Good Article, Good Timing

Fascinating, and thoughtful piece in the SLTrib today; give it a look. For me, the money quote came from Philip Barlow:

Disillusionment with LDS leaders “would evaporate,” says Philip Barlow, Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, “if people saw the church not as essentially divine, marred only by the weaknesses of human administrators, but rather … [as made up] entirely of human beings — with all of their limitations — who are trying to respond to the divine with which they have (in faith) been touched.”

I'm not sure if he's right, but it's an intriguing thought. Could such a change in paradigm be accomplished organically, or would it require active support of Church leaders? If the latter, then I don't ever see it happening — who would intentionally undermine his/her own influence? It's like congress voting to lower their own salaries: highly unlikely.

Prepare yourselves!

It begins.

__________
HT: BCC Sideblog
The image above is a depiction of the army of Alexander the Great, which seemed... fitting.

A Conundrum

When debating religion in the past, on several occasions an opponent has attempted to use Rev. 22:18-19 to demonstrate that the canon is closed, and therefore any further LDS scriptures are false by definition. Using such an argument creates an interesting situation: either the opponent is unaware that such a view is untenable in the light of NT scholarship (because, chronologically, Revelation was not the final book of scripture written), or they are aware that the argument is bad, but they use it anyway.

Currently, I find myself in a situation somewhat similar: I cannot decide if the party in question, ostensibly an expert in the realm that his remarks address, is woefully uniformed (perhaps simply illogical), or if he is being blatantly disingenuous.

Either way, his credibility has turned to ash.

A fun one!

Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy
by Thomas Lux

For some semitropical reason
when the rains fall
relentlessly they fall

into swimming pools, these otherwise
bright and scary
arachnids. They can swim
a little, but not for long

and they can’t climb the ladder out.
They usually drown––but
if you want their favor,
if you believe there is justice,
a reward for not loving

the death of ugly
and even dangerous (the eel, hog snake,
rats) creatures, if

you believe these things, then
you would leave a lifebuoy
or two in your swimming pool at night.

And in the morning
you would haul ashore
the huddled, hairy survivors

and escort them
back to the bush, and know,
be assured that at least these saved,
as individuals, would not turn up

again someday
in your hat, drawer,
or the tangled underworld

of your socks, and that even––
when your belief in justice
merges with your belief in dreams––
they may tell the others

in a sign language
four times as subtle
and complicated as man’s

that you are good,
that you love them,
that you would save them again.

Annoyed...

It's upsetting to watch friends on the cusp of terrible, potentially life-destroying decisions that they are considering largely because of the opinions of a crazy person (who won't live forever anyway). Kowtowing to such insane whims is just nuts. It doesn't matter if one's heart is in the right place or not -- it's irrational to make any more disastrous offerings on the altar of someone else's good intentions.

That is all.

Rilke for a New Year

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and ... try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

Karma

One of the privileges of unclehood is the opportunity to corrupt young minds. Early and often. This is sometimes achieved intentionally. For instance, due to my direct intervention, my almost-four-year-old niece now believes that the correct answer to

Why did the chicken cross the road?

is actually

To die in the rain. Alone.

Sometimes such lessons are inadvertent. After hearing me use a particular word only once, this same niece apparently squirreled it away in her own personal lexicon, only to pull it out a week later when she told her mother:

Princess Jasmine dresses like a floozy!

But fate, it seems, will have her revenge, forcing me to say things that take me by surprise, as though the words were not my own. Just a few days ago, I found myself instructing my young charges:

Don't feed the Baby Jesus to the giant robotic hamster. At least not so close to his birthday.

Just one day too late...

Arrgh! Of course this would happen. On the day after my birthday, Cake Wrecks posts the picture of the most perfect cake ever! Oh well... I'm totally getting this next year:

Bad touch! Bad touch!

Thanksgiving is fast approaching, turkeys are finalizing their wills, and pancreata across the country are training hard for the extended insulin production necessary to keep Uncle Bob and Aunt Jane from collapsing into their green-bean casserole in a diabetic coma.

