dual personalities

Tag: John Bunyan

August 29, 2024

That pile of broken mirrors

by chuckofish

This week was a scorcher, but par for the flyover course. The forecast for the long weekend is optimistic so we’ll see.

Daughter #2 and her family escaped to Michigan, but they encountered a huge storm halfway through their vacay which knocked out the electricity to 400,000 people and their running water!

C’est la vie. Before the weather catastrophe, my brother and sister-in-law drove over for a short visit…

…and caught up with the comings and goings of Pete the Cat et al.

Yes, the month is winding down. I will toast Jorge Luis Borges again and suggest you read this short story about a man whose father tells him he had “Lunch with Borges” once. It reminded me of my father telling me he sat on Gertrude Stein’s lap as an infant. We know our parents so little really.

As in dreams
behind high doors there is nothing,
not even emptiness.
As in dreams
behind the face that looks at us there is no one.
Obverse without a reverse,
one-sided coin, the side of things.
That pittance is the boon
tossed to us by hastening time.
We are our memory,
we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes,
that pile of broken mirrors.

This is an interesting reflection on Peer Gynt, showing how a troll becomes a troll. “In 2024, we live in a world of trolls. What is the name for cowardly people who leave hateful comments on the internet? Trolls. Our family’s word for road-ragers? Road trolls. Peer Gynt is a story for today.”

And here’s a heads up that the Church of England remembers John Bunyan with a Lesser Festival on 30 August. I was glad to see that a memorial window to Bunyan was unveiled in the west aisle of the north transept of Westminster Abbey in January 1912. It was erected by public subscription and designed by J. Ninian Comper and shows eight main scenes from the first part of Bunyan’s most famous work The Pilgrim’s Progress. The inscription reads: In memory of John Bunyan. The Pilgrim’s Progress. B.1628. D.1688.

“You are not yet out of reach of the gunshot of the Devil. You have not yet resisted unto death in your striving against sin. Let the Kingdom be always before you, and believe with certainty and consistency the things that are yet unseen. Let nothing that is on this side of eternal life get inside you. Above all, take care of your own hearts, and resist the lusts that tempt you, for your hearts `are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.’ Set your faces like a flint; you have all the power of Heaven and earth on your side.”

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August 31, 2021

The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye

by chuckofish

It is the last day of August! Zut alors–the year continues to fly by.

Today is the birthday of the great actor Fredric March (1897-1975) who won two Oscars for Best Actor and two Tonys for Best Actor. I suppose he is all but forgotten these days, but he was highly thought of for decades and I always liked him.

(March is on the right in The Best Years of Our Lives.)

March also made several spoken word recordings, including a version of Oscar Wilde’s The Selfish Giant in 1945. Here it is. (You might want to get your Kleenex out.)

The boy turned me on to the old What’s My Line show (1950-1967), which you can watch on Youtube. It is a rather sophisticated show, especially by today’s standards. Here is the episode with Fredric March:

Daughter #1 gave me the sad news that Ed Asner has died at 91. Asner is the most decorated male performer in Emmy history and received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2001. He is also the recipient of five Golden Globe Awards and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We remember him, of course, as the lovable Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and as the bad guy Bart Jason in one of our favorite westerns El Dorado (1966).

I cannot say what he was like in real life, but I knew and liked his cousin Herschel Asner who took classes at my flyover institute. Herschel was a paratrooper in WWII who jumped into France on D-Day. Unlike his cousin, he led a relatively quiet life after the war. He was a really good guy.

Today we also remember the Puritan John Bunyan who died on this day in 1688.

“All states are full of Noise and Confusion, only the Valley of Humiliation is that empty and solitary place. Here a man shall not be so let and hindered in his Contemplation, as in other places he is apt to be. This is a Valley that nobody walks in, but those that love a Pilgrim’s life. And tho’ Christian had the hard hap to meet here with Apollyon, and to enter with him a brisk encounter, yet I must tell you, that in former times men have met with Angels here, have found Pearls here, and have in this place found the words of Life.”

The Pilgrim’s Progress

And isn’t this an interesting story? A Pixar artist who made beautiful maps of Christian’s journey to the Celestial City.

The world is more than we know.

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August 29, 2012

Though he with giants fight

by chuckofish

John Bunyan (28 November 1628 – 31 August 1688) was, of course, an English Christian writer and preacher, who is well known for his wonderful book The Pilgrim’s Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, he is remembered in the Church of England with a Lesser Festival on August 30, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (US) on August 29.

I have mentioned before that we had a daily chapel service at the private school I attended. I remember our English headmaster telling us that the hymn “He Who Would Valiant Be” was a favorite (if not the favorite) hymn of Winston Churchill. That struck me as significant and I paid close attention to the words.

He Who Would Valiant Be Hymn

He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

Who so beset him round with dismal stories
Do but themselves confound – his strength the more is.
No foes shall stay his might; though he with giants fight,
He will make good his right to be a pilgrim.

Since, Lord, Thou dost defend us with Thy Spirit,
We know we at the end, shall life inherit.
Then fancies flee away! I’ll fear not what men say,
I’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.

I tried to find a Youtube video of the hymn, but they all featured the wrong tune (Monk’s Gate). Here is one that at least plays the St. Dunstan’s tune, so you can sing along!

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