The Nightingale Song

"The spirit of the ring obeys the one who has the ring whether he is Aladdin or a Noureddin, and he who has the wealth has it regardless of how he got it. It is different in the world of the spirit."
Johannes de Silento

Of all the characters in film perhaps the hardest to understand is that noble, young woman Cinderella. The more I study her - how she hoped against hope while enduring the malice of her step-family - the more amazed I am. The film is very difficult for me to watch.

Walt Disney was surely a student of the Copenhagen school ... studying the works of Anderson and Kierkegaard. He certainly had an eye for subtlety and the many ways the spirit expresses itself.

Perhaps the highest point of the animation is the Nightingale song. We are taken to the music room to hear the singing of the step-sisters. They are poor singers, yes, even to a comic extreme. However Disney is trying to show us something deeper and more profound, and it is here one finds his mastery of story-telling.

"Sing sweet Nightingale ... Ah ah ah ah Aaaah!"

The half-smile ... the affectation of the flute player ... the closed eyes ... the smugness ... these girls are singing for an audience. They are singing not because they find their song meaningful. They are trying to find meaning in the eyes of others. The mother emphasizes practice to make them sound better to others as the real problem gets worse.

Trouble is brewing. The flutist catches her finger on a note. She pulls hard on her hand - sending the flute into her sister's face. The conflict escalates: the flute is stolen and becomes a weapon. Whatever control these girls have over their music, they have little control over themselves. Only the external intervention of the mother can bring the argument to rest while the girls remain ... restless.

The scene changes to the downstairs entry where Cinderella is scrubbing the floors. She is singing Sweet Nightingale - the same song her sisters were singing. And yet the song is completely different.

Oh sing sweet nightingale ...
Sing sweet nightingale.
Sing sweet nightingale ... to me !

The bubbles begin to lift and fall with the melody. We see reflections of the young girl floating around her. Reflections of a woman alone, abused by her family. Just as in every reflection, Cinderella gains the chance of seeing herself. And the woman she sees reflected in the music and the work upon herself is ... glad and at peace.

Beautiful.

As in the music room above, trouble is not far away. Lucifer the cat has spread dirt around the tile floor. Cinderella is angry and chases the cat away. But she is not defeated precisely because she does not despair.

In both scenes we find work, trouble, and the nightingale song. And could anything be more different!

Pulp Devotion

To what extent can back-and-forth discussion (i.e. the dialectic) help a person to discover their devotion?

In the film Pulp Fiction, two gangsters have a human corpse in their trunk. They go to their friend Jimmie's house to clean things up, and he happens to be home. The problem presents itself that the wife may return home from a long shift at the hospital and become displeased to find a dead body in the garage. Jimmie is disturbed by this prospect.

At this point Jules, one of the gangsters, decides to approach the situation dialectically with Jimmie ... as awkward as it might be. He starts by talking about the coffee. It's really great. Like gourmet great.

Jimmie sees that this dialectic manuever is merely a distraction:

I buy the gourmet expensive stuff 'cause when I drink it, I wanna taste it. But what's on my mind at this moment isn't the coffee in my kitchen, it's the dead black dude in my garage.

So here we are left with a question: is Jimmy in a state of inconsolable rage (inconsolable to the point that no dialectic can rescue him) or is it that the dialectic itself has become a distraction to the Good? Is there anything that could come up in the conversation that could reconcile the heart through the discourse interpreted by the brain? Jimmie does not leave us speculating on this question:

"There's nothin'you can say that's gonna make me forget I love my wife."

But Jimmy! How did you arrive at the conclusion that you love your wife? Can't we say something that will conflict with the reasons you have for loving your wife? Isn't your logic subject to external analysis?

No. Jimmy loves by the means of love. That is to say, the presupposition and conclusion are united in the paradox of faith. No external proof (in the form of good tasting coffee for example) presents itself to esteem the love he has for his wife. He will not have any such proof. In the silence of the world's justifications, Jimmy is left with his own voice ... and it's saying, "I love my wife!".

