“OK, so what’s the work of today,” said Lady.
“Recovering from yesterday,” I said, since I had been struck
low, assaulted by a thousand demons that had boiled my blood; they did rage
through my veins, causing ill humors and vapors to burst from my skin. I did
battle all day yesterday with the demons; they were viperous, tenacious, and
wily, but with the help of Jesus Christ our Lord, they were defeated, and
scattered to the four winds, to wail ceaselessly and await the next victim they
might devour.
“Maybe it was something you ate,” said Lady, who though
poetic tends not to be mystic, or rather religious. “Anyway, you’re feeling
better now, right?”
“There’s no rest for the weary,” I told her, “since the Seventeenth
Sunday after Trinity seems to be about humility. Oh, and I have to produce not
a parable but miracle!”
“Yeah?”
“Right, since this week’s reading is from Luke 14:1-11. And
guess what? The miracle lasts only four verses, which is breathtaking speed, as
miracles go, but which gives Jesus plenty of time to do a little finishing
school etiquette on weddings.”
“Always treacherous waters, socially speaking. Especially
towards the end, when everybody has had too much.”
“Jesus doesn’t even get around to that, but rather the
seating arrangements, and you know what you’re supposed to do? Go to the lesser
room—no instruction there as how to tell one room from another, though perhaps
it’s marked—and wait until your host comes up to you and say, ‘hey, what are you
doing there? Get back into the greater room, you idiot, where you belong.’
Otherwise you’ll suffer the shame of having the host say, ‘hey, what are you
doing here? Get back to the lesser room, you smarmy upstart!’”
“Dear me, who could imagine the social landmines or perhaps
quagmires that must have ensnared the men who trod in Biblical times? But
really, did anyone need to be told?”
“Well, it’s sort of a metaphor. The whole message—what the
Wal-Mart boys used to call the ‘take-home’—is humility. Consider the chorale,
which basically says that we’ll give up the big house and the fancy car—all
right, it’s ‘temporal glories’ in the original text—in return for eternal life.
So we are required to be meek and humble, and not put ourselves above others.”
“Hmmm, I begin to suspect that this message—laudable as it
seems on the face of it—has a very nice secondary benefit for some, namely the
church. After all, isn’t that just saying ‘don’t rock the boat, don’t get
uppity, and we’ll take care of you one day?’”
“Ah, to be so young, and yet so cynical!”
“Well, you should be around here some poetry nights,” says
Lady. “And why is it that the poets with the least talent invariably have the
biggest attitude?”
“Well, the Biblical texts are silent on that matter,” I
said. “But the lyrics of the cantata couldn’t be clearer! It’s the devil!”
“What?”
“Well, consider the bass recitative in the cantata BWV 47,
which starts out, ‘der Menshe ist Kot,
Staub, Asche und Erde, and that’s when you really don’t want to know
German.”
“Why so?”
“Translation: Man is dung, dust, ashes, and dirt.”
“What!” cried Lady, “though come to think of it, some
poets….”
“Everybody, including you and I. That’s why we are all
‘miserable sinners,’ which we used to assent to every Sunday, when we went to
church. Not only did we assent to it, we said it! Anyway, that being the case,
you can imagine how easy it is to fall into the snares of the devil, who roams
the earth as a raging beast, seeking whom he may devour. Better be careful,
Lady!”
“Should I cancel my book presentation,” Lady said, “or is
that going too far?”
“You should tread with trepidation,” I told her, “since the
recitative goes on to say that if Christ endured derision and scorn, why should
you, miserable worm, pride yourself to boast.”
“Damn, but I bought the dress….” said Lady, who though a
poet is still a woman.
“Harlot of Babylon,” I told her, since reading all this
stuff is turning me into a neo-John the Baptist. “Salome had more modesty!”
“But how am I going to sell five thousand copies?”
“Give them as alms to the poor! Traverse these ancient
streets of Old San Juan, flogging yourself until the blood does gush from the
breaks of thy too weak flesh, and place your book, Heal, gently and
reverently next the sleeping bodies you do there encounter, that they might
wake and receive the message of one ordained to speak. Do this in HIS name!”
“Yeah?” said Lady. “And will you be joining me in this
peregrination? After all, you have a book of your own, don’t you?”
“Yes, but never have I contemplated spitting in the face of
God by giving a book presentation!”
“That’s completely unfair,” cried Lady, “and besides, it’s
also untrue. You want to do a book presentation, but you’ve got it into
your head that no one will show up, and you’ll look like an idiot.”
She’s right of course.
“We’ve strayed from the point,” I told her, since when the
content backs you into a corner, the only defense is to plead structure. “The
point is that for Bach and his contemporaries, the devil and Satan were very
real. Do you know that in Germany, the last witches were burned
in 1738?”
“Wonderful, the facts you possess. Would you know as much,
one wonders, if you had three businesses to run, a teenage girl to raise, a husband
to please, and….oh, did I mention those 5000 books to sell?”
“Thy burden is indeed great,” I told her, “but God tempers
the wind to the shorn lamb.”
“Mixed metaphor,” she retorted. “Anyway, I have some casitas
to paint. And shouldn’t you be cooking up a miracle?”
And so to work.
