PZ's Podcast

I'm talking about unforeseen death.

"I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" (Electric Prunes, 1967):

"Are You Ready?": Bob Dylan asked in 1980.

Sunday after Sunday I hear sermons that seem completely to sidestep the one really big reason a person would go to church. John Wesley never sidestepped it. Nor did Luther. St. Ignatius didn't, either. Don't you.

The music is "Good Vibrations" at the start, by The Beach Boys; and "I Knew Jesus (Before He Was a Super Star)", at the end, by Glen Campbell.

Here is the description for iTunes and also the blurb for Mockingbird:

So much has been written -- I mean, SO MUCH -- concerning the so-called Historical Jesus: a welter of books and "Untersuchungen". I've spent most of my career reading these books, and writing a few, too.

Then Pope Francis came along and put them all in a cocked hat. This is because if you want to see with your own eyes how Jesus operated in the New Testament -- how he acted, how he spoke, how he was desired, and how he was received -- all you need to do is watch Francis. Phrancis.

The way Christ was with Zacchaeus, Bartimaeus, the man at the Pool of Bethesda, the woman with the issue of blood, Jairus -- the beat goes on:

All your questions about the conduct and message of the historical Jesus -- or almost all of them -- will be answered. It just takes a few videos, a couple speeches, a few infants kissed, a few cripples blessed.

Remember the song by The Fifth Dimension, "Blowing Away"? (George Harrison wrote a similar song.) So much of what I read and learned over 40 ytears just got, well, blown away -- by the Real Thing.

Songs like "Hooked on a Feeling" and "Don't Pull Your Love Out on Me, Baby", together with a zillion co-belligerants that are written and performed "In the Name of Love" (Thompson Twins), reveal the nature of love and loss, undoings and exaltings, and painful stasis and buoyed forward movement.

Now just imagine if professional New Testament scholars "parsed" pop songs the way they want to parse the Gospels. You can't do it. Or rather, you don't need to do it. "She Loves You" (The Beatles) is so obviously true. "Tracks of My Tears" is obviously true. "My Girl" is obviously true.

Just like the Bible, or most of it. When you read the Bible through the lens of acknowledged pain and the deficits that come from being emotional human persons -- if you do that, the Bible makes sense. Doesn't need parsing.

William Tyndale was right! The "simplest ploughboy" can understand the Bible, or at least enough of the Bible to make sense of life, and loss.

Read the Bible the way you listen to Motown. "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" is true, to life. As is... Luke 24. LUV U (PZ)

"Now it wasn't just John Boehner! I noticed as I watched the Pope inter-acting with individuals, and especially with individuals in acute need or distress, that it was those encounters that touched me personally. (I was abreacting all over the place.)

I don't have spina bifida. I'm not in a wheelchair. I'm not six years old, nor 84 (yet). Nor am I homeless. But hey: Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child! My tears flow freely, and often not freely enough. In other words, I identify with distress and need. I identify with exclusion, tho' you might not know it. I identify with rejection and exile, tho' again, you might not know it.

The point is, everybody's at their own point of need. Everybody's got something they're thinking about that's painful.

Pope Francis, walking in the steps of the great Understander, the great Sympathizer, touched the core pain. He touched the core pain of many, many people. It was busting out all over.

I think we're each walking in "The Tracks of My Tears". (Thank God for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.) And when they bubble up, you can just smell the healing.

Is vertical religion -- not just calls to social justice, not just implied belief (system) -- but actual vertical religion rooted in anything resembling fact?

I'm utterly bummed these days by mainstream Christianity that just leaps over the religious element on the way to the "mission" element. There's nothing there, I mean nothing there -- to aid an everyday sufferer. Like me, for example.

On the other hand, evangelicals continue to fake it royally. They'll talk you blue in the face about God's being present in the worst and darkest moments of your life. But when it's you who is actually there, you who is sitting flummoxed in the Shadows of Knight (1966), they act as if they didn't mean a word of it. Grace? Real Grace? "You have got to be kidding." Book him!

The theme of this 201st podcast is Real Religion. Does it exist?

Oh, and SEE The Sentinel (1976). Don't miss The Sentinel (1976).

This podcast is dedicated to Melina Smith.

So maybe it is the Who's Final Tour.

Whatever it is, it's Podcast 200, and that's a benchmark.

Seriously, the two core themes of PZ's Podcast are the durability and necessity of romantic connection; and the presence of God when a person is at the end of his or her rope. 'God meets us at our point of need.'

Gosh, I've seen that happen a lot. Not least of all, to me.

And I know, too, from Mary -- 'Along Comes Mary' (The Association) -- that the boy-girl side of things is paramount. Nothing above it.

Now, for 23 short minutes, Come Fly With Me.

Sometimes I wish I could give a college commencement address. (No one is ever going to ask.) But I should like to talk about romantic love, and its over-riding, over-reaching, superseding strength as an element -- the decisive element -- in personal decision-making.

I can't really say that, though. Many people seem to want to "privilege" career and/or professional choices over their love life. They seem to want to, at least. But then you surprise yourself! You quit your job, or apply for a job in another city, or go back to school; and the real reason is that you've met someone, or want to. Even desperately want to.

Romantic love always wins. Tho' it takes too long these days.

What am I saying? Put romantic love first. Hey, and then, work's a piece of cake. You'll probably be promoted at work the moment you start promoting yourself to her.

Artur London was one of the 11 most misunderstood men in the world,

After suffering the most inhuman torture and brainwashing, London was sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes not one of which he had come 10,000 light years close to committing.

Later on, Arthur London was released, rehabilitated; and now they name streets after him.

Arthur London said that his life's struggle was to differentiate between the essence of an ideal, and the form in which that ideal had taken shape politically -- a debased and wicked form, it turns out. London also said that being a Communist in a Soviet prison was like being a Christian tortured by the Spanish Inquisition. Christians, like Communists, could only survive, and persist,

Good luck, Arthur!

It's great blessing, Cimarron -- which was based on the novel Cimarron, written by Edna Ferber. But you'd never know it's a blessing if you relied on the critics.

Cimarron has become notorious in recent times for its racial and ethnic stereotyping. When you read contemporary descriptions of this movie,

Yet the amazing thing is that Cimarron is actually the opposite of what it's accused of being. It's actually a definitive portrait of "Radical Hospitality",

But only if you aren't carrying so much presuppositional baggage that your eyes are already closed and your ears already shut. Cimarron is a portrait of that great House for All Sinners and Saints.

Oh, and there's a mistake at the end of the cast: