The Fine Print

Back in the spring, I was writing a sermon that referred to the concept of pattern recognition, the thing our brains seem hardwired to do in order to learn from our experience, create symbols to carry meaning, use language and math and music. As I was looking for examples to explain this phenomenon, I happened to read a short piece in the New York Times magazine where a Nashville record producer, Callie Khouri, was asked about her Easter Brunch playlist, and among the cool music she singled out was the sentence: “I would definitely have some pop staples.” Now in the article, the words “pop staples” are lower case, implying they mean standard songs of the pop music genre, which, depending on who you are, might mean The Beatles or Smokey Robinson or Lady Gaga.

But I had a hunch that is not what she meant at all, having lived in Nashville for a while I believed that a hip Nashville record produced would not be recommending music so imprecisely. No, I suspected that what she actually was  referring to with the words “pop staples” was a proper noun, a person, Mr. Roebuck “Pop” Staples, the patriarch of the Staples Singers musical family, father of Mavis, a giant in the gospel world and the kind of staple you do want on your Easter morning ultimate playlist, maybe in their classic song, “I’ll Take You There,” which, if it does not make you glad to be alive, you might just better check to see if you really are.

And sure enough the next week after Easter, I just happened to notice in the Errata section a little notice correcting what they were calling a transcription error—the reporter recorded the interview and the person who transcribed the notes did not know the difference between pop staples, lower case, and Pop Staples, proper noun. And aside from pointing out to you what a terribly close reader of the NY Times I am, there is something there about this practice of examining facts and errors, setting the record straight, being willing to admit mistakes, that corresponds nicely with spiritual practices that help us sort out our actions and intentions, our values and our context, the pattern recognition of the inner life.

Add to that the following paragraph I noticed, back in the Times just last week:

A letter to the editor on May 5, about “Red Doc>,” a book of poetry by Anne Carson with some lines that refer to the velocity of a falling cow, misapplied the notion of a constant acceleration due to gravity near the Earth’s surface. The rate, 9.8 meters/second, refers to the increase of velocity per second, not the velocity itself.

It charms me and encourages me that we live in  a world where poets write poems about the velocity of falling cows, and readers write letters to the editors, and those editors try to keep the math and the poetry in balance. Surely, as long as we can give ourselves to such fancy and accuracy, creativity and precision, we have not unalterably wrecked the creation we were put here to make a garden of, or forever lost the pattern of its maker.