One of my 2022 reading goals was to read a work of poetry by Christina Rosetti. In various works of literature, I have come across references to her works and always appreciated them. And who can deny the beauty of the Christmas Carol In a Bleak Midwinter? And while I was surprised by the fantasy poem the Goblin Market, and enjoyed it, my favorite piece I discovered in the book I read was “A Discovery.”
“I thought your search was over.”-”So I thought.”- “But you are seeking still.”-”Yes, even so: Still seeking in mine own despite below That which in Heaven alone is found unsought; Still spending for that thing which is not bought.”- “Then chase no more this shifting empty show.”- “Amen: so bid a drowning man forego The straw he clutches; will he so be taught? You have a home where peace broods like a dove Screened from the weary world’s loud discontent, You have home here, you wait for home above: I must unlearn the pleasant ways I went, Must learn another hope, another love, And sigh indeed for home in banishment.”–
The poem imagines a conversation between two people. One of them thought they’d found it (God, faith, salvation, contentment) but it turns out they haven’t and so they are seeking it still. But they recognize their search is futile. The reason is they are seeking in the things of the world that which they can only find in God. Yet recognizes the tremendous fear of death to self.
Several things really speak to me in this poem:
“still spending for that thing which is not bought.” I’m currently reading through another work by Capon and he, in typical Capon fashion, needles the idea that we seem married to the desire to earn God’s favor. Rosetti paints the picture of a person who is spending countless money trying to purchase something which isn’t for sale in the first place.
How many of us treat God’s favor as something which, if we throw enough of something (good works?) at it, can be purchased?
Unfortunately, that isn’t the way the real world (not this shadow that we live in) works. And so we must “unlearn these pleasant ways” and instead we “must learn another hope, another love, and sigh indeed for home in banishment.”
2 1/2 months into 2022, my reading plan is going quite well. Several years ago I read Peace Like a River by Leif Enger. While I enjoyed it, and it definitely had some religious tones to it, there was nothing overtly theological about it. I found it to be a sad story. But as time has passed, I find myself thinking about it a lot. So I decided to read Virgil Wander.
Virgil Wander is his third novel and the first one published in 10 years. The plotline intrigued me so I put it on my list for 2022. It isn’t often I do an individual post devoted to a book but Virgil Wander called for it.
This book is fantastic.
The story takes place, like all of his works, in Minnesota. (Sidebar: William Krueger also writes great novels that take place in Minnesota. Is anyone talking about this?) Virgil lives in an apartment above the movie theater he owns, in a small dying town, along the banks of Lake Superior. At the start of the story, Virgil drives his car into the lake and barely lives. As a result of the car crash, he has suffered some memory loss and his personality has changed enough that he feels like he is a new person. Through his rediscovery of his own identity as well as that of the people of his town, we are introduced to a variety of quirky and interesting characters. If for no other reason, this book is worth your time to read about Virgil’s journey as well as Enger’s depiction of his fictitious town.
“You’re changing rapidly into the next. Some rangy ascetic if I had to guess. Lasering in on what’s important in life, now that you’ve nearly died. Why not? Everyone wants to start again. Rebuild with new bones and fresh skin. Why are we here if not to grow! Plus, aren’t you discovering it’s attractive?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Attractive to others. Keep up with me Virgil! People are drawn to rebirth.”
Perhaps my favorite part of the story is a microcosm for the book. One of Virgil’s co-workers’ husband is a failed alcoholic. She lands him a job and he decides to go ahead and use the job as an opportunity to re-invent himself. It is a job as a handyman for the local rich man (think Mr. Potter). He stops by Virgil’s place to ask for a tool that he claims he loaned to Virgil before Virgil was injured. Though Virgil’s memory is damaged, he is positive he has never borrowed any tools from him. But thinking about this chance to turn his life around, Virgil decides to go ahead and find the “tool.” They go down to the basement where he has lots of very nice tools. Suddenly, after “returning” the tool, Virgil reminds his co-workers’ husband that he also loaned him a bunch of other tools. In a scene very reminiscent of Les Miserables, Virgil starts giving away the best of his tools, continually reminding his visitor these were actually his tools all along.
Isaiah 55:1-3
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. 2 Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me; listen, that you may live.
I’m an Ohio football fan. I’m an OSU alumnus. I was raised a Bengal. And I married a Browns fan. For many years I cheered for both the Browns and the Bengals, except for when they played each other. Over the last 6 years, I have been rooting more and more for the Browns.
