Stuart C. Henry - "Of Madness and Man and La Mancha" (April 27, 1969)

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	(whistling)	0:11
	(sacred organ music)	0:52
	(choir singing faintly)	2:56
-	Let us offer onto God our unison prayer of confession,	5:09
	and for pardon, let us pray.	5:15
	Oh most merciful Father	5:20
	who willis, not the death of any sinner,	5:23
	but rather that he should return unto thee and be saved.	5:27
	Comfort us who are grieved by the weight of our sins.	5:32
	We confess to thee	5:37
	that we have been slow to believe the good news	5:39
	made known in Jesus Christ.	5:42
	We confess that like the disciples of old,	5:45
	we have not expected great things to happen to us.	5:49
	We have doubted the power of Christ's resurrection	5:54
	in our lives.	5:57
	Forgive us for believing that the triumph of right	5:59
	is too good to be true.	6:03
	Restore us through thy pardoning grace,	6:06
	to what childlike faith.	6:09
	We pray in Jesus name.	6:12
	Amen.	6:15
	Now hear these words of assurance, of pardon.	6:18
	As the heaven is high above the earth,	6:25
	so great is God's mercy, toward them that fear him.	6:29
	Like as a father pity at his children,	6:36
	so the Lord pity them that fear him.	6:41
	If we confess our sins,	6:46
	He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins,	6:50
	and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.	6:57
	As far as the east is from the west,	7:02
	so far has God removed our transgressions from us.	7:06
	Therefore, be of good courage.	7:14
	(choir singing faintly)	8:19
	There is one announcement	10:40
	that I would like to draw the attention	10:42
	of our radio congregation to.	10:44
	The second announcement in our order of worship.	10:47
	This afternoon at 02:30,	10:52
	the Mary Duke Biddle Memorial organ	10:57
	will be dedicated here in the chapel to our right.	11:01
	The dedication recital	11:08
	will be played by Mr. E. Power Biggs,	11:11
	who is one of America's most celebrated organists,	11:15
	and the public is cordially invited to attend.	11:19
	And I am happy also to inform you all that	11:25
	Mr. Walter Holtcamp,	11:28
	who built the organ, is worshiping with us,	11:31
	at this service.	11:35
	The lector at this service	11:37
	is the chaplain to the university.	11:40
-	Let us hear the reading of a portion of scripture.	11:48
	This being the first of 13 verses	11:51
	of chapter nine of the gospel, according to Saint Matthew,	11:54
	"Jesus went on board a ship and passed over	11:58
	and came into his hometown.	12:02
	Immediately, some people brought to him a paralyzed man,	12:05
	lying on a sleeping pad.	12:08
	And because Jesus saw the faith of the bearers,	12:11
	he said under the paralytic,	12:14
	'Son be of good cheer, your sins are pardoned.'	12:16
	Where upon certain teachers of the law said to themselves,	12:21
	'This man speaks profanely.'	12:25
	Jesus read their inward thoughts and said,	12:30
	'Why must you have such evil thoughts in your minds?	12:34
	Which is easier to say,	12:38
	your sins are pardoned	12:40
	or to say arise and walk?'	12:43
	But to make it quite plain	12:47
	that the son of man has authority on earth to pardon sins.	12:48
	He then said to the paralyzed man,	12:53
	'Get up, take up your sleeping pad and return to your home.'	12:55
	The man sprang to his feet and went to his home.	13:02
	When the crowd saw this, they were awestruck	13:06
	and described the glory to God for giving such power to men.	13:09
	And as Jesus went along,	13:16
	he saw a man named Matthew presiding over the tax office.	13:18
	Jesus said unto him, 'Follow me.'	13:22
	And he arose and followed Him.	13:26
	Later on as Jesus was in the house	13:29
	sitting at the dinner table,	13:32
	many tax collectors and other disreputable people	13:34
	came and sat down with Him and His disciples.	13:37
	The Pharisees noticed this	13:41
	and they began to say unto his disciples,	13:43
	'Why does your teacher eat	13:47
	in the company of tax gatherers and outcasts?'	13:48
	Jesus overheard the remark and replied,	13:53
	'It is not men in good health who require a doctor,	13:57
	but they who are sick.'"	14:02
	Suppose you go away	14:04
	and learn the meaning of Hosea 6:6	14:06
	"I like mercy and not mere sacrifice"	14:11
