X
I have come to understand this: You imagine, when things aren't going too badly, that one day, when you are really down in the dumps, this book and that book can be pulled off the shelf and the wisdom therein will help you pull through to better times. But when you get there, and your world has no meaning, you find that you can no more read those books than you can spin straw into gold.
X
Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Readings and Writings: The Only Way Is Up
X
This morning I was reading again in The ABCs of Robert Lax, a collection of critical and anecdotal essays concerning the literary theory and poetic works of Robert Lax. The essay by Nicholas Zurbrugg with which I began my reading today kicked off with a Lax quote which I had already encountered in several of the other essays in the collection:
Starting at the top and moving down, sometimes even syllable by syllable…it’s a little like movie film. ~ Robert Lax
Zurbrugg enlarges upon this quote thusly:
xxAs Robert Lax suggests in the lines above…his poetry frequently evinces a peculiarly vertical, cinematic quality, in the sense that it flows downwards, word after word – ‘even syllable by syllable’ – somewhat like the successive frames of a film.
xxConsidered in terms of this trait, the poetry of Robert Lax – and most particularly, those works that he entitles ‘Movies’ – seems to invite partial definition as one of a number of examples of verbal creativity elaborating a distinctively vertical aesthetic, as opposed both to the horizontal discourse of conventional poetry, and the multi-directional, predominately geometrical constellations of concrete poetry.
I decided to continue the series of experiments I have been making based on my appreciation of Lax’s work by composing a ‘cinematic’ poem, employing only one word per line. Many of Lax’s poems in this mode are like time-lapse nature films where one sees 20 seconds of spring unfolding in all its busy perfusion, followed by 40 seconds of quivering summer, followed by 20 seconds of brightly desiccating and molting autumn, followed by 30 seconds of successive sheets of brilliant snow. My concept of a good film, however, is one that narrates a story. So the vertically oriented, ‘cinematic’ poem which I wrote does just that:
artist > shaman > theologian
first
let
there
be
fire
primordial
light
painting
the
cave’s
stone
walls
with
shadows
of
human
form
then
the
sooty
print
of
the
hand
which
next
would
outline
the
icons
of
great
beasts’
deaths
at
the
hand
of
the
hunter
a
correspondence
made
between
the
mental
conjuring
of
the
image
and
the
providential
guidance
of
the
hunter’s
arrow
thus
art
becomes
magic
becomes
religion
becomes
faith
man’s
transcendence
Having worded this piece to my satisfaction, I began considering that a celluloid film does not, as a physical object, actually move on a straight vertical track; it winds its way over the spools, off the reel, and behind the light and lenses of a projector. How to depict this, using the same words? I hit upon the device of arranging the words in four columns, using a boustrophedonic (‘as the ox ploughs’) orientation. But, in keeping with the cinematic concept, the poem would be arranged in vertical columns, rather than in horizontal lines. I constructed the poem using the ‘columns’ page set-up of Microsoft Word. Since this would not transfer to any of the online templates available at the various sites on which I wanted to share these pieces, I scanned the boustrophedonic version, after marking it up to demonstrate the directions in which the columns should be read:
I personally find this latter version to be more satisfying, in that the words of right-hand column climb upwards to the final word: transcendence, rather than descending to it, as they do in the strictly vertical format. This upward thrust to the word ‘transcendence’ seems most appropriate.X
This morning I was reading again in The ABCs of Robert Lax, a collection of critical and anecdotal essays concerning the literary theory and poetic works of Robert Lax. The essay by Nicholas Zurbrugg with which I began my reading today kicked off with a Lax quote which I had already encountered in several of the other essays in the collection:
Starting at the top and moving down, sometimes even syllable by syllable…it’s a little like movie film. ~ Robert Lax
Zurbrugg enlarges upon this quote thusly:
xxAs Robert Lax suggests in the lines above…his poetry frequently evinces a peculiarly vertical, cinematic quality, in the sense that it flows downwards, word after word – ‘even syllable by syllable’ – somewhat like the successive frames of a film.
xxConsidered in terms of this trait, the poetry of Robert Lax – and most particularly, those works that he entitles ‘Movies’ – seems to invite partial definition as one of a number of examples of verbal creativity elaborating a distinctively vertical aesthetic, as opposed both to the horizontal discourse of conventional poetry, and the multi-directional, predominately geometrical constellations of concrete poetry.
