Month: April 2012

A brief meditation on the miracle of life:

 

"I love the Church. I'm a happy priest. But I really think there's a sect-like thing afoot, and I think Mrs. Herx got caught in it. It's this idea of condemning, crushing, inhibiting, trying to put the lid back on. Some would say that Jesus engaged people rather than suppressing people. This is just another example of the Church battening down the hatches. Where it once wanted to engage people, it now wants to engage less. It feels that it may have given away too much. That's what's going on," – Reverend Richard Sparks.

Verlyn Klinkenborg wonders:

When did “home” become embedded in human consciousness? Is our sense of home instinctive? Are we denning animals or nest builders, or are we, at root, nomadic? For much of the earliest history of our species, home may have been nothing more than a small fire and the light it cast on a few familiar faces, surrounded perhaps by the ancient city-mounds of termites. But whatever else home is—and however it entered our consciousness—it’s a way of organizing space in our minds. Home is home, and everything else is not-home.

Novelist Tim Parks uses systems-based psychology to explain the highly varied responses to a work of art. Why do some people love, and others hate, a novel or writer? The writing we love, it turns out, tracks the intimations of our lives — the questions, dilemmas, and categories impressed upon our consciousness since childhood. They resonate with the conversations we've been having, with others and within ourselves, far before we ever pick up a particular book. It answers a question we have already been asking:

What I’m suggesting then is that much of our response to novels may have to do with the kind of “system” or “conversation” we grew up in and within which we had to find a position and establish an identity.

Dostoevsky is always and immediately enthralling for me. The question of whether and how far to side with good or evil, with renunciation or indulgence, grabs me at once and takes me straight back to my adolescence. And how I loathe the end of his books where the sinner repents and gets on his knees and sees the error of his ways in an ecstasy of self-abasement. I love Dostoevsky, but I argue furiously with him. Same with an author like Coetzee in Disgrace. I feel locked into the same conversation. Beyond any question of “liking”, these books are important to me.

On the other hand, when I read, say, the Norwegian writer, Per Petterson, who again is chiefly concerned with fear, vulnerability to the elements and the terror of being abandoned by those we have most trusted, I immensely admire his writing, but find it hard to care. When asked on two occasions to review Petterson I read every word carefully and with pleasure and gave the novels the praise they very much deserve, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to read another book of his. His world, the disturbing imagery he draws on, the rhythm and pacing of his sentences, are far removed from my concerns. Affinities, as Goethe tells us, are important. Few works of art can have universal appeal.

Annabel Clark documented the world of caregivers:

The photographic project deftly highlights the universality of aging. It is evident that this matter crosses all socio-economic strata. "Most people will have to deal with an aging parent who can't take care of themselves anymore," says Clark.

("Estela massaging her son Pedro's hand, Miami, Florida, 2005" courtesy of Clark) 

Ackerman defends Peter Beinart's new book. Not that he agrees with Peter's specific proposal:

I think Peter is wrong to argue for a boycott of products from the settlements, but on the grounds of unfeasibility; his heart is in the right place. I suggest it might be better to shift U.S. defense aid into platforms like the Iron Dome anti-rocket system. That’s the kind of weapons program that, in addition to being awesome, counters Israel’s legitimate security vulnerabilities and creates a strategic fact: it removes a security-based argument for Israel retaining its hold on the West Bank. Then the United States ought to pressure, cajole and coax Israel to unilaterally withdraw from the West Bank.

Withdraw unilaterally; allow the creation of a fact called the State of Palestine; and then begin the agonizing process of negotiating with the Government of Palestine over final borders, dividing Jerusalem, water rights, spectrum rights, and so forth. The world should create a fund to assist the resettling of Palestinian refugees in land controlled by the State of Palestine — that is, not within the State of Israel. The position of the United States ought to be that Jewish settlers who wish to remain in places like Ariel after final-status discussions over borders between Israel and Palestine conclude are welcome to be citizens of the State of Palestine. (Although that’s probably unfeasible, because there would be Arab assaults on the settlements; Jewish reprisal attacks; and Israel would inevitably be sucked into a war that would look like kind of Balkan. But if Israel wants to avoid the difficulties of ordering the IDF to vacate the settlements during a withdrawal, I am sure NATO would jump at the chance to do it for them.)

