QUESTION: IS ADAM DRIVER WORTHY TO SEEK THE GRAIL?

The people want to talk about Adam Driver and his most face. They’re asking the questions, they want to know if his skin contains Grail-worthiness, if the great big bones God granted him to bear up the mainsail of his face are the bones of a worthy knight and pure. Do you know? From his youth he were all that was seemly and demure, fed by grey-winged nuns in seclusion and goodwill. And in some lights he were fair and well made, and in other lights he were a son of giants. Fists like loaves of bread, too wide to hold even the Blessed Sacrament, and the abbess were torn on whether this was a sign of his blessedness (“For sure he must receive his sacrament as a child receives mother’s milk, in full trust and dependence,”) or of his unworthiness (“For what man could hope to bear a lance that could not first bear the Host?” And so he went on to wrought a little film, and to wrought a little television, and sought bravely and with courtesy his fortune throughout Christendom, and outside Christendom too, and there were never reports of cowardice or imbravery that followed him home. But shall he seek the Grail? Some say Yea sure, and some say Never, not while he values his life, not when he has not even ventured to spend a night in the Perilous Bed, from which all knights rise in shame. Some say it was from the Perilous Bed that he himself were conceived, though others call this jealous slander, from those who envy the wideness of his brow, a sure sign of God’s favor, a brow as wide as Jerusalem.

Will Adam Driver seek the Grail? What are the signs either for or against it? How augurs the chin of his jaw, the unspooling roundness of his torso – some say he is shaped like the Grail cup himself, with a skull built for holding holy blood and a torso made for the hands of many Grail Maidens to bear through the hall of the Fisher King. But then there are some who say that his shape is the shape of unworthiness, that his odds are no better than Kay the seneschal’s, Kay who has some wit but precious little else to recommend him to the Cup of Heaven.

Still others say, why listen at table to the idle gossip of those who stay at home and have never seen Corbenic? Simply offer to Adam Driver a richly-made sword, the pommel of which is encrusted with rubies and carbuncles and other jewels beside, and the side of which is cunningly wrought with gold to read “No man shall take me hence but he by whose side I should hang, and he shall be the best knight in the world,” after Sir Lancelot forbears to take it up knowing full well that his secret sin prevents him from being the best knight in the world, and see if he can lift it from its jeweled scabbard; if the sword comes away freely in his hand, the matter is settled and he can set forth to pursue the Sangreal at once, before even Hocktide has concluded. For if the sword do come away, will not the hall be immediately filled with a dim and marvelous darkness, pierced suddenly by a fair and gentle light from underneath the Perilous Seat, that shall fill up the whole of the palace with its beams?

And did not Our Lord fashion Adam Driver with legs curiously long, and a torso curiously broad, in order that his and no other body might fit the peculiar proportions of Seat Perilous? And was not his face curiously built, with women’s skin stretched over men’s bones, that all who gazed upon his countenance might be reminded of the completeness and self-sufficiency of Holy Trinity? For the purpose of seeking the Grail and no other was such a face made.

…Unless such a face were cunningly-wrought by the Devil, to fool good Christian men and women into sending a false knight out on the Grail-quest. Does his face truly bear the perfection of the Trinity? Is not the length of his jaw a mockery of the Crucifixion? Perhaps Adam Driver might first prove his lineage and honor at other, secular castles, with prizes less dizzying and strange, with cupbearers not still dripping with heaven’s redolence. Let lesser men come to respect his shield before we send him forth on the quest that unseats even the best of knights.

It is a villain’s face! It is a face meant to seek the Grail! It is the face of a monk, of a brother-sufferer with Christ! It is the faith of a heathen prince, enemy of maidens! It is the face of a man with evil faith and poor belief! It is a visage bright as any fire, with no business among mortal faces – we must deliver the face and body of Adam Driver back to the Lord, and let the Lord deal with him as he sees fit. There he shall find either the life of his body or the death of his soul, and we shall be none the worse off for flinging him into the judgment of the Grail. No act of speech can settle this. Send Adam Driver to seek the Grail! Let him tarry not another second in our midst, before we are driven to ruin and suspicion amongst ourselves! You there – Driver – seek the Grail, and may God have mercy on you if you are not worthy!

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