Skip to main content

A Scholastic Halibut

This morning, still thinking about yesterday's sandstorm warning, I was driving all over town, looking for fresh halibut, which is no simple search, here in the Sonoran Desert, all the while listening to a carousel debate about same-sex marriage--around and around, up and down, going nowhere--and whether there even was such a thing as a same-sex marriage, or whether marriage was exclusively what might be called "a union" between one man and one woman, apparently because it was the only way to get on to the next generation.  I decided I was a union man, but not if another kid was the only reason for another union meeting.

 It made me think of a favorite quote, from Erasmus of Rotterdam, in which he described medieval scholastic thought:  
“There are innumerable quibblings . . . concerning instances and notions, and relations and formalitations, and quiddities and eccëities, which no one can follow out with the eyes, except a lynx, which is said to be able in the thickest darkness to see things which exist nowhere.”

 I grew up in a religious tradition shaped by medieval scholasticism.  The 17th century scholastics who shaped the religion I learned as a child.  They really did believe that if they could make the proper distinctions, and reason from the right principles, one could know "the truth".  They distinguished "the Law" from "the Gospel", the Old from the New Testament, dispensations from dispensations, faith from works, apples from oranges, wine from grape juice, Saturday sabbaths from Sunday Sabbaths, and why milking cows and preaching sermons did not violate the Sabbath.  I do not remember any truth about same-sex marriage.  I do know that divorce was worse than marital abuse, and that it was best not to say anything about relatives who "fooled around", which I think usually did not take the form of same-sex foolery:  that was best never mentioned, although it might be hinted at in the case of maiden aunts (another scholastic distinction, I suppose).  

 It is odd to hear a scholastic debate on a pickup radio.  It is like owning a time machine, like turning water into wine, and finding a halibut in the desert.  Halibut have both eyes on the same side of their heads, too.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Watching a Formerly Sane Man Descend into Abject Religion

If you read the previous post, you know the apparatus, pictured here, is a torture machine. There are ten of them in our house, purportedly to circulate air to dry out all the problems caused by a water leak. We live in Tucson:  it has not rained in Tucson since the Gadsden Purchase. A mudslide the size of the one in Washington State could course through our neighborhood and it would be bone-dry and stone-hard before it quit moving. I suspect it is the CIA, and probably the Border Patrol! We are, after all, only about a hundred miles from the border. I fully expect a large suburban assault vehicle to pull up to the house, and for lots of people with UPPER CASE LETTERS on their shirts to interrogate us, and I will have to explain that all the drugs I use come from Walgreens and Total Wine. But it won't work.  Our minds are going. We are getting short with each other and, if they promise to turn off the fans, I will confess to having invented the Arab...
Post a Comment
Read more