I just don’t get Halloween. Not as a big deal celebration. I get a few things.
I get the language underpinning of it. I know, for instance, that the -een of Halloween is properly “e’en.” In the Scottish version of the word it is a contraction of “even,” still meaning “evening” rather than “eve.”
I get the notion of a liminal time—a time of the year when the borders between the living and the dead are thin and permeable. [2] Such a border means that “they” are closer to us and we are closer to “them.” Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing depends on your views of the relationship between the dead and the living, so it varies quite a bit among cultures and faiths.
If, for instance, “they,” the people on the other side of the border that separates the living and the dead,” are active and inclined to be mischievous, I can see why placating them would be a prudent thing to do and a big part of Halloween is about that.
I get the attachment to the annual cycles of death and rebirth. The autumn is, after all, the time of year when the sun is going away—and who knows whether it will ever come back north—and the plants are all dying.
On the other hand, all these understandings have declined quite a distance from their earlier meanings. Often, when we say things like, “declined from their earlier meanings,” the implication is that we have substituted later meanings. That is not true in this case. In the case of Halloween, the customs have declined from the spooky earlier meanings to no meanings at all. Of course, “no meanings” doesn’t mean “no reason.” The commercialization of Halloween insures that there are lots of reasons to push the celebration of it. I’m thinking of the costumes, the cards, the candy, the paraphernalia. [1] And Bette says that a lot of people have a lot of fun at Halloween, dressing up and going out for candy and so on. I never did, so I really wouldn’t know.
And while I don’t begrudge anyone a bit of special holiday fun—provided I don’t have to do it myself—I belong to a related but different tradition. And for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the secular celebration of the holiday, it is a tradition that has come to mean a lot to me.
In my tradition, the “hallow” of Halloween is a big thing. It means “holy.” Most Americans probably know it as a verb because that is the way Abraham Lincoln used it in the Gettysburg Address: “we cannot hallow this ground.”
Some Christians celebrate All Saints’ Day. In fact, I celebrate All Saints’ Day, having known and honored quite a few saints in my time. All Saints’ Day is the remnant of a much older and longer celebration called Allhallowtide, which had—as did Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost—a vigil that began the night before. It is that inaugural vigil, “all hallow’s eve,” which placed the word “Halloween” in Western Christianity.
And the limen?
If we are to think that the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead is stretched thin at this particular time, I can’t think of a better way to honor that thinness that than to honor those who have left us but whom we still hold in our hearts. The “dying” or “dozing off” of nature in winter suggests it. Pope Gregory III suggested it in the middle of the 8th Century. [2] The practice of many cultures outside the culture of the church, suggest it.
If there is “another side”—something on the other side of the threshold, it matters a great deal how a culture imagines what is there. Is it the spirits of the ancestors, watching kindly over their progeny? Is it the spirits of the ancestors, angry at being dead and waiting only for the thinning of the barrier to come back and wreak havoc? Are there beings that were never human—fairies, ogres, dryads—who have intentions of their own if they can just get back among the living?
There is a lot of such speculation—all of it implicit—in the modern celebration of Halloween. That is, in fact, what the fire theme is for. It accounts for the “lantern” part of the Jack-of-the-Lantern. [4] The fire is supposed to scare the spirits away. On the other hand, it also accounts for the food themes because the food is supposed to appease the spirits, on the off-chance that they are inclined toward malice. And, to add the last little bit of historical setting to it, if you were approached in the “trick or treat” mode by a Druid priest, you might want to think seriously about what a Druid might think a “trick” was.
All Saints’ Day
At my church, the tradition is to hold a reading of the names of the saints who have died since the previous All Saint’s Day. A name is read and a bell is tolled. Then another name; another tone. From the time my wife, Marilyn, was diagnosed with cancer, we expected that we would have only a few All Saints’ Days left to us and we sat in church as the names were read and the bells tolled and held hands and cried. On the All Saints Day after she died, I sat there and listened to her name being called and the bell being tolled and cried by myself. It was bitter, but the context of meaning made it tolerable.
