Author: Andrew Sullivan

Roger Scruton defends negative thinking:

In order to see human beings as they are, therefore, and to school oneself in the art of loving them, it is necessary to apply a dose of pessimism to all one’s plans and aspirations. I don’t go along with Schopenhauer’s comprehensive gloom, or with the philosophy of renunciation that he derived from it. I have no doubt that St Paul was right to recommend faith, hope and love (agape) as the virtues which order life to the greater good. But I have no doubt too that hope, detached from faith and untempered by the evidence of history, is a dangerous asset, and one that threatens not only those who embrace it, but all those within range of their illusions.

"Epithalamium"

Without silence there would be no music.
Life paired is doubtless more difficult
than solitary existence –
just as a boat on the open sea
with outstretched sails is trickier to steer
than the same boat drowsing at a dock, but schooners
after all are meant for wind and motion,
not idleness and impassive quiet.

A conversation continued through the years includes
hours of anxiety, anger, even hatred,
but also compassion, deep feeling.
Only in marriage do love and time,
eternal enemies, join forces.
Only love and time, when reconciled,
permit us to see other beings
in their enigmatic, complex essence,
unfolding slowly and certainly, like a new settlement
in a valley, or among green hills.

In begins from one day only, from joy
and pledges, from the holy day of meeting,
which is like a moist grain;
then come the years of trial and labor,
sometimes despair, fierce revelation,
happiness and finally a great tree
with rich greenery grows over us,
casting its vast shadow. Cares vanish in it.

– by Adam Zagajewski.

The poem is from this collection, which you can (and should) buy here. For more discussion of wedding poems, see here. A review of Zagajewski's work here.

Cusco, Peru, 3.49 pm

The latest salvo from the theocon-dominated bishops is a thinly-veiled argument that lay Catholics have no right to engage in their own civic and moral reasoning on questions like the recent health insurance reform. It comes by way of an attack on the magazine, Commonweal, one of the few remaining Catholic venues where freedom of thought is not regarded as somehow hostile to true faith. Money quote from the editors:

Catholics seeking full and equal participation in American democracy have long battled the canard that they cannot think for themselves, and instead take political orders from their prelates and from the Vatican. Historically, however, American Catholics have shown a great degree of political independence from the hierarchy—and from political parties themselves—and there is little reason to think that will change. If the authors of “Setting the Record Straight” wish to seize a “new opportunity for the Catholic community to come together in defense of human life,” they can start by not questioning the motives of those Catholics who disagree with them about how best to interpret the provisions of the new health-insurance law. On questions such as this, disagreement should not be understood as a threat to unity, but as a sign of the church’s intellectual vitality.

"Those whom heaven helps we call the sons of heaven. They do not learn this by learning. They do not work it by working. They do not reason it by using reason. To let understanding stop at what cannot be understood is a high attainment. Those who cannot do it will be destroyed on the lathe of heaven." — Chuang Tse, from Ursula le Guin's novel "The Lathe Of Heaven"

The title is actually a slight mistranslation.

A reader writes:

In college, I was required to take 3 classes in religion at my Catholic institution. Looking through the course catalog, I was doing whatever I could to shoehorn in my last class in between a schedule full of business major courses. The only one that fit my schedule? Christian Marriage. "Shoot me," I thought, "this is going to be horrible."

I was wrong. It was a fantastic course and one that, I would argue, made the difference in choosing a small, private, Catholic school vs. a behemoth state school or other unaffiliated college. The professor (a biblical scholar who left the convent for her now husband), brought in couples at various stages of marriage — from the newly-engaged to the couple who celebrated 40+ years of commitment. The couples with more time together were the most captivating — they told stories of mutual hatred, marital infidelity, challenges with raising children and the classic toilet seat fights. To see the differences between what they showed to others publicly, what they discussed (or, in one case, litigated) behind closed doors, and the nearly unthinkable thoughts that passed through their very human minds at moments of weakness, was absolutely critical to how I now see relationships, love and marriage.

I'm 29 and single. I've been in a few serious relationships, several not-so-serious ones, and yet I see marriage as the big, hairy, audacious goal that it should be. As tough as the trying times are, they're the best times — the ones that show the true character of both partners. In those moments of absolute mutual disgust, it's so difficult to treat each other with dignity. I believe that when you find that quality in the person to whom you're red-faced anger is directed, you realize just how worth it it is. I also wholeheartedly believe that marriage, with its pitfalls, triumphs, abuses, comforts, disappointments and expectations, is the closest thing to what it is to know the struggles that God faces with us all. That might not fit our culture of not only instant but constant gratification, but I believe that any higher purpose comes with a price tag.

Jessa Crispin reviews Stephen Hall's Wisdom: From Philosophy To Neuroscience:

Wisdom is not the same as knowledge, and so it seems odd it has attracted the attention of science. There is such a thing as "wisdom studies" now, and in his book Hall talks to researchers and neuroscientists in a search for the latest information about wisdom. Scientists treat wisdom the way they treat anything else. They break it down into its smallest components to identify and test, and they attempt to figure out how it works, how to obtain it, and what it is. There are, according to Hall and the researchers he meets, eight attributes of wisdom: Emotional Regulation, Knowing What's Important, Moral Reasoning, Compassion, Humility, Altruism, Patience, and Dealing with Uncertainty. Tests are designed, studies are lined up, and college undergrads short of cash or in need of class credit are recruited as lab rats in our pursuit of wisdom.

The problem is that wisdom is elusive, and the act of reducing it down to a binary code seems ridiculous.

You gotta love this (even Maureen will):