PZ's Podcast

These podcasts are almost all dialogues with music.

The music, such as "Beep Alonia" from 1964, touches a soft or sensitive spot in my heart -- and also one's brain, maybe -- and suddenly "the waters flow".

Here I am thinking about contact with the supernatural, with God, really: the curtain coming down between "God and man" ('Modern Love', David Bowie 1983). Are you, dear listener, actually open to divine encounter? Or do you simply dismiss such a possibility, at least in practice? (I believe you probably don't.)

Booth Tarkington's explicit regard for Charles Fort and Fort's writings is an almost unique instance of a mainstream writer's being open to the Beyond. And Tarkington was!

The ending to his novel The Magnificent Ambersons (1918) is beyond unusual. It shatters almost every preconception you have ever had instilled in you -- about life, let alone death.

Moreover, that ending is universally unread by the critics, and especially by the thousands of persons interested in Orson Welles' movie version. Why is this?

Why the complete and IMO willful neglect of the entire "twist"-event that enables the resolution and ending of a great work of art? (I think it has something to do with "the world, the flesh, and the devil"...)

Well, read the ending of The Magnificent Ambersons. It's just nine pages, and doesn't really need an intro.

And then... then... consider a trip to Beep Alonia!

Good things, true things, lasting things have built-in repetition. They repeat in life because they are always valid. So they come back.

Like "The Monster Swim"! That major contribution was the follow-up, by the same artist/s, to "The Monster Mash". We all know about the latter. It was the Best Song of 1964, hands down.

Recently, an appearance to me several years ago of the soul of my oldest friend, who had died, had a sequel. The soul of another, more recently departed friend appeared to me the night he died, far away and alone. I didn't even know he was dead. Only three days later did I get the news. But he actually came to me the night he died. I write in earnest.

The supernatural is real. It is not the only means of navigating our lost and fallen world. But it is true nevertheless, at least in my opinion. When we die, our souls go somewhere. Loose ends need to be tied up; explanations, offered; assurances, given. I know this for sure now.

It's also made me go back to Booth Tarkington. Anyone remember an essay in Mockingbird at the Movies (2015) concerning "The Magnificent Ambersons". That celebrated Orson Welles follow-up film to "Citizen Kane" is marked by an ending that omits entirely the most important thing about the novel. In the novel -- not the movie -- the main character is directly confronted by the soul of a woman who has died. That really happens. Tarkington describes it as empirical fact, not psychological fantasy. And all the good of his novel's beautiful resolution hinges on this "para-normal" encounter.

I believe in such encounters, tho' only because they have happened to me. Not every day. But twice. And that's enough. LUV U.

Warning from Space, a Japanese sci-fi "thriller" from 1956, is an extremely ridiculous movie.

But I had confused it with Message from Space, also Japanese but from 1978, which is in fact not as good. (What is he talking about?!)

I had wanted to entitle this cast "Message from Space".

That is because the messages we need so urgently to receive from Space, i.e., from God, come in often ridiculous, and certainly unexpected forms. ("O Little Town of Bethlehem")

One is constantly trying to shoehorn reality into a preconception. So I want to believe a particular person is_ this_ way, i.e., my way; but he or she is not. They are their way. I'm desperate for someone to approve of me who doesn't, while all the time not seeing the person who does approve of me and who is actually right there in front of me.

This is why I love Ritchie Blackmore -- or the Ritchie Blackmore whom Joe Meek kept calling on in the early 1960s to insert flashy guitar solos into otherwise lame material. It happens again and again! 'God' -- in this case equivalent to Ritchie -- shows up and blows away the "reality" of the dumb song and makes it into something... well, transcendent.

I invite you to listen to the Ritchie Blackmore oddnesses in your own personal history -- and even now. "That's what the Good Book says": Remember.

There is so little one knows. Here one thought one had a "deep bench" when it comes to foreign films, and yet I knew nothing of Julien Duvivier!

Yes, there is his 'classic' Poil de Carotte, and Criterion put out Pepe le Moko a while back. And they are both outstanding.

But it took an almost accidental viewing recently of Duvivier's Flesh and Fantasy -- for he had a Hollywood phase -- followed by his all-star (sort of) epic Tales of Manhattan, to put it through my head that his was a distinctly Christian view of reality.

Then Lo and Behold! Turns out all of Duvivier's films from the 1920s have just been packaged to BluRay. So Mary and I sit down to watch them -- and, well, the tears roll, because three of them are Christ-centered epics of the highest quality, visually, theatrically, and emotionally.

Where have I been all these years? The answer is: nowhere near as close to full truth as you thought. How did these remarkable Gospel movies escape you, Paul? You know so much less than you thought you did.

