Once upon a time there was a little girl who wondered what it was like to be a frog. No reason in particular; she was usually wondering something or other, and on this day she was gluing green pom-poms to a green hat, and probably the green made her think of it. For whatever reason, it came into her head to wonder what it was like to be a frog. And she was instantly seized with despair, because she realized she would never know. Those words (never, never know, never) were horrible to her, the most horrible words she could imagine. Crushing, crippling words, words that pinned her into a tiny box of space and time, isolated from the rest of the world -- forever. Never, forever. Horrible.
There were other points of despair, too. She hated kaleidoscopes, hated that the beautiful pattern she was looking at would shift with one turn, and never be seen again. The day after Christmas, or after any long-anticipated joy, her heart would sink and sink. She was very young to feel so oppressed by time; adults do not generally believe that children can feel things like time, and the limits of existence, so painfully. But she did. The future was her joy and her hope; every night when her mother tucked her in, she would ask, "What are we going to do tomorrow?" She loved to hold the future, as a possession, to look over it when the lights were off and enjoy its beauties. So disappointment was the most cruel feeling she knew -- a beautiful future turned into a lie -- and "never" the most horrible word.
She warded off the cruelty of disappointment by throwing herself into a new future as quickly as she could. The horror of "never," though, the black wall between her and a future that could not be... her only defense against that was a hope of heaven, an extra-earthly future where the impossible became possible. Eternal duration, unlimited joy. In heaven, she would either know what it was like to be a frog, or she would no longer feel the need to know. Either way would be okay.
She grew older and she read more. Her relationship to life and time became more complicated, but always with the hallmarks of her childhood. She had little hope or fear attached to the material world. Her imagination was where her real life took place, and the outside world was only important because it provided the materials for her imagination to play with. If something precious was taken from her, she would suffer a little, and then transfer her love to something else. If something precious was threatened, she could transfer her love pre-emptively, prepare for loss. Life was like a game, an adventure, a story. All the important things were happening inside her head, under her control. The adventure could take her where it would: the cornerstones of her life were safe from outside hands.
All her life, she called herself a Christian, and this faith was important in helping her maintain that inner stability. The hope of heaven, which got her over that early day of despair, gave the philosophical anchor she needed. No matter what happened, she had a future, a good and beautiful future, which no fear could breach. She did not need to know what it would be like: she was promised good, and she had only to cling to that promise. Promises others clung to ("God will provide, God will protect us") seemed silly to her. Quite evidently God did not provide and protect in all cases: plenty of people, as deserving as she, suffered loss and died young. But she had that promise: in the end, after the end, everything would be all right. An unshakable hope.
Clinging... that's the word. We usually do cling to something, don't we? A lot of people cling to something in the material world: a lover, a possession, a job. Something that tells us who we are and assures us that our lives are not empty. Something that lets us feel like we have a handle on the world. I thought I was lucky. I could lose everything, but I would always have my imagination, and my imagination would always have heaven. Torture me, maim me, imprison me -- it might hurt, but it could never strike at the heart of who I was. And if you killed me, you'd only be escorting me to hope's final consummation. Fool-proof. Invulnerable. I even boasted of my invulnerability, not long ago (December 14th, 2006). My hope, my future, my prized possession, was one that even God couldn't take away from me.
And then God did. Not a month after writing those proud and confident words, my faith was gone. I still don't know what happened, but the experience was like this: I was driving home from playing pool with friends, friends who had been challenging me on my beliefs for several months. I had said to one of them, several weeks ago, "I don't know why I believe in God, I just do." And I was speaking the truth; there was a place in my thoughts where the belief was lodged, firmly, not apologizing for or explaining its presence, just there. I couldn't not believe in God; if I tried it, I knew I was kidding myself.
So on this night, driving home, I went back to that place, to make sure it was there, to see if I still couldn't not believe in God. And I found that I could. And darkness fell.
