bath, you should already be clean. (A shower is supplied for this purpose, perhaps with a small stool to sit on if you prefer: the Japanese use the European-style showers where the head is attached to a long flexible hose.) The bath is for taking your ease; it is a small version of the onsen, the public baths (artificial, or at hot springs) for social soaking. Foreigners tend to think the Japanese are uptight, but this is at best a partial picture: the Japanese take relaxation very, very seriously.

Soap may be out of the question, but beer is another story. So are snack foods. I myself am partial to a certain kind of prawn chip, common in Japan, shaped like a twist of rope the size of a child's finger. Colleagues offered me a plate of these chips at a party once, asking if I liked them; I praised them as the ideal accompaniment for beer, when sitting in the o-furo and drinking. The younger Japanese standing around smiled, nodded, and broke out into polite applause: in this taste, if in nothing else, I had gone native.

Saturday. Adelaide. Pärt. Miserere. ABC.

For those in Australia, or with access to ABC Classic FM on the web:

A programme by the Adelaide Chamber Singers will be broadcast live from St Peter's Cathedral in Adelaide, as part of the Adelaide Festival, this Saturday from 11:00 pm Sydney time. The first work is Arvo Pärt's extraordinary setting of the Miserere, previously discussed on this blog.

Fish, on a fish out of water

In the NYT opinion section there's a post from Stanley Fish that tries to distinguish good and bad reasons for opposing a controversial university appointment: thoughtful as always. For example, here's a striking portrait of the plight of the outsider in certain special kinds of community:

he or she will lack the internalized understanding that renders the features of the enterprise intelligible, and in the absence of that understanding, the wanderer in a strange land will see only anomalies and mistakes that should be corrected. Items in a practice are not known piecemeal; you don’t learn them by listing them. You learn them by being so embedded in the practice that everything that happens within it has a significance you don’t have to strain for because it is perspicuous without any mental effort at all ...

Teenage boys are human after all ...

... according to a survey discussed in the NYT on the weekend. This reads like another of those studies that gets over-interpreted because its results are striking on their face, but the discussion in the article is interesting. A sample: after noting that the survey results --- which showed that boys were motivated by things other than sex --- had been greeted with derision by male bloggers, it's stated that

skepticism about boys in their teens isn’t surprising ... but it reveals more about what’s going on in the minds of adults, than of teenagers.

“Grown men often deny how dependent they are on women,” said Michael G. Thompson, a psychologist specializing in children and families and co-author of the book “Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys.” “The idea that you could pine for a girl, and be devastated by a girl makes an adult man uncomfortable. It reminds them of how profoundly attached they get to women.”

The science of pretty pictures

There's a great set of photos in The Week in Science at the New York Times, with links to the relevant articles (both in the NYT and in journals etc.)

An enquiry concerning the proper use of scientific arguments, wherein our author loses his sense of humour

My mate Eb remarked, re that last post, about flame wars starting when people tried to "fix" something "wrong" on the Web late at night ...

... and he might as well have been talking about me. There was a post last week at nothing new under the sun, which has since been buried under a pile of long comments from yours truly. Byron has occasionally gotten a word in edgeways.

The original post concerns a Jared Diamond article on agriculture; the (ahem) "discussion" concerns the sciences, myths, their nature, and the proper use of scientific arguments in wider disputes. My point, in part, is that there are limits to what counts as a fair argument, even if the cause in question is Really Really Important.

I am sensible of the irony (if not the absurdity) of trying to establish this point using an extended series of posts to someone else's blog.

xkcd on duty

"Duty Calls". Know the feeling?

Four reactions to an apology

I guess even people outside Australia have noticed that on Wednesday the federal parliament passed a motion of apology to the nation's aboriginal people, in particular the so-called Stolen Generations: victims of policies of removal of aboriginal children from their families. Of almost equal symbolic importance was the speech by the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, in support of the motion.

There has been a lot of talk on this during the week and in a sense I do not have much to add to it. But by chance it's my duty to offer prayers this morning, on behalf of the 10:00 AM congregation at my church, and so I have to reach some kind of publicly useful position on the week's business. On the one hand, this is dark history that (as the PM says) cries out for recognition and redress. On the other, it is a fearful thing to inject irrelevant polemic into a public prayer, and so I've been trying to understand to what extent this apology really is controversial. As a way of thinking through this, here are a couple of (very different) reactions I think should be rejected; and one, equally critical, that I think should be treated with respect. (Skip to the end if you want to get to the positive bit!!)

(1) Easiest to dismiss is Miranda Devine's statement in the Herald that the PM was fanning the flames of the "culture wars". Coming from a serial arsonist, this really was a bit much ... and if Ms Devine truly thinks (as she says) that Mr Rudd is taking up the approach of former prime minister Paul Keating, then her memory is worse than mine, or her imagination more powerful. I fully admit to having enjoyed Mr Keating's use of aboriginal rights and history as a cudgel to beat his political opponents: at the time, I also thought it was clever politics, a way of bringing the Labor Party in line to support land rights (after the initiative of the High Court) that it might otherwise have held at arms length. In retrospect he was wrong, and so was I. That polemical approach sowed the wind, and we then reaped the whirlwind for eleven-and-a-half long years: reaction that could point to what it reacted against, accuse it of partisan ideology and impracticality ... and be at least partly right.

