…that easy travelling gait, which is the best for man and beast, [is] vulgarly called a " dog-trot. " Some very fine and fanciful people insist upon calling it a " jog-trot. " We beg leave, in this place, to set them right. Every trot is a jog, and so, for that matter, is every canter. A dog-trot takes its name from the even motion of the smaller quadruped, when it is seized with no particular mania, and is yet disposed to go stubbornly forward. It is in more classical dialect, the festina lente motion. It is regularly forward, and therefore fast -- it never puts the animal out of breath, and is therefore slow. “[The Beagle] was a pleasure to hunt. He could jump rabbits, run full-speed all day, and he never wore out.” –Owner of Big Meadows Beagles. ἤϋσε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη Στέντορι εἰσαμένη μεγαλήτορι χαλκεοφώνῳ, ὃς τόσον αὐδήσασχ᾽ ὅσον ἄλλοι πεντήκοντα: αἰδὼς Ἀργεῖοι κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα εἶδος ἀγητοί. --Iliad On a weekend long run, I had passed the country church I attend at mile 4, the horse barn at mile 5, and the ¼-acre cemetery of leaning slabs and eroded transcriptions on mile 6. I picked up two handfuls of stones in case the dogs at the house around the bend came out at me. The yard was still and silent in the morning sun. But something was coming up from behind. I whirled around, raising a hand ready to throw the stones.
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 .Bear Lodge. |  |
Rainbow from the rocks in full sun. This and the next four photos taken in Shoshone National Forest.
When a desert dweller told of his spiritual disciplines and asked how he might further progress, Father Joseph replied "Why not be totally changed into fire?"
Evening Baroque. A Titian-esque landscape.
A remnant of creatures walking through these lands long before human stories about them.
Ancient watcher. Who is behind her?
Yellowstone.
We had planned to have breakfast in Red Lodge, MT but it was overtaken by hundreds of motorcyclists. So, a few miles from the town, heading back toward Yellowstone, we found this delightful spot to have our granola with instant milk.
Celebration of reaching the peak after a long, hard climb
Having had no previous idea of what was at Bryce, Ruka wept silently, in awe of its strange beauty
Outside of Zion National Park.
Alcoholism has long afflicted the Wilt side of my family, from at least my great-grandfather to those struggling with it today. Many of us have been able to observe first-hand how alcoholism and other addictions affect those close to the addicted as well as the addicts themselves. Fear, anger, pity, cover-up, and distancing are some responses to a loved one’s addiction. The family swings back and forth between attempts to intervene and resignation. A successful intervention will help the addict admit that there is a problem, often after a low point even by the addict’s standards—a fight, crime, or accident—and accept help for the healing process. My grandfather’s response to alcoholism in his family was to insist on total abstinence and, as far as I know, most perhaps all of his nine children followed his model, the addiction awaiting the next generation to resurface. This family history has led me to think of alcoholism as primarily a snare for a few individuals within a large family. But I have recently learned of “alcoholic families.” Both mother and father are heavy drinkers and the children grow up thinking that the intake—and the results—are the norm. Heavy drinking, hilarity, fights, irresponsibility, self-justification, and earning enough money for heavy drinking, hilarity, etc. are what life is all about. If it’s hard to help an individual struggling with alcoholism, how much harder to help a whole family!
There is another affliction that has been passed from generation to generation in the Wilt family: racism. I observed and replicated the symptoms as a child, thinking them to be a normal part of any family. I would retell my uncles’ and aunts’ n- jokes to friends at school and they would reciprocate with ones I could tell at the next family reunion. I would laugh along with my cousins when an uncle flourished his n-shooter. In high school, I would sing songs with racist lyrics—and wonder why some would not join in. It was not until my college years that friends and teachers confronted me directly enough that I could begin to see that I had a problem—that my family had a problem, an addiction, a generational disease. With the help of many who were further along in the healing process and with the help of those who had been targets of racism, I could begin to heal.
Relatives’ Facebook posts over the past few years, especially after widely reported events such as the mid-August ones in Charlottesville, indicate that this disease has not yet been eradicated from our family. The symptoms are now not as obvious as in the family-reunion examples given above. They are more like an alcoholic’s quiet sipping of lemonade at a church picnic, yearning for the spouse’s signal that they can go home—and begin opening the bottles of the hard stuff.
In the past, I have started to write responses to Facebook posts that are especially troubling in this regard but given up. How, I wondered, could I respond in a way that would go beyond an exchange of emotional blows, beyond defensiveness or denial to constructive, healing discussion? I am hoping that the comparison of alcoholism and racism might be a helpful beginning. If we recognize that alcoholism has been a generational problem, can we recognize that racism has been as well? If so, can we take the crucial first step in the healing process of admitting that there is a problem? For many of us, “admitting” can be recast in stronger terms in keeping with our religious upbringing: confessing (verbal communication to others) and repenting (behavioral change, involving “turning away from” the destructive behavior).
To encourage dealing with this problem, I will suggest some symptoms of racism. Just as shaky hands are not necessarily a symptom of alcoholism, some features listed here might not necessarily be a symptom of racism. But as shaky hands combined with other symptoms such as dehydration, anxiety, irritability, and yearning for the next drink increase the likelihood that alcoholism is at play, so too the combination of factors listed below increase the likelihood that racism is at play.
How willing are we to admit that racism in our family has contributed to symptoms such as the above? Can we develop a dialogue about this? Can we at least “admit there is a problem”?
I am not restricting this to descendants of the Paul Wilt clan since there are certainly many other families who suffer from generational racism. I hope that this post may be a first or further step in the healing process.
