My son Brian is getting married this Saturday, and I ran across a very nice wedding poem by Richard Wilbur, who was US Poet Laureate in 1987-88, which I share with you:
Wedding Toast
St. John tells how, at Cana's wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.
It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.
Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That this world's fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.
Now, if your loves will lend an ear to mine,
I toast you both, good son and dear new daughter.
May you not lack for water,
And may that water smack of Cana's wine.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
St. Augustine
At our last meeting St. Augustine's "Confessions" popped up in our discussion. A version that I found extremely readable is a translation by F. J. Sheed, published by Hackett Publishing Co., latest revision, 1993. It still has the Thy's and the Thou's but still very easy to read. Most people object to Augustine's emphasis on man's corrupt nature and his portrayal of the degrees to which man can degrade himself, but, he also exhibits a worshipful and awe-filled love of the Lord that we would do well to imitate. I offer the following as an example (I translated the Thous and Thys).
What then is my God, what but the Lord God? For Who is Lord but the Lord, or who is God but our God? O You, the greatest and the best, mightiest, almighty, most merciful and most just, utterly hidden and utterly present, most beautiful and most strong, abiding yet mysterious, suffering no change and changing all things: never new, never old, making all things new, bringing age upon the proud and they know it not; ever in action, ever at rest, gathering all things to Yourself and needing none; sustaining and fulfilling and protecting, creating and norishing and making perfect; ever seeking though lacking nothing.
You love without subjection to passion, You are jealous but not with fear, You can know repentance but not sorrow, be angry yet unperturbed by anger.
You can change the works You have made but Your mind stands changeless. You find and receive back what You have never lost; are never in need but rejoice in Your gains, are not greedy but exact interest manifold. Men pay You more than is of obligation to win return from You, yet who has anything that is not already Yours? You owe nothing yet You pay as if in debt to Your creature, forget what is owed to You yet do not lose thereby. And with all this, what have I said,
my God, my Life and my sacred Delight?
Book One, IV, p.4
What then is my God, what but the Lord God? For Who is Lord but the Lord, or who is God but our God? O You, the greatest and the best, mightiest, almighty, most merciful and most just, utterly hidden and utterly present, most beautiful and most strong, abiding yet mysterious, suffering no change and changing all things: never new, never old, making all things new, bringing age upon the proud and they know it not; ever in action, ever at rest, gathering all things to Yourself and needing none; sustaining and fulfilling and protecting, creating and norishing and making perfect; ever seeking though lacking nothing.
You love without subjection to passion, You are jealous but not with fear, You can know repentance but not sorrow, be angry yet unperturbed by anger.
You can change the works You have made but Your mind stands changeless. You find and receive back what You have never lost; are never in need but rejoice in Your gains, are not greedy but exact interest manifold. Men pay You more than is of obligation to win return from You, yet who has anything that is not already Yours? You owe nothing yet You pay as if in debt to Your creature, forget what is owed to You yet do not lose thereby. And with all this, what have I said,
my God, my Life and my sacred Delight?
Book One, IV, p.4
Friday, September 25, 2009
How Ambiguity Reveals Different "Senses" in the Bible
Last night, reading the Book of Revelation, we reviewed the "four senses" in which scripture is traditionally interpreted: the literal, and three "spiritual" senses, the allegorical (typological), tropological (moral), and anagogical (the future). This article quoted the Catechism (No. 118):
The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites a medieval couplet which summarizes these four senses: Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. (The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; the Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.)
Robert Sokolowski has some interesting things to say about how different meanings can be discerned in ambiguity. In Eucharistic Presence (at p. 156-57), he says, of the literary trope of ambiguity:
"Ambiguity as a literary form does not mean inexactness in expression. . . Rather, ambiguity as a trope is the deliberate expression of two meanings in one phrase. It is the use of one set of words that can be taken in two senses. . ." Sokolowski uses as an example, some lines from T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton:
". . . as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness."
Sokolowski says the word "still" is triply ambiguous: "'Still' can be taken as an adjective, an adverb, or a conjunction. The phrase could say that the Chinese jar is motionless (still) and yet moves; it could say that the ancient jar moves even now (still); and it could say that despite its stillness the jar nevertheless (still) moves. It is the interplay of all these meanings that gives the lines their force."
Sokolowski cites examples in the Gospel of John 5:24-26, in which the word "life" is used to mean not only the life that Jesus communicates to believers, but also the life that his Father shares with him:
Sokolowski goes on to say (p. 158) : "The literary ambiguities in the Fourth Gospel are possible because of the play of presentational dimensions that occurs in Christian belief. The simply worldly can be taken just as it is, but it can also be seen in an iconic way, as a manifestation of a dimension that transcends it. . . Such hints and ambiguities are not deficiencies but disclosures. . ."
In other words, the different senses in scripture's "ambiguities" make manifest to us not only the life that Jesus gives us, but also the eternal trinitarian life in which he participates. "The redemptive mission is profiled against the eternal procession. If the life Christ brings were not related to the life he has eternally from the father, the sense of our Redemption would be incompletely expressed." Ibid., p. 158.
Looking at it this way, we see that scriptural ambiguities "layer in" multiple truths and senses which must be unpacked for a fuller understanding of the God who created and loves us. The different senses do not lead us astray, and are not conflictual, but are part of scripture's richness and blessing.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church cites a medieval couplet which summarizes these four senses: Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. (The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; the Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.)
Robert Sokolowski has some interesting things to say about how different meanings can be discerned in ambiguity. In Eucharistic Presence (at p. 156-57), he says, of the literary trope of ambiguity:
"Ambiguity as a literary form does not mean inexactness in expression. . . Rather, ambiguity as a trope is the deliberate expression of two meanings in one phrase. It is the use of one set of words that can be taken in two senses. . ." Sokolowski uses as an example, some lines from T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton:
". . . as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness."