So there, Ms Devine: I was wrong; so was Paul Keating, at least in this respect. As for the Labor Party, it is currently led by a dentist (figuratively speaking), a bureaucrat, a plain and uninspiring speaker (although his litany-inspired speech yesterday was, for him, unusually good) ... the kind of man who can say without irony that he is excited by establishing evidence-based policies. I take that as a token that the ALP is also willing, in this matter at least, to move on. Perhaps you could try it yourself. I understand that newspapers thrive on controversy, and on "debate" between "opposed" positions, and thus there's a kind of premium on taking a contrary view. But come on: this is important.

(2) Criticism instead from the left, and (as it were) from above, comes from a guest-post by Scott Stephens at Faith and Theology: The apology and the moral significance of guilt, accusing the PM and Parliament of tokenism and empty spectacle and (his words) enlisting aboriginal people "to take part in a kind of emotional pornography for the benefit of thousands of white Australian viewers".

I find this kind of purism --- this apology does not go far enough, so it is worse than useless --- infuriating. One could take issue with the details of the argument: for example, if it's intention that matters, as Mr Stephens Kants, doesn't that count against the approach of Paul Keating? (Mr Stephens faults the PM's language for not being as robust as PK's storied Redfern Speech: "we took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life … we committed the murders … " and so on.) As mentioned, I loved the Redfern Speech and I love PK, but the man can barely open his mouth without at least incidentally swiping at his enemies, Redfern not excepted: surely this is intentional at some level, and thereby compromises the action? Or if one's vice has become so ingrained that it proceeds without any higher-level volition, is it thereby innocent? (Hint: The Christian answer to that question is "no".)

But such arguments are incidental: I just cannot see the merit in trying and convicting the Prime Minister of compromise, of judging the limits of achievable consensus --- of being a politician. This is not news. Nor is it criticism. It is self-indulgence.

And yet ... Mr Stephens is held in regard by at least some other people I respect, and I have learned from experience to be careful of dismissing someone where this is true. There's also something a bit suspicious in a scientist accusing a theologian of contrariety and self-indulgence: because I would say that, wouldn't I? Maybe my reaction against this sort of posturing is part of some Two Cultures problem, however I have, as Mr Darcy would say, not yet learnt to condemn it.

(3) Both Ms Devine and Mr Stephens appeal for support to Noel Pearson, the aboriginal leader whose fierce independence of previous debate has won him enormous authority in the wider Australian community. Read his reflections the night before the apology, and also shortly after the election last year, and you will see why. In fact, one could profitably skip the Devine and Stephens articles and read Pearson alone: the substantial points against the current bien-pensant consensus are all there, but they are set in the midst of an argument that is actually about the problem of dealing with this history, and the present, in political terms, rather than using the apology as a tool in some other dispute.

Mr Pearson is in two minds about the apology, and seems to feel no need to condense his views into a easily-repeated "reaction". I will honour that restraint by simply saying: read what he has to say.


(4) As for me, I have no plan to repeat the apology later this morning: that would be presumptuous and unnecessary. But I do want to use it as a starting point, or (perhaps better) as background: for how can one ignore it this week? And when will we get a topic more fitting for reflection during Lent? "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?", asks the hymn. The answer to the question is "Yes", but it is not a simple yes by any means, and some of the issues are the same.

At Good Friday services at the Lutheran church in Geneva --- it doubles as a kind of chaplaincy to visiting English-speakers, and (a little perversely) as a British Commonwealth get-together --- a striking hymn was sung in the nineties, adapted from a Zulu (and Xhosa?) protest song. It was powerfully used to invite reflection on the crucifixion, and on all human sin, especially sins committed in company: the simple chorus will stay with me all my life.

Senzenina --- What have we done? What have we done? What have we done?

Two takes on the US budget ...

... both from the New York Times: one from the science pages, hoping that America's recent unilateral disarmament in Big Science may come to an end; and one from the editorial page, lamenting the fact that the budget as a whole is broken.

I am torn. If my own concerns were to take a hit as part of some reasonable, overall accounting --- a spreading-out of necessary restraint --- then it would be hard to object. But the process in the States at the moment is neither reasonable, nor global, nor an accounting. The Bush Administration is a long bad dream, defiantly resisting its wake-up call, and the new president is still a whole year away. (It is going to be a long year at that.) Meanwhile the Congress is in some kind of holding pattern.

A propos of the election: how strange is it that Hillary Clinton seems the least fictional option for president? An Obama v. McCain contest would resemble nothing so much as the final season of The West Wing, with John McCain playing Honest Arnie Vinick, and Barack as Matt Santos, substituting black for brown. If the junior senator from Illinois is considering an older man as his running mate, he would be wise to first insist on a visit to a cardiac specialist ...