While writing this post, I tried to find other literature comparing alcoholism and racism. There is much on how the one can contribute to the other, but I have so far found only one book that focuses on how racism is analogous to alcoholism: Applying Alcoholics Anonymous Principles to the Disease of Racism by Rev. Kenneth L. Radcliffe, “an Administrative Chaplain, (Retired), for the New York City Department of Correction. His assignments included Rikers Island, detention centers, in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan Detention Center, MDC, also known as "The Tombs" He is a trained Substance Abuse/Addictions counselor. He has worked as a Case Manager in a Homeless Shelter, and conducted relapse prevention programs for licensed outpatient drug and alcohol treatment programs.”
There is another affliction that has been passed from generation to generation in the Wilt family: racism. I observed and replicated the symptoms as a child, thinking them to be a normal part of any family. I would retell my uncles’ and aunts’ n- jokes to friends at school and they would reciprocate with ones I could tell at the next family reunion. I would laugh along with my cousins when an uncle flourished his n-shooter. In high school, I would sing songs with racist lyrics—and wonder why some would not join in. It was not until my college years that friends and teachers confronted me directly enough that I could begin to see that I had a problem—that my family had a problem, an addiction, a generational disease. With the help of many who were further along in the healing process and with the help of those who had been targets of racism, I could begin to heal.
Relatives’ Facebook posts over the past few years, especially after widely reported events such as the mid-August ones in Charlottesville, indicate that this disease has not yet been eradicated from our family. The symptoms are now not as obvious as in the family-reunion examples given above. They are more like an alcoholic’s quiet sipping of lemonade at a church picnic, yearning for the spouse’s signal that they can go home—and begin opening the bottles of the hard stuff.
In the past, I have started to write responses to Facebook posts that are especially troubling in this regard but given up. How, I wondered, could I respond in a way that would go beyond an exchange of emotional blows, beyond defensiveness or denial to constructive, healing discussion? I am hoping that the comparison of alcoholism and racism might be a helpful beginning. If we recognize that alcoholism has been a generational problem, can we recognize that racism has been as well? If so, can we take the crucial first step in the healing process of admitting that there is a problem? For many of us, “admitting” can be recast in stronger terms in keeping with our religious upbringing: confessing (verbal communication to others) and repenting (behavioral change, involving “turning away from” the destructive behavior).
To encourage dealing with this problem, I will suggest some symptoms of racism. Just as shaky hands are not necessarily a symptom of alcoholism, some features listed here might not necessarily be a symptom of racism. But as shaky hands combined with other symptoms such as dehydration, anxiety, irritability, and yearning for the next drink increase the likelihood that alcoholism is at play, so too the combination of factors listed below increase the likelihood that racism is at play.
- Denial. Similar to “I’m not an alcoholic; I just like to drink.” is the claim “I’m not a racist but…” or “I’m not a white supremacist but…” (To loosely quote one comedian: how at ease would you be if your daughter began to communicate about her first date by saying “He’s not a necrophiliac but…”?) Or prejudice is denied when talking about race. Most, perhaps all, of us have been brought up with racial prejudices: racism nurtures rather than counteracts these prejudices (Viewing “The Hidden Prejudice” can be a helpful start in understanding the relationship between prejudice and racism; you yourself can take a test for racial prejudice at the Project Implicit website.)
- Defensiveness and deflection. The alcoholic might snap “Quit nagging at me! I make a little mistake and you make a big deal out of it. Be thankful I'm not like ___” Similarly, racism can be defended along the lines of “Okay, the KKK is bad but what about communists!” There is more interest in defending oneself or one’s predecessors against charges of racism than in understanding racism in America.
- Memory loss. “I don’t remember anything about last night, so let’s just forget it.” America’s long history of slavery, dislocation, segregation, mass murder, and public humiliation of minorities is forgotten or claimed to be irrelevant to current situations.
- Isolation. “My drinking buddies are the only ones who understand me.” Churches—or other key social groups—that ignore, tolerate, or actively perpetuate racism are almost always led by white speakers who offer comforting messages in the wake of situations such as the Charlottesville one, without any identifiable steps being suggested or taken to counter racism. The rare one of another race or culture who is allowed to speak is carefully vetted to assure that s/he reinforces the community’s norms. Schools tolerating or perpetuating racism often have a percentage of whites much higher than the national norm. Racists will often have no ongoing, close personal relationships with a person of color. When’s the last time you had a person of color in your home for dinner?
- The shakes. Anger or fear is much greater when a person of Arabic origin plows into a crowd in Europe than when a white-supremacist does the same in our own country. A white person being unjustifiably killed by a black cop brings outrage; a black person being unjustifiably killed by a white cop—or even by a self-appointed vigilante, is considered a better option than the risk of diminishing law and order. Crossing paths with a person of different skin color, whether on the street or professionally, makes one more nervous than with someone of similar skin color.
- Confusion. “I thought the stoplight was for the other guy.” Sherriff Arpaio, found guilty of contempt for the judicial system while accused of racial profiling, is considered a hero; Colin Kaepernick, kneeling on behalf of victims of injustice, is considered a villain.
- Irrationality. Obama’s “A More Perfect Union” speech is unknown or ignored if not vilified while Trump’s ongoing rhetoric is viewed as telling things as they are. White supremacists’ support of Trump does not trouble the conscience and his attacks on the press are applauded.
- Hiding. “I thought if I drank enough coffee, the alcohol would not affect me.” “I didn’t think they’d smell beer on my breath if I ate enough mints.” Religion is used to hide racism and other expressions of hatefulness. Fundamentalist Christianity (as taught, for example, in Liberty University, Bob Jones University, and Dallas Theological Seminary) is highly similar to fundamentalist Islam in stressing identity statements of “belief,” claiming that these identity statements are based on the only valid interpretation of a holy book, spiritualizing texts such as “Love your neighbor” and the parable of the good Samaritan to justify rigid group boundaries, condemning those who do not accept their beliefs, agenda, and actions, and ignoring their holy book's calls for justice and expressions of outrage against oppression, favoring militant nationalism, and dehumanizing others.
