Christmastide 2010

One hundred and thirty years ago this Christmas Eve, several hundred people gathered at 10 p.m. in a wooden church to welcome Christmas, as the new cathedral was not yet finished in Truro, Cornwall, England.

The idea for this service was put forward by the Reverend G H S Walpole, and the newish Bishop of Truro, the Reverend Edward White Benson, took up the idea and developed what he called "A Festal Service of Lessons and Carols." And that's exactly what it was - lessons from the Old and New Testaments and music, mainly from Handel's "Messiah."

Three years later, Benson was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and during his thirteen year tenure spread the word about this service, and very slowly it began to find its way into other churches, even though it fell outside of the liturgical conventions of that time.

And as it does, time passed...quite a lot of time, it turned out.

In 1912, Eric Milner White, a graduate of King’s College, was appointed Chaplain of the college; when war broke out two years later, he joined the Army as a chaplain and served in France and Italy. Toward the end of the war, his unit was heavily engaged, and all the officers were either killed or wounded. The men asked Milner White to take command. He did, and by doing so, violated the role of non-combatant required of clergy in combat. He left the army - or perhaps it was the army which left him - and returned to his previous position at King’s College, and just a few months later was appointed Dean of the Chapel, a position of considerable importance.

In the autumn of the first year of his Deanship, he proposed a "new" service for Christmas Eve - its roots were in Truro, but under Milner White it was transformed; he saw it as part of a new approach to liturgy in the Church and brought three key elements from the service in Truro - a mixture of lessons read and carols sung, readers from a chorister (boy singer) to the Provost of the college (where at Truro the readers were members of the community and clergy), and the idea that the service was a gift from the college to the community. He changed some of the lessons, re-positioned some, and broadened the musical choices, with the somewhat reluctant help of the Director of Music, Dr A. H. Mann (who served at King's in that role for fifty-four years).

And then....and then, Milner White wrote the great bidding prayer; it comes early in the service and includeds these wonderful words: “Lastly, let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are for ever one.”

So on Christmas Eve, 1918, six weeks after the Armistice was declared on November 11th, ending World War I, a congregation gathered in King’s College Chapel, that amazing gothic stone structure begun by Henry VI and completed by Henry VIII, for the first “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols."

One can only speculate on the feelings of those in attendance as they heard the words of the bidding prayer, mindful as they were of the great sacrifices made by all who took part in the "war to end all wars" but especially by friends - students, staff and professors at King's and all the other Cambridge colleges. Even today, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh month, the memory of all those lost in World War I is honored throughout the United Kingdom.

Nine decades later, we can participate in that same service by listening to public radio... and nine decades later, we should take time to appreciate the poignancy and meaning of that first service and perhaps find relevant links to events in our own time.

The lineage of this service from Truro to listeners around the world is a reminder that small ideas, well, thoughtfully, and sometimes accidentally nurtured, often find their way into our lives - if we lower our defenses and permit them entry. Some of them will survive and become recurring elements in the lives of a few; a smaller number will grow, change, and be meaningful to untold numbers of people in many different parts of our world.

You, faithful reader, have your own ideas about the greater good. To grow them, all one need to is, well, to begin....

In spite of the turmoil which surrounds us these days, the blessings of the season upon you....

Nick Nash

Looking Towards Our Silent Night

We need silence now more than ever before. Surrounded as we are by the persistent and loud beating of the drums of politics and commerce, as well as the beeps and tones from the electronic devices which live in our kitchens, game rooms, pockets, purses, and briefcases, we need a break, and this is the perfect time of year to permit yourself to do just that.

Just before I sat down to write this, I went out to shovel the snow off the front steps. It was cold, probably about 12 degrees Fahrenheit; the sun was bright, and no wind...a perfect winter day. (The calendar may suggest late autumn, but it's winter, no doubt about it.

The shovel scraped under the snow on each step, and once in a while, I would have to punch the blade into the packed stuff to break it up so that I could clear it away.

From time to time, I would pause to look around to check on Islay, the beloved Scotty. She seemed to be enjoying the silence as she moved around studying the yard.

After a week involving the loss of heat and hot water in the house when the boiler committed hari-kiri - I found my bit of shoveling in the silence quite restorative.

These few minutes were an excellent reminder that for my own good, I need to time to be outside in the quiet and refreshing (cold better outside than in, I've learned yet again), especially when Islay and go out for the last time before bed and frequently view the array of stars in the black sky, our own silent night, in anticipation of the season of joy to come.

Islay, Beloved Dog

Today I celebrate Islay the beloved Scottish terrier's birthday and calling it her sixth. Because she came from the Humane Society, we're not sure of the details, so I decided to make them up.

