We headed up to Provincetown yesterday to say goodbye to our dear friend, Norma Holt. Today would have been her 95th birthday. It was a beautifully crisp fall day, with a wind gusting around us, as we stood at the end of MacMillan Wharf and spoke and read and danced and then each took a flower and a handful of dust that was once Norma and tossed them into the bay. Almost as soon as it was over, I felt suddenly weighed down by some irresistible pressure, and, instead of going to the reception afterwards as I had intended, I took to bed. I woke up a couple of hours ago, as the dusk was creeping across the cottage. We were supposed to throw Dusty’s ashes into the bay today as well. Tomorrow.
My favorite post of the weekend was Pope Francis’ homily on faith and ideology – and the difference between them being prayer. And by prayer, Francis meant opening oneself to God in silence, wordless, doing nothing, merely – merely! – being-with-reality. Francis has told us of his own recent moment of intense prayer, just before his papacy became public:
My head was completely empty and I was seized by a great anxiety. To make it go way and relax I closed my eyes and made every thought disappear, even the thought of refusing to accept the position, as the liturgical procedure allows. I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion. At a certain point I was filled with a great light. It lasted a moment, but to me it seemed very long. Then the light faded, I got up suddenly and walked into the room where the cardinals were waiting and the table on which was the act of acceptance. I signed it, the Cardinal Camerlengo countersigned it and then on the balcony there was the ‘”Habemus Papam”.
It has nothing to do with, as Buddhists understand, thinking.
And when Francis says ideology, he means (I think) both a neurotic and public fixation on a set of truths or doctrines – and also a fusion of religion and politics. This is the distinction I have tried to make between Christianism (an ideology) and Christianity (a faith). Ridding the latter of the former could do a huge amount to improve public life – and politics – in America.
Four others: the power and freedom of friendship as a virtue; a child’s face painted in earth on eleven acres; a reality show about the ultimate reality – death; and why it may be worth taking your kids to see the explicit lesbian love story, Blue Is The Warmest Color.
Plus: Stark. Naked. Skiing. And reader discussions of online hookups and dating.
The most popular post of the weekend was How Faith Becomes An Ideology; The second was the astonishing recreation of what a song from Ancient Greece would have sounded like: A Hellenistic YOLO.
See you in the morning.
The Dish 