- Yearning for the next drink. Giving up on a balanced diet, one drinks in news, Facebook posts, and sermons that dull understanding of different points of view.
- Irritability. Favorite programs and posts frequently use outrage rhetoric (yelling, belittling, name-calling, over-simplification, slippery-slope arguments, fear-mongering, etc.).
- Slurred language. “English Only” is supported and hearing people speaking different languages in one’s home area is upsetting.
- Combativeness. One could have walked hand-in-hand with the white supremacists in Charlottesville—or at least supports or excuses those who did.
How willing are we to admit that racism in our family has contributed to symptoms such as the above? Can we develop a dialogue about this? Can we at least “admit there is a problem”?
I am not restricting this to descendants of the Paul Wilt clan since there are certainly many other families who suffer from generational racism. I hope that this post may be a first or further step in the healing process.
While writing this post, I tried to find other literature comparing alcoholism and racism. There is much on how the one can contribute to the other, but I have so far found only one book that focuses on how racism is analogous to alcoholism: Applying Alcoholics Anonymous Principles to the Disease of Racism by Rev. Kenneth L. Radcliffe, “an Administrative Chaplain, (Retired), for the New York City Department of Correction. His assignments included Rikers Island, detention centers, in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan Detention Center, MDC, also known as "The Tombs" He is a trained Substance Abuse/Addictions counselor. He has worked as a Case Manager in a Homeless Shelter, and conducted relapse prevention programs for licensed outpatient drug and alcohol treatment programs.”
Week 1
After a long day of bicycling, I missed a turn and spent an hour or so getting back on route as the sun set. The area was too developed to find a campsite in unfenced, unposted woods, but just before dark a large church with acres of manicured lawn appeared as a place of refuge for the weary traveler. Behind it, my one-person tent would be hidden from view and I would be packed and off at dawn. A few cars were parked in front so I stood at their locked glass doors and knocked. And knocked, waiting for someone to come from the well-lit room a few feet on the other side. Finally, a woman came, opened the door a crack and listened as I summarize my trip in a couple sentences and asked if I might "set up my tent behind the church for the night.” She answered, “Well, I don’t see why not, but let me check.” A few minutes later a woman, with mop in hand and the look of a Levite whose temple duties had been interrupted by an unclean intruder, came to the door. She opened it a crack, said “I’m sorry but you may not set up your tent behind the church for the night,” immediately closed the door, and went back to cleansing her church. To her credit, she had quoted my words to the first woman as faithfully as ancient scribes had transmitted biblical texts, whether about the wages of sin or caring for the wandering homeless.
After a long day of bicycling, I missed a turn and spent an hour or so getting back on route as the sun set. The area was too developed to find a campsite in unfenced, unposted woods, but just before dark a large church with acres of manicured lawn appeared as a place of refuge for the weary traveler. Behind it, my one-person tent would be hidden from view and I would be packed and off at dawn. A few cars were parked in front so I stood at their locked glass doors and knocked. And knocked, waiting for someone to come from the well-lit room a few feet on the other side. Finally, a woman came, opened the door a crack and listened as I summarize my trip in a couple sentences and asked if I might "set up my tent behind the church for the night.” She answered, “Well, I don’t see why not, but let me check.” A few minutes later a woman, with mop in hand and the look of a Levite whose temple duties had been interrupted by an unclean intruder, came to the door. She opened it a crack, said “I’m sorry but you may not set up your tent behind the church for the night,” immediately closed the door, and went back to cleansing her church. To her credit, she had quoted my words to the first woman as faithfully as ancient scribes had transmitted biblical texts, whether about the wages of sin or caring for the wandering homeless.
Week 3
It was 97° when I biked through the southern edge of Manchester, New Hampshire. I needed to camp soon but I had not yet gotten beyond the developed properties on the northern side. The road was narrow but the cars on it were far from few, speeding home from work in the city. I labored on the edge of the road, sweaty, exhausted, beaten by the heat. Having topped a hill in a small town’s center, I moved away from a guy by his pickup as I started to coast down.
“… the night?” What? I looked back. “Are you set for the night?” he called out. I braked and he came toward me. “You need a place to stay?” He had been returning from a visit with his mother in the nursing home when he saw me on the side of the road. An avid cyclist, he was a member of Warm Showers, “a free worldwide hospitality exchange for touring cyclists” and was now offering some of that hospitality to me. Like the beaten traveler loaded onto the back of the Good Samaritan’s donkey, my bike was loaded onto the back of his pickup. Although I had no wounds to be bandaged, my sweaty clothes surely smelled as if I did; to my apology, he replied “I’ve been there.”
His home was just a couple miles from my route, reached via an unlined paved road then a dirt road and driveway through frontage trees. He and his wife had built the home back in the 70’s and expanded it for their children. I would have the children’s side all to myself. After showing me where to get food and do laundry, he went to do garden work in the last minutes of evening light.
He returned as I was finishing his homemade soup and bread. He made lots of bread. He had found that taking a loaf of homemade bread facilitated communion with others in “just wanted to see how you were doing” house visits. We talked for some time. When it came to previous work, he smiled at my being a consultant for Bible translators as he might have if I’d said I was a used-car dealer and he asked no follow-up questions. Later on, he did express enthusiasm for the idea of travel through time to other worlds that I told him I experienced when reading ancient texts in other languages. He spoke of his joy in small-town community involvement, local friendships developed over decades, carpentry, and gardening.
So, "Who was a neighbor to the man" on the bike?
Yes, "The one who showed mercy to him.” I agree but remain more like the levite than the good samaritan in responding to the divine command “Go and do likewise.”
It was 97° when I biked through the southern edge of Manchester, New Hampshire. I needed to camp soon but I had not yet gotten beyond the developed properties on the northern side. The road was narrow but the cars on it were far from few, speeding home from work in the city. I labored on the edge of the road, sweaty, exhausted, beaten by the heat. Having topped a hill in a small town’s center, I moved away from a guy by his pickup as I started to coast down.
