Word: godly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...papal vision went beyond Poland, and beyond Catholicism. John Paul reached out eloquently to "the Silent Church," the hosts of oppressed congregations in the Soviet orbit that fare worse than Christians in Poland. In one remarkable sermon, the Pope wondered aloud about God's purposes in the election of an East European as the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years. He called himself history's "first Slav Pope," whose succession to the Apostle Peter forms a bond of blood not only with Poles but with other Slavic peoples, including Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, Ukrainians and, most dramatically...
...park of pearly gates, angels with harps, ambrosia, manna, a Heavenly choir that sings, "Oh dem golden slippers" and a St. Peter who answers a would-be club member's wonderment with a snobby "We like it." Peter is not entirely accurate. There are lonely child musicians whom God has untimely plucked because he likes a tune now and then. And there are tensions in the best of families...
...this seems like an eschatological Upstairs, Downstairs, with the damned as underprivileged and God as absentee slumlord, let the reader be assured that Elkin's Heaven and Hell are mainly framework. Unlike his other novels, centrifuges of virtuosity, The Living End is tightly structured, with a beginning, a middle and a sudden, inevitable...
Does Elkin feel privileged? "God...
...Sure,' God said. 'I'm Hero of Heaven. I call on Myself.' That was when He began His explanations. He revealed the secrets of books, of pictures and music . . . why marches were more selfish than anthems, lieder less stirring than scat, why landscapes were to be preferred over portraits, how statues of women were superior to statues of men but less impressive than engravings on postage. He told them how to choose wines and why solos were more acceptable to Him than duets. He told them the secret causes of inflation...