I decided to continue the series of experiments I have been making based on my appreciation of Lax’s work by composing a ‘cinematic’ poem, employing only one word per line. Many of Lax’s poems in this mode are like time-lapse nature films where one sees 20 seconds of spring unfolding in all its busy perfusion, followed by 40 seconds of quivering summer, followed by 20 seconds of brightly desiccating and molting autumn, followed by 30 seconds of successive sheets of brilliant snow. My concept of a good film, however, is one that narrates a story. So the vertically oriented, ‘cinematic’ poem which I wrote does just that:
artist > shaman > theologian
first
let
there
be
fire
primordial
light
painting
the
cave’s
stone
walls
with
shadows
of
human
form
then
the
sooty
of
the
hand
which
next
would
outline
the
icons
of
great
beasts’
deaths
at
the
hand
of
the
hunter
a
correspondence
made
between
the
mental
conjuring
of
the
image
and
the
providential
guidance
of
the
hunter’s
arrow
thus
art
becomes
magic
becomes
religion
becomes
faith
man’s
transcendence
Having worded this piece to my satisfaction, I began considering that a celluloid film does not, as a physical object, actually move on a straight vertical track; it winds its way over the spools, off the reel, and behind the light and lenses of a projector. How to depict this, using the same words? I hit upon the device of arranging the words in four columns, using a boustrophedonic (‘as the ox ploughs’) orientation. But, in keeping with the cinematic concept, the poem would be arranged in vertical columns, rather than in horizontal lines. I constructed the poem using the ‘columns’ page set-up of Microsoft Word. Since this would not transfer to any of the online templates available at the various sites on which I wanted to share these pieces, I scanned the boustrophedonic version, after marking it up to demonstrate the directions in which the columns should be read:
I personally find this latter version to be more satisfying, in that the words of right-hand column climb upwards to the final word: transcendence, rather than descending to it, as they do in the strictly vertical format. This upward thrust to the word ‘transcendence’ seems most appropriate.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Readings: Second-hand Prose
X
Sometimes it is good to read an author not in quest any major theme or system of thought, but only because he writes well and says interesting things. Thus it was that, having been directed by Paula Fredriksen’s footnote to Frank Kermode’s The Genesis of Secrecy, of which I which I posted below, I went back to the stacks for more Kermode.
I came away with a book of articles, the majority of which had been previously published in The London Review of Books, entitled, Pleasing Myself – from Beowulf to Phillip Roth. The two excerpts below are from “Empson the Poet”:
The radical contradiction is between the hope human happiness, for which, at least at certain moments, we feel our selves so wonderfully suited, and the power of the world as it inescapably is to frustrate or even ridicule that feeling. Hence Empson’s endorsement of the Buddhist position that ‘no sort of temporal life whatever can satisfy the human spirit’. Yet Buddhism also takes account of the fact that ‘birth has a human being is an opportunity of inestimable value. He who is so born has at least a chance of hearing the truth and acquiring merit.’
And,
A much quoted remark occurs in Empson’s notes to the poem ‘Bacchus’: ‘life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can’t be solved by analysis’.
Although I’ve never read much, if any, of William Empson’s poetry, he has provided me with food for thought via the medium of Kermode’s journalism.
X
Sometimes it is good to read an author not in quest any major theme or system of thought, but only because he writes well and says interesting things. Thus it was that, having been directed by Paula Fredriksen’s footnote to Frank Kermode’s The Genesis of Secrecy, of which I which I posted below, I went back to the stacks for more Kermode.