And what that meant, and what happens next, is a story I've been trying to tell for a year, and I haven't fully managed it yet because I don't understand it myself. But at the same time, it's quite clear: this is where the story had to go. If you cling and you cling, and you protect yourself from all calamities, and you use nothing except your faith to shield yourself from reality (which is to say, to shield yourself from God), then that faith must be dismantled. Because a life buried in imagination, anchored in the hope of heaven, is a fictional life. It is the destruction of the things we cling to that drives us into reality, into truth, into the heart of God. Sometimes that destruction takes a very strange shape.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Simone on intelligence and faith
So I've picked up my Simone Weil again. (Tangent: It's interesting how my reading seems to cycle with the seasons. In the spring/summer it's fantasy, sci-fi, and mysteries. In the winter it's fat British and Russian novels and philosophy.) She has such a fascinating mind, and a lot of her thoughts resonate very deeply with my own experiences and intuitions. The paragraphs I quote below do better than I possibly could at expressing my current ideas about faith and intellect. I'm not going to comment beyond that, but I'd love to hear other people's thoughts and reactions.
*****
The mysteries of the Catholic faith are not intended to be believed by all parts of the soul. The presence of Christ in the Host is not a fact of the same kind as the presence of Paul's soul in Paul's body (actually both are completely incomprehensible, but not in the same way.) The Eucharist should not then be an object of belief for the part of me which apprehends facts. That is where Protestantism is true. But this presence of Christ in the Host is not a symbol, for a symbol is the combination of an abstraction and an image, it is something which human intelligence can represent to itself, it is not supernatural. There the Catholics are right, not the Protestants. Only with that part of us which is made for the supernatural should we adhere to these mysteries.
The role of the intelligence-- that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions-- is merely to submit. All that I conceive of as true is less true than those things of which I cannot conceive the truth, but which I love. St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have had a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to these mysteries when they have no right to do so. That is why such people need a purification, of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism and incredulity constitute an equivalent of this purification.
There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
Perhaps every evil thing has a second aspect, a purification in the course of progress towards the good, and a third which is the higher good.
We have to distinguish carefully between these three aspects, because it is very dangerous for thought and for the effective conduct of life to confuse them.
*****
The mysteries of the Catholic faith are not intended to be believed by all parts of the soul. The presence of Christ in the Host is not a fact of the same kind as the presence of Paul's soul in Paul's body (actually both are completely incomprehensible, but not in the same way.) The Eucharist should not then be an object of belief for the part of me which apprehends facts. That is where Protestantism is true. But this presence of Christ in the Host is not a symbol, for a symbol is the combination of an abstraction and an image, it is something which human intelligence can represent to itself, it is not supernatural. There the Catholics are right, not the Protestants. Only with that part of us which is made for the supernatural should we adhere to these mysteries.
The role of the intelligence-- that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions-- is merely to submit. All that I conceive of as true is less true than those things of which I cannot conceive the truth, but which I love. St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have had a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to these mysteries when they have no right to do so. That is why such people need a purification, of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism and incredulity constitute an equivalent of this purification.
There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.
Perhaps every evil thing has a second aspect, a purification in the course of progress towards the good, and a third which is the higher good.
We have to distinguish carefully between these three aspects, because it is very dangerous for thought and for the effective conduct of life to confuse them.
Sunday, October 07, 2007
the quality of strain...
So Shakespeare is kind of merciless.
I've been listening to the Arkangel Shakespeare recordings, really excellent audio dramas. I'm becoming addicted, and also slowing losing my ability to speak in plain modern English. I first found them in Borders, when I was looking for something to listen to on an upcoming road trip. I bought Henry V, because I remember loving it at the Shakespeare Tavern. It was a good choice. My heart was captured right around the speech which concludes "And some are yet ungotten and unborn / Which shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn." Let me tell you: in the role of the king, Jamie Glover is HOT. And I don't even know what he looks like.
But I digress. From there it was a slow downward slide. I listened to Henry V a number of times, becoming more and more entranced by how uncomfortable and difficult Shakespeare makes the character. I listened to several other plays, and finally decided I needed to go back and hear the previous two Henrys. I read them for Core III, but my memory was too vague. So now at long last I am just a scene or two from the end of Henry IV part 2, and it's a little bit devastating.
