Notes from the Editor's Desk -- 3/29/23

I search through the Iliad to see if I can discover what Homer makes of glancing blows. Thrown spears, arrows, thrusts, or strikes that leave their mark on armor but do not do more than minor damage to its wearer occur, if memory serves, not infrequently, but I can’t discover one now. I am curious to see if a philosophy of near misses can be discovered across these physical miscalculations of incorporeal fate. A similar miscue, taking place between the shift into park and the removal of the keys yesterday, must have depressed the steering wheel’s seek button before I noticed the change, so that this morning I found the radio tuned to 90.1 when I started the car again. 90.1 being the Moody Bible Institute’s station, a sermon played about Esther, a story my upbringing never touched, and the preacher was focused on Esther’s hesitation. Esther had risen to the top of King Ahasueres’ harem and became his wife but was urged to conceal her Jewishness, and so did. Haman, an advisor to the king, incensed that Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, refuses to bow to him, purchases the right to issue an order under the king’s seal that would allow for the extermination of the Jews. Esther is encouraged to reveal her background to the king, but she hesitates, as going before the king without being summoned could result in death. At the insistence of Mordecai, her hesitation becomes resolve, and the ensuing events lead to Haman’s hanging. Unable by law to revoke an order under his seal once it has been issued, a second order is issued that allows the Jews to defend themselves on the day of their extermination, and this they do successfully.

This story came to me as does a glancing blow. Entranced by its strangeness, as I find it strange that the portion of my life that passes in my car should ever present a matter that would alter me, or threaten to alter me, I nevertheless tuned to a more familiar frequency in order to complete my errand unbothered. Religion is the basis of the work of no few great literary figures. My religious upbringing was not on elf people, places, nor the interplay of these, but rather focused on the personal relationship to Jesus. Such an upbringing can only go so deep without either failing, or else continuing in a kind of hallucination. Historicity, even when dubious, provides a more robust intellectual basis, both for a people and its individual persons. It is a succession of small mysteries and straightforward answers rather than one mystery and an abiding grace that is forever hinted at in lieu of definitiveness. Of course the intellect is only one dimension of a writer’s life, or any life.

Street folk always know about the Bible, or else they will simply, when presented with a joke at the Bible’s expense, emphasize that this material is not to be made light of, even though they do not seem to possess comprehension of its details. A schizoid outside a pool hall in Arizona taught me that. The walls of Jericho were, to him, a projection of his own relationship to the world, albeit he was more interested in the trumpets than the walls. As I was the one to bring up Jericho, I assume it was his affliction that allowed him to instantly identify with it and make its holiness a matter of incredible fascination. He was engrossed and moved on from our group to discuss Jericho with the next.