Sokolowski says the word "still" is triply ambiguous: "'Still' can be taken as an adjective, an adverb, or a conjunction. The phrase could say that the Chinese jar is motionless (still) and yet moves; it could say that the ancient jar moves even now (still); and it could say that despite its stillness the jar nevertheless (still) moves. It is the interplay of all these meanings that gives the lines their force."
Sokolowski cites examples in the Gospel of John 5:24-26, in which the word "life" is used to mean not only the life that Jesus communicates to believers, but also the life that his Father shares with him:
- Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not come to condemnation, but has passed from death to life.
- 25
- Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.
- 26
- For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to his Son the possession of life in himself.
Sokolowski goes on to say (p. 158) : "The literary ambiguities in the Fourth Gospel are possible because of the play of presentational dimensions that occurs in Christian belief. The simply worldly can be taken just as it is, but it can also be seen in an iconic way, as a manifestation of a dimension that transcends it. . . Such hints and ambiguities are not deficiencies but disclosures. . ."
In other words, the different senses in scripture's "ambiguities" make manifest to us not only the life that Jesus gives us, but also the eternal trinitarian life in which he participates. "The redemptive mission is profiled against the eternal procession. If the life Christ brings were not related to the life he has eternally from the father, the sense of our Redemption would be incompletely expressed." Ibid., p. 158.
Looking at it this way, we see that scriptural ambiguities "layer in" multiple truths and senses which must be unpacked for a fuller understanding of the God who created and loves us. The different senses do not lead us astray, and are not conflictual, but are part of scripture's richness and blessing.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Faithlessness and its Antidote
On the radio yesterday I listened to Ron Regan interview a researcher from Trinity College who recently issued a report finding that the number of "nones," those who report they belong to no religion, has increased by 10 percentage points since 1990.
Trinity sampled "more than fifty thousand Americans last year finding that seventy-six percent identified as Christians. That's a ten point decrease since 1990. The number claiming no religion has grown to fifteen percent of the population, behind only Catholics and Baptists." I heard on the radio that most "nones" are former Catholics. Not all become atheists, but all non-identify with the Catholic faith, the faith they grew up in or formerly espoused.
I think of lack of faith and despair as linked. Faith essentially believes in something "super" natural, i.e., that all does not end in natural death. Not to have faith is to believe that natural death ends everything, which is a form of despair (cutting off the air of hope).
Why this creeping fall of faith? I assume Rieff would have found it understandable given his view that a vanguard of nihilists are mounting a pressing attack on Judeo-Christian culture (the second culture he calls it), and its belief in a sacred self, "that identity which is to each his own, never having been before and never again to be. . ." Rieff (p. 102 of My Life Among the Deathworks). The sacred self has an identity only in relation to God (Not I/ I), for we are constituted in our identity (our "I") by our acceptance of responsibility to obey an Authority above us (a "Not I"), and by the guilt arising in the relation when we fail so to obey. Obedience to ourselves alone is untethered to Authority and takes us around in a circle of solipsism, going nowhere.
This attack on the sacred self has been proceeding apace for a century and more . and is becoming more vocal and trenchant. (Ron Regan is a confessed atheist himself and obviously wants to "spread the good news" about his anti-faith in discussing the growing faithlessness.)
How does one counter-attack? Interestingly enough, Rieff (p. 103 of My Life Among the Deathworks quotes Gerard Manley Hopkins (who faced the same "shatterings" of attacks in his lifetime, as the 20th Century loomed (1888)):
"Whatever the shatterings Hopkins felt threatened his and other sacred selves, perhaps precisely because of that threat, he composed the greatest passage on the God-relation of identity since Galatians 2:20. Despair shatters itself against the hard truth of Hopkins's sense of identity.
'I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This, Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.'" From Hopkins, "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire.")
"Whatever the Jack, joke, mortal trash of our lives may be, our predicative relational identity, Not I/I supplies the resistant hardness of sacred self Hopkins blazons in every one's honor, each Not I/I an "immortal diamond." When I read Hopkins, as when I hear a Bach Mass, I am an honorary Christian."
As I read Rieff, and Hopkins, only Christ has broken the yoke of death, and so only Christ provides the antidote to the death rattle emitted by our cultural "betters." Only "in" Christ do we see in our matchwood and potsherd, the "immortal diamond" that "in truth" we are, the antidote to faithlessness and despair.
But who is voicing this loud and clear? Well, I know Rieff is, a Jew, and an honored "honorary Christian."
Trinity sampled "more than fifty thousand Americans last year finding that seventy-six percent identified as Christians. That's a ten point decrease since 1990. The number claiming no religion has grown to fifteen percent of the population, behind only Catholics and Baptists." I heard on the radio that most "nones" are former Catholics. Not all become atheists, but all non-identify with the Catholic faith, the faith they grew up in or formerly espoused.
I think of lack of faith and despair as linked. Faith essentially believes in something "super" natural, i.e., that all does not end in natural death. Not to have faith is to believe that natural death ends everything, which is a form of despair (cutting off the air of hope).
Why this creeping fall of faith? I assume Rieff would have found it understandable given his view that a vanguard of nihilists are mounting a pressing attack on Judeo-Christian culture (the second culture he calls it), and its belief in a sacred self, "that identity which is to each his own, never having been before and never again to be. . ." Rieff (p. 102 of My Life Among the Deathworks). The sacred self has an identity only in relation to God (Not I/ I), for we are constituted in our identity (our "I") by our acceptance of responsibility to obey an Authority above us (a "Not I"), and by the guilt arising in the relation when we fail so to obey. Obedience to ourselves alone is untethered to Authority and takes us around in a circle of solipsism, going nowhere.
This attack on the sacred self has been proceeding apace for a century and more . and is becoming more vocal and trenchant. (Ron Regan is a confessed atheist himself and obviously wants to "spread the good news" about his anti-faith in discussing the growing faithlessness.)