However, packing a suitcase and making sure not to forget your photo id are not adequate preparation anymore. Travelers need to get geared up mentally, because this year, courtesy of Uncle Sam, we all get to play a psychologically-scarring round of Violation or No Vacation!

In honor of this newest Thanksgiving tradition, a friend sent me a list of suggested slogans for the TSA to adopt. I'm posting them here in order to provide something to distract you from that most terrible of realizations: "Hey, there's a fist in my cornucopia!" So break out the Vaseline and latex gloves, kids, because it's time for a full cavity search!

We've handled more balls than Barney Frank.

Can't see London, can't see France, unless we see your underpants.

Grope discounts available.

If we did our job any better, we'd have to buy you dinner first.

Only we know if Lady Gaga is really a lady.

Don't worry, my hands are still warm from the last guy.

Throw a few back at the airport Chili's and you won't even notice.

Wanna fly? Drop your fly.

We are now free to move about your pants.

We rub you the wrong way, so you can be on your way.

It's not a grope. It's a freedom pat.

When in doubt, we make you whip it out.

TSA: Touchin', Squeezin', Arrestin'.

You were a virgin.

We handle more packages than the USPS.

Something Wonderful

From Northumbrian Sequence, by Kathleen Raine––

IV

Let in the wind
Let in the rain
Let in the moors tonight.

The storm beats on my window-pane,
Night stands at my bed-foot,
Let in the fear,
Let in the pain,
Let in the trees that toss and groan,
Let in the north tonight.

Let in the nameless formless power
That beats upon my door,
Let in the ice, let in the snow,
The banshee howling on the moor,
The bracken-bush on the bleak hillside,
Let in the dead tonight.

The whistling ghost behind the dyke,
The dead that rot in mire,
Let in the thronging ancestors
The unfulfilled desire,
Let in the wraith of the dead earl,
Let in the unborn tonight.

Let in the cold,
Let in the wet,
Let in the loneliness,
Let in the quick,
Let in the dead,
Let in the unpeopled skies.

Oh how can virgin fingers weave
A covering for the void,
How can my fearful heart conceive
Gigantic solitude?
How can a house so small contain
A company so great?
Let in the dark,
Let in the dead,
Let in your love tonight.

Let in the snow that numbs the grave,
Let in the acorn-tree,
The mountain stream and mountain stone,
Let in the bitter sea.

Fearful is my virgin heart
And frail my virgin form,
And must I then take pity on
The raging of the storm
That rose up from the great abyss
Before the earth was made,
That pours the stars in cataracts
And shakes this violent world?

Let in the fire,
Let in the power,
Let in the invading might.

Gentle must my fingers be
And pitiful my heart
Since I must bind in human form
A living power so great,
A living impulse great and wild
That cries about my house
With all the violence of desire
Desiring this my peace.

Pitiful my heart must hold
The lonely stars at rest,
Have pity on the raven's cry
The torrent and the eagle's wing,
The icy water of the tarn
And on the biting blast.

Let in the wound,
Let in the pain,
Let in your child tonight.

____________________

A (very) few thoughts: Raine is clearly showing the influence of Yeats here. The temptation to read this as some stream-of-consciousness rambling must be resisted, as there are significant signs of careful construction: the progression of thought, the subtle rhyming, etc. (Note, for instance, the rhymes of the first three lines and the last.) I think "pours the stars in cataracts" is particularly fine. It bears multiple readings, but in this section––considered alone––it is impossible not to hear the voice of the post-annunciation Mary.

Shifting sands...

There has been a lot of buzz recently surrounding the new soon-to-be-released-(but-already-leaked) CHI. Having had an opportunity to peruse some of its contents already, I can confirm that––just like every other edition of the CHI––the book is mostly boring. Of course it is. For those who are interested, there are already several posts in the bloggernacle detailing differences between the forthcoming edition and the previous one (promulgated in 2006) on subjects such as priesthood blessings, homosexuality, and the new prohibition on playing Uno. (The post from that last link is so many kinds of awesome.)