I came away with a book of articles, the majority of which had been previously published in The London Review of Books, entitled, Pleasing Myself – from Beowulf to Phillip Roth. The two excerpts below are from “Empson the Poet”:
The radical contradiction is between the hope human happiness, for which, at least at certain moments, we feel our selves so wonderfully suited, and the power of the world as it inescapably is to frustrate or even ridicule that feeling. Hence Empson’s endorsement of the Buddhist position that ‘no sort of temporal life whatever can satisfy the human spirit’. Yet Buddhism also takes account of the fact that ‘birth has a human being is an opportunity of inestimable value. He who is so born has at least a chance of hearing the truth and acquiring merit.’
And,
A much quoted remark occurs in Empson’s notes to the poem ‘Bacchus’: ‘life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can’t be solved by analysis’.
Although I’ve never read much, if any, of William Empson’s poetry, he has provided me with food for thought via the medium of Kermode’s journalism.
X
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Readings: How It Works
X
Here’s how it’s supposed to work:
On a Saturday morning, I make a routine trip into town to go to the public library. I have a book to return, but no intention of borrowing anything on this visit. Nonetheless, a new memoire by novelist Anne Rice catches my eye, and I take it out on a whim. Somewhere in the book, Rice mentions that one of her sources in researching her two novels about Jesus has been Paula Fredriksen. Since I’d come across that name in reading before and had made a mental note to one day check her out, this reference became the occasion for me to borrow this book from the university library.
In reading Fredriksen, I was led, in a footnote concerning a passage from the Gospel of Mark, to this book by the critic Frank Kermode, and duly borrowed it from the university library as well. In his book, Kermode uses a novel entitled Party Going by Henry Green to illustrate the mechanism of interpreting a narrative. Kermode made the novel seem interesting enough that I wanted to read it too.
Having decided to write about all this, I began searching for a link to a description of Party Going to use for this post. What I learned was that Amazon.com has no information on it, because the book is apparently not currently in print. I went, therefore, to Wikipedia for this article, which mentions Kermode’s use of Party Going, and also notes that Green’s best-known work is another novel entitled Loving. I have since borrowed both of these Green novels from the university library and added them to my "to read" stack. And so it goes.
My intention in writing about these things is that somebody, anybody, happening across my site might be prompted by my serial enthusiasms to hunt down at least some of these books and read them.
Hey, listen—it couldn’t hurt.
X
Here’s how it’s supposed to work:
On a Saturday morning, I make a routine trip into town to go to the public library. I have a book to return, but no intention of borrowing anything on this visit. Nonetheless, a new memoire by novelist Anne Rice catches my eye, and I take it out on a whim. Somewhere in the book, Rice mentions that one of her sources in researching her two novels about Jesus has been Paula Fredriksen. Since I’d come across that name in reading before and had made a mental note to one day check her out, this reference became the occasion for me to borrow this book from the university library.
In reading Fredriksen, I was led, in a footnote concerning a passage from the Gospel of Mark, to this book by the critic Frank Kermode, and duly borrowed it from the university library as well. In his book, Kermode uses a novel entitled Party Going by Henry Green to illustrate the mechanism of interpreting a narrative. Kermode made the novel seem interesting enough that I wanted to read it too.
Having decided to write about all this, I began searching for a link to a description of Party Going to use for this post. What I learned was that Amazon.com has no information on it, because the book is apparently not currently in print. I went, therefore, to Wikipedia for this article, which mentions Kermode’s use of Party Going, and also notes that Green’s best-known work is another novel entitled Loving. I have since borrowed both of these Green novels from the university library and added them to my "to read" stack. And so it goes.
My intention in writing about these things is that somebody, anybody, happening across my site might be prompted by my serial enthusiasms to hunt down at least some of these books and read them.
Hey, listen—it couldn’t hurt.
X
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Readings: Why I Read - part 2
X
Since I’m on record as an enthusiastic admirer of characteristically Jewish feminine beauty, it's not surprising that, as I was leafing through the January 12, 2009 issue of The New Yorker looking for the cartoons, I was arrested by the picture on page 64 of the German-Jewish philosopher, Hannah Arendt. (She looks to be slightly pained by my appreciative gaze.) The portrait adorns an article entitled “Beware of Pity” by critic-at-large, Adam Kirsch, which I went on to read. It is an interesting article, and I urge you to read it here. What I will discuss below are a couple of things in the piece that resonated with me: the first is a discussion of elitism; the second is an occurrence of a phenomenon about which I have written previously, and which I shall here dub “Textual Synchronicity.”
