Topics of Cancer Blogs

Oddly enough, with all my wretched cynicism of anything humankind has created in the name of, well, a “higher authority”, I find some of the associated writings and works of art strangely appealing at times. And so it was, overfed, well-rested and sated with my usual internet amusements, I went to a favorite web site, www.gutenberg.org, which contains hundreds of literary works from a time before…well, let’s just say you can read for days tales of the Great War with its doomed Archduke, Czar and Kaiser, but a search on the name “Hitler” yields the following message: “No record found. Please retry.”

With weeks of Christmas carols, hymns and movies subconsciously setting the mood, I decided to peruse this august (in content at least) library for some light reading on the subject of…saints. Now, having been raised in the Protestant faith, such inventions of the Holy Roman Church should be the furthest thing from my mind. But, having had the happy fortune to view various astonishingly allegorical (abject alliteration alert!) and painstakingly-painted canvases that have been treasured and lovingly cared for over decades, centuries, eons, what-have-you for their depiction of the multitude of human beings who came to be revered as saints for their actions before, during and/or after death, I find myself strangely fascinated by their equally multitudinous(?) legends.

But I digress. Having entered the word “saints” as my search criteria, a lengthy list of book titles appeared. I quickly selected “A Child’s Book of Saints”, authored by one William Canton at the turn of the next-to-last century. As a rule of thumb, I’ve found that, when attempting to read up on a weighty subject on which I have absolutely no background or even less understanding, any title that includes the words “A Child’s Book” or “A Child’s Guide to” is a great starting point. This was back in the days before the currently-popular title “An Idiot’s Guide to…” removed all charm from ignorance. I mean, come on. No one’s an expert in everything anymore, who has the time?

So, settling back in my leathery loveseat perch, I read through various romantic-if-cautionary tales of Christian saints, laden with archaic vernacular but containing no words as long and cumbersome as the word “vernacular”. And amongst the lepers and the beloved-of-birds and the humbled-before-God, I stumbled upon the journey of Rheinfrid. Saint Rheinfrid? Who knew? Okay, someone Catholic and German most likely, but it was news to me. Rheinfrid was a nobleman (actually a thane, technically meaning a landholder. I think.), dying nobly of the “yellow plague”, abandoned far from the more healthy townsfolk. And there it was, shining like a Christmas star outside the glaring city’s limits, one of the loveliest sentences I’ve ever had the pleasure to know:

“But in the dead and dark of the third night a beautiful Child, crowned with roses and bearing in his hand a rose, had come to the dying thane and said: “Now mayest thou see that the best the world can give—call it by what name thou wilt and prize it at its utmost worth—is nothing more than these: wind and smoke and a dream and a flower.”

Now, maybe I’ve inhaled too much incense and peppermints, but this is the sort of holy that says “holy moley” in my book. I’d gladly give assorted god-given body parts to have come up with such a vision of a sentence - knucklebones, one appendix slightly used, two ticklish tonsils (if only these tonsils could speak!), any number of fleshy encumbrances. That such pulchritudinous phrasing should be subject to such obscene obscurity! Bah humbug, indeed.

This is normally the portion of the show where I insert various insights of dubious value. I’m perfectly willing to admit that I think much too well of my equally dubious writing talent. But I’m not feeling terribly insightful tonight. A sentence like that quoted above robs me of the usual desire for snarky sarcasm, this-reminds-me-of-me narcissism, I-can-top/outwrite-that one-up-authorwomanship. For god’s sake. It’s just beautiful, in all its child-simple truth. And, as the song goes, I am a fool for beauty.