"Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies"

Robert Duvall has died.  He was a great actor and was in several of my favorite films. Some years ago, at the beginning of Lent, John Nolte suggested several films appropriate to the season. One he recommended:

Tender Mercies(1983) - Robert Duvall plays Mac Sledge, an alcoholic has-been country and western star who wakes up hungover in a rundown motel run by a widow and her young son. The great Horton Foote’s exquisite, Oscar-winning script understands faith like few others. Sledge doesn’t come back to life through rediscovering music; he rediscovers music after coming back to life. And what brings him to life is the love of a kind and simple woman, her young son, a difficult reconciliation with the past, and in the film’s most touching scene, a gentle dunk in baptismal waters.

Tender Mercies seems to be about a very troubled and messed-up life. It is really about God's grace. I saw the film in a theater on its first run, and I've watched it on videotape and DVD many times since. It isn't a "message" film. It isn't propaganda for the faith. It simply shows how, even when we focus on the drama in our lives—on the terrible and stressful things—we are still surrounded by blessings.

Tolerance for country music is necessary if the film is to be enjoyed. If you haven't seen it, it is worth at least renting (it is available on Blu-ray and, last time I checked, can be watched on Prime). If you haven't seen it for a while, this is a good time to revisit.

Duvall was given "Best Actor" and Horton Foote "Best Original Screenplay" for the film—back when that still meant something. Foote was also responsible for the screen adaptation of Duvall's first film, To Kill a Mockingbird (for which Foote also received an Academy Award). Duvall famously objected to delivering lines that no real person would utter. Foote didn't write any dialogue like that.

“Textualism” and “originalism”

Ten years after his death, why Scalia's influence remains strong, and likely will continue to be:

Scalia was not just a judge but a philosopher: he sought to fundamentally change how we think about the role of a judge in a democratic nation. His view was very simple: if the law is to change, it should be changed by the people who wrote the law, not by nine unelected judges sitting on the Supreme Court. If your favorite right is not in the Constitution, amend it. If your favorite provision is not in the U.S. Code, ask Congress to add it. If you can’t convince your fellow citizens that the law should change, why should you be able to get your way through judicial fiat instead?

He called this view “textualism” for statutes and “originalism” for constitutional provisions, but the two terms are synonymous: judges should follow the original understanding of a text until the text is changed. The idea is so compelling it is hard to believe it was ever controversial. But it was – until Scalia joined the Supreme Court in 1986.

Since then, textualism and originalism have taken over the legal profession. ....

The trends are even bipartisan: one could argue that the best textualist on the Supreme Court today is Elena Kagan. As she admitted not too long ago, thanks to Justice Scalia, “[w]e’re all textualists now.” ....

It occurs to me that Scalia's approach to legal interpretation is a pretty good description of what biblical interpretation ought to be.

Brian Fitzpatrick, "Justice Scalia ten years later," SCOTUSBlog, Feb. 13, 2026.

Mobocratic rule

On the anniversary of his birth:

 

Lincoln, age 28, in 1844: from the Lyceum Address delivered in Springfield:

.... If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana....

...[B]y instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained.— Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the People. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last. By such things, the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it; and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world. .... (more)

Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address

"Yet I will rejoice"

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines,
The produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength; He makes my feet like the deer’s.
He makes me tread on high places. 

Habakkuk 3:17-19 [ESV]

The final verse of Cowper's hymn is based on that passage from Habakkuk. It is a favorite hymn of mine, although several others of Cowper's are, too.

Sometimes a light surprises the Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord who rises with healing in His wings:
When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again
A season of clear shining, to cheer it after rain.

In holy contemplation, we sweetly then pursue
The theme of God’s salvation, and find it ever new.
Set free from present sorrow, we cheerfully can say,
'E'en let th' unknown tomorrow bring with it what it may.

It can bring with it nothing, but He will bear us through.
Who gives the lilies clothing will clothe His people, too;
Beneath the spreading heavens, no creature but is fed;
And He Who feeds the ravens will give His children bread.

