Thanks for Frog Hospital.
You conjure a television program from our youth - a program I have not thought of in years."
You Are There," moderated by Walter Konkrite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_There_(series)
Speaking of Uncle Walt, do you have any thoughts on Eric Sevareid's comment: "There are two kinds of people in this world; those who want to be somebody and those who want to do something."
We are witnessing "something new under the sun," a vast political constituency dedicated to Un-Doing "everything" in hope that faithful adherence to "godly principles" will "make everything better" --- that sola fide (and bold proclamation of orthodox credos) will accomplish every necessary thing.
Conveniently, the "word becomes flesh" without need to enact The Incarnation.
Questing after "Righteousness" impresses me as wishful thinking grounded in arrested development.
Remarkably recent biblical translation replace the word "righteousness" with "justice."
"Righteousness" is an open invitation to indolent ego-centrism.
Justice, on the other hand, is an invitation to the work of vouchsafing the dignity of others.
We have here competing visions of the "Summum Bonum" -- Self or Other.
Perhaps "righteousness" appeals to people who want to "be someone" -- people who want passive, "non-performing" salvation -- whereas "justice" appeals to people who want to "do something," people who believe faith must be supplemented by good works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide
“The work of heaven alone is material; the making of a material world. The work of hell is entirely spiritual.”
G.K. Chesterton
We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened.
But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
Thomas Merton
Attachment to spiritual things is… just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.
Thomas Merton
Bibliolatry is alive and well.
Pax
Alan
PS To further our ongoing discussion of gender, Chesterton offers this observation: "Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem." "The Glory of Grey," Alarms and Discursions (1910).
On the other hand...
PPS The following post is similarly provocative. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/01/npr-poll-women-are-more-intelligent.html
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
FROG HOSPITAL -- January 2, 2013
By Fred Owens
Frida Kahlo. By chance, I was in New York City in November of 1990 and I visited the Metropolitan Musuem of Art to see an exhibit of Frida Kahlo's original paintings. Few people in this country had ever heard of her, but she made a splash in the world of art and the world of Hispanic culture, becoming a feminine icon, her image silk-screened on t-shirts and coffee mugs from Seattle to Tierra del Fuego, to become as over-exposed as she had once been hidden......There's some politics in all of this, and I will stay one hundred miles away from that.
Instead, I am composing a work of the imagination on Facebook starring Frida Kahlo, the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, director John Huston, Moses, King Solomon, Queen Nefertiti, Pope Pius XII, Modjadji -- the Rain Queen of South Africa, and the Virgin of Guadalupe. And others. I am thinking I will need a comic character, so that will be Albert Brooks .
The work is exploratory but it has three unquestionable premises -- that America is the New World, that Africa is where the human race began, and that the Matopos Hills in Zimbabwe are the site of King Solomon's Mine.
The work bears a distinct resemblance to my previous effort, the Story of Jimmy & Hitch, re-titled the Fishtown Blues, which I wrote last summer. That work placed real and historical people in a fictional setting, with characters such as pharmacist and former Mayor Fred Martin, plus quasi-fictional characters such as Aurora Jellybean. The story was tightly focused on a journey of one day's duration in July, 1982, when Jimmy Kuipers woke up from a night's drinking and headed into town to buy more beer at the Frog Hospital. Jimmy hooked up with his pal Hitch and they had adventures and went out to Fishtown to confront the face of evil and the death or disappearance of a woman they knew only as Lisa. It was a good story, and those who have read it asked me to write another story.
So, working on a global scale with a time-frame of centuries, I have used the same method, placing real persons, such as Frida Kahlo, into imaginary settings, such as her luncheon conversation with director John Huston in 1947. Huston was in Mexico City that year because he was researching a movie project on the life of Benito Juarez. The topic interested him, but he could not find a workable plot and he dropped it.
Instead Huston flew to Africa and discovered the right location for a movie which came to be called the African Queen. And who was that Queen? You will find out if you follow the story, but you have to read it on Facebook, because I am using multiple images and posting almost daily. Find me at "Fred Owens" -- you will be glad you did.
The story begins with a post on December 28 if you want start at the beginning
Happy New Year to all, Love, Peace and Prosperity to you and your loved ones. May 2013 be wonderful in many ways. And thank you for reading my words and thank you for being my friend.
--
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214
My blog is Fred Owens
send mail to:
Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001