Inauguration Day Challenge!

My challenge to you, good people, is this:

If you cannot swear the Oath of Office on a Bible, what book would you choose?

For me, it depends on whether I am trying to send a message with my choice or whether I will choose a book that means a lot personally to me either with regards to our nation or to my own self.

As far as sending a message goes, not swearing on the Bible already makes a pretty clear statement that God is not necessarily going to be sitting on the cabinet next to the Treasury Secretary.  But if I really wanted to send that message home I would probably swear the oath on a copy of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature, which I have read bits and pieces of and manages to give a decent proof against the existence of God.  If memory serves David Hume thought we should not concern ourselves with God but rather use reason to create conditions that would lift up all mankind to new heights: a view that Jefferson, perhaps, would not disagree with.  If memory also serves, David Hume could outconsume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

If on the other hand I wanted to send a more personal message to the members of the opposing party, I could think of no better choice than John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces.

If I was going to choose a book that means a lot to me personally, my mind naturally looks at the favorites I have come across over the years.  But I don't think that War and Peace has too much to say about the American Experience; I think the plot of The Crimson Petal and the White, in which the heir to a perfume empire gets stuck into his job so that he can purchase his favorite whore and support her in style, is probably a wee bit to distatesful to a broad swath of the American public; The Beatles Anthology is probably too heavy for most members of the supreme court to lug around.

My favorite book of all time, to which I attach intense personal meaning, is The Brother's Karamazov, but that book betrays a troubled soul and I feel it is important to project strength when one takes the oath of office (again, that whole messaging thing).  So, at long last, I choose Frank Beamer's Turn Up The Wick.

Not only does one get to learn about the life one of the greatest college football coaches of all time, but also how Frank turned the team around after the disasterous 2-8-1 season of 1992.  One year later the Hokies were 9-3 and found glory at the Poulan Weedeater Independence Bowl.  It is difficult to find in human history a more miraculous series of events.  Dunkirk comes to mind.

I keep it next to my bed, above my own Bible and next to a loaded Long Land Pattern flintlock musket, bayonet (naturally) attached.  Look, if it was good enough when Mel Gibson defeated the British at Cowhouse (an amalgamation of Cowpens and Guillford's Courthouse, which is what the last battle in "The Patriot" sort of seems to be) well, it's damn well good enough for me. Aim small, miss small.

So there you go.  In Turn Up the Wick I have found a book with intense personal meaning but that sends a clear message; and that message is that if we change out our staff America will finally get into a bowl game and beat Indiana.  It's a message the people are desperately waiting to hear, and it couldn't have come at a better time.  Indiana, after all, has it coming to them.

So I ask you, what book would you choose?

"Siwi, can you tell me how to get to Sebastopol?"

So the other day I was eating dinner with one of those awful city women my mother always warned me about.  She was the VP of SP Publishing and I was trying to sell my recently completed manuscript entitled "I For One Care Less for Them:  How I Kicked the Cupcake Habit and Learned to Love the Muffin".

Ms. Huffingtonstone ordered an espresso after dinner but promptly sent it back.  "Like shit, it tastes", she said, as she pulled out her rather expensive smart phone.  "It's so sad that the lengths that one must go to to get a decent cup of coffee."  She sent a text to someone and then tucked in to a piece of Tiramisu.  A few moments later she received a text, threw down her fork in utter frustration, and replied.

"It's also sad that one can't find good help these days," she said, her thumbs dancing across the screen.

"What is the problem?" I asked.

"My new assistant.  You'd think that after two weeks on the job she'd have it down.  How hard is it to remember that I drink venti soy caramel machiatos, no whip?  Seriously."

"Venti whatnows?"

She set down her phone.  "Thank God for text messaging, that's all I can say.  I can still remember the days when I'd have no choice but to send her back out there and get it right.  Of course, they learned faster when they had to go back out in the rain and sleet and snow..."

As she spoke I thought to myself - a simple text message kept this poor over privileged New York woman from the minor disaster of having to suffer through bad coffee, but what if, say, the British had had smart phones and text messaging during the Battle of Balaclava, October 25 1854?  Might the Charge of the Light Brigade never happened?

For those of you not bothering to go to the link, the Charge of the Light Brigade was an ill-fated charge that took place during the battle.  It seems that a mix of mis-interpreted orders, bad handwriting, and even personal rivalries amongst officers contributed to sending the Light Brigade of Calvary (about 670 men in rather dashing uniforms) down a Valley of Death into the teeth of an established Russian artillery battery, when they should have been attacking Russian artillery that was already retreating from the so-called "Causeway Heights".

It was bad.

But again, I ask you:  what if the British had texts in 1854?

Lord Raglan:  Lord Cardigan, my dear fellow!
Lord Cardigan:  Sir?
Lord Raglan:  It is my duty to inform you that you are making a most egregious error.
Lord Cardigan:  Milord?
Lord Raglan:  I want you to take the Russian guns from the Causeway Heights.  NOT the ones in the valley, towards which you are now gallantly leading your Brigade.  But my dear sir, if you lead your force in the direction in which you are now heading, your men will be blown into tiny tiny bits despite the fact that they will naturally fight with incredible bravery and tenacity (as they are British).
Lord Cardigan:  You having me on?
Lord Raglan:  brb.
Lord Raglan:  Look at this:

Lord Cardigan:  Oh dear dear me.
Lord Raglan: See?
Lord Cardigan:  Perfectly milord.  That would have been disastrous.
Lord Raglan:  Indeed.  Thank God for these amazing communication machines.
Lord Cardigan:  Here him!  Here him!
Lord Raglan:  Hey, get a load of this:

Lord Cardigan:  HOT!

