Love or Folly... or Both?

I have recently been reading the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. I enjoy it because I have never read anything like it before. Aside from it being a classic, it's originality is a breath of sweet aroma amidst the predictable, unoriginal, overly dramatic literature of today.
The first tale, The Knights Tale, is remarkable in that it tells a love story that not one person I know would be able to relate to. Even though it is so distant from us, we cannot help but be drawn in. The story goes something like this: A duke named Theseus encounters several ladies whose husbands have been killed and their cities besieged and they have been cast out. Noble Theseus sets out to avenge the innocent ladies and he takes two princes as perpetual prisoners, Arcita and Palamon. Theseus' friend visits and recommends that Arcita is set free as they once knew each other. Arcita is released on the condition that he never comes back. The problem with this banishment is that in prison Arcita and Palamon lay eyes on the fair lady Emily (Theseus' sister) and are both stricken with "love". Arcita curses the day he was born and rots away until he plots to disguise himself as a servant and go back to Athens. This disguise works and he slowly gains the respect of the duke until there is no one in all the land that the duke trusts more. Then one day, seven years later, while Arcita was in the woods hunting or something he stumbles across Palamon who had recently escaped from prison. They dispute about the lady Emily and decide to fight like honorable men would over her. The next day during the fight the duke, his wife, and Emily stumble across the fighting men and the duke is about the kill them both when the weeping of his wife and Emily puts pity into Theseus' heart. He proposes that they go away for a year and then with exactly one hundred knights, fight for the fair lady Emily. I'll stop here because I don't want to give anything away... but the point is: both of these men are willing to go through suffering, pain, war wounds, endless waiting for a woman who they've only ever glimpsed on occasion, one whom they have little chance of ever attaining her favor, and one whom another loves as well.
When I first read this I thought "how utterly ridiculous," "oh my gosh he's so dramatic... just get over it." I then stopped myself and heard that it was voice of my culture speaking in my mind. This way of love and sacrifice is unheard of because most men are lazy, they go through girls like a child with a play thing, and if that doesn't work out they go through another one. Also I've seen a lot of girls in my seemingly short life and I've never seen light coming off of a girl as it seemed to have done in this story. I've never seen a girl so beautiful that she could be compared to a goddess. But I realized that that is because our eyes see things differently. Our boys in mens clothing are taught to think that each girl is just another fish in the sea. Our hearts prepare for disappointment and so we stop fighting for what we probably won't get.
I had to force myself to stop saying "wow Arcita and Palamon are so stupid they should just get over it" because the way our culture says to love is different from their love. Our love is cheap. Our men aren't willing to sacrifice everything they have, everything they are, and everything they will be for true love. And us women are not working to be worthy of this love by being wholly beautiful, pure, and true. The reason why this "love" is not merely cheap infatuation, though it seems like it, is because of the commitment, the risk, and the cost. These men are willing to give up everything for Emily. It seems selfish, but why not go after the one woman, fairest woman, purest, most beautiful woman you know and give up everything for her safety comfort and pleasure and a life shared with you, the essence of chivalry and honor? Instead, the real selfishness lies in the modern meager hunt after what young men want in hopes of finding love. But love without sacrifice is a piteous love indeed.
This true love, though, is so secretly pure and encapsulates the beauty of this story. That is why no one can relate to this love story and that is why deep down we are hopelessly captivated.

An Endless Procession

Instead of a Show - By Jon Foreman

I hate all your show and pretense

the hypocrisy of your praise
the hypocrisy of your festivals
I hate all your show.
Away with your noisy worship
Away with your noisy hymns
I stop up my ears when your singing ‘em
I hate all your show.
Instead let there be a flood of justice
An endless procession of righteous living, living
Instead let there be a flood of justice
Instead of a show.

Your eyes are closed when you’re praying

you sing right along with the band
you shine up your shoes for services
but there’s blood on your hands.
You turned your back on the homeless
and the ones that don’t fit in your plans
quit playing religion games
there’s blood on your hands.
Ah! let’s argue this out
if your sins are blood red
let’s argue this out
you’ll be white as the clouds
let’s argue this out
quit fooling around.
Give love to the ones who can’t love at all
give hope to the ones who got no hope at all
stand up for the ones who can’t stand up at all
instead of a show
I hate all your show.

This is a picture of the quintessence of musical genius. The hypocrisy, the conviction, and the hope that this song portrays, all in tastefully done acoustic artistry, must capture the attention of the church. This song was actually adapted from Amos chapter 5 (several various verses but mostly 21-24). It was Amos' job to be the voice of God in the darkness, to be a voice of warning and of hope. "You turned your back on the homeless and the ones that don't fit into your plans." That's the sentence that sinks deep into my soul.

"Instead let there be a flood of justice, an endless procession of righteous living, living." Ladies and Gentlemen, a life of discipleship is more than church and charities, it's more than checks and perfunctory chides. I love this song most especially because Foreman writes it straight from Amos who is speaking from God's mouth talking to his chosen people, Israel and saying that their offerings are a gross stench to his nostrils. True, we are not virgin Israel being seduced away from God, but the call to ardently seek God is just as tangible in our own lives today as it was to Israel. So how can we apply the words in this melody to our own lives?