	"For I did not come to invite the pious,	14:17
	but the outcast to repentance."	14:20
	Amen.	14:24
	(sacred organ music playing)	14:26
	♪ Glory be to the Father ♪	14:33
	♪ And to the son ♪	14:37
	♪ And to the Holy Spirit ♪	14:40
	(choir singing faintly)	14:44
	The Lord be with you.	15:16
Congregation	And (indistinct)	15:19
-	Let us pray.	15:20
	Let us offer first a Prayer of Thanksgiving,	15:27
	for the joy which is born of sympathy and sorrow,	15:32
	for the joy of the lost soul finding love again,	15:37
	and for the joy of the angels over one sinner that repented.	15:43
	Glory be to thee, O Lord.	15:49
	For all pure comedy and laughter	15:54
	and for the gift of humor and gaiety of heart,	15:57
	glory be to thee O Lord.	16:01
	For all who have consecrated (indistinct)	16:05
	with the love of Christ,	16:07
	glory be to thee, O Lord.	16:11
	For all singers and musicians,	16:15
	for all who work and farm	16:19
	and color to increase the joy of life,	16:22
	glory be to thee O Lord.	16:26
	For poets and craftsman,	16:29
	for all who rejoice in that and make things well.	16:33
	Glory be to thee O Lord.	16:39
	For all who have loved the common people	16:42
	and born their sorrows in their hearts,	16:44
	glory be to the O Lord.	16:49
	For profits and reformers,	16:52
	who cry shame on all social wrong	16:56
	and point the way to fare a life for all the people,	16:58
	glory be to thee O Lord Most High.	17:03
	And a prayer of intercession.	17:11
	We bring before thee O God the troubles	17:14
	and pedals of peoples and nations,	17:17
	the sighing of prisoners and captives,	17:21
	the sorrows of the bereaved,	17:26
	the necessities of strangers,	17:30
	the helplessness of the weak,	17:34
	the despondency of the weary,	17:37
	the failing powers of the aging.	17:41
	O God drawn near to each,	17:45
	for the sake of Jesus Christ, our Lord.	17:49
	And a prayer of supplication.	17:55
	O thou and who's boundless being laid up	18:00
	all treasures of wisdom, truth and holiness,	18:02
	grant us through constant fellowship with thee	18:07
	the true graces of Christian character,	18:10
	the grace of courage,	18:16
	whether in suffering or in danger,	18:19
	the grace of preparedness,	18:23
	lest we enter into temptation.	18:26
	The grace to treat others as we would have others treat us.	18:30
	The grace of charity,	18:38
	that we may refrain from hasty judgment,	18:42
	the grace of silence,	18:47
	that we may refrain from hasty speech,	18:50
	the grace of forgiveness towards all who have wronged us,	18:55
	the grace of tenderness towards all who are weaker,	19:00
	and the grace of steadfastness	19:08
	in continuing to desire,	19:12
	that thou will do as now we pray.	19:15
	And as our savior Christ has taught us,	19:23
	we humbly pray together saying,	19:26
	our father who art in heaven,	19:30
	hallowed be thy name,	19:34
	thy kingdom come,	19:36
	thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.	19:38
	Give us this day our daily bread	19:43
	and forgive us our trespasses	19:46
	as we forgive those who trespass against us,	19:49
	and lead us not into temptation,	19:53
	but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom	19:55
	and the power and the glory forever.	19:59
	Amen.	20:04
-	In the name of the Father and of the Son	20:38
	and of the Holy Spirit.	20:42
	Amen.	20:44
	Taken all together,	20:52
	it was an unlikely setting of what happened,	20:55
	for 15th century Spain was no place to look for inspiration.	21:00
	In the closing years of the century,	21:06
	a group of foolhardy sailors	21:10
	with outrageous confidence	21:12
	and a magnetized needle floating in a bowl of water,	21:14
	had sailed to the west,	21:18
	and had returned with maps of Africa and the Americas.	21:21
	Almost overnight, the world doubled in its size.	21:27
	And if there was now twice as much treasure	21:32
	for the greedy and the bold,	21:34
	there was also twice as much danger about.	21:37
	For it was not long before that a curious German	21:42
	had discovered a combination,	21:45
	that would blow the roof from his laboratory	21:49
	or the head from his enemy.	21:54
	And it was not alone the physical world that was threatened	21:57
	and simply in matters of fair fields and firearms,	22:00
