WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.390 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.390 --> 00:00:06.300 align:middle line:84% There's a wonderful anthropologist 00:00:06.300 --> 00:00:10.880 align:middle line:84% who works at Santa Cruz now, and who 00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:17.540 align:middle line:84% did as one must do her field work in one 00:00:17.540 --> 00:00:21.500 align:middle line:84% of the classic sites abroad and published her first book 00:00:21.500 --> 00:00:26.990 align:middle line:84% and got tenure, and then changed her field work to the American 00:00:26.990 --> 00:00:33.680 align:middle line:84% South and the sites of fundamentalist religious 00:00:33.680 --> 00:00:35.510 align:middle line:90% practice in America. 00:00:35.510 --> 00:00:39.350 align:middle line:84% And it was from Susan that I was first 00:00:39.350 --> 00:00:42.530 align:middle line:84% prompted to contemplate the difference 00:00:42.530 --> 00:00:50.870 align:middle line:84% between the solid oak pulpit that traditional revivalist 00:00:50.870 --> 00:00:56.300 align:middle line:84% preachers use and the newer transparent plexiglas 00:00:56.300 --> 00:01:01.640 align:middle line:84% pulpits used by some of the television charismatics. 00:01:01.640 --> 00:01:06.560 align:middle line:84% And I thought that was exceedingly interesting 00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:11.540 align:middle line:84% and it came back to me at a crucial moment. 00:01:11.540 --> 00:01:15.170 align:middle line:84% This poem is called, "Good News" and it's 00:01:15.170 --> 00:01:18.680 align:middle line:90% written in two sections. 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:27.140 align:middle line:84% One, the hobbled, the halt, the hasten-to-blame-it-on childhood 00:01:27.140 --> 00:01:32.660 align:middle line:84% crowd, the undermined and over-their-heads, the hapless, 00:01:32.660 --> 00:01:36.080 align:middle line:90% the humbugs, the hassle-me-nots. 00:01:36.080 --> 00:01:40.820 align:middle line:84% The night-- before the night my uncle Jens saw Jesus standing 00:01:40.820 --> 00:01:43.130 align:middle line:90% in the hayloft, he-- 00:01:43.130 --> 00:01:46.430 align:middle line:84% my uncle Jens, that is considered 00:01:46.430 --> 00:01:49.130 align:middle line:90% cashing the whole thing in. 00:01:49.130 --> 00:01:55.220 align:middle line:84% Bettina gone the way she had, the boys all gone to hell-- 00:01:55.220 --> 00:02:03.210 align:middle line:84% the mild, flat light of evening lay like a balm on the fields. 00:02:03.210 --> 00:02:07.670 align:middle line:84% But for his heart no balm in sight. 00:02:07.670 --> 00:02:13.070 align:middle line:84% So Jens gave all his money to the local charismatic, 00:02:13.070 --> 00:02:16.640 align:middle line:84% and in exchange, his fellow faithful 00:02:16.640 --> 00:02:20.840 align:middle line:90% told him to forgive himself. 00:02:20.840 --> 00:02:24.260 align:middle line:84% God's god-forsaken children all over the suburbs 00:02:24.260 --> 00:02:30.560 align:middle line:84% and the countryside are dying in the service of a market share. 00:02:30.560 --> 00:02:35.330 align:middle line:84% Witness the redhead I used to go to college with, 00:02:35.330 --> 00:02:38.600 align:middle line:84% who played the trombone and studied Kant 00:02:38.600 --> 00:02:40.880 align:middle line:84% and now performs the laying on of hands 00:02:40.880 --> 00:02:43.760 align:middle line:90% somewhere in eastern Tennessee. 00:02:43.760 --> 00:02:48.830 align:middle line:84% Beneath her touch quench sight returns, 00:02:48.830 --> 00:02:54.620 align:middle line:84% the myelin sheath repairs and lets the wheelchair rust, 00:02:54.620 --> 00:03:00.630 align:middle line:84% the cancerous cat comes purring back to health. 00:03:00.630 --> 00:03:06.600 align:middle line:84% But Jens, whose otherworldliness imperfectly cohered, 00:03:06.600 --> 00:03:09.780 align:middle line:84% took to driving his pickup off the road, 00:03:09.780 --> 00:03:12.810 align:middle line:84% in desultory fashion for the most part 00:03:12.810 --> 00:03:17.550 align:middle line:84% so that cousin Ollie's cornfield took the brunt of harm. 00:03:17.550 --> 00:03:20.850 align:middle line:90% The hens ran loose. 00:03:20.850 --> 00:03:26.280 align:middle line:84% And Jens, who in his mother's arms had leapt for joy 00:03:26.280 --> 00:03:31.260 align:middle line:84% and in tow-headed youth had leapt to favor in each tender 00:03:31.260 --> 00:03:37.510 align:middle line:90% heart, went weary to salvation. 00:03:37.510 --> 00:03:44.180 align:middle line:84% Two, having learned from a well-meaning neighbor 00:03:44.180 --> 00:03:49.280 align:middle line:84% that death will not have her if Jesus does first, 00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:51.680 align:middle line:84% My three-year-old daughter is scouring 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:53.810 align:middle line:90% the visible world for a sign. 00:03:53.810 --> 00:03:57.440 align:middle line:84% The other she's found in abundance-- 00:03:57.440 --> 00:04:02.660 align:middle line:84% death on her dinnerplate, death in the grass-- 00:04:02.660 --> 00:04:09.680 align:middle line:84% and drawing just conclusions is beside herself with fear. 00:04:09.680 --> 00:04:13.220 align:middle line:84% "Most Englishmen," the Archbishop said smoothly, 00:04:13.220 --> 00:04:16.760 align:middle line:90% "are still residual Christians. 00:04:16.760 --> 00:04:20.930 align:middle line:84% We still need a clergy for funerals." 00:04:20.930 --> 00:04:23.390 align:middle line:84% The televangelists plexiglas pulpit, 00:04:23.390 --> 00:04:27.290 align:middle line:84% the crystal veil of his tears, assure us 00:04:27.290 --> 00:04:31.220 align:middle line:90% the soul is transparent too. 00:04:31.220 --> 00:04:35.720 align:middle line:84% No stone can break nor scandal mar the radiant 00:04:35.720 --> 00:04:39.710 align:middle line:90% flow of video conversion. 00:04:39.710 --> 00:04:45.800 align:middle line:84% Close now, closer than audio enhancement, 00:04:45.800 --> 00:04:49.940 align:middle line:84% the frictionless story that washes us clean. 00:04:49.940 --> 00:04:56.930 align:middle line:84% Words disencumbered of contingency, of history, 00:04:56.930 --> 00:04:59.270 align:middle line:90% of doubt. 00:04:59.270 --> 00:05:07.070 align:middle line:84% God's wounds, they swore, the old ones, the believers, 00:05:07.070 --> 00:05:10.610 align:middle line:90% as now we swear by sex or shit. 00:05:10.610 --> 00:05:17.250 align:middle line:84% God's wounds, which failures of attention made." 00:05:17.250 --> 00:05:20.280 align:middle line:84% That's what zunes is, you know, what sort of people 00:05:20.280 --> 00:05:23.130 align:middle line:84% goofing around and at one another with swords 00:05:23.130 --> 00:05:26.180 align:middle line:84% or doing their swearing by God's name. 00:05:26.180 --> 00:05:28.000 align:middle line:90%