“… the night?” What? I looked back. “Are you set for the night?” he called out. I braked and he came toward me. “You need a place to stay?” He had been returning from a visit with his mother in the nursing home when he saw me on the side of the road. An avid cyclist, he was a member of Warm Showers, “a free worldwide hospitality exchange for touring cyclists” and was now offering some of that hospitality to me. Like the beaten traveler loaded onto the back of the Good Samaritan’s donkey, my bike was loaded onto the back of his pickup. Although I had no wounds to be bandaged, my sweaty clothes surely smelled as if I did; to my apology, he replied “I’ve been there.”
His home was just a couple miles from my route, reached via an unlined paved road then a dirt road and driveway through frontage trees. He and his wife had built the home back in the 70’s and expanded it for their children. I would have the children’s side all to myself. After showing me where to get food and do laundry, he went to do garden work in the last minutes of evening light.
He returned as I was finishing his homemade soup and bread. He made lots of bread. He had found that taking a loaf of homemade bread facilitated communion with others in “just wanted to see how you were doing” house visits. We talked for some time. When it came to previous work, he smiled at my being a consultant for Bible translators as he might have if I’d said I was a used-car dealer and he asked no follow-up questions. Later on, he did express enthusiasm for the idea of travel through time to other worlds that I told him I experienced when reading ancient texts in other languages. He spoke of his joy in small-town community involvement, local friendships developed over decades, carpentry, and gardening.
So, "Who was a neighbor to the man" on the bike?
Yes, "The one who showed mercy to him.” I agree but remain more like the levite than the good samaritan in responding to the divine command “Go and do likewise.”
Three years ago, I set out on a bicycle trip from Brownsville, Texas to Fort Kent, Maine. After completing the first part, from Brownsville to my home in Tennessee, I found that my sister was in a stage of cancer much more advanced than when I had left so discontinued the trip to be with her and family. This summer, I completed part 2 of the trip. This post summarizes the two parts. Later ones will focus on this summer’s trip to the tip of Maine.
See Tim’s Bike Trip (blogspot.com) for a report on my coast-to-coast trip five years ago.
See Tim’s Bike Trip (blogspot.com) for a report on my coast-to-coast trip five years ago.
Part 1: Brownsville, TX to Murfreesboro, TN
Approximate Length: 1,2000 miles in 12 days (no rest days)
Time: Last two weeks of May, 2015
Getting to the starting point: I boxed my bike with the help of Youtube videos and a carton taken from the bin of our local bike store MOAB with their permission, took a Greyhound Bus to Brownsville, and reassembled the bike in Greyhound’s quiet, protected outside waiting area.
Highlights
Time: Last two weeks of May, 2015
Getting to the starting point: I boxed my bike with the help of Youtube videos and a carton taken from the bin of our local bike store MOAB with their permission, took a Greyhound Bus to Brownsville, and reassembled the bike in Greyhound’s quiet, protected outside waiting area.
Highlights
- As I coasted heat beaten into a rest area in southern Texas, a man standing by his truck held out a frosty bottle taken from his ice chest and asked “Want some water?” Yes indeed!
- Ferry hops along the Gulf Coast.
- The Bluewater Highway to Galveston, enabling avoidance of Houston and travel along beaches. Few of the beach houses were occupied and car traffic was light.
- Several hours of biking with cousin Jason.
- In Louisana, eating crawfish for the first time.
- The Natchez Trace Parkway. A delightful route for bicyclists. The speed limit is 40-50 mph and cars yield to cyclists. I took it from the starting point in Natchez, Mississippi until near the end in Nashville, breaking off to go through Columbia, TN to my home in Murfreesboro. I had a healthy, plentiful breakfast at the French Camp Bed and Breakfast Inn, just off the Trace, and enjoyed talking with some of the friendly Academy administrators and teachers who had just finished a meeting there.
Part 2: Murfreesboro to Fort Kent, Main
Approximate Length: 1,800 miles in 23 days, including 3 rest days
Time: May 27—June 18
Highlights: I will mention a few here, each being the potential topic of later posts.
Getting back home: Dear cousin Marg had been in central Maine and, ready to return to her place in Pennsylvania, agreed to go a couple hundred miles out of her way to pick me up in Fort Kent and take me with her. I then rented a car from her place to my home. The price of the rental dropped from $650 to $150 when I changed the final destination to the airport 25 miles from home rather than the local agency in Murfreesboro.
Time: May 27—June 18
Highlights: I will mention a few here, each being the potential topic of later posts.
- Biking with daughter Kayitesi the first day’s 75 miles.
- First time to travel with a smart phone, given to me just a couple days before the trip as an early Father’s Day present.
- State parks in Kentucky and Ohio: clean, cheap and within a day’s hike from each other.
- Ohio bike paths: excellent!
- Stealth camping (a joy of any bike trip).
- Overnight stays with friends and family along the way.
- Coasting down the east side of the Green Mountains (climbing the west side a bit laborious).
- A parallel to the parable of the Good Samaritan.
- Maine: southern Maine, central Maine, northern Maine, Maine, Maine, Maine.
- My Specialized Sirrus hybrid bike bought just before the hike.
Getting back home: Dear cousin Marg had been in central Maine and, ready to return to her place in Pennsylvania, agreed to go a couple hundred miles out of her way to pick me up in Fort Kent and take me with her. I then rented a car from her place to my home. The price of the rental dropped from $650 to $150 when I changed the final destination to the airport 25 miles from home rather than the local agency in Murfreesboro.
This morning, the blueberry harvest was plentiful but the workers were few. Indeed I alone was picking them, putting most in a bowl but eating some. Their good taste encouraged me to question a common interpretation of the ancient saying about harvest and workers that had come to mind. I was taught that the harvest was the “unsaved” and the workers were missionaries. I believe there were banners to this effect in my college years and workers were few since people resisted the altar calls during “special meetings” in the chapel, favoring instead meetings in off-campus bars.