I have been accused in the comboxes of several discussion threads over the years of being an elitist—either political, or cultural, or both. Except in instances where this charge was made out of context, I haven’t bothered to deny it, since, as is the case with growing old—of which I’ve also been rightly accused—it seems to me that it beats all hell out of the alternative. So if from your perspective I look like an elitist, well, what the hey—to paraphrase Chevy Chase: I am. And you’re not. Congrats, all around.
I have often contrasted “the elite” with what I’ve called “bleating merinos.” The Kirsch article discloses that Arendt contrasted the self-designated elite to the shlemihl, which I take to be Yiddish for “bleating merino.” Arendt is quoted as characterizing this category of loser as “the hapless human being, the shlemihl, who has anticipated nothing.” An example of this, for Arendt, were those European Jews who waited and did nothing during the rise of National Socialism, until it was too late and they were swept up by the killing machine. My comparison to these would be those middle- and lower-middle-class Americans who allow their buttons to be pushed by neocon political propaganda, issued by “conservative” pols, for whom they subsequently vote, and by whom they are inevitably screwed.
Below is a discussion of what Arendt believed fires the ambition to be one of the political elite:
Still more revealing than Arendt’s definition of politics is her explanation of why people are drawn to it in the first place. We do not enter the political world to pursue justice or to create a better world. No, human beings love politics because they love to excel, and a political career is the best way to win the world’s respect. In ancient Greece, she writes, “the polis was permeated by a fiercely agonal spirit, where everybody had constantly to distinguish himself from all others, to show through unique deeds or achievements that he was the best of all. The public realm, in other words, was reserved for individuality; it was the only place where men could show who they really and inexchangeably were.” Arendt recognizes that most of the people of Athens, including all women and slaves, were shut out from this arena, but she accepts that her kind of politics is necessarily an aristocratic pursuit. In yet another instance of her favorite metaphor, she defends “the bitter need of the few to protect themselves against the many, or rather to protect the island of freedom they have come to inhabit against the surrounding sea of necessity.”
To be of the hoi polloi, a lesser creature that exists at the moral-intellectual mercy of contingency, to be blindly, easily, led towards destruction—a bleating merino—is to be in a bad place:
Avoiding that helpless “place” became the goal of Arendt’s life and thought. The categorical imperative of her political theory might be phrased: Thou shalt not be a shlemihl.
Right. Or a bleating merino. Now here comes the instance of “Textual Synchronicity.” I have previously written of a tendency for the serious reader to choose, simultaneously, but unintentionally, completely at random, various texts that contain identical and/or complementary ideas, which reinforce each other, with significantly enhanced impact on the reader. Towards the end of the Kirsch article, then, we read:
In “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” [Arendt] points out that the first step in the Nazis’ destruction of the Jews was to make them stateless, in the knowledge that people with no stake in a political community have no claim on the protection of its laws. [emphasis added]
And:
This is exactly what happened in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and what is happening now in Darfur.
So I finished that article and was putting the magazine aside with my right hand, in order to pick up Roberto Bolaño’s multi-volume, episodic, novel 2666—which I got for Christmas—with my left. Now for the occurrence (edited for brevity) of a synchronicity:
Upon opening the novel to p.266 of the first volume, where I had it bookmarked, I read, in the very first section—or episode—the following recitation of a newly introduced character:
The Greeks, you might say, invented evil, the Greeks saw the evil inside us all….It was the Greeks who showed us the range of possibilities and yet now they mean nothing to us. Everything changes, you say. Of course everything changes, but not the archetypes of crime, not any more than human nature changes. Maybe it’s because polite society was so small back then….Most human beings existed on the outer fringes of society. In the seventeenth century, for example, at least twenty percent of the merchandise on every slave ship died. By that I mean the dark-skinned people who were being transported for sale….And that didn’t get anyone upset….But if a plantation owner went crazy and killed his neighbor, and then went galloping back home, dismounted, and promptly killed his wife, two deaths in total…the legend of the murderer on horseback might linger for generations. Or look at the French. During the Paris Commune of 1871, thousands of people were killed and no one batted an eye. Around the same time a knife sharpener killed his wife and his elderly mother and then he was shot and killed by the police. The story didn’t just make all the French newspapers, it was written up in papers across Europe, and even got a mention in the New York Examiner. How come? The ones killed in the Commune weren’t part of society, the dark-skinned people who died on the ship weren’t part of society, whereas the woman killed in a French provincial capital and the murderer on horseback in Virginia were. [emphasis added]
Greeks. Elites. Dark-skinned people. Stateless persons. I get it. But go figure.
