Chasing the Thrill & Snatching at Joy

"People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on 'being in love' for ever . . . In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill that a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction."
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I don't have it handy, but in Gaudy Night, Dorothy Sayers has a variation on this theme: It is the people who snatch at things, especially love, who, in actuality, do not know what they want and will never attain happiness, let alone love or joy. I read this passage in Lewis and have not been able to shake it from my mind, constantly turning over people I know, some who are so very dear to me, who are unable or at least unwilling to submit to the loss of the initial thrill and so flit from one thing to another, trying to maintain that level of living that is impossible and unfulfilling, both. I have been thinking of it in my own life, too, of the loss of that sort of intense, blinding, world-shattering love and accepting a much quieter, more peaceful sort of love. At times I nearly despised myself for it, thinking I was "settling" or "giving in," but it is neither of those things. Huge conflagrations die out--sometimes immediately, sometimes after burning for days or even weeks. They take too much to maintain. They are too big for themselves. And, more often than not, they are destructive. It is the hearth fire that can burn for years, that provides heat and warmth without consuming everything in its vicinity, that can be maintained and used and enjoyed in the actual living of life. It is the hearth fire, too, that gives the sort of light that one needs to enjoy and explore the new "thrills." When faced with the forest fire, one has no capacity for looking at other things--the fire dominates.
Applied to pleasure in general: Consider for a moment the sorts of things that modern media encourages. It is all about finding the "thrill," about moving from one experience to another, without cohesion or understanding or even necessarily enjoyment--anything to keep from growing bored, to keep from seeing emptiness. For snatching at thrills, whether in art, love, food, music, or anything else, is in fact nothing more than the desperate attempt to hide one's one emptiness, futility and despair.

Regarding Honesty

i have been editing my husband's dissertation, which examines St. Thomas's account of the virtues and applies them to just war theory (he is political philosophy). on reading his account of honesty, an annex of fortitude, i was a bit awed to read that honesty is the virtue that is in relation to beauty; that is, the honest man is he who is able to apprehend what truly is beautiful.
i do not have distinct or profound meditations on this, and i do not think i need to provide you with my own. i would like to leave you with this thought and let you come to your own conclusions and have your own contemplations on it. consider how a synonym for "honesty" is "integrity," for instance. consider the meaning of "integrity"--not just moral integrity, but for a thing or being to have integrity. consider how much that is supposed to be "beautiful"--"full of beauty"--how much painting sketching drawing, how much music song rhythm, how much supposed art, lacks fundamental, basic, objective integrity. consider how modern art, in fact, seeks to glory in the deliberate destruction of integrity--of honesty--and so, therefore, by default cannot be beautiful, and therefore cannot be art.
consider how we have, now, several generations formed by this perverted media (i shall not honor it with "art"), and so we have a whole nation that has a fundamentally distorted understanding of beauty, and how we are urged to contemplate what is abhorrent and abherrent, and revel in it lest we be thought unsophisticated or intolerant. sophistry indeed . . .
and that is as far as i go. consider your own contemplations as inspired by different genres of media, even art, and respond, if you dare.

Tolkien and Heroism

i alluded previously, briefly, to my interest in what makes Tolkien's heros heroic. of course, it is easy to see what in the protagonists of Lord of the Rings, but most of the history of Middle Earth is much darker than this. as i gradually work my way through Silmarillion, what seems a painfully obvious point occurred to me: they all fight for something greater than themselves. the tragic heros, such as Feanor and even Melkor, are those who cause division and strife for their own ends. even those who seem to fail, however--what Gandalf will later describe to Frodo as a time of "sorrow . . . and gathering dark, but great valour, and great deeds that were not wholly vain." (bk.1, chp. 2) it does not seem high praise, but perhaps takes greater valour than we can understand in our self-bound age, a sort of courage that holds the self as little or naught and the goal as everything. it is a sort of valour, indeed, which none but a Christian could fully understand--to face death boldly, to lose everything, and yet not for self-gain. or, to paraphrase Chesterton, the soldiers of Christ go singing gaily in the dark. for it is also true that only in sorrow and gathering dark can the light of great deeds shine forth.
to be continued . . .