But the harvest is good! As the psalmist says about the earth yielding a harvest, “Yahweh gives what is good!” Maybe Jesus was encouraging the disciples to go out and harvest not for the sake of “the lost” but for the sake of themselves. Get up and go to “the harassed and helpless” rather than sitting in the synagogue or clinging to my robe and realize that in interacting with those outside your religious circle you will find goodness!
But the harvest is good! As the psalmist says about the earth yielding a harvest, “Yahweh gives what is good!” Maybe Jesus was encouraging the disciples to go out and harvest not for the sake of “the lost” but for the sake of themselves. Get up and go to “the harassed and helpless” rather than sitting in the synagogue or clinging to my robe and realize that in interacting with those outside your religious circle you will find goodness!
My first bike hike of the year was on my favorite 40-mile loop. Some of the sights are posted here.
This is my response to friend Don's "The Dearth of Souls," posted earlier today on this blog site.
There is indeed an increasing dearth of souls, lexically if not metaphysically: the frequency of this word in its plural form is about a third of what it was 150 years ago and in its singular form less than a fourth. It looked like the word was heading for extinction, with ever decreasing use through the 1960’s. But there has been a slight increase since then thanks to expressions such as soul music, soul food, and soul mates. In this revival, soul is used as a modifier of another noun, a structure that was very rare before the 1960’s. Its use in such expressions seems to be in keeping with your preference to “use the soul…as a style and not a content.”
The contemporary dearth of soul is not only in secular literature. In the King James Bible, completed in 1611, soul occurs 132 times in the book of Psalms. This is reduced to 74 occurrences in the mid-20th century, scholarly revision that “preserves those qualities which have given to the King James Version (KJV) a supreme place in English literature." Later translations, concerned with using contemporary English more than echoing the KJV, reduced or eliminated the use of soul in the Psalms: 12 occurrences in the Living Bible and Good News Translation, 9 in the Holman translation, and only one in the Common English Bible (Psalm 42) and Contemporary English Version (Psalm 143). I never use it in my translation Praise.
Ms. Jayde(-d?) might cite all this in support of her claim that “there aren’t any souls in the world anymore”—or at least soon won’t be—that the souls of modern speech are fading echoes of ancient creeds.
What replaces the biblical soul? In the more modern translations, it is usually a pronoun: “my soul is sore vexed” becomes “I am in deep distress.” To the modern ear, my soul may sound like my cow, something to be—as you put it—lost, sold or “taken care of in some barn away from one’s house.” The I is better in this respect. It cannot be possessed grammatically: no my I or her she. I or she is less “ethereal” than Mr. J’s spirit, in that it is a pointing word (a deictic). When we use I and you, we are always pointing at someone with a “curl or lobe of ear” who “can be touched with one’s fingertips.” Or, as the conservative New International Version indicates, someone with a neck:
KJV: Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. (Psalm 69)
NIV: Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
KJV: [Joseph’s] feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron. (Psalm 105)
NIV: They bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in irons.
The words in bold are translating the Hebrew “possessive pronoun + nefesh”. As indicated in the lines from Psalm 105, even the KJV translators realized they had to render this expression more concretely in certain contexts: “his soul was laid in iron” would be pushing too far its preference for spiritualizing the psalmists’ texts. And some of that venerable KJV group must have grimaced at the philosophical if not poetic awkwardness of “water com[ing] in unto my soul”—of concrete, tangible material coming in to abstract, intangible essence.
Nefesh is used in biblical texts to refer to the part of the body which connects the mouth to the lungs and stomach. The focus might be on the outside of this structure, as in the above verses, or on the inside—the throat. The nefesh expands to swallow while eating with great appetite (Isaiah 5), feels thirst (Psalm 107) and can be clogged up by dust (Psalm 44). The throat as passageway of air gives the extended sense of nefesh as the action of breathing or breath: the prophet Elijah prayed that the nefesh return to a widow’s deceased son—that his breath return. The Deuteronomist used the expression “heart and throat” to refer to complete commitment: “You are to love your divinity YHWH with all your heart and all your throat”; that is, every thought (the heart being the organ of intellect) and every breath should support your commitment to YHWH. In the creation accounts, animals and humans were distinguished from plants by their life-enabling breath.
Nefesh is often used as a synecdoche, a part representing the whole. “All the nefeshes—all the breathing throats—in one’s household” refers to all those who have breathing throats—all the members, all the people. But the KJV, followed by many modern versions reversed the direction of the synecdoche. Rather than having a part stand for the whole, they have translated references to the whole (a person, humans) by referring to a part and transformed ancient Hebrew texts into platonic ones by referring to that part as a soul.
I still think of myself as having a soul, understanding it in terms of a wide—and perhaps confusing—array of philosophical and religious texts and Christian hymns. But I agree that it is helpful to think of it as “under the stove”—the warm breath supporting the thinking brain and feeling guts.
Observations about the frequency of soul are based on analysis of Brigham Young’s Corpus of American Historical English and Corpus of Contemporary American English.
Another trend suggested by these databases is to use soul to refer to negative or inessential, finite aspects of character. Human soul occurred five times more frequently in the 2nd half of the 1800’s as it did in the last two decades, good soul and noble soul ten times more, inmost soul over one hundred times more. In [Adjective + soul] expressions that do occur more frequently now than in earlier decades, the adjective tends to have a negative reference: e.g. lost, damned, and unfortunate modify soul more often now than they did decades ago. American too might be grouped with these modifiers since it tends to modify soul in negative contexts: for example, “dark corners of the American soul,” the haunted American soul,” and quotes of D. H. Lawrence’s ”The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.”