How does one counter-attack? Interestingly enough, Rieff (p. 103 of My Life Among the Deathworks quotes Gerard Manley Hopkins (who faced the same "shatterings" of attacks in his lifetime, as the 20th Century loomed (1888)):
"Whatever the shatterings Hopkins felt threatened his and other sacred selves, perhaps precisely because of that threat, he composed the greatest passage on the God-relation of identity since Galatians 2:20. Despair shatters itself against the hard truth of Hopkins's sense of identity.
'I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This, Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.'" From Hopkins, "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire.")
"Whatever the Jack, joke, mortal trash of our lives may be, our predicative relational identity, Not I/I supplies the resistant hardness of sacred self Hopkins blazons in every one's honor, each Not I/I an "immortal diamond." When I read Hopkins, as when I hear a Bach Mass, I am an honorary Christian."
As I read Rieff, and Hopkins, only Christ has broken the yoke of death, and so only Christ provides the antidote to the death rattle emitted by our cultural "betters." Only "in" Christ do we see in our matchwood and potsherd, the "immortal diamond" that "in truth" we are, the antidote to faithlessness and despair.
But who is voicing this loud and clear? Well, I know Rieff is, a Jew, and an honored "honorary Christian."
Monday, September 21, 2009
Putting His Arms Around a Child . . .
From yesterday's gospel reading:
"Taking a child, he placed it in the their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but the One who sent me.”
I don't know if the Chicago Tribune follows the liturgical calendar,
but yesterday's front page story fit the gospel reading perfectly.
Christ's antidote to the general squabble for power and status was perfectly captured in this story of a family "surviving on faith" and yet opening their arms to children from Africa.
Keeping our eyes and ears open, we can find words of encouragement all around us, I believe!
What strikes me especially is Jesus' statement that in receiving a child, we receive Him. Is it possible that the powerlessness and total reliance a child has, and our embrace of the child in that light, is how we should embrace Christ? We think of Christ as the "Almighty" - why would he have any need of OUR assistance? It's the other way around. But isn't Jesus saying, "In embracing a child you embrace me, for I am powerless for you and rely on you." To me, this is a wholly new way of seeing Christ, i.e., as being in need of, or at least asking for, our embrace, our compassion and aid. But it makes sense if we are Christ's eyes and ears and hands on this earth. Our compassion for our neighbor bespeaks our compassion for Jesus, in his plight, until he comes in glory.
"Taking a child, he placed it in the their midst,
and putting his arms around it, he said to them,
“Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me;
and whoever receives me,
receives not me but the One who sent me.”
I don't know if the Chicago Tribune follows the liturgical calendar,
but yesterday's front page story fit the gospel reading perfectly.
Christ's antidote to the general squabble for power and status was perfectly captured in this story of a family "surviving on faith" and yet opening their arms to children from Africa.
Keeping our eyes and ears open, we can find words of encouragement all around us, I believe!
What strikes me especially is Jesus' statement that in receiving a child, we receive Him. Is it possible that the powerlessness and total reliance a child has, and our embrace of the child in that light, is how we should embrace Christ? We think of Christ as the "Almighty" - why would he have any need of OUR assistance? It's the other way around. But isn't Jesus saying, "In embracing a child you embrace me, for I am powerless for you and rely on you." To me, this is a wholly new way of seeing Christ, i.e., as being in need of, or at least asking for, our embrace, our compassion and aid. But it makes sense if we are Christ's eyes and ears and hands on this earth. Our compassion for our neighbor bespeaks our compassion for Jesus, in his plight, until he comes in glory.
Molly Bloom Must Be a Saint!
I confess that my eyebrows went up when I read Fr. Barron's reference to Joyce in his Preface. The reason is that Philip Rieff, who I have been reading recently, cites Joyce as an artist of "deathworks," works of art that are the artist's vehicle to attack Judeo-Christian culture. (Oh, by the way, wasn't Ulysses the subject of a major obscenity trial?)
And so my question would be how to interpret Molly Bloom's "wonderfully rambling" stream of consciousness. It may be that Thomas Aquinas can say yes to all of his experience because he is a saint, and has closed down completely his "openness" to the possibility of personal evil. But as far as I am concerned the rest of us mere mortals are not in that exalted position. I wouldn't think Molly Bloom was either, but that I don't know.
For the unwashed masses, of which I count myself a member, I would suggest, on the authority of Rieff, that Bloom's (Joyce's?) attitude is exactly the opposite of what we should "embrace." Her attitude is a modern day heresy. Here's why (as I read Rieff).
In his book Charisma, Rieff claims that the path to spirituality is not a "Yes," but a "No," in fact, a string of nos extending throughout our lives. (Yeses are yesses to nos!) We are not Dionysians whose spirituality is the ecstacy of orgy -- an experience of all possibilities in sexual life and in life in general. For mere mortals like me, spirituality (and I would say Christian spirituality) is more an experience of purgatory, a succession of Nos (to instinct), the closing down of possibilities, the turning away from power (see my previous post). It cannot be a string of unconditional Yeses to "experience." (I remember in the 1960's and early 1970's friends saying they felt life had to be "experienced" -- mostly as a rationalization to smoke dope!)
Again, according to Rieff, modern heresy holds the opposite. At its extreme, it rejects not only the interdictory commands of the decalogue, but the very notion of commands, since the absolute commander, God, is either dead or has abandoned his post. Freedom is precisely found in saying Yes to instincts and desires (to the "life force!", the "energies"), since to say No on the basis of "guilt-producing rules" promulgated by some ancient and outmoded "god" is irrational, repressive and therefore positively unhealthy. There are many artists this day whose art advocates this view. (I think of "Madonna" for example.) These are artists we should avoid or expose for the damage they do to us mere mortals.
