writing in the dust

"What makes “The Little Way” such an illuminating book, though, is that it doesn’t just uncritically..."

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:07:39 -0500

“

What makes “The Little Way” such an illuminating book, though, is that it doesn’t just uncritically celebrate the form of community that its author rediscovered in his hometown. It also explains why he left in the first place: because being a bookish kid made him a target for bullying, because his relationship with his father was oppressive, because he wasn’t as comfortable as his sister in a world of traditions, obligations, rules. Because community can imprison as well as sustain, and sometimes it needs to be escaped in order to be appreciated.

In today’s society, that escape is easier than ever before. And that’s a great gift to many people: if you don’t have much in common with your relatives and neighbors, if you’re gay or a genius (or both), if you’re simply restless and footloose, the world can feel much less lonely than it would have in the past. Our society is often kinder to differences and eccentricities than past eras, and our economy rewards extraordinary talent more richly than ever before.

The problem is that as it’s grown easier to be remarkable and unusual, it’s arguably grown harder to be ordinary. To be the kind of person who doesn’t want to write his own life script, or invent her own idiosyncratic career path. To enjoy the stability and comfort of inherited obligations and expectations, rather than constantly having to strike out on your own. To follow a “little way” rather than a path of great ambition. To be more like Ruthie Leming than her brother.

Too often, and probably increasingly, not enough Americans will have what the Lemings had — a place that knew them intimately, a community to lean on, a strong network in a time of trial.

And absent such blessings, it’s all too understandable that some people enduring suffering and loneliness would end up looking not for help or support, but for a way to end it all.

”

- Ross Douthat, reflecting on Rod Dreher’s new book

The Destinations of Love

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:43:46 -0500

The Destinations of Love

"The psychological definition of loneliness hasn’t changed much since Fromm-Reichmann laid it out...."

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:27:18 -0500

“The psychological definition of loneliness hasn’t changed much since Fromm-Reichmann laid it out. “Real loneliness,” as she called it, is not what the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard characterized as the “shut-upness” and solitariness of the civilized. Nor is “real loneliness” the happy solitude of the productive artist or the passing irritation of being cooped up with the flu while all your friends go off on some adventure. It’s not being dissatisfied with your companion of the moment—your friend or lover or even spouse— unless you chronically find yourself in that situation, in which case you may in fact be a lonely person. Fromm-Reichmann even distinguished “real loneliness” from mourning, since the well-adjusted eventually get over that, and from depression, which may be a symptom of loneliness but is rarely the cause. Loneliness, she said—and this will surprise no one—is the want of intimacy.”

- Judith Shulevitz, “The Lethality of Loneliness”

"I do a good deal of lecturing in my classes, but most of my lectures are to some degree improvised..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 07:26:34 -0500

“

I do a good deal of lecturing in my classes, but most of my lectures are to some degree improvised and circumstantial. When I walk into a classroom where students have just read a work of literature that’s new to them, most of my excitement comes not from the opportunity to tell them what I know but from curiosity: What do they want to know?

Maybe the coolest thing about being a teacher is just this: Everything that’s worn and familiar to me is new to my students. I’ve been through the ins and outs of Ulysses dozens of times, which is precisely what makes it fun to be in a room with thirty people who are encountering it for the first time. It’s easy for me to forget that experience — to forget all the ways that book can disorient (and even delight) a reader — unless I make a point not of explaining but of asking: What confused you? Where did you run aground? Was there a point when you were tempted to give up? (And no, I won’t ask you whether you yielded to that temptation.) What do you make of this passage? What about that one?

And it’s wonderful to see how some people discover that they were confused by something they didn’t even realize they were confused by until someone else raised a question — how a question from one student generates quite another question from a different student, how nodes of puzzlement — or excitement, or understanding — form during a class session. I lecture all right, but my lectures arise from where I discover that my students are situated in relation to a text.

When I think about turning all this into a MOOC, my first thought is: How easy that would be. Just write out a lecture and deliver it? Piece of cake — especially in comparison to the hard work of trying to learn a book and its contexts well enough to be ready when people ask those questions you didn’t expect, offer thoughts you hadn’t thought. And those questions and thoughts can change the course not just of a single class session but of the whole semester, as different ways of connecting various works come into play in response to what students want to know.

