God and Man

One of the interesting things I found in Leyburn's The Scotch-Irish that I imagine will be interesting to those following the political ruckuss these days is the sections dealing with the church. Specifically, the Presbyterian Church of the Scots-Irish settlers. One quote that has shown up in several works, but that I've not yet been able to track down beyond "A Hessian Officer" goes -

"Call this war by whatever name you may, only call it not an American rebellion; it is nothing more or less than a Scotch Irish Presbyterian rebellion."

Despite my misgivings over the 17th century, I realize I have to actually sit and study it in more detail someday.. this was a time as near to the Founders as we are to the Edwardians. That is, it wasn't dim and distant history - the whole bloody mess of Protestant and Catholic sweeping Europe was just out of living memory. It was fresh wounds indeed that lay in the whole "no State church" insistence of the Founders. Indeed, with the arguable exception of the Classical era, no other time held as much sway over their minds, I think.

But.
The Presbyterians.

How to explain it in a time when all the various Protestant denominations across America blend into a loose mostly undifferentiated fog of spare rooms, hard pews, and a piano up front -- that once upon a time, the doctrinal differences were every bit as harsh as "NRA or PETA" today? More, really... people killed and died over those differences.

I think ultimately the answer has to come from the nature of the Protestant movement itself... that notion that there can be no barrier between God and man, that each soul remains immediately in communion with - and accountable to- the Divine, and that no third party should - or even can - intercede between the two.

The Church of England resisted Rome, yes, but it was every bit as insistent on the centralized authority to appoint priests as their predecessors. The Scots Presbyterians were different. You could think of them, I suppose, as the 17th century equivalent of the modern "auditorium" churches. They radically changed what a worship service was, and preached a doctrine that - harsh as it was - nonetheless insisted on individual relationship with God. Further, for the Presbyterians, Church governance was a very local matter. Elders were elected and and ministers selected at a remove not far distant from the congregation itself.*

Thus, the King's insistence on his authority to appoint church officials or dictate the contents of a liturgy were not trivialities, but an affront nigh on to spiritual rape. A government of fallible men interceding itself as the keeper of the keys between God and man was not simply a heresy, but an outright usurpation of God's legitimate authority.

That was the disgust that ultimately led a great many Scots-Irish to these shores. A hundred years alternating between open fighting and swallowed umbrage was finally released. Oh, the land was rough, living conditions on the frontier harsh and uncomfortable even when there wasn't fighting with the natives - but after the last century, it must have been a relief to finally be able to walk out of the cabin in the morning and know that while you might not live to see night fall again, at the very least no one was going to try to wrap your very soul around the words they wanted you to say.

And that was the nest into which the Crown chose to rattle its stick.


Here I am,
I can imagine them saying,
an ocean away from you.

I will never again walk on the earth I played upon as a child.
I will never again see beloved aunts, uncles, cousins....
I will never again see the kirk-yard I was married in,
nor the ground where my firstborn lies cold.

All of this,
all of this loss, just to get away from you.
And still you won't let me be.

I've run to the very ends of the earth to escape you.
Heaved my guts out into the belly of a stinking ship,
passage bought with the twilight of my youth.
I've faced bloody screaming terror in the night,
fed a family on what these two hands could scratch from the waste,
and watched children die for lack of Babylon's learned men.

All of this.... all of this... to get away from you.

And still you follow?

Hope you brought your good shoes then,
'cause we're gonna dance all night.











====
* Leyburn is scrupulous to avoid saying or implying that religious self-governance was a prelude to political self-governance, and an indirect cause of the rebellion - and yet I can't help but think the predecessors he is clearly indirectly answering might have been on to something. But that's another subject for another time, and not one I've enough expertise to address yet.

You know the real reason for all this snow now?

... it's cause Miss D just showed up in town to finish her airplane after spending six months in points south.

I think Alaska just decided she wasn't getting out of winter *that* easy.

So D..um... thanks. Welcome back. :)

Okay, it's official..

... I ♥ Google.

So when's their competitor to the iPad coming out? :)

Living Memory

So the harp is a gentle-thing is it?
A toy of teasing sidhe, a fancy of diapered cherubim?