Baker Mayfield brought me into the fold. He’s an absolute story: a walk-on who wins the Heisman and is the #1 pick in the NFL draft? That’s everyone’s dream.
So, I will not lie when I said I was very upset with the unbelievable news that the Browns have signed Deshaun Watson to be their quarterback. I’m not going to get into the absurd contract which throws their future ability to sign free agents, retain talent, or even draft anyone. I just want to say a few things.
I can’t root for the Browns now. After all of the years of criticizing the Steelers for keeping Big Ben on their roster after the things he did early in his career, I cannot turn around and act like the many more women making accusations against Deshaun do not matter. As a father of many girls, it does matter. The Browns have lost me.
Moving beyond the highly questionable action of signing someone who has 22 civil lawsuits pending is the fact that Baker Mayfield is a good quarterback.
Here is the Browns’ record the 4 years prior to drafting Mayfield and then the 4 years with him as the QB:
That’s a remarkable turnaround. Especially when you consider that Mayfield’s numbers took place with 3 different head coaches and 3 different offensive systems in…4 years! He had to learn one of the new systems during the pandemic when everything was virtual. And his last year of playing, which was his second-best record, he played with a non-existent offensive line (due to injuries) and a torn labrum in his shoulder which required surgery in the off-season.
According to Cleveland.com’s write-up on Mayfield’s success, he is the 6th best QB to play in Cleveland since the franchise started in 1944. And that is in only 4 seasons.
In all honesty, I hope the Steelers sign him. And I hope he beats the Browns every time they play. And if you happen to know me personally, you’ll understand what a remarkable statement that is.
So long Mayfield. Cleveland did you dirty. Wherever you land, I hope you wake up feeling dangerous.
I wish you all the best and hope you have a long and prolific NFL career.
CINCINNATI, OHIO – DECEMBER 29: Baker Mayfield #6 of the Cleveland Browns celebrates after throwing a touchdown pass during the game against the Cincinnati Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium on December 29, 2019 in Cincinnati, Ohio. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
So ever since the Russian invasion of the Ukraine (sorry, Ukraine) this has pretty much been me:
My friends are probably sick of my texts. I have so many thoughts floating around in my head if I do not write them down, I will blow up. Literally.
Full disclosure: I’m not an expert on Eastern Europe but I’m also not an idiot. I have a Master of Arts in Slavic and Eastern European Studies and when I was working on my master’s, my area of focus ended up becoming of all things, Ukrainian national identity. I even wrote a lengthy paper on said topic which I presented, to positive reception at the Midwest Conference on Slavic Studies.
So here’s the thing about what is happening in Ukraine. It is entirely possible (you may want to sit down), that Putin isn’t wrong in his claims about Nazis or Ukraine being Russian but that doesn’t mean his actions are okay.
Ukraine is a modern invention. With the exception of a brief period of time in the 1300’s when there was the city-state of Kievan Rus, Ukraine has been Russian.
Next, the claim that Ukraine is Russian. Let me try to contextualize it for the Western reader.
Let’s pretend that in 2060, Texas secedes from the Union. They immediately begin drawing heavily upon their 10-year experience in 1836-1846 as the Republic of Texas to both build a separate identity and prove they should always have been independent. Now, losing Texas hurts the US. It is large. It has a significant population and economy. It is rich in natural resources. It pays more into the Federal government than it receives back. And, in terms of pride, it is an insult. So Americans are unhappy and rightfully claim that Texas has been American over the past 200 years and can’t really state they’ve been anything else. The Republic of Texas is a weak argument for stating they should always have been independent.
Now, let’s imagine that Austin and the area around it quickly revolt and declare they are still part of America. They don’t want to be Texans, they want to be Americans and ask for support from the USA. What do you suppose the USA would do?
But things are about to get more complicated. Because in its bid to establish itself, Texas has been seeking international recognition and is about to enter into a military alliance with the People’s Republic of China which will let the PRC build a base in Texas and promises military support if Texas gets attacked. The PRC also tells the USA to mind its own business and ignore the Austin separatist.
The USA, nervous about the possibility of a very real security threat, upset over its national prestige being injured, and nervous about the economic losses from Texas moving further and further away politically issues a number of demands to Texas and China which both nations dismiss out of hand.
What does the USA do now? What should they do?