And my second thought about teaching a MOOC is: How shockingly boring that would be. To stand up there are recite what you’ve prepared beforehand in complete ignorance of and indifferent to the needs, thoughts, and questions of the people in the room before you, and the hundreds or thousands of other people who are watching and listening on their computers — not my idea of a good time.

”

- Alan Jacobs, “Once More Around the MOOC”

jonklassen2: David Hockney - weather

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:00:10 -0500

jonklassen2:

David Hockney - weather

"Most of us live as if we believe that the surest path to happiness is that which spins out endlessly..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 14:03:18 -0500

“

Most of us live as if we believe that the surest path to happiness is that which spins out endlessly and offers up the least resistance, but traveling that path is a futile business. I’ve confessed elsewhere that I assume that the highest form of freedom is not the ability to pursue whatever whim or fancy may strike us at any given moment, but rather the freedom to make choices which will promote our well being and the well being of our communities. And such choices often involve sacrifice and the curtailment of our own autonomy. To put this another way, happiness, that elusive state which according to Aristotle is the highest good we all pursue, lies not at the end of a journey at which every turn we have chosen for ourselves, but along the path marked by choices for others and in accord with a moral order that may at times require the reordering rather than immediate satisfaction of our desires.

This vision of the good life does not play well in the society we have made for ourselves. In fact, it has become counter-intuitive. If it is ever to gain any traction, it cannot be merely preached. It must be lived and its beauty must of its own mysterious accord draw us in. This is, I believe, Dreher’s great accomplishment. He has faithfully and honestly written that beauty into his story so that it may speak to his readers, may they be many.

”

- From Michael Sacasas’ wise, generous review of Rod Dreher’s The Little Way of Ruthie Leming. Read on.

"So here’s my pitch for Christian faith, in the most succinct and accessible form I can think of...."

Sat, 11 May 2013 10:14:35 -0500

“

So here’s my pitch for Christian faith, in the most succinct and accessible form I can think of. It’s a pitch. It argues some things, and postulates others, and you may not agree with all, or any, of these postulates. But it tries to be clear about what it postulates, and what it postulates, I think, makes sense, both rationally and intuitively.

So here goes. Let’s start here: the greatest thinkers and artists of history have recognized, and we ourselves know deep in our hearts, that human beings are incomplete; that there’s something within us that craves for something bigger. Call it meaning, call it happiness, call it self-actualization, call it the top of Maslow’s Pyramid—whatever. There is this something extra that we all crave and that we can’t quite put our finger on, and we’re all stuck in medium, trying to find it.

I think we can agree that religion, a good chunk of philosophy, art, ideology and so forth is dedicated to exploring that void and/or finding ways to fill it. I think we can also agree that plenty of people find ways to fill that void that are destructive, for themselves and/or others—substance abuse, pride, money, power… As DFW put it, in the day-to-day trenches of life, there are no atheists. We all worship something, we all choose something to fill that void.

I would submit that if there were such a thing that could fill that void, and do it in a non-destructive way, it could only be the following: the infinite love of a human person.

Every word in that phrase matters. The infinite love of a human person.

”

- PEG’s case for Christianity is typically thoughtful and interesting.

My appreciation for Dallas Willard

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:46:04 -0500

My appreciation for Dallas Willard

"Likewise, I occasionally get chided by friends and relations for “living in the past.” As a..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 08:15:22 -0500

“

Likewise, I occasionally get chided by friends and relations for “living in the past.” As a historian, I’m never quite sure how to respond.

I have facetiously imagined doing one of those eccentric projects the purpose of which is to write a best-selling book. It would be “My Year of Living in the Present.” I would listen only to music recorded that very year, wear only the latest fashions, watch only newly released films, be a first adopter of all new technological innovations and so on.

But, of course, I would never be able to stand this for an entire year, so I would have to find a publisher who would let me get away with “My Summer of Living in the Present” or, better still, “My Month of Living in the Present.” Even then, it would be a doomed project. The book would inevitably turn into a long, reactionary rant: “I can’t believe people listen to this music when they could download Duke Ellington!”

