Take My Five Dollars! Thursday, January 22, 2004

Spotted this morning on the way to the train: a hand-lettered sign taped to the interior wall of the Bayonne Community News:

Headlines Should Not Be Hy-Phen-Ated

Then, on the train, nearly finished Evelyn Waugh's "Helena." There's a wonderful passage toward the end where Helena, lately baptized, attends an intricate Christmas mass in Bethlehem. As she thinks about the Three Wise Men, the story turns into a reflection on faith, art, Waugh and all of us cranky aesthetes:

'Like me,' she said to [The Wise Men], 'you were late in coming. The shepherds were here long before; even the cattle. They had joined the chorus of angels before you were on your way....

'How laboriously you came, taking sights and calculating, where the shepherds had run barefoot! How odd you looked on the road, attended by what outlandish liveries, laden with such preposterous gifts!

'You came at length to the final stage of your pilgrimage and the great star stood still above you. What did you do? You stopped to call on King Herod. Deadly exchange of compliments in which began that unended war of mobs and magistrates against the innocent!

'Yet you came, and were not turned away....

'You are my especial patrons...and patrons of all late-comers, of all who have a tedious journey to make to the truth, of all who are confused with knowledge and speculation, of all who through politeness make themselves partners in guilt, of all who stand in danger by reason of their talents....

'For His sake who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for all the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.'

It last for two pages but speaks more clearly and more truthfully about faith and the human condition than fifty volumes of Da Vinci Codes or Gnostic Gospels or Blade and Chalices. Balls to them all.

@ 8:17:00 AM,

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