The real purpose of art (according to Rieff) is more than Fr. Barron's conveying "understanding;" it is to convey saving guilt. Think: "You must change your life." (Archaic Torso of Apollo, Rilke). True art, says Rieff, shows us our "true better," known by God, knowable by us, and when known by us, known as what we ought to be but are not. This knowledge is "true, oppositional, accusative, and personal." It is moral (not scientific) knowledge, and in its being known by us it prickles us with guilt, which is a sense of indebtedness to those whom we feel, deeply, we do not enough resemble (including our true, better, self).
"The great arts of a high culture are conveyances of this saving, renunciatory sense of what we are not but, stimulated by those arts, yet hope to be. All true works of art point out directions of renunciatory self-transformation." (Charisma, pp. 36-37). The purpose of true art is to "shut down possibilities," not open them up. Judging from this standard, many modern artists do not produce true art, despite all they may contribute to our "understanding" of the modern condition.
In this way of thinking, Molly Bloom's string of Yes's shows us the wrong "way" (cf.Ps.1). (Joyce may have left the message ambivalent, but isn't that too a defect in his art?) Thomas Aquinas might have been "unable to sin" -- and likewise Molly Bloom, confined to a sickbed -- but we surely aren't!
May I lastly suggest that too much spiritual reading, in striving to accommodate (and even celebrate) our Yeses, blunts Christ's crucial call, which is to "deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me." Seems to me, saying Yes to Christ's call starts with saying No.
And so my question would be how to interpret Molly Bloom's "wonderfully rambling" stream of consciousness. It may be that Thomas Aquinas can say yes to all of his experience because he is a saint, and has closed down completely his "openness" to the possibility of personal evil. But as far as I am concerned the rest of us mere mortals are not in that exalted position. I wouldn't think Molly Bloom was either, but that I don't know.
For the unwashed masses, of which I count myself a member, I would suggest, on the authority of Rieff, that Bloom's (Joyce's?) attitude is exactly the opposite of what we should "embrace." Her attitude is a modern day heresy. Here's why (as I read Rieff).
In his book Charisma, Rieff claims that the path to spirituality is not a "Yes," but a "No," in fact, a string of nos extending throughout our lives. (Yeses are yesses to nos!) We are not Dionysians whose spirituality is the ecstacy of orgy -- an experience of all possibilities in sexual life and in life in general. For mere mortals like me, spirituality (and I would say Christian spirituality) is more an experience of purgatory, a succession of Nos (to instinct), the closing down of possibilities, the turning away from power (see my previous post). It cannot be a string of unconditional Yeses to "experience." (I remember in the 1960's and early 1970's friends saying they felt life had to be "experienced" -- mostly as a rationalization to smoke dope!)
Again, according to Rieff, modern heresy holds the opposite. At its extreme, it rejects not only the interdictory commands of the decalogue, but the very notion of commands, since the absolute commander, God, is either dead or has abandoned his post. Freedom is precisely found in saying Yes to instincts and desires (to the "life force!", the "energies"), since to say No on the basis of "guilt-producing rules" promulgated by some ancient and outmoded "god" is irrational, repressive and therefore positively unhealthy. There are many artists this day whose art advocates this view. (I think of "Madonna" for example.) These are artists we should avoid or expose for the damage they do to us mere mortals.
The real purpose of art (according to Rieff) is more than Fr. Barron's conveying "understanding;" it is to convey saving guilt. Think: "You must change your life." (Archaic Torso of Apollo, Rilke). True art, says Rieff, shows us our "true better," known by God, knowable by us, and when known by us, known as what we ought to be but are not. This knowledge is "true, oppositional, accusative, and personal." It is moral (not scientific) knowledge, and in its being known by us it prickles us with guilt, which is a sense of indebtedness to those whom we feel, deeply, we do not enough resemble (including our true, better, self).
"The great arts of a high culture are conveyances of this saving, renunciatory sense of what we are not but, stimulated by those arts, yet hope to be. All true works of art point out directions of renunciatory self-transformation." (Charisma, pp. 36-37). The purpose of true art is to "shut down possibilities," not open them up. Judging from this standard, many modern artists do not produce true art, despite all they may contribute to our "understanding" of the modern condition.
In this way of thinking, Molly Bloom's string of Yes's shows us the wrong "way" (cf.Ps.1). (Joyce may have left the message ambivalent, but isn't that too a defect in his art?) Thomas Aquinas might have been "unable to sin" -- and likewise Molly Bloom, confined to a sickbed -- but we surely aren't!
May I lastly suggest that too much spiritual reading, in striving to accommodate (and even celebrate) our Yeses, blunts Christ's crucial call, which is to "deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me." Seems to me, saying Yes to Christ's call starts with saying No.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
At Saturday's Meeting
At our Saturday meeting we considered how James Joyce “has a distinctive take on things … which flow finally from Jesus of Nazareth” as contended by Fr. Barron in the opening paragraph. The book contains the following references to Joyce.
p. 20 “ … we turn to the artists of our time to understand the human condition … the multivalent and disquietingly off-centered inner monologues of Joyce’s characters ….
p. 76 “I can't help but see a link between this more classical Christian ideal of freedom and the wonderfully rambling monologue of Molly Bloom at the close of Joyce's Ulysses. The word that returns like a mantra in Molly's stream of consciousness, that echoes almost comically through the entire speech, and that brings the monologue and the novel as a whole to a close is "yes": “... and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so that he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." As she arranges imaginatively around the whole of her experience and affirms all of it, Molly, though physically confined to her bed, is supremely free, since she is able to say only "yes," drawing to her breast the whole of life. In this she is like the God of Thomas Aquinas who is "unable" to sin... consistently, almost compulsively, affirms, drawing to her breasts the energy of existence."
