The latest HOUSE was much better than average. One of his colleagues tells Dr. House:
“You spend your whole life looking for answers because you think the next answer will change something and make you a little less miserable and you know that when you run out of questions you just won't run out of answers, you run out of hope.”Meanwhile, the blogger at Compostela quotes a book on Flannery O’Conner:
“Meeks sees Flannery O’Connors works as being influenced by the cruel truth, in Dr. Johnson’s words, that ‘nothing so concentrates the mind as the verdict of death.’ The characters in O’Connor’s fiction are sick with sin and waiting, in Meeks’s words, for a “gesture of grace”.Dr. House is sick with sin and seeks a gesture of grace via his questions?
The juxtaposition isn’t likely accidental: read a 2nd century sermon in Liturgy of the Hours that counselled the wise not to display wisdom in their words but actions. Later I’m a voyeur at Clarence Thomas’s book party (held at the house of Armstrong Williams and televised by C-Span) and at one point he mentions that his grandfather, who raised him, said: “Do as I do, not as I say”. Can you even imagine? But he lived it! Every day. Thomas made the startling statement that there was not one single moment he or his brother can remember that his grandfather did not serve as a model for them. Not one slip-up.
Thank God for C-Span goes the line. And where else can a commoner get to meet the furtive eyes of Justice Scalia? He joked to Thomas that he was there for a cameo, and you could see a glimpse into the personalities of these “anti-celebrities”, these very private individuals who make up the Supreme Court and who would brave a camera only out of loyalty to their colleague. Thomas said a couple of times, "I'm sorry to have bothered you," meaning he was sorry to have to put them through this. Taking one for the team, they expose their social skills to a nationwide audience. Where else could I see the body language of Ruth Bader Ginsberg as she shakes Dick Cheney’s hand? Such cramped quarters made for other strange bedfellows; Thomas once joked when posing for a picture with a Democrat that this picture would get him (the Democrat) in trouble. My sister-in-law drives a school bus that passes by our house and she said she looks at my book room window and recently saw me addressing & caressing various volumes. C-Span, meanwhile, delivers a scene of infinitely greater voyeuristic interest – and you don’t even have to drive a bus! Thank God for C-Span indeed!
Thomas said his grandfather is being described as ‘hard’ by reviewers and he “was hard, but not harsh. Those were hard times and you become hard in reaction, like the hand that becomes calloused by hard work.” Our age is soft and become soft as a result. Even the poor in America live better than 99% of all humans who have ever lived. This is primarily the result of the American founders, who recognized the benefits of freedom (economic and otherwise), and the soldiers who protected that freedom since then. Spiritual and material economies are somewhat similar in that we are indebted to generations before us while, at the same time, in some way having to do the work that maintains and builds. In one sense, we are all born pagans and have to start from scratch, beginning with Baptism. But in another sense, we do rest on the soldiers of giants and don't have to reinvent the wheel and have at our avail the capital they won.
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