Mockingbird features Slate's interview with Vincent Kartheiser, and sees in his Mad Men character, Peter Campbell proof positive that "human beings need love, not love-based-on-achievement." Kartheiser sees his own character as a kind of proof:

"With success comes a level of sadness. You think, 'I’ll reach this goal, and then I’ll feel a sense of completeness, of wholeness. I’ll feel that I have accomplished something. I will see myself as a worthy man.' And it doesn’t really exist."

One of my toilet books is Thomas Merton's translations of the hilarious and deep Taoist master, Chuang Tzu. If Christianity is the religion of 'unachievement," in Oakeshott's terms, then it had a predecessor:

Who can free himself from achievement
And from fame, descend and be lost
Amid the masses of men?
He will flow like Tao, unseen.
He will go about like Life itself
With no name and no home.
Simple is he, without distinction.
To all appearances he is a fool.
His steps leave no trace. He has no power.
He achieves nothing, has no reputation.
Since he judges no one
No one judges him.
Such is the perfect man:
His boat is empty.

(Art by Nancy Poucher).

Friends:

In one of the recent studies on the health benefits of social relationships, published earlier this year, researchers provided evidence that social ties and increased contact with family and friends are associated with a lower risk of death in young women with breast cancer. Another presented a similar conclusion with respect to surviving heart surgery. What’s more, a 2010 meta-analysis of 148 other studies showed that social connection doesn’t just help us survive health problems: the lack of it causes them.

More on the benefits of a solid social network here.

 

New research illustrates the perks:

A new paper published in Personality and Social Psychology Review looks over the accumulated evidence and concludes that thinking about death can make your life better. Previous terror management research has focused on the dark side of our psychological protections: Psychologists say that reminders of death can make us more hostile toward people we see as outside our own group. But researchers led by Kenneth E. Vail III at the University of Missouri, Columbia, say the perks of morbid thinking are too great to ignore. … Tapping into the benefits of our fear of death, the authors say, could make people "more inclusive, cooperative, and peaceful." 

(Photo by Flickr user Stuck in Customs.) 

A new book on Ghandi, Ghandi and the Unspeakable, further reveals the connections between the Indian leader and Thomas Merton. While Merton was working on his Raids on the Unspeakable, he also was editing a volume of Ghandi's writings — Merton's own explorations of contemplation, non-violence, and the struggle for justice drew him to Ghandi's thinking. It's one of the great unanswered questions in 20th century Catholicism: what would have happened if Merton's migration toward Eastern practices and Buddhism had not been interruoted by his untimely death?

But here you have it: the convergence between Christianity and Eastern wisdom, the mutually reinforcing words and deeds of Ghandi, Merton, Dr. King, the parallels between the anti-colonial, anti-war, and civil rights movements. For those who dismiss pacifism as a form of weakness and withdrawal, the example of these men surely shows the dynamism of creative suffering – the authentically Christian power of the powerless. From Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's review:

Merton wrote his Raids on the Unspeakable in the midst of the turmoil of the '60s. He was corresponding with friends around the world about the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the threat of nuclear disaster. He'd become a spiritual counselor to activists (including Jim Douglass). And yet, at the same time, Merton's superiors forbade him to write on political issues. In a fascinating way, this forced him to explore the spiritual dynamics of activism.

So, the notion of the "Unspeakable" emerges as a way of naming what can't be spoken—those powers that lurk in the silence, defying description and so paralyzing us all the more. Raids on the Unspeakable reads like an apocalypse. It's a prose poem, really. Out of context, it almost seems crazy. But it is a prayer at the heart of the world's dark night. In the midst of it, Merton names a bedrock truth: "Christian hope begins where every other truth stands frozen stiff before the power of the Unspeakable."

What's fascinating, looking back, is that Merton's contemplative confrontation with the Unspeakable brought him to Gandhi as well. When he was working on Raids on the Unspeakable, he was also editing a collection of Gandhi's writings, poring over the extensive collections of a man who, like himself, wrote almost every day of his adult life. What Merton did in an anthology, Jim has done in a fascinating biography—to hold Gandhi's witness up as a mysterious icon of Christian hope vis à vis the Unspeakable.