PZ's Podcast

No finer Southern prep ever hit the scene than the Sewanee graduate Tupper Saussy. His two albums produced under the name "The Neon Philharmonic", with Don Gant, are supreme examples of symphonic rock. More than that, however, the songs are profound.

Saussy's track entitled "Something to Believe In" speaks the voice of a questing human soul, "riding the wind" of life and searching for "something to believe in". Needless to say, the soul finds "a girl", whom the soul believes in and worships, only to lose. Now what? At the end of the song, Tupper's soul prepares to die, still looking for that "something to believe in".

I think we're probably almost all in that boat. Life's a wholly engaged existential search for God, and it's quite dangerous, because "in the dark", which is life in the world, you can think you've found it but you haven't. And then, when what you thought was It turns out not to be It, one's disillusion, and dissolution, becomes terminal. Be careful, in other words, about what you put your trust in. If you make an enduring, imprinting mistake, you may never find It! And the It -- call it by whatever name you will (HT Bill W.) -- is "the Rock that is higher than I". Just avow this, that YOU're not it -- nor is she and nor is he -- and you're almost home.

Oh, and two other things:

First, go out and find Enid Bagnold's play "The Chinese Ambassador" and read it from cover to cover. (It's quite short. It's just a play.)

Second, this cast is dedicated to TAMARA SANSBURY, who understands my Instagram posts.

Shibboleth's are often true in part. Maxims are true in part. But they are never, or at least rarely, wholly true.

One such maxim is a current fashionable imperative, Face the Cannons. The idea is that when you are confronted with opposition or antagonism, your best bet is to look it squarely in the face and permit it to do its worst. Somehow in that acquiescent transaction, your foe will lose its power and kind of flow through you and get de-potentiated.

There is a truth to this. Frank Lake used to talk about "assimilating the negativity" of one's life. He had, in practice, an important therapeutic point.

And yet! There seem to be certain "antagonists", certain oppositional forces -- some of them inside a person, some of them outside -- that resist the treatment. Certainly, there exists pain in our lives so acute that the prospect of facing it directly is too heavy for words. In other words, facing it, practically speaking, is almost impossible.

This podcast talks about THAT particular and specific pain -- THAT concrete negativity which is simply too much for one to bear, let alone welcome. I submit that you may well be conscious of such an element in the composition of your life. It is an element that resists assimilation, and even the hope of assimilation.

What then? Well, here I invoke our old ally Dennis Wheatley, not to mention America's most perceptive preacher; not to mention Jesus and St. Paul. There are some things, just a few but they're decisive, that resist acquiescence. Rather, they call for flight or, if worst comes to worst, that miraculous life's lesson known as "How To Throw a Crucifix".

Hope you like the music for this one, too! Especially the last track, "Easy To Be Hard", which unmasks a certain fashionable form of hypocrisy in the now.

In a quote that's been making the rounds recently, Rudolph Bultmann wrote, "When we encounter the words of Jesus in history, we do not judge them by a philosophical system with reference to their rational validity; they meet us with the question of how we are to interpret our own mode of existence. That we ourselves be deeply disturbed by the problem of our own life is the indispensable condition of our inquiry."

Note that word "indispensable".

I used to pussy foot some around this, trying to allow for "stronger" personalities or less either-or ways of putting the Christian Gospel. But all the time, I was really just scared to put it the full way I'd experienced it myself, afraid to do full (albeit excoriating) justice to the insoluble problem of being human -- insoluble, that is, on its own terms.

The truth is -- "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" (from 'Naughty Marietta') -- you can't make an inch of progress in solving your problem until you state the problem with no holds barred. And at that point, at the point of total and indeed helpless admission, it's as if every window opens and every door! Somehow embedded in your true statement/admission of your case is the answer itself.

This is why prayers of sincere apology, for example, are almost always instantaneously accompanied by radical new composure and peace. This is why sober assessments of what's actually going on in your beleaguered life -- your "Holy City" (John Bunyan; HT RKA) -- are almost always accompanied, within minutes, or even seconds, by external solutions. It is the truth of life: state the problem as it actually is, and the solution will hit you over the head.

Episode 252 of PZ's Podcast imports the Holy Ghost at the end. Listen carefully to Eddie James and co's inspired song, "Power". Then listen to it again. Everything's there.

Oh, and my podcast today is dedicated to DAVID BABIKOW, a hero and dedicated hearer of this Sweet Mystery of Life.

Benjamin Britten's 'Spider and the Fly' number from his Suite for "Johnson over Jordan", by J.B. Priestley, takes you by surprise. It sounds like Gershwin at the start, then becomes a kind of danse, and is ultimately sinister. The composer meant it like that, for he was drawn to Priestley's play because it concerns life after death; and Britten was interested in life after death during this period of his career.

