I got into a Walker Percy kick again recently, for the first time in a while. At one point, I read him voraciously, reveling in the irony, the dissipation, the odd redemptions, at times bitter, at times flat, at times (such as Lancelot which I cannot in good conscience recommend to anyone but is an incredible feat), breathtaking.
Feeling irritated with Love in the Ruins, which is the first Percy book I got my hands on and usually delights me, I picked up Lost in the Cosmos, which I love but which, at one point, hit too close to home in its discussion of transcendence and re-entry. At a slight distance, though, I am able to appreciate it greatly, and equally greatly regret that it slipped my mind when writing my master's thesis (so passé and, it may be argued superfluous, but I so badly wanted to write). It's a superb treatment of the post-modern man--or human, if you prefer--dilemma of the abstracted self. Put simply, the modern man has no point of reference by which to define himself, so he is left floating in a constant state of impermanence, unmoored to any solid referent outside of himself . Art and science, claims Percy, are the two ways by which a person transcends the problem of reality, but then s/he is left with the problem of re-entering the word "at Wednesday afternoon at 4 o'clock": How does one who has tasted transcendence deal with the most mundane and humdrum of this often tedious reality?
One thing that slowly dawned on me is that, while spot on with the idea of transcendence and reality and the difficulties of the artist (and, to a lesser extent, the art-lover/receiver), something about the 1983 view of science wasn't quite relevant any more. There is some truth to it, that the "laity" revere science: medicinal, environmental, technological, but there is an edge, a disillusionment, that we have that was still absent to the wondering world of the '70s and '80s. We question surgeries and vaccines; our scientifically-altered food is making us an increasingly ill society; we have seen the limits of and also the fear of advanced weapons technology; we have reached the second decade of the 21st century and still drive cars, by and large, that run on four wheels and gasoline. So I pondered: What has replaced science as our panacea, our new god, our layman-available escape?
Oh friends: it is entertainment. Instead of seeking the cure for the abstracted, "flying dutchman" self, we have sought to numb it continually through means of ever-increasing, ever-more-extreme pleasures.
We are zombies.
Abstracted zombies.
The problem hasn't changed. We, as a societal whole, still are floating around, unmoored, untethered . . . except now we don't care. We numb it: lots of prescription drugs, lots of other drugs, lots of media--oh, such an incredible amount of media! (like this blog: teehee!)--fake online "communities", yogis and gurus and meditation and marriages and non-marriages and "alternative marriages" and God knows what else.
but we don't care, as long as we can numb it, even for a moment.
One slightly spooky coincidence is how well Percy's description of the modern man jives (yes, I did, and no I won't take it back) with C. S. Lewis's depiction of hell in The Great Divorce: isolated individuals, petty squabbling, incessant bickering over nothings, and, above all, the tininess. We are a nation of pusillanimity: of small-souled beings. How much you love your dog or cat or save the whales or the ozone layer doesn't matter a'tall in the end. What matters is our relationship to other human beings. We are the human race. The problem is not saving the abused animals or the abused earth or the whatever. The problem is that we are doing it instead of caring for each other. Because "caring" for each other has come to mean "let me do whatever the hell I want or I will scream intolerance at you."
We will not save ourselves or each other or the dogs (after all, it is very, very wounded people who abuse animals and children) or the earth (ditto that: if I don't care about myself, why should I care two pins about the earth?) or the whatever. And we cannot fix ourselves or help anyone else until we find moorings. And, as Walker Percy, the first in a family of generational suicides not to kill himself (it was at least his father and grandfather, if not great-grandfather, as well, and I believe an uncle or two) well knew, the only way to survive this world, to find moorings, is to find God. After that, well, as Lewis says:
"A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never simply by going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power'--or else not. It is still 'either-or'. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell." (The Great Divorce, "Preface")
19 July 2013
19 September 2012
and He became sin
last friday, 14 September, the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. i lost track of the dates and couldn't have told you that, but the boys and i try to make it to Mass on fridays, regardless, so by the grace of God, we made it.
the first reading of this feast is the story of the israelites compaining in the desert, so they are punished with a course of serpents. as they lay dying, they begin to repent, so God tells Moses to raise up a serpent on a pole, and whomever gazes on it will be saved from death.
this is viewed as one of the first images of the Crucifixion, but it always has puzzled me. a serpent is a symbol of satan and sin, not of Christ, so why is this an image of the crucifixion?
the biggest sin that the israelites commit after leaving egypt, the one that kept them in the desert for forty years and brought the serpents to them, was grumbling against God--some translate it as "murmering" against God for not leading them directly to the promised land. this whole thing has so many layers of symbolism that it is hard to stay focused: for us, egypt is our own sin, and the desert is our own life, which gives us the opportunity to become pure, to enact our salvation and live out grace so that we can stand with God, with nothing between Him and us. because any speck of sin is incompatible with God's presence (hence the strongest argument for Mary being pure from sin: if Christ was to live in her, she could not have had original sin. Christ and sin cannot cohabitate). so it makes sense that sin must die, typified by the serpent on the pole, before we enter heaven.