X
Since I’m on record as an enthusiastic admirer of characteristically Jewish feminine beauty, it's not surprising that, as I was leafing through the January 12, 2009 issue of The New Yorker looking for the cartoons, I was arrested by the picture on page 64 of the German-Jewish philosopher, Hannah Arendt. (She looks to be slightly pained by my appreciative gaze.) The portrait adorns an article entitled “Beware of Pity” by critic-at-large, Adam Kirsch, which I went on to read. It is an interesting article, and I urge you to read it here. What I will discuss below are a couple of things in the piece that resonated with me: the first is a discussion of elitism; the second is an occurrence of a phenomenon about which I have written previously, and which I shall here dub “Textual Synchronicity.”
I have been accused in the comboxes of several discussion threads over the years of being an elitist—either political, or cultural, or both. Except in instances where this charge was made out of context, I haven’t bothered to deny it, since, as is the case with growing old—of which I’ve also been rightly accused—it seems to me that it beats all hell out of the alternative. So if from your perspective I look like an elitist, well, what the hey—to paraphrase Chevy Chase: I am. And you’re not. Congrats, all around.
I have often contrasted “the elite” with what I’ve called “bleating merinos.” The Kirsch article discloses that Arendt contrasted the self-designated elite to the shlemihl, which I take to be Yiddish for “bleating merino.” Arendt is quoted as characterizing this category of loser as “the hapless human being, the shlemihl, who has anticipated nothing.” An example of this, for Arendt, were those European Jews who waited and did nothing during the rise of National Socialism, until it was too late and they were swept up by the killing machine. My comparison to these would be those middle- and lower-middle-class Americans who allow their buttons to be pushed by neocon political propaganda, issued by “conservative” pols, for whom they subsequently vote, and by whom they are inevitably screwed.
Below is a discussion of what Arendt believed fires the ambition to be one of the political elite:
Still more revealing than Arendt’s definition of politics is her explanation of why people are drawn to it in the first place. We do not enter the political world to pursue justice or to create a better world. No, human beings love politics because they love to excel, and a political career is the best way to win the world’s respect. In ancient Greece, she writes, “the polis was permeated by a fiercely agonal spirit, where everybody had constantly to distinguish himself from all others, to show through unique deeds or achievements that he was the best of all. The public realm, in other words, was reserved for individuality; it was the only place where men could show who they really and inexchangeably were.” Arendt recognizes that most of the people of Athens, including all women and slaves, were shut out from this arena, but she accepts that her kind of politics is necessarily an aristocratic pursuit. In yet another instance of her favorite metaphor, she defends “the bitter need of the few to protect themselves against the many, or rather to protect the island of freedom they have come to inhabit against the surrounding sea of necessity.”
To be of the hoi polloi, a lesser creature that exists at the moral-intellectual mercy of contingency, to be blindly, easily, led towards destruction—a bleating merino—is to be in a bad place:
Avoiding that helpless “place” became the goal of Arendt’s life and thought. The categorical imperative of her political theory might be phrased: Thou shalt not be a shlemihl.
Right. Or a bleating merino. Now here comes the instance of “Textual Synchronicity.” I have previously written of a tendency for the serious reader to choose, simultaneously, but unintentionally, completely at random, various texts that contain identical and/or complementary ideas, which reinforce each other, with significantly enhanced impact on the reader. Towards the end of the Kirsch article, then, we read:
In “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” [Arendt] points out that the first step in the Nazis’ destruction of the Jews was to make them stateless, in the knowledge that people with no stake in a political community have no claim on the protection of its laws. [emphasis added]
And:
This is exactly what happened in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and what is happening now in Darfur.