Though vine, nor fig tree, neither, their wonted fruit should bear,
Tho' all the field should wither, nor flocks, nor herds, be there,
Yet God, the same abiding, His praise shall tune my voice
For while in Him confiding, I cannot but rejoice.
(William Cowper, c. 1779)

Poets' Corner - William Cowper: Olney Hymns

O blessed they

From Augustine, "Exposition on Psalm 148":

The subject of our meditation in this present life should be the praises of God; for the everlasting exaltation of our life hereafter will be the praise of God, and none can become fit for the life hereafter, who has not practiced himself for it now. So then now we praise God, but we pray to Him too. Our praise is marked by joy, our prayer by groans....On account of these two seasons, one, that which now is in the temptations and tribulations of this life, the other, that which is to be hereafter in everlasting rest and exultation; we have established also the celebration of two seasons, that before Easter and that after Easter. That which is before Easter signifies tribulation, in which we now are; that which we are now keeping after Easter, signifies the bliss in which we shall hereafter be. ....

Praise ye the Lord from heaven: praise Him in the high places. First he says, from heaven, then from earth; for it is God that is praised, who made heaven and earth. All in heaven is calm and peaceful; there is ever joy, no death, no sickness, no vexation; there the blessed ever praise God; but we are still below: yet, when we think how God is praised there, let us have our heart there, and let us not hear to no purpose, Lift up your hearts. Let us lift up our heart above, that it become not corrupted on earth: for we take pleasure in what the Angels do there. We do it now in hope: hereafter we shall in reality, when we have come there. Praise Him then in the high places. ....

What sort of command, think ye, have things in heaven and the holy angels received? What sort of command has God given them? What, but that they praise Him? Blessed are they whose business is to praise God! They plough not, they sow not, they grind not, they cook not; for these are works of necessity, and there is no necessity there. They steal not, they plunder not, they commit no adultery; for these are works of iniquity, and there is no iniquity there. They break not bread for the hungry, they clothe not the naked, they take not in the stranger, they visit not the sick, they set not at one the contentious, they bury not the dead; for these are works of mercy, and there is no misery, for mercy to be shown to. O blessed they! Think we that we too shall be like this? ....

“Two nations divided by a common language”

I very much enjoyed "Divided by a Common Language," about the differences between American and British English. Bryan A. Garner concluded it thus:

The differences between American and British English are tuned finely enough to carry tone, identity, and local flavor without blocking understanding. An American novelist who writes mom instead of mum summons a whole emotional landscape in three letters; a British narrator who chooses lorry over truck conjures a road running through a very different place. English remains gloriously mongrel, perfectly able to let both sides sound entirely themselves — and still, cheerfully, understand one another.

But then I came across this at the end of a book review in the Daily Telegraph:

This book is an entertaining read, but its thesis is overblown and exaggerated. It is also written in American [emphasis added], a language whose spellings and idioms are exceptionally irritating to British readers. Even if Allen Lane are short of editors, can’t they at least show sufficient respect for their British market to invest in some software that will translate such books into English?

I live in a place called the "Capitol Centre." I don't mind.

A good American

Again, from the current issue of National Review, Charles C.W. Cooke, an immigrant, responds to Vivek Ramaswamy's definition of what it means to be an American. Ramaswamy, himself the child of immigrants, was reacting in turn to some on the Right who advocate for something called "heritage" Americans:

On the eve of America’s 250^th anniversary, Vivek Ramaswamy offered up a definition of what it means to be an American. “Americanness,” he wrote in the New York Times, “isn’t a scalar quality that varies based on your ancestry.” Rather, “you are an American if you believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.”

As a strong advocate of the notion that America, in a meaningful sense, represents an idea, I found a lot to like in this explication. Nevertheless, I think that it’s missing a crucial word: “good.” What Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate now running for governor of Ohio, describes is a good American, an ideal American, an American as Americans are imagined in our founding documents. It is true, in my estimation, that to be a good American is to believe in the rule of law, and in freedom of conscience and expression, and in colorblind meritocracy, and in the Constitution, and in the American dream, and to swear exclusive allegiance to our nation. It is not true, however, that the Americans who do none of these things aren’t American. An American who opposes the First Amendment or wishes to implement a caste system or loathes the U.S. Constitution is a bad American, certainly. But he is still an American — with the same rights and status as everyone else. ....

On America’s 150^th birthday, Calvin Coolidge remarked, “About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.” He submitted that “if all men are created equal, that is final”: “If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.”

Taken seriously, Coolidge’s construction suggests that the United States has no choice but to insist on the continuation of its fundamental ideals — which are not merely some ideals among many but the only ideals suitable to a free country. Naturally, these ideals cannot be maintained by our pivoting to an interest in “heritage Americans.” .... (more)

Charles C.W. Cooke, "To Be, and to Become, an American," National Review, March, 2026.