	because thanks to the invention of moveable type,	22:07
	Western man was now being flooded	22:11
	with wave after wave of printed books,	22:14
	inundating him with new notions that washed away	22:17
	at the old structures and the older ideas.	22:22
	There was no stability without,	22:28
	and there was no tranquility within,	22:30
	nor was that the worst.	22:33
	For while the explorers	22:36
	whatever pushing further and further,	22:37
	trying to unloose the very bounds of the ocean.	22:40
	And while the scholars were insistently asking that	22:43
	unanswered and unanswerable question, why, why, why?	22:46
	inquisitors under royal mandate,	22:52
	what probing into the darkest corners of men's minds	22:55
	and searching out the secret shadows of their homes,	23:00
	looking for heresy, testing for faith.	23:04
	So that sanity was remote from man's life,	23:09
	nightmare in darkness and terror by day,	23:13
	this is the way it was,	23:17
	with a man unwilling,	23:19
	even in the secrecy of his own family	23:21
	to speak his inmost thoughts.	23:24
	It was a mad world	23:28
	or more accurately it was a world of men driven to madness.	23:30
	And especially did the situation seems so	23:37
	to one Cervantes,	23:39
	who sat down to consider the matter	23:42
	and wrote his letter to the world,	23:46
	in the form of the life	23:49
	and adventures of Don Quixote of La Mancha,	23:51
	for the villages are these own region of La Mancha	23:57
	were no safer than the grand cities of Castillo.	24:00
	Nothing was stranger about this word to his generation	24:06
	than the enthusiasm with which it was received.	24:11
	Then, and later.	24:15
	Some 400 years after the time of Cervantes,	24:18
	New York was treated to a play with music	24:22
	called "The Man of La Mancha".	24:26
	It was a skill for blending,	24:29
	of the life and the career of Cervantes	24:32
	and of Don Quixote, the foolish knight who they invented.	24:36
	It was a play about compassion and pity	24:41
	and honor and virtue,	24:47
	and self-sacrifice,	24:50
	and New Yorkers loved it.	24:53
	Instead of turning their backs upon this play,	24:56
	the men of Gotham embraced it and held it tightly	25:00
	and they have done so ever since.	25:05
	Presented originally, modestly in an off-Broadway house,	25:08
	which means in relatively small and inadequate quarters,	25:13
	and as cheaply as possible,	25:17
	it was forced by public demand	25:19
	to move to a large metropolitan theater.	25:21
	And there, it has continued for years	25:25
	to play to standing room only.	25:28
	Surrounded by other productions that come and go	25:32
	in which the players sometimes confused art with the ability	25:36
	or rather the willingness,	25:42
	to act condescending and to speak dirt.	25:44
	This play continues to present itself	25:48
	to houses that are filled, night after night.	25:51
	And the houses aren't just filled	25:56
	with the matrons from Upper Montclair,	25:58
	or with children and company with their nannies.	26:02
	The houses are filled if one may judge,	26:05
	by the fetishes,	26:09
	and the dress of those who sit about him when he goes,	26:11
	the houses are filled with the blithe and the spirited,	26:15
	with the beautiful and the young.	26:19
	Surely there is a sermon here, could we but discover it?	26:23
	So let us try,	26:27
	and let us begin with the man, Cervantes.	26:29
	But his story is no chronicle of success,	26:33
	rather it is a catalog of catastrophe.	26:37
	The grotesque failure in an unsympathetic world	26:41
	where he was forced to live,	26:44
	begins with his birth and continues as his family moves	26:47
	from city to city throughout Central Spain.	26:51
	While he is still a young man,	26:55
	he enlisted in the army as a common soldier,	26:57
	and for his trouble,	27:01
	he loses the use of his left hand in a Mediterranean battle.	27:01
	Subsequently attempting to sail back to his native Spain,	27:07
	he is captured by barbaric pirates.	27:11
	And for five years he was a slave in Algiers.	27:14
	Ransom comes but tardily,	27:19
	and thereafter through the rest of his life,	27:22
	Cervantes is in and out of prison	27:26
	as he is in and out of debt,	27:29
	and in and out of favor with the inquisition.	27:32