The contemporary dearth of soul is not only in secular literature. In the King James Bible, completed in 1611, soul occurs 132 times in the book of Psalms. This is reduced to 74 occurrences in the mid-20th century, scholarly revision that “preserves those qualities which have given to the King James Version (KJV) a supreme place in English literature." Later translations, concerned with using contemporary English more than echoing the KJV, reduced or eliminated the use of soul in the Psalms: 12 occurrences in the Living Bible and Good News Translation, 9 in the Holman translation, and only one in the Common English Bible (Psalm 42) and Contemporary English Version (Psalm 143). I never use it in my translation Praise.
Ms. Jayde(-d?) might cite all this in support of her claim that “there aren’t any souls in the world anymore”—or at least soon won’t be—that the souls of modern speech are fading echoes of ancient creeds.
What replaces the biblical soul? In the more modern translations, it is usually a pronoun: “my soul is sore vexed” becomes “I am in deep distress.” To the modern ear, my soul may sound like my cow, something to be—as you put it—lost, sold or “taken care of in some barn away from one’s house.” The I is better in this respect. It cannot be possessed grammatically: no my I or her she. I or she is less “ethereal” than Mr. J’s spirit, in that it is a pointing word (a deictic). When we use I and you, we are always pointing at someone with a “curl or lobe of ear” who “can be touched with one’s fingertips.” Or, as the conservative New International Version indicates, someone with a neck:
KJV: Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. (Psalm 69)
NIV: Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
KJV: [Joseph’s] feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron. (Psalm 105)
NIV: They bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in irons.
The words in bold are translating the Hebrew “possessive pronoun + nefesh”. As indicated in the lines from Psalm 105, even the KJV translators realized they had to render this expression more concretely in certain contexts: “his soul was laid in iron” would be pushing too far its preference for spiritualizing the psalmists’ texts. And some of that venerable KJV group must have grimaced at the philosophical if not poetic awkwardness of “water com[ing] in unto my soul”—of concrete, tangible material coming in to abstract, intangible essence.
Nefesh is used in biblical texts to refer to the part of the body which connects the mouth to the lungs and stomach. The focus might be on the outside of this structure, as in the above verses, or on the inside—the throat. The nefesh expands to swallow while eating with great appetite (Isaiah 5), feels thirst (Psalm 107) and can be clogged up by dust (Psalm 44). The throat as passageway of air gives the extended sense of nefesh as the action of breathing or breath: the prophet Elijah prayed that the nefesh return to a widow’s deceased son—that his breath return. The Deuteronomist used the expression “heart and throat” to refer to complete commitment: “You are to love your divinity YHWH with all your heart and all your throat”; that is, every thought (the heart being the organ of intellect) and every breath should support your commitment to YHWH. In the creation accounts, animals and humans were distinguished from plants by their life-enabling breath.
Nefesh is often used as a synecdoche, a part representing the whole. “All the nefeshes—all the breathing throats—in one’s household” refers to all those who have breathing throats—all the members, all the people. But the KJV, followed by many modern versions reversed the direction of the synecdoche. Rather than having a part stand for the whole, they have translated references to the whole (a person, humans) by referring to a part and transformed ancient Hebrew texts into platonic ones by referring to that part as a soul.
I still think of myself as having a soul, understanding it in terms of a wide—and perhaps confusing—array of philosophical and religious texts and Christian hymns. But I agree that it is helpful to think of it as “under the stove”—the warm breath supporting the thinking brain and feeling guts.
Observations about the frequency of soul are based on analysis of Brigham Young’s Corpus of American Historical English and Corpus of Contemporary American English.
Another trend suggested by these databases is to use soul to refer to negative or inessential, finite aspects of character. Human soul occurred five times more frequently in the 2nd half of the 1800’s as it did in the last two decades, good soul and noble soul ten times more, inmost soul over one hundred times more. In [Adjective + soul] expressions that do occur more frequently now than in earlier decades, the adjective tends to have a negative reference: e.g. lost, damned, and unfortunate modify soul more often now than they did decades ago. American too might be grouped with these modifiers since it tends to modify soul in negative contexts: for example, “dark corners of the American soul,” the haunted American soul,” and quotes of D. H. Lawrence’s ”The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.”
With his permission, I post my friend Don's The Dearth of Souls. (His Lectio Divina and the Question of Depth was posted on this blog site April 29, 2016.) My Soul, also to be posted today, responds to this essay.
What a find! An excerpt from the poet Charles Olson’s Variations Done for Gerald Van De Wiele. I found it in one of my black garbage bags of papers that I had dumped upon Dominic’s bedroom floor in the search for a green book of passwords. The excerpt is about the soul, and it has always been instructive to me, even as I haven’t much thought about what a soul is. The excerpt reads:
what soul
isn’t in default?
can you afford not to make
the magical study
which happiness is? do you hear
the cock when he crows? do you know the charge,
that you shall have no envy, that your life
has its orders, that the seasons
seize you too, that no body and soul are one
if they are not wrought
in this retort?
Well, Mr. B., a while back, did a run on the soul after reading Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because the coinage made it sound like one was taking care of a cow in some barn away from one’s house. And of course I’ve heard about losing one’s soul to the devil, or selling it in exchange for some item of favor like Dorian Gray bartering for youth. But even in that, just what is it that one is supposed to lose, or sell?
Enter the poem. Yeah, that’s a good coinage, by way of introduction: that the poem puts the pause in me, and within that pause I enter, watching in the magical study my comings and my goings and the comings and goings of others and of this and of that. Perhaps this “entering” occurs when one recites, pours sound, one’s own voice, into the silent words so that they are born into the flesh of a magical study with a polished desk and books which bindings from the shelves catch the quiet light of a lamp. Soft carpet against the bared feet, and out the window a morning star, the black masses of trees, silent or moving with a wind, and a rooster in the yard –the cock- with the red comb upon its head and its alert and golden eye that crows whenever one betrays, oneself, another, Christ.
