Notes

Gospel Scenes and Meditations

2011-04-16T15:05:00.002-04:00

The End

2005-08-31T21:00:00.000-04:00

This blog is closed.

But see:

Diary of a City Parishioner

www.MurphyWong.net

Mary Murphy Tells Stories

Barzun 100

Hello

Memorare

Communio 9

2005-08-31T20:12:00.000-04:00

Of course, one may believe that this isn’t the era of the saints, that the era of the saints has passed. But as I once wrote, it is always the era of the saints.
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Notes 141

2005-08-31T20:10:00.000-04:00

Many write, few do.

You did not suffer custodians but pupils to come to you.

At a funeral Mass the deceased’s eldest son, who has not been to Mass in years, gets up to receive Communion. At a Holy Day Mass, two visibly bored teenagers, dragooned to church by their mother, get up to receive Communion. What priest, knowing that, observing this, would deny the three the Eucharist?

We, whose teacher said, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God (Matthew 19:17)—why are we so free and easy with the word “great”?

In future we shall hear less of America as the exception.

Soon true religion will be sought as people ask, To Whom shall we go?

Art, too, can be ascetic.

One prays, not to go back, but to go forward.

A Brace of Letters by Jacques Barzun

2005-08-31T20:09:00.001-04:00

These letters refer to a version of Gospel Scenes.

Charles Scribner’s Sons, Publishers
597 Fifth Avenue
New York, N. Y. 10017
June 26, 1980

Dear Leo,

Despite your injunction, I read the first portion of your Gospel Mosaic immediately and in one sitting, and I am moved to write—

—to write, because I am moved. You have done a beautiful job of condensation and re-wording. Your prose is limpid and strong and you translate into the vernacular without once vulgarizing or being clever. The two or three marginal queries I permitted myself have to to do with what are most likely slips of the pen.

But what is your intention for the whole? You speak rather bitterly of addressing those who don’t heed, or can’t. Did you hope for a pamphlet or very small book giving the entire story and wisdom in an hour’s reading? By whom? That’s the diagnostic question.

There’s no doubt in my mind that anybody would be the better for reading your elegant, eloquent resume and anybody would want to read it who knows how the effort would be repaid. But how do you catch your fish?—to use a symbol drawn from your very story.

Give me some idea of the total length and of the intended public and I’ll think further of how to get your work into print.

Meanwhile, best regards.

Yours,
Jacques

Charles Scribner’s Sons, Publishers
597 Fifth Avenue
New York, N. Y. 10017
July 22, 1980

Dear Leo,

I have reread your entire script and find it very good indeed. It is moving and also fresh—new, not solely because of your diction, which is colloquial without being smart-aleck, but rather because of the juxtapositions you make, which produce the effect of a fifth gospel. I think you should publish, and I shall begin by finding out whether this firm would consider the work salable. Not every publisher has the same access to the various parts of the public and it is important to match any given work with the proper means of access.

Meantime I return the typescript to you for one more re-viewing and and revising. I have marked a few things in the margins and have a question or two. When you have Jesus quote Isaiah or Elijah or the Psalms, you use the language of the familiar Bible&mdash A.V. or A.V.R. Is that the best thing to do? You want to show, of course, that Jesus is speaking an ancient text, i.e., archaic to him and and his hearers. But can’t you make it archaic enough in syntax and possibly diction, without using thee and thou and the corresponding forms, which to us bring back the atmosphere that the rest of your book avoids? I would strongly urge your creating all your effects de novo and bring Isaiah et al nearer to us also.

Again, here and there in your text are inversions and other constructions that do not go well with the judicious vernacular you have adopted as your tone. Try to catch every jarring note and remove it. I do not include in this stricture the few passages where Jesus utters a long, oratorical homily or invective. There tone can rise to poetry without spoiling your scheme.

All good wishes,

Yours,
Jacques

P.S. One thing more—you repeat parables (e.g. the man who invited the wedding guests who begged off) and other, smaller bits. Do you intend this or not?

It Seemed Good at the Time

2005-08-31T20:08:00.000-04:00

And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
—Genesis 3:6

Evangelization 6

2005-08-31T20:02:00.000-04:00

Evangelization aims at making people Jews (outward conversion); they still need to be made Christians (inward conversion).

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praises not of men, but of God.
—Romans 2:28–29

Communio 8

2005-08-31T06:57:00.000-04:00

A hero gives the illusion of surpassing humanity. The saint doesn’t surpass it, he assumes it, he strives to realize it in the best possible way. Do you see the difference? He strives to approach as nearly as possible his model, Jesus Christ; that is, to come as close as possible to Him who was perfect man, with a simplicity so perfect that in reassuring others He disconcerts the hero, for Christ did not die only for heroes—he died for cowards too. . . . The man with a firm and fearless hand can at the last moment look for support on His shoulder, while the man with a trembling hand can be sure of finding His trembling hand. . . .
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Why Love God?

2005-08-31T06:54:00.000-04:00

Several have been finding this too. These comings to old entries are mysterious.

Stain

2005-08-30T17:08:00.000-04:00

And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.—Matthew 10:38

pilgrim image

2005-08-30T16:46:00.000-04:00

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.—1 Peter 2:11

Why Crosses?

2005-08-30T16:30:00.000-04:00

I don’t know why people have been going to Crosses, but it seems somehow to witness compassion for the sufferers of Katrina.

But this verse is perhaps more appropriate:

And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
—1 Kings 19:11–12

And lamentations.

Communio 7

2005-08-29T21:25:00.000-04:00

When one thinks of the strict discipline which almost implacably maintains every member of this great ecclesiastical body in his place, from the modest curate right up to the Holy Father with his titles and privileges (one almost feels like saying, with his own vocabulary)—when one thinks of these things, don’t those sudden promotions really seem extravagances, those most sudden promotions of obscure nuns, of simple laymen and even of beggars, abruptly made patrons, protectors and sometimes even doctors of the Universal Church?
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

After the Crash

2005-08-29T20:59:00.000-04:00

From Caryl Johnston, After the Crash: An Essay-Novel of the Post-hydrocarbon Age:

The Science Controversy had taken place during the time when most people in society were going insane. It was very difficult in this period to ignore the growing numbers of unbalanced individuals. People would accost you on the street, for example, and tell you how they were feeling, or inform you that the government had moved to a new secret location, or that they were being shadowed by a difficult decision of destiny. Other people would stand in the street surrounded by little piles of household appliances that no longer worked, in the vain hope of trading them for something useful. One person might specialize in toasters, another in electric can-openers (p. 43).

So this is what I think: if you think about things but do not complete the whole cycle and return to re-internalization and participation-with, your thinking is basically nothing more than a refined form of egotism (p. 96–97).

If you have ever sat by the bedside of a person who is dying, you learn that it is not easy to die. . . (p. 166).

There was a lot of talk about ethics, but it mostly came down to the fact that ethics were fine as long as they didn’t involve any form of personal sacrifice. Where morality was concerned, the Hydrocarbon Era never abandoned its intellectual standpoint. The intellect was self-justifying. It had brought forth oil. What more needed to be said? (p. 168)

No one said anything for quite a few minutes. It was the intention of the mediator to hold this moment of emotional expressiveness for as long as possible, and not let it slip away into acts of interpretation, rationalization, judgment, pretence (p. 170).

I think it was this feeling of being in the dark, of being at a loss, that I remember so clearly of my Hydrocarbon-Age experience. You could turn on the lights, anytime day or night, but the light of knowing yourself, knowing how to cope with a situation—this kind of light was dim. Maybe it really always had been, in human experience, but the contrast of that inner dimness and uncertainty with the bright lights and the smoothly-functioning machines all around you was pretty overwhelming. I think this realization was one of the first things to strike us, when the oil and gas began to give out and people were worrying about the real difficulties of electrical generation in the face of declining resources. For the first time, it was as if knowledge (or ironically in this case lack of knowledge) actually corresponded to what was going on in the world. . . . What I am trying to say is that the Crash, the shortage of energy, caused a great many people to become connected to reality through not-knowing, through this feeling of lack. . . . And yet this not-knowing was not the same thing as ignorance (pp. 178–179).

Communio 6

2005-08-29T20:58:00.000-04:00

Oh, nothing seems better ruled, more strictly ordered, more according to degree and better balanced than the external life of the Church. But its interior life overflows with the prodigious liberties, one almost wants to say with the divine extravagances, of the Spirit—the Spirit that bloweth where is listeth.
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Notes 140

2005-08-29T20:26:00.000-04:00

If the East accepts Roman dogmas, will Rome accept Eastern saints?

The lesson—at least a lesson—of Job is that one cannot justify the ways of God to others. It may even be that one cannot justify the ways of God to oneself. Which is not to say that the ways of God are not justified. Bernanos said, “The scandal of the universe isn’t suffering but freedom.”

At present, some read the Bible to predict the future; in the future (not yet in future), many will read the Bible to understand the present.

Complaint now is wasteful.

Is Nietzsche vulgar, or only is translators, interpreters, and followers?

After the Crash, there is a chance that human beings will experience a more shared reality.

I was a writer, and ye read me. Cf. Matthew 25:31-46.

Prudence: the virtue most lacking.

Communio 5

2005-08-29T20:22:00.000-04:00

The communion of saints. . . . Which of us is sure of belonging to it? And if we are granted that happiness, what rôle will we play in it? Who are the rich and who the poor in that astonishing community? Those who give and those who receive? What surprises! For example, doesn’t that venerable canon, piously deceased, who was pompously eulogized in the diocesan bulletin in the style peculiar to those publications—doesn’t he risk learning that he owed his vocation and his salvation to some notorious unbeliever, secretly tormented by religious anguish, to whom God incomprehensibly refused the consolations of the faith but not the rewards? (You wouldn’t look for Me if you didn’t already know Me.)
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

About Ritual

2005-08-29T20:02:00.000-04:00

It is a reproach to our civilization that in commemorating a great artist we must rely on the feelings and thoughts of the moment and the halting words that they provoke. Why are there not some ritual words to mark the passing of the artist as there are in the various churches to mourn the man? For the intention of ritual in rededicating the listeners through the Word is to remind them of certain permanent truths, and surely the conditions of art and more especially the tribulations of the greatest, most innovative, artists have not changed for five hundred years.
—Jacques Barzun, “To Praise Varèse” (1965), in A Jacques Barzun Reader (New York, HarperCollins, 2002), p 354.

Still, this change [in attitude toward Zionism] in Lionel never went far enough to induce him to arrange any form of Jewish education for his son, James, the Trillings’ only child, who at the time of Lionel’s final sickness [1975] was in his twenties. Nor, so far as I could tell, had Diana ever undergone even as mild a transformation as Lionel’s in her own attitudes toward Jewishness. Which is what made it so extraordinary that she should ask me as Lionel’s certain death approached whether I would be willing to teach Jim how to recite the Kaddish, the prayer that a Jewish son is obligated to read at his father’s funeral service. The enthusiasm with which I agreed to his request amazed me as much as the request itself. I simply had not realized that I cared so deeply about this, and I suppose now that the reason was that, when all was said and done, Lionel—just as Diana had maintained, much to my resentment at what I regarded as a piece of vulgar Freudian reductionism—had indeed been a surrogate father to me.

Jim could not read the Hebrew alphabet, and so I set about making an English transliteration and drilling him day after day in how to pronounce the words properly. Lionel died about a week after we had begun these tutorials, and by then Jim had mastered the whole text and could even translate it into English.

Yet for reasons I was never to unearth or to understand, Diana (possibly seconded by Jim) changed her mind about giving Lionel even a watered-down Jewish funeral. The service was held in St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus and was followed by a cremation. And neither in this Christian building nor in the crematorium did Jim recite the Kaddish. Distressed as I was by this, I was positively offended by Diana’s decision to omit even a eulogy from the funeral services. I knew as surely as I was sitting there that Diana had persuaded herself that this decision arose out of her infinite regard for Lionel: what could a eulogist, or ten eulogists, say in praise of him that would be adequate or commensurate with his greatness? But having so recently been soaked in the Kaddish, I remembered more vividly than I might otherwise have done the reference to God as l’ailah min kol birkhata v’shirata, tushbekhata v’nekhemata (beyond [or above] all blessings, and hymns, praises and consolations). And because I understood this passage to mean that only God was above or beyond them, I thought it a mark of impious and even blasphemous presumption to treat a mortal man as though he were beyond or above them too.

Perhaps out of cowardice, or perhaps because I was still not prepared for the almost certain break it would entail, I never said any of this to Diana. But it continued rankling, and when about eighteen years later, in 1993, she published a book about the early years of their marriage (The Beginning of the Journey), which I, and not I alone, read as a covert attack on Lionel, I found myself borrowing from her own Freudian arsenal and reinterpreting the funeral she had arrange not as a mark of hubris in relation to Lionel but as an unconscious slap at him.
—Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (New York, The Free Press, 1999), pp. 93-95.

I was in St. Paul’s that day, and the service was indeed lacking—a reproach to secular civilization. Sometime later, in a fit of cultural criticism I have come to regret, I destroyed Lionel Trilling’s three letters to me.

Communio 4

2005-08-29T19:56:00.000-04:00

In his recent book, Les problèmes de la vie, the distinguished University of Geneva professor, M. Guyénot, has gone back to the distinction between body, mind, soul. If one accepts this hypothesis, which Saint Thomas did not reject, one tells oneself, with horror, that innumerable men are born, live and die without even once making use of their souls, really making use of their souls, even if only to offend the good Lord. To what extent are we not of the same species? Won’t Damnation be the tardy discovery, the discovery much too late, after death, of a soul absolutely unused, still carefully folded together, and spoiled, the way certain precious silks are when they are not used? Anyone who makes use of his soul, however clumsily, participates in the life of the universe, becomes a part of its great rhythm, and at the same time enters on a level with the saints that communion of the saints that which is the communion of all the men of good will to whom Peace was promised, that Holy Invisible Church which we know includes pagans, heretics, schismatics or non-believers, whose name God alone knows.
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Communio 3

2005-08-26T17:06:00.000-04:00

To engage all of oneself. . . . Most people, as you know, engage only the feeblest part of themselves in life, a ridiculously tiny part of their being, like those wealthy misers who will spend only the interest their income earns. A saint doesn’t live on the interest of his income, or even on his income; he lives on his capital, he gives all of his soul. In this, he differs also from the sage who hides inside his wisdom the way a snail hides inside his shell, seeking to find refuge there.
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Bernanos’ Last Essays

2005-08-26T16:54:00.000-04:00

Excerpts from The Last Essays of Georges Bernanos, translated by Joan and Barry Ulanov (Chicago, Henry Regnery Company, 1955):

I am not one to allow myself to be carried away by currents (“France Before the World of Tomorrow”).

