A mighty fortress survives heavy shelling

The Column: 10.13.23

String theory was once a hobby of mine — the study of how two adjacent fishing lines or cords or laces or reins will, even though carefully laid individually in a drawer or case, in the course of a night become promiscuously intermingled, tangled, even symbiotic ­­— and I thought it might help me understand the affairs of the world but now suddenly the news has become unbearable and incomprehensible.

The opinion columnists take the long view and offer reasonable analysis of the Palestinian dilemma and Israeli politics and the strategic thinking of Hamas, but the rest of us are witnessing the murder of civilians, women dragged away screaming, bleeding children in the arms of Palestinian parents, the wreckage of hospitals, homes blown apart, sheer evil unleashed on people like us, and we stare at the pictures until we can’t bear it and then we look again.

Meanwhile, the leaderless Republicans in Congress seem divorced from reality, and a week ago we were supposed to be fascinated by a possible romance of a pop star and a football player, rumors of which made their merch sales boom, and a commanding majority of Republican voters seem prepared to vote happily for a convicted felon to be president of the United States, should it come to that.

This is why I was glad to go to church last Sunday. I walk into this peaceable hall where there is still one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and we repent of the evil we have done and also the evil done on our behalf and vivid images come to mind. These matters have not been reworked by therapeutic theology for our ease and comfort. We expressed contrition and were forgiven and we shook hands all around. And after the closing hymn, our organist John played the postlude, Bach’s Pièce d’Orgue, which begins with arpeggios like swallows flying over the grass, then solid chords like tall trees, which sent us out onto Amsterdam Avenue in a state of quiet elation.

I have loved Bach (1685–1750) since I was 20 and dated an organist and sat outside her practice studio and listened to her go at his chorale preludes. She is gone but the music is permanent.

Bach spent his last years slaving as a church organist for the Lutherans of Leipzig, who were suspicious of genius, paid him a pittance, so he depended on the fees he got for playing funerals, and in a bad year, when the death rate was low, he was desperate. He begged them to hire good singers for the choir and instead they hired their friends and in-laws. They sat through his gorgeous chorales coughing their big honking Lutheran coughs, and as he got old and his eyesight faded from all those years of writing music by candlelight, he worked at editing his organ works in the faith that they would live beyond him and they did and still do.

I went to church with my friend Brian visiting from Denmark where he pastors a church whose congregation is aging so he preaches at a good many funerals, meanwhile his wife is five months pregnant, so he sees life coming and going. We are suspicious of piety and we didn’t talk about the Middle East. We sat in a coffee shop on Broadway and told jokes, which are classics, not quite up to Bach’s, but I’ll bet he knew some of them. Ole is on his deathbed, close to dying, when he smells a rhubarb pie fresh from the oven and manages to crawl to the kitchen and get out a knife and fork. Lena slaps him hard and says, “Leave it alone — that’s for the funeral.” A man walks past the insane asylum and hears them shouting “Twenty-one! Twenty-one!” They sound happy and he puts his eye to a hole in the fence and someone pokes it with a sharp stick and yells, “Twenty-two! Twenty-two!” The auto mechanic is sentenced to death and lies under the guillotine but they can’t get the blade to drop so they decided to commute his sentence and he said, “No, I see the problem. Hand me a pair of pliers and a screwdriver.”

Since then, everything has gotten worse. I still feel that cheerfulness is the only rational course to take but I’m not talking about that this week. And Dominus Vobiscum to you, pal.

Escape to the Lake Wobegon places you know and love, from the Sidetrack Tap to the Chatterbox Cafe.

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