Priestley broke an English taboo, you might say -- but it's a taboo in our country, also, in practice -- in his 1939 reflection on purgatory, and salvation, which he entitled "Johnson over Jordan". There is little in 20th Century theater to rival the third redemptive act of "Johnson over Jordan", except maybe "A Christmas Carol" from the century before.

What I hope to have underlined in this podcast is the play's decisive concern for universals. It was written and produced in the period right before World War II, but you'd never know it. Priestley is interested in the poignant memories and aspirations-to-love of an everyday person at the point of his (sudden) death -- and after death! As the 'Radio Times' reviewer wrote in 1965, when the play was revived on BBC television, "Priestley never allows himself to forget that wherever he takes us in the play, he is concerned with those

Hear this: the world, under the aegis of Satan, is lying to the human race about what really matters. It's not politics (that really matters). It's not predicates (that really matter) relating to "identity", such as gender, skin color, race, or ethnicity. It's not even art (that really matters). What really matters is "those emotions and problems... which are mankind's common property."

Or, to quote Justin Hayward, who rounds out my cast, we are all pilgrims "On the Road to Love".

This is a short riposte to the politicization of basically everything just now; but not in the way of taking sides, but rather in the way of digging deeper. I mean, digging deeper to the best and true interests of human beings.

The best and true interest of human beings, the necessary condition for our welfare, exists in the direction of connection with another person; and, most typically (tho' not absolutely always), a romantic connection. The best interest of us does not consist in political concerns and goals. As Sting sang it, in "Spirits in the Material World" (1981), "There is no political solution. Have no faith in constitutions."

Sting did not mean, and this podcast does not mean, that politics is not important; or that social and political concerns are not worthy ones. But social and political concerns seldom partake of ETERNITY. They are passing away. By definition, they are passing away.

What doesn't pass away is the human aspiration for romantic connection. The reason one can aver that this is a knowable truth -- indeed, a universal truth -- is one's experience with dying people. When people are dying, or believe that their death is imminent, their interest in politics absolutely crashes down to nil. They "check out", as it were, in favor of more direct personal concerns, specifically the interest we all have in being loved (and cherished), and the interest we feel, by consequence, in loving and cherishing someone else.

I used to say in Birmingham that no life-long "War Eagle" or "Crimson Tide" fan who was dying in UAB Hospital had ever once talked to me, or anyone else at that point, about football. When the Reaper was in sight, such just collapsed. Overnight. Instantly.

The same is true of politics. Someone once said to me of his dying father, "He wants to stay around to see if McGovern can win." So I decided to 'try that out', at the hospital, and asked the dad what his thinking was about the upcoming election. I heard him say, right to my face, "Remind me, Paul, who Senator McGovern is, again."

Do you see the importance of this? If you think politics is ultimate, then you are being deceived. (In my opinion, being deceived by Satan, who always wants to confuse us concerning our true welfare.) Politics is important, sure. But it is not ultimate.

What is ultimate is love received and love given, and most commonly, romantic, emotionally connecting love that is mutual. That's what most people have on their minds when "The Train's a-Comin'".

The music for this cast is 'Philadelphia Soul', specifically "When Will I See You Again", by The Three Degrees; and "Used Ta Be My Girl", by The O'Jays.

The cast is dedicated to SPENCER LEFFEL.

Ellis Brazeal recently pointed out a clear-and-present fact about what we call "sanctification". Ellis observed that the moment we begin to think we have it, or have made it, it is completely nullified. In other words, the only actual sanctification at which one ever arrives is un-self-conscious.

Another way of putting this would be to say that no amount of or "espece de" virtue-signalling will ever cut it. The moment you draw attention to your "growth" or "discipleship", at that exact moment it gets disqualified as evidence of moral improvement. The only material sanctification is, to the evincer of it, unawares! Someone ELSE, maybe, sees you're a better man than you were before in some area. But the moment you see it, or glory in it even, it vanishes. It literally ceases to exist.

I would never in a million years have believed that the Top 40 song by the Canadian band Motherlode entitled "When I Die" would apply to me. At the time, which was the spring of 1970, I disregarded the song 100%, as I listened to it in the late-night fast food restaurant on the way home from the library. It could never ever be or become true of, well, me.

On the other hand, "When I Die" made an indelible impression. On the soul, that is. (See Podcast 248, "Dead Reckoning".) My soul knew, unconsciously, that the song was a point of inspiration. (Unlike 'Led Zeppelin II', which at the time, was the sole sustenance, in practice, of yours truly.)

Some day I hope "When I Die" will be played at my funeral -- or the wake, like they played Lloyd Fonvielle's signature songs at his wake not so long ago. But I'll be maybe shadowing the place, wondering whether it really came true. I hope so much that it will have. And hope that my sanctification will not be "making me late" (Carly Simon). LUV U.

THIS PODCAST IS DEDICATED TO ELLIS AND DEBBIE BRAZEAL.

