WWWtW-Watch #9 : A Little Help

Dedicated to the proposition that it can happen here.

Being a former English major, I was severely tempted to dedicate an installment of WWWtW-Watch to Lydia McGrew's modest proposal, entitled Plotting to Save the Humanities. The situation is, however, that I currently have seven books checked out of the library, and my leisure time to read is falling ever further behind the branching interests of my intellectual curiosity: I've bitten off more than I can chew. Since I feel a real need to be spending more time reading than blogging for the nonce, I was very pleased to see that Kyle of Postmodern Papist has taken Lydia on himself. He has said everything that I might have said, and has done so not only better, but with much more propriety than I would have been able to muster. Therefore, without further ado, I direct you to Kyle's post.

Readings: Chesterton's HERETICS

It had not been my intention to put up any more posts on G.K. Chesterton in the near future, even though I borrowed Heretics from the library immediately upon having finished Orthodoxy. But when I came upon the passage below, from the chapter in Heretics entitled “On Mr. Rudyard Kipling”, it seemed so appropriate to our current national dilemma that I was forced to modify my game plan:

The truth is that exploration and enlargement make the world smaller. The telegraph and the steamboat make the world smaller. The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger. Before long the world will be cloven with a war between the telescopists and the microscopists. The first study large things and live in a small world; the second study small things and live in a large world. It is inspiriting without a doubt to whizz in a motor-car round the earth, to feel Arabia as a whirl of sand or China as a flash of rice-fields. But Arabia is not a whirl of sand and China is not a flash of rice-fields. They are ancient civilizations with strange virtues buried like treasures. If we wish to understand them it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. To conquer these places is to lose them. [emphasis mine]

Amen.

Readers might find it interesting to compare the above to Kyle R. Cupp’s take on Interpreting Nations on his blog, Postmodern Papist.

Reflections: And Forgive Us Our Trespasses...

Among the titles listed here, which I am currently working my way through, is Catholic novelist Ron Hansen’s book, A Stay Against Confusion, Essays on Faith and Fiction. Last night I was reading his essay “Anima Christi”, in which he translates, and then comments on, each line of the title prayer. In light of an unpleasant exchange* in which I recently become involved in the comments section at Postmodern Papist, I was particularly struck by Hansen’s commentary as follows:

Ab hoste maligno defende me.

“From spiteful enemies protect me.”

I have translated this line to underscore that the writer is not talking about a devil (diabolus) or demon (daemon) here, as a great many translations would have it, nor is the host, or army, as pernicious and hateful as enemies that are malignant in the English way. Every definition of malignus indicates pettiness and unkindness. A hostis malignus is stingy, ill-natured, grudging, small, the grouch next door, the snipe up the street, nothing so grand as an Evil One, nor even a bête noire. And I love that about the prayer.

Jacques Derrida has pointed out that our enemies are persons we haven’t met yet; when we have met them, when we have done our best not to meet them and met them often and hour after hour, then our enemies are no more than maligno and too much like ourselves. How wise and practical of the “Anima Christi” to address the humdrum problems of Christianity rather than martyrdoms and persecutions: the frowns and jokes and put-downs, the belittlings and smirks.

~ Ron Hansen

‘Nuff said.
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*UPDATE: This post originally included a link to the referenced post and subsequent conversation at Postmodern Papist. I find that the post has since been deleted, which is, perhaps, just as well. That said, Hansen's insights illuminate situations that we all regularly face, and remain valuable.