If it is not true one time out of a hundred, or even once out of a hundred thousand or a million times, that’s enough to prove that man is a being capable of surpassing himself (ibid.).

It’s a question of knowing who will win, technology or man (ibid.).

A civilization that engenders catastrophes, at the same time, through suffering, produces in man the very interior life it believed itself capable of abolishing. We others, Christians or Moslems, realize that suffering is a redemptive force, a true super-creation [LW: however, some turn into devils] (ibid.).

The millions don’t care a bit about learning that we don’t despair of ourselves. What they want to know is if that they can place their hope in us. They care nothing about our optimism. Our optimism does not reassure them at all. Quite the opposite, it sends a shiver down their spines (ibid).

I realize that anyone who refuses to be deceived today must someday or other pursue his path all alone, as I have been doing for a long time. I’m used to it now. I even think that a little solitude is not too high a price to pay for certain modest privileges which no one dreams of trying to take away from me, such as the right to speak the way I do—with a tranquil frankness—in my own name alone (ibid.).

I [like H. G. Wells in his last book] also believe this world is full of despair, although it is bursting with optimism (“Why Freedom?”).

A great number of those who go to Mass on Sunday are no less despiritualize than the others [people who don’t believe in God], although they seem less so. . . . The hangmen of the so-called Spanish Crusade, for example, whom I saw in operation at Majorca, were suffering from the same malady as their enemies. Their fanaticism was simply the powerlessness that comes from not believing with a simple and sincere heart. Instead of asking God for the faith they lack, people of this kind have always preferred to avenge themselves on unbelievers for agonies, the humble acceptance of which would bring them salvation, and when they dream of relighting the pyres, it is less in order to throw the godless into the flames than in the hope of coming there to rekindle their own tepidity—that terrible lukewarmness which the Lord vomits out. No, the clerical opinion which justified and glorified the bloody farce of Francoism was not at all exalted. It was cowardly and survile. Engaged in an abominable adventure, these bishops, these priests, these millions of fools, in order to leave it, would only have had to pay homage to the truth. But truth frightened them more than crime (ibid.).

Speculation commanded machines, and thanks to machines commanded power as well. Thus, in a fabulously short time, by the single miracle of technology and of all techniques, including that which not only allows the control of worldwide opinion but also the making of it, it has created a civilization in the image of a prodigiously diminished and shrunken man, a man no longer made in the image of God, but in the image of the speculator—that is to say, of a man reduced to the two states, both equally miserable, of consumer and taxpayer (ibid.).

. . . not a civilization, but an anti-civilization, a civilization not made for man but to enslave man, to make man for itself, in its image and likeness and thus to usurp the power of God (ibid.).

No, it is not a question of destroying machines but of elevating man, of restoring in him faith in the freedom of his soul and an awareness of his dignity.

It is no more a matter of destroying machines than of destroying one by one the pimples of a person ill with smallpox. When one has conquered the infection, the pimples disappear by themselves. It is all very well to destroy dicatatorships. But in order to destroy two of them, we have just destroyed an enormous part of the patrimony of humanity. To destroy a third dictatorship, we risk the explosion of the planet; and if the planet escapes the explosion, the conquerers may find themsleves contaminated in their turn (ibid.).

It is necessary above all to re-spiritualize man. . . . It is right to put these ideas back into circulation, as formerly people took old coins and melted them down [LW: not repackaged] into gold and silver again (ibid.).

I am not sure I shall be able to make you realize the frightening solidarity that links certain complacent victims to the hangman who resembles them like a brother, for he often kills out of cowardice (ibid.).

Chesterton used to speak of Christian virtues gone mad. It is a fact the Christian virtues are going mad. But there is a furious madness. There is also senile decay. Christian resignation is a virile virtue, which supposes a reasoned choice between the refusal and the acceptance of injustice. It seems to me, therefore, very far from being within everybody’s reach. One usually encounters instead of it a kind of dull indifference to the unhappiness of others. Centuries ago, Christian resignation everywhere went toward the scaffold and stake with head held high, burning eyes, and hands soberly crossed over the heart. Today it sits by the corner of a fire which does not even warm it, with hanging hands and vacant eyes. I know very well that these truths are not to the taste of pastors who preach such resignation the way the priests of the catacombs used to preach martyrdom. So much the worse for them! When they repeat to us, as the bishops and archbishops of the Vichy collobaration used to, “Resign yourselves . . . ,” we are not fooled, we know very well that they mean to say, “Resign yourselves to having pastors like us. . . .” (ibid.).

Hope is a heroic virtue. People think it easy to hope. But the only people who hope are those who have had the courage to despair of illusions and lies in which they had once found a security they falsely took for hope (ibid.).

If someone were to ask me what is the most general symptom of this spiritual anemia, I would surely reply: indifference to both truth and falsehood (ibid.).

But what if man really was created in the image of God? Suppose there is in him a certain element of freedom—however small one may imagine it—to what would their experiments lead then, if not to the mutilation of an essential organ? What if in man there does exist that principle of self-destruction, that mysterious hatred of himself which we call original sin, which the technologists have not failed to observe, for it explains all the frightful disappointments of history? It’s true that they don’t attribute these disappointments to man’s sin but rather to an evil organization of the world. But what if they are mistaken? What if the injustice is inside man himself and all their constraints do nothing but reinforce the evil-doing? What if man can only fulfill himself in God? What if the delicate operation of amputating his divine part—or of systematically making this part atrophy until it falls off, dried up, like an organ in which blood no longer circulates—should turn him into a ferocious beast? Or worse, perhaps, a beast forever domesticated, a domestic animal? Or, even worse, something abnormal, deranged? (ibid.)

I do not wish to send machines to Nuremberg; the cost of the trial would be too high. Machines do not multiply according to the needs of man, but according to those of speculation; that’s the important point. . . . One can imagine . . . prosperous governments, princes who are patrons of the sciences (as so many others formerly were patrons of letters and the arts), encouraging engineers to build machines. Machinery would thus remain a means, not an end; it would not turn human life upside down and confiscate almost the whole of human energy; it would facilitate and even embellish life, without usurping the other arts, for it would itself be an art (“Revolution and Liberty”).

The worth of a civilization is measured by the security it gives people. Never before, since the first civilization existed, have people been reduced to the miserable status of temporary occupants of a planet which may tomorrow be at the mercy of any technologist that comes along. . . . (ibid.).

To be willing to accept this world is to be willing to become the passive objecct of a dreadful, irrevocable experiment (ibid.).

The man of machines is abnormal. When one speaks of an imbalance between spiritual necessities and the multiplication of machines, one reasons as if, in order to remedy the evils this imbalance creates, it would suffice to impose on man a better, mores rational use of time, following the rules of pedagogy: shorter recreations, longer classes. Alas, those are the ideas of a junior master. Modern man is not a lazy pupil who is playing with machines instead of learning his lessons or saying his prayers. Machines distract him, to take this word which has become banal, not in its accepted sense but in its exact etymological meaning: to divert, to separate. What he demands of these machines is the brutal destruction of the ancient, traditional, human rhythm of work; he wants machines to speed it up to such a point that dangerous pictures cannot be formed in his thought any more than ice crystals can be formed in water broken by a rock. Moreover, it isn’t only a question of utilitarian machines here. Those which the man of machines loves most—for which he never stops expending the resources of his inventive genius, the perfecting of which absorbs four-fifths of industrial human effort—are specifically those which correspond, or we might say are adjusted, to the natural defense reflexes of an anguished man: the movement which makes you dizzy, the light which is comforting, the voice which is reassuring (ibid.).

Oh, we are overwhelmed by lies, and there is no worse lie than a problem poorly stated. We are overcome by lies, but for a long time now we have been unable to distinguish our own part in these lies, for we are forced to use them; forced twenty times a day to endorse these worseless checks (“The European Spirit and the World of Machines”).

We are the dupes, but to use again the terrible words of Collot d’Hervois, whose favor was implored on behalf of the little seventeen-year-ld Marquise do Levis: “There are no innocents among the aristocrats” (ibid.).

Between those who think that civilzation is a victory for man in the struggle against the determination of things—and particularly against that part of the universal determinism in which man is caught up the way the tip of a bird’s wing is stuck with bird-lime—and those who want to make of man a thing among things, there is no possible scheme of reconciliation (ibid.).

One understands nothing of man if one imagines him to be naturally proud of what distinguishes him, or seems to distinguish him, from animals. The average man is not at all proud of his soul; he wants only to deny it and does so with great relief, as upon awaking from a terrible dream. He thinks, with a kind of incomprehensible pride, that he has just discovered that it really doesn’t exist. Metaphysical anxiety in the average man is almost always shown by this sly denial, this pride, the thousand tricks which only tend to lay aside some part, it doesn’t matter which, of this burden, this harassing consciousness of good and evil. . . . If only that soul didn’t exist! If it does by some mischance exist, if only it were not immortal! Very far from being the consoling illusion of the simple-minded and the unknowing, belief in liberty and in the responsibility of man has been for thousands of years the tradition of the élite; it is the spirit of civilization, civilization itself, transmitted through genius. For ages, billions of fools, fools without number, in languages without number, have said again and again, with a knowing look, “When you’re dead, you’re dead.” If they haven’t said these exact words, it was because they didn’t dare, because they were ashamed to say them; they preferred to trust in those more learned than they, the wise ones. But as soon as the prestige of the wise and the authority weaken, as soon as civilization gives way, the men of the masses begin again to look for a vacant lot, a street corner, on which to lose their immortal souls, with the hope that no one will bring them back to them. And suddenly now, in our time, this gesture held to be ignoble, until now, has been adopted by the wise men too. Those one always thought of as guardians of the highest traditions of the species have refused to keep it in their charge (ibid.).

There is something more in man than those deceivers think who believe him inspired only by self-interest. There is in man a secret and incomprehensible hatred, not only of his fellow men but of himself. One may cite for this mysterious feeling any cause or explanation one wishes, but one must explain it. As for us Christians, we believe this hatred reflects another hatred a thousand times deeper and more clear—that of the Unspeakable Spirit who was the most resplendent of the stars of the abyss, who will never forgive us for his terrible fall. Apart from the assumption of original sin, that is to say of a basic contradiction in our nature, the concept of man becomes clear, but it is no longer man. Man has passed byeond the definition of man, just like a handful of sand between his fingers (ibid.).

. . . a world without a god . . . will soon be a world without men. Thus, it makes more glorious still the mysterious solidarity of God and man which is the most august mystery of Christianity (ibid.).

It’s not question of creating free men at the expense of the masses—for the masses have put their confidence in their size and weight in vain; they will not survive free men. In a humanity without free men, the masses will not take long to fall away, just like the leaves of a tree derived of sap. Nor will it be a question then of destroying machines, but rather of saving them too. . . . The world will only be saved by free men (ibid.).

The Chruch is in fact a moving spirit, a force on the march, even though so many of her devout men and women seem to believe, even pretend to believe, that she is merely a shelter, a refuge, a sort of spiritual hostel, from whose windows one may enjoy looking out at the passers-by (the outsiders who are not paying guests of the house) walking in the mud. Surely there are outsiders among you who are deeply scandalized by the self-assurance of mediocre Christians, a self-assurance which resembles the legendary self-assurance of fools, probably because it’s the same. . . . (“Our Friends the Saints”).

I blush at the idea that [a non-Catholic] may think I address him from the depths of my security as a believer—as from a safe and warm resting place—that I hold myself apart from the risks he runs. It isn’t true, no, it isn’t true, that faith is security, at least in the human inflection of the word (ibid.).

What if life really were the free thought of this world, this world which appears to be controlled and determined? (ibid.)

The answer to the riddle of the world is in us—why not? Isn’t it the ordinary fate of people to search far and wide, and often at the risk of their lives, for what they have, without realizing it, within the reach of their hands? (ibid.)

The scandal of the universe isn’t suffering but freedom. God made His Creation free—that’s the scandal of scandals, for all others proceed from it (ibid.).

Right now, in our world, in some obscure church or some old house or at the bend of a deserted road, there is some poor man who is joining his hands and from the depths of his misery, without really knowing what he is saying, or perhaps without saying anything at all, is thanking the good Lord for having made him free and capable of loving. Elsewhere, it doesn’t matter where, there is a mother who is hiding her face for the last time against the little heart that no longer throbs, a mother, close to her dead child, offering God the moaning of an exhausted resignation, as if the Voice that threw the suns into the great void the way a hand disperses grain, the Voice that makes the earth tremble, had just sweetly whispered in her ear: “Forgive Me. One day you will know, you will understand, you will thank Me. But now, what I await from you is your pardon. Forgive Me.” Those people—the harassed women, that poor man—are at the heart of the mystery, at the core of the universal creation and even inside the secret of God Himself. What can I say of this? Language is at the service of intelligence. But what these people have grasped, they have understood by a faculty superior to the intelligence, though not at all in conflict with it, or rather by a profound and irresistable impulse of the soul which engages all the faculties at the same time, which thoroughly absorbs all that is natural in them. . . . (ibid.)

To engage all of oneself. . . . Most people, as you know, engage only the feeblest part of themselves in life, a ridiculously tiny part of their being, like those wealthy misers who will spend only the interest their income earns. A saint doesn’t live on the interest of his income, or even on his income; he lives on his capital, he gives all of his soul. In this, he differs also from the sage who hides inside his wisdom the way a snail hides inside his shell, seeking to find refuge there (ibid.).

In his recent book, Les problèmes de la vie, the distinguished University of Geneva professor, M. Guyénot, has gone back to the distinction between body, mind, soul. If one accepts this hypothesis, which Saint Thomas did not reject, one tells oneself, with horror, that innumerable men are born, live and die without even once making use of their souls, really making use of their souls, even if only to offend the good Lord. To what extent are we not of the same species? Won’t Damnation be the tardy discovery, the discovery much too late, after death, of a soul absolutely unused, still carefully folded together, and spoiled, the way certain precious silks are when they are not used? Anyone who makes use of his soul, however clumsily, participates in the life of the universe, becomes a part of its great rhythm, and at the same time enters on a level with the saints that communion of the saints that which is the communion of all the men of good will to whom Peace was promised, that Holy Invisible Church which we know includes pagans, heretics, schismatics or non-believers, whose name God alone knows (ibid.).

The communion of saints. . . . Which of us is sure of belonging to it? And if we are granted that happiness, what rôle will we play in it? Who are the rich and who the poor in that astonishing community? Those who give and those who receive? What surprises! For example, doesn’t that venerable canon, piously deceased, who was pompously eulogized in the diocesan bulletin in the style peculiar to those publications—doesn’t he risk learning that he owed his vocation and his salvation to some notorious unbeliever, secretly tormented by religious anguish, to whom God incomprehensibly refused the consolations of the faith but not the rewards? (You wouldn’t look for Me if you didn’t already know Me.) (ibid.).