The post from Wheat and Tares (linked above under "priesthood blessings") was something of a catalyst for me, mentally, spurring a crystallization of a few previously unconnected thoughts. In short, I think we may be watching a subtle, but significant shift occurring in LDS theology.

Let's begin by first reviewing the pertinent changes to the CHI:

2006:

Brethren who perform ordinances and blessings should prepare themselves by living worthily and striving to be guided by the Holy Spirit.
...
A priesthood leader who oversees an ordinance or blessing ensures that the person who performs it has the necessary priesthood authority, is worthy, and knows and follows the proper procedures.
...
Only brethren who hold the necessary priesthood and are worthy may perform an ordinance or blessing or stand in the circle.
...
Leaders encourage worthy fathers who hold the necessary priesthood to perform or participate in ordinances and blessings for their own children [29, 2006 CHI].

2010:

Only a Melchizedek Priesthood holder who is worthy to hold a temple recommend may act as voice in confirming a person a member of the church, conferring the Melchizedek Priesthood, ordaining a person to an office in that priesthood, or setting apart a person to serve in a church calling.

As guided by the Spirit and the instructions of the next paragraph, bishops and stake presidents have the discretion to allow priesthood holders who are not fully temple worthy to perform or participate in some ordinances and blessings. However, presiding officers should not allow such participation if a priesthood holder has unresolved serious sins.

A bishop may allow a father who holds the Melchizedek Priesthood to name and bless his children even if the father is not fully temple worthy. Likewise, a bishop may allow a father who is a priest or Melchizedek Priesthood holder to baptize his children or to ordain his sons to offices in the Aaronic Priesthood. A Melchizedek Priesthood holder in similar circumstances may be allowed to stand in the circle for the confirmation of his children, for the conferral of the Melchizedek Priesthood on his sons, or for the setting apart of his wife or children. However, he may not act as voice [140, 2010 CHI; italics added].

In the Wheat and Tares post the 2010 guidelines are viewed as being stricter than those from 2006. I would disagree. Part of the argument derives from the words "worthy to hold a temple recommend." Contrary to the W&T post, I do not read this as identical to "must have a temple recommend." Rather, the priesthood holder must meet the requirements, but need not have the actual document. Perhaps this is nit-picking.

However the 2006 text does not presuppose any distinctions regarding degrees or gradations of worthiness; the 2010 text clearly does. I would suggest that the meaning of "worthy", as used in the 2006 CHI, was generally applied in the sense of "temple worthy." That is not to say that there were never exceptions, and I would presume (and hope) that local leaders who feel so inspired would also be willing to make such exceptions, even though the 2010 CHI makes clearer distinctions and more specific recommendations: if inspiration cannot trump policy, we have moved above (or, more likely, below) the need for revelation.

In any case, this policy shift seemed to be related to some thoughts expressed by Dallin H. Oaks in a recent address in General Conference:

Another part of a priesthood blessing is the words of blessing spoken by the elder after he seals the anointing. These words can be very important, but their content is not essential and they are not recorded on the records of the Church....

Ideally, the elder who officiates will be so in tune with the Spirit of the Lord that he will know and declare the will of the Lord in the words of the blessing. Brigham Young taught priesthood holders, “It is your privilege and duty to live so that you know when the word of the Lord is spoken to you and when the mind of the Lord is revealed to you.” When that happens, the spoken blessing is fulfilled literally and miraculously. On some choice occasions I have experienced that certainty of inspiration in a healing blessing and have known that what I was saying was the will of the Lord. However, like most who officiate in healing blessings, I have often struggled with uncertainty on the words I should say. For a variety of causes, every elder experiences increases and decreases in his level of sensitivity to the promptings of the Spirit. Every elder who gives a blessing is subject to influence by what he desires for the person afflicted. Each of these and other mortal imperfections can influence the words we speak.