Well so it can be.

But before the knife pleats of regimented tartan, before the marches of pipe and drum, before even the fiddle dances of the Gows, there was the clarsach, wire harp of the Gaels.

And though through its strings the bards brought forth the threefold musics of mirth, of sleep, and of sorrow, that was not all there was.

For the clarsach was the grand piano of its day, a courtly instrument.

Strings of heavy gold birthed the deep resonance of the bass, and fine iron tinkled in the treble like fine tempered blades. Warm bronze crossed the bridge between, and the whole was covered with jewels and carvings, a credit and token of the hall-lord's generosity and patronage.

For it was not simple entertainment that the harpers carried, but history. Stories of words and deeds of ancestors long past, the very living soul of a people. A sacred thread of identity that stretches back to when words were first fomed and memory of deeds first cultivated - stories of fighting and loving and reiving and winning. There were epics to celebrate high deeds of heroes, and satires to shame the wicked. So it was through the long summer of the Gaelic world.

In time though, the old order fell.. and much of that lore was lost in the fires of harps and the death-strangles of their owners, left to dangle for the crows.

It was over.

...But much of it has been remembered, committed by friend and enemy alike to the long steady memory of ink and skin. And like grass seed blown between the flagstones of even the finest courtyard, the songs would not stay dead.




=============================

Hear then, the song of Calgacus.
Swordsman, he was called. Man of the blade.
Ox-armed and oak-tall he was,
Shoulders of stone, soul of fire.

Calgacus, man of the blade.







Stand here! For where will you go?

Behind you are but rocks and sea,
Before you the soul-death of slavery.

There is nowhere you can go that they will not follow.
There is nothing you can build that they will not take.

Your poor naked pride provokes them,
Your last-held treasures entice them.

Will you shame your fathers with surrender?
Will you shame your children with flight?


Then stand. Stand here. Stand here.

Point of view...

Well.. that's interesting.

Not long ago, I was feeling so heavy from a winter's worth of beef and potatoes that I thought "why not lay off the meat for a week or so?"

Well the week came, and the week went.. and so far I've not had any interest in my celebratory cheeseburger. It's not for any ethical reason* - or even health reasons really - just "this is what my body is asking for now" that I decided to go veggie for a while, and so far am actually kind of surprised that I really haven't got any craving to go back. I'm sure I will sooner or later (probably sooner).. but for now it feels better.**

But so anyhow... here's the funny part. Perspective.

See, the place where I regularly grab lunch in town is one of those froo-froo grocery stores. We're not really sophisticated enough for a Trader Joes to pay us any mind up here, but this is the closest thing to. But they have a not half bad lunch counter.

And the strangest thing happened the other day..
See, all this time walking in the place I was thinking essentially "silly smug hippy place. I mean, look at all this froo-froo eco-nut stuff. But man is the meatloaf good"

One. Week. Later. I find myself walking through those exact same aisles thinking "what... does every entree have to have meat in it here? What is with these people? Is is that hard to have one alternative?

Yes. Yes I was embarrassed.
But for half a second, I got a glimpse of the world as the other half sees it.. where NPR really is unbiased and college towns are islands of enlightenment in seas of darkness.

.. for our experience of the world is so very controlled by our own current state. Get one standard deviation from me, and you're normal - if wrong. Get two and you're kind of freaky. Get three and you're flippin' crazy.

No matter where my center happens to be at the moment.


And no... no plans to change my voter registration. The tofu hasn't had that long to affect my synapses. :p




















================

* When I was little, I remember once having an attack of the pitiables for all those pretty creatures in my food. I remember once at my Gramma's place declaring to my Mom that I wasn't going to eat animals anymore. "That's okay," she said, as she put down a breakfast plate of Sizzlean in front of me. "This isn't real bacon."

Yes, I bought it. Gosh, that not-from-real-pigs Sizzlean sure tasted good. ... but I did give up on the whole "no eating cute animals" thing not long after.
Moms are devious. Watch 'em careful-like. :)




** About half a week ago I woke up feeling different. I don't know how to describe it really other than "lighter," but it was a definite physical state change of some kind or another. Interesting.