Confession: I like the sound of my own voice... I'll admit it. But I know that if my heart is not wholly disposed to God with all I am during worship, I don't sing. I pray. I pray that God would transform my heart... so that I can sing in worship... and that my praise would not be detestable in his sight. I know that if I keep singing and my heart is not focused on the one to whom I'm singing, I'm just singing to hear myself... then I become the object of my worship therefore defaming something sacred and holy. When I am humble, my heart is changed and I sing in rejoicing and my eyes are re-focused. But sometimes, though, my heart is not in it and I continue to not sing, I continue to ask God for even the faintest desire to pray for a changed heart... and sometimes it takes a while.

But God is a merciful God. Even in our weakness he is strong and that's why he is worth singing for. That's why He is not an audience to some grand production, He's the king we worship with the best we have, with a heart that longs to please Him. God promised a return for our devotion, he promised his people in Amos chapter 5 that if they sought Him, they would live. If we seek Him, we will live.
(The picture, by the way, is a drawing of the prophet Amos. I thought it appropriately placed next to this song.)

Explained: The Set Change

As you, if I even have any readers, have noticed, I recently changed almost everything about my blog. I spent hours searching for and finding a template and rewriting some html because the links didn't work and various things of that sort.
Amidst these changes, you may also have noticed that I changed the name of the blog. I thought that my first name was o.k. but excessively cheesey and quite like the annoying person that runs around telling everyone to smile all the time. The truth is, I want to dwell on all things bright and beautiful because that's exactly what real home is like, but we're not home yet. We live in the shadow of home and the imitation of what is real. I read an article by C.S. Lewis one time about the stage and how as the audience we are quite curious to know the reality behind the set. We wonder who the actors and actresses really are, and that those painted masses aren't real mountains and trees, they just look like them... and to go behind them would reveal how very unreal they are. But to step outside would reveal real mountains and trees, real people, and real lives, just as stepping behind the curtain would reveal how very unreal the shadow is. Theaters mimic what is real, but they aren't real themselves. This world is but a shadow of real home, I am fully convinced of this. That is why I changed my name.

"The Curtain Call" is when, at the end of the show, the actors and actresses stop acting. They come out on stage in their costumes and bow before the audience for their fantastic display of shadow-making (imitating real life). Something casts the shadow we love and so I call my blog "The Curtain Calls" as a summons for the curtain to be lifted and to explore what is beyond the shadows so we can make this show even more like the real, good thing. There is much to be loved in this shadow as Lewis's character, the unicorn, remarked in the Last Battle upon entering Aslan's Country, "The reason why we loved Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this... come further up and further in."

Et tu Brute?

So I was helping my brother write a paper the other day. He's a Sophomore in high school and his assignment was to compare the accounts of the assassination of Julius Caesar as told by Shakespeare and Plutarch. My brother then listed a series of differences and similarities between the two accounts. Not knowing how to sum up in a good conclusion, I suggested that he pick which one tells the story better and to say why that person gives a better account. Through a series of questions and forcing him to think about this he came to the same conclusion I did (surprise): Shakespeare tells the story better.

There is nothing on this earth that is quite like a story well told. There's something captivating about picking up a walking stick and sneaking through forests with Bilbo and the dwarfs. There's something fascinating about the mental explosion that occurs in the dining car on the Orient Express trying to figure out who stabbed the dead man. We lose our breath but never tire of chasing Huck and Jim down the Mississip. The intrigue that we feel when the great lion finally appears just when the children are at their last moments, is sometimes too much to bear. Somehow in the back of our minds, we know everything is going to be OK in the end, but we don't know how, or when, or why. Some heroes lose their life on the way, Gandalf the Grey in the mines, Susan Pevensie who will never return to the beloved lands, the great warrior Patroklos. In these great stories, we laugh, we cry (at least the tears drip down our souls if not our cheeks), we think, we hope, and it ends.

That is why History is so frightfully boring to me and I've never taken to it. Because no matter how good of a historian you are, you will never capture or draw the reader (at least me) into the minds, hearts, hopes, and fears of characters involved. History will never let me experience the sadness and doubt that accompanied the separation of Merry and Pippin at Rohan. Yes, I know. The quest to destroy the ring and save Middle Earth is not a real story... but it represents real feelings and real courage and heroism and love of good which are real.

Julius Caesar as told by Shakespeare includes us in the inner conflict of men, the citizens of Rome. Shakespeare does not tell you what side to be on, he shows you the intentions and motives, the behind the scenes, the wives, the resulting fissures, all told in the most beautiful of words. That way we can actually experience conviction one way or the other when the temptation to overthrow a tyrant for the sake of the greater good arises. I don't know one history textbook that has ever moved me. Dates, times, places, endless names that I cannot remember, events of some great splendor that I don't even understand because I'm too busy trying to remember who is who. It's all very distasteful after a while and yet... it must be taught and it must be learned. Bummer.