Fortunately, the words spoken in a healing blessing are not essential to its healing effect. If faith is sufficient and if the Lord wills it, the afflicted person will be healed or blessed whether the officiator speaks those words or not. Conversely, if the officiator yields to personal desire or inexperience and gives commands or words of blessing in excess of what the Lord chooses to bestow according to the faith of the individual, those words will not be fulfilled. Consequently, brethren, no elder should ever hesitate to participate in a healing blessing because of fear that he will not know what to say. The words spoken in a healing blessing can edify and energize the faith of those who hear them, but the effect of the blessing is dependent upon faith and the Lord’s will, not upon the words spoken by the elder who officiated [Priesthood Session, April 2010; italics added].

How often do we hear people speak in tongues? (Yes, yes, I know. Missionaries do it all the time. I am here referring to the variety of speaking in tongues that was more common in the early days of this dispensation, including immediate revelatory interpretation. I am not using "the gift of tongues" in the "what happens when you read books, use flashcards, memorize vocabulary, buy Rosetta Stone™, and study abroad" sense.) Very, very rarely. Most Mormons (like any other sane person*) would feel a little creeped out by attending some the more exuberant varieties of Pentecostal services. In general, LDS attention to and focus on the cultivation of charismatic gifts has waned. That is, we all seek personal revelation, but we already know what the only acceptable answers are.

I wonder if Elder Oaks's GC comments and these revisions to the CHI may indicate further baby steps in that direction. I guess I needn't have brushed up on my snake-dancing skills.

*Yes, my bias is showing––but, luckily, I. DON'T. CARE.

SPOILER ALERT?

Guess who just procured a digital copy (see here and here) of the brand-spankin'-new Church Handbook of Instructions! It's like opening your mailbox to find that Amazon has sent your copy of the newest Harry Potter novel a week early!

(However, that I could write the foregoing––and mean it––is a sad, saaaaad testament to the bottomless depths of my nerdiness. Sigh.)

[UPDATED!] Interrupting this regularly scheduled update...

CLARIFICATION FROM LDS NEWSROOM BLOG:

This weekend, an AOL article reported that Haitians displaced by flooding caused by Hurricane Tomas were not allowed shelter in a Church meetinghouse in Leogane, Haiti. The fact is that other Church buildings in Haiti were used as public shelters, and arrangements had been made for this particular building to be used by a government agency to respond to the disaster. Because of this arrangement, it was unclear to some whether the building could also be used as a public shelter.... The report of this event obviously describes an isolated aberration (emphasis mine).

_____________

Original post follows:

Note: I'm really, really hoping that there is more to this story, perhaps some explanation that will cast the situation in a new light. I will be sure to update as soon as I find/read/hear anything, and I'll be keeping an eye on the Church's Newsroom site.

I had a post planned about a possible (and subtle) shift concerning LDS priesthood doctrine, but then I read an article that left me stunned. It's not often that a news item induces that breathless, punched-in-the-gut sensation, but this one did. And how.

LEOGANE, Haiti (Nov. 8) -- The water in Haiti's seaside town of Leogane rose to the doorsteps of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But if you're local, and homeless, you needn't have bothered coming here for help. Help is for Mormons only.

...

The LDS church is one of the biggest and most modern buildings in Leogane, with the capacity to safely hold and protect 200. The church's hurricane policy? Only church members can seek shelter there. On Friday, 36 congregants and family members slept at the church.

...

"It's not shelter, it's a Mormon church," a church employee said.

Read it and weep.

Really.


Never say never.

Oh.

I'm afraid that there are some other updates I missed. What a month.



Cody J. Barker, 17


Felix Sacco, 17


Harrison Chase Brown, 15


Alec Henrikson, 18

Interesting Weekend (UPDATED!)

See here.

Interesting Evening

After having been very whiny for the past couple of days (as is my wont), I find myself––most unexpectedly––feeling very, very grateful.

When God was assigning families, I really lucked out.

When God was arranging friendships, he was tremendously generous.

And when it seems that I haven't had a glimpse of him in far too long, I find he has left fingerprints in the most surprising places.

“I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: ‘Go down again––I dwell among the people.’”

––Blessed John Henry Newman

Interesting Weekend (UPDATED!)

