Imbolc and the Snow Moon
Friday gratefuls: Alan. Marilyn and Irv. Snow. March, our big Snow month. Shadow. Difficult nights sleep. Ramadan. Elon Musk, a real Bond villain. Mussar. Hana Matsuri. Torah study. Men’s group. Smart phones. The internet. The cloud. Clouds. NOAA. National Weather Service. Critical government services.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The sound of Shadow eating
Week kavannah: Netzach with zerizut and simcha
One brief shining: Driving up the hill Tuesday after lunch with Alan, Denver temperature 66 degrees, climbing on 285 past the Hogbacks, past Indian Hills, past Windy point, temperature in the low 50’s, by the time I reached Shadow Mountain Home the air was 47 degrees, 19 degrees cooler than Denver.
60 years ago I was a freshman at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana. In my first semester I joined the Scarlet Masque, a group of actors who put on plays for the town of Crawfordsville. Guerilla theatre had a moment in the mid-1960’s and we decided to perform medieval morality plays on the main commercial street of Crawfordsville.
Medieval morality plays convey straightforward messages about good and bad, sin and redemption. They present difficulties for actors because the lines rhyme. Here’s an example from the Castle of Perservance:
MANKIND:
What need I toil, or sweat, or strive?
Why should I labor, while I am alive?
Gold and silver will serve my will,
And I shall do what I like still!
BACKBITER:
Well spoken, my jovial lad!
Hold fast to pleasure, be never sad!
Why fret and fast, why should you care?
Eat, drink, and make good cheer,
For life is short, and death is near!
MANKIND:
Ha! By my soul, thy words are sweet,
And thus my heart shall take its seat.
A lordly life shall I pursue,
And bid those beggarly monks adieu!
This is, I admit, a long winded introduction to my real point. Over the last six months or so, I notice I’ve drifted in my reading and in my television watching to contemporary morality plays. I’ve read mysteries and thrillers. I’ve watched police procedurals, movies about assassins, the FBI, science fiction movies about alien invasions.
What do they share in common with the medieval morality plays? They present clear messages. Good Bond. Bad villain. Good police, bad criminals. Bad arms dealers, good assassins. Over the course of 45 minutes to an hour and a half, though the battle goes back and forth with the outcome often in doubt, in the end good triumphs. The vanquished bad actors get what’s coming to them.
Ah.
It took me until last week to realize why I felt soothed by these works. So much in the world and in the U.S. seems an inversion of values I hold close. US friends with Russia. Extorting Ukraine for precious metals. Gutting NOAA and the National Weather Service. Finding money for deficit increasing tax breaks in programs like Medicaid and food stamps. Not only are the bad guys not getting punished, they’re making front page news daily.
Not so in NCIS: New Orleans. That wife who poisoned her husband and brother with polonium. Behind bars. Or, FBI. The three terrorists who tried to bomb a baseball game in Central Park? Foiled and arrested.
BTW: Whose name could I have replaced Mankind’s with in the excerpt from Castle Perserveance?