For those who don't know the storyline, in brief: Henry IV's heir, also named Henry and generally called Hal (though only by Falstaff in the plays), spends most of his time with drunkards, thieves, and buffoons, and has acquired a reputation for the same. Falstaff, a drunken buffoon's drunken buffoon, is generally considered to be his closest friend. His father, of course, is unhappy with this, and it's generally assumed, at the court and in the taverns, that when Hal ascends the throne the country will become a thieves' paradise.
Hal, however, clues us in pretty early that he's about three steps ahead of anybody in the kingdom. He plans to awe and astound the nation with his apparent transformation when the time comes. (I say "apparent" transformation because it's quite clear to me that he's the same man in all three plays.) While he enjoys the pranks and revels of his life with Falstaff and company, he's also using it for political purposes.
Now here's where Shakespeare gets merciless. We have come to the end of Henry IV part 2, and Hal has just been crowned Henry V. We have just had two terrific scenes which show the beginnings of the new king's transformation. The dying king, anticipating a reign of chaos, has heard his son's intentions; a justice who committed the prince for some crime a while ago, and who now fears retribution, has instead been commended for his boldness in upholding the law. King Henry V speaks with wisdom and nobility; we begin to sense that good things are ahead for England.
And then we cut to Falstaff. There's a jolly scene, made jollier halfway through by the news of the old king's death and the crowning of their Hal. Now there will be good times; now Falstaff will be one of the most important people in the kingdom, and he immediately starts promising honors to his friends. He leaves at once, riding through the night, to see the coronation and be near his friend. He arrives dirty and sweaty, and declares he is not ashamed of his appearance, because it shows how devoted he is.
And I am driving up to work listening to this, and Falstaff's every word of joy and anticipation is as a tightening of the rack. Because I know this play's sequel backwards and forwards, and so I know that not long after this the fat old reprobate will die of a broken heart. Falstaff loves the king, and the king is going to have nothing more to do with him. And I don't remember how the scene I'm listening to now ends (I arrived at work in the middle of it), but I'm quite sure it's going to hurt.
This transformation of the prince's, in both its aspects, runs through all three plays in which he appears: foreshadowed in Henry IV part 1, effected in Henry IV part 2, and looked back on in Henry V. And Shakespeare, cruel artist, does nothing to relieve the painful tension it carries. You have a riotous and irresponsible lad turned into a skillful and inspiring leader; with only the minor drawback that he turns his back on all his old friends. And both aspects are played up to the full. You can't get away from the fact that Harry the fifth is a magnificent king; you can't get away from the fact that he breaks the heart of his old comrade, and receives the news that another former friend has been hanged without batting an eyelid.
To me it's more excruciating than any of the tragedies. There's no resolution between the two sides; in fact frequently they're shown in scenes that follow immediately upon each other, just in case you missed the unremitting pressure they create between them. Merciless, I say.
I've been listening to the Arkangel Shakespeare recordings, really excellent audio dramas. I'm becoming addicted, and also slowing losing my ability to speak in plain modern English. I first found them in Borders, when I was looking for something to listen to on an upcoming road trip. I bought Henry V, because I remember loving it at the Shakespeare Tavern. It was a good choice. My heart was captured right around the speech which concludes "And some are yet ungotten and unborn / Which shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn." Let me tell you: in the role of the king, Jamie Glover is HOT. And I don't even know what he looks like.
But I digress. From there it was a slow downward slide. I listened to Henry V a number of times, becoming more and more entranced by how uncomfortable and difficult Shakespeare makes the character. I listened to several other plays, and finally decided I needed to go back and hear the previous two Henrys. I read them for Core III, but my memory was too vague. So now at long last I am just a scene or two from the end of Henry IV part 2, and it's a little bit devastating.
For those who don't know the storyline, in brief: Henry IV's heir, also named Henry and generally called Hal (though only by Falstaff in the plays), spends most of his time with drunkards, thieves, and buffoons, and has acquired a reputation for the same. Falstaff, a drunken buffoon's drunken buffoon, is generally considered to be his closest friend. His father, of course, is unhappy with this, and it's generally assumed, at the court and in the taverns, that when Hal ascends the throne the country will become a thieves' paradise.