When she arrived in my life, I hadn't had a dog in the house for several years - the last one died just as a hip started its decline, and I felt it would be unfair to have a dog I couldn't exercise properly. After the hip replacement adventure, I began to think about another dog. About that time I got a call about a scotty at the humane society and made the delicious mistake of following up promptly (somewhat unlike me), and Islay arrived in my life.

And nothing has been the same since. After a rambunctious, even wild start, she began to calm, to develop confidence, and - as one would expect from a terrier - manage me from morning 'til night.

This began with a studied shake of her head which caused her id tags and dog license to jingle brightly, and shortly that signal became the sign that it was

time to get up
time to go out
time for breakfast
time to go out again
time for a walk
time for a snack
time to go out
time to go out again
time for another walk,
time for dinner
time to go out
time to go out again
time for a bed time snack.

If the head shake doesn't do the trick, then she leaps up and puts her paws on a knee, and she will do this recurrently until there is an appropriate response. And once I start moving toward the front door, for example, she pushes her cold wet nose into the backs of my ankles. With bare feet in the morning, that strategem still comes as a surprise.

On our walks together, Islay sets the pace, and it is I who tries to catch up. Fortunately we frequent nearby trails used by other dogs and their owners, so Islay has to stop regularly to receive and respond to p-mail. Turns out there is quite a lot of that, but I try not to notice.

When Islay is joyful, generally just before the food bowl is put down for her, she leaps into the air and manages to get several feet of air underneath her, a sort of canine geländesprung, with no intervening obstacle. She amazes me every time she does it.

There was a point when I wasn't too thrilled about the level of skill Islay had achieved in managing me, but I've "moved on," as we say nowadays, and I rather enjoy it. She gets more done, and I have a happy dog.

Some dogs are companions, and that's well and good. Terriers don't put up with that kind of limitation, and they are relentless in being part of the family. Islay sits on the furniture (the better to see what's going on outside), she checks out the neighbor's big dog to make sure that he's OK, and if she comes in wet from the rain, she rolls on her back, stretches out, and does everything but advertise in full color that a towel plus a drying session had damn well better be close at hand. And yes, the dinner plates end up on the floor for Islay to clean up.

She comes to my office in order to greet visitors, observe the local fauna, and water the local flora at every opportunity, and when K and I drive up to the North Shore of Lake Superior, Islay comes with us, sitting on K's knees, her head resting on the top of the glove compartment, or she chooses to sit on the console, sometimes facing forward, sometimes facing backwards.

Islay is the most recent scot in a long line of them stretching back over four decades. I enjoyed them all for their enthusiasm, energy, and sense of humor.

But she is different, and each day I am grateful for her presence in my life, for the laughter she creates, the crankiness she jollies me out of, and the love she shows continuously.

And I hope she feels the same way about me.

A Thought About Concussions

As a society with what I think is an excessive interest in "violent sports," we are finally getting around to confronting the issue of the effects of violence on the brains of the participants...not just at the professional levels but all the way down to school boy football and hockey (among others).

Evidence continues to accumulate that there is more damage to brains than we might ever have thought, and just this week the NFL emerged from its dark cave to assess fines and suspensions against some perfectly terrifying hits in the weekend's games.

The long term impact of the mayhem emerges in depression, forgetfulness, and early onset dementia, among other problems. Lives are shortened, families impacted, and at the pro level, insurance does not apparently support the darkling end of live's journey.

There are those who contend that violence is "part of the game," "why people go to the games," and that mayhem has a long and noble history in our country. Cynically, one might say that those who take that point of view probably played too much football, baseball, rugby, soccer, and hockey themselves.

On the constructive side, we're seeing some improvements in the technology of protection, a more generous view towards those who have been hurt and who are very slowly returning to normal (Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins is one recent and local example), and stricter rules governing what is acceptable contact.

A sportswriter recently observed that the way to reduce violence in football is to take away the helmets (think rugby here, friends, with some ear protection and nothing else). Think about it...perhaps we have provided too much protection for athletes and so they take too many risks thinking that it's the other athlete who will be injured.

I have a simpler idea. Let's stop using the word "concussion" and start using the phrase "brain injury." Concussion sounds too benign, but "brain injury" tends to get one's attention.

About a decade ago, I slipped on winter ice and fell backwards on my head. I was probably out for a few seconds, but when I came to I couldn't get up, so I crawled into the building and made it down the hall to the tea room where I found some help - but only after they realized that I was not trying to be amusing on a Friday morning

I called my doctor who asked me lots of questions, then told me to go home and to take the weekend off and - especially - not to make any important decisions until the following Monday. I was a bit surprised by that, but he explained that I would be "goofy," to use his word, for several days.

He was absolutely correct about the goofy part, and I resolved to make every effort to avoid a similar event in future and now try to fall on my butt and not my head.

When I imagine athletes getting smacked in the head a couple of hundred times a season (at any level of competition), I wonder why the hell it's taken us so long to get a grip on the problem of voluntary brain injury. And please don't get me started on those who suffer similar difficulties in places like, oh, Afghanistan and Iraq.

