Saint Dorothy Day, Rome Ga and Furman thoughts
Gonna lump a couple of loosely connected themes together here because the Trump administration and its reverberations are thick and cloudy but these things are playing out.
On Sunday Furman Religion faculty will hold an afternoon seminar at FBC Greenville on the Old and New Testament and Donald Trump. I remember when Carlyle Marney came to Furman campus the winter of 74 or 75 to talk about Watergate using an Old Testament text. It was about the profoundest thing I'd ever heard in my 20 something short years. I tried to compose a polysyllabled word thick question to ask him and his reply was, "Hell son, if you don't know by now, you'll probably never know."
But I had a sense of the timelessness of Scripture and speaking to power, being transcendant over political thickets stronger than ever before to that point.
My conundrum is if Marney knew everything he knew then and there were hundreds of just Baptists and a few Willimon Methodists that understood it much better than my inklings, how did we get to the Lee Atwater, Jim Demint, Paul Pressler Freedom Caucus Steve Bannon alt right moment of Donald Trump.
Makes no damn sense.
But Furman people are on the case in Upstate SC. I hope they make reference to some of my links here on this blog this last half year and get right down to the real Nitty Gritty. I have to believe that between Furman Wofford and Converse in Upstate SC. somebody can unseat Trey Gowdy which would be a helluva a sensible start.
There is a world of difference between Furman Religion faculty and Trey Gowdy and Tony Beam's Truth for a New Generation conferences at FBC Spartanburg; and to paraphrase Joe Cocker, "It's High time (he, Trey Gowdy) Went."
And this update from over the weekend of March 24. Booktv had a stellar panel re the new book the Benedict Option. Russ Moore of the SBC and his troubles with fundamentalists even further to his right was invoked twice. And the author made reference to JD Vance and Hillbilly Elegy though he failed to discuss the better book Hochschild's Strangers in their Own Land. For too long white working class vote has been the devils playground for demagogues like Lee Atwater, Adrian Rogers, Steve Bannon and as Ted Koppel rightly named on 60 Minutes, Sean Hannity. Hochschild says Oil is the new Cotton in Trump's Plantation Economy.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?425495-1/benedict-option
On to Dorothy Day. Her father or the father of her first child was from Asheville NC and some branch of the ancestry came from the vicinity of Rome Ga. Day is mostly thought of as a product of Chicago.
I'm on the trail of reading the new biography of her granddaughter asap after a fascinating interview yesterday on NPR Fresh Air
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/23/521220274/an-intimate-portrait-of-dorothy-day-the-catholic-activist-with-a-bohemian-past
Do click on transcript. Toward the end Ms Hennessey said her Mother, the only child of Day said about her husband with whom they had nine children could only be understood by careful consideration of three books.
Pat Conroy's The Great Santini
Arthur Miller's book on his romance with Marilynne Monroe
And Nabokov's Lolita.
How an aspect of Dorothy Day, soon to be a Catholic Saint gets intertwined with that collection is a great enchanting mystery of the faith. But I'm in for this exploration.
Furman great Marshall Frady had insight in 2002 with his Penguin series bio of Martin Luther King. From that introduction
But we have not yet learned to accommodate in our understanding of such figures what the ancient seers, Sophocles and the King David Chronicler and Shakespeare and Cervantes, knew--that while evil can wear the most civil and sensible and respectably rectitudinous demeanor, good can seem blunderbous and uncertain, shockingly wayward, woefully flawed, like one of Graham Greene's dissolute, shabby, God-haunted saints. And what the full bodied reality of Martin Luther King should finally tell us, beyond all the awe and celebration of him, is how mysteriously mixed, in what torturously complicated forms, our moral heroes--our prophets--actually come to us.
Had a good chat few days ago with devout Polish Catholic truck Driver from Near Detroit. He's seen the movie Ida which my nephew Andrew will see soon. Will enhance our next conversation, this new bio of Day.
On Sunday Furman Religion faculty will hold an afternoon seminar at FBC Greenville on the Old and New Testament and Donald Trump. I remember when Carlyle Marney came to Furman campus the winter of 74 or 75 to talk about Watergate using an Old Testament text. It was about the profoundest thing I'd ever heard in my 20 something short years. I tried to compose a polysyllabled word thick question to ask him and his reply was, "Hell son, if you don't know by now, you'll probably never know."
But I had a sense of the timelessness of Scripture and speaking to power, being transcendant over political thickets stronger than ever before to that point.
My conundrum is if Marney knew everything he knew then and there were hundreds of just Baptists and a few Willimon Methodists that understood it much better than my inklings, how did we get to the Lee Atwater, Jim Demint, Paul Pressler Freedom Caucus Steve Bannon alt right moment of Donald Trump.
Makes no damn sense.
But Furman people are on the case in Upstate SC. I hope they make reference to some of my links here on this blog this last half year and get right down to the real Nitty Gritty. I have to believe that between Furman Wofford and Converse in Upstate SC. somebody can unseat Trey Gowdy which would be a helluva a sensible start.
There is a world of difference between Furman Religion faculty and Trey Gowdy and Tony Beam's Truth for a New Generation conferences at FBC Spartanburg; and to paraphrase Joe Cocker, "It's High time (he, Trey Gowdy) Went."
And this update from over the weekend of March 24. Booktv had a stellar panel re the new book the Benedict Option. Russ Moore of the SBC and his troubles with fundamentalists even further to his right was invoked twice. And the author made reference to JD Vance and Hillbilly Elegy though he failed to discuss the better book Hochschild's Strangers in their Own Land. For too long white working class vote has been the devils playground for demagogues like Lee Atwater, Adrian Rogers, Steve Bannon and as Ted Koppel rightly named on 60 Minutes, Sean Hannity. Hochschild says Oil is the new Cotton in Trump's Plantation Economy.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?425495-1/benedict-option
On to Dorothy Day. Her father or the father of her first child was from Asheville NC and some branch of the ancestry came from the vicinity of Rome Ga. Day is mostly thought of as a product of Chicago.
I'm on the trail of reading the new biography of her granddaughter asap after a fascinating interview yesterday on NPR Fresh Air
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/23/521220274/an-intimate-portrait-of-dorothy-day-the-catholic-activist-with-a-bohemian-past
Do click on transcript. Toward the end Ms Hennessey said her Mother, the only child of Day said about her husband with whom they had nine children could only be understood by careful consideration of three books.
Pat Conroy's The Great Santini
Arthur Miller's book on his romance with Marilynne Monroe
And Nabokov's Lolita.
How an aspect of Dorothy Day, soon to be a Catholic Saint gets intertwined with that collection is a great enchanting mystery of the faith. But I'm in for this exploration.
Furman great Marshall Frady had insight in 2002 with his Penguin series bio of Martin Luther King. From that introduction
But we have not yet learned to accommodate in our understanding of such figures what the ancient seers, Sophocles and the King David Chronicler and Shakespeare and Cervantes, knew--that while evil can wear the most civil and sensible and respectably rectitudinous demeanor, good can seem blunderbous and uncertain, shockingly wayward, woefully flawed, like one of Graham Greene's dissolute, shabby, God-haunted saints. And what the full bodied reality of Martin Luther King should finally tell us, beyond all the awe and celebration of him, is how mysteriously mixed, in what torturously complicated forms, our moral heroes--our prophets--actually come to us.
Had a good chat few days ago with devout Polish Catholic truck Driver from Near Detroit. He's seen the movie Ida which my nephew Andrew will see soon. Will enhance our next conversation, this new bio of Day.
posted by foxofbama | 2:10 PM
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