Oh, nothing seems better ruled, more strictly ordered, more according to degree and better balanced than the external life of the Church. But its interior life overflows with the prodigious liberties, one almost wants to say with the divine extravagances, of the Spirit—the Spirit that bloweth where is listeth (ibid.).

When one thinks of the strict discipline which almost implacably maintains every member of this great ecclesiastical body in his place, from the modest curate right up to the Holy Father with his titles and privileges (one almost feels like saying, with his own vocabulary)—when one thinks of these things, don’t those sudden promotions really seem extravagances, those most sudden promotions of obscure nuns, of simple laymen and even of beggars, abruptly made patrons, protectors and sometimes even doctors of the Universal Church? (ibid.)

It isn’t a question of opposing teh visible Church to the invisible Church. This visible Church is not only the ecclesiastical hierarchy, it’s you, it’s me. It isn’t always agreeable (ibid).

For, after all, it is as easy for us to recognize what the Church has of the human in her as it is difficult to know what she has in her of the divine. How else then would you explain the oddity that those most entitled to be scandalized by the mistakes, the deformations, or even the deformaties, of the visible Church—I mean the saints—are precisely those how never complain about her? (ibid.)

A hero gives the illusion of surpassing humanity. The saint doesn’t surpass it, he assumes it, he strives to realize it in the best possible way. Do you see the difference? He strives to approach as nearly as possible his model, Jesus Christ; that is, to come as close as possible to Him who was perfect man, with a simplicity so perfect that in reassuring others He disconcerts the hero, for Christ did not die only for heroes—he died for cowards too. . . . cowards too. . . . The man with a firm and fearless hand can at the last moment look for support on His shoulder, while the man with a trembling hand can be sure of finding His trembling hand. . . . (ibid.)

The people who have so much trouble understanding our faith are those who have an all too imperfect idea of the eminent dignity of man in Creation, who do not put man in his place in Cration, in the place to which God elevated him in order to be able to come down to him. We are created in the image and after the likeness of God because we are capable of loving. . . . (ibid.)

The saint is the person who knows how to find in himself, and to make gush forth from the depths of his being, the water of which Christ spoke to the Samaritan woman: “Those who drink of it will never thirst.” The water is there in each of us, the deep cistern open under the sky. Undoubtedly the surface is cluttered with debris, broken branches, dead leaves, from which arises the smell of death. On it shines a cold and hard light, that of the rational intelligence. But immediately under that pernicious layer, the water is so limpid and pure! Still a little lower, and the soul finds herself again in her native element, infinitely purer than the purest water, in that uncreate light that bathes all Creation—in Him was life, and the life was the light of men—in ipso vita erat et vita erat lux hominum (ibid.).

Of course, one may believe that this isn’t the era of the saints, that the era of the saints has passed. But as I once wrote, it is always the era of the saints (ibid.).

The Last Essays are really speeches. The Appendix to the book contains “Asides to the Audience[s]” which are really preliminary remarks. Here are three excerpts:

For there is something which is worse than dying—it is to die deceived.

Never have I had less desire to speak of literature.

To sum up, it would not be enough for me to obtain your approval; I want to try to convince you.

Communio 2

2005-08-25T21:11:00.000-04:00

Right now, in our world, in some obscure church or some old house or at the bend of a deserted road, there is some poor man who is joining his hands and from the depths of his misery, without really knowing what he is saying, or perhaps without saying anything at all, is thanking the good Lord for having made him free and capable of loving. Elsewhere, it doesn’t matter where, there is a mother who is hiding her face for the last time against the little heart that no longer throbs, a mother, close to her dead child, offering God the moaning of an exhausted resignation, as if the Voice that threw the suns into the great void the way a hand disperses grain, the Voice that makes the earth tremble, had just sweetly whispered in her ear: “Forgive Me. One day you will know, you will understand, you will thank Me. But now, what I await from you is your pardon. Forgive Me.” Those people—the harassed women, that poor man—are at the heart of the mystery, at the core of the universal creation and even inside the secret of God Himself. What can I say of this? Language is at the service of intelligence. But what these people have grasped, they have understood by a faculty superior to the intelligence, though not at all in conflict with it, or rather by a profound and irresistable impulse of the soul which engages all the faculties at the same time, which thoroughly absorbs all that is natural in them. . . .
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Notes 139

2005-08-25T21:08:00.000-04:00

“It is obnoxious to see conductors and musicians, like Catholic priests, trying to be ‘ordinary guys’”.
—Donald Vroon, American Record Guide (May/June 2005).

A person who represents no interest will not be heard.

When we put you first, how will we dress, how eat, how sleep, how climb a tree?

To rise is more difficult than to fall.

One cannot please everybody and you.

Evangelization 5

2005-08-25T21:03:00.000-04:00

Truth vs. Experience. Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Matthew 7:13-14). Experience will almost always be against life. Few are apparently saved. Most take to well-worn paths. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind
lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. (Matthew 15:14). Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God (Luke 9:60; see also Matthew 8:22).

Father Martin D’Arcy quoted in George Weigel, “St. Evelyn”, First Things 33 (May 1993):

Few [converts] can have been so matter of fact as Evelyn Waugh. As he said himself, “On firm intellectual conviction but with little emotion I was admitted to the Church.” All converts have to listen while the teaching of the Church is explained to them-first to make sure that they do in fact know the essentials of the faith and secondly to save future misunderstandings. . . . Another writer came to me at the same time . . . and tested what was being told him by how far it corresponded with his experience. With such a criterion, it was no wonder that he did not persevere. Evelyn, on the other hand, never spoke of experience or feelings. He had come to learn and understand what he believed to be God's revelation, and this made talking with him an interesting discussion based primarily on reason.

Not that discussion must be based primarily on reason (how complete a Catholic was Waugh?), but that the convert must be willing to leave the crowd. For many are called, but few are chosen (Matthew 22:14).

Communio 1

2005-08-24T21:36:00.000-04:00

The scandal of the universe isn’t suffering but freedom. God made His Creation free—that’s the scandal of scandals, for all others proceed from it.
—Bernanos

Communio 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

02005 08 24 +

2005-08-24T21:01:00.000-04:00

Back from burying Mary’s father. The military honor guard at the cemetery provided a sense of solemn ritual not evident in his mass of christian burial.

Rim 10

2005-08-21T21:31:00.000-04:00

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

02005 08 21 +

2005-08-21T21:29:00.000-04:00

Read “Miranda Over the Valley,” the first of Andre Dubus’ Selected Stories.

Rim 9

2005-08-21T18:52:00.000-04:00

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Nothing More Crucial than Genesis

2005-08-21T18:25:00.000-04:00

From Stanley L. Jaki, “Genesis 1: A Cosmogenesis?”

Nothing more crucial than Genesis

Finally, one should muster plain common sense and no small courage to separate oneself, when necessary, from the popular bandwagon. Theologians and exegetes too are part of that wider academic world which, if and when it praises them, may merely implement the words of the Gospel: “Woe to you when all speak well of you!” But for Genesis 1 it is worth taking the risk of departing from a consensus that has provided no safe course around the shallows of concordism, if the old saying, recalled by a French exegete a century ago, is to retain its validity: “Nihil pulchrius Genesi, nihil utilius.” Nothing more beautiful than Genesis, nothing more useful.

One may add, nothing more crucial than Genesis and indeed its very first chapter. Four hundred years ago, Cardinal Bellarmine made the astute remark in his great book, De controversiis, that the temporal sequence of heresies followed the thematic sequence of dogmas as set forth in the Creeds. Citing this remark in an essay of his on patristic commentaries on Genesis 1, the Père Congar called attention to a crucial point: Today the principal Christian heresy is the practical denial of that eternal life for which the secularized world in its resolve not to look beyond nature has no use at all. Congar also noted that one cannot defend eternal life, centered on the immortality of the soul, without defending the proposition that all is created. That proposition too goes against the grain in this age of nature-worship. No theological defense of the strict createdness of all can, however, be made without a defense of Genesis 1. It should not be defended under any circumstances as a cosmogenesis, with any reference, indirect as it may be, to science. Its genuinely biblical meaning can, however, be fully defended by that reason whereby, as Genesis I tells us, man is created in the image of Almighty God.

Thanks to la nouvelle théologie.

Stanley L. Jaki

Evangelization 4

2005-08-21T15:58:00.000-04:00

I blush at the idea that [the non-Catholic] may think that I address him from the depths of my security as a believer—as from a safe and warm resting place—that I hold myself apart from the risks he runs. It isn’t true, no it isn’t true, that faith is security, at least in the human inflection of the word.
—Bernanos, Last Essays

Rim 8

2005-08-21T13:34:00.000-04:00

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The Great Commandment

2005-08-21T13:33:00.000-04:00

Do not put the second commandment before the first.

Rim 7

2005-08-19T18:03:00.000-04:00

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Lonely Catholics

2005-08-19T17:29:00.000-04:00

Read Amy Welborn’s post on Msgr. Clark and the comments that followed. Most people believe that the Monsignor broke his vow of celibacy. My belief is that if Clark is guilty, he should not have maintained his innocence, and that if he is innocent, Cardinal Eagan should not have accepted his resignation. In this matter Eagan is more important than Clark, because it involves the possiblity of scandal. Will Eagan prove to be another blind mouth?

The accused always seem very lonely; one wonders what direction Msgr. Clark received from his confessors and spiritual advisers. It is one thing for a man to be a sinner, another for the Church to allow him to bring disrepute to the Church. The failure is institutional as well as individual. Or is everyone amazed when a priest is surprised?

The theme of loneliness appears in the several comments by Mr. Rod Dreher and others. Amy Welborn had asked of the “Clark situation”:

1) Does it discredit faith to the outsider?

2) Does it strike a blow to the faith of one who is Catholic?

What is clear is that many Catholics feel like outsiders in the Church. This is admitted even by those who defend the Church and would never leave it. They don’t leave it because the Church has the truth. Unfortunately, the truth seems to be in the Church but not of it. For how often these days does a Catholic meet the Word incarnate in his parish? Where are the saints and where the art?

See also Diary of a City Parishioner (Saturday, August 20, 2005).

Louis Aloysius Murphy, 1920–2005

2005-08-19T17:28:00.000-04:00

Mary’s father Louis A. Murphy died of cancer this morning around 4:30 a.m. at the James Square nursing home in Syracuse, New York. “Visiting” will probably be on Monday and the funeral probably on Tuesday. God have mercy on him.

Rim 6

2005-08-18T22:22:00.000-04:00

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Evangelization 3

2005-08-18T21:35:00.000-04:00

From The sacrifice of childhood on the altar of progress in Chris Robert’s blog Exploring the Mystery:

Dr. Calvin Miller, in his sermon Is El Ja at Beeson Divinity School, quoted Jacques Barzun:

The difference between revolution and decadence is that when revolutions are going on the church looks out at the world and says, “This is what you better do or we won’t accept you” but when we’re decadent we say, “What do we have to do to get you to come in?”

In an e-mail to me, Chris Roberts explains the title of Dr. Miller’s sermon:

In his sermon, Dr. Miller made several references to Elijah and broke down his name into its meaning—El is Ja, El being a form of God and Ja being a form of Yahweh, Jehova, or Lord. Elijah’s name therefore means God is Lord. So the sermon asks the question is God Lord? We recognize Him to be God, do we also recognize that He is truly Lord?

Notes 138

2005-08-18T16:46:00.000-04:00

Hell is not other people but myself.

He that is without Enlightenment among us, let him first cast
a stone.

Dear Jesus, grant me the grace to write one thing truly.

Unconditional Love?

2005-08-18T16:44:00.000-04:00

Matthew 8:12
But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:41–42
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 13:49–50
So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 22:11–13
And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 24:48–51
But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Matthew 25:30
And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Luke 13:3
I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Luke 13:5
I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Matthew 25:12
But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not.

Luke 13:25
When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are:

Luke 13:27–28
But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.

Matthew 25:41
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

Matthew 5:22
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Mark 9:43–48
And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where there worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

Matthew 18:34
And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.

Matthew 22:7
But when the king heard thereof, he was wroth: and he sent forth his armies, and destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

Rim 5

2005-08-17T17:14:00.000-04:00

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes 137

2005-08-17T17:07:00.000-04:00

Temptations are intermittent, consequences permanent.

Temptations cluster. What is dessert without coffee?

Suffer in this life, or suffer in the next.

If God had written the Bible, he would have taken more care with his copyists.

Catholics who love the Church more than God.

We who say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets, who of us would not have joined in crucifying Christ and burning Joan of Arc?

Eternal Recurrence is Nietzsche’s attempt to give significance to life. But something signficant could occur once, or not at all.

The purpose of ritual is to go through the motions. That is why good liturgy is so important.

In an oral culture, there is no distinction between theory and application, properly speaking: there are only particular reenactments of the cosmic. In Mircea Eliade’s elegant terms, “An object or an act becomes real only insofar as it imitates or repeats an archetype” (Myth of the Eternal Return 34). To conform to the ritual is to be practical, for the surest way to get things done is to do them in the pre-established pattern.
—John R. Harris, “How Never to Write a ‘Scholarly Article’: On Falling Afoul of Academic Bigotry”, Praesidum: A Journal of Literary and Literate Analysis 5.3 (Summer 2005)

It is well that the Summa Theologica is not Scripture.

Metaphor for original sin: the internal-combustion engine.

English: the principal language of posturing in the early 21^st century.

Theologians resemble eunuchs writing about sex.

Evangelization 2

2005-08-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

Justice is politique. Truth is mystique.

Notes 136

2005-08-16T16:49:00.000-04:00

As the world becomes Catholic (please God), the meaning of Catholic will change (to the original meaning, some will say).

Paul’s epistles are arguments, not panegyrics. Lectors, avoid pomposity!

“All the Reformers loved Augustine” (“Is the Reformation Over? Well, if you have to ask . . . ” by Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom). That is why the Reformation is over, but not yet the Schism.

What does [Peter] Kreeft feel he lost and gained? He gained an appreciation for the richness of God’s mystery. Having come to think of Protestant theology as overly infected with Descartes’ scientific view of reason, Kreeft learned to appreciate “wisdom rather than mere logical consistency, insight rather than mere calculation.” He also learned to worship God through all of his senses, not merely the mouth and ears of Protestantism. Perhaps most important, he found himself swimming within the two-thousand-year stream of historical Christianity. But Kreeft also speaks of losses. He inherited from his evangelical roots a serious concern for truth that he finds sadly missing among many Catholics. For example, although he finds Catholic theology quite clear on the subject of justification by grace through faith, &ldquoo;well over 90 percent of the students I have polled . expect to go to Heaven because they tried, or did their best, or had compassionate feelings to everyone, or were sincere. They hardly ever mention Jesus.” And he misses music. He remembers evangelical worship with “beautiful hymns, for which I would gladly exchange the new, flat, unmusical, wimpy ‘liturgical responses’ no one sings in our masses.” Kreeft envisions a time when all of these losses will be redeemed. “I think in Heaven, Protestants will teach Catholics to sing and Catholics will teach Protestants to dance and sculpt (Ibid.).