Hal, however, clues us in pretty early that he's about three steps ahead of anybody in the kingdom. He plans to awe and astound the nation with his apparent transformation when the time comes. (I say "apparent" transformation because it's quite clear to me that he's the same man in all three plays.) While he enjoys the pranks and revels of his life with Falstaff and company, he's also using it for political purposes.
Now here's where Shakespeare gets merciless. We have come to the end of Henry IV part 2, and Hal has just been crowned Henry V. We have just had two terrific scenes which show the beginnings of the new king's transformation. The dying king, anticipating a reign of chaos, has heard his son's intentions; a justice who committed the prince for some crime a while ago, and who now fears retribution, has instead been commended for his boldness in upholding the law. King Henry V speaks with wisdom and nobility; we begin to sense that good things are ahead for England.
And then we cut to Falstaff. There's a jolly scene, made jollier halfway through by the news of the old king's death and the crowning of their Hal. Now there will be good times; now Falstaff will be one of the most important people in the kingdom, and he immediately starts promising honors to his friends. He leaves at once, riding through the night, to see the coronation and be near his friend. He arrives dirty and sweaty, and declares he is not ashamed of his appearance, because it shows how devoted he is.
And I am driving up to work listening to this, and Falstaff's every word of joy and anticipation is as a tightening of the rack. Because I know this play's sequel backwards and forwards, and so I know that not long after this the fat old reprobate will die of a broken heart. Falstaff loves the king, and the king is going to have nothing more to do with him. And I don't remember how the scene I'm listening to now ends (I arrived at work in the middle of it), but I'm quite sure it's going to hurt.
This transformation of the prince's, in both its aspects, runs through all three plays in which he appears: foreshadowed in Henry IV part 1, effected in Henry IV part 2, and looked back on in Henry V. And Shakespeare, cruel artist, does nothing to relieve the painful tension it carries. You have a riotous and irresponsible lad turned into a skillful and inspiring leader; with only the minor drawback that he turns his back on all his old friends. And both aspects are played up to the full. You can't get away from the fact that Harry the fifth is a magnificent king; you can't get away from the fact that he breaks the heart of his old comrade, and receives the news that another former friend has been hanged without batting an eyelid.
To me it's more excruciating than any of the tragedies. There's no resolution between the two sides; in fact frequently they're shown in scenes that follow immediately upon each other, just in case you missed the unremitting pressure they create between them. Merciless, I say.
Friday, June 22, 2007
statement of faith, revised and updated for the new millenium!
So most of the people reading this know by now that the major event in the life of Ginny, year 26, has been the decision to stop identifying myself as a Christian. (For those of you who didn't know, well it's time you did.) The process surrounding this decision began around last November; in March I made it official by sending out an email to a lot of my friends and family. As the months go by I have been thinking pretty intently still, and so when one of the recipients of the original email sent me a very belated response, my thoughts had developed a lot, and I found myself writing a new, fairly thorough description of where I am and how I got here. And then I thought it would be a good idea to post it here, for those who are interested in my ongoing spiritual development (which I flatter myself is a lot of you.)
In the email we began with the question of truth: what is truth, and what does it mean to seek it? What I'm looking for, when I talk about truth, is best described as "the non-contingent reality of the universe." (Contingent realities being things like opinions, cultural constructs, interpretations of all kinds... things that could have been different depending on the circumstances. Non-contingent realities are things built into the very structure of the universe.) It seems obvious to me that there is at the very least a physical non-contingent reality... though physicists and cosmologists may still be fairly far from understanding it. In any case, it is the job of science to uncover and move closer and closer to understanding this physical reality.
There may, or may not, be a spiritual non-contingent reality. By "spiritual" I mean relating to our emotions, our rationality, our sense of things being good or bad on a higher level than simple physical pain or pleasure. It seems intellectually plausible to me that all these things may be byproducts of evolution and culture (I do not say "mere" byproducts because I do not think this in any way robs them of importance), instead of being related to a spiritual authority which existed before humanity and transcends us. If there is such an authority, I would give it the name "God." But it is not self-evident to me that such an authority exists.