Part of it is the critics. The critics one grew up with -- from the New Yorker to the Village Voice to the NY Times: well, they were almost all secular. Or, if they had Christian belief, they tried to hide it. Maybe they would tout a movie for being "humanist" -- which for JAZ and me is shorthand for "probably Christian" but SHHHH. The specifically Christian content needs to be hushed up, or just ignored. That is true again and again in the history of movie criticism.

Anyway, Duvivier shatters the narrative. And not just in the '20s, but in the '30s -- when he produced and directed Golgotha -- and the '40s -- when he made Tales of Manhattan -- and then again in the '50s, when he directed the 'Don Camillo' movies, which are milestones of Christian encomium, albeit painted with humor.

Now seriously, "Can't You Hear the Beating of my Heart?" LUV U.

Sometimes I hear a 'Grace' sermon that is just terrific... until the last five minutes. During the last five minutes, the preacher seems pressed to tell me how I should respond, at least mentally, to the message of God's One-Way Love. The preacher -- in good faith and sincerity, to be sure -- tells me to "relax into the Message", "accept the Gift", "live into It", "let It sink in", "allow It to become part of you". And although that sounds good, it ends up, at least for me, feeling abstract. It may even convey a(n un-intended) sense of pressure, as there is still something to do. Which I can't seem to do. It's a little like what Roman Catholics sometimes describe as the need to perpetually return to the Confessional because they haven't quite taken it in, i.e., the forgiveness they were told they had last week.

Luther taught something different. (As did St. Paul.) They both taught that one's response to the Gospel is automatic. When you are "One-Way-LUV'd", you automatically wish to respond -- with love! Belovedness engenders loving back.

I mean, look: it's true in Romantic Love. When you are sincerely loved by another person, no one needs to tell you how to respond. You always, or almost always, respond by desiring to love the other altruistically -- selflessly -- empathetically. That just happens. You don't need imperatives, even subtle ones; nor instructions.

That's the point of this 350th Episode of PZ's Podcast. I am particularly proud of it.

It is dedicated to Tullian Tchividjian and his remarkable ministry of One-Way Love. "Bleib bei Mir fuer alle Zeiten."

This is a follow-up to "Joe Meek Is God", and observes the non sequiturs of one's life.

I believe they are Providential, those decisive non sequiturs; and are best observed in the absence of a "narrative" or personal story-line.

What has happened in your life has happened. The turning points, the "pivots", both for 'good' and for 'ill', were not rationally conceived -- or at least few of them were. They came upon you. Just look! Be a scientist for a minute. Study the data of your actual experience. It's all a bit of a mystery in terms of the whys and the wherefores.

Yet over time a kind of odd observed plan -- not your plan, but God's Plan -- becomes apparent.

As Dr. Tom Calhoun says with Doric profundity: "It had to be that way". My call on the listener to this cast is this: Study the way your life's actually been. You'll very possibly see a larger Purpose, albeit caused by non sequiturs. Your entire life, within stops and starts, under extrusions and intrusions, had an individual direction that added up to a supernatural Non Sequitur Who is God.

I hope you like the concluding track, too. It is entitled "Tom Tom Cat" as performed by The Tom Cats, i.e., one of Joe Meek's "bands" in 1961. "Tom Tom Cat" out-Los Straitjackets Los Straitjackets -- which is Saying Something. "Tom Tom Cat" is an inspired non sequitur. Like you and me. LUV U.

This cast is dedicated to Ryan Alvey.

I've talked about Joe Meek before, but think I've finally gotten to the spiritual wisdom that lies beneath his many records. (Meek was an English independent record producer in the 1950s and '60s.)

The wisdom of Joe Meek, which is a prolific and dramatic instance of the wisdom of the Biblical God, consists in the power of non sequiturs. Meek's almost innumerable pop-music productions are almost all examples of the non sequitur. To wit, he generally takes a lame lyric (and a lame artist or group of artists) and inserts inconsistent instrumentals or sound-elements that completely transform the original raw material. (In this cast, I have given four (4) excerpts of this "technique" -- tho' it was not really a technique for it came from Meek's all-over-the-place personality rather than from a conscious artistic strategy.) Joe's jaw-dropping interruptions/interpolations are an instance of what we used to call, at least in the 1970s, "the God of Surprises".

Just look at oneself: the breakthroughs and providential turns in our lives are almost always caused by something that came out of nowhere. There was the unexpected phone call, the off-sides note or e-mail, the chance bumping-in to someone, the car accident or illness that put everything in a new perspective, the loss which turned into a gain (!). You name it. Fill in the blank. My own life, let alone my ministry, has been like a Joe Meek single: the best part/s are the odd guitar bridge or the "reverb". Isn't this true of your life?