That year, the “boundary” between my world and whatever is on the other side [5] was thinned almost to transparency. So when I think of Halloween, I think of All Saints Day. And when I think of All Saints’ Day, I think of the day Marilyn’s name was read. And then I think of the day when my name will be read. [6]
So I don’t really object to Halloween. It’s just, as I said at the beginning, that I don’t get it. I do object to conceiving of that time as a time for appeasing malevolent spirits and warding off angry minor deities. I don’t want to be any part of that. [7] All Hallow’s Eve, on the other hand, makes perfect sense to me and offers a great deal of comfort.
[1] How many innocent pumpkins, for instance, have given their lives to become jack-o-lanterns so they can simulate the ignis fatuus, “the foolish fire?”
[2] We don’t use liminal (from the Latin limen) straight up, but it is common in compounds like “subliminal.” A limn is a threshold.
[2] The reference of the author of 2 Timothy may have had something like this in mind (1:16—18) but given the lack of context, it is hard to say for sure.
[3] These people didn’t become saints just by dying. Here’s a good summary of the broader meaning of the terms from http://www.gotquestions.org, a site I like a good deal. “Christians are saints by virtue of their connection with Jesus Christ. Christians are called to be saints, to increasingly allow their daily life to more closely match their position in Christ. This is the biblical description and calling of the saints.”
[4] I almost hate to tell you this, but they didn’t always use pumpkins. Sometimes they used rutabagas and I really like rutabagas.
[5] I don’t mean by that phrasing to say that there is something “on the other side.” I have no idea. But at the beginning, my sense of “no longer here” was so strong that it virtually stipulated some “…and now there.”
[6] I’m not forgetting Bette. I’m just skipping over her because according to our deal, she has to live longer than I will. It just isn’t right to expect a man to marry and lose two such women in just one lifetime.
[7] On the other hand, I fully believe that people can be killed by witchcraft in cultures that believe in witchcraft. People are psychosomatic unities. We don’t come in two packages, one universal and the other local.
were so badly damaged that they had to be amputated above the knee. He may very well have died from loss of blood had Carlos not intervened. But he didn’t die and a very frightened city declared him to be a hero—just for not dying.
The help he gets, he gets from his sometime (but not current) girlfriend, Erin (Tatiana Maslany) who sees what he needs and is unwilling to withhold it from him. She is immediately heroic, as I see it, although that is not the way the movie understands her. And when all the crisis is over and Jeff has had a chance to discover in a whole new way just who he is, he gives himself to Erin. That is very satisfying. He says something to her in this scene about “leaning on her.” Yes he does.
Everything is wrong with the Blackhawks event and it is portrayed so that we see that. Here, for instance, is a picture I didn’t see at the movie and now that I am looking at it, I can hardly believe I missed it. Look at the cage the shadows of the hockey goal make on his face! Then Jeff goes through a lot of development. He learns, for instance, that giving Boston the hero they need so badly is a form of self-transcendence.
So he does. He plays the hero for them. He throws out the first pitch. [5] Carlos pushes his wheelchair out to the mound and that makes sense because Carlos is a hero in the same sense that Jeff is a hero. (As viewers, we understand Erin’s heroism at the Bruins game, but no one in the film understands it that way.) And then he tries to escape from the setting of the game, having done everything he thinks he can do. But here, his heroism catches up with him—not the phony imputed heroism that Boston lavished on him, but the real personal heroism that is based on his courage in responding to his personal disaster. A man named Larry needs to talk with him about the courage he has shown, and Jeff is willing to talk. We are surprised when Jeff asks the man his name; we are dumbfounded when Jeff reaches up and hugs him.
man. Also autistic. Also extremely bright. When you hear him diagnosing a medical condition, you think of Sherlock Holmes.
