Lapsometer of the Latter Days

The "Lapsometer," is an esoteric creation of Walker Percy from Love in the Ruins; a failed scientifically designed lab device for measuring sin.  "Lapsarian" refers to original sin incurred by the fall of the original pair of turtledoves.  (the partridge don't figure into it, me lad! But the pear? May Be!!!)

"Hamartology," however, is no laughing matter.  This is the study of sin; from the Pelagians who denied original or ancestral sin altogether; to the Calvinists for whom it is a supra-deadly given.

So what about this hand clippers stuck in the ice?

"Well, I'll tell you..."  (He's going to tell, he's going to tell...)

("Uh, somebody want to give me a push?" -Sir Lance-a-Lot.)

Well if you insist...


It was not all that long ago that we had genuine floods in our backyards, during which Spring Creek, which empties into the Illinois River and curves in and out of our neighbor's property,  used to cover our roads and leave them full of woody debris and thousands of corn cobs. The last time was two years ago, when we had an abundance of rain.  Since August, however, there have only been a few stagnant pools left; no running water at all.  There is virtually no runoff, and we are at least 12 inches of rain behind--having gone in one year to an overflowing water table to a stream bed that still is covered with the fall leaves of 2012.  With a good chance they will still be there next "fall" as well.

Go back three years however.  I had just bought a nice red--no not uniform-- hand pruner from Ace Hardware--choosing red because I have a habit of losing clippers by putting them down on the ground whilst weeding my heart out. Red, like blood, has a way of capturing our attention even in high grass.


My other bad habit is running with scissors--the nuns in my day-care in Oregon Ill. forgot to tell me about this--more specifically with clippers.  Not long after said purchase I was jogging over one of the bridges --we have four close by--and for reasons unknown had the pruners in hand and inexplicably I flung my right hand in the air, and my new pruner "sailed right out there," into the raging flood.  To say I kicked myself a few times would be obvious.  But to say that I despaired of ever seeing the pruning tool would also be plain; what is not so plain except to me is that I never forgot the incident. I have managed to hold onto all my other clippers since then, and now have quite a collection--Stephen and Grace, tool persons as they both are--just presented me with the best one yet for Christmas. So I am keeping that in my car!! (It's orange--and a cut above--oooh--Fiskars)

Well, one lesson learned. Are there others?

Going right on:  the current drought, the most severe in my lifetime, has given me an opportunity to actually look for these blades. And there they were! At the edge of one of the deeper pools under said bridge, basically unmoved by any amount of water or forces thereof, was the clippers, as you see them now.  Once chiselled out of the frozen mud and  ice, thawed out, and washed, the blade is as sharp as ever, having been half-buried in the creekbed for over 3 years. Pretty good for a generic Ace brand, eh?

 I tell this not to impress anyone--if anything it is a pungent display of my own dimness and  faults and in spite of them; but in using them, as I think intended, will at least give me a few object lessons; Take what you need--really need--and leave the rest. (Old AA slogan) 

As my friend Dr. Vercimak observed some  years ago, some of us wouldn't know a miracle if it came up and spit  on us in the face. I find that most materialists are materialists to the bone; having a deep and lifelong addiction to the various variations of materialism including spiritualism,  religionism, scientism, and rationalism (sans any actually raw rational reason to fanatically devote one's self to any of this pantheon of panaceas.)

To quote, as an example, this paragraph from Love in the Ruins: "Books matter. My poor wife, Doris, was ruined by books and a heathen Englishman; not by dirty books but by clean books. God, if you recall did not warn His people against dirty books. He warned them about high places."

Let that soak in...

"My wife, who began life as a cheerful Episcopalian from Virginia, became a priestess of the high places...beware of Episcopal women who take up with Ayn Rand and the Buddha (Siddhartha) and Dr. Rhine, formerly of Duke University.  A certain type of Episcopal girl has a weakness that comes on them just past youth...They fall pry to Gnostic pride, commence buying antiques, and developing a yearning for esoteric doctrine." (I do of course except my wife, raised Episcopalian but taking "the road less travelled,"  instead of the variations on the above taken by most Episcopalians; then again she is certainly not your typical anything, including native Chicagoan!!!)

Of course in a fictional work one has to paint as specific a picture as possible, as an oblique angle on painful and  probably universal truths; which people will not embrace unless attenuated and adumbrated.

To me, however, my personal tale of pride and pruners (pruners of pride, I hope; and errant branches thereof,  all so very neatly disguised as virtue.)  is rife with lesion-lessons for me, starting with the present drought which is, according to almost everyone, brought about by human sin--and not just relating to burning the trash in the backyard, either. Casting blame is our Constant Comment Cup of Tea, is't not?

Whether any of my loyalist readers will glean  anything from this, I wonder.  But I am compelled to write, as you  know, regardless.  (This is only the tip of the iceberg--none of you have ever seen my notebooks)  Most of what I write is Bible meditation; with a lot of tentative and sometimes hazardous and impertinent commentary which God Alone knows how to take; and mostly overlooks as one might overlook the graffiti of a five-year old.

But HE willing, I will live another day to expand on the meaning  of droughts, not merely the physical ones which are, one way or another, the indirect and/or much-delayed results of  accumulations of legions of overlapping sins;  but the most important drought which lasted 400 years BC, was a famine of Hearing from The Lord, which may be, now and again,  just getting a  new start. (Inferred by Percy) We must now study our "hamartology",  as in The Screwtape Letters, with as much pain and grief as it cost that author.  While I enjoy writing, I must be so very cautious that, as CSL warned, I do not believe in devils, "and have an excessive and unhealthy interest in them."