“Hell is a soul’s separation from God.” When, then, is earth?

“THERE IS ONLY THE CATHOLIC WAY AND THE FALSE WAY.”. This would be more believable if Catholics did not act so much like other people. Besides, what is meant is: “THERE IS ONLY THE ROMAN CATHOLIC WAY AND THE FALSE WAY.” This cannot be true.

Not every one who says Magisterium, Magisterium, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

People are reluctant to spend an hour doing what they supposedly desire to do for eternity.

You said so yourself: Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Popularity should never be a goal.

I should think that the angels share God’s interest in man.

How reconcile Unconditional Love with: “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” and “And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” and “Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” and many other passages in the Bible? I don’t think one can.

We who do not love, who do not know love, who refuse love, talk about unconditional love.

We know that few find life; are we to hesistate until we are assured that all find it?

I shall strive to do good, even if damned.

Four bloggers: Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, Elihu.

Will I for all eternity desire to reason with thee? Will there forever be things too wonderful for me? Or will I say, Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further? Having heard thee by the hearing of the ear, shall then mine eye see thee?

Should one distinguish between: The Lord answered Job, and: The writer of Job wrote, The Lord answered Job? Reread Job before deciding.

Let not my portion be in this life.

Rim 3

2005-08-16T06:46:00.000-04:00

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

A Body Without Breath

2005-08-16T06:40:00.000-04:00

Excerpts from A Body Without Breath: How Right and Left Have Both Stifled Moral Reason Within the Christian Faith, by John R. Harris:

Every human being is already a dormant Christian, at the very least (p. 2).

It is a vital tenet of Christianity—one of the reasons, indeed, why gnosticism was declared a heresy—that we are all made in God’s image and that the love of goodness, though readily perverted, burns at the core of every heart when it leaves nature’s hands. The word which Epictetus uses to convey our spiritual union in god, ανωθεν (“from above”), is in fact the very word in the Gospels which English translators have dubiously chosen to render “again” in describing the believer’s spiritual rebirth (John 3.3–7) (p. 57).

What we see in tolerant Middle America . . . is alienation from one’s own life, a disjunction between one’s profession of faith and one’s example which is so chasmic that the doctrine of salvation through faith alone must work three shifts to patch it up (p. 107).

The picture of a lonely dozen worshipping in a great cold cathedral is hardly inappropriate if one considers the spiritual path to be straight and narrow (p. 110).

[Fundamentalists] are very much scions of the Enlightenment. [James] Barr is right: their epistemology is empirical. He says this best, I think, in his brief chapter on “Fundamentalism and Society”: “It is a reasonable comment . . . to say that the fundamentalist conception of truth is dominated by a materialistic view, derived from a scientific age. This stress on the accuracy of the Bible in its material-physical reporting separates modern fundamentalism entirely from that of older theology, such as the theology of Luther and Calvin, which it ill-informedly claims as its own forebear (Barr, Fundamentalism. p. 93) (p 114–115).

It was said during President Clinton’s impeachment that if a man will lie about anything, he will lie about love. The truth is just the opposite: a man who will lie about love will lie about anything (p. 177).

Today our ailing culture offers the young virtually no moral conditioning at all (and the Latin mos, like the Greek ethos, simply means “habit”); hence our offspring obey the call of the wild. Many who would have fared well under loving discipline now wallow in various depths of duplicity, no more worthy of fierce damnation, perhaps, than they would otherwise have been worthy of canonization. We have liars in all stages, and we are breeding them faster than we can paste together our broken promises (p. 178).

We can always explain, and explain quite fully, why Mrs. Smith bought brown shoes instead of red ones. She was reared wearing brown shoes, her taste is genetically disposed to prefer brown, and the shoes were also on sale. At the same time, no amount of explanation can ever cancel the possibility that Mrs. Smith bought brown shoes primarily because she wanted to (p. 210).

Given that religious and political liberalism can make a common cause of almost any issue, and given that the latter is scornful of the metaphysical trappings once (but no more) associated with the former, the liberal church really doesn’t have any significant ground of distinction from liberal politics. If the social-activist church were to slow down its parade to the Promised Land in occasional remembrance of the other world—of “useless” duties and “unrealistic” commandments—its secular fellow-travelers would peel away, alarmed by an odor of unearthly authority. Such defections do not appear imminent (p. 233–234).

I put it to you that a hell in the company of this great Comforter—in the knowledge, I mean, that our afflictions were arbitrary and unconnected to our moral will—would be closer to heaven for us than an eternity in the presence of a power which so inflicts the souls at its mercy. Though our agony should be constantly renewed, we would always have the hope of relief. For we should still have our god of goodness, the god whom we know in our hearts: the more inscrutably and vindictively our tormentor flailed us, the more certain we should be that the ruler of our hearts was elsewhere—perhaps in a deeper vault of the same dungeon. Of course, Milton represents the fallen angels as placing the similar hope in Satan. It was Milton’s right to do so, courtesy of epic convention and dramatic license. Dante was more accurate, however, in stressing that all hope is left behind at the Gates of Hell. Why? Because the soul knows its own guilt, the justice of its own damnation: any hell which seeks to dispense with this one element must remain a poetic fiction. Hell is the soul’s separation from God, which is its separation from a vital, illuminating energy at its very essence. A damned soul has lost its energy, its will—its love. The light of goodness has been utterly extinguished in it while the knowledge of goodness lingers to weigh it down (p. 254).

My own position is and has been throughout this book that visionary experiences cannot claim authority superior to moral imperatives for those who believe in a supremely good God (p. 264).

I remain invincibly uncomfortable with the role of the intellectual in most congregations. We are to nurture depth and introspection in our own faith, it seems, and in that of our breathren—until the vitality of this internal seeking after God notable exceeds the average, at wich point we quickly blunt our offensive keenness and attempt to blend back into the crowd (p. 276).

The whole point of worship is to seek our relevance to Him, not His to us. To that end, an empty room or a windswept mountaintop might be a better sanctuary than a laughing, clapping congregation. Consider, after all, how easy it is to make people laugh and clap. Look at the throngs which line up to howl on cue in the studio of a “talk show” or of some “late night” distillation of gossip and vulgarity. Is this then, our neo-liberal, neo-conservative heaven? Are these our choruses of angels, their anguished boredom the ultimate object of divine pity, thier ribald frivolity the ultimate context of holy brotherhood, their spontaneous applause the ultimate reward of ardent endeavor? (p. 277)

The charismatic denominations whose ranks have swelled over the last three decades represent the Crucifixion itself as an indescribably gory agony whose horrors are obviously intended to distance believers from Christ in a shuddering cringe. The rite of communion, to the extent that it surpasses a friendly handshake (also a staple of contemporary liturgy), draws its powers from this scapegoat symbolism. The riterated message is supremely simple, as it was for millennia before the coming of Christ: set aside the burden of guilt—set it on the innocent victim’s shoulders. Enter the utopia of self-indulgence without self-reproach (p. 281).

There is little room for a god of goodness in a state where law requires that everyone achieve personal happiness (although, of course, there is no room for happiness in a heart which doesn’t serve goodness). In the now-unified reign of the empirical, where all dwells within our understanding and hence our “corrective” ability, we can handle inexplicable longings only as neurological phenomena (p. 282).

Rim 2

2005-08-15T06:58:00.000-04:00

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Evangelization 1

2005-08-15T06:45:00.000-04:00

No amount of close reading would have revealed to the man of Ethiopia that he who was led as a sheep to the slaughter was Jesus (Act 8:32–39, Isaiah 53:7–9). He had to be told.

Rim 1

2005-08-13T21:14:00.000-04:00

À Marie Laurencin

Rim 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

See also Gleizes 1934.

After the Crash

2005-08-13T20:58:00.000-04:00

Perhaps you are not much interested in the world of tomorrow. But the world of tomorrow is very much interested in you. You may say to yourself, no doubt, “Whatever happens, somehow or other I’ll manage to find a way to enter it.” Well, it may be so. Let us hope that it will not be the way the lamb enters the jaws of the wolf.
—Bernanos, Last Essays

Read about tomorrow today:

After the Crash: An Essay-Novel of the Post-Hydrocarbon Age, by Caryl Johnston

At the same time pick up a book about yesterdays:

House of Holy Fools: A Family Portrait in Six Cracked Parts, by Amy Biancolli

Beuron 5

2005-08-13T16:30:00.000-04:00

Beuron 1 2 3 4 5

02005 08 13 +

2005-08-13T16:28:00.000-04:00

Pray that the New York Archdiocese doesn’t make Catholics feel like chumps.

Beuron 4

2005-08-12T22:36:00.000-04:00

Beuron 1 2 3 4 5

GS 78 Posers

2005-08-12T22:32:00.000-04:00

From Gospel Scenes:

They return to Jerusalem.

PETER. Master, look: the fig tree you cursed has withered away.

JESUS. Believe God. Whoever tells this mountain, “Get up and throw yourself in the sea,” and has no doubt but believes that what he asks will happen, will have what he asks. Therefore I say to you: whatever you pray for, believe when you pray that you will get it, and you will.

He again goes to the Temple.

CHIEF PRIESTS and ELDERS. By what authority do you do the things you do? Who authorized you?

JESUS. I also shall ask a question: answer it and I’ll tell you by what authority I do what I do. John’s testimony—was it from God or from men?

They say to themselves, “If we say from God, he’ll say, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’ but if we say from men we anger the people, who are convinced that John was a prophet.”

CHIEF PRIESTS. We do not know.

JESUS. Then you will not know by whose authority I do what I do. Let me ask you this. A man had two sons. He went to the firstborn and said, “Son, work today in my vineyard.” The boy replied, “Yes, sir,” but did not work. The man then went to his other son and asked him. First the boy said, “No, I will not,” but later he changed his mind and worked in the vineyard. Tell me, which son did his father’s work?

ELDERS. The second.

JESUS. Yes: that is why the tax collectors and the prostitutes will enter the kingdom before you.

CHIEF PRIESTS. John said it himself: he was not a prophet.

JESUS. A landowner planted a vineyard, set a hedge around it, built a wine press, and erected a tower; then he let the vineyard out and went to another country. At harvest time he sent a servant to the vineyard to receive his share of the produce. The tenants beat the servant and sent him away empty-handed. The landowner sent another servant. The tenants threw stones at him and struck his head before sending him away. The landowner sent another servant. The tenants murdered him. Many others were sent; some were murdered and some merely beaten. The landowner had a son, whom he loved. He said to himself, “At least they’ll respect my son.” He sent him to his vineyard. When the tenants saw the landowner’s son they said to themselves, “This is the heir: if we kill him the inheritance is ours.” They seized the son, took him out of the vineyard, and murdered him. Tell me—when the landowner returns, what will he do to the tenants?

CHIEF PRIESTS. He’ll destroy them and lease his vineyard to others who will give him its fruits.

JESUS. Do you remember the passage, “The same stone the builders refused is become the headstone in the corner: this is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”? Don’t be surprised when the Father’s kingdom is taken from you and given to a people who will bring forth its fruits. A king gave his son in marriage and invited the entire kingdom to attend the wedding. As the king greeted his guests he saw among them a man who was not properly dressed. He asked him, “My friend, why aren’t you wearing your wedding clothes?” But the man said nothing. The king said to his servant, “Tie his hands and feet, and toss him into the darkness where he will scream and chew his tongue.”

Herod’s supporters join the discussion.

HERODIANS. Master, we know you always speak the truth and teach God’s word regardless of persons or public opinion. Tell us, then, is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or is it not?

JESUS. Pretenders, do you wish to tax or be taxed? Show me a coin.

They bring out a silver piece.

JESUS. Whose image and name are on it?

HERODIANS. Caesar’s.

JESUS. Then give Caesar what is Caesar’s and give God what is God’s.

Although the Sadducees don’t believe in existence after death, some Sadducees pose Jesus a question about it.

SADDUCEES. Teacher, you know the law of Moses: “If brothers live together and one dies childless, his wife shall not marry outside the family; her husband’s brother shall marry her and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her.” Given this, consider the case of seven brothers. The eldest married and died, leaving no children. The second married his brother’s wife and also died leaving no children. So the third down to the seventh. Last of all the woman died. Tell us: at the Resurrection, which of her seven husbands will she be married to?

JESUS. On this point and others you misunderstand both scripture and God’s power. When men and women rise from the dead they will neither marry nor be given in marriage but will live like God’s angels in heaven. But why cite Moses, since you don’t believe in the Resurrection? You remember God said to Moses, “I am the God of your fathers: the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.” The God of Moses is not the God of the dead but of the living.

A Pharisee lawyer speaks up.

THE LAWYER. Teacher, which command of the Law is the greatest?

JESUS. You know the first commandment, “Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.” You know the second also: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

THE LAWYER. Rabbi, you are right. There is only one God, and there is none other than he, and to love him with all one’s understanding, strength, and will, and one’s neighbor as one’s self, is worth more than any amount of burnt offerings and sacrifices.

JESUS. You are near God’s kingdom: love your neighbor.

THE LAWYER. Tell me, who is my neighbor?

JESUS. A man was going from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell among thieves who wounded him, stripped him, and left him for dead. A priest was going down the same road. He saw the man and passed by on the other side. A Levite came by and also avoided him. Then a Samaritan came by, saw him, and pitied him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds after bathing them in oil and wine. He carried him to an inn, and nursed him though the night. The next morning he gave the innkeeper two silver coins and said, “See that he gets well—whatever the added expense I’ll repay you when I return.” Tell me, of the three, who was the neighbor of the person who fell among thieves?

THE LAWYER. The person who did good to him.

JESUS. Go and do like him.

JESUS to the some scribes. Tell me about the Messiah. Whose son is he?

SCRIBES. He will descend from David.

JESUS. Then why did David call him Lord, as in the psalm, “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies my footstool”? If David called him Lord, how is he his son?

They can’t answer him. He turns to the crowd.

