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Having yesterday finished Brazilian author Clarice Lispector’s lyrical novel about a woman who has undergone a violent spiritual crisis which she is attempting to explain to herself, The Passion According to D.H. , it has occurred to me that if Simone Weil had chosen to write narrative fiction, she might well have written a book much like this one. Here is a long excerpt by which to remember it:
XXXBut listen a minute: I’m not speaking of the future, I’m speaking of a permanent nowness. And that means that hope doesn’t exist because it is no longer a deferred future, it is now. Because God doesn’t promise. He is much greater than that: He is and never ceases being. It is we who cannot bear this ever-now light, and so we promise it for later only so we do not have to feel it right now, today. The present is God’s today face. The horror is that we know that it is right in life that we see God. It is with our eyes truly open that we see God. And if I put the face of reality off until after my death—it is though guile, for I prefer to be dead at the time of seeing Him, and so I think I won’t really see Him, just as I have courage really to dream only when I am sleeping.
XXXI know that what I am feeling is serious and has the power to destroy me. Because—because it is as though I were telling myself that the kingdom of heaven is now.
XXXAnd I don’t want the kingdom of heaven, I don’t want it, I can bear only its promise! The message I am getting from myself sounds cataclysmic to me, and once again close to the diabolical. But that is only for fear. It is fear. For doing away with hope means that I have to begin to live and not just to promise myself that I will. And that is the greatest fright I can have. Before, I waited. But God is now: His kingdom has just begun.
I don’t know if this is good theology. But I do know that it is powerful, visionary, writing.
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Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Readings: The Real America?
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One of my favorite authors, Ron Hansen, on small town America in his outstanding short story collection, Nebraska:
Everyone is famous in this town. And everyone is necessary.
Think about that. Meditate on it for a bit. I personally have never quite known that mode of necessity. But my parents knew it. You might say that I came close enough as a boy to catch a whiff of it. Close enough to account for the ache of nostalgia that Hansen's lovely book caused to rise in my throat as I read the final words of the title story.
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One of my favorite authors, Ron Hansen, on small town America in his outstanding short story collection, Nebraska:
Everyone is famous in this town. And everyone is necessary.
Think about that. Meditate on it for a bit. I personally have never quite known that mode of necessity. But my parents knew it. You might say that I came close enough as a boy to catch a whiff of it. Close enough to account for the ache of nostalgia that Hansen's lovely book caused to rise in my throat as I read the final words of the title story.
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Rants: Sound the Tocsin!
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Awake! There are lies to tell, goods to covet, duties to shirk, beauties to defile, vows to break, myriad opportunities to utter "I am."
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Awake! There are lies to tell, goods to covet, duties to shirk, beauties to defile, vows to break, myriad opportunities to utter "I am."
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Monday, September 28, 2009
Quote du Jour: Small Fry
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When asked for his opinion of the proper disposition of the case of film director, Roman Polanski, recently arrested in Switzerland and being held for possible extradition to the U.S. on a thirty-year-old charge of statutory rape, columnist and wag, Patrick J. Buchanan, replied:
Wire up ol' Sparky and let 'im ride the lightning!
He was kidding of course. I mean...wasn't he?
___________________________
Update: Is something like this Polanski's ultimate fate?
X
When asked for his opinion of the proper disposition of the case of film director, Roman Polanski, recently arrested in Switzerland and being held for possible extradition to the U.S. on a thirty-year-old charge of statutory rape, columnist and wag, Patrick J. Buchanan, replied:
Wire up ol' Sparky and let 'im ride the lightning!
He was kidding of course. I mean...wasn't he?
___________________________
Update: Is something like this Polanski's ultimate fate?
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Sunday, September 27, 2009
Reflections: A Few Idol Thoughts
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Consider this brief excerpt from Simone Weil’s First and Last Notebooks:
For Protestants, who no longer have the Church, religion has become to a great extent national. Hence the revived importance of the Old Testament.
What Weil had in mind when she penned these thoughts, may mostly likely have been such institutions as German Lutheranism, the Church of England, and their importance in the Nazi-era struggle for dominance of Europe and the world. But it occurs to me that the essence of her point can be translated, with regard to both time and place, so as to comment on our current plight in 21st century America.