So I finished that article and was putting the magazine aside with my right hand, in order to pick up Roberto Bolaño’s multi-volume, episodic, novel 2666—which I got for Christmas—with my left. Now for the occurrence (edited for brevity) of a synchronicity:
Upon opening the novel to p.266 of the first volume, where I had it bookmarked, I read, in the very first section—or episode—the following recitation of a newly introduced character:
The Greeks, you might say, invented evil, the Greeks saw the evil inside us all….It was the Greeks who showed us the range of possibilities and yet now they mean nothing to us. Everything changes, you say. Of course everything changes, but not the archetypes of crime, not any more than human nature changes. Maybe it’s because polite society was so small back then….Most human beings existed on the outer fringes of society. In the seventeenth century, for example, at least twenty percent of the merchandise on every slave ship died. By that I mean the dark-skinned people who were being transported for sale….And that didn’t get anyone upset….But if a plantation owner went crazy and killed his neighbor, and then went galloping back home, dismounted, and promptly killed his wife, two deaths in total…the legend of the murderer on horseback might linger for generations. Or look at the French. During the Paris Commune of 1871, thousands of people were killed and no one batted an eye. Around the same time a knife sharpener killed his wife and his elderly mother and then he was shot and killed by the police. The story didn’t just make all the French newspapers, it was written up in papers across Europe, and even got a mention in the New York Examiner. How come? The ones killed in the Commune weren’t part of society, the dark-skinned people who died on the ship weren’t part of society, whereas the woman killed in a French provincial capital and the murderer on horseback in Virginia were. [emphasis added]
Greeks. Elites. Dark-skinned people. Stateless persons. I get it. But go figure.
X
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Readings: Shelter From the Storm
I am going to provide several excerpts below from a remarkable little book that came to my attention recently, and that I experienced a great deal of pleasure in reading. I learned of the book through an old, yellowed newspaper clipping that I found in a file at work. The reason that the clip came into my hand—there are no coincidences in these things--is that this book, My Brother’s Place: An American Lutheran Monastery, is a fitting complement to The Ascent to Truth, the Thomas Merton book on the contemplative life, which I am currently reading, and which I have quoted below. If there can be said to be a coincidence here, it is that the author, George Weckman is, among many other things, the organist of my parents’ church.
But, wait—a Protestant monastery? In Michigan? In contemporary America? I mean, I grew up in Michigan; my mother’s whole side of the family is Lutheran; one of my first cousins is a Lutheran pastor; and I hadn’t a clue. Nonetheless, it’s there:
[A] monastery is a place where people go to pursue a private path to religious self-awareness, self-consciousness in the presence of God. That must be something one does alone, even in the midst of other people, even in an institution dedicated to it. [My Brother’s Place, p.52]
Prof. Weckman stresses the value of the monastery on several levels. One that struck home particularly with me is the value of the monastery as a focal point of ecumenism with the Roman Catholic Church, towards the much-longed-for goal of a unified Communion. But it’s Weckman’s writing on the value of monasticism’s primary activity—prayerful contemplation—and particularly on reading as contemplation, and the relationship of contemplation to education, that most struck a responsive chord in me. Without further comment, I will now provide the promised excerpts:
First, contemplation as the careful, sensitive examination of ideas and stories is very close to scholarly study. This kind of contemplation consists of reflection and meditation on the meaning of the Bible and other religious texts. It explores the stories, images, and ideas found in such writings. It does not concern itself with footnotes and bibliographies and it does not worry over historical accuracy or systematic consistency, as academic scholarship must. It is, nevertheless, intent on deriving meaning and message from the inspired classics of the tradition. It dwells especially on the various connections and implications of the words and the personal dimensions of passage.