Tolkien and Manhood

Someday, that mythical day when I have time, energy, and focus, I would like very much to write an article on Tolkien's idea of heroism. While The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, of course, show heros being successful at seemingly hopeless tasks, many if not most of his other tales are of men (and sometimes women) embarking on truly hopeless tasks, fighting the darkness when it cannot be overcome, of sacrificing everything for a cause already lost. What, then, is the difference between heroism and foolishness? Can an action be both? I don't know, and I will have to spend many more moons pondering this question.
In the meantime, though . . . I am not a fan of Hugh Jackson's movies. In fact, parts of them make me so angry that I am sorely tempted to throw things at the screen. One of the main reasons for this is because Jackson consistently undermines Tolkien's entire conception of what manhood is, what it means to be a man and a leader and a king. Elrond, the wise half-elven tried by battle, length of years, and sorrow upon sorrow, yet still with hope and wisdom and gentleness and light, becomes an angry, bitter, cruel father. And Faramir, that beautiful, wise, grave, gentle, learned warrior, with a strong and true heart, becomes a angst-ridden figure nearly giving in to temptations that, in Tolkien's portrayal, do not exist. Even Denethor, once wise and become overwhelmed by real trials, becomes merely heartless, with none of the anguish that Tolkien gives to him.
And is this not a problem overall? Have we not lost the conception of what a true man is? I take it as no coincidence that any man who loves beauty automatically is in danger of being labelled "homosexual"--as if loving beauty were not a mark of a real man! This ubiquitous division of the lover and the fighter, the artist and the sportsmen, the scholar and the soldier, has done incalculable damage to our men.
Here, then, is another task for a mother: to ensure that my sons know they can be both, to guide them to a path where they can be men without fear or shame.

On the Art of Motherhood

   John Senior is perhaps the best source to explain my ideals of motherhood, since he combines the best of Waldorf emphasis on imagination with a more Montessori-ish emphasis on intellect, combined with traditional Catholic culture. Beginning more or less at the beginning:

              Culture, as in "agriculture," is the cultivation of the soil from which men grow. To determine proper methods, we must have a clear idea of the crop. "What is man?" the Penny Catechism asks, and answers: "A creature made in the image and likeness of God, to know, love and serve Him." Culture, therefore, clearly has this simple end, no matter how complex or difficult the means. Our happiness consists in a perfection that is no mere  endless hedonistic whoosh through space and time . . . All the paraphernalia of our lives, intellectual, moral, psychological, and physical, has this end: Christian culture is the cultivation of saints.

   In the myriad ways that this could apply to mothering, the basic premise that I draw from this is that mothering means not just occupying my children's time so I can get things done and then throwing some Theology and the requisite Sacraments in the mix, but in developing my children, body, mind, and imagination, to fulfill the Christian ideals.
   I have been so disturbed lately by images and stories of mothers who heavily depend on some form of screen or gadget to entertain their children. Not every child needs to be, or obviously has the ability to be, Michelangelo--but every child has the innate ability to explore the world in order to discover truth, goodness, and beauty. Limiting exposure to this world, whether from fear, laziness, or ignorance, will limit the development and understanding of our children. How can a child who watches television appreciate the beauty of the Sistine Chapel: a static collection of images that requires contemplation and imagination? How can such a child even understand the rich symbolism, metaphor, and supernatural realities contained in the Mass? If we rely on technologically "interactive" toys, how will our children learn the beauty of silence, the richness of imagination, and the serenity of contemplation?
   As a mother, then, I must give of my own time, inclinations, and past times. I must sacrifice every aspect of myself to develop the latent potentialities of my baby. Only thus will he be able to find God, to be the man that God intended him to be, and to fulfill the purpose for which he was created.
God help me!

pleasure and the state

as Bentham posits and Tocqueville develops, one fall-out from a pleasure-based idea of leisure is that it softens the individual will and lessens the desire and ability to reckon with the difficulties and annoyances of existence.  this in turn creates a society ripe for virtual enslavement--not only literally, as we have seen increasingly in our country, but ideologically and practically speaking, as well.  a society without an awareness of others, lacking in a firm telos, has no protection from the power-hungry.  pieper writes exceeding much on this principle, that the only way to fight the enervating consequences of a pleasure-based people is to have a proper understanding of beauty and of leisure: that we exist for feasting, and that feasting is an incarnation of the divine into our daily lives.
Chrisus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat.

On Pleasure

In most people, then, the things that are pleasant to them are in conflict with one another, since they are not pleasant by nature, but the things that are pleasant to those who are passionately devoted to what is beautiful are the things that are pleasant by nature, and of this sort are actions in accordance with virtue . . . So the life these people lead has no additional need of pleasure as a sort of appendage, but has its pleasure in itself. -Aristotle


I love that bit about pleasure not being an appendage, that it should belong to the things that one pursues. We often think of virtue as a struggle, which it is, but this does not preclude it being beautiful, as well. And I do think that we appreciate things more when we have to struggle for them--not that a struggle makes things beautiful, but that it helps us to recognize their beauty.
'til next time . . .