What my imaginary literary agent would want — indeed, the key to turning it into a best-seller and making us lots of money — would be a self-deprecating tale of an inept, clueless, stuffy history professor learning to let down his hair and enjoy the pleasures of contemporary popular culture. (I can imagine the reviewer on Salon writing, “I adored that moment when he frantically tweeted his prediction of the season-finale twist of ‘Trophy Husbands’!”).

”

- Timothy Larsen, “Why is history important for Christian leadership?”

"The availability of disbelief is a condition of modernity."

Tue, 07 May 2013 08:04:36 -0500

“The availability of disbelief is a condition of modernity.”

- T. M. Luhrmann, qtd. here

"Two particular things I gained from Colin are worthy of mention. First, a sense of joy in the..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 07:50:10 -0500

“

Two particular things I gained from Colin are worthy of mention. First, a sense of joy in the possibilities of the discipline of theology: the intellectual work is hard, and is also important, but there is more than that: Colin attributed it to Barth, and it is certainly there, but he appropriated it more than any other Barth scholar I have met: theology done properly must be cheerful work. How can we speak (read; write) of God’s infinite grace poured out without limit in the gift of Jesus Christ, and not find our hearts warmed, our sorrows comforted, our failures rendered into proper perspective? How can we not be basically joyful, if to do this is our life’s work?

Second, a belief that theology belongs – not just to the church, but to the churches. Colin and I came from traditions that differed on baptism, but were joined by a commitment to congregationalist ecclesiology: it is the local, gathered, congregation that is (in John Smyth’s words) ‘the chief and principal part of the gospel’. The theologian cannot do his/her work without being seriously committed to a particular local fellowship, with all its eccentricities, peculiarities, joys, and frustrations. Too much theology, still, regards the churches as embarrassing, and tries to proceed by cruising 30 000 feet above their messy lives. It was from Colin that I learned that this can never be right.

”

- from Steve Holmes’ lovely tribute to the great theologian Colin Gunton (1941-2003)

"Lewis never used the jargon of his day and of his peers, and thereby avoided the corrupting..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 07:41:39 -0500

“

Lewis never used the jargon of his day and of his peers, and thereby avoided the corrupting influence of words that were both in fashion and carried with them fashionable ideas. He would not have used the word “text” to mean everything written or spoken, in the current academic fashion, because it imports, partially and quietly and under the table, the deconstructionist idea that all speech is without meaning and has only the meaning the reader decides to give it. Hamlet is not a play, and certainly not great literature; it is a text, as are romance novels, grocery lists, and the obscenities scrawled in men’s rooms in highway rest stops.

Jargon is easily absorbed, especially by academics and clerics, who are exquisitely sensitive to the movements—and to the vocabularies thereof—of the wider world. Why this is, I am not sure; perhaps their vulnerability to jargon reflects a mixture of a pastoral desire to speak the language of the people they are ministering to and an unhealthy desire to fit into the inner ring, inevitably of the enlightened and sophisticated, marked by the use of such jargon.

Lewis did not use such jargon, I think, because he was active in prayer and charity, an astute reader of his culture who was unusually sensitive to its peculiar language, and a courageous man willing to talk in ways of which his colleagues did not approve. The first gave him a clearer vision of himself and the world, the second a better understanding of the temptations he faced (to adopt the fashionable jargon, for example), and the third the willingness to speak as he should to his readers even when this carried a social and personal cost. Jargon marks the speaker as a member of the club, and Lewis was courageous enough not to join when joining meant a break with those to whom he was called to speak.

”

- David Mills

"I find that hours pass without my being aware of myself enough to be in the business of having..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 13:16:11 -0500