And the thick plottens! Elder Packer's talk has undergone some editing between being delivered and being posted online. The changes are subtle, but (I think) significant. It was very considerate of Elder Packer (and anyone else who was involved in the changes). For more information and discussion, see here.


Alma 30:44:

“...all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it ... do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.”

Wikipedia:

Some anglerfishes employ an unusual mating method. When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were females, and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these “parasites” were highly reduced male ceratioids.

At birth, male ceratioids are already equipped with extremely well developed olfactory organs that detect scents in the water. The male ceratoid lives solely to find and mate with a female. They are significantly smaller than a female angler fish, and may have trouble finding food in the deep sea. Furthermore, the growth of the alimentary canals of some males becomes stunted, preventing them from feeding. These features necessitate his quickly finding a female anglerfish to prevent death. The sensitive olfactory organs help the male to detect the pheromones that signal the proximity of a female anglerfish. When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then slowly atrophies, first losing his digestive organs, then his brain, heart, and eyes, and ends as nothing more than a pair of gonads, which release sperm in response to hormones in the female's bloodstream indicating egg release. Multiple males can be incorporated into a single female.

Boyd K. Packer:

“Why would our heavenly father do that to anyone?”

Why, indeed?


Billy Lucas, 15, hanged.



Seth Walsh, 13, hanged.



Tyler Clementi, 18, jumped from a bridge.



Asher Brown, 13, gunshot.



Raymond Chase, 19, hanged.

Why, indeed?

George Q. Cannon, 1897:

[A]bominable crimes are being practiced. How will these be stopped? Only by the destruction of those who practice them.

Ernest L. Wilkison, 1965:

We do not intend to admit to our campus any homosexuals.... We do not want others on this campus to be contaminated by your presence.

Boyd K. Packer, 1978:

[W]e will be able to correct this condition routinely.... the cause when found, will turn out to be a very typical form of selfishness.... It is very possible to cure it by treating selfishness.

Hartman Rector, Jr., 1983:

That’s right, brothers and sisters, I am referring to the mother of all evil, putrid, and vile sins––homosexuality. You know, Satan himself is a homosexual.

Dallin H. Oaks, 2006:

[To a hypothetical gay son or daughter:] Yes, come, but don’t expect to stay overnight. Don’t expect to be a lengthy house guest. Don’t expect us to take you out and introduce you to our friends, or to deal with you in a public situation.

Why, indeed?

Facepalm

Why is BYU made of FAIL‽

From a student article in BYU's Daily Universe:

Defending Proposition 8—It’s time to admit the reasons

By CARY CRALL

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the recent United States District Court case that overturned Proposition 8, highlighted a disturbing inconsistency in the pro-Prop. 8 camp.

The arguments put forth so aggressively by the Protect Marriage coalition and by LDS church leaders at all levels of church organization during the campaign were noticeably absent from the proceedings of the trial. This discrepancy between the arguments in favor of Proposition 8 presented to voters and the arguments presented in court shows that at some point, proponents of Prop. 8 stopped believing in their purported rational and non-religious arguments for the amendment.

Claims that defeat of Prop. 8 would force religious organizations to recognize homosexual marriages and perform such marriages in their privately owned facilities, including LDS temples, were never mentioned in court. Similarly, the defense was unable to find a single expert witness willing to testify that state-recognized homosexual marriage would lead to forcing religious adoption agencies to allow homosexual parents to adopt children or that children would be required to learn about homosexual marriage in school.

Four of the proponents’ six expert witnesses who may have been planning on testifying to these points withdrew as witnesses on the first day of the trial. Why did they go and why did no one step up to replace them? Perhaps it is because they knew that their arguments would suffer much the same fate as those of David Blankenhorn and Kenneth Miller, the two expert witnesses who did agree to testify.

Judge Vaughn Walker, who heard the case, spent 11 pages of his 138-page decision meticulously tearing down every argument advanced by Blankenhorn before concluding that his testimony was “unreliable and entitled to essentially no weight.” Miller suffered similar censure after it was shown that he was unfamiliar with even basic sources on the subject in which he sought to testify as an expert.