JESUS. The Pharisees and scribes preside over the Law. You may therefore do what they say. But you mustn’t do what they do, since they say and do not. They tie together heavy loads and put them on men’s backs and won’t lift a finger to lighten them. They do everything for display. They have the Law written all over them and they dress in dark robes. They are passionate for the head table at banquets and for the front seats in synagogues. They preen themselves on being recognized in public and being called Rabbi. You are to call no man Rabbi. You have one Rabbi, the rest are students. You are to call no man Father. You have one Father, he is in heaven. You are to call no man leader. You have one leader, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. The man who raises himself will be lowered and the man who lowers himself will be raised. Alas, Pharisees and scribes, pretenders! You block the door to God’s kingdom, neither entering yourselves nor allowing others to enter. Alas, Pharisees and scribes, pretenders! You eat up widows’ houses and make a show of being devout: thus you double your damnation. Alas, Pharisees and scribes, pretenders! You somersault land and sea to make a single convert, and then make him twice as twisted as yourselves. Alas, blind guides. You say, “If anyone swears by the Temple it does not count, but if he swears by the gold in the Temple he is bound by oath.” Ignorant teachers, which is more important, the gold or the Temple that sanctifies the gold? You say, “If anyone swears by the altar it means nothing, but if he swears by the gift of the altar he is bound by oath.” Blind fools, which is more important, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Anyone who swears by the altar swears by everything on it. Anyone who swears by the Temple swears by God’s kingdom and its king. Alas, Pharisees and scribes, pretenders! You deal in the herbs and spices and ignore the meat of the Law—charity, forgiveness, faith. Attend to these and the rest will have their place. Blind mouths, you vomit the ant and swallow the camel. Alas, Pharisees and scribes, pretenders! You scour the outside of cups and plates and leave the inside full of greed and crime. Blind Pharisees, clean the inside first, then the outside. Alas, Pharisees and scribes, pretenders! You build monuments to the prophets and filigree the graves of the just, and say, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we should never have joined them in killing the prophets.” What you are saying is, your fathers murdered the prophets and you bury them. Children of snakes, no wonder you love graves, being worms. How can you escape damnation in hell? I shall send to you prophets, and wise men, and teachers. Some you will kill and crucify, some you will scourge in synagogues and persecute from village to village until on you comes all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias, Barachias’ son, whom you murdered between Temple and altar. What I say to you is, All this shall be laid to this generation. Jerusalem, my dear Jerusalem, who kill the prophets and stone the messengers sent you, how often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused. Look: your house is empty. I say to you, You will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he that comes in the Lord’s name.”

People are putting money in the Temple treasury. Many rich people are contributing large sums. A poor widow comes and puts in two copper coins amounting to a penny. Jesus sees her and points her out to his followers.

JESUS. What I say is. The poor woman gave more than the rest. They gave part of their wealth: she in her poverty gave everything, even what she needs to live.

He goes out of the Temple.

A FOLLOWER. Look, Master—what magnificent structures and stonework!

JESUS. Observe the buildings well: the time is coming when everything will be thrown down and not one stone will stand on another.

THE TWELVE. When will it be—what signs should we look for?

JESUS. Don’t be misled by prophecies and portents. Men will say, “I am the one,” and “The time is coming.” Many will be deceived—you mustn’t be. If anyone says to you, “He is in the desert,” don’t follow him. If anyone says, “He is in the next room,” don’t believe it. Adam’s son will come like lightning out of the east shining into the west. You’ll hear of wars and threats of wars. Don’t be deceived: these things must happen, but they are not the end. Nation will war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes and famines and plagues: these will be like only the beginnings of birth pains. When you see standing in the sacred place the abomination of desolation Daniel saw, then everyone in Judea must escape to the mountains. No one on the rooftop must return to his house to get his clothes. Alas for those who are pregnant or have babies at the breast! Pray that you don’t need to escape in winter or on the Sabbath. There will be sorrow, such as hasn’t been from the beginning of the world until now and never will be again. If these days are not shortened, no one would live, but for the sake of the chosen the days will be shortened. Two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at a mill: one will be taken and the other left. The people will fall by the edge of the sword and will be imprisoned by the nations. Jerusalem will be kicked by the nations, until the nations are weary. When a tree is budding and putting forth leaves, you know spring is near. Know then that it is near—at your very door. You will see it happen in this generation. Heaven and earth will be destroyed: my word will remain. You won’t see Adam’s son, but you will vindicate him before the world. The world will hate you; you will be tortured and killed; many will fail, and betray one another, and hate one another; evil will abound; love will grow cold: but whoever endures to the end will be saved. As to the day and the hour, no one knows, not the angels in heaven nor the son, but only the Father. As the flood came in Noah’s day, so Adam’s son will come. Before the flood up to the day Noah entered the ark there was eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage. No one knew until the flood came and took them all away. That is how Adam’s son will come. The earth will shudder; the sun will be darkened; the moon will not give her light; the stars in the heavens will fall; there will be a groaning among the powers of heaven. Then from the clouds the son of Adam will come with great power and glory: he’ll send out his angels to gather his chosen ones from the four winds and his trumpet will blast from the ends of the earth to the utmost reaches of heaven. So be alert: you don’t know when your master will come. If a man knew what hour a burglar intended to break into his house he would be ready and not let his house be broken into. Because you don’t know when the son of Adam will come, you must always be ready. Who is the dutiful and intelligent servant whom his master put in charge of the household to feed everyone at the proper time? Fortunate for that servant when the master returns and finds him at his task. He will give his servant charge of all his lands. But the neglectful servant, thinking his master slow in coming, will make slaves of his fellow servants and feast with gluttons, and his master will return when he no longer expects him. The master will torture the neglectful servant and put him with the other pretenders, where there will be screeching and chewing of tongues. Consider ten bridesmaids who took up their lamps and awaited the bridegroom. Five were prudent and five careless. The careless ones took lamps but no extra oil, while the prudent took containers of oil with their lamps. Since the bridegroom was long in coming they all grew drowsy and slept. At midnight they heard a shout: “The bridegroom’s coming! Get ready to meet him!” The bridesmaids woke up and trimmed their lamps. The careless said to the prudent, “Give us some oil—our lamps are going out.” But the prudent answered, “There may not be enough for us and you. Get some from the sellers.” While they were getting oil the bridegroom came: the bridesmaids who were ready went in with him to the wedding and the door was shut. When the others returned they said, “Master, Master, open the door!” He said, “I don’t know you.” An employer was going away. He called his servants and made them responsible for his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one, according to their ability. Then he left. The servant who received five talents used them to acquire five more. Likewise the servant who received two acquired two. But the servant who received one talent dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s wealth. After a long time the employer returned and called his servants in for an accounting. The servant who received five talents brought also the other five and said, “Master, you gave me five talents. Look: I have acquired five more.” The master said to him, “Excellent, my good and trustworthy servant. Because you have accomplished much with little I shall give you charge of much. Come: share your master’s delight.” The servant who received two talents said, “Master, you gave me two talents. Look: I have acquired two more.” His master said to him, “Excellent, my good and trustworthy servant. Because you have accomplished much with little I shall give you charge of much. Come: share your master’s delight.” Then the servant who received one talent said, “Master, I knew you were greedy—reaping where you haven’t sown and harvesting where you haven’t planted. I was scared and hid your talent in the earth. Look: you have back what is yours.” His master said, “You miserable and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I don’t sow and harvest where I don’t plant. You should at least have given my wealth to usurers, in order that I might get it back with interest. Take from him his one talent and give it to the servant with ten. Everyone who has used his wealth shall be given more and shall be rich, but everyone who has not used it shall be deprived of it. Throw the useless servant out into the darkness, where he can screech and chew his tongue.” When Adam’s son comes in glory with all his holy angels about him, he will sit on this throne of glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered. He will divide each nation, putting the sheep on his right side and the goats on the left. He will turn to his right and say, “Come into my Father’s blessing and inherit the kingdom I have prepared for you from the beginning of creation. I was hungry; you fed me. I was thirsty; you gave me drink. I was abandoned; you received me. I was naked; you clothed me. I was sick; you visited me. I was in prison; you came to me.” The righteous will say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, thirsty, and give you drink, abandoned and receive you, naked and clothe you, sick and visit you, in prison and come to you?” The king will say, “What you did to the lowest of my brothers you did to me.” He will turn to his left and say, “Leave me, you accursed ones, and dwell in the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. I was hungry; you gave me no food. I was thirsty; you gave me no drink. I was abandoned; you did not receive me. I was naked; you did not clothe me. I was sick; you did not visit me. I was in prison; you did not come to me.” They will say, “Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or abandoned, or naked, or sick, or in prison, that we should go to you?” He will say to them, “What you did not do to the lowest of my brothers, you did not do to me.” Then these will go away to everlasting torment, and the just will enter into everlasting life.

Beuron 3

2005-08-12T20:19:00.000-04:00

Beuron 1 2 3 4 5

Modern French Painters

2005-08-12T18:33:00.000-04:00

More excerpts from Jan Gordon, Modern French Painters (1922/3). I quote at least once from each chapter.

The number of Art critics who have been right about the artists of their own day, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I have not the temerity to thrust myself among them. Ruskin himself, admitting the dangers of contemporary criticism, pushes up Turner to the detriment of Claude. Time has had her revenge and Turner has slipped down below Claude again, to the detriment of our faith in Ruskin’s foolhardy judgment (“Introduction”).

Following after the Gothic comes a period which I have called the European period, and which represents the time which elapsed between Giotto and the Impressionists. But it might have other names, it might be called the “nature” idiom or the “scientific” idiom, since it is characterized by what may be called a scientific curiosity in the physical appearance of nature, and comes to an end as soon as that inquiry is exhausted. As the other idioms corresponded to the permanency of their peoples, so does this scientific idiom, it changes its dialect and develops with the development of civilization (“The Languages of Art”).

The study of nature comes to a natural climax in two ways: first, exhaustion of the visual method and, secondly, invention of the mechanical method—the photograph. The visual examination of nature comes to an end in Manet, and by a natural path develops into a study of the means by which nature is visible, that is, light (ibid.).

One has been asked why not go on in the old road? Why not be content to continue that matter-of-fact representation of external fact which was so easy to understand and under which we had so much pleasure in eating our dinners? The answer is that one cannot stand still. It is contrary to the laws of nature. There is no such thing as lack of change. The mountain is falling into the valley, the earth never travels the same course twice, history, in spite of the old saw, never repeats itself. The artist is man brought to the highest point of sensitiveness to life. How, then, cannot he be the most ready to respond to the law of nature? (ibid.)

The analysis of nature as a tangible fact comes to an end about the moment when the philosophical doubt of nature as a tangible fact is becoming understood. The Impressionists’ abrupt change, from the study of the tangible to the study of the intangible—light, is not too far removed from Kant’s declaration that space is a property of the mind. I wish to make no claim that the Impressionists had any ideas of being practical philosophers; but I do suggest that ideas become commonly suitable for the human race at certain stages of development, and that these ideas appear spontaneously under different aspects (“Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism”).

At the first exhibition of Impressionism there were about a hundred exhibitors. How many of these are to-day known to the public? The three most famous were never au fond Impressionists. These three, Renoir, Degas, and Cézanne are all in direct contradiciton with one of the chief tenents of the Impressionist theory—that of taking the subject direct from nature without any artistic control or composition of the pictorial elements. Of the other painters Monet, Sisley, Guillemin and Pisarro had high talent. Of these seven men, the first three would have made their mark in any age and under any conditions. It may be doubted whether the last four would have been peculiarly remarkable but for the novelty of their research and the new technique which was inspired by it (ibid.).

The true use of knowledge is to deepen our sense of the marvelous, no revelation can do anything more than increase our sense of wonder. The self-conscious seekings of the Neo-Impressionist (Pointillist) group do not indicate that art grows necessarily more beautiful thereby. It is a truism that art does not grow more beautiful by increase of knowledge. Neither the language of Leonardo nor of Sir Joshua Reynolds helped either to be a better artist than was Botticelli or Gainsborough respectively. But this growth of self-consciousness does show one thing. It shows that art has not degenerated into a stagnant state of self-content. It shows that art is elastic enough to keep pace with the mental growth of civilization: Art, by developing, proves that it is still alive, that by growing it is, indeed, the exact contrary state to that which it has been accused of, namely, decadence. Art falls into decadence when it stagnates. Bouguereau and Poynter are the decadents, not Cézanne or Van Gogh. It is not new movement which we must fear, but lack of movement, or rather lack of movement commensurate with its period. The arts of Egypt or of China, which represent societies stable over centuries, could show stability parallel to that of their social frame. The arts of Greece grew and declined within a short period (ibid.).

The artist of to-day is not trying to add little by little to the list of objects [e.g. frogs, peasants, factories] which can be allowed fit matter as beauty “containers”. . . . He is trying to destroy the illusion of the picturesque, and to build up in its place a sentiment for the pictorial. . . . Cézanne is almost the first painter who dared to eschew all suggestions of the picturesque. . . . One can assert that the person who cannot perceive the beauties of Cézanne has never properly seen the beauties of the Old Masters. By understanding Cézanne all good painting seems to become more significant; and all bad painting less valuable (“Cézanne”).

The highest emotional value which Nature possesses is its spatial value. . . . Space takes us in the throat and shakes us with emotion. In the cathedral, space first moves us and on it our final remembrance lingers. Cézanne, striving to realize nature, struggles with the problem of space. The spatial value of colouring forces itself upon him, and in consequence of his solution of this problem he forces upon the spectator a realization of space which is far more poignant than our normal sensations (ibid.).

When we are actually face to face with nature the beauty which moves us is dependent upon a feeling of more or less exact proportions between the different objects in the scene. . . . When one tries to copy this in paint, one must at once make compromises. . . . The Chinese or Japanese painter does not attempt this compromise. . . . Van Gogh’s apprecation of nature is akin to that of the Chinese or Japanese . . . the intensity of his sense of space. . . (“Vincent Van Gogh”).

The eye is in continuous though almost imperceptible motion. . . . The circle is a satisfying figure, excellently complete, but the interest in it is soon exhausted. With the ellipse . . . the eye is tempted to move and to re-analyze the curves and balances. . . . We are all under the unconscious domination of gravity. . . . There is, then, in the horizontal figure an ease of grasp, and a satisfactory sense of stabilty; in the vertical we find more difficulty of grasp but a corresponding increase of interest because of balance which seems to be an inherent quality. From the former figure we get a sensation of peace, from the later a feeling of dignity and of inherent power (“Renoir”).

The quality of suggested movement is one of the most valuable in Art. The power of organizing forms which seems to possess an internal power of movement mark out the great artist from the smaller.

Owing to his power of suggesting movement to the eye the great artist can to some extent control the order in which his harmonies are appreciated. . . . The harmonious succession of shapes, of colours, of light and shade, of movement to and fro, in and out, puts us in contact with something which is more consistent, more complete, and therefore more valuable and satisfying than the often chaotic nature which we normally perceive (ibid.).

Of course the four chief controlling lines of a composition are constituted by the frame. Whatever linear harmonies we place together upon the canvas we cannot forget that these must also harmonize with the limiting edges of the picture. This institutes a great difference between nature and art, for nature has no frame. This consideration of the harmonic use of the limits of the frame is specially remarkable in Renoir. His mise-en-page is almost always superlative. In no other artist can it be studied with more ease and with more satisfaction (ibid.).