This conclusion is not a conclusion at all, but a resolution ... a resolution that longs to express itself the more Jimmy looks upon his own decisiveness in the moment by means of the absurd. Nothing implies imposes or implants this decisiveness upon Jimmy. He implies imposes and implants this decisiveness upon the world ... and it is precisely in this decisiveness that the proof lies.

And this is the only avenue to finding one's devotion.

Theology From Demons

"It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling.

Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, 'These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.'

She continued doing this for many days. But Paul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, 'I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!' And it came out at that very moment."

Acts 16:16-18

In the book of Acts Paul and Silas were traveling to pray. Along the way they found a slave-girl who began shouting claims about the people traveling with Paul. Here are her words:

"These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation."

Was she correct? Were her claims true or false? If you wrote it on a piece of paper and sent copies to every major Christian theologian in every major city, would they agree or disagree with this woman's claims?

Sure, she was possessed by a demon ... but she had true things to say. Isn't that what every major Bible analyst says matters most? C.S. Lewis claims* being a Christian is just a matter of agreeing with the claims of the Bible. And was not the slave-girl doing just this?

Why was Paul greatly annoyed? Didn't he care primarily about having correct doctrine?

No.

Here the demonic voice was not expressed by a lack of knowledge. The voice was in the distance between this person's knowledge and her lifestyle. How serious was the slave girl about her claims? Did she cry out because she wanted to find the 'way of salvation'? Or was it to show off what knowledge the demons had given her?

Sadly, I think a lot of theology is done simply to show off one's knowledge. So often it is a performance to show how much a person knows.

But does it matter to them?

Do our opinions matter to us when we give them?


* ("The name Christians was first given at Antioch to the 'disciples', to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles" Mere Christianity, XIV). Doesn't Christian mean 'little Christ'? If so, being a Christian has less to do with which doctrine a person accepts and more to do with who they are.

The Good Zombie

"Leaves appear green while they are alive. Only after their death do we see their true color." The Shepherd of Canaan "The dead know nothing." Solomon

Once upon a time in Haiti there was a beautiful young woman who taught children at a school by the ocean. The children talked about her good looks and they were drawn to her remarkable wisdom. When she smiled the boys sighed, and when she spoke the students listened. Unlike the other teachers, she usually carried the full attention of her class.

There was another teacher at the school who was very old, and her students were not eager to listen to her instruction. They weren't drawn to her appearance, and sometimes the elder teacher overheard them say they wanted to be in the younger teacher's class. This infuriated the older teacher.

One day while her students were at gym, she decided to watch the younger teacher with her class. The students seemed responsive to her questions - at times interested in the material - and, was that an apple on the desk? Surely there was no occasion. Her face darkened, and she thought, "If I had her advantages ... I could hold their attention!"

After school was out that day she went to her home in the mountains and prepared - as they still do somedays in Haiti - a mixture from rare fish extracts and powerful botanicals. The concoction would deaden her understanding and turn her face pale as death. Without the mental ability to resist she would have the young teacher do tasks around her mountain home.

So the old teacher took a vial of her tasteless potion to school and - while the young teacher was out at recess - she dripped the substance into the young teacher's tea. Before the day was over she felt ill. When evening came she was rambling and making no sense. The next morning no pulse could be found and they pronounced the poor girl dead. There was a large funeral and nearly all her students came to mourn her passing.

That night the older teacher went to the cemetary and dug up the body of the young teacher. Using a mixture of strong salts and cucumbers she woke the young teacher from her rest. She opened her eyes and sat up.

"Good evening!" The old teacher said.
The younger teacher smiled.
"What's your name?" The older teacher asked.
The young teacher looked down and shook her head.
"Well, where do you live? What do you do?"
The young teacher shook her head and mumbled something.
"Never you mind. You can stay with me. You'll just do some work around my place."
The young teacher - her face already changing in appeaerance - smiled and went with the older teacher.