The court was left with lopsided, persuasive testimony leading to the conclusion that Proposition 8 was not in the interest of the state and was discriminatory against gays and lesbians. Walker’s decision is a must-read for anyone who is yet to be convinced of this opinion. The question remains that if proponents of Prop. 8 were both unwilling and unable to support even one rational argument in favor of the amendment in court, why did they seek to present their arguments as rational during the campaign?

It is time for LDS supporters of Prop. 8 to be honest about their reasons for supporting the amendment. It’s not about adoption rights, or the first amendment or tradition. These arguments were not found worthy of the standards for finding facts set up by our judicial system. The real reason is that a man who most of us believe is a prophet of God told us to support the amendment. We must accept this explanation, along with all its consequences for good or ill on our own relationship with God and his children here on earth. Maybe then we will stop thoughtlessly spouting reasons that are offensive to gays and lesbians and indefensible to those not of our faith.

A few hours after the article was published, it was removed from the site. The explanation?

The Daily Universe made an independent decision to remove the student viewpoint titled “Defending Proposition 8” after being alerted by various readers that the content of the editorial was offensive. The publication of this viewpoint was not intended to offend, but after further review we recognized that it contained offensive content. This is consistent with policy that The Daily Universe has, on rare occasions, exercised in the past.

"Independent decision," huh? The lady doth protest too much, methinks. The fact they even felt the need to emphasize that the decision was "independent" strongly suggests that it was anything but. As Morris Thurston wrote elsewhere: "It seems obvious that it was taken down not because a few students objected to it, but because people in authority objected to it."

My request (and many requests by others) for some clarification as to what was deemed "offensive" has gone, most unsurprisingly, unanswered. BYU journalism students should take note, though: Deseret News has just had a massive lay-off, cutting their staff in half, so it's very possible that BYU journalists may actually be forced to find work at real newspapers (God forbid!) where the overarching editorial style is not Pollyanna's Glad Game, where fact is valued over positive thinking, and rationality is more important than being faith-promoting.

Finally, this whole debacle illustrates precisely why I hate it when Mormons and Mormon institutions try to dissemble––the dishonesty doesn't bother me, it's the fact that they're just so damn bad at it.

[And, yeah, I did use an interrobang in the first sentence––thanks for noticing!]

Daniel, Isaac, and Neal

A very interesting point to consider in light of the ubiquitous "the world is getting steadily more awful" meme we often hear in religious discussion. (This attitude or presumption is even more influential in faiths with a strong millennialist streak, such as Mormonism.)

The author, depicted with (counterclockwise from upper left) Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, Sophia of Hanover and William of Orange.

Aboard ship, our protagonist, Daniel, morbidly ponders the possibility of a wreck as he continues to record his memoirs of his university education with his friend Isaac Newton––specifically regarding the new (and more accurate) sundial they built.

From Quicksilver, Vol. 1 of The Baroque Cycle, by the brilliant and inimitable Neal Stephenson:

One cannot board a ship without imagining ship-wreck. Daniel envisions it as being like an opera, lasting several hours and proceeding through a series of Acts.

Act I: The hero rises to clear skies and smooth sailing. The sun is following a smooth and well-understood cœlestial curve, the sea is a plane, sailors are strumming guitars and carving objets d'art from walrus tusks, et cetera, while erudite passengers take the air and muse about grand philosophical themes.

Act II: A change in the weather is predicted based upon readings in the captain's barometer. Hours later it appears in the distance, a formation of clouds that is observed, sketched, and analyzed. Sailors cheerfully prepare for weather.

Act III: The storm hits. Changes are noted on the barometer, thermometer, clinometer, compass, and other instruments––cœlestial bodies are, however, no longer visible––the sky is a boiling chaos torn unpredictably by bolts––the sea is rough, the ship heaves, the cargo remains tied safely down, but most passengers are too ill or worried to think. The sailors are all working without rest––some of them sacrifice chickens in hopes of appeasing their gods. The rigging glows with St. Elmo's Fire––this is attributed to supernatural forces.