	And yet the spirit which informs his word to the generation	27:37
	is broader than the bitterness of any one man could ever be.	27:43
	It's deeper than the despair that would ever be allowed	27:48
	to a single individual.	27:51
	Consider if you will, a question that he raises,	27:55
	not for himself, but for the whole mad world	27:59
	and for all the people who are trapped within it.	28:05
	He is speaking in the play,	28:10
	he is awaiting the hooded inquisitors of rat and state,	28:12
	and he is jailed with less rather than more justice,	28:17
	but he speaks.	28:21
	"I have lived 50 years, and I have seen life as it is.	28:23
	I have seen misery and pain and hunger	28:30
	and cruelty beyond belief.	28:35
	I have heard the singing from taverns	28:38
	and I have heard the moans from bundles of filth	28:41
	lying inert in the street.	28:44
	I have seen it all.	28:47
	I have fought in battle	28:49
	and seen men die in the field,	28:50
	or worse, under the slow lash in Africa.	28:53
	I have held them in my arms in the final moments,	28:57
	and they died despairing.	29:01
	There was no glory,	29:03
	there were no gallant words,	29:05
	only the confusion and the agony and their eyes	29:08
	and the whimpering question, why?	29:11
	And I do not think they asked why they were dying,	29:14
	they asked why they lived	29:17
	in a world where life itself is lunatic,	29:22
	who can say where Magnis lies?	29:25
	And so Cervantes set out as a service to his generation	29:29
	to give a word to the men of his time.	29:35
	He knows of course,	29:40
	that there has never been a time	29:41
	when the world was free of heartache	29:43
	and of despair.	29:46
	Never a time when the world was free of agony,	29:48
	and he knows that there was a time	29:52
	when men believe that knights might ride out gallantly	29:54
	to slay dragons,	29:59
	to deliver maidens,	30:01
	to break open prisons,	30:03
	to lift up the fallen.	30:05
	But that time has long since passed.	30:08
	The knight's armor is tarnished,	30:11
	the plune is the bedraggled.	30:14
	The knight (indistinct) in his cumbersome armor	30:17
	is no match for the swift evil of his own time.	30:21
	And perhaps, just perhaps,	30:25
	the very notion that the knight ever was significant,	30:29
	is an idea that is now being exploded with the new notions	30:33
	in the printed books.	30:36
	And so Cervantes sets out to write a parody upon knighthood,	30:38
	and to say to his generation,	30:43
	that whatever else an age of grief and misery needs,	30:46
	it does not need a knight,	30:50
	for the time when he would be relevant	30:52
	has long since passed.	30:55
	And yet, because Cervantes is wise,	30:59
	he chooses not to preach, but to entertain,	31:03
	knowing that martyrdom lends dignity to a cause,	31:08
	but well aimed raring can kill it.	31:12
	And so Don Quixote is himself a ridiculous character	31:16
	a veritable lunatic.	31:21
	Toothless and wheezing,	31:24
	this mad knight rides out	31:26
	on a swayed back verminous charger,	31:28
	imagining himself a titan of romance	31:31
	and too silly even to be pathetic.	31:35
	Hard by his warm side there is a warped misshapen peasant	31:38
	far better fitted for tending cabbages and swine	31:44
	than for acting the part of the squad.	31:48
	But the two go out,	31:50
	(indistinct) pick a rose if ever there was one.	31:52
	Realism has their way with these two.	31:57
	And with his lady, Dulcinea,	32:00
	for she is no more than a common slacken,	32:04
	and her breath is redolent of garlic and onions.	32:08
	And yet the story is not vulgar,	32:13
	the story is not commonplace,	32:18
	the story is not irrelevant.	32:21
	These earthy creatures rise up out of their clay	32:25
	and they challenge comparison with ancient and worthy folk.	32:30
	They become the very embodiment of our own selves	32:35
	and they speak to us.	32:38
	Just as the novel spoke to Cervantes' own time,	32:40
	and just as the play, "The Man of La Mancha" speaks to us,	32:45
	he set out to write the story of a ridiculous night,	32:50
	a parody on knighthood,	32:54
	but his generation hears him speaking something else.	32:57
	And so does ours.	33:02
	Now, why?	33:04
	How did the miracle happen?	33:06
	How is it that this madman, becomes a kind of saint	33:08