The second occasion was set up when she comes back outside—where Dr. Murphy is still waiting in the rain—to ask him why he kept recommending an echocardiogram. He gives a plausible reason, but while they are talking, the call comes that the echo revealed nothing at all. Dr. Murphy rejects that reading of the echo and when, through Dr. Brown’s auspices, he is shown the screen, he sees something no one else had seen—why the patient is still in danger. That’s the second occasion, and Dr. Murphy characterizes it as “nicer to me.”
That brings us to the final two questions. The first is, what can Dr. Murphy do to keep from destroying a very good hospital staff? We pretend with each other. We represent ourselves as more interested than we actually are or as less offended than we actually are. We are expected to do that. We are very nearly required to do that, given the penalties that are meted out for failing. [4]
doctor is candid, we are going to have to think about what candor is. The Merriam-Webster podcast which featured this word in 2012 gave an illustration like this: “when the job applicant admitted to some indiscretions in his past, the interviewer thanked him for his candor.” Since the root, the Latin adjective candidus, means “white” or “pure,” I think we can see in this interview, the idea that putting your best foot forward is a violation of candor. The “shaping” of your presentation of yourself is a “blot,” let’s say on what would otherwise be a pure unshaped presentation of yourself.
and over and he knows what he is talking about. Frodo, like most of the rest of us, is living in the only time he knows. [1] And like the rest of us, Frodo is forced to take the presuppositions of his age for granted.
What you do know is that the water used to reach much further up the beach and now it is clear down to where you are standing and it is still going down, going “away.” You are horrified, let’s say, because you liked this part of the coast where the ocean “used to come” and you long for “the good old days” when the water—you don’t know to call it a “tide”—used to come all the way up to here.
ded to have large families of obedient children.
In the next phase, the helicopter parent phase, parents are responsible for the good choices and the consequent happiness of the children. Let’s just stop and think how far we have come from the farm family where the kids are plowing the back forty and gathering and selling the eggs. Now that the parents are responsible for the choosing that the child does—not, please note, for the choices themselves [3]—a child who is not choosing well or who does not play nicely with others or who can’t make the soccer team or who is not happy, is a problem that the parents need to do something about.
as autonomy for children and choosing as the principal mode of self-expression and the complete responsibility parents have shouldered for the quality and the success of their children. If it is really high tide on all those things, then the demands they make need to be met in some way. Or perhaps they can be modified. Or even rejected.
of goo and the sole function of these humans is to provide, through the natural operation of their bodies, the electricity that the Matrix requires to rule them and keep them (us) in their place. In this picture you can still see the goo on Neo and several of the pods near him, each containing a “human battery.”
By all three of these expressions, Jesus is talking about the new life in the spirit—the life of the ages—and Nicodemus is talking about the old life, the life of the flesh. So when Nicodemus understands anōthen as “again,” he immediately thinks about being born a second time in the same manner that he was born the first time. So he asks disbelievingly how it is possible for a grown man to enter his mother’s womb so he can be born again. My argument is that in his conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus is better understood as contrasting the insignificant (merely earthly) with the enduringly significant (the heavenly).
found it too challenging. Cypher is rescued from the life he imagined he was living and was made part of a real life. The real life was dreary and difficult and he made the choice for which John ridicules Nicodemus. Here we see Cypher in the matrix “experiencing” a juicy steak. At the moment of this picture, his body is back in the hovercraft, but he is making arrangements to be put back into a tub of goo and to have an imaginary life restored—a life of complete insignificance. He says he wants to be somebody famous.
Second, you can be rescued from such a life. We see Neo choosing it. This is the justly famous “red pill or blue pill” scene where Neo may choose to go back into his life of illusion (blue pill) or he may choose to be rescued (red pill)—literally “lifted up” from the tub of goo—and live a real, though hazardous, life. Note: to insert the picture here, I have to click on a button that says CHOOSE. Not a bad name for this picture.
My goal for today is to define the difficulty Mr. Peterson is in and to extend my sympathies. If he and I were having a discussion about the U. S. and the future and about what is needed for the long-term health of our homeland, I think I would get angry at him and say things I shouldn’t. But sitting here at my desk on a beautiful fall day, I have nothing for him but sympathy. [2]
character. Well…”good character,” really. He believes that people ought to make the right decisions because they are the right decisions. And they do sometimes. But when the economic supports for what used to be “the right decisions” go away, you get a situation where “character” points this way and “economic viability” points that way.