but Christ was sinless.
then i remembered an image that an artist i knew many years ago had been given. i do not remember the whole scene, except that it depicted Christ in profile. in iconography, saints are always shown with their whole face, which is why if one is looking off to the side, the face looks out of proportion: so it can show the whole of it. and which is why, if you look at an icon of the last supper, you can tell which is judas, because he is the only one shown in profile. so this friend remarked that this image was blasphemous, unless taken in the context of that verse that Christ was made sin . . .
the verse is 2 Corinthians 5.21, and the KJ translation reads, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
this, then, is why the image of the serpent can typify Christ: the Christ who died on the Cross took on and became our sin. and this is the only way in which we can be saved, is if we nail our sin to the Cross with Christ. our sinfulness must die, because anywhere that sin holds, is not held by Christ. every sinful habit, every vice to which we cling, is not saved. this, then, is what purification means, and what it means to be crucified with Christ so that the new nature may live, so that we may be God's righteousness.
the first reading of this feast is the story of the israelites compaining in the desert, so they are punished with a course of serpents. as they lay dying, they begin to repent, so God tells Moses to raise up a serpent on a pole, and whomever gazes on it will be saved from death.
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| photo courtesy of artvalue |
the biggest sin that the israelites commit after leaving egypt, the one that kept them in the desert for forty years and brought the serpents to them, was grumbling against God--some translate it as "murmering" against God for not leading them directly to the promised land. this whole thing has so many layers of symbolism that it is hard to stay focused: for us, egypt is our own sin, and the desert is our own life, which gives us the opportunity to become pure, to enact our salvation and live out grace so that we can stand with God, with nothing between Him and us. because any speck of sin is incompatible with God's presence (hence the strongest argument for Mary being pure from sin: if Christ was to live in her, she could not have had original sin. Christ and sin cannot cohabitate). so it makes sense that sin must die, typified by the serpent on the pole, before we enter heaven.
but Christ was sinless.
then i remembered an image that an artist i knew many years ago had been given. i do not remember the whole scene, except that it depicted Christ in profile. in iconography, saints are always shown with their whole face, which is why if one is looking off to the side, the face looks out of proportion: so it can show the whole of it. and which is why, if you look at an icon of the last supper, you can tell which is judas, because he is the only one shown in profile. so this friend remarked that this image was blasphemous, unless taken in the context of that verse that Christ was made sin . . .
the verse is 2 Corinthians 5.21, and the KJ translation reads, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."
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| giotto's crucifixion |
02 October 2011
False Dichotomies
"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom or philosophy." - Ludwig von Beethoven
Once in another life I acquired a t-shirt for the main purpose of vexing someone whom I wished to vex. Many, many years later, and much worn, it still reads quite clearly. Beethoven is one of my favourite composers, and I was delighted at its defiant proclamation of sense over reason. When my dad read it, his comment was simple: the quotation creates a false dichotomoy between knowing through reason (philosophy) and knowing through the sensed (art). I admitted, at the time begrudgingly, that he was right, and that at the very least philosophers need to accept that art teaches in many ways that reason cannot, and artists need to accept that their philosophies form their art. Well and good.
"The world of the fairy-story is that world which is opposed throughout to the world of rational truth." -Novalis.
I love George MacDonald, and was very excited to finally acquire and begin reading his Phantastes. In the beginning quotation, however, I stumbled upon this sentence and was troubled by it. Perhaps it is intended to mean that we cannot be bound by the rules of the natural world when entering "Faerie"(Tolkien), that we must leave behind our preconceptions and expectations of normal cause-effect, even. Well and good to this, as well. I would like to think that. But it doesn't say that, quite. It says rational truth. Perhaps it is using a dangerous word, or perhaps the translator mis-chose (although I question that: When those Germans go wrong, they get *really* nutty). This seems to me to be once again setting up a false dichotomy. Art is not its own truth; Faerie is not its own truth, and to leave behind the world of truth when entering the world of art is to enter the world of lies. A work of art can depart from the world of literal truth, but not from the world of moral truth: one could even say it must do the former and must not do the latter.
off the cuff, I would say that this continued and insistent dichotomy is the work of arrogance. Find the humble artist, the humble philosopher, the humble scientest, and you have found truth and goodness and beauty--or at least the way there.