While the constitution of the United States of America specifically forbids the establishment of a formalized national religion, that constitution has not served to prevent a de facto national religion—demonstrably Protestant at its core—from emerging out of the swamps of history; namely—American Exceptionalism.
Because of American Exceptionalism, for instance, the genocide of the original inhabitants of this continent was not really a genocide, or an "ethnic cleansing," but a feature of “Manifest Destiny”—God’s will that His people should be given this Promised Land, to have and to hold in perpetuity. The “Indians” were in the way. Though we have uttered weak proclamations of repentance for perpetrating this slaughter (as we have with regard to the race slavery that accompanied its accomplishment), we have done little—and that reluctantly—to make amends for either. God does not require it of His new Chosen People. That is so Old Testament.
Because of American Exceptionalism, throughout the 20th century, and yet today, the American invasions of sovereign nations, from Latin America to Asia, back to Latin America, thence to Asia again, and currently, on to the Holy Land itself, are not understood to be conducted in the service of greed enforced by power, but rather to be launched in the service of Truth, Justice, and the American Way: Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s—Superman! Americans, you see, are a Super-race descended from the heavens, and endowed with all the extraterrestrial rights and privileges pertaining thereto: Old Testament, am I right?
The bullying of a Superpower, isn’t really bullying, you see—it’s God’s Will in the form of geopolitical pragmatism: as American as apple pie. Not “national,” then, but “nationalist.”
That major fundamentalist Protestant figures such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have delivered tremendous political clout; that their heirs have come to dominate the most conservative of our two major political parties; and that “Religious Conservatism” is dominated by Old Testament imagery and the morality of “an eye for eye” needs no elucidation here. If you don’t already know that for a fact, then you haven’t been paying attention.
But just about the best thing ever concerning our national religion is that anyone can play! In the service of “life,” Roman Catholics can bemerde themselves carrying water for the war-mongering, propagandizing, neocon, AIPAC lobbyists, who in turn can anoint (with Old Testament oil) the heads of such Protestant worthies as Ronald “Bitburg” Reagan, and George W. “Burning” Bush—with Sarah “Voodoo Doll” Palin waiting in the wings: Exceptionalists all. From God’s lips to their ears, and on to Abu Ghraib. Mine eyes have seen the Glory—and it is us’ns!
Just a few idol thoughts.X
Consider this brief excerpt from Simone Weil’s First and Last Notebooks:
For Protestants, who no longer have the Church, religion has become to a great extent national. Hence the revived importance of the Old Testament.
What Weil had in mind when she penned these thoughts, may mostly likely have been such institutions as German Lutheranism, the Church of England, and their importance in the Nazi-era struggle for dominance of Europe and the world. But it occurs to me that the essence of her point can be translated, with regard to both time and place, so as to comment on our current plight in 21st century America.
While the constitution of the United States of America specifically forbids the establishment of a formalized national religion, that constitution has not served to prevent a de facto national religion—demonstrably Protestant at its core—from emerging out of the swamps of history; namely—American Exceptionalism.
Because of American Exceptionalism, for instance, the genocide of the original inhabitants of this continent was not really a genocide, or an "ethnic cleansing," but a feature of “Manifest Destiny”—God’s will that His people should be given this Promised Land, to have and to hold in perpetuity. The “Indians” were in the way. Though we have uttered weak proclamations of repentance for perpetrating this slaughter (as we have with regard to the race slavery that accompanied its accomplishment), we have done little—and that reluctantly—to make amends for either. God does not require it of His new Chosen People. That is so Old Testament.
Because of American Exceptionalism, throughout the 20th century, and yet today, the American invasions of sovereign nations, from Latin America to Asia, back to Latin America, thence to Asia again, and currently, on to the Holy Land itself, are not understood to be conducted in the service of greed enforced by power, but rather to be launched in the service of Truth, Justice, and the American Way: Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s—Superman! Americans, you see, are a Super-race descended from the heavens, and endowed with all the extraterrestrial rights and privileges pertaining thereto: Old Testament, am I right?
