2020-11-04 Yesterday was "election day" and "Morning has broken."

The public voices I heard on twitter and youtube and by proxy, the cable and TV networks had the requisite amount of existential angst and skepticism and humor. Mostly I watched a live youtube feed of Matt Taibbi and Katy Herzog scouring their environment for scoops and insights. The election is the "great anticipation" ritual of American life. I am less tempted to watch it all in real time as I have been for quite a while. Shakespeare's "sound and fury, signifying nothing" quote comes to mind.

I have been memorizing a hymn that starts "Immortal, invisible, God only wise." I felt like abandoning the task for a bit because some of the words rubbed me the wrong way. "Most blessed, most glorious ... Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise." I don't think we can get God to do what we want by flattering him and imploring him repeatedly like he is Donald Trump. But I went on regardless and the praise and adoration came to seem less problematic to me. The God of Jesus I regard as worthy of my worship whatever my fate.

I've been slowly learning the piano over the last couple months. One song I've been memorizing is "Morning has broken" which I thought was written by Cat Stevens. I recently discovered it is a rather old hymn. After burning the lyrics into memory I've come to think it is very similar in spirit to the Song of Solomon, a largely veiled but morally upright erotic song. "Like the first dew fall on the first grass." Nubile virginity. "Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden, sprung in completeness where his feet pass." Innocent children do not pick up on "feet" in the Bible being used as a euphemism. Memorizing this hymn has started to break a long and I think wrongly held sense of shame about sex even inside marriage. There is a popular complaint about men viewing women as forms of property, but I think that view wrongly casts property as a lifeless and evil idea. A wife's body is her husband's property, freely given and vice versa. Our duty is to possess each other aright.

One remembrance of my childhood that seared itself into me was a Sunday School class taught by a black woman who I think only taught one session. It was on Sodom and Gomorrah. She spoke to us very directly about the depth of evil in that story and the lessons to be drawn. The pupils were all young children whose Air Force fathers were contemplating participation in a present day encore.