Perhaps it is a function of youth that I am so anxious to align my beliefs with the "truth" in this sense. After all, I don't expect science to provide a final answer to the questions of physical reality in my lifetime, or in my children's children's lifetime, or even in the whole course of humanity. Much more difficult for the spiritual reality. I am not looking for proof, or sufficient evidence, because I recognize that proof is impossible and no evidence is sufficient to an overly skeptical mind.
But still I think truth, under my definition, is approachable if not attainable. Scientists discover physical realities by running experiments, seeing what laws of behavior seem to apply to matter. There is always interpretation, and therefore always error, but still they approach a clearer and clearer picture of how this space-time-matter stuff tends to function.
Similarly, if there is a spiritual reality, it ought to be discoverable by similar experimentation. If a pattern of behavior really is "contrary to God's will," then the result of continuing that behavior over time should be like butting one's head against a wall: a really bad headache. In this manner, you discover interesting and important truths about the nature of walls and the nature of your head. If you have any sense you will not butt your head against the next wall you come up against, but try some other means of getting past it.
Now if you had listened to your Mommy, you might not have tried butting your head against the wall in the first place. She could have told you it wouldn't get you anything but a headache. So it can be the part of wisdom to take other people's word for some truths, instead of trying to verify them experimentally for oneself. Better yet, one could watch someone else butt their head against a wall, observe the result, and conclude that it wasn't a worthwhile endeavor. The extent to which one accepts other people's word for things, or draws conclusions from results seen in other people's lives, is a matter of preference.
Christianity, as I had always understood it, gives an extensive list of spiritual laws: descriptions of positive or negative consequences for given behaviors and attitudes. (Since the laws are spiritual, the consequences are also spiritual. The physical consequences might be quite different: one might be tortured to death, while receiving great spiritual benefits.) If you follow these laws, your spiritual health will be greater than if you stray from them. If the Christian (that is to say, Bible-centric, fairly fundamentalist Christian) description of God is correct, then following these laws is optimal and straying from them is foolish. Experimentation may not result in disaster, but you'll always be better off if you follow the laws.
This, at any rate, is a fairly good description of my attitude toward Christianity up till last fall. I followed the rules because I believed the description of God given by Bible-centric fundamentalism, and therefore following the rules seemed the only sensible thing to do. If it WAS true, then not only would I avoid a lot of pain and trouble (in the deepest sense, discounting more surface-level suffering) but I would achieve, in heaven if not on earth, spiritual fulfillment, wholeness, freedom, and peace. There is a deep longing in me (as, I think, in most of us) for something inexpressible, and it was the hope of having this longing satisfied that I clung to as my ultimate definition of "spiritual fulfillment."
Last fall, though, I began questioning whether the description of God I had accepted was accurate. By the end of December I had decided that it was not convincing. There were a number of reasons for this, which if you're curious I can lay out for you. But the bottom line is, the central premise on which I had constructed my philosophy of life collapsed. I no longer "knew" what, if any, spiritual non-contingent reality existed, and I no longer had a handy-dandy manual for living the best possible life.
So how to make decisions? I don't know if there is a God, of any kind, and if there is I don't know what that God is like. I don't know what choices might be wise or foolish, good or bad. All I can do is experiment; find out what happens when I butt my head up against this structure over here. I do this in the hope of moving closer and closer to what truth there is, and I'm willing to take a certain number of bruises.
Of course one has to start somewhere. A good experimenter has a set of basic premises, and a hypothesis to test. I start with the belief that love and beauty are spiritual realities, if anything is. These are two core values that I am not willing to give up; if God is opposed to them, then I am opposed to God. (If you've read The Silver Chair, think of Puddleglum right after he stomps on the fire.) At this time, nearly all other values and beliefs (including nuances of the definitions of love and beauty) are up for grabs. I will investigate them on the basis of my own intuition, reason, and experience. If nothing else, this means that whatever beliefs I come to will be honestly and thoroughly mine, something I could never say when I was getting them primarily from a book of teachings.
But, my correspondent says, Christianity is not a book of teachings, and truth is not a set of spiritual laws. He says Truth is a Person, and that person is Jesus Christ. Okay. But I don't know that person. I know a book, a book that describes the sayings and actions of a person. A critical reader of that book may have many questions about the accuracy of that book. Are the gospels accurate accounts of what Jesus said? Were important things added or left out? Even if you accept the gospels as accurate, do you take the rest of the Christian Bible as divinely inspired?
