Sound of 1 Hand Clapping: Very few indeed . . .

Well a full week has come and gone since His Holiness released his open letter to the people of Ireland.

www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/letters/2010/documents/hf-ben_xvi_let_20100319_church_ireland_en.html

Lots of comments on it back and forth, some favorable, some less so.

www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0321/breaking4.html
www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0321/breaking3.html
www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/un-should-probe-popes-abuse-role-2114085.html
www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/popes-weasel-words-add-to-victims-pain-2108824.html
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusets/articles/2010/03/21/popes_letter_stikes_a_mixed_chord/
www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/world/europe/22ireland.html
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7069646.ece
www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2706994
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/mar/22/pope-letter-ireland-abuse

One thing, though, that surprised me was the amount of attention some people gave section #4, about the secularized climate of society. Some openly questioned the relevance of such a discussion in a letter ostensibly charged with assuring the public of the hierarchy's commitment to conducting matters in a more transparent manner. I'm a simple man, so I won't claim to know about all that.

But one thing the 'nay-sayers' can't deny: There is very few 10 year-old orphans what are able to give a satisfactory account of Vatican II.

What exactly is the 'Sound of 1 Hand Clapping'?

Must be a very queer, lonely sort of a thing. The eerie, unearthly sort of a thing that could turn a fellah's mind inside out. It apparently drove this particular fellow to end it all after only 2 posts.

http://www.soundofonehandclapping.blogspot.com/

And think of it--he had an extra three letters to keep him company!*

I intend on this blog to share my enjoyment of the absurd, the mysterious, the inscrutable, the just plain weird. Especially in its literary manifestations.

"Sure," you say, "there is no lack for strangenesss in the world today! Have you turned on the evening news lately?"

Which would be precisely my point. Here we are, practically knocked down and washed away by a tidal wave of surreal weirdness, and the arbiters of popular culture would have us behave as if it were nothing more than the hollow knock of a callow neighbour on our door inviting us to the local rotary club's Sunday chicken dinner.

No my friend, those fellows have not the connoisseur's sensitivity, no real appreciation of the thing at all. It's as if Mary Magdalene, upon finding the open tomb of Christ, began to complain of His unreliability.**

In a world increasingly fixated on the literal, the mundane and the just plain stupid, I find wonderous revivifying inspiration from the writings of certain doctors mirabilis (e.g., Flann O'Brien, Hunter Thompson, et al.). Yes, they may show a shocking disregard for decorum, rules of syllogistic logic and everyday common sense--maybe they make no sense at all. But they sure do blow open a few new doors, and in inimitable styles that give you faith that there just might be such things as free will, moral agency and the ability for an individual to carve out a life of his own against the overbearing weight of The Machine pressing down upon us. After all, some of them new doors looked remarkably like walls until they was opened for us . . .

My hope is that the 'Sound of 1 Hand Clapping' can eventually become something like the bulletin board at the last rest stop on the road to perdition. Maybe it'd be wise to keep my ambitions modest, considering the success rate of some of my predecessors. What I probably mean to say here, in a more prosaically straightforward idiom, is that I wish to post on this blog snippets of weird original fiction, discussion of the works of the Masters, bookreviews, and links to the online publications of particularly promising aspirants. To that end, comments and contributions would be most welcome. I am confident that no one could be any weirder than you when you really put your mind to it.

*i.e., 'one' vs. '1'. Don't worry--this is a literary, not video medium. We've got all the time in the world for you to catch up.

** See, the standard story is that it was M. Magdalene, either alone as member of a larger party, that discovered the empty tomb of Christ that heralded the central mystery of the Jesus movement. John 20:1, Mark 16:1-7; Matthew 28:1-7; Luke 24:1-3. Look, I'm not insisting that you completely believe the absolute factuality of the whole account, I'm just illustrating an ultimate hypothetical example of a person missing the point entirely. . . Get it now? Certain irony there, no?

Sound of 1 Hand Clapping

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Very few indeed . . .

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