The young teacher was immediately put to work at her captor's home in the mountains. She cleaned the walls and cabinets. She carried produce around the garden. And she sensed that something was terribly wrong. But everytime she went to the old teacher to say something, she began moving her mouth but strange and unusual sounds came out.

She did not know that the old teacher continued to put the botanicals in her food.

As time passed the young teacher seemed to grow much older. Her hair turned gray. Her face grew wrinkles. She was not fed much, and her face appeared emactiated and tight. The older woman began experimenting with herbs and was able to gradually make herself appear younger. Her students began to listen in class, but some found her younger appearance a bit strange.

While the older teacher continued to gain prominence at her school, she felt a heavy burden come over her. She refused to see it at first, but it didn't leave. "Is it guilt I feel? After all I have suffered, am I to believe I am the guilty one?" She paused. "If only I could find the source of my unhappiness and look it in the face!"

As the older teacher was saying these words, the young teacher brought a bushel of ripe tomatoes from the garden - almost stumbling as she walked. "What is that?!" The older teacher thought. "Is that a smile on her face?"

She pulled the teacher's face forward to examine it. Her eyes looked weary from the potion, but they also seemed ... full of life and peace. The older teacher searched every corner of her eyes, but she could find no ill-will hidden in them. She almost appeared to be glad to do her work.

The older teacher exclaimed, "Here! This is it!". She ran from her house to get away. She didn't know where she was running. If she hid under a rock it would still be there. If she lived alone in the forest it would be there too. The faster she ran the closer it came to her.

When the locals found her the next day, the older teacher was lying at the bottom of a great ravine. The people wept and said, "How unfortunate that such a teacher should die at a time when she was so prominent." Other people blamed God.

The younger teacher - a bit uncertain of her surroundings - wandered into the forest one day. She began eating some of the berries and bananas, and her appearance slowly began to change. The area began to look more familiar to her, and she began to look more young and beautiful again.

One day she went into the town and over heard people talking about growing tomatoes. The young teacher suddenly began talking about how tomatoes are grown. She was surprised to find she was able to speak.

One of the people listening to her said, "Aren't you the lady who used to teach us nearly two years ago?". And the young teacher recognized the face of her old student.

"I knew it was you because you seemed so knowledgable and pleasant to the eyes." The student told her. The young teacher laughed - for the student's words seemed bizarre somehow.

In time the young teacher regained her health and continued to teach at the school in Haiti. Every so often she looked in the mirror and asked herself why life was so wonderful.

Touch of the Master's Hand

As a child I remember having a giant framed poem on the living room wall. The writing was highly stylized - probably by my grandmother who is a professional calligrapher. I wasn't old enough to read at the time, so I asked my parents to read it for me. The poem was titled, "The Touch of The Master's Hand".


The Touch of the Master's Hand
by Myra Brooks Welch

Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer
Thought it scarcely worth his while
To waste much time on the old violin,
But held it up with a smile.
"What am I bidden, good folks," he cried,
"Who will start bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar" --then, "Two!" "Only two?
Two dollars, and who'll make it three?
Three dollars, twice;
"Going for three --" But no,
From the room, far back, a gray-haired man
Came forward and picked up the bow;
Then wiping the dust from the old violin,
And tightening the loose strings.
He played a melody pure and sweet
As sweet as a caroling angel sings.

The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said what am I bidden for the old violin?
And he held it up with the bow.
A thousand dollars, and who'll make it two?

Two thousand! And who'll make it three?
Three thousand, once; three thousand twice;
And going, and gone!" said he.
The people cheered, but some of them cried,
"We do not quite understand
What changed its worth?" Swift came the reply:
"The touch of the master's hand.

And many a man with life out of tune,
And battered and scattered with sin,
Is auctioned off cheap to the thoughtless crowd,
Much like the old violin.
A "mess of pottage," a glass of wine;
A game -- and he travels on.
He's "going" once, and "going" twice,
He's "going" and "almost gone."
But the Master comes and the foolish crowd
Never quite understand
The worth of a soul and the change that's wrought
By the touch of the Master's hand.