“I find that hours pass without my being aware of myself enough to be in the business of having sensations; at least, of having any marked, distinct ones. It isn’t just that the dyer’s hand is stained the colour of what it works on. The dyer’s elbow follows it in, the dyer’s arm, the dyer’s whole body: plop into the vat, to disperse into my attention to the thing being made. When things are going right, almost all I notice is the fiddly half-created structure of the writing, with all the mutual dependences of the pieces of it upon each other, including the delicate dependence of written parts upon parts not yet written, and vice versa; and the whole thing in motion, or at least in a kind of state of responsiveness, ready to flow into new positions and new configurations as the possibilities alter. To try to attend to my own state of mind while this is happening would be to throw myself abruptly out of it, back to a place where there’s nothing to feel but that I’m cold from sitting still so long, and wouldn’t mind visiting the cottage cheese pot in the fridge, with a teaspoon. So far as I can look at my own mind at all, it is in a state of flow mirroring the responsive flux I feel in the writing. What I know, from a thousand books read and conversations had, works itself together as if by itself; what I need next comes to my hand without being forced, ready to be turned, examined, compared, remoulded, adjusted, smoothed until it aligns itself in parallel with the other pieces of what seems at this moment to be the design.

Why do I write? From selfishness. Because this state of liquefied, complex concentration, however faintly and dimly I’m able to perceive it, is the greatest pleasure I know.”

- Francis Spufford, “Why I Write”

"We are… well past the age of the polymath and into the era of the sub-specialist. The trouble..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 15:07:18 -0500

“

We are… well past the age of the polymath and into the era of the sub-specialist.

The trouble with the Cliff’s Notes approach is that it rests upon the fallacy that a superficial acquaintance with the evidence can aid you in making an independent judgment of its meaning. In high school, it may have enabled you to fool an English teacher into believing that you really understood Mr. Rochester, when you never cracked the spine of the book. But in life, you’re only fooling yourself.

So here’s my advice. Choose the things about which you genuinely care, and come to know them deeply and well. Form your own judgments, and constantly question them. In other matters, attempt instead to ascertain the consensus of expert judgment. It will be right far more often than not. The only alternative is to form your own judgment upon every question, and I can assure you that you will be correct far less frequently.

If you encounter an attack upon a conventional piety that troubles you, first assess its source. Has its author taken the time or trouble to know his subject deeply or well? Then, assess its content. Does it seem sophisticated and convincing? If it meets those two tests, ask yourself how much you care to know about the matter. You can always add it to the list of things you wish to know deeply. But if you feel that you simply don’t have the time, because of the realities of your life, then bracket your concerns and set them aside. The regnant consensus will do.

”

- Yoni Applebaum, in an old comment at TNC’s blog, via TNC

"If anyone has labored from the first hour, let them today receive the just reward. If anyone has..."

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:49:56 -0500

“If anyone has labored from the first hour, let them today receive the just reward.
If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let them feast.
If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let them have no misgivings; for they shall suffer no loss.
If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let them draw near without hesitation.
If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let them not fear on account of tardiness.
For the Master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first.”

- St. John Chrysostom (via Carrie Frederick Frost on Twitter)

"Instead of a life of experience, Christ calls us to a life of love. And a life of love for the most..."

Fri, 03 May 2013 14:45:58 -0500

“

Instead of a life of experience, Christ calls us to a life of love. And a life of love for the most part means attending to the tedious details of others’ lives, and serving them in sacrificial ways that most days feels, well, not exciting at all. Rather than sweeping the kitchen, cleaning the toilet, listening to the talkative and boring neighbor, slopping eggs onto a plate at the homeless shelter, or crunching numbers for another eight hours at the office—surely life is meant for more than this. We are tempted to wonder, Is that all there is to the “abundant” Christian life? Shouldn’t my life be more adventurous if God is in me and all around me? How am I going to be all I’m supposed to be if I have to empty bedpans in Peoria? I would just die if I had to do that.

Yes, you would. Jesus called it dying to self. Love is precisely denying the self that wants to glory in experience. The cost of discipleship most of us are asked to pay is to live the life God has given us, serving in mundane ways the people he has put in our path. To be free from the self and to discover such love is the essence of abundant life.

As Paul put it, in the final analysis love is not about speaking in tongues, having prophetic powers, understanding all mysteries or knowledge, having experiences of wonder, or being all we can be. Love instead “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:7). Yes, endures. It endures now because it hopes. And it hopes because it has not yet been given in full what is promised, but only glimpses here and there, mere appetizers to the great kingdom feast.