It’s easy to judge Russia but sometimes, before you judge someone, you should try to put yourself in their shoes to better understand why they feel the way they feel.
Again, I’m not saying Russia was right to attack Ukraine or anything that has happened since. But I understand why Russia felt the way they did prior to the invasion.
Now that that is off my chest let’s move on to the Western response to Russia’s invasion. Here is what I want to know:
Do we have a coherent, long-term strategy?
What are our goals and expected outcomes?
In other words, what the hell are we doing?
Behold, US Foreign policy:
Here are my concerns with our current response:
It isn’t a guarantee these sanctions will end the war, cause Putin to retreat, recognize Ukrainian national integrity or (long term) destroy the Russian economy. It will, however, hurt the American economy and drive up prices which are already extremely high.
Sanctions do not work. Iran is still Iran. North Korea is still North Korea. There is a global black market which allows them to still have an economy. Remember, it is well known that Iran has managed to evade sanctions and still sell their oil. I realize the response could be, yes but we’ve never seen sanctions like this before. And that is correct. What we are watching unfold is a global experimentwhere we do not know the outcome. Which again, begs the question, what are our goals and expected outcomes with these financial sanctions?
A vacuum will be filled. As surely as water always flows down, to the lowest place, so too will a vacuum in the geopolitical world get filled. Cutting Russia out of Western oil doesn’t mean other nations won’t trade with them. It just puts the West in an even more perilous position. There are already reports that 4 Chinese SEOs are in talks with Russian oil and mineral companies for acquisition. Wouldn’t it be cute if China bought Gazprom (one of the companies mentioned in the Bloomberg report) and started pumping oil/gas out to the US, which we then began buying? Russia is reportedly looking into the Yuan as a currency to trade with (which helps China’s attempt to internalize the Yuan to compete with the dollar) and Russian banks are encouraging companies/banks to switch to China’s UnionPay, the Chinese equivalent to Mastercard/Visa. Which begs the question: will the sanctions help China while not detering Russia from continuing their war?
Exclusion is not helpful and is reminiscent of Nazis. I don’t take the Nazi analogy lightly. It is used far too often today. But telling an artist their work is not valuable because of their ethnicity is….wrong. Telling a scientist they have nothing to contribute (or you don’t want to consider their contributions) to the global scientific community because of their ethnicity is…well, Nazism.
The bandwagon is about to fall over. Let’s be honest, the vast majority of companies which have decided to pull out of Russia are not doing so because they actually have discovered their morality. Much of what has happened is a political bandwagon. And it is getting so full it is about to tip. Western banks will lose over 120 billion in money loaned to Russia which they will most likely never get back. Because…global banks discovered there’s a difference between right and wrong? Do we really believe Shell, which has the third largest defense budget of any African nation and employes mercenaries throughout Africa, has figured out violence isn’t okay? Has McDonalds, which serves food which has been shown to cause serious illness if eaten regularly, suddenly decided it cares about human well being? For me, all of these companies acting like they care about these things in Russia look like this:
This brings me to the last thing I need to get off my chest: I’m sick of the fake righteousness over what Russia is doing in Ukraine.
It might seem like a lifetime ago, but do you remember the Beijing 2022 Olympics? Do you remember how Western leaders boycotted attending in protest to what China is doing to its Uyghur population? In an excellent piece in The Atlantic, Tom McTague points out the following (inconvenient truth): “Right now, the world’s second-most powerful state, China, is committing genocide against its own people and dismantling the freedoms of a city of several million, but the West continues to trade with it almost as if nothing is happening. Even as Western governments busily sanction Russian oligarchs, they continue to let Saudi oligarchs buy up their companies, sports teams, and homes, despite the fact that their leader, according to U.S. intelligence, approved the butchering of a journalist in one of his embassies.”
It would be too easy to say our “moral” reaction to what Russia is doing in the Ukraine is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy implies an ideal you are pursuing but falling short of. It isn’t hypocrisy; it is insanity. China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs while we not only keep trading with them but purchasing goods produced by slave labor. Feel free to review Wikipedia’s article with 508 external citations on the topic.
Maybe it is the mandatory training in unconscious bias I’ve had to take, but I can’t help but wonder if the reason the West cares about Ukraine and not the Uyghurs is because the Ukraine is populated with white Christians and the Uyghurs are brown Muslims?
Three Taverns Brewery 