	and this tedious peasant becomes a sort of model?	33:14
	We are not the first to ask the question.	33:21
	In the play, Aldonza, that poor wretched, derelict,	33:24
	whose lips that kiss the flesh of a dozen races,	33:30
	"Aldonza." Asks Sancho,	33:35
	"Why do you follow after Don Quixote?	33:39
	Why do you follow him?"	33:43
	"I don't know," says Sancho, "but I like him.	33:46
	I really like him."	33:51
	"Why? You don't get anything out of it." Resists the girl.	33:53
	"I know, but I can't explain why I really like him."	33:56
	You see the question asked more than the words inquire,	34:03
	and the answer is more significant than it first appears,	34:07
	for Aldonza's doubt and Sancho's faith,	34:11
	will introduce us to a similar experience.	34:17
	What his answer translates to is this,	34:20
	I really like him because he likes me,	34:24
	but it is more than this.	34:29
	You see, the world has always loved the fool,	34:31
	the fool no less than the rest of us	34:35
	is caught in a world of madness	34:37
	and he is subjected to the misery of circumstances	34:40
	that he can't control,	34:43
	but he behaves as if they weren't true.	34:44
	The fool of course, looks through the facts and beyond them,	34:48
	and so he evades the facts and dissolves events.	34:52
	And in the end, he finally cast doubt upon the fact itself.	34:57
	Do you see, it is only the fool who can treat the king,	35:01
	like a coloner,	35:06
	and yet the fool by his behavior may demonstrate	35:08
	that the king is less than noble?	35:12
	And so we like the fool,	35:15
	but what we like him for most of all,	35:17
	is that he ignores the fact	35:20
	of what we seem to be.	35:22
	My neighbor says, "(indistinct) think that I am nothing,	35:25
	but if you will, the keeper of a pig sty.	35:29
	But Don Quixote sees through the fact,	35:33
	he sees me.	35:36
	And he sees me because he knows what I am.	35:39
	And because I understand that he knows me,	35:43
	somehow I know myself a little better,	35:47
	or at least a little differently.	35:50
	I like him because he likes me."	35:53
	Now, surely it is at this point,	35:58
	that Don Quixote has something in common	36:00
	with Jesus of Nazareth,	36:03
	for much of the appeal of the historic Jesus,	36:05
	lay in the fact that he persisted	36:08
	in looking through the facts that people were,	36:11
	and appealing to them because he saw them	36:14
	as something else.	36:17
	He looked at a band of ragged, ignorant fisher folk,	36:19
	and he says, "I need to for my friends,	36:23
	I love you.	36:27
	Will you follow me?"	36:28
	Or talking with the outcast of the village he said,	36:30
	"You really aren't what you seem to be,	36:34
	go and be what you are."	36:38
	Now this is the meaning and the thrust of the lesson	36:42
	that was read in our hearing,	36:45
	not the critical analysis of it,	36:47
	not the linguistic explanation,	36:50
	but the meaning, the thrust,	36:52
	for there is by vitality in paralysis.	36:55
	And the scribes and the Pharisees are thus,	36:59
	and they bring down due upon our heads	37:03
	and so did the publicans and centers not have so much	37:05
	that we have made them this,	37:10
	but that we persist in thinking	37:12
	that they are nothing else than this	37:15
	and they are unwilling to let them be anything else.	37:18
	Are you only what your ID card reveals you to be?	37:22
	How much more you are than this,	37:29
	only you and God dare admit,	37:32
	but fools like Don Quixote	37:36
	move in the direction of seeing through our credentials	37:39
	and knowing what we are.	37:43
	The breathtaking appeal of Don Quixote	37:46
	is not the diversion of a fool	37:49
	who mistakes windmills for giants,	37:51
	or a flock of sheep for a marching army.	37:54
	No, the shattering characteristic about the man	37:57
	is that he persists in insisting,	38:01
	that sorted fact will yield to idealism.	38:04
	And so this silly knight goes out on his errands,	38:10
	but every knight must have his lady.	38:14
	And so he selects Aldonza.	38:17
	know most from the moment he cups eyes upon her,	38:20
	he insists that she is not Aldonza,	38:24
	but the Lady Dulcinea.	38:27
	He writes her a letter	38:30
	and the faithful Sancho brings it to her.	38:31