This kind of contemplation is very important for religions of revelation and books, while other kinds are more central in other religious traditions. The emphasis on words, understanding and communication, has its Christian charter in John 1: "In the beginning was the Word." Listening to the Word is the beginning and heart of Christian contemplation. The Word is a person, not words, of course, but the person speaks in words and is known through words. If contemplation also moves beyond words it never completely rejects them in a religion of incarnation. Through the words, the Word becomes incarnate and dwells in the presence of the listener and reader. [My Brother’s Place, pp.53-54]
Education is an instrument of the search for God. Such contemplation is a slow, unhurried process. It is symbolically associated with the central organs of the body, not with the speed and accuracy of a calculator. As Luke (2:51) says of Mary's cognition: "she treasured up all these things in her heart." The heart as an organ of thought connotes the correlation of ideas and emotions, getting used to things, and integrating them into one's personality. [My Brother's Place, p.54]
My advice: Set your alarm for 4:00 a.m. Rise before the dawn and read deeply, while still awash in the alpha waves. Read both early and often.
But, wait—a Protestant monastery? In Michigan? In contemporary America? I mean, I grew up in Michigan; my mother’s whole side of the family is Lutheran; one of my first cousins is a Lutheran pastor; and I hadn’t a clue. Nonetheless, it’s there:
[A] monastery is a place where people go to pursue a private path to religious self-awareness, self-consciousness in the presence of God. That must be something one does alone, even in the midst of other people, even in an institution dedicated to it. [My Brother’s Place, p.52]
Prof. Weckman stresses the value of the monastery on several levels. One that struck home particularly with me is the value of the monastery as a focal point of ecumenism with the Roman Catholic Church, towards the much-longed-for goal of a unified Communion. But it’s Weckman’s writing on the value of monasticism’s primary activity—prayerful contemplation—and particularly on reading as contemplation, and the relationship of contemplation to education, that most struck a responsive chord in me. Without further comment, I will now provide the promised excerpts:
First, contemplation as the careful, sensitive examination of ideas and stories is very close to scholarly study. This kind of contemplation consists of reflection and meditation on the meaning of the Bible and other religious texts. It explores the stories, images, and ideas found in such writings. It does not concern itself with footnotes and bibliographies and it does not worry over historical accuracy or systematic consistency, as academic scholarship must. It is, nevertheless, intent on deriving meaning and message from the inspired classics of the tradition. It dwells especially on the various connections and implications of the words and the personal dimensions of passage.
This kind of contemplation is very important for religions of revelation and books, while other kinds are more central in other religious traditions. The emphasis on words, understanding and communication, has its Christian charter in John 1: "In the beginning was the Word." Listening to the Word is the beginning and heart of Christian contemplation. The Word is a person, not words, of course, but the person speaks in words and is known through words. If contemplation also moves beyond words it never completely rejects them in a religion of incarnation. Through the words, the Word becomes incarnate and dwells in the presence of the listener and reader. [My Brother’s Place, pp.53-54]
Education is an instrument of the search for God. Such contemplation is a slow, unhurried process. It is symbolically associated with the central organs of the body, not with the speed and accuracy of a calculator. As Luke (2:51) says of Mary's cognition: "she treasured up all these things in her heart." The heart as an organ of thought connotes the correlation of ideas and emotions, getting used to things, and integrating them into one's personality. [My Brother's Place, p.54]
My advice: Set your alarm for 4:00 a.m. Rise before the dawn and read deeply, while still awash in the alpha waves. Read both early and often.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Reflections: Why I Read
As I was making the morning rounds of my regularly-visited blogs, I read a gorgeous post on Catholic and Enjoying It which begins like this:
“When Evangelicals ask me why the Church keeps holding up Mary alongside Christ, the best answer I can think of is this: There's one thing that even Jesus cannot do.
”He cannot show us what a disciple of Jesus looks like.”
Mark’s post was inspired, I believe, by the Pope’s recent encyclical. It speaks of the Virgin Mary as “the first apostle”. I was inspired by Mark’s post to submit the following comment:
“As a Protestant, let me ask, with reference to all the beautiful (no sarcasm there) writing above, how Mary is to be considered an exemplar for those of us struggling to attain discipleship?