All worthwhile and pertinent questions. But in my opinion the biggest question to be asked by a reader of the Christian gospels is this: is Jesus, called Christ, alive or dead?
I don't know the answer to that question. In my opinion, the answer to that question determines whether the history of humanity is a comedy or a tragedy. If Jesus is alive, then humankind gets a "happily ever after." Like the very end of the Narnia stories, where all wounds are healed and all wrongs made right, and we begin to see meaning in everything that seemed impossibly meaningless.
On the other hand, if the life of Jesus of Nazareth ended at the hands of Roman soldiers, then human history is almost certainly a tragedy. Not to say that it is meaningless: at the very least, we create our own meaning, simply by existing and stubbornly interpreting the universe as if it has meaning. We have things to strive for, we have hopes and loves, we cannot help creating. But we are weak; we die. If we have no ally who transcends the blind natural forces of the universe, then we are doomed to entropy and decay, no matter how great our creations may be while they stand. Even imagining some fantastic human future where we master the tools of life and death, even in the utopian daydream where, hundreds or thousands of years from now, we at last create our own heaven (which, as far as I can tell, is the highest hope an atheistic philosophy can offer)... even if that dream should come true, there will still be all those of us who have died... myself included. Meaning and beauty there may be, but it is meaning and beauty that ends in death. Thus, tragedy.
I don't know whether Jesus is alive or dead. At this time I don't feel any particular urgency to place my bet one way or the other. My projects and my decisions will be about the same. Here's one thing I don't believe: if Jesus is alive, and if I die tomorrow and find myself before a divine tribunal, I don't believe I will be barred from the "happily ever after." I don't believe it because everything in me rejoices at the possibility. I know the reaction to encountering heavenly glory is traditionally fear and trembling, but I can only imagine myself laughing with joy at finding it was all true after all.
So that's where I stand right now. Feel free to respond, in a comment or an email, with any questions or arguments or perplexities you might have. My apologies to those who are still waiting for responses in conversations started three months ago, and my double apologies to those few of you who have known me as a Christian for many many years and are just now finding out. You're probably a little shocked; I know I was.
Oh, here's one more thing: three months out from the official decision, life is good. I feel a freedom and an honesty in my life that I didn't have before. I am (slowly) learning to speak who I am and what I feel about things, without always feeling hampered by the external laws I was supposed to be following. Where this path takes me I don't know, but right now, I am at peace with who I am and excited about my life.
In the email we began with the question of truth: what is truth, and what does it mean to seek it? What I'm looking for, when I talk about truth, is best described as "the non-contingent reality of the universe." (Contingent realities being things like opinions, cultural constructs, interpretations of all kinds... things that could have been different depending on the circumstances. Non-contingent realities are things built into the very structure of the universe.) It seems obvious to me that there is at the very least a physical non-contingent reality... though physicists and cosmologists may still be fairly far from understanding it. In any case, it is the job of science to uncover and move closer and closer to understanding this physical reality.
There may, or may not, be a spiritual non-contingent reality. By "spiritual" I mean relating to our emotions, our rationality, our sense of things being good or bad on a higher level than simple physical pain or pleasure. It seems intellectually plausible to me that all these things may be byproducts of evolution and culture (I do not say "mere" byproducts because I do not think this in any way robs them of importance), instead of being related to a spiritual authority which existed before humanity and transcends us. If there is such an authority, I would give it the name "God." But it is not self-evident to me that such an authority exists.
Perhaps it is a function of youth that I am so anxious to align my beliefs with the "truth" in this sense. After all, I don't expect science to provide a final answer to the questions of physical reality in my lifetime, or in my children's children's lifetime, or even in the whole course of humanity. Much more difficult for the spiritual reality. I am not looking for proof, or sufficient evidence, because I recognize that proof is impossible and no evidence is sufficient to an overly skeptical mind.
But still I think truth, under my definition, is approachable if not attainable. Scientists discover physical realities by running experiments, seeing what laws of behavior seem to apply to matter. There is always interpretation, and therefore always error, but still they approach a clearer and clearer picture of how this space-time-matter stuff tends to function.