The bullying of a Superpower, isn’t really bullying, you see—it’s God’s Will in the form of geopolitical pragmatism: as American as apple pie. Not “national,” then, but “nationalist.”
That major fundamentalist Protestant figures such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have delivered tremendous political clout; that their heirs have come to dominate the most conservative of our two major political parties; and that “Religious Conservatism” is dominated by Old Testament imagery and the morality of “an eye for eye” needs no elucidation here. If you don’t already know that for a fact, then you haven’t been paying attention.
But just about the best thing ever concerning our national religion is that anyone can play! In the service of “life,” Roman Catholics can bemerde themselves carrying water for the war-mongering, propagandizing, neocon, AIPAC lobbyists, who in turn can anoint (with Old Testament oil) the heads of such Protestant worthies as Ronald “Bitburg” Reagan, and George W. “Burning” Bush—with Sarah “Voodoo Doll” Palin waiting in the wings: Exceptionalists all. From God’s lips to their ears, and on to Abu Ghraib. Mine eyes have seen the Glory—and it is us’ns!
Just a few idol thoughts.X
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Reflections: Better Left Unsaid
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The unsayable can be given to me only through the failure of my language. Only when the construct falters do I reach what it could not accomplish. ~ Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
Our downfall is in naming that about which we must not speak. In so doing we construct a language which filters out Reality. For it is a Reality by which we would be entirely overwhelmed—our “I” ripped from its root—were we to see it Whole. Our consequence, the origin of our perpetual mourning, is to inhabit a paint-by-numbers world, success in coping with the elements of which satisfies no one. Like Oedipus, we blind ourselves in order to avoid admitting through the gates of our eyes that Light whose reception our psyches would not survive: the face of God.
I have thought that the “church,” in the widest sense of the term—meaning not only the Church of Rome, or the Church of Rome plus the Eastern Orthodox church, or even those “catholic” churches plus the mainstream Protestant churches and all their myriad schisms and permutations; but taking “church” to mean the universe of all believers—is nothing more than a medium in which the crystal of sainthood can form. It may be that the great multitude of souls exist and dance their mediocre two-step only for there to be that which the saint is other than. Fueled by words, the meaning of which he only marginally comprehends, the ordinary believer delves in the dirt of this world to grow the grain with which to fill the saint’s beggar’s bowl; and then he fertilizes that soil with the material remnants of his being. But in so doing he has provided the saint with the little he needs in order to shuck the husk of words protecting him from the Truth, and to transcend this cycle of tedium and death.
In the Great Hive, the believer/drone is distracted from his pain by stories about the Gospel. The Gospel--only for the saint--is Life Itself.
X
X
The unsayable can be given to me only through the failure of my language. Only when the construct falters do I reach what it could not accomplish. ~ Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.
Our downfall is in naming that about which we must not speak. In so doing we construct a language which filters out Reality. For it is a Reality by which we would be entirely overwhelmed—our “I” ripped from its root—were we to see it Whole. Our consequence, the origin of our perpetual mourning, is to inhabit a paint-by-numbers world, success in coping with the elements of which satisfies no one. Like Oedipus, we blind ourselves in order to avoid admitting through the gates of our eyes that Light whose reception our psyches would not survive: the face of God.
I have thought that the “church,” in the widest sense of the term—meaning not only the Church of Rome, or the Church of Rome plus the Eastern Orthodox church, or even those “catholic” churches plus the mainstream Protestant churches and all their myriad schisms and permutations; but taking “church” to mean the universe of all believers—is nothing more than a medium in which the crystal of sainthood can form. It may be that the great multitude of souls exist and dance their mediocre two-step only for there to be that which the saint is other than. Fueled by words, the meaning of which he only marginally comprehends, the ordinary believer delves in the dirt of this world to grow the grain with which to fill the saint’s beggar’s bowl; and then he fertilizes that soil with the material remnants of his being. But in so doing he has provided the saint with the little he needs in order to shuck the husk of words protecting him from the Truth, and to transcend this cycle of tedium and death.
In the Great Hive, the believer/drone is distracted from his pain by stories about the Gospel. The Gospel--only for the saint--is Life Itself.
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