This year (2012) marks the 30th anniversary
of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.
Created by Professor Scott Rice of the
English Department of San Jose State
University that now sponsors it, entrants
submit what they hope will be judged to be
the most awful opening line imaginable for
a novel.  This tongue-in-cheek contest was
inspired by the British novelist Edward
Bulwer-Lytton who, in 1830, published his
novel Paul Clifford.  The novel begins with a now infamous sentence which we have printed below.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents-except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

Entries to the contest must be submitted by June 30.  Below is our contemplated entry.

"While it is no doubt true that a square peg in a round hole usually results in a poor fit thereby necessitating the rejection of the peg, sometimes a square peg is just the tool required to create, or otherwise bring to perfection, a hitherto abysmally inferior state of holiness."

As profoundly awful as that sentence may be, we actually have no realistic hope of winning the prize.  So we may decide not to submit it.  However, it does form the opening sentence in this essay.  Yes, we are aware that it occurs some 7 sentences and 154 words into the essay, but a sentence that is simultaneously as awful and profound as our would-be entry doesn't have to abide by the usual convention requiring that it be placed at the very beginning.  So, if you prefer, just consider this idiosyncratic placement of our first sentence to be an example of our being another square peg in a round hole.

Now, just to provide you with evidence that all persons, events, ideas, conversations, sermons, essays and other instances of the expelling of gas are inter-related, it is the very same Edward Bulwer-Lytton who first used the phrase, "square peg in a round hole," appearing in his novel Kenelm Chillingly, His Adventures and Opinions, published in 1873.

If, by now, you're completely lost and wondering just where this essay is headed, then join millions of your fellow Americans who are equally baffled about where our country is headed.  Your bafflement is understandable, given the fact that last week, among some of its other outrageous actions which we may address in another essay, the U.S. Congress defeated a rather mild, common sense bill, supported by 90% of the American public, that would require background checks prior to all gun sales.

How could this happen?  How, in light of the deaths of twenty first graders and their teachers, could Congress turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to that?  How could they ignore the fact that daily there is more handgun violence striking down children and youth in our major inner cities than in all the suburbs combined?  How could they ignore the 90% of Americans who wanted them to pass legislation that would make a modest effort to reduce the casualties of such violence?

The answer is "money."  It takes a kingly sum to run for Congress.  They've got to have it or they'll be voted out of office in the future.  Their careers are at stake.  Those who voted to defeat the legislation are probably no more venal than the rest of us.  And if that assertion doesn't frighten you, read it again. 

Congress' "sin" (a word derived from the Greek hamartia which, in archery, means "to miss the mark") is that they put their own self-interest above the interest of the people who elected them to office in the first place.  In the process, Congress (and most especially the majority of its conservative members) once again acted in ways that wind up supporting Karl Marx's notion that it is not compassion or a zeal for justice but economics that determines history.  And they call Obama a socialist?  Wow.

Ninety percent of the American people support Congress acting to reduce the casualties of gun violence.  But they do not fund their legislators' campaigns.  Gun advocacy groups such as the NRA do.  Money talks.  Self-interest rules.  As Mark Twain memorably put it, "We have the best government money can buy." 

This would appear to be even more true now since, in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that since corporations are "people," they are as free as any person to fund independent political broadcasts in support of candidates standing for election.  The subsequent tsunami of corporate-funded political campaign ads has made members of Congress for sale to the highest bidder.  Just over 100 years ago, a deaf and blind observer shrewdly observed:  "The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor."  Her name?  Helen Keller.

But, in spite of the correctness of those observations, Marx really wasn't correct about economic determinism.  The appeal to justice and compassion is the heart and soul of every major religious and spiritual tradition on the planet, and each tradition has had their prophets who spoke to their people in behalf of God.  They were, each and all, square pegs in round holes.
 
Martin Luther King, Jr. was such a prophet.  This Methodist seminary-educated Baptist preacher believed in the activity of God in current events.  That is why he once said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  He was killed by an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968.

Isaiah was an 8th century B.C. Israelite prophet who, upon being called to speak difficult things to his countrymen, asked, "For how long, Lord?" God replied:  "Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away and the land is utterly forsaken."

Tradition has it that King Manasseh, was put off by this prophet who kept saying that there was a Power higher than the King and that this Power was concerned with doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly. So Manasseh did the sort of thing that tyrants then and now do:  he had Isaiah sawed in half.  These days, in that part of the world, Sarin gas is probably accomplishing the same thing in Syria.

Jesus, of course, was at the very least a prophet.  A few days before his death he laments over Jerusalem:
 
"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killer of prophets, abuser of the messengers of God!  How often I've longed to gather your children, gather your children like a hen, her brood safe under her wings-but you refused and turned away!  And now it's too late: you won't see me again until the day you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of God.'"

Being consummate examples of square pegs, prophets such as King, Isaiah and Jesus are seldom, if ever, appreciated by the round holes of their own contemporaries.  Each of them was murdered . . . two of them by state authorities.
 
So let us ask with Isaiah, "How long will this have to go on?  How long will we, the American majority, passively tolerate the self-serving mini-Neros in Congress who see to their own job security while tens of thousands of their countrymen annually are burned by gun violence?  How long will we have to wait for Americans to put their money where their mouth is and support only those members of Congress who care for compassion, and justice and not just for their own re-election?" 

This is an instance in which the American People may be better than the majority of their elected leaders in Congress.  The long arc of the moral universe will continue to keep bending toward justice.  But it will not significantly approach that happy destination until we learn how to bless the pursuit of justice, compassion, and mercy by a greater involvement in the political process through every legal means available to us. 

So, let us answer the Isaiah-like questions we have posed with the sort of answer Jesus foretold:  "Blessed is the member of Congress who, of whatever faith, legislates in a way pleasing to the God whose name is Compassion, Justice, and Mercy."

If we would reduce the number of dark and stormy nights of violence, then let us hold the newspaper in one hand and read the latest evidence of dereliction of duty in the halls of Congress . . . and then, in the other hand, hold this essay and read the sentence which, if it really didn't begin it, will now surely bring it to its conclusion:

"While it is no doubt true that a square peg in a round hole usually results in a poor fit thereby necessitating the rejection of the peg, sometimes a square peg is just the tool required to create, or otherwise bring to perfection, a hitherto abysmally inferior state of holiness."

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