lovelily As I write this, it’s the last hour of March First, Saint David’s Day. The feast is named after a Welsh man, but the feast was appropriated by Saint David’s School (where I taught in years past) as the feast of King David. The Western Church typically does not call Old Testament figures “saints” nor celebrate them in the calendar, a most unfortunate omission, but Saint David’s School is a curious exception, being named after the man who ordered the death of Uriah.
Al Maţarīyah On Wednesday, reading the text of the Miserere (a psalm of David) in mass, I was overwhelmed by his resemblance to New Orleans. Murderer and adulterer, but also God’s king and anointed; the slayer of Goliath and also the master of the lyre; the man who danced like a fool in front of the Ark and wept like a child at the death of his treacherous son Absalom. And the only full man in all of the Bible.
Dan Baum (another New Yorker in love with this city) said:
It’s different out here [outside of New Orleans]. We’re richer out here. We have more stuff, and we drive newer cars. It sounds corny, but life means something in New Orleans. Day-to-day living in New Orleans matters in a way it doesn’t out here, and you pay a price for that. It’s scary and stressful to live in New Orleans, but I don’t have to tell you that.
As with any life lived close to the mystery, and away from the rules.
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