"84 Charing Cross Road"

This 1987 film depicts the post-WWII correspondence between a Jewish NY script writer interested in British literature and a London bookseller operating from the address that is the title of the movie. It shows how two unlikely aficionados of antiquarian books strike up a warm-hearted correspondence and the inner and outer life they share as a result. I heartily recommend the movie, which you can get at the library.

One scene in the film shows Joan Bancroft, who plays the Jewish scriptwriter, carefully cradling and caressing a leather bound volume, with pages trimmed in gold, as she ponders its heft, its richness and beauty, and its history and contents.

This is how beauty is to be appreciated, as I read recently in an article about Iris Murdoch's views on art, which reflected Simone Weil's views as well. The article states, "learning to appreciate beauty is a matter of learning to attend properly to beautiful things, which means learning to contemplate both their integrity or unity, their independent reality, and often learning to contemplate the aspects of reality to which they direct us by their truthful representation of the world."

The author of the article goes on to say, "[t]he thought of Simone Weil behind this . . . is that to recognise an object as beautiful is to refrain from consuming it, to want it not to change; the experience of the beautiful thus places a check on the ego's desire to ingest reality, to project its own fantasies and desires upon the world in which it finds itself. It works to disrupt the self's addiction to illusion and its refusal to accept reality as it truly is, and thereby purifies our consciousness."

The author states that this "orientation to the truth" requires the discipline of truthfulness, a transcending of egotism, "a deepening capacity to place the self properly in the world, which can only be done by recognising the reality and value of that which is not the self." This, says Murdoch, is a "spiritual pilgrimmage (transformation-renewal-salvation)."

This transformation, the author says, is at the "centre and essence of morality." "The essentially egoistic energies that permeate and generate the texture of the self's everyday inner life . . . can be transformed only by transforming their orientation; they must be re-directed, away from the ego and its interests and toward that which is not the ego. The broadest characterization of the various techniques by which this transformation can be effected is that of attending to particulars: we must either attune our consciousness to its objects, or (if we fail) those objects will be attuned to one's consciousness, to its fantasies and distortions, for on Murdoch's account, the reality of our world is determined, the facts are set up as such, by the morally inflected discriminations of our consciousness. In this sense, every subject has the objects it deserves."

In other words, the subjective willingness to let things (and persons) be what they are, an attitude called truthfulness (and respect), is what permits the world (and persons) to be experienced as they truly are. The enjoyment of beauty is the fruit of that attitude since goodness and beauty are garmets of the true. Responsibility for truthfulness is at the core of human morality, and requires self-mastery and renunciation. Says the author, truthfulness "often feels like deprivation, since it demands that we deprive ourselves of consoling pictures of reality in favor of ones less gratifying to our egos."

A religious dimension in the discipline of truthfulness isn't hard to detect. Conversion is the same process of turning away from (ego-induced) falsehood to the truth. The pain suffered from this conversion ushers us into the temple of truth, with its sacred beauty and goodness, experienced in joy, together with the silent, transcendental Being that is its inhabitant, source and foundation. Thus appropos is another comment of Simone Weil: "All art of the highest order is religious in essence."

Stephen Mulhall, "Misplacing freedom, displacing the imagination," p. 258-260 in Philosophy, the Good, the True and the Beautiful, Ed. Anthony O'Hear (Cambridge University, 2000). The references to Simone Weil are to Gravity and Grace, pp. 137.

Therese of Lisieux, Theology and Love

I read a review on the First Things website of a new biography of St. Therese that, while the reviewer was appreciative of the author's fleshing out of the setting of 19th century French Catholicism, he was a bit critical of the author's approach to Therese's spirituality. The last three paragraphs of the review are what struck me:

The proper images for understanding Little Thérèse are not those of modern theology, which tends to promote unfortunate and untenable dichotomies between official church teachings and a living faith, or, as Nevin put it, between “the historical complex of creeds, council statements, theologies, and decrees,” which he suggests “fade before a radical intimacy with Jesus.”