Act IV: The masts snap and the rudder goes missing. There is panic. Lives are already being lost, but it is not known how many. Cannons and casks are careering randomly about, making it impossible to guess who'll be alive and who dead ten seconds from now. The compass, barometer, et cetera, are all destroyed and the records of their readings swept overboard––maps dissolve––sailors are helpless––those who are still alive and sentient can think of nothing to do but pray.

Act V: The ship is no more. Survivors cling to casks and planks, fighting off the less fortunate and leaving them to drown. Everyone has reverted to a feral state of terror and misery. Huge waves shove them around without any pattern, carnivorous fish use living persons as food. There is no relief in sight, or even imaginable.

––There might also be an Act VI in which everyone was dead, but it wouldn't make for good opera so Daniel omits it.

Men of his generation were born during Act V* and raised in Act IV. As students, they huddled in a small vulnerable bubble of Act III. The human race has, actually, been in Act V for most of history and has recently accomplished the miraculous feat of assembling splintered planks afloat on a stormy sea into a sailing-ship and then, having climbed onboard it, building instruments with which to measure the world, and then finding a kind of regularity in those measurements. When they were at Cambridge, Newton was surrounded by a personal nimbus of Act II and was well on his way to Act I.

But they had, perversely, been living among people who were peering into the wrong end of the telescope, or something, and who had convinced themselves that the opposite was true––that the world had once been a splendid, orderly place––that men had made a reasonably trouble-free move from the Garden of Eden to the Athens of Plato and Aristotle, stopping over in the Holy Land to encrypt the secrets of the Universe in the pages of the Bible, and that everything had been slowly, relentlessly falling apart ever since [emphasis mine]. Cambridge was run by a mixture of fogeys too old to be considered dangerous, and Puritans who had been packed into the place by Cromwell after he'd purged all the people he did consider dangerous. With a few exceptions such as Isaac Barrow, none of them would have had any use for Isaac's sundial, because it didn't look like an old sundial, and they'd prefer telling time wrong the Classical way to telling it right the newfangled way. The curves that Newton plotted on the wall were a methodical document of their wrongness––a manifesto like Luther's theses on the church-door.

*In England, the Civil War that brought Cromwell to power, and on the Continent, the Thirty Years' War.

Mosquerade

I don't know about you, but I am in the mood for some serious refudiation today!

By now, unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard about the attempts to build a mosque/community center at or near the site of the World Trade Center buildings (or where they used to be).

In legal terms, the situation is quite simple: if they own the property and that property is correctly zoned, they can build whatever the hell they want.

If we want to concern ourselves with sensitivity or decorousness, things get a bit more complicated. There are lots of opinions on the subject; both sides have marshaled numerous arguments to their defense. However, I would like to address just one thing that has come up repeatedly, which I found irksome.

When someone says that the mosque site is just too close, their opponents will frequently say something along the lines of "Well, how far away is far enough?" That argument is just too smug for my liking. The suggestion, of course, is that "too close" is basically meaningless, because nobody will be able to make a rational argument explaining that, while two blocks is too close, three blocks (or whatever) would be fine. If the refudiators cannot offer a specific acceptable radius –– and of course they can't –– then their opponents feel they've won. Game, set, match. But they'd be wrong.

Let's do an experiment. You'll need a box of matches or toothpicks and a few friends. Begin to put the matches/toothpicks on a table, one at a time, stacking them roughly on top of each other. Tell your friend to say stop when you have made a "pile." Repeat with your other friends. Chances are, they will have stopped you at different points in the process. So, how many toothpicks does it take to make a pile? 5? 6? 83? Attempting to pick a specific number will always be arbitrary. However, that does not mean that the word or concept of a "pile" is worthless.

Trying to draw a line at the outer radius of a "too close to ground zero" zone is going to be arbitrary too. But that does not mean that there's no such thing as "too close." Mosque proponents ought to acknowledge that, instead of wasting time with semantic games whose sole benefit is ego-stroking, but which do nothing to promote understanding or further the possibility of a fair and amicable resolution.