”As the Immaculate Conception, born without Original Sin, it would seem that Mary would have had to struggle supernaturally to turn away from God; whereas the rest of humanity, born with, in effect, two strikes against it, needs to struggle supernaturally in order not to turn away from God, and this, knowing that we will continually fail. Mary never failed. She never needed to fear failure. I will. I can contemplate her with envy, but I can't do what she so effortlessly did. And I say "effortlessly" knowingly. Each and every one of us will face all of the sorrows that she faced, but we will face them as potentially damned sinners, while she faced them with full confidence of a crown and a heavenly throne for both her Son and herself, once the ordeal had been endured. We face our sorrows in hope, perhaps, in our strongest moments, but also in fear. Mary, ultimately, had nothing to fear.
It's all well and good to tell me to do what she did; but I can't do it. I am a sinner; she was not. And this sinlessness was of her essence; it is not of mine.
If Protestants don't get it, I think this, at least in part, is why.”
Having sent the above comment off, I clicked on “Home” and walked across the room from my computer to my recliner in order to pick up one of the books I am currently reading, G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.
Okay, so here is why I read:
On the very next page from where I had left off reading last night, in the chapter entitled “The Eternal Revolution”, Chesterton answers the question posed in the opening paragraph of the comment I had, only three minutes before, submitted to Mark Shea.
And here is how Chesterton does so:
“This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make may rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its own failures are fruitless. The question then becomes this: How can we keep the artist discontented with his pictures while preventing him from being vitally discontented with his art? How can we make a man always dissatisfied with his work, yet always satisfied with working?” [emphasis added]
And thus the demise of my too clever objection to Mary as the ideal for the struggling apostle. Do I thank Mark Shea? Do I thank G. K. Chesterton. Do I file it under “synchronicity”? Or do I thank something Higher?
All of the above.
“When Evangelicals ask me why the Church keeps holding up Mary alongside Christ, the best answer I can think of is this: There's one thing that even Jesus cannot do.
”He cannot show us what a disciple of Jesus looks like.”
Mark’s post was inspired, I believe, by the Pope’s recent encyclical. It speaks of the Virgin Mary as “the first apostle”. I was inspired by Mark’s post to submit the following comment:
“As a Protestant, let me ask, with reference to all the beautiful (no sarcasm there) writing above, how Mary is to be considered an exemplar for those of us struggling to attain discipleship?
”As the Immaculate Conception, born without Original Sin, it would seem that Mary would have had to struggle supernaturally to turn away from God; whereas the rest of humanity, born with, in effect, two strikes against it, needs to struggle supernaturally in order not to turn away from God, and this, knowing that we will continually fail. Mary never failed. She never needed to fear failure. I will. I can contemplate her with envy, but I can't do what she so effortlessly did. And I say "effortlessly" knowingly. Each and every one of us will face all of the sorrows that she faced, but we will face them as potentially damned sinners, while she faced them with full confidence of a crown and a heavenly throne for both her Son and herself, once the ordeal had been endured. We face our sorrows in hope, perhaps, in our strongest moments, but also in fear. Mary, ultimately, had nothing to fear.
It's all well and good to tell me to do what she did; but I can't do it. I am a sinner; she was not. And this sinlessness was of her essence; it is not of mine.
If Protestants don't get it, I think this, at least in part, is why.”
Having sent the above comment off, I clicked on “Home” and walked across the room from my computer to my recliner in order to pick up one of the books I am currently reading, G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.
Okay, so here is why I read:
On the very next page from where I had left off reading last night, in the chapter entitled “The Eternal Revolution”, Chesterton answers the question posed in the opening paragraph of the comment I had, only three minutes before, submitted to Mark Shea.
And here is how Chesterton does so:
“This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make may rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its own failures are fruitless. The question then becomes this: How can we keep the artist discontented with his pictures while preventing him from being vitally discontented with his art? How can we make a man always dissatisfied with his work, yet always satisfied with working?” [emphasis added]
And thus the demise of my too clever objection to Mary as the ideal for the struggling apostle. Do I thank Mark Shea? Do I thank G. K. Chesterton. Do I file it under “synchronicity”? Or do I thank something Higher?
All of the above.
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