[Gauguin] desired to rid everything of accidentals and to get down to the stark innocence of nature. He thus rejects the analytical method of the Impressionists. He ignores the accidentals of light as did Cézanne, but for a very different reason. He says, “If I wish to express greenness, a metre of green is more green than a centimetre”. . . . Nobody [in European painting] had ever wanted to express “greenness” before (“Gauguin”).

The painter has now been trying to pierce down to the meat of art, to those things which depend upon painting alone. . . . The artist who is seeking for the root matters of art, the things which belong to painting and to nothing else, is trying to find something which will be beyond the chances of taste or of fashion. Owing to the cast of his civilization and to the mental bias of the present day the artist is seeking these permanencies rather within himself than from without. But he always remains an ego facing something which is external, and his ego can only communicate with other egos by means of this joint external element “nature,” therefore the artist will draw his primary inspiration from this common source. If he draws too far within himself, if he becomes too personal, he risks that danger of becoming unintelligible as a man who invents a language which nobody else can decipher. This danger faces some modern artists (“Art and the New Civilization&rdquo).

If the most profound impulse of humanity were towards realism, towards imitation of nature, successive genius would be continually at work regenerating pattern back to nature. There would result a sort of see-saw, the easy careless artistic kind of workmen debasing the work through slovenly copying, the great and real artists drawing it back to realism. In practice this does not occur. It is true that careless artists debase the pattern, and that the good artists revivify it, but this process of revivification is not through a return to nature, but usually by means of reasserting the value of proportion, space, and rhythmic harmony. Like the tale in Russian Scandal we will find some good artists who make elaborations and complexities, while others strip down to the bare bones of structure. The one aims at the Beautiful, the other at the Sublime. But the process of revivification sometimes even helps to carry the pattern even farther from nature. A return to nature is always conscious. When, however, a partial return to nature is shown—and it occurs from time to time—it will usually be found to be coincident with a general decadence; when the moving spirit which dictated the major outline of the art is no longer a living force, when faith is dead, and when humanity has unconsciously to find some other background and a new reason for its art. In periods of decadnce, complexity for the sake of complexity and a return to nature are almost inevitable (“The Designing Instinct”).

To more than a small extent beauty of design is enshrined in suitability, in a proper respect for the artistic medium employed. Thus, large works in stone must be more compact than large works in bronze, since stone is more breakable; and from this comes the fact that many broken fragments of Greek statuary are more beautiful than the completed figures, the processes of nature having reduced the work until it is suitable to the material (ibid.).

Every kind fo adventure should be applauded. If the results are valueless the future generations will judge them: posterity can always be left to deal with results; but for humanity the encouragement of even futile adventure will have a real value; amongst the futile must also spring up the real (ibid.).

When we contrast the scientific spirit with the creative we realize that science is at root an extension of the monkey habit; curiosity is strongly marked in animals, as is also the imitative element. One does not deny to science a creative element, nor does one deny an aesthetic content in scientific work. But the moving spirit behind science is curiosity; analysis, not creation. This is but an extension of the animal. Creation is human. Art and not science most profoundly marks our separation from the rest of the animal world (ibid.).

Artists can be divided into two classes. The creative impulse can develop from two centres: either the artist has a spiritual driving force, which compels him to find a means of expression, or else he is greatly gifted with craft, and has to struggle to find some motive upon which to work. El Greco and Blake are examples of the first; Holbein, Veronese or Tiepolo are examples of the second [Matisse an example of a third type: the gifted craftsman who seeks a spiritual force.] (ibid.)

The result of the use of mental realities—instead of carefully studied aspects—to produce artistic effect, is that the artist may with them more powerfully create the genius loci of his object. We do not, as a rule, remember things which are fugitive as easily as those which are permanent. Thus, a landscape such as that in the background of Piero della Francesca’s “Nativity” recalls the actual quality of Southern Europe more forcibly than does either Corot or Turner. The latter artists are often only interested in a study of light effects, in an analysis of nature&rquo;s appearance at a particular moment. Therefore, if we do not catch her again at such a moment something has gone out of the likeness. But Piero is concerned with the placing of two or three trees upon the side of a hill over a particular kind of stream. These features are recognizable no matter what light may play over the object. All primitive art, because it deals with mental symbols, has this vivid power of awakening belief. We are more ready to credit the Angels of Fra Angelico than those of Veronese; Botticelli’s goddesses are more divine than those of Rubens (“Henri Rousseau and Utrillo”).

From Leonardo until the Impressionists the only ancient art which had any general recognition was the art of Greece, and, within architectural limits only, the art of the Gothic. During Napolean’s day that gigantic masterpiece of Egyptian culture, the Sphinx, was massacred by the soldiery of the “most intelligent nation of Europe.” It was, however, almost an accident that this Greek art became the ideal of the Renaissance. The art of Fra Angelico, of Botticelli and of the French Primitives indicates a line upon which the arts of Europe might have developed, had ancient Greece and imperial Rome been a little more effectively obliterated by the Turks or by the Goths. This art was in principal an architectural and a coloured art rather than an attempt a naturalistic imitation. It was an art which depended upon spirit rather than upon material, thus fulfilling the first law of the Chinese artistic canon, “Ch’i yun shen tung,” which has been translated as “Spirirtual rhythm expressed in the movement of life.” But this art was turned into the materialistic development which reaches a climax with Veronese and France Hals (“Savage Art and Modigliani”).

The Negro art concentrates in general upon the idea of creating images of mystic import in harmony with the religion of “Tabu”. . . . The representation of humanity is more and more conventionalized, more and more simplified and withdrawn from realism. We find images of extraordinary power, full of subconscious suggestion, among these carvings. They solve in the simplest and frankest way many of the problems confronting the artist of to-day; yet in spite of this simplicity they convey to the fullest extent the effect intended. These masks of War God or Devil Dancers convey their meaning in a more powerful and more direct manner than all the tortured humanity of the naturalistic European school. These sculptures in wood reaveal what are called plastic qualities of the highest order, that is to say, their values lie in their shapes, in the curves and in the contrasts of their surfaces. They are the works of men who have thought only as sculptors; there is no literary preconstruction. Sometimes these images become so conventionalized that all sembance to representation is lost, yet without sacrifice of the meaning. They thus become abstract works of art, depending upon qualities which are those of painting alone, thus speaking the pure language of the painter’s art, as music speaks with its own tongue, borrowing from no other art, nor requiring to be explicit in order to be intelligible (ibid.).

For the recognition of certain properties of objects the power of picturing without imitating results in a heightening of consciousness. By this means art can make sensible to us even in small things that magic value of space which by nature we perceive only before the vista or in the cathedral (“‘Space’ and ‘Life’ in Painting”).

Real life is not an external property of living things; but life must be an external, visible property of Art. . . . In a non-living thing the property of apparent life, the mystic sensation that this inanimate mass will move if we but turn the eyes away from it, is so remarkable that the meaning of life as life acquires an extraordinary value (ibid.).

We have . . . two powerful factors in sculpture which owe their value to the aesthetic use of space; the delight of the eye in proportions of plane and of mass, and the illusion of life properties which spatial proportions can induce. Both of these are due to design. The pleasure which likeness to a known real object brings must be recognized as a factor in art, but such a pleasure is less vivid and less lasting, and suffers a speedy decay if we realize that in an attempt to gain imitation the suggestion of life has been sacrificed. The aesthetic factor of life is the work of the artist, it depends upon his sense of design, upon what he draws from within himself, and depends much less upon what he copies from nature. We may say that nature is the bucket in which the water is drawn from the well, but nature is not the water. Space in painting has value similar to that in sculpture. The Chinese artists ascribe to space (or infinity) the greatest value in painting as an art; and, because landscape gives to them the best opportunity of space suggestion, they name landscape the most profound of the plastic arts. In painting, space is produced by three means: first, by imitation of the usual effects of nature; secondly, by the spatial properties of colour; thirdly, by spatial qualities of line, perspective, proportion, and so on. The eye can delight in proportions of suggested space in painting even more than it does in sculpture. In painting, space has a value more positive than it has in actual life. The sense of space is distilled out—it becomes a more concentrated draught. Mr. Berenson, the founder of most modern criticism, in his excellent work on the Florentine Painters calls this sense of space in painting “tactile value,” because the sense of space, as we have explained, is allied with the muscles of touch. He says:

How is it that an object the recognition of which in nature may have given me no pleasure becomes when recognized in a picture a source of aesthetic enjoyment? The answer, I believe, depends upon the fact that art stimulates to an unwonted activity psychical process which are in themselves the source of most (if not all) of our pleasures and which here, free from disturbing physical sensations, never tend to pass over into pain. For instance, I am in the habit of realizing a given object with an intensity of two; if I suddenly realize this familiar object with an intensity of four, I receive the immediate pleasure which accompanies a doubling of my mental activity. . . . This is what form does in painting; it lends a higher co-efficient of reality to the object represented, with a consequent enjoyment of accelerated psychical processes and the exhilarating sense of increased capacity in the observer.

(ibid.)

There is a general tendency to preach that work is noble, leisure useless and on the whole degrading. The practice of the world contradicts this statement. There is a unanimous tendency to struggle towards a position in which labour becomes no longer a necessity. . . . Only because it is so potently necessary do we elevate it to a virtue in order to take the edge from its undesirablility. . . . In reality leisure is the desirable thing in life, and in spite of the fears of moralists it is rightly to be so considered. If man were habitually of a lazy nature, then leisure would be, no doubt, the evil which it is depicted. But very few men, save in enervating climates, can survive the infinite boredom which continued inaction brings. The man whom fortunate circumstances relieves from the slavery of compulsory work fills it with some activity. It is curious that this activity usually takes the form of some kind of pursuit of which the aim is the enhancement of the consciousness of life or the development of faculties which indirectly lead to life enhancement (“The Value of Art”).

The function of all good art and, indeed, of all forms of real beauty, is to increase the sense of the value of life (ibid.).

In the arts . . . perceptions by which we make our way through the world are suddenly relieved from the mere demands of existence itself. In ordinary life the demands of existence weigh down upon our perceptive powers in the same way that the power of gravity limits us in the use of our strength. On the moon we should suddenly get the sensation of extraordinary force [“If we were to seize a rock which would weigh upon earth a hundredweight, and hurl it from us, we should have almost as much pride in the feat as though the rock were really a hundredweight heavy.”]; in the arts we receive a sense that the powers of perception are doubled or quadrupled in penetration. This reaction produces the feeling of more power to overcome existence; a sense of superior life is communicated to us (ibid.).

Though in life colour is not intensely necessary, yet the colours have quite definite physiological reactions—the excitement of red, the calmness of blue, etc.—by means of which a mood can be evoked, and by means of which the other aesthetic values may be enhanced. Form and movement are the two visual functions of life which are most positively useful. These are, in consequence, the most commonly potent of the life-communicating qualities. In a non-representative (or abstract) art the problem of form reduces itself to a fusion of fine shapes with the suggestions of movement. As soon as realism is allowed, as in sculpture or pictorial art, two other factors come into play in the imitative quality of form and what we may call the aesthetic paraphrase. . . . In the compromise which is undertaken between imitative form and harmonious form, that quality which possesses the least absolute value, the imitative, is the first which is (or may be) discarded. The frankness with which this has been recognized by the present-day artists is the chief factor which so dismays the public (ibid.).

Passing from shape and movement we come to the third perception of use to life, that of space, which is the last developed, as well as the last to be consciously used in painting. . . . In Western painting, the spatial value has been appreciated and used by a few artists of genius. Actually, it is the most important of the visual qualities in the function of life for the spectator. . . . Owing to its importance, the spatial quality when dissociated from the needs of life has a most vivid life-communicating value for the spectator. The sensation of organized space produces in the observer the effect of Infinity in art [distinguish between this and Renaissance perspective] (ibid.).

An artist does not wish to be misunderstood; for if he is not understood his whole artistic life is a failure. Nor, in spite of popular belief, does the artist really delight in shocking the public. The true end and aim of the artist’s effort is appreciation; he is pathetically eager to be loved. But he wishes to be loved at a proper level, at his own level. He is like a women who is bold enough to persist that her husband like her for herself; and not because she becomes merely a sort of human cushion upon which the man can leave his own imprint (“Derain and Vlaminck”).

It is a common reproach levelled at modern artists that they despise the Old Masters, that they do not understand what realistic drawing is. In truth, Picasso and Derain, the leaders of two schools of modern thought in art matters, have always been the most most persistent students of the past and probably know far more about the Louvre than most of their academic opponents (ibid.).

Derain was probably the first who produced studies showing that the novel structure of Cézanne&rquo;s compositions had been understood by a painter, and who thus revealed a new path along which pointed the finger of the old man of Aix (ibid.).

It is, I think , possible that Derain, like Picasso, knows his art galleries too well. The great arts of the past arose to their peculiar excellencies because they despised the arts of their own past. Thus a Renaissance architect, contemptuous of the Gothic, would restore a Gothic church with Renaissance additions. There is in this attitude a certain truth to one’s culture and social conditions which is very healthy, and I feel that these harkings back to the past, on the part of artists like Derain and Picasso, would be the equivalent of a harking back by Renaissance to Gothic (ibid.).

With Gleizes, Cubism pursues its way to a logical development. This art of abstract flat surfaces is an art which, in its way, can reach to the highest points of pictorial purity. It is parallel with the music of the tone poem from which all melody is banished. There is, however, a further development of this abstract painting which I foresee. This is an art of moving shapes and colour, produced by some process akin to the cinema. This art, which has been hinted at in some dramatic productions, still needs the artist who can employ its possibilities. An art of moving abstract colour and form would place painting upon the same footing as music. At present the painting of Gleizes appears to me an arrested moment in a colour-form symphony which as no beginning and no end (“Cubism”).

The modern Realistic school is that which to-day is gaining ground and strength more than its rival, the Cubist, non-representative school. And, indeed, upon analysis the former conforms most nearly to the present stage of civilization. I am afraid that Cubism in art must lie on a level with ideals in politics; universally possible only with a re-created humanity—it is, in fact, the art of Utopia (“The Modern Realists”).

Marie Laurencin is as much an innovator as Matisse. Her line undoubtedly derives much from the Negro art—that simplified source of so much of the direct expression of personal vitality to-day—and something to Botticelli. Her colouring is purely her own. It is said that the most difficult task for the painter is to produce beautiful greys. Marie Laurencin’s silvery tints can only be called neutral because they are greys, but they seem to imply a new gamut of unpaintable colours, and they give an exquisite quality to the reds and blues which she contrasts with them. We may, perhaps, consider that women’s most valuable contribution to civilization has been the raising of taste. Marie Laurencin’s taste is impeccable. Was it not Peter Pindar who said, “Give me one man of taste and I will find you twenty men of genius”? (“The Women Painters”).