	"What's it say?" she asks	38:34
	Because of course, Aldonza cannot read.	38:36
	"O lovely, sovereign and high born lady." Sancho begins	38:40
	and continues ponderously.	38:48
	"O fairest of the fair,	38:50
	O purest of the pure,	38:53
	incomparable Dulcinea."	38:56
	"My name is Aldonza." She says.	38:59
	"My master calls you the Lady Dulcinea."	39:03
	"Why?"	39:08
	"I don't know, but it won't do any good to ask questions.	39:09
	Knights have their own language for everything,	39:14
	and it will only get you into trouble to question him."	39:17
	And yet Aldonza persists,	39:22
	later asking of the mad knight himself.	39:24
	"Would you just want," she begs	39:28
	"look at me as I really am and see me for what I am?"	39:31
	And Don Quixote, looking into her pleading eyes, says,	39:37
	"I see beauty,	39:42
	I see purity,	39:44
	I see Dulcinea."	39:47
	It is a long and plenty exchange.	39:50
	Dulcinea rails and lashes at him.	39:54
	He has shone up the sky,	39:57
	but what good is the sky to anyone	39:59
	who will never do anything but crawl?	40:01
	What good does it have to see ambition	40:04
	when you are hopelessly bound in the earth?	40:08
	There is no meaning left to life.	40:11
	The worst crime of all is being born.	40:13
	And when she attempts by his standards	40:16
	to minister to his and her enemies,	40:18
	then they degrade and ravish,	40:22
	and ridicule,	40:25
	and abandon her.	40:27
	And yet,	40:30
	and yet in the end,	40:32
	the knight wins.	40:35
	For when his embarrassed family have safely rescued him	40:37
	and brought him home again,	40:41
	to spare him from further spectacle before the world,	40:44
	and to save their own purse.	40:48
	When he has made his peace with God,	40:50
	and when he is ready to die,	40:53
	he goes out and departs of the world like a knight.	40:56
	And Cervantes has proven his point.	41:01
	Knighthood is no longer an option,	41:04
	but Aldonza has fallen and she stands close by his bed.	41:07
	Even the redoubtable Sancho so filled with proverbs	41:13
	is defenseless in the mute presence of death.	41:18
	And he sobs out in Pathos, "He's dead.	41:21
	My master Don Quixote is dead."	41:27
	"No, Sancho." Says Aldonza.	41:31
	"He is not dead.	41:34
	Don Quixote is not dead.	41:36
	Believe Sancho,	41:40
	and in (indistinct) he turns to her,	41:42
	"Aldonza."	41:45
	"My name," she replies "is Dulcinea."	41:47
	Now something of this transformation	41:53
	was accomplished in Cervantes himself.	41:56
	Do you see he set out to write the story	42:00
	of a ridiculous knight, but in the course of the story	42:02
	the knight turns more nearly into the sage,	42:06
	not so much by what he says,	42:10
	but by the reflected light that shines	42:13
	and the gentle character	42:16
	and the persistent ideal of the man.	42:18
	The character of Don Quixote changes	42:21
	and one can only guess,	42:24
	that the character of Cervantes himself had changed,	42:26
	changed because he too was exposed to the knight.	42:31
	Do you see in the play?	42:35
	One has Cervantes thrown into jail by the inquisitors,	42:37
	and so he tells the prisoners the story of Don Quixote	42:41
	and the scene shifts from the story of Don Quixote	42:45
	to the scene in the prison back and forth, back and forth,	42:49
	until it is no longer possible to tell	42:53
	where Don Quixote leaves off	42:55
	and where Cervantes takes on,	42:57
	until in the end, it is impossible to separate Don Quixote	43:00
	from Cervantes or the death of one	43:06
	from the death of the other,	43:09
	but in their fusion and death,	43:11
	a new man is born, The Man of La Mancha.	43:13
	And he it is who has a word for the madness of his own time.	43:17
	He is the holy wanderer.	43:23
	He is that strange combination of spiritual gifts	43:27
	and spiritual frailties,	43:30
	that is nothing more nor less than charity and action.	43:33
	And it is course for this reason that he is misunderstood,	43:38
	though it wouldn't bother Don Quixote for an instant.	43:43
	Rejection of some wounds him, but not of the intellectuals.	43:47
	This one is a man of faith and of action,	43:52
	"For mere scholars," he says to Sancho,	43:56
	"to reject me	43:59
	or scholars who have never tried the path of chivalry,	44:01
	I despise that criticism." He says.	44:05
