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Sacred and Profane on the Northeast Regional

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Heading south in the Quiet Car (having gotten there via the Alewife Greenway, the Red Line T, and South Station), gazing at the moment (we’re stationary) at a black car on the next track on which big white letters say DO NOT HUMP, UD considers how she got herself comfortable in this seat. First she fiddled with chargers; then she put in her ear plugs and listened to Schubert songs (her discovery of Lezhneva’s Im Frühling has her rooting around in Schubert); then she leaned back for a light nap, during which she listened to the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism, Hour Two, kept at a gentle grumbly baritone (UD finds deep male voices deliciously soporific, and the more the merrier).

At one point, Richard Dawkins woke me up and made me laugh:

When [the liturgy] becomes intelligible, the nonsense becomes more transparent. If it’s in Latin, it can survive much better because the nonsense is camouflaged. It’s rather like a camouflaged insect; it can get through the barriers because you can’t see it. When it’s translated into not just English but modern English you can see it for what it is.

Later, Dawkins said that he once listed among the six pieces of music he’d take to a desert island Bach’s Mache dich mein Herze rein, so I switched over to that.

Make yourself pure, my heart
I want to bury Jesus himself within me,
For he now within me
Forever
Shall have his sweet rest.
World, depart from my heart, let Jesus enter!

Margaret Soltan, February 26, 2016 11:50AM
Posted in: snapshots from home

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