Similarly, if there is a spiritual reality, it ought to be discoverable by similar experimentation. If a pattern of behavior really is "contrary to God's will," then the result of continuing that behavior over time should be like butting one's head against a wall: a really bad headache. In this manner, you discover interesting and important truths about the nature of walls and the nature of your head. If you have any sense you will not butt your head against the next wall you come up against, but try some other means of getting past it.
Now if you had listened to your Mommy, you might not have tried butting your head against the wall in the first place. She could have told you it wouldn't get you anything but a headache. So it can be the part of wisdom to take other people's word for some truths, instead of trying to verify them experimentally for oneself. Better yet, one could watch someone else butt their head against a wall, observe the result, and conclude that it wasn't a worthwhile endeavor. The extent to which one accepts other people's word for things, or draws conclusions from results seen in other people's lives, is a matter of preference.
Christianity, as I had always understood it, gives an extensive list of spiritual laws: descriptions of positive or negative consequences for given behaviors and attitudes. (Since the laws are spiritual, the consequences are also spiritual. The physical consequences might be quite different: one might be tortured to death, while receiving great spiritual benefits.) If you follow these laws, your spiritual health will be greater than if you stray from them. If the Christian (that is to say, Bible-centric, fairly fundamentalist Christian) description of God is correct, then following these laws is optimal and straying from them is foolish. Experimentation may not result in disaster, but you'll always be better off if you follow the laws.
This, at any rate, is a fairly good description of my attitude toward Christianity up till last fall. I followed the rules because I believed the description of God given by Bible-centric fundamentalism, and therefore following the rules seemed the only sensible thing to do. If it WAS true, then not only would I avoid a lot of pain and trouble (in the deepest sense, discounting more surface-level suffering) but I would achieve, in heaven if not on earth, spiritual fulfillment, wholeness, freedom, and peace. There is a deep longing in me (as, I think, in most of us) for something inexpressible, and it was the hope of having this longing satisfied that I clung to as my ultimate definition of "spiritual fulfillment."
Last fall, though, I began questioning whether the description of God I had accepted was accurate. By the end of December I had decided that it was not convincing. There were a number of reasons for this, which if you're curious I can lay out for you. But the bottom line is, the central premise on which I had constructed my philosophy of life collapsed. I no longer "knew" what, if any, spiritual non-contingent reality existed, and I no longer had a handy-dandy manual for living the best possible life.
So how to make decisions? I don't know if there is a God, of any kind, and if there is I don't know what that God is like. I don't know what choices might be wise or foolish, good or bad. All I can do is experiment; find out what happens when I butt my head up against this structure over here. I do this in the hope of moving closer and closer to what truth there is, and I'm willing to take a certain number of bruises.
Of course one has to start somewhere. A good experimenter has a set of basic premises, and a hypothesis to test. I start with the belief that love and beauty are spiritual realities, if anything is. These are two core values that I am not willing to give up; if God is opposed to them, then I am opposed to God. (If you've read The Silver Chair, think of Puddleglum right after he stomps on the fire.) At this time, nearly all other values and beliefs (including nuances of the definitions of love and beauty) are up for grabs. I will investigate them on the basis of my own intuition, reason, and experience. If nothing else, this means that whatever beliefs I come to will be honestly and thoroughly mine, something I could never say when I was getting them primarily from a book of teachings.
But, my correspondent says, Christianity is not a book of teachings, and truth is not a set of spiritual laws. He says Truth is a Person, and that person is Jesus Christ. Okay. But I don't know that person. I know a book, a book that describes the sayings and actions of a person. A critical reader of that book may have many questions about the accuracy of that book. Are the gospels accurate accounts of what Jesus said? Were important things added or left out? Even if you accept the gospels as accurate, do you take the rest of the Christian Bible as divinely inspired?
All worthwhile and pertinent questions. But in my opinion the biggest question to be asked by a reader of the Christian gospels is this: is Jesus, called Christ, alive or dead?
I don't know the answer to that question. In my opinion, the answer to that question determines whether the history of humanity is a comedy or a tragedy. If Jesus is alive, then humankind gets a "happily ever after." Like the very end of the Narnia stories, where all wounds are healed and all wrongs made right, and we begin to see meaning in everything that seemed impossibly meaningless.