I thought about bringing all this up to Mrs. Huffingtonstonington (is that the same name I used last time....eh.  I don't care), but decided it wouldn't help my cause.  As it was, my manuscript was rejected, so I should have just taken the opportunity to geek out.

In Which Nick is Jazz Fluted out of the Lay Ministry

Every few months of so I get a call from St. Mark Lutheran Church asking me to be a communion assistant.  It's a pretty simple job - I basically present the wine to the pastor (while another person presents the Host), I stand next to the altar during the Communion prayers, and then I help distribute the wine.  At our Church we pass out these little plastic tumblers and I very carefully put some wine into each one as the communicants kneel at the rail.

Can I just say one thing?  I don't really like the tumblers because when I drink the wine I always feel like I am taking a shot of whisky.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but there is a place for that and Church isn't the place.  You take a shot at home after a stressful day, perhaps, or when you saunter into a two bit mining town after a long day on the dusty trail, or when you need a little bit of courage to go ask that woman for a dance at the wedding reception (a woman who may well turn out to be your wife -- thank you, Stolichnaya!).  But you don't do it at the communion rail.  

Anyway.  I had been asked to serve with my wife at the 5:30 Christmas Eve service, and we were standing there with the communion implements (there has to be a better word for that) in the knave waiting for the offering to end.  We were being treated to a beautiful piece of music, a duet for flute and organ, and as I stood there listening I heard a little bit of syncopation.  

What happened next was a most unfortunate chain reaction of mental eclecticuity.

Syncopation makes me think of jazz.  Syncopated flute music makes me think of Jazz Flute.  Jazz Flute makes me think of this:

It was a very unfortunate thought to have before going up the altar.  I told my wife about it, thinking that sharing would help kind of keep it in the box, but it made her laugh instead; laughter, being infectious, only made things worse.  

Trish has a Theater degree from Virginia Tech; her education has equipped her well to deal with a situation like this, and she was able with some difficulty to pull her self together before we walked up to the altar.  

Did I pull it together?  While my education at Virginia Tech at least laid the groundwork for me being able to launch a submarine, it does very little to help me in crucial real life situations such as this.  But of course the communion liturgy is the commemoration of the Last Supper and in a way of Christ;s death on the cross, a reminder of what God has done for us through the Crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord, a ritual that reminds us that God is present with us.  Clearly the emotions girding such a solemn (and yet somehow joyful) meal at altar would overpower any other considerations.

So as the Pastor said:

In the night in which he was betrayed our Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples saying "Take and Eat; this is my body, given for you.  Do this for the remembrance of me."

...and then continued

Again, after supper, he took the cup, gave Thanks, and gave it for all to drink saying "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.  Do this for the remembrance of me."  

...I totally Jimmy Falloned it. I am happy to say at least that I didn't actually laugh out loud, but the only way I could hold all in was with a series of very visible grimaces, grins, smirks, ticks, and a bit of head shaking.  I just couldn't get the whole jazz flute thing out of my head, no matter how I tried.  

At last the prayer had past and I went with my wife with a chalice to administer communion by intinction, which is what we usually do for larger services such as Christmas Eve (for those of you unaware, intinction is the method by which the bread is dipped into the wine by the communicant -- and I say bread, but really its a wafer with very little absorbency, which is perfect for intinction).  My job was easy:  I stood with the chalice and as the communicants dipped their wafers into the aforementioned vessel I simply had to say "The Blood of Christ, shed for you" as they did so.  My wife and I were administering communion at one station, and the pastor was at the other with the acolyte of the day.

I was putting in a workman like performance when a family came up to me that I didn't recognize, probably because they go to a different service.  The children did not take communion and the mother said  "The children get a blessing."

"I don't know if I can do that," I quietly protested, raising my free hand up towards my neck to indicate the absence of any kind of clerical collar.  But she was insistent, and said again: "The children get a blessing."

I have heard many a Blessing in my day.  Even now, sitting here, I can say "The Lord Bless you and keep you, The Lord maketh his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace".  Maybe not quite right, but any one of those would have sufficed.  I could have easily simply said "The Lord give you peace on this blessed Christmas" or something like that.  

But no.  I was frozen with fear so that I could not think, and as I tentatively placed my left hand on the blond head of the first child I stammered out the now immortal Marickovich Christmas Blessing:  "Oh God....bless this kid.  Have a Merry Christmas".

I knew it was pretty bad for a blessing, but to stay consistent I said the same thing to the child's three brothers and sisters.  

After that, my wife took over the blessings of the children that came up to us, and after the communion stuff (again, there has to be a better word for that) had been properly put away and my wife and I were allowed to return to our seats I excused myself, went out of the sanctuary and into the hall, and finally burst out laughing.