The Russian school is dominated by two factors: the peasant feeling for applied art, and the practice of Icon painting, which is a direct descendant from Byzantine decoration. We who live in the heterogeneous interiors to which bad taste, no taste, and manufactured taste have condemned us, can scarcely realize what it means to have been brought up in the midst of surroundings which have a uniform character and which belong to a national and therefore natural scheme of decoration. We cannot realize what it meant to be a Gothic, or an Egyptian, or a Greek, nor can we realize what it means to be a Russian (“The Slavonic Influence”).

The influence of Slavonic household art shows immediately when the Slav sets himself to painting. Roughly speaking, the Slavonic school possesses in the highest degree in Europe the power of colour as design. Even in great French colorists, such as Cézanne and Renoir, one finds that the beauty of the colour is a general beauty of interharmonized tints. If one stands so far away from a Renoir that all detail disappears one finds that the colour is distributed in vague patches, which are usually pleasing, but which are not very definitely organized into what one can call pattern. This power of colour design has of course struck the public in the Russian Ballets. . . (ibid.).

The second quality which stands out in the Slavonic shool is the heritage from the Byzantine which comes through the Greek Church and through Icon painting. In this art the artists can consider personages and objects as symbols rather than as representation; the symbol must be made recognizable, and once this necessity has been fulfilled the artist may take what liberties he likes. . . . Chagall may be considered as the pre-eminent representative of this element in Slavonic art, though it is is keenly present in the work of Gontcharova and Larianoff, as well as in that of the extremely versatile Madame Vssilieff (ibid.).

Cézanne ends logically in Gleizes or Picasso. Van Gogh ends logically in Dufy and the Polish painter, Kandinsky. But logical conclusions may be a little difficult for humanity to swallow; nor, indeed, it it necessary that logical conclusions be right. After all, the logical conclusion is only the logical conclusion of one aspect, it must neglect a host of other points of view. Human existence is possible because we are not receptive to logical but prefer harmonized or balanced conclusions (“Conclusion”).

One can assert almost with confidence that the public may expect no new shocks for a very long while. New genius will arise of course, but it will be within the limits of the new tradition. If the public can assimilate all that it has recently received, it will be able to assimilate all that it will receive for a century or so (ibid.).

Beuron 2

2005-08-11T21:55:00.000-04:00

Beuron 1 2 3 4 5

Jan Gordon

2005-08-11T21:46:00.000-04:00

A work of art which has the power of operating only upon two or three persons, if it operates strongly enough, is a great work; for the value of art cannot be measured by the extent of its audience, but by the quality of emotion which it produces in its most responsive spectator.
—Jan Gordon, Modern French Painters (1923),

Beuron 1

2005-08-11T16:47:00.000-04:00

Beuron 1 2 3 4 5

Rising Crosses

2005-08-11T16:46:00.000-04:00

Notes 135

2005-08-11T16:44:00.000-04:00

I am saying things which will some day be thought of, rather than trying to get the attention of anyone.
—John Jay Chapman

Few read Chapman today, but for now the long view is still the right one. Our complaints are true, but the future will not find them very interesting.

Notes 134

2005-08-10T22:02:00.000-04:00

Anything I say to draw attention to me is wrong. Anything I say that draws attention to me is wrong.

To say “we need to” is already to admit defeat. Just say: Go, Come, Do this.

What if Rome had fallen without Christianity?

Notes 133

2005-08-09T21:26:00.000-04:00

Do not love God too quickly.

2005 08 09 +

2005-08-09T21:04:00.000-04:00

I believe that if I live long enough, I shall say something worth remembering.

Notes 132

2005-08-09T20:53:00.000-04:00

Sex cannot be all that important, or men and women would be more attractive.

Democrats don’t believe in their own candidates. Republicans believe too much in theirs.

Why don’t your priests see that most Catholics won’t visit you in a Blessed Sacrament Chapel but will visit you in the main part of the church?

Political parties fight over the same bone.

A lie: sex without consequences.

It is not my body until I take responsibility for it; even then, it is not my body.

Admittedly, my reasons are rationalizations. But if my rationalizations are false, so may my motives be.

Notes 131

2005-08-08T21:20:00.000-04:00

A surfeit of art: it is art that is the problem, for we do not suffer from a surfeit of beauty.

Religion vs. morality: the conflict cannot be ultimate, otherwise Jesus would be divided. A rogue tamed is useful to society, while a dull clod resisting temptation is heroic even if, pace Trilling, he does not look like one. To forgive those who trespass against us: is this religion or morality? Few artists are artistic, fewer philosophers philosophical. Neither the Prodigal Son nor his brother was good. There is none good but one, that is, God.

On sola scriptura: Ye have heard that it was said of them of old time, . . . But I say unto you, . . .

Independent thinkers mainly want people to agree with them.

Faith is fulfilled by works. Works are the testimony of faith.

God speaks. The Bible is a book.

Goodness does not require choosing. A good person who acts without deliberating may still be doing good as a person and not as a robot, because no person is a robot. Natural grace is still grace, and still supernatural. When Jesus said to the leper, I will; be thou clean, he did not first think, I don’t have to do this. Not to deny that choosing good is also good, and also supernatural. Not my will, but thine, be done.

Bible reading should not be all that important when the population is illiterate.

Hummingbirds

2005-08-08T17:35:00.000-04:00

Photographs taken by my friend and colleague Jay Holcomb:

Today I spent 45 minutes sitting and standing near our hummingbird feeder, and was richly rewarded. The exterior walls of our kitchen and back entryway form an L. The feeder is straight out from that L. I stood in the L, just 12 feet or so from the feeder, and the birds seemed to ignore me. I was shooting at from 1/1,000 to 1/1,600 second.

I think that [the first] pic shows a male. Usually the males have bright red throats, but in this image it's not very vivid. The others are of a female(s). They're a lot of fun to watch. Enjoy.

J

Seven Demons Worse

2005-08-06T22:45:00.000-04:00

Like Jonah, [Evans] had sprung out of the dark pit into which he had been swallowed alive just so that he could denounce them . . . yet wherein was he different? Had he, too, not wanted a happiness made according to his specifications for the length of his natural life? He hadn’t been greedy—he didn’t expect to live forever, and after this life he would even have been content with oblivion, as long as he and Sheila had enjoyed thirty-five good years together to make up for the thirty-five without her. God had owed him for those lean years, and the debt was payable now, please, and in terms that he could comprehend. Even if there were nothing afterward—even if there turned out to be no God—there should be someone or something to see that he got paid . . . not much, just everything—just exactly what he wanted. And so he had created exactly the kind of universe that would exist if there were no God, where everything had to make sense here and now, and then had expected his God to come dwell in it. Or rather, he had been shocked to find that his God did not dwell in it when Sheila died senselessly. And his faith had worn away like dross, leaving a lifeless skeleton rather than the crystal-hard but malleable paradox of sand.
—from Ewen Harris, Seven Demons Worse (Tyler, Texas: Acturus Press, 1998)

Croix

2005-08-05T17:43:00.000-04:00

Notes 130

2005-08-05T17:41:00.000-04:00

I heard the woods and distant waters roar;
Or heard them not, as happy as a boy.

I am so happy (temporary sensation, permanent reality).

Modern theology: fiddling while Rome burns.

Which is more difficult to believe: Jesus is God, or: Jesus is in the Eucharist?

If I am invited to the feast, I must not be angry with those who aren’t.

A Good Word for Luther

2005-08-05T17:36:00.000-04:00

I would never want to gainsay the contribution that Christians have made to the abolition of slavery, the banning of child labour, the amelioration of the harshness of industrial life, and other important fruits of the Social Gospel movement. Nor do I wish to call into question the social teachings of the Catholic Church from Leo XIII to John Paul II. But all these teachings and efforts belong, it is important to remember, to what Martin Luther called “the order of preservation” (that is, to the order of creation-after-the-Fall) and not, strictly speaking, to what he called the “order of redemption.”

as well as good words on other matters:

Edward T. Oakes, SJ, “Benedict XVI and Some Current Theology”

For more Oakes, see Edward T. Oakes.

Obedience

2005-08-05T17:32:00.000-04:00

St. Augustine”s words in De libero arbitrio seem apposite . . . : “The man who, knowing the right, fails to do it, loses the power to know what is right; and the man who, having the power to do right, is unwilling, loses the power to do what he wills.”
—Caryl Johnston, “Michael O’Brien’s Catholic Apocalypses”

Gothic 3

2005-08-04T20:46:00.000-04:00

Gothic 1 2 3

With this I say good-bye to applet making, and perhaps blogging.

Gothic 2

2005-08-04T20:45:00.000-04:00

Gothic 1 2 3

Gothic 1

2005-08-04T19:33:00.000-04:00

Gothic 1 2 3

Notes 129

2005-08-04T06:39:00.000-04:00

“It’s the culture.”
Rome, too, was a culture.

Notes 128

2005-08-03T22:35:00.000-04:00

Unwonted because unwanted.

Do I want to read, or to have read?

It is a fisherman, not a PhD, who has the keys of the kingdom of heaven.

You were not crucified for any esoteric doctrine, but for what you taught and did in synagogues and the Temple.

Notes 127

2005-08-02T22:14:00.000-04:00

Why read a blog when you can read a book?

The Last Man

2005-08-02T17:49:00.000-04:00

. . . Kojève's disposition to the culmination of universal history is radically ambivalent. On the one hand, he follows Marx by seeing in idyllic terms the post-historical world, one of universal freedom, emancipation from war and want, leaving space for “art, love, play, etc., etc., etc.,; in short, everything that makes Man happy”. However, Kojève is simultaneously beset by pessimism. In his philosophical anthropology, man is defined by his negating activity, by his struggle to overcome himself and nature through struggle and contestation. This is the ontological definition of man, his raison d’être. Yet the end of history marks the end of this struggle, thereby exhausting man of the activity which has defined his essence. The end of history ushers in the “death of man”; paradoxically, man is robbed of the definitional core of his existence precisely at the moment of his triumph. Post-historical man will no longer be “man” as we understand him, but will be “reanimalized”, such that the end of history marks the “definitive annihilation of Man properly so-called”. . . . Fukayama follows Kojève in tying the triumph of capitalism to the satisfaction of material human needs. Moreover, he sees it as the primary mechanism for the provision of recognition and value. Consumerism and the commodity form [sic], for Fukayama, present the means by which recognition is mediated. Humans desire to be valued by others, and the means of appropriating that valuation is the appropriation of the things that others themselves value; hence lifestyle and fashion become the mechanisms of mutual esteem in a post-historical world governed by the logic of capitalist individualism.
—Majid Yar, “Alexandre Kojève (1902-1968)”, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

One needn't read Kojève or Fukuyama to no longer be man.

True, the age will get darker, but that doesn’t prevent me from inventing new sources of light. Besides, it’s later than we think, since we have gotten used to the dusk.

Notes 126

2005-08-01T21:44:00.000-04:00

If nothing is good in itself, no consequences are good.

The end justifies the means. The means are not the end.

Man without God is man without his image.

Péguy on Bergson

2005-08-01T21:22:00.000-04:00

A great philosophy is not a dictation. . . . The greatest of all is not the one with no mistakes in it.
A great philosophy is not the one nothing can be said against; it is the one that says something.
. . . It is not the one with no holes in it; it is the one with amplitude.
A great philosopher is not one without reproach; it is one without fear.
A great philosophy is not one without breaches in the walls; it is one with citadels.
A great philosophy is not finally the one that lies down, and all at once on all positions and on every battlefield. It is simply the one that one day fought well there in the corner of the wood:

Heureaux ceux qui sont morts pour quatre coins de terre.

—From Note sur M. Bergson, quoted in Daniel Halévy, Péguy and Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine

Créteil and French Poetry

2005-07-30T08:45:00.000-04:00

From Jacques Barzun, “Some Notes on Créteil and French Poetry,” New Directions, v9, 1946.

If it is conceded that the changing sensibility of the poet does perpetually reshape the form and technique of poetry, and even the conception of what poetry is for, then the radical “proposition” embodied by [H. M.] Barzun in L’Orphéide appears both thoroughgoing and, by now, intelligible. We have got used to many things done upon the body of language since 1914; but at that time the principle of simultaneity in poetry necessarily seemed cataclysmic. For it brought into question again the basis of all poetic techniques since Lessing’s Laokoon. The western world had agreed that poetry was to be read the way it was written—one word after another. All discussions of “technique” dealt with “lines.” “This is a good line; that is a bad line.” A poet is known by his lines, in much the same way that a volume of poems is known by the irregular aspect of the right-hand margin. It is even believed by the innocent that Homer was a writer and that the Greek dramas originally sounded very much like the girls’ school commencements which they now adorn.

But if the scribe tradition is rejected and instead of lines and books the poet should begin with sounds and sensations, he would logically arrive at the view that his page was simply a convenient portion of space in which to organize the symbols for what he hears. Space relations would indicate time relations as well—would create a larger syntax for his use—and he might them give himself and others the feeling that he was composing a world in motion instead of merely “extending remarks” like a Congressman.

See From the Barzun File.

Circles of Chant

2005-07-29T20:11:00.000-04:00

This is not a painting.

Cross for Cecil Gray and Friends

2005-07-29T20:06:00.000-04:00

An Art Poor in Spirit

2005-07-29T20:03:00.000-04:00

[Gregorian chant] possesses a purely aesthetic appeal as great as that of any other form of art that has ever existed—an appeal which, however, triumphantly defies all attempts at analysis or definition. Wherein lies the secret of its irresistible glamour and fascination, of its immemorial power to move us? It seems, on the face of it, to be entirely devoid of every attribute of musical beauty which is commonly deemed essential. It has no determinate rhythm, no harmony or accompaniment of any kind, and its melodic scope is severely limited and circumscribed. Nevertheless, when heard in the appropriate surroundings and under fitting conditions, these simple unisonal changes take on a remote, magical, and disembodied quality—a grave ecstasy, radiant yet austere, impassioned yet serene—and glow as with a secret inward fire. The voices themselves seem to undergo a curious transmutation and become impersonal, sexless, super-human almost, giving expression to the inarticulate yearnings and aspirations, not only of the living, but also of the countless generations of the dead and the unborn. If we accept the definition of a miracle as a phenomenon contrary to or deviating from the laws of nature, then we may justly call Gregorian chant a musical miracle, for its beauty and appeal are not to be accounted for by any known laws or principles governing musical art, but exist in spite of them, in defiance of them.
—Cecil Gray, The History of Music

See also Cross for Cecil Gray and Friends.

02005 07 29 +

2005-07-29T17:42:00.000-04:00

If I speak to no man, let me speak to myself, and to you.