Instead, if we attend to her writings, we see that Thérèse suggests an illuminative rather than critical method. Thérèse takes church teaching about heaven and hell, sin and grace, Christology and ecclesiology and puts them into strikingly fresh forms. She is not critiquing the male priesthood when she imagines her priestly vocation; she is helping us see the universal priesthood of all believers. She is not denying the existence of hell; she is testifying to the omnipotent power of divine love. The truths of the faith are servant truths—they serve the Truth of Christ. They do not fade or fall away. Instead, when used properly, they become ever more luminous with the light of Christ.

As John Paul II observed when he announced Thérèse as a doctor of the church, her radical awareness of her spiritual childhood teaches a fundamental truth. The breath of Christ’s love fans even the smallest spark of desire for him in our hearts. It’s something we all need to hear. But Thérèse also has a lesson for theologians. We should beware the modern tendency to explain the dry limitations we so often feel in the official language of church teaching with easy dichotomies between spirit and letter. The problem is not in the obvious fact that a creed or a council decree is not the living Word of God. As Thérèse’s “little way” suggests, the dryness comes from the poverty of our love.

I thought this was an excellent reminder when we too often try to pit the Church and her teachings against "faith", or organized religion against spirituality.

Easter Hope

I went to the Confirmation Mass tonight. I went to see some of my kids confirmed; kids in the flock that I've had the good fortune to be able to share my faith with for the past two years. The following reading was given by one of the confirmandi, Katherine Janoski. I know Katherine, not very well, but, well enough to be assured that the passing on of our faith is in good hands.

The first reading, though, is one that has always imbued me with a profound sense of family. Of being part of a family lead by someone who loves me and wants me, someone who is willing to look past my transgressions and in spite of them hugs me and pulls me to his bosom.

From Ezekiel Chapter 36,

24 For I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. 28 You shall dwell in the land which I gave to your fathers; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

He has made us his own. Does not that invoke in you that feeling of safety and comfort you felt as a child when pulled into your mother's bosom, all insecurities vanished, the pain went away, and all fears receded to nothingness. What an awesome God we have. How greatly he elevates us despite our unworthiness.

What a great message for our confirmandi! Perhaps, as those who have been born into a loving family, as those who have always been approached as having an innate sense of self-worth, the message of Ezekiel does not hold much impact. But, for those of us who have accumulated experiences that show how alone we can be and how much our own destructive inclinations can pull us away from God, we can see and feel in these words a deeper meaning and a great comfort.

What an awesome God we have! I see it in his mercy and I see it in our children.

To "act" is to live!

One purpose of a retreat is to awaken us to the truth that the truth is to be lived, acted out, not only thought. Unless I live the truth I think, my truth is not incarnated. But thinking is needed too because our emotions and passions must be informed and trained by reason. And reason tells me that parts must be understood together with their wholes in order to be really understood, so they can really be lived.

In order to see a whole one must see "ends." An end is that for which a thing exists. As an example, the end of the art of medicine is the restoration and maintenance of the condition called health. I can have many "purposes" in practicing medicine -- to gain wealth, for prestige, to help people -- but unless I conform my art of medicine to its "end" -- securing health -- I am not respecting the nature of medicine, its true end, in my actions. The morality of our actions is determined by the ends of the material of our actions, not by our purposes. As Aristotle said in the Poetics, "all human happiness or misery takes the form of action." (Poetics 5.1450a17-19). In other words, our actions will make us miserable or happy, depending on whether we respect the ends inherent in our actions.

Another topical example of ends is sex. A "part" of sex, of course, is pleasure, but its "end" is the unity open to procreation (the birthing and rearing of children). To restrict our focus to pleasure, to use technology to eliminate the end, in effect, to make the part the whole, is to misunderstand the nature of the sexual, its proper end, and to warp it, by human purpose, away from what it is by nature. That is living a fiction, a similitude, a "sin."

Francis Slade* mentions the films of Quentin Tarentino (Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers) as depicting a world in which there are only the purposes of human beings, a "world without ends." Such a world is a world of purposes and cross purposes, a world of violence, "the definition of fiasco." "A world of fiasco is a world in which guilt is impossible, because guilt requires responsibility for actions, and there are actions only if purposes are measured by ends." In a world without proper actions, the world degenerates into a despairing meaninglessness. Another term is nihilism.