This dreadful harvest of brain injury will be with us for decades unless we work quickly to find better solutions.

All Blogged Down

Since the beginning of this blog, its title has been "Hobbling Through The Zeitgeist," but I'm beginning to think that was a bit too optimistic.

It's not about me you understand - I'm still hobbling around reasonably well, thanks to regular doses of ibuprofen and scotch. What it is about is the feeling I have that for the last little while in our country, we're barely able to crawl through the zeitgeist, much less hobble.

No doubt the weight of financial distress and of its multitudinous ramifications has slowed all of us down as we try to manage our lives, lives which have not proceeded along the pathways about which we had hoped and dreamed.

On top of it all, we have a bunch of prancing politicians for whom truth is no longer a virtue and who demonstrate few of the characteristics of being adults. Assertion is the new substitute for fact, and fact - you may recall - is one of the essential building blocks of knowledge. Knowledge, as well as informed and thoughtful speculation, is what adults use. Knowledge is not much in fashion these days, and so we are slouching toward a new "dark age," where the loudest voices will shut out the informed and knowledgeable ones.

You would do well to read Richard Hofstadters "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life," his Pulitzer Prize winning attempt to understand why so many of us believe that ignorance really is bliss, most notably in the fields of politics, religion, and education. His ideas continue to resonate today.

Our infrastructure decays, our schools struggle, local, state and federal governments rob Peter to pay Paul, and the media pushes assertions and not necessarily facts, we believe that we can pay off the national debt by standing on the sidelines and bitching.

Some of us are old enough to remember the words of Walt Kelly's cartoon character Pogo. "We has met the enemy," he said, "and they is us."

That will still be true until the day arrives when we can agree on the facts and find a bunch of grown-ups who will go to Washington and worry a bit less about their own skins and a hell of a lot more about the future of the country. If we're lucky, we may be able to avoid the darkness, out there, waiting. Like me, I think you can sense it.

An Easy Way To Improve Your Driving

During our recent trip to the UK, we rented a car for our time in Scotland, about three weeks, in other words. The most significant challenge for me in driving in the UK is not the shift to driving on the left but in getting out of the "Roundabout Hell" at Glasgow Airport and across the Erskine Bridge.

Last year I took my GPS, and there was not one curse word heard in the car that first day. So I used the same strategy, and in general the GPS worked well, once we had departed the rental car parking lot. "Jane" as we call her wanted us to exit the lot against the one way traffic; Karen was right, but after that Jane was close to perfect.

So while the GPS took a lot of the pressure off and improved our daily stints in the car, the best thing we did was to leave the radio off...even with the delights of BBC Radios 2 and 3 so easily at hand.

Conversation was easier, of course, but what I discovered was that I could concentrate more easily on the driving - and I could sneak a few more looks at the gorgeous landscapes through which we were passing. I began to enjoy a new sense of calm, so I slowed down a bit and found myself enjoying the sometimes collaborative process of being part of the vehicle flow.

Back home, I've been a bit surprised to find that I was using the radio considerably less, mainly to keep up with the Minnesota Twins baseball game of the day and to find out the weather forecast.

Public radio continues to be something of a distraction, but thus far I'm still more or less in control of sound in the car, except for Islay the Scottish Terrier, the observations and opinions of whom are regularly and forcefully expressed under any circumstance she deems appropriate.

A Prayer For Our Times

Last May found us in the islands and highlands of Scotland, and it was in the highlands that we had one of those unexpected and unforgettable experiences - in a small church near the River Dee, not far from the front gates of the Queen's Estate at Balmoral. The Church of Scotland is Presbyterian and is proud of its independence, and when we're in the area, we like to attend the Sunday service.

That particular morning, I was surprised to find a "Prayer Of Confession" which I had never come across before, and at the end of the service, I made sure I departed with a copy of the program. I don't know who wrote it or how long it's been around, but I thought it might be of interest to others who may not have read it.

So from "The Parish of Braemar and Crathie," here is that prayer:

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you have created a world filled with wonder and abundance, while we make do with dull monotony and self-inflicted shortages.
Forgive us.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you have entered into our world with grace and truth, but we have created a culture of judgement and deception.
Have mercy upon is.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you have touched our world with power and presence, and yet we live in the midst of despair and loneliness.
Grant us your peace.

AMEN

After saying that in unison - even after reading it silently - I felt and continue to feel its cool truth sink in. Its essence comes to mind regularly and motivates me....

Verily

The iPad, uh, My iPad

There seemed to be an awful lot of sturm und drang over the birth of the iPad. I read most of the articles which guessed that it would be an incredibly well designed brick and good for not very much; I also read most of the ones which predicted that it would make and deliver a hot breakfast and that it would be expensive.