But if there be no interpreter, let him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to himself, and to God.
—1 Corinthians 14:28

Jesus Prayers 3

2005-07-29T17:36:00.000-04:00

Jesus Prayers 1 2 3

Revelation

2005-07-29T17:34:00.000-04:00

Even if God wrote every word of the Bible it would not be revelation, since revelation only exists in being revealed.

And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth [Isaiah 53:7-8]. And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.
—Acts 8:26-35

Jesus Prayers 2

2005-07-29T17:33:00.000-04:00

Jesus Prayers 1 2 3

One Hundred Years Ago (Charles de Foucauld)

2005-07-22T21:37:00.000-04:00

Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene. On July 22, 1905, Charles de Foucauld wrote in his diary:

Jesus has set you up forever in the life of Nazareth. Missionary and solitary lives are only the exception for you as for him: carry them out every time His Will indicates it clearly; as soon as it is no longer indicated, return to the life of Nazareth.

Make, whether alone, or with a few brothers, the life of Nazareth your objective, in everything and for everything, in its simplicity and its breadth . . . no special clothing—like Jesus in Nazareth; no enclosure—like Jesus in Nazareth; a house not far from an inhabited place, but close to a village—like Jesus in Nazareth; not less than eight hours of work a day (manual or other, as much as possible manual)—like Jesus in Nazareth; no large land holdings, no large dwellings, no great expenses, not even large alms, but the utmost poverty in everything—like Jesus in Nazareth. In other words, in everything: Jesus in Nazareth.

Do not try to organize; prepare the establishment of the Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; alone, live as if you were always to remain alone; if you are two, three, a few, live as if you were never to be many. Pray like Jesus, as much as Jesus, allow, as he did, for a great deal of prayer; also as he did, allow for a great deal of manual work, which is not a time taken away from prayer, but given to prayer. Faithfully say the Breviary and the Rosary every day. Love Jesus with all your heart . . . and your neighbor as yourself for love of Him. The life of Nazareth can be lived everywhere: even there in the place most useful for one’s neighbor.

—Quoted in Michel Carrouges, Soldier of the Spirit: The Life of Charles de Foucauld, trans. Marie-Christine Hellin (New York: Putnam's, 1956), p. 227.

Jesus Prayers 1

2005-07-22T17:59:00.000-04:00

Jesus Prayers 1 2 3

Fritz Stern’s Summer Reading Recommendations

2005-07-21T19:52:00.001-04:00

From Columbia College Today (July 2005):

Anatole Lieven, America Right Or Wrong: An Anatomy Of American Nationalism

Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith : His Life, His Politics, His Economics

Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts : Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950

Conversations with Anatole Lieven

2005-07-21T17:01:00.000-04:00

From American Nationalism: Conversation wth Anatole Lieven

Harry Kreisler: . . . what are the particular policy aims of the Bush administration in the way that it has responded to 9/11? It would seem that Afghanistan was a nuanced balancing of these forces; but when we move on to the Iraq war, there seems to be another policy agenda in choosing Iraq and looking to reorder the Middle East. Talk about how you see the play of forces at work to give us specific policies within this overall context of the tension between the two forms of nationalism.

Anatole Lieven: I strongly supported the war in Afghanistan after 9/11. I felt that we simply had no choice. I say "we" -- I'm British, of course; but I strongly favored British participation in that war. Britain offered 25,000 troops. The Bush administration actually turned them down, but I was completely supportive of that [war]. I believed we had no choice. Having spent a considerable time in that region, I also believed very strongly that the forces represented by the Taliban and al Qaeda are a serious threat, not only to us, but to surrounding states and societies, and to the progress of the entire region.

So I had no problem with the war in Afghanistan. My problem has been the way in which the tremendous long-term effort which was absolutely necessary and is known to be necessary after the overthrow of the Taliban to stabilize Afghan society, to develop it, to lay some kind of foundation for a successful future Afghan state has been grossly neglected, precisely because the war against terrorism was diverted into a completely new field, and against a completely new target, namely the Ba'ath regime in Iraq, which was as different from the Taliban and al Qaeda as one could possibly imagine.

Now, that is not saying in any way that the Ba'ath regime in Iraq was not a savage and at least would-be totalitarian one. The Ba'ath are a mixture of communism and fascism. They're ultra-nationalists. They're national socialists, if you will. But it's also a modernizing ideology, like communism and fascism. It's all about developing the state as a modern state with modern armies, but also with modern services to the population. And above all, from its inception, Ba'ath nationalism, like Nazism or fascism, by the way, or communism, were savagely anti-religious. The leading founding ideologue of the Ba'ath was a Christian, Michel Aflaq, and like his equivalents in Europe, he hated the world of religion because he saw it as precisely hampering progress, dividing the nation. The most savage repressions by the Ba'ath in the past were not just of Kurds and not just of Shias, but also, based in Iraq and Syria, precisely of religious fundamentalist groups now allied to al Qaeda.

So the lumping of this regime together with al Qaeda, and then on top of that to add Iran -- Shia Iran -- to the "axis of evil," which, of course, has been violently opposed both to the Ba'ath and to al Qaeda and the Taliban -- ! I mean, Iran went to the brink of war with the Taliban in 1999. To have lumped these together is an error as great and as potentially tragic as that which led America into Vietnam.

It's frankly quite inexcusable, given the facts about the Muslim world in the Middle East, which are known to every serious expert on the subject. As a result of this invasion of Iraq, it should by now be quite obvious that, tragically, we have handed the enemies of the West and the terrorist groups a tremendous success.

From AsiaSource Interview of Anatole Lieven

Nermeen Shaikh: In several articles and in your book [America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism], you point out that unlike in previous empires, the vast majority of ordinary Americans do not think of themselves as imperialist, or as possessing an empire. At the same time, you mention repeatedly the extent to which the American population is unaware of the policies pursued in its name, is indeed alarmingly ignorant of world affairs. Given this, how could they conceive of the United States as an imperial power? And why is the perception of "ordinary" Americans relevant to understanding the place of America in the world today?

Anatole Lieven: If I remember rightly, according to a poll in Britain in the 1930s, a very small proportion of the British population could remember the name of more than two British colonies. They could remember maybe India and Australia, or probably they remembered the white colonies, but most of them could not remember the name of a single African colony. No one would ever have used that as an argument that the British people did not believe in empire; they were just ignorant.

In the book, I quote C. Vann Woodward on this subject, another great American critic of the past, whose insights I wanted to try to revive for contemporary Americans. Woodward talked about the American people as being bellicose but not militarist, and I think it is also true that they are bellicose but not imperialist. That said, this kind of bellicosity, this instinctive reaction to lash out if attacked or even if insulted, has been repeatedly, and by the way quite explicitly on the part of the neo-cons, used as a way of whipping up nationalist anger, and nationalist commitment to what are in fact imperialist projects.

This is a very old tradition in imperialism. In my book, I cite many examples from history to show that in general even at the height of the Western empires, ordinary Western people were not really very interested in great imperial projects if they were going to be expensive. They liked the idea of power and glory but they were very dubious about losing lives and spending large amounts of money to go out and conquer bits of Africa and so forth. If they could be convinced that this was not simply an imperialist project, but rather part of national rivalry with France or Germany, then it was possible to generate much more support.

In some ways, the American people do fit into this tradition. It is quite clear, for example, that even most of the ones who do consider themselves imperialist would be dead against the reintroduction of conscription in America. Even if it were proved to them that conscription was absolutely necessary in order to maintain America's imperial power in the world, they would not be persuaded. Equally the assorted jackasses who bray in the media about the American empire and the need for great sacrifices in its cause have shown no very ardent desire to go and serve themselves in Afghanistan or Iraq or anywhere else.

There is therefore a good deal of lack of underlying commitment to American power on the part of Americans themselves. More commitment certainly than exists almost anywhere else in the world by now but still not enough to generate a really full-scale imperial project. This also explains in part the relative pragmatism of the Bush administration in some areas of the world. After all even this administration recognizes that it cannot simultaneously run its present program in the Middle East and risk war with China and radically alienate Russia. If there were war with China or with North Korea then America would have to reintroduce conscription. Then the end of the American imperial project would be very close indeed.

. . .

Nermeen Shaikh: Looking beyond the publicly stated goals for the American invasion of Iraq, you said that the neo-conservative nationalists were all more or less unanimous in their agreement on one basic plan: "unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority". To what extent did the Iraq invasion have the intended results and what is the likelihood that such policies will continue to be pursued in the second term of the Bush presidency?

Anatole Lieven: Iraq has been a disaster for their aims. They have gotten away with it of course in that they have been re-elected but it is perfectly obvious that they cannot launch another war of choice, another invasion of Iran, say. They simply do not have the troops. With almost 150,000 men pinned down in Iraq, they could not launch another war on that scale without introducing conscription. That would tear American society apart and for the first time since Vietnam lead to a significant anti-imperialist movement in this country. It would also, for the first time, lead to really serious questions about what America is doing in the Middle East at all.

From that point of view, Iraq really has not worked out as they had anticipated and has greatly reduced their plans. After all, in the immediate aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, all the neo-cons were going around saying: "Next stop: Iran". Or Syria. This kind of rhetoric has not disappeared completely - they are still refusing to talk to the Iranians - but the agenda on Iran has really narrowed just to the issue of nuclear weapons. So Iraq has had a major effect in this respect.

Nermeen Shaikh: You have said that, "The younger intelligentsia [in the United States] has also been stripped of any real knowledge of the outside world by academic neglect of history and regional studies in favour of disciplines which are often no more than a crass projection of American assumptions and prejudices.. This has reduced still further their capacity for serious analysis of their own country and its actions." In addition, you point out the very close links that exist between relevant university departments and government institutions. What are the implications of this?

Anatole Lieven: Well it contributes enormously to the conformism when it comes to debates like that about the Iraq war or about Israel. As Henry Kissinger pointed out almost thirty years ago, too many people in the academic world are either defending previous records when in government or aiming to be in the next administration. This is not a situation likely to produce radical critiques or really strong alternative policies. These people are not at all anxious to say something which will either lead to them not being selected or to their being vetoed by a Senate committee.

I used to think that it is wonderful that the American state can recruit from people in academia but I have come to find it deeply corrupting. I almost prefer the British system now, of career civil servants who serve one administration after another. But one needs a strong ethos of the independence of the civil service and a very strong ethos that people cannot be sacked or penalized for political views as long as they maintain the discipline of their service. This actually leaves the public debate in the UK freer than in the US, particularly in the strange, solipsistic world of Washington DC. It is amazing in a republic with a strong tradition of individualism and cultural egalitarianism, that in DC the sense of hierarchy, of sometimes obsequious deference, of the court game, who is in, who out, dominates everything just as much as it did in an early medieval court. It does contribute to this lack of debate in America.

This is compounded by the tremendously strong power of American national myths. As previous American authors like Loren Baritz pointed out, Vietnam knocked these myths off their pedestal, but many Americans spent a whole generation resuscitating them. Reagan was elected very much to do just that, to restore America's image of itself. It would seem that these myths are so important to America's national identity and image of itself that the American political and intellectual establishment is simply incapable in the end of seriously examining them and asking what flaws they may embody. Of course, there are dissidents - even some very senior ones like Senator Fulbright; but it is striking how little influence they seem to have had in the long run.

In consequence, there are all these people running around Washington - very much among the Democratic intellectual elites as well as the Republicans - who really believe that all America has to do is try harder to generate and display a sense of will. If only America wants something badly enough, anything can be achieved. Any society in the world can be transformed, irrespective of the wishes and traditions of its people. Any country can become not just a democracy, but a pro-American democracy, irrespective of its own national interests or ideals.

This is part of a deep inability to see America as others see it. It is incredible but again and again I have found myself at meetings discussing Russia and China in Washington at which I have been the only person to point out that America does after all have its own sphere of influence in Central America and the Caribbean. Not just that, but a sphere of influence which is not doing very well either economically, or to a great extent, in terms of real democracy either. The rest of the world sees this perfectly well, and as a result, develops a belief in American hypocrisy which is itself very bad for American prestige and influence.

After all, how much did Haiti get after floods which killed thousands of people and devastated the country? Peanuts. A mere fifty million dollars or so from America. And Haiti is only a few hundred miles from America's own shores. Haiti also has a very large population here in the US and they got virtually nothing. Yet when I point this out to people in DC, and suggest that pouring money into the Middle East when countries close to America's shores and within America's old sphere of influence are suffering so badly, they often become furious. There is this strange moral bubble, it seems, and of course it is particularly bad in Washington, but then again, outside Washington and the universities, nobody thinks about these issues at all!

The Center for Literate Values

2005-07-21T16:56:00.000-04:00

The Center for Literate Values and The Blog of Virtues

The Corruption of Legal Research

2005-07-20T21:56:00.000-04:00

The Corruption of Legal Research, by Scott P. Stolley, is at The Provincial Emails.

Ecclesial Movements

2005-07-20T21:12:00.000-04:00

“Groundswell: The Pope, the New Movements, and the Church”, by Tom Hoopes

Thanks to la nouvelle théologie.

John Jay Chapman

2005-07-20T20:48:00.000-04:00

Worth reading again.

“Your calmness is only possible because your heart is cold, or your eyes dim.”

Notes 125

2005-07-20T20:35:00.000-04:00

If man is not a problem, religion is not an answer.

Task for the 21^st century: make driving to church an unnecessary evil.

Nothing scares Mary, especially spiders, snakes, raccoons, and bats.

An unwilling suspension of belief.

One should only be interested in becoming a saint.

Finality: period; commotion: epoch.

Walking and sitting assume stability.

Annotators are needed, but they need something to annotate.

“The world of those without a mystique. And who boast of it.”—Péguy

“Shakespeare is a veritable windfall for England. If he had never existed, his age would not have have missed him. Soon he was completely forgotten. . . .”—Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians, “The Age of Elizabeth”.

When Jacques asserted that Art must Be Questioned, he did not question what was art.

If I walk with you while others tarry, what is that to me?

Reformation Counter Reformation

2005-07-20T20:32:00.000-04:00

02005 07 19 +

2005-07-19T23:22:00.000-04:00

Our neighbor Julie R gave us tickets to tonight’s New York City Ballet performance in Saratoga. Swan Lake ( Tschaikovsky [now the preferred spelling?], Balanchine, Vaes), After the Rain (Pärt, Wheeldon), Agon (Stravinsky, Balanchine). Apparently “Choreography by George Balanchine,” or perhaps just “George Balanchine” is © The George Balanchine Trust. Either there was little art tonight, or I was not moved by it. During the first intermission we ran into Hillary McLellan and Roger Wyatt, who are making a move called Life on the Run (Blog), which Roger described as a “La Bohème in the 21^st century.” I immediately became inane by coughing and then asking Roger if he was going to include Baz Luhrmann’s L'Amour sign. How easily I am taken away from you!

O has an overnight at MG’s.