To restate, living requires reasoned actions, which in turn require an understanding of the "whole" of things, including things' proper "ends." Our calling is to act, to incarnate our "holistic" reason into action, respecting things' ends. That is to live!

*Francis Slade, "On the Ontological Priority of Ends And Its Relevance to the Narrative Arts."

This week's meeting

Bob's out of town, so I've been put in charge of the meeting for the week (Oh, boy!).

We'll try to finish up Screwtape this Saturday, so read to the end if you can. I'll try to remember to grab some donuts and coffee on the way.

Thanks!

Matthew Popkes

Recognizing Mystery

Gabriel Marcel in his The Mystery of Being is investigating into "the essence of spiritual reality" (p.1) -- including in the human person -- in a world of science and technique in which the human recedes into anonymity (p.6), and power, efficiency, technique, and bureaucracy assert their dominance. Marcel wrote in 1949, 1950 against the background of World War II, but the situation he describes is certainly recognizable today, I think.

In such a world where are mystery and presence to be found? Marcel offers as an example, a sleeping child:

"From the point of view of physical activity. . . the possible grasping of things, the sleeping child is completely unprotected and appears to be utterly in our power; from that point of view, it is permissible for us to do what we like with the child. But from the point of view of mystery, we might say that it is just because this being is completely unprotected, that it is utterly at our mercy, that it is also invulnerable or sacred. And there can be no doubt at all that the strongest and most irrefutable mark of sheer barbarism that we could imagine would consist in the refusal to recognize this mysterious invulnerability. This sacredness of the unprotected lies also at the roots of what we call a metaphysics of hospitality. In all civilizations of a certain type (not, of course, by any means merely in Christian civilizations), the guest has been regarded as all the more sacred, the more feeble and defenceless he is. In civilizations of a certain type, I say: not, I might have added, of the type dominated by the ideas of efficiency and output. The more, it might be said, the ideas of efficiency and output assert their supreme authority, the more this attitude of reverence towards the guest, towards the wounded, towards the sick, will appear at first incomprehensible, and later absurd; and in fact, in the world around us, we know that this assertion of the absurdity of forbearance and generosity is taking very practical shapes." pp.216-217.

What was true in 1949 is even truer today, don't you think?

Can't we conclude that it is precisely the vulnerable, and our care for the vulnerable, that keeps us human? When we euthanize the unfit and unwanted, be they born or unborn, haven't we turned ourselves into barbarians precisely because we can no longer sense the mystery inherent in the human being herself, living on this fragile earth, vulnerable and unprotected?

The Agony and the Ecstacy

Maybe it is not completely unreasonable to compare the suffering brought about by the economic recession with Christ's passion? To say in genuine anguish on a cross of sacrifice, "I have lost all," (and I do not mean simply my investments!) is to participate in some fashion in Christ's experience, is it not? Of course, the original denouement was not agony but the ecstacy of renewed life. And in Christ we hope for the same.

I was reading in Gabriel Marcel's The Mystery of Being, ch. 10 "Presence As A Mystery," that when the "important" is lost, the "essential" is revealed:

"At first glance, it seems that when I decide that something or other is important I am relating it to a certain purpose of mine or perhaps, more generally, to a way in which I organize my life. If I centre my life upon some predominant interest, say, for instance, the search for pleasure, power, or money, everything that seems likely to subserve this interest will strike me as having positive importance. Experience, however, shows us, and its lessons cannot be rejected or ignored, that our special ways of organizing our lives are always liable to collapse like houses of cards under our very eyes; leaving something else in their place, something which the original structures of lust, ambition or greed had merely masked from us. This something else, which we are not yet in a position to define, and of which we have not perhaps even a direct apprehension, is not the important, but the essential, the "one thing needful." It is obvious that the believer has a name for this 'something else': he will say that the one thing needful is salvation . . ."

So, we should remain hopeful that our experience of "being on the cross," though probably not ludicrous only in our own eyes, can lead to our discovery of the essential, the 'one thing needful,' and thereby be saved.