Pastoral experience in hospital pre-op units provides abundant evidence for the existence of the soul. I first saw this evidence in Birmingham years ago, when someone we knew and loved was having to go into the operating room twice the same day, because the first "pass" that morning had failed. The situation was in fact do-or-die, and I had never before seen the look of fear which had come over the patient's face as she was being prepared for her second procedure.

Then another time, in Washington, as the gurney was being wheeled out to surgery, a kind of fluttering look of complete panic and "We Gotta Get Out of this Place"- NOW came over a man I knew. The inward person, i.e., the soul, was in absolute but completely failing revolt over what the outward person, i.e., his body, was being forced to endure.

This is not dualism. It's empiricism. There is a body and there is a soul, and the two will part -- the connection between them be dissolved -- at the point of death.

My podcast considers that supreme and also sublime moment of dissolution. Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross comes into it. Humphrey Bogart and Lizbeth Scott come into it. And The Love Unlimited Orchestra comes into it.

Please don't end up like Marley. Many do! End up like St. Paul, leaning on the Everlasting Arms. LUV U!

People are constantly trying to shoe horn their search for God into containers too tight for the Object of the search. This is probably true of some of your interests, whether it's food or Hammer horror films or "Philadelphia Soul" -- to name two of my current but chronic faves -- or you name it. On something or someone, you are probably pinning very high hopes.

The blogosphere is full of such shoe horns -- interests such as a movement or style or movie or type of music that attracts your "ultimate concern" (Tillich). But they don't actually produce for you what you need.

Take Joe Cocker. I love Joe Cocker, and think "Hitchcock Railway" is one of the irreducibly GREAT rock 'n roll songs of all time. Or Led Zeppelin 2, the album. I honestly thought once -- in practice, tho' I'd have denied it in theory -- that Led Zeppelin 2 could save me. Or for that matter, the movies of Jacques Demy. The latter are wonderful, but they can't save a person.

Nor can another person save a person. (Tho' they can come close. Listen to the Spinners' songs at the beginning and the end of this cast.)

We are just chronically trying to shoe horn our aspiration for unity with God, peace with God, into spaces that don't fit. They're too small! Can you think of a "space" within this world, within what Paula White calls "the natural", into which you are trying to shoe horn something inside you that is Ultimate. Luther would have called it an idol.

But hey, I still like the Spinners. And then there's Blue Magic. LUV U.

One of the best things about the recent Mockingbird conference in NYC was its unerring focus on universals and primary factors in human destiny and identity, rather than on contingencies and elements in life that do not endure, but pass away.

Hence one's love for Blue Magic.

Blue Magic were a Philadelphia group in the early and mid-1970s who stuck to absolute basics. Which is to say, Blue Magic stuck to romantic connection and romantic loss as the big drivers. Almost every song they performed is about acutest mourning (for a person) or ecstatic presence (of a beloved and loving person). I don't think "profound" is too strong a word for Blue Magic's output. (Never mind the Spinners, Stylistics, Delfonics, and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes).

This cast talks about Home and the treasured feelings, some of them conflicted and unfulfilled, that almost everyone has concerning Home. Think "The Wizard of Oz" and "The Green, Green Grass of Home". In passing, I connect those feelings to current passions on the subject of immigration; and relate it all to ... college! (Did you have fun in college? Did you want to have fun in college? Yes or no.)

If we could just frame our debates -- basically all of them -- in terms of primary and not secondary or even tertiary elements in the creation of personal happiness. Abstractions don't make you happy. Blue Magic understood this. Dorothy understood this. Paula White understands this. The Gospel and the Word of God understand this.

Podcast 246 is dedicated to the Rev. Canon John Arthur Zahl, Rector-elect of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Bedford, NY.

Well, the short answer, tho' not the whole answer, is: you can't. I wish you could. I can give you a hundred pointers and tips concerning it; and can even print out some prayers for you to say, in hopes of their breaking the soul-tie.

But they would all be "tweaks". They would all be wistful hopes that will let you down. This is because in "the natural" -- i.e., within the systems and interactions of this world -- the soul-tie is a tethering of something eternal, your endless soul, to a contingency. The chain of your soul to the memory or person or situation to which it is chained partakes of eternity. You can't break it. From your/our end, it is unbreakable.

On the other hand, it is nothing to God. Because God is in charge of your soul, He -- and He alone -- can unchain you. "Unchain My Heart" (Ray Charles, 1961). Exactly how God does this, exactly how and when and where God unfastens the unfastenable in your life -- I can't say. (Wish I could.)

But one thing I can say. And mean it! "Once I was blind, now I see." I write as one for whom the soul-tie's been broken. I never thought it would happen. Had tried everything.

Listen to Eddie James' song again. And Tavares'. You can agree with Tavares: "It Only Takes a Minute, Girl." LUV U. PZ