Taking the middle way, I reflected on all this and decided to order one partly, I must confess, I am intrigued by new gadgets, especially anything that Apple creates, and at my age you want to learn about this new stuff before the large hand comes out of the blue and takes you off to the happy hunting ground (call it what you will).

I thought that the iPad would be very good for reading books, magazines, and some newspapers. I also felt that it would be more than adequate to deal with television, via the web, via Sling Mobile, or via Netflix. and finally, I thought that for the under 40s, the prospect of games on the iPad would be of interest. And I figured it would be excellent for showing photos. To that end, I acquired the Wi-Fi only version in the belief that enriching AT&T with yet another data plan wasn't a high priority in my world.

That you could wander the web relatively easily and deal with email on a larger screen seemed a great improvement over the limitations of the iPhone (but it does have a place). Finally, no matter how many apps that the 12 year old geniuses come up with, the iPad will not replace a laptop...well, not yet.

The book on the bookshelf when you start up the iPad is "Winnie The Pooh," and the colorful Ernest Shepard drawings are so much more lively than they would be in black and white. A friend whose vision isn't as good as it once was looked at the large type available on iPad books and pronounced it of greater interest to him the Amazon's Kindle. My sister has a Kindle and has enjoyed it immensely, especially when she travels.

But the point is that digitization of print materials like a tsunami. I now subscribe to four newspapers online, and the paper recycling bags at the end of the driveway on Monday morning are now but one.

And yes, I get that there's nothing like the feel of turning the page of the New York Times or of a book whether old or new. Having thought about it some, I've decided that I'll hold out for the printed editions of The New Yorker and Cook's Illustrated, but that's about it.

I think about getting on a plane to London next month with an iPad which will replace the usual four or five books I usually squeeze into the carry-on, and I smile.

My conclusion is that you'd better get on the stagecoach before you find yourself under it. But now I have to return to the most recent episode of Spartacus, on my iPad courtesy of Netflix, and then find some time to leave the electronic world to admire the daffodils at the end of the drive. Nothing compares, even a nice high density image of them on a small screen, and nothing ever will.

Olympic Afterglow

During the last couple of weeks I found myself in a number of long meetings, and not just Monday through Friday, but on the weekends as well. I'm not complaining, mind you, just describing this last chunk of time.

Yessir, those winter Olympics can eat up a lot of time, what with NBC using a fistful of channels to bring all the delayed action to us. Oh, there were a few things live, but you had to be on the ball to figure that out. But I digress.

Every four years, there is an opportunity to see young athletes at the top of their particular game, and accompanying those performances are stories which are so good, so touching, that i just plop a large box of Kleenex next to my chair and get ready to weep.

This year, a luger from the Republic of Georgie died on the track at Whistler Mountain. It was a terrible tragedy - casting a deep shadow on the judgement and competence of the Canadian engineering. Kleenex.

Joannie Rochette's mother died of a heart attack days before her figure skating competition, but her daughter decided to compete, and was she a wonder, earning the bronze medal with performances of great beauty, skill, and emotion. More Kleenex.

In that same competition, the young Korean skater Yu-Na-KIm took our collective breath away with an incomparable perforance in the long program. She had wonderful lines, enormous grace, and she swept away all her ebullient, enthusiastic, and far less graceful competitiors. It was a night to remember. Kleenex again, just for the beauty of it all.

On the men's side, Evan Lysacek defeated his Russian competition by his careful competence, clear understanding of the judging rules, and a sense of caring which put him ahead of Evgeny Plushenko. Fists in the air but no Kleenex.

The story of the American bobsled driver whose vision had been so poor, he was legally blind and drove by instinct soon came to the fore. Recent daring eye surgery had given him near perfect sight, and in three runs, he took home the gold. The art and science of medicine, plus a patient's courage, made for a very happy ending. Kleenex during the playing of the national anthem at the award ceremony.

But the hockey, both men's and women's games, was a source of considerable delight. Both USA teams ultimately lost to Canada in championship matches, but the games were as intense, competitive, creative, and exhausting as any I've ever seen. Too involved for Kleenex until the end of two men's games against Canada and the women's final contest.

I'm learning about the half-pipe and am amazed by the athleticism of the competitors, and curling is beginning to intrigue me more than ever before, but now I have four years to wait before I can re-evaluate my interest. But speaking of curling, if there is a better play-by-play person for a sport than John Duguid, I don't know who it would be. He treats the audience with respect and understands the game thoroughly so that you feel that you understand what the participants are thinking before making every strategic decision. And Mike Emrick did a terrific job with the hockey play-by-play, but often I felt as though as was sitting under an enthusiastic and endless cascade of words, words, words.

So now Vancouver and Canada begin to recover from what must be the greatest national hangover in decades. I'll bet they don't regret the celebration one damn bit.