So the point is, if you want to understand the nature of life as it is actually lived, listen to the odd productions of Robert George Meek. He probably didn't know it, but his fingers in the control room were just like the Fingers of God.

This cast is dedicated to Mary C. Zahl, with whom I have walked, for coming on 50 years, in Paradise Garden.

What could really do it? What could actually revive the beneficent influence of the Christian Gospel on our current masochistic/sadistic world? "What Does It Take/To Win Your Love for Me" (Junior Walker, 1969).

That is the question of this cast: What might need to happen in order for the unique vision of New Testament faith and hope to "re-enchant" the world?

One's attention was drawn recently to the martyrdom at Carthage, in 203 A.D., of St. Perpetua.

Her journal, the personal account of her trial for the capital crime of being a Christian in that place and time, is the only document of its kind preserved from Classical (i.e., Greco-Roman) culture that was written by a woman. It is entirely genuine and also entirely unique. Plus, the final chapter, which was written by an observer of Perpetua's death in the arena, is as shocking, in my opinion, as almost anything you will ever read concerning the physicality of martyrdom. What happened to Perpetua is a certain confirmation of "Low Anthropology".

Perpetua's death -- she was a single mother, aged 22 -- made a huge difference in the perception of Christianity by the people of North Africa. In fact, the difference it made was decisive. Thousands of everyday people were shaken by her courage and her explicit faithfulness.

I believe the fortunes of the Church would change overnight if someone were willing to die for their faith, were willing to give up even their physical life for it. This doesn't seem to be happening in the West. I hope it will -- tho' I recognize that's easy to say. (What if the lot should fall on Mary's and my door? "Fuh-get about it!"?)

Listen to Billy Preston now, from 1971. "(God) promised to exalt us/But low is the way."

Podcast 347 is dedicated to my friend Steven Berzin.

I'm not talking about dying these days in order to be a downer.

(For years one has tuned out all sorts of devotional books that major on death and dying. Especially R.C. ones, which felt morbid. They seemed both remote from one's actual life and almost intentionally depressing.)

What I am talking about now, though, is the question of where one goes immediately after death.

Not Too Long Ago (Nick Lowe/Los Straitjackets, 2015) I was preaching at a funeral and ended the sermon by asking the question: Now where is our friend? Where is he right now?

People almost jumped out of their pews. But not in a bad way. It proved an arresting question. "Everybody's Talkin'" (Nilsson, 1970).

That is the purpose of this cast. Who wants to be a Dumb Head at the end of your life?

Believe me, at that moment, all your attention will be on the question, Where am I going? "To San Francisco, with a Flower in your Hair" (Scott McKenzie, 1967)? Maybe something like that.

One is required to deal with this. You become less interested in the vagaries of the "dying process", terrible as they are, than in the question of Final Destination. Into the arms of Whom or What am I falling when I am pushed off the cliff of physical life? Nothing else matters. At least in my opinion.

We conclude with a swift journey into the Unknown, Joe Meek's production of "Message from Venus" by The Tornados. It's German-language, tho' produced in a third-floor flat in North Islington, London; and has to be... from God. Right? LUV, PZ

Dennis Wheatley was an author "on the margins". In other words, he was a flawed (tho' very popular in his day) writer who was not taken seriously by most critics. But his distinctly marginal themes and observations gave him a kind of crossbow into truth that endow more than one of his novels with Inspiration. I am a big fan of Dennis Wheatley.

In 1956 he published a novel about the immediate aftermath of one's bodily death. It is called The KA of Gifford Hillary and I can't recommend it highly enough. In it, the narrator is murdered, and his 'KA', or immediate soul -- not exactly his Soul in the Christian sense, but the sum of accretions and experiences had by his human ego -- is suspended, as it were, before he can proceed towards Ultimate Destiny. Gifford Hillary's KA is put on hold, you might say, because there is a crime, a heinous crime, of which he was the victim; and the unresolved nature of the crime has to be resolved before he can move ahead.

Whether this makes any sense to you or not, I think there is something to it.

Why? Well, because three times in my life I have seen, or sensed directly, the KA of persons I loved. First was a college roommate who drowned in our sophomore year but appeared to me four months later on an escalator in Grand Central Station. Second was my best friend, who after his sudden and all-alone death appeared to me during Centering Prayer in All Saints Episcopal Church, Winter Park. And third was a close college friend who caused me recently, one day after her sudden, unexpected death, to find a letter she had written exactly 50 years that was the pure essence of sincere upbuilding.

So three times I have met a KA. And three times an unresolved death was, at least for me, given "peace at the last" (BCP). Oh, and I'd rather encounter a KA than become one at the point of death. Look to yourself now!