	"I laugh at it."	44:07
	Which is only another way of saying	44:09
	that the solution for the problem of his time	44:11
	or up any time,	44:15
	lies in orienting one's values to the eternal.	44:17
	We have done it just the other way around.	44:22
	We have shaped the next world if there be one,	44:25
	by our confused creations.	44:30
	We judge the goodness of anything	44:33
	as to whether it accommodates itself to our here and now.	44:35
	The standard American question is always, will it work?	44:40
	Will it last a season?	44:44
	Is it practical?	44:47
	And yet, the majestic creatures of Don Quixote	44:49
	are just this,	44:54
	because they insist upon searching for an ideal	44:56
	for which they find or will ever find	45:00
	any earthly counterpart.	45:03
	And so they rise out of the folly,	45:06
	which en-meshes them	45:08
	and their own folly becomes their deepest wisdom,	45:11
	and their pursuit of it becomes their recompense.	45:15
	Sheer madness of course,	45:20
	utter madness for his time or ours,	45:22
	but would you hear once more, his testament of faith,	45:26
	his rule of light,	45:31
	to dream the impossible dream,	45:35
	to fight the unbeatable foe,	45:40
	the bear with unbearable sorrow,	45:44
	to run, where the brave dare not go,	45:48
	to right the un-rightable wrong,	45:52
	to love pure and chaste from afar,	45:56
	to try when the arms are too weary	46:01
	to reach the unreachable star, this is my quest,	46:04
	to follow the star, no matter how hopeless,	46:08
	no matter how far,	46:11
	to fight for the right without question or pause,	46:14
	to be willing to march into hell for the heavenly cause.	46:17
	And I know if I'll but true to the glorious quest,	46:23
	that my heart shall lie calm and peaceful.	46:28
	I know,	46:34
	to dream the impossible dream	46:36
	and the world will be better for this,	46:40
	that one man,	46:43
	sore and covered with scars,	46:45
	strove with his last ounce of courage,	46:48
	to reach the unreachable stars.	46:52
	Sheer madness, of course,	46:56
	but the world needs some mad men now,	46:59
	see why the sane ones have gotten us.	47:02
	Let us pray.	47:06
	Almighty God,	47:12
	give us the honesty and the wit,	47:17
	to understand what we have been,	47:22
	the grace to acknowledge what we are,	47:29
	and the indwelling spirit to be what we may become.	47:36
	Through Jesus Christ our Lord.	47:42
	Amen.	47:45
	(calm religious music)	47:55
	(choir singing faintly)	48:31
	(calm music)	51:36
	(choir sings faintly)	52:36
	(calm music)	53:31
	(choir sings faintly)	53:41
	(calm music)	54:47
	(choir sings faintly)	55:09
	O God, Father of all mercies,	58:25
	receive this offering which we present to thee	58:28
	as part of our worship,	58:30
	may these gifts be the symbol of our consecration unto thee	58:33
	and to thy son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.	58:38
	Amen.	58:43
	And out of God's gracious mercy and perfection	58:45
	do we commit you.	58:51
	May the blessing of God come upon you abundantly,	58:53
	may it keep you strong and tranquil	58:59
	in the truth of His promises through Jesus Christ our Lord.	59:02
	♪ Amen ♪	59:07
	♪ Amen ♪	59:10
	♪ Amen ♪	59:15
	♪ Amen ♪	59:19
	(choir sings faintly)	59:24
	(calm music)	1:00:30

Item Info

Title:

Stuart C. Henry - "Of Madness and Man and La Mancha" (April 27, 1969)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4z31sq41

Date:

April 27, 1969

Speaker:

Henry, Stuart C.

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 RR-0480
ref6165_zo1
uachapelsermaud
duke:628157
dcrau002471
ark:/87924/r4z31sq41
048c3432-3c79-4e88-973f-65af67ebe835

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

No Re-Use

In Copyright

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This material is made available for research, scholarship, and private study. Copyright in this material has not been transferred to Duke University. For reuses of this material beyond those permitted by fair use or otherwise allowed under the Copyright Act, please see our page on copyright and citations: https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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Transcript

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