From Up On Frederick's Stone

I have now added a new page called “Reflects.” (See upper right hand panel amid the trees, about eight feet off the snow.) There I’ll put little snippets, thoughts, that are too small or that I don’t feel like making into essays. I want you to think of the word “reflects” not just as a verb.

It is a story well known. Jonah: the reluctant prophet. Called by God, an Israelite to preach love to his nation’s rival Assyria, a country rancid with violence, crime, brutality, and disorder. Racist and resistant to the divine impetus—why should those psychopathic monsters be given a second chance, be seen as equal persons?—Jonah flees in the very opposite direction of the Assyrian capital Ninevah (located in modern-day Iraq): he embarks on a journey toward “Tarshish” (which was probably Spain; and if it wasn’t, most biblical commentators agree it was definitely in the opposite direction of Ninevah. Think of the emphasis implied in Jonah paddling straight across the Mediterranean to the Straits of Gibralter and perhaps beyond those gates. Imagine him thinking of retiring to a nice seaside cottage on the Azores, or settling down along the Portuguese coast, or of finding a Morrocan village to recline and hear the sunrise of Edvard Grieg’s famed “Morning.”)

(This is going to be a series I periodically update, within this post. I will critique common blunders within Christian circles. Each entry will be headed with a quote in italics. The most recent entry will be at the top, in reverse chronological order. Note that this is not for the faint of heart.)

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     It was a sunny seaside afternoon. After five months of hunting, I had finally found a shoreline replete with purple sea urchins. Tidepool invertebrate collection has become something I do; if I called it a hobby then I’d have to say buying groceries is one of my favorite pasttimes. I go to the coast to get food. It is healthy, extremely fresh, and usually sumptuous. Of course, there are regulations from the California Fish and Game Department in effect, and these are designed based on a lot of science to maintain balance of the marine ecosystem, as well as to protect you, the consumer.

Foreword

     On a Friday afternoon in May of 2017, during a lull period in my Aircraft Design class, I scribbled out an essay for the journal Aletheia. I gave it the name “Playing with Infinity.” It was to encapsulate an ephemeral moment in my life, when the impassable limits of human experience and the escape from its infinite regress had first crystallized before my eyes.

     High up in the Himalayas lives a society of svelte birds, the black-necked cranes. Each fall they cross the sky-scraping range from the highlands of Tibet to the north, and settle in for winter among the alpine valleys of Bhutan, Nepal, and India to the south. There are only around 11,000 individuals, and it seems to have always been this way. No human interference has caused this; they have a small population by nature. When the cranes come soaring in flocks from those deep blue heavens, the swift silky air quietly bears their chamber-timbred gawking down as they recongregate and gradually return to terra firma in wide circling turns. One place they like to end their migration is beside the Gangteng Monastery, on a little hill in the Phobhjikha Valley of Bhutan. They grace the valley with their cloud-white black-fringed wings, their slender black necks and heads, red crown, and glacier-clear eyes.

Frederick the Mouse lived in a family of five field mice. He liked to sunbathe, gaze at the scenery, and ponder the meaning of things. Because he did not gather nuts and seeds and straw with the rest of his family and friends, they looked at him reproachfully. “Frederick, why don’t you work?” they asked. “I am preparing for winter,” he would shyly reply, “gathering sun rays and colors and words.” And they would go back to working like little busy bees. When winter arrived, they crawled into their nest in the stone wall. They ate and shared stories and laughed for a while, until little by little, the rations got smaller, winter grew colder, and no one felt like chatting. But then they remembered what Frederick had said about sun rays and colors and words. “What about your supplies, Frederick?” they asked. Then Frederick climbed up on a stone and opened his mouth.

Herein are supplies for when most of the nuts and berries have been nibbled up, the straw is gone, and the corn is only a memory; for when it is cold in the wall and no one feels like chatting.

A retelling of Frederick, written and illustrated by Leo Lionni.

March 22, 2020