Once in another life I acquired a t-shirt for the main purpose of vexing someone whom I wished to vex. Many, many years later, and much worn, it still reads quite clearly. Beethoven is one of my favourite composers, and I was delighted at its defiant proclamation of sense over reason. When my dad read it, his comment was simple: the quotation creates a false dichotomoy between knowing through reason (philosophy) and knowing through the sensed (art). I admitted, at the time begrudgingly, that he was right, and that at the very least philosophers need to accept that art teaches in many ways that reason cannot, and artists need to accept that their philosophies form their art. Well and good.
"The world of the fairy-story is that world which is opposed throughout to the world of rational truth." -Novalis.
I love George MacDonald, and was very excited to finally acquire and begin reading his Phantastes. In the beginning quotation, however, I stumbled upon this sentence and was troubled by it. Perhaps it is intended to mean that we cannot be bound by the rules of the natural world when entering "Faerie"(Tolkien), that we must leave behind our preconceptions and expectations of normal cause-effect, even. Well and good to this, as well. I would like to think that. But it doesn't say that, quite. It says rational truth. Perhaps it is using a dangerous word, or perhaps the translator mis-chose (although I question that: When those Germans go wrong, they get *really* nutty). This seems to me to be once again setting up a false dichotomy. Art is not its own truth; Faerie is not its own truth, and to leave behind the world of truth when entering the world of art is to enter the world of lies. A work of art can depart from the world of literal truth, but not from the world of moral truth: one could even say it must do the former and must not do the latter.
off the cuff, I would say that this continued and insistent dichotomy is the work of arrogance. Find the humble artist, the humble philosopher, the humble scientest, and you have found truth and goodness and beauty--or at least the way there.
04 April 2011
where to go, where to start
Most people now are looking for "a better place," which means that a lot of them will end up in a worse one. I think this is what Nathan learned . . . . I think he gave up the idea taht there is a better place somewhere else. There is no "better place" than this, not in this world. And it is by the place we've got, and our love for it and our keeping of it, that this world is joined to Heaven . . .
"Something better! Everybody's talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don't matter if it ain't nothing but a log pen."
-Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
I don't agree with Wendell Berry's views of education, but then, I don't think he understands education as anything except the prevalent view: a means (degree) to an end (more money). He does not, I don't think, understand education as liberal arts, in the ancient sense. Perhaps he still would not agree, but I think maybe he does. What he does understand, and what I do agree with so strongly, is his view of land, and the realization that this is where it must begin, with love of earth and land, with appreciating the value of simplicity and the simple life: renewing the land, renewing homes, continuing cultivation through generations, being able to transmit the values from father to son: the importance of hard work, of working with one's whole self. Speaking of his daughter's unfaithful husband, Nathan says, "It would have been better for Marcus if he had been tireder at night."
It is absurd, I agree, how divorced everything has become. People sit in offices all day and then go to other insides to "work out," rather than having a life and job incorporating both--and surely this is possible without everyone farming. Surely not everything must be so isolated, including families--from each other and from themselves, even, so often husbands and wives and children having completely separate lives.
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell works from the presumption that families are not, or at least no longer are, the primary shapers of their children. In modern society, this is often the case: that, as Gladwell asserts, the silences that would be filled with the voices of adults are now filled with cell phones, video games, television, texting, et cetera, ad nauseum. But, of course, this does not have to be the case, and returning to the sort of simplicity that Berry's stories portray would be a good place to start.
"Something better! Everybody's talking about something better. The important thing is to feel good and be proud of what you got, don't matter if it ain't nothing but a log pen."
-Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
I don't agree with Wendell Berry's views of education, but then, I don't think he understands education as anything except the prevalent view: a means (degree) to an end (more money). He does not, I don't think, understand education as liberal arts, in the ancient sense. Perhaps he still would not agree, but I think maybe he does. What he does understand, and what I do agree with so strongly, is his view of land, and the realization that this is where it must begin, with love of earth and land, with appreciating the value of simplicity and the simple life: renewing the land, renewing homes, continuing cultivation through generations, being able to transmit the values from father to son: the importance of hard work, of working with one's whole self. Speaking of his daughter's unfaithful husband, Nathan says, "It would have been better for Marcus if he had been tireder at night."
It is absurd, I agree, how divorced everything has become. People sit in offices all day and then go to other insides to "work out," rather than having a life and job incorporating both--and surely this is possible without everyone farming. Surely not everything must be so isolated, including families--from each other and from themselves, even, so often husbands and wives and children having completely separate lives.
In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell works from the presumption that families are not, or at least no longer are, the primary shapers of their children. In modern society, this is often the case: that, as Gladwell asserts, the silences that would be filled with the voices of adults are now filled with cell phones, video games, television, texting, et cetera, ad nauseum. But, of course, this does not have to be the case, and returning to the sort of simplicity that Berry's stories portray would be a good place to start.
24 February 2011
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.
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.
24 October 2010
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.
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.
14 September 2010
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 . . .
to be continued . . .
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