“degrades the marriage market value of the men.” As a social conservative, he deplores the destruction of intact families and the production of children that no one seems to be able to care for. But now, as a political conservative, he also opposes the government programs which could soften the impact of the economic difficulties and ease some of the social costs of postponed marriages. There really isn’t anywhere else to go.
free to graze their cattle on the common pasture provided they don’t have too many cattle. Only so many and no more. But each farmer has an incentive to add just a few “extra” cattle—how much harm can a few extra cattle possibly do?—to the common area and when too many farmers do that, the commons crashes and there is no food for anyone’s cattle and disaster ensues.
asked “to join in”—even though the word “free” with that awful tight ee- vowel comes at a high G that hardly anyone can reach. That adds a common ritual to the “sacrosanct leisure hours.” As long as you don’t pay much attention to what it says, you can just wait until the performance is over and the game starts. [4] And as long as it is common, no one objects.
Now the commons is gone. Players are staying in the locker room until after our “ritual of solidarity is over.” Players are inventing combinations of ways to affirm the unity of the team amidst the different views of the players. Look at this picture of the Detroit Lions. Some are kneeling, some are standing. All are holding onto each other. I wish the churches could figure out a way to do that.
If you begin by understanding that President Trump was making a campaign speech aimed at people “back home” it all makes more sense. There is a great deal of anti-U. N. sentiment among Trump supporters. I used to see signs “U.S. out of U. N.” I haven’t seen any of those signs for awhile, but the sentiment lives on. This speech pandered to that sentiment in quite a few ways.
embarrassing. They are dumb, but they aren’t really dangerous. But there is another matter that troubles me and this one I think it is far more dangerous. Trump has in mind changing the understanding of what the U. N. is for.
explain what that means before I write anything about his work. When a subject area is both important to me and too confusing for me to sort out, I like to choose “a guy” as my default guru. [2] “Default guru” means that I provisionally accept that person’s perspective as my own and I pay particular attention to writers who diverge a little from that perspective. [3] Sometimes these divergences pile up and I have to look for another guru—if I still feel, by that time, that I need a guru. More often, I keep the guru’s perspective, but modify it to meet my own needs. In that case, I think of myself as a “neo-something.”
I like that a great deal. If you look at the current fluidity in the performance of gender and the norms by which those performances are judged, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the complexity. If you get a firm notion of how those roles used to be and what happened to them, you can see today’s struggles as an attempt to return to clarity. Starting that far back gives you a perspective on today that you can’t get by starting today.
And what are those “waves of events.” As specific tools, they vary, of course, from one parent to another, but as kinds of tools, they are pretty common among parents who are trying really hard to be “modern” [3] and “positive.” These tools involve amazing levels of “polite request” and “expressions of appreciation” for the children’s compliance with those requests that sometimes occurs. The tools involve praising a child for doing something he has no sense of doing at all. This has the effect of weaponizing the child, who now knows what behavior he is currently foregoing and therefore what behavior will bring him the attention he craves. The kid who was perfectly happy looking out the window, learns, for instance, that he has been passing up jumping up and down on his seat.
little girl standing on her seat, the mother say “Would you sit down please?” and, when the little girl sat down, “Thank you.” Why is that a good thing to say, I wondered.
What would work a good deal better, I think, is for the parent—we have been considering the mother here, but there is no reason it couldn’t be the father—to take the role of the parent, to be in loco parentis. That means that she has special authority to organize the behavior of the group, to dole out rewards and punishments as needed. She can be as sweet-tempered as the situation allows her to be, subject to getting the work done successfully. And let me remind you that “successfully” has independent metrics for the safety of the children, the health and welfare of the mother, and the safety of non-belligerent parties, such as neighbors and passers-by.
