#punctuationmatters

The day after Mother's Day, as I was driving, I spotted a sign outside a church. The sign declared:

MOTHERS ARE GODS

ANGELS ON EARTH

Being a sometime editor, I quickly perceived what I thought was an error of diction and wanted to rejigger the movable letters to say:

MOTHERS ARE GODDESSES

thinking, "Wow, that's a pretty progressive church, going all New Age on us with gods or goddesses." And then I read the next line and realized the misperception that the missing apostrophe in "GODS" had wrought in one reader. See, punctuation matters. In heaven and on earth.

Incidentally, theologically speaking, I don't get all Thomas Kinkade-warm-and-gauzy over that angel thing. Back in the Sixties, in high school, Father Giuliani used to say we've got to be human before anything else. We're humans. No disrespect to angelic entities, wherever they may be, if anywhere, but we humans need not aspire to that ontological leap. (Is it even a leap, Kierkegaardian or otherwise? Now don't go ruffling your gossamers.)

It Is written, Or Is It?

Two weeks ago last Saturday -- oh, who cares when it was. Does it matter? So, I'm standing by the doorway inside Chipotle (which nearly everyone pronounces as if it were spelled Chipoltee), on Marshall Street, in Syracuse. I'm observing people accessible and visible on the sidewalk, easily seen through the big plate-glass window comprising the store's facade as they busily stream by. I see this bearded fellow walk by, wearing a Boston Red Sox wool cap. Wait. We both catch each other's eye. Wait. Hold it there a sec. There's that expression "double take." Or, as Merriam-Webster.com puts it:

"a delayed reaction to a surprising or significant situation after an initial failure to notice anything unusual"

Merriam-Webster says the first known use in English was in 1930.

In 2012, we both did a double take. Just like on TV or in the movies.

Stopped in our pedestrian, quotidian tracks.

We each did a take, then stopped, then did another take, maybe even a third and a fourth take.

Then I opened the door and advanced outside.

"Dan?"

"Paul?"

"Paul?"

"Dan?"

We laughed. But, knowing Dan, he was not totally surprised. Knowing me, I was not totally surprised. Yes, we were in Syracuse, but Dan lives in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. We see each other maybe once a year, maybe once every few years. We've gone stretches of hardly having any contact for -- what? -- a decade? So, the coolest thing is we were surprised but not surprised. Dan, knowing me, and vice versa, admits of such providential possibilities. And vice versa. (There's an expression: vice versa. Why isn't there an expression "virtue versa"?)

In the movie "Lawrence of Arabia," if I recall correctly, Lawrence says to one of the Arab tribal leaders: "It is written." Wait. Wouldn't it make more sense if someone said it to T.E. Lawrence? "It is written." By whom? And is it? If I remember the movie correctly, Lawrence ends up thinking nothing is written.

For reasons I find hard to explain, the phrase "it is written" resonates with me more readily than "it is God's will" or "God has a plan for us" or "God has a plan for me." And yet. Why? One sounds more mystical? Or mysterious? Or more respectful of free will? Can't explain that.

And yet.

So, was this written? Or pure coincidence?

And does it matter?

Why?

Or why not?

Ash Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Maybe Monday and Tuesday

And we thought Lent was over. "Ashes to ashes; dust to dust." We are cavalier. We are masters and mistresses of our universe. We live in the modern age, even post-modern, if you will. "Apocalyptic" is an adjective reserved for theologians or drama queens or alarmists. Besides, it has too many syllables. Apocalyptic. All by itself, one line of a haiku about endings -- with no end in sight. We conquered nature, didn't we? Nature. She's so last century, so pre-millennial. (And who says Nature is feminine, anyway?) From ashes unseen on the ground, under a true-blue (liar!) sky, our high-tech world is insulted by dust. Fibers that upon ingestion by a jet's turbine can stall an engine or flame it out. The rudeness of these volcanic particulates to ruin our techno planet, to stall the mighty engine of progress, to flame out the fragile text of the future. We were just getting used to "global" as an adjectival cliche. If these ashes turn to fibers, is it like the angel hair we put on Christmas trees in the 1950s, causing us to scratch an invisible itch? These Icelandic (the nerve! Iceland!) ashes, this devil's hair, are the molecular patron saint of Luddites Universal. Who are we such that ashes drifting above an azure-cerulean clarion-clear sky force us to huddle, to encamp in airports, would-be Haitians in waiting, communing with not nature but each other, as if the Me Generation had no choice but to admit the potential of a We Generation. Generation Ash. Five syllables. Another line in the uncompleted haiku, the haiku with the missing seven, the missing middle, searching for the heart of the matter. Ashes.

The Mysticism of Zoos

For me, last week visiting New York's Central Park Zoo for the first time in several years, as a wordsmith I was most struck by quotations sprinkled around on arbors, railings, and other borders. You might consider my infatuation with words in this case an infraction against Zen Buddhist clarity, of the sort noted in their old koan about looking at the moon versus looking at the moon's reflection in the water. Which somehow reminds me of today's Doubting Thomas Gospel.

No matter.

Here's a gorgeous sampling of what I mean:

The secret.
and the secret hidden deep in that.

-- Gary Snyder

Both William Wordsworth and T.S. Eliot often invoked the concept of the unnameable as a spiritual marker. Meister Eckhart talks of "the God beyond God," or words to that effect.

No wonder my son and his wife got married at the zoo.

Correct that: wonder, not no wonder.

Wonder, plenty of it.

My, My, Maimonides

Maybe you saw this. A Muslim owner of a $4.6-million racehorse named his horse Maimonides. The owner's good-will and peace gesture honors Moses Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher who lived more than 800 years ago.

The New York Times Sports section featured a photo of Orthodox Jewish kids visiting the horse. (No, contrary to rumors, the rabbi leading the field trip was not there to certify whether the horse was circumcised. Bad-da-boom. Calm down. It's a joke!)

Now, all we need are 5,677,439 to the ninth degree (I don't know how to make those superscript numerals on my blog) more heartfelt gestures like that for us to put our heads on our planetary pillows for a peaceful night's repose.

Speaking of Maimonides,

YIKES!

What a guy!

Blogging has its surprises. I like what I've learned already about Mr. M.M. He wrote medical and other aphorisms (but apparently not that many laughorisms, but I could be wrong). Cool. He wrote A Guide for the Perplexed (which sounds useful to me). And he espoused apophatic theology, as did my beloved Meister Eckhart. I learned this through listening to Tony DeMello tapes in 1993. Apophatic theology, or the Via Negativa, sort of says, "I can't tell you who or what God is. too mysterious. Maybe we can start by imagining what God is not.' I like that socks-inside-out stuff, to use the term of my late friend Sam Patterson.

Two bucks on Maimonides in the fifth.

Fly, baby, fly.