I’m not familiar with Joyce’s works and look to Mike Casey to explain to us how Fr. Barron's thesis might or might not be the case.
p. 20 “ … we turn to the artists of our time to understand the human condition … the multivalent and disquietingly off-centered inner monologues of Joyce’s characters ….
p. 76 “I can't help but see a link between this more classical Christian ideal of freedom and the wonderfully rambling monologue of Molly Bloom at the close of Joyce's Ulysses. The word that returns like a mantra in Molly's stream of consciousness, that echoes almost comically through the entire speech, and that brings the monologue and the novel as a whole to a close is "yes": “... and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so that he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." As she arranges imaginatively around the whole of her experience and affirms all of it, Molly, though physically confined to her bed, is supremely free, since she is able to say only "yes," drawing to her breast the whole of life. In this she is like the God of Thomas Aquinas who is "unable" to sin... consistently, almost compulsively, affirms, drawing to her breasts the energy of existence."
I’m not familiar with Joyce’s works and look to Mike Casey to explain to us how Fr. Barron's thesis might or might not be the case.
Deuteronomy Chapter 34:1-8
And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain, that is, the valley of Jericho the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar. And the LORD said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, 'I will give it to your descendants.' I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there." So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD, and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-pe’or; but no man knows the place of his burial to this day. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.
“his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated”
I confessed one Saturday morning to my Cursillo group reunion that I was disturbed by a recent tendency that I had to become angry or upset, even discouraged, when confronted with the news of the day or certain people's behavior. I was upset that I was assuming an attitude of anger at the world as opposed to maintaining a sense of awe of the world.
My world was in a turmoil. An economic turmoil because markets had crashed, retirement fund values had shrunk, the cost of living was on its way up. Bombarded every day by stock market quotes every 10 minutes, the number of jobs lost last month, and a shrinking GDP, it was difficult to maintain a lighthearted attitude.
My world is in a political turmoil. I was constantly informed of the new proposed health-care reform, being told the horror stories about “death panels”, about losing the ability to choose my own doctor, of not being able to obtain the latest, cutting edge treatments. I heard stories about people requiring medical treatments they couldn't afford and had no insurance coverage to pay for them.
My world is in an emotional turmoil. Every day I wake up and a different body part is malfunctioning. I'd like to reduce the amount of time that I work at my job, but, we're in an economic recession and my employer is making increasing demands on my time in an effort to reduce costs and keep the company afloat.
So with all these concerns swirling around in my head I found myself sitting on August 12 at a Wednesday morning Mass listening to those words from Deuteronomy. "His eye was not dim nor his natural forces abated." At age 120. What was his secret? How was his world brightened? How did he maintain an enthusiastic and awe filled spirit?
After all, he did his people the favor of freeing them from slavery, he led them to a new land, it took him 40 years. All the while his people grumbled and complained about how hard life was. They did nothing but worry about where their next meal was coming from. They gave up on God and created their own idols to worship. Only once did he exhibit a lack of faith and for this he was forbidden to enter the promised land. How much more could have been heaped upon Moses? Yet when he died his eye was not dim and his vigor unabated.
Of course, we all know that it was easier for Moses. He had direct access to God, saw him face to face. We don't have that resource to keep our spirit alive and invigorated. But we do have hope. We can keep our eye, not on our political, economic, emotional turmoil's, but on the Lord. Our faith tells us that we can rely on him to provide the light to keep the eye of our heart bright. We can rely on his Spirit to enlighten us and provide our bodies with the energy needed to maintain our vigor.
So with these goals in mind, to take the focus off our turmoil, to keep our eye on the Lord, we begin another year of exploring our Christian spirituality. Our meetings may be a distraction from the very important tasks that we need to carry out on a Saturday morning, but, it is a way to look toward the light.
And Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, all Naphtali, the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, all the land of Judah as far as the Western Sea, the Negeb, and the Plain, that is, the valley of Jericho the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar. And the LORD said to him, "This is the land of which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, 'I will give it to your descendants.' I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not go over there." So Moses the servant of the LORD died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the LORD, and he buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite Beth-pe’or; but no man knows the place of his burial to this day. Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated. And the people of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the days of weeping and mourning for Moses were ended.
“his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated”
I confessed one Saturday morning to my Cursillo group reunion that I was disturbed by a recent tendency that I had to become angry or upset, even discouraged, when confronted with the news of the day or certain people's behavior. I was upset that I was assuming an attitude of anger at the world as opposed to maintaining a sense of awe of the world.
My world was in a turmoil. An economic turmoil because markets had crashed, retirement fund values had shrunk, the cost of living was on its way up. Bombarded every day by stock market quotes every 10 minutes, the number of jobs lost last month, and a shrinking GDP, it was difficult to maintain a lighthearted attitude.
My world is in a political turmoil. I was constantly informed of the new proposed health-care reform, being told the horror stories about “death panels”, about losing the ability to choose my own doctor, of not being able to obtain the latest, cutting edge treatments. I heard stories about people requiring medical treatments they couldn't afford and had no insurance coverage to pay for them.
My world is in an emotional turmoil. Every day I wake up and a different body part is malfunctioning. I'd like to reduce the amount of time that I work at my job, but, we're in an economic recession and my employer is making increasing demands on my time in an effort to reduce costs and keep the company afloat.
So with all these concerns swirling around in my head I found myself sitting on August 12 at a Wednesday morning Mass listening to those words from Deuteronomy. "His eye was not dim nor his natural forces abated." At age 120. What was his secret? How was his world brightened? How did he maintain an enthusiastic and awe filled spirit?
After all, he did his people the favor of freeing them from slavery, he led them to a new land, it took him 40 years. All the while his people grumbled and complained about how hard life was. They did nothing but worry about where their next meal was coming from. They gave up on God and created their own idols to worship. Only once did he exhibit a lack of faith and for this he was forbidden to enter the promised land. How much more could have been heaped upon Moses? Yet when he died his eye was not dim and his vigor unabated.