Mr. J., on the other hand, bandied the word ‘spirit’ about, but that’s just so ethereal, like hydrogen and oxygen before they meet and flesh into water and houses dishes in suds, streams down the nape and the flank, or settles in puddles and mirrors the greens of trees and the puffs of clouds, and ripples. Yes, I much prefer a soul.
But Ms. Jayde says that there aren’t any souls in the world anymore. Gone before I even had a chance to poke into them decently. We’re behaviorists now, I suppose, and we tinker with stimulus and response, or tweak the biochemistry a bit so that the gizmo runs in a more pleasing fashion.
“Lila,” says the Sanskrit fellows, and so we must play with soul, yes? For our good health. For our sanity of mind. For our innate demand that we not be incarcerated within a house of bounds that has no windows or doors that can swing into the boundless, that can let in fresh air within the rooms, and through which we may stroll out to peruse our own personal property of the Boundless. So, in that interest, we return to soul, but we must poke about into it now. Splashy water it must be, or be the comfort of one’s favorite color of a marble that one can curl within the fingers and the palm. Which is to say that it must be an intimate Thing and not like that hydrogen and oxygen that one reads about in texts and can wave one’s hand through and be assured by reason that it’s there. But one can’t touch it with one’s fingertips. It has no curl or lobe of ear, no scuffling sound of gravel beneath the feet, no laughter or questioning in the eyes, and this we must have if a soul is a worthwhile thing to have.
You got a better word? A better pointing to something that isn’t a just reduction to a body, to a creed, and to a most uncomfortable confinement? Ay, I’ll use the soul, but no longer as a cow in a barn, but as a style and not a content, an identity, a bank account, a name. A doing. A splashing of water in the sudsy sink to feel the curve of dish and wash it clean, and dries upon the dish rack, and quietly inhabits its place with light. This is soul, an intimacy, a most private being-here that cares not a whit for proof it’s there. Lose it? A misnomer. Call it instead a confusion that a being-here, the abundance of Place, can be found “out there” when all the while, like Uri Shulevitz’s Isaac, our treasure is beneath our stove.
And within this Place, all Work is done, and all Love is consecrated.
(ii)
I, briefly, thought I had finished this The Dearth of Souls essay, but it was only an hour after keying in the last line that I knew that there was more. Not a big surprise, eh?, if you are at all familiar with my bent towards going on and on and on into all the branching questions that set out in ever new delicious travelings from even a single asking. And besides, such a Thing as a soul must be a very fertile and wiggly squirmy singing pausing and considering Thing. So, to resume.., I will here state that I am not content with this essay of the soul yet, and I will not be content until I walk about as a soul this very morning. A soul with a belly with a bit too much of a curvature these days. “Ay, you preoccupied chap, flatten it a bit with, say, ten sit-ups, a walking through woods, and smaller bowls of the yummy stuff, -but without restraint, Sir. Instead, play yet another twist of a game of marbles. Use the tiger eye one, then the one with blue.”
Am a soul. Not have. One has a house. One has a body. One has a paint brush. And isn’t every thing a paint brush? For one’s canvass. For putting a little blue in the upper right corner of a sky, or a little gold within an orb two-and-a-half inches from the blue that one calls a sun. Am. But what’s an Am without a color? And I have been guilty of that. “Negate! Negate!” I have been known to cry out. “Neti! Neti! Not this! Not that!” Then what then? No curvature of a belly? No St. Patrick’s Shamrock emeralds in the ear lobe of a woman? No hot water for tea, or a spoon that clinks against the side of a cup when one stirs? No, this Am Am of a soul is chalk full of color, and I’ll even add the pretty no-color, too, so I got them both, when before I just had one.
Vertical. Yes, vertical, too, that subsumes all horizontal. In fact, this vertical of which I speak puts me in mind of the dying of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s title character - the Sicilian nobleman Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina- in his novel The Leopard. This man doesn’t die into a horizontal, but into the vertical of himself, like that of a mountain sinking back into its continent. But not a continent. But his. He. Or, better yet, this Am that clinks the side of a cup of tea with a spoon. So, as for death, -much overrated in this particular soul. A redundancy, actually, of ending that is just a daily fact of clearing out old is-ings for is-ing, or of switching one paint brush for another.
Salvation? Of what? Of the soul from a sorry little two-foot square closet of a confinement. And how did that happen?, which is the question of the Fall, of Samsara, of Caughtness, go figure. Very odd, indeed. I mean, just why is it that one can’t simply open the door and step out? Why all these angsty dramas? Why can’t one just step back and watch? See? The line of a shadow across the snow of a roof that cuts one, too, so that the flesh of this fruit falls open to show the quiet kernel in its center. Listen? To the clink of the spoon against the porcelain sides that is the eschatological end of things, consummating.
But, then, why stop at the soul? Why not Mr. J.’s spirit, as well? Am, the spirit of Things, interfusing, interpenetrating, resting there in the dark massed trees even as I walk by and leave’em behind for other quarters. Why, it’s all quite interchangeable, you see. Dark massed trees, a book-lined study, what’s the diff? And so I’ll take the soul and everything else as well, and every word and every thing will be my pigments in the rollicking and impish art of painting doors on everything.
what soul
isn’t in default?
can you afford not to make
the magical study
which happiness is? do you hear
the cock when he crows? do you know the charge,
that you shall have no envy, that your life
has its orders, that the seasons
seize you too, that no body and soul are one
if they are not wrought
in this retort?
Well, Mr. B., a while back, did a run on the soul after reading Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul, but I didn’t pay much attention to it because the coinage made it sound like one was taking care of a cow in some barn away from one’s house. And of course I’ve heard about losing one’s soul to the devil, or selling it in exchange for some item of favor like Dorian Gray bartering for youth. But even in that, just what is it that one is supposed to lose, or sell?