It is not hard to see why the religion of experience—the experience that Rob Bell is now writing about—tempts one to make feeling an idol, or how a religion of feeling leads to the watering down of great gospel themes. Historians of theology have shown such connections time and again. What’s hard to understand is why so many Christians who claim they stand for the faith once delivered to the saints don’t see that the road of experience leads nowhere except to the barren desert of the self.

”

- Mark Galli, “Rob Bell’s ‘Ginormous’ Mirror.” This is an excellent piece.

Jack Gilbert, "Finding Something"

Fri, 03 May 2013 08:15:11 -0500

I say moon is horses in the tempered dark,
because horse is the closest I can get to it.
I sit on the terrace of this worn villa the king’s
telegrapher built on the mountain that looks down
on a blue sea and the small white ferry
that crosses slowly to the next island each noon.
Michiko is dying in the house behind me,
the long windows open so I can hear
the faint sound she will make when she wants
watermelon to suck or so I can take her
to a bucket in the corner of the high-ceilinged room
which is the best we can do for a chamber pot.
She will lean against my leg as she sits
so as not to fall over in her weakness.
How strange and fine to get so near to it.
The arches of her feet are like voices
of children calling in the grove of lemon trees,
where my heart is as helpless as crushed birds.

"During his lifetime and after, Hammarskjold was widely assumed to be homosexual and these rumours..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:38:05 -0500

“During his lifetime and after, Hammarskjold was widely assumed to be homosexual and these rumours were eagerly encouraged by those who wished – in an unquestioningly homophobic era – to undermine his moral credibility. Roger Lipsey devotes one chapter to this, which is a model of sobriety: no speculation, no claims to sensational new information, simply a careful setting out of what little evidence there is one way or another. His conclusion is that Hammarskjold might have been homosexual; but on the facts presented here, the only real supporting evidence would be that he never married, which doesn’t get us very far. There is no trace of either heterosexual or homosexual affairs. Lipsey notes briefly the surprising closeness that developed between Hammarskjold and the sculptor Barbara Hepworth (whose wonderful and iconic monument to him, Single Form, now stands outside the UN headquarters in New York), and comments perceptively, “It was probably better than a romance: it was sincere love and care, seeing with the same eyes”. We have to face the possibility that Hammarskjold was that most alarming of sexual deviants in twenty-first century eyes, a willing and self-aware celibate.”

- Rowan Williams, “A Review of Hammarskjold: A Life by Roger Lipsay (University of Michigan Press, 2013)” The Cambridge Humanities Review (Lent Term, 2013). (via withruemyheartisladen)

"To paraphrase Douglass, a writer is worked on by what she works on. If you spend your time raging at..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 15:30:59 -0500

“

To paraphrase Douglass, a writer is worked on by what she works on. If you spend your time raging at the weakest arguments, or your most hysterical opponents, expect your own intellect to suffer. The intellect is a muscle; it must be exercised. There are cases in which people of great influence say stupid things and thus must be taken on. (See Chait on George Will’s disgraceful lying about climate change.) But you should keep your feuds with Michelle Malkin to a minimum.

In the interest of exercising that intellect, I would add something else: Write about something other than current politics. Do not limit yourself to fighting with people who are alive. Fight with some of the intellectual greats. Fight with historians, scientists, and academics. And then after you fight with them, have the decency to admit when they’ve kicked your ass. Do not use your platform to act like they didn’t. Getting your ass kicked is an essential part of growing your intellectual muscle.

To do all of that, you have to actually be curious. You have to not just want to be heard, but want to listen. Brooks makes the point that the detached writer’s role should be “more like teaching than activism.” I would say that it should be more like learning than teaching. The stuff you put on the page should be the byproduct of all you are taking in — and that taking in should not end after you get a degree from a selective university. Keep going. You must keep going.

”

- Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ted Kooser, "Two"

Thu, 02 May 2013 06:47:58 -0500

On a parking-lot staircase
I met two fine-looking men
descending, both in slacks
and dress shirts, neckties
much alike, one of the men
in his sixties, the other
a good twenty years older,
unsteady in his polished shoes,
a son and his father, I knew
from their looks, the son with his
right hand on the handrail,
the father, left hand on the left,
and in the middle they were
holding hands, and when I neared,
they opened the simple gate
of their interwoven fingers
to let me pass, then reached out
for each other and continued on.

[here]