Of course, we all know that it was easier for Moses. He had direct access to God, saw him face to face. We don't have that resource to keep our spirit alive and invigorated. But we do have hope. We can keep our eye, not on our political, economic, emotional turmoil's, but on the Lord. Our faith tells us that we can rely on him to provide the light to keep the eye of our heart bright. We can rely on his Spirit to enlighten us and provide our bodies with the energy needed to maintain our vigor.
So with these goals in mind, to take the focus off our turmoil, to keep our eye on the Lord, we begin another year of exploring our Christian spirituality. Our meetings may be a distraction from the very important tasks that we need to carry out on a Saturday morning, but, it is a way to look toward the light.
Friday, September 18, 2009
How do you know you are "Spiritual"?
From Philip Rieff's Charisma (at p. 21):
Spirituality, as Kierkegaard knew, is a way of opting out of the fight to be a man of power. It is to "live as though dead," i.e., without power. But spirituality so threatens ordinary men, who want their fill of things, to conquer and digest, that they demand "the death of the man of spirit," or rush upon him "to put him to death." This is how it came about, concluded Kierkegaard, that Christ was crucified. There are two kinds of death-dealing: God's and man's. When the spirit strikes, it kills the assertion of the body, self-assertions. When the body strikes, it kills the assertion of the spirit, God's assertion.
So spirituality is a turning away from possibility, not "going for it," not grasping, thrusting, wresting, seizing, overpowering, possessing, controlling, taking, using, wanting. Since "power corrupts" one finds the spiritual man in the act of running the other way. I run alot, but usually in the wrong direction.
Spirituality, as Kierkegaard knew, is a way of opting out of the fight to be a man of power. It is to "live as though dead," i.e., without power. But spirituality so threatens ordinary men, who want their fill of things, to conquer and digest, that they demand "the death of the man of spirit," or rush upon him "to put him to death." This is how it came about, concluded Kierkegaard, that Christ was crucified. There are two kinds of death-dealing: God's and man's. When the spirit strikes, it kills the assertion of the body, self-assertions. When the body strikes, it kills the assertion of the spirit, God's assertion.
So spirituality is a turning away from possibility, not "going for it," not grasping, thrusting, wresting, seizing, overpowering, possessing, controlling, taking, using, wanting. Since "power corrupts" one finds the spiritual man in the act of running the other way. I run alot, but usually in the wrong direction.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Spiritual Guides
I was in love with St. Augustine for a while. After years on my bookshelf, I finally managed to read his Confessions. Why did his writting appeal to me? It was introspective and personal. Pope Benedict in his prior role as Cardinal put it this way, "With Augustine ... the passionate, suffering, questioning man is always right there, and you can identify with him."
My current love affair is with Hans Urs von Balthasar. He was a prolific thinker and writter as well. Why did I fall in love with him? It was Richard Neuhaus' fault. I read the following commentary by Fr. Neuhaus on his writtings in an issue of First Things.
"He went in for heavy-duty intellection that is sometimes ponderous and exhaustingly discursive, but always adorned with dazzling erudition and rewarding one's effort with scintillating insights of a frequently counterintuitive nature. One spends pleasurable hours reading Balthasar not so much in an analytical mode as in surrendering oneself to the beauty of how his mind works and its adventurous probings of theological imagination. Reading Balthasar is in large part a meditative exercise bordering on the contemplative."
In the opening pages of volume one of Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics he observes that if man is to live in his original form “one must possess a spiritual eye capable of perceiving the forms of existence with awe. … a life-form which is determined … to bestow nobility upon a person’s everyday life itself.”
So began my desire to develop an eye capable of perceiving with awe the ordinary life I live and to believe it to be a noble endeavor.
I fall in love easily. The thing about love though, is that it is infinitely distensible.
My current love affair is with Hans Urs von Balthasar. He was a prolific thinker and writter as well. Why did I fall in love with him? It was Richard Neuhaus' fault. I read the following commentary by Fr. Neuhaus on his writtings in an issue of First Things.
"He went in for heavy-duty intellection that is sometimes ponderous and exhaustingly discursive, but always adorned with dazzling erudition and rewarding one's effort with scintillating insights of a frequently counterintuitive nature. One spends pleasurable hours reading Balthasar not so much in an analytical mode as in surrendering oneself to the beauty of how his mind works and its adventurous probings of theological imagination. Reading Balthasar is in large part a meditative exercise bordering on the contemplative."
In the opening pages of volume one of Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics he observes that if man is to live in his original form “one must possess a spiritual eye capable of perceiving the forms of existence with awe. … a life-form which is determined … to bestow nobility upon a person’s everyday life itself.”
So began my desire to develop an eye capable of perceiving with awe the ordinary life I live and to believe it to be a noble endeavor.
I fall in love easily. The thing about love though, is that it is infinitely distensible.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Flannery O'Connor's "Yahwist" Fundamentalism
After reading Phillip Rieff (and his idea of personality arising only from a humble relationship with the absolute), I found what Robert Brinkmeyer said in The Art and Vision of Flannery O'Connor most interesting (at p. 29):
"Herbert N. Schneidau, in Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition, argues that a profoundly skeptical and self-critical approach to reality characterizes the vision of the Bible and its prophets. Scheidau terms this vision Yahwist and says its central tenet is that an absolute gulf separates humanity from an all-powerful God. Quoting from Henri Frankfort, "Every finite reality is shriveled to nothingness before the absolute value which was God."
According to Brinkmeyer, O'Connor's vision of Christ is essentially Yahwist, "the Son of God characteristically arriving not with outstretched hand but with swinging sword." Only God's violence, according to O'Connor, can penetrate the hubris and blindness of the modern soul. This is the only surgery that can heal us.