Enter the poem. Yeah, that’s a good coinage, by way of introduction: that the poem puts the pause in me, and within that pause I enter, watching in the magical study my comings and my goings and the comings and goings of others and of this and of that. Perhaps this “entering” occurs when one recites, pours sound, one’s own voice, into the silent words so that they are born into the flesh of a magical study with a polished desk and books which bindings from the shelves catch the quiet light of a lamp. Soft carpet against the bared feet, and out the window a morning star, the black masses of trees, silent or moving with a wind, and a rooster in the yard –the cock- with the red comb upon its head and its alert and golden eye that crows whenever one betrays, oneself, another, Christ.
Mr. J., on the other hand, bandied the word ‘spirit’ about, but that’s just so ethereal, like hydrogen and oxygen before they meet and flesh into water and houses dishes in suds, streams down the nape and the flank, or settles in puddles and mirrors the greens of trees and the puffs of clouds, and ripples. Yes, I much prefer a soul.
But Ms. Jayde says that there aren’t any souls in the world anymore. Gone before I even had a chance to poke into them decently. We’re behaviorists now, I suppose, and we tinker with stimulus and response, or tweak the biochemistry a bit so that the gizmo runs in a more pleasing fashion.
“Lila,” says the Sanskrit fellows, and so we must play with soul, yes? For our good health. For our sanity of mind. For our innate demand that we not be incarcerated within a house of bounds that has no windows or doors that can swing into the boundless, that can let in fresh air within the rooms, and through which we may stroll out to peruse our own personal property of the Boundless. So, in that interest, we return to soul, but we must poke about into it now. Splashy water it must be, or be the comfort of one’s favorite color of a marble that one can curl within the fingers and the palm. Which is to say that it must be an intimate Thing and not like that hydrogen and oxygen that one reads about in texts and can wave one’s hand through and be assured by reason that it’s there. But one can’t touch it with one’s fingertips. It has no curl or lobe of ear, no scuffling sound of gravel beneath the feet, no laughter or questioning in the eyes, and this we must have if a soul is a worthwhile thing to have.
You got a better word? A better pointing to something that isn’t a just reduction to a body, to a creed, and to a most uncomfortable confinement? Ay, I’ll use the soul, but no longer as a cow in a barn, but as a style and not a content, an identity, a bank account, a name. A doing. A splashing of water in the sudsy sink to feel the curve of dish and wash it clean, and dries upon the dish rack, and quietly inhabits its place with light. This is soul, an intimacy, a most private being-here that cares not a whit for proof it’s there. Lose it? A misnomer. Call it instead a confusion that a being-here, the abundance of Place, can be found “out there” when all the while, like Uri Shulevitz’s Isaac, our treasure is beneath our stove.
And within this Place, all Work is done, and all Love is consecrated.
(ii)
I, briefly, thought I had finished this The Dearth of Souls essay, but it was only an hour after keying in the last line that I knew that there was more. Not a big surprise, eh?, if you are at all familiar with my bent towards going on and on and on into all the branching questions that set out in ever new delicious travelings from even a single asking. And besides, such a Thing as a soul must be a very fertile and wiggly squirmy singing pausing and considering Thing. So, to resume.., I will here state that I am not content with this essay of the soul yet, and I will not be content until I walk about as a soul this very morning. A soul with a belly with a bit too much of a curvature these days. “Ay, you preoccupied chap, flatten it a bit with, say, ten sit-ups, a walking through woods, and smaller bowls of the yummy stuff, -but without restraint, Sir. Instead, play yet another twist of a game of marbles. Use the tiger eye one, then the one with blue.”
Am a soul. Not have. One has a house. One has a body. One has a paint brush. And isn’t every thing a paint brush? For one’s canvass. For putting a little blue in the upper right corner of a sky, or a little gold within an orb two-and-a-half inches from the blue that one calls a sun. Am. But what’s an Am without a color? And I have been guilty of that. “Negate! Negate!” I have been known to cry out. “Neti! Neti! Not this! Not that!” Then what then? No curvature of a belly? No St. Patrick’s Shamrock emeralds in the ear lobe of a woman? No hot water for tea, or a spoon that clinks against the side of a cup when one stirs? No, this Am Am of a soul is chalk full of color, and I’ll even add the pretty no-color, too, so I got them both, when before I just had one.
Vertical. Yes, vertical, too, that subsumes all horizontal. In fact, this vertical of which I speak puts me in mind of the dying of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s title character - the Sicilian nobleman Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina- in his novel The Leopard. This man doesn’t die into a horizontal, but into the vertical of himself, like that of a mountain sinking back into its continent. But not a continent. But his. He. Or, better yet, this Am that clinks the side of a cup of tea with a spoon. So, as for death, -much overrated in this particular soul. A redundancy, actually, of ending that is just a daily fact of clearing out old is-ings for is-ing, or of switching one paint brush for another.
Salvation? Of what? Of the soul from a sorry little two-foot square closet of a confinement. And how did that happen?, which is the question of the Fall, of Samsara, of Caughtness, go figure. Very odd, indeed. I mean, just why is it that one can’t simply open the door and step out? Why all these angsty dramas? Why can’t one just step back and watch? See? The line of a shadow across the snow of a roof that cuts one, too, so that the flesh of this fruit falls open to show the quiet kernel in its center. Listen? To the clink of the spoon against the porcelain sides that is the eschatological end of things, consummating.
But, then, why stop at the soul? Why not Mr. J.’s spirit, as well? Am, the spirit of Things, interfusing, interpenetrating, resting there in the dark massed trees even as I walk by and leave’em behind for other quarters. Why, it’s all quite interchangeable, you see. Dark massed trees, a book-lined study, what’s the diff? And so I’ll take the soul and everything else as well, and every word and every thing will be my pigments in the rollicking and impish art of painting doors on everything.
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