We started reading Revelation with Matt Pozen last week, and the first chapters do depict Christ with a sword in his mouth (though also later as a "lamb"). Matt offered a good interpretation of the double-nature of the sword: Christ worries the complacent and comforts the worried.
Life presents its banes and benefices. But we need to "worry ourselves" more than we often do in order to lay ourselves open to divine action, which is creative and healing.
In this regard I note that von Balthesar in TheoDrama (vol III at p. 208) quotes Revelation in connection with the possibility of becoming a person, i.e., the possibility of a "conscious subject to rise above his natural level to that of the ("super-natural") person." Balthasar says,
"In positive terms, this presupposes that the created spirit, man, can be an image (imago) of God; negatively, it implies that he is deficient and needs to be perfected and given a "likeness" (similitudo) to God; such a likeness can only be imparted by God, in Christ. This deepening or elevation of the conscious subject does not alienate the latter from himself but enables him to "come to himself", a view consistently put forward by the Fathers. . . . When a man comes to God, he truly comes to himself for the first time. Held by God, the prime Person, man becomes genuinely personal. The truth of human nature is the divine truth. Person is the "new name" by which God addresses me (Rev 2:17) and which comes from "the beginning of God's creation" (Rev 3:14); it always implies a task, namely to be "a pillar in the temple of my God." (Rev. 3:12).
Why the reference to Revelation? This book's "prophetic" attitude of skepticism toward one's merits, and a consequent beating of one's breast, shows the only workable attitude toward the Almighty, Christ included. Only an attitude of humble consciousness of our sinfulness can lay ourselves open to be raised up by Christ to personhood. This seems to be one of Revelation's messages.
So, it seems to me that we become persons in fear and trembling, not through the "I'm OK, you're OK" of high self-esteem. We're not OK! Unless we are in "the way" toward Heaven, i.e., toward becoming a person, we are on a path to perdition, to dissolution and death.
Sounds like good, orthodox fundamentalism to me!
"Herbert N. Schneidau, in Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition, argues that a profoundly skeptical and self-critical approach to reality characterizes the vision of the Bible and its prophets. Scheidau terms this vision Yahwist and says its central tenet is that an absolute gulf separates humanity from an all-powerful God. Quoting from Henri Frankfort, "Every finite reality is shriveled to nothingness before the absolute value which was God."
According to Brinkmeyer, O'Connor's vision of Christ is essentially Yahwist, "the Son of God characteristically arriving not with outstretched hand but with swinging sword." Only God's violence, according to O'Connor, can penetrate the hubris and blindness of the modern soul. This is the only surgery that can heal us.
We started reading Revelation with Matt Pozen last week, and the first chapters do depict Christ with a sword in his mouth (though also later as a "lamb"). Matt offered a good interpretation of the double-nature of the sword: Christ worries the complacent and comforts the worried.
Life presents its banes and benefices. But we need to "worry ourselves" more than we often do in order to lay ourselves open to divine action, which is creative and healing.
In this regard I note that von Balthesar in TheoDrama (vol III at p. 208) quotes Revelation in connection with the possibility of becoming a person, i.e., the possibility of a "conscious subject to rise above his natural level to that of the ("super-natural") person." Balthasar says,
"In positive terms, this presupposes that the created spirit, man, can be an image (imago) of God; negatively, it implies that he is deficient and needs to be perfected and given a "likeness" (similitudo) to God; such a likeness can only be imparted by God, in Christ. This deepening or elevation of the conscious subject does not alienate the latter from himself but enables him to "come to himself", a view consistently put forward by the Fathers. . . . When a man comes to God, he truly comes to himself for the first time. Held by God, the prime Person, man becomes genuinely personal. The truth of human nature is the divine truth. Person is the "new name" by which God addresses me (Rev 2:17) and which comes from "the beginning of God's creation" (Rev 3:14); it always implies a task, namely to be "a pillar in the temple of my God." (Rev. 3:12).
Why the reference to Revelation? This book's "prophetic" attitude of skepticism toward one's merits, and a consequent beating of one's breast, shows the only workable attitude toward the Almighty, Christ included. Only an attitude of humble consciousness of our sinfulness can lay ourselves open to be raised up by Christ to personhood. This seems to be one of Revelation's messages.
So, it seems to me that we become persons in fear and trembling, not through the "I'm OK, you're OK" of high self-esteem. We're not OK! Unless we are in "the way" toward Heaven, i.e., toward becoming a person, we are on a path to perdition, to dissolution and death.
Sounds like good, orthodox fundamentalism to me!
Indvidualism and Personalism
I always wondered at the source for this central passage in Gaudium et Spez (24):
"Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one. . . as we are one" (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.(2)" (emphasis added)
Here is what Emmanuel Mounier said in his Personalism (at pp 18-19):
"Other persons do not limit [the person], they enable it to be and to grow. The person only exists thus towards others, it only knows itself in knowing others, only finds itself in being known by them. The thou, which implies the we, is prior to the I-- or at least accompanies it. . . . But the person is only growing in so far as he is continually purifying himself from the individual within him. He cannot do this by force of self-attention, but on the contrary by making himself available (Gabriel Marcel) and thereby more transparent both to himself and others. Things then happen as though the person, no longer 'occupied with himself' or 'full of himself', were becoming able -- then and thus only -- to be someone else and to enter into grace." (emphasis added)
Mounier did battle against what he called Individualism. Here is what he said about it:
"Individualism is a system of morals, feelings, ideas and institutions in which individuals can be organized by their mutual isolation and defence. This was the ideology and the prevailing structure of Western bourgeois society in the 18th and 19th centuries. Man in the abstract, unattached to any natural community, the sovereign lord of a liberty unlimited and udirected; turning towards others with a primary mistrust, calculation and self-vindication; institutions restricted to the assurance that these egoism should not encroach upon one another, or to theri betterment as a purely profitmaking association -- such is the rule of civilization now breaking up before our eyes, one of the poorest history has known. It is the very antithesis of personalism and its dearest enemy."
Mounier said that the impetus for his Personalist Manifesto was the world stock market crash and a world lurching from war to war. His work was echoed in many respects by Gabriel Marcel. These thinkers sowed the seeds which blossomed in Vatican II, and are flowering even now.
"Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one. . . as we are one" (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.(2)" (emphasis added)
Here is what Emmanuel Mounier said in his Personalism (at pp 18-19):
"Other persons do not limit [the person], they enable it to be and to grow. The person only exists thus towards others, it only knows itself in knowing others, only finds itself in being known by them. The thou, which implies the we, is prior to the I-- or at least accompanies it. . . . But the person is only growing in so far as he is continually purifying himself from the individual within him. He cannot do this by force of self-attention, but on the contrary by making himself available (Gabriel Marcel) and thereby more transparent both to himself and others. Things then happen as though the person, no longer 'occupied with himself' or 'full of himself', were becoming able -- then and thus only -- to be someone else and to enter into grace." (emphasis added)
Mounier did battle against what he called Individualism. Here is what he said about it:
"Individualism is a system of morals, feelings, ideas and institutions in which individuals can be organized by their mutual isolation and defence. This was the ideology and the prevailing structure of Western bourgeois society in the 18th and 19th centuries. Man in the abstract, unattached to any natural community, the sovereign lord of a liberty unlimited and udirected; turning towards others with a primary mistrust, calculation and self-vindication; institutions restricted to the assurance that these egoism should not encroach upon one another, or to theri betterment as a purely profitmaking association -- such is the rule of civilization now breaking up before our eyes, one of the poorest history has known. It is the very antithesis of personalism and its dearest enemy."
Mounier said that the impetus for his Personalist Manifesto was the world stock market crash and a world lurching from war to war. His work was echoed in many respects by Gabriel Marcel. These thinkers sowed the seeds which blossomed in Vatican II, and are flowering even now.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Sin and Chaos in Dostoyevsky
In reading Crime and Punishment I was struck by the disorientation experienced by Raskolnikov following the murders. Here is how the last part of Part I of the book (Chapter VII) ends as Raskolnikov returns to his room after the murder:
"When he was in his room, he flung himself on the sofa just as he was— he did not sleep, but sank into blank forgetfulness. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts…"
Raskonikov's mind and spirit have seemingly disintegrated into chaos. Dostoyevsky seems to be making the point that sin breaks down the created world into chaos and disorder, ultimately destroying the sinner, unless he repents and again submits to God's law. The suffering caused in this "fall" into chaos is excruciating, as is the struggle for repentance, but this is the only path upward to salvation. This is also the outline of the Christian story, with Christ as the salve who can lead us to salvation, just as he did, in the character of Sonia, for Raskolnikov. Only love heals and brings together what sin has driven apart and destroyed.
"When he was in his room, he flung himself on the sofa just as he was— he did not sleep, but sank into blank forgetfulness. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts…"
Raskonikov's mind and spirit have seemingly disintegrated into chaos. Dostoyevsky seems to be making the point that sin breaks down the created world into chaos and disorder, ultimately destroying the sinner, unless he repents and again submits to God's law. The suffering caused in this "fall" into chaos is excruciating, as is the struggle for repentance, but this is the only path upward to salvation. This is also the outline of the Christian story, with Christ as the salve who can lead us to salvation, just as he did, in the character of Sonia, for Raskolnikov. Only love heals and brings together what sin has driven apart and destroyed.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The "New Freedom"
Reading that the Lutherans have okayed ordination of non-celibate homosexuals led me to think of the fundamental distinction drawn between Catholic and Protestant attitudes by Sister Rose Mary Gertrude, in her Renouncement in Dante:
"The mark that Catholics have put upon their poetry without deliberation, while children of the Reformation have unconsciously or deliberately omitted it, is the imprint of renouncement: the Sign of the Cross. Not otherwise may the reader distinguish the Catholic from the non-Catholic poet. The Jew and the Pagan have retained the old idea of sacrifice; and their poetry like that of the Catholic reflects the spirit of renouncement.
"The Reformation, from the first moment of its inception, substituted for the idea of personal sacrifice the belief that the death of the Redeemer was all-sufficing for those who trust and love Him. Altars were removed from churches, soon divorces were granted, the commandments of the old Church with their restrictions, were rejected as Pope-imposed shackles and there went abroad the idea that Faith alone was sufficient. A new Freedom was born, a freedom which meant absence of restraint to desire.
"Freedom to the old school of poets had meant absence of obstacles to the will. The domination of that will over every opposing force, even over personal inclination, was their notion of absolute human freedom. It is the Catholic definition of freedom today."
"The mark that Catholics have put upon their poetry without deliberation, while children of the Reformation have unconsciously or deliberately omitted it, is the imprint of renouncement: the Sign of the Cross. Not otherwise may the reader distinguish the Catholic from the non-Catholic poet. The Jew and the Pagan have retained the old idea of sacrifice; and their poetry like that of the Catholic reflects the spirit of renouncement.
"The Reformation, from the first moment of its inception, substituted for the idea of personal sacrifice the belief that the death of the Redeemer was all-sufficing for those who trust and love Him. Altars were removed from churches, soon divorces were granted, the commandments of the old Church with their restrictions, were rejected as Pope-imposed shackles and there went abroad the idea that Faith alone was sufficient. A new Freedom was born, a freedom which meant absence of restraint to desire.
"Freedom to the old school of poets had meant absence of obstacles to the will. The domination of that will over every opposing force, even over personal inclination, was their notion of absolute human freedom. It is the Catholic definition of freedom today."
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