On the other hand, if the life of Jesus of Nazareth ended at the hands of Roman soldiers, then human history is almost certainly a tragedy. Not to say that it is meaningless: at the very least, we create our own meaning, simply by existing and stubbornly interpreting the universe as if it has meaning. We have things to strive for, we have hopes and loves, we cannot help creating. But we are weak; we die. If we have no ally who transcends the blind natural forces of the universe, then we are doomed to entropy and decay, no matter how great our creations may be while they stand. Even imagining some fantastic human future where we master the tools of life and death, even in the utopian daydream where, hundreds or thousands of years from now, we at last create our own heaven (which, as far as I can tell, is the highest hope an atheistic philosophy can offer)... even if that dream should come true, there will still be all those of us who have died... myself included. Meaning and beauty there may be, but it is meaning and beauty that ends in death. Thus, tragedy.
I don't know whether Jesus is alive or dead. At this time I don't feel any particular urgency to place my bet one way or the other. My projects and my decisions will be about the same. Here's one thing I don't believe: if Jesus is alive, and if I die tomorrow and find myself before a divine tribunal, I don't believe I will be barred from the "happily ever after." I don't believe it because everything in me rejoices at the possibility. I know the reaction to encountering heavenly glory is traditionally fear and trembling, but I can only imagine myself laughing with joy at finding it was all true after all.
So that's where I stand right now. Feel free to respond, in a comment or an email, with any questions or arguments or perplexities you might have. My apologies to those who are still waiting for responses in conversations started three months ago, and my double apologies to those few of you who have known me as a Christian for many many years and are just now finding out. You're probably a little shocked; I know I was.
Oh, here's one more thing: three months out from the official decision, life is good. I feel a freedom and an honesty in my life that I didn't have before. I am (slowly) learning to speak who I am and what I feel about things, without always feeling hampered by the external laws I was supposed to be following. Where this path takes me I don't know, but right now, I am at peace with who I am and excited about my life.
Monday, May 14, 2007
A writer is born: or, why I fell in love with you
Witness-- I have carefully constructed this moment, a work of art with no audience. My father's plaid wool overshirt, my grandfather's grey wool cap, both incongruous with my large dangling earrings. On the table a pack of clove cigarettes and a glass of red wine; a cigarette in one hand and a fountain pen in the other. In front, a window looking into my neighbor's dining room. Above, the stars. Is this not the very picture of a writer, in all her bohemian splendor? It's perfect-- I wish you could see it.
Absolutely I am posing, posing for myself if no one else (but there is always the hope of an observer.) Many years ago I grew conscious of my self-consciousness, and was repulsed by my own artifice. How could I be so stagy, my words and actions orchestrated for effect? What was I really like, who would I be if I was not constantly performing for some unseen observer?
This proves a much more difficult question than it would seem. First of all, the in-turned eye cannot be shuttered. It does blink occasionally, but by definition those are the very moments we're unaware of. The moment we realize we are (at last, at last!) having a moment of unselfconsciousness, it is over.
Here irony is born, born with a squint, born in the act of catching yourself trying to look at yourself with your eyes closed. An ugly child, but some hypnotic glint peeps from under her half-closed eyelids. She spends most of her time playing with parallel mirrors, watching the curved chamber of reflected frames grow deeper as it straightens-- but at the moment it becomes perfectly straight, and the chamber on either side stretches to infinity, her head blocks the reflection and she can only see her own face. And she laughs.
Irony, once born, is with you for good as far as I can tell. Then the best you can hope for is a semblance of unselfconsciousness; the best you can do is to stifle actions and words that come with too-conscious artistic pride. If you think, before doing something, "What a fine picture this would make!" then refrain, in the name of authenticity. You do not want to be like those dramatic ones who are forever saying things for effect (though how you do envy them for how easy and carefree they are with their studied artifice!)
But beware-- since the self-scrutinizer rarely sleeps, the only actions this rule will permit are dull ones. You may wait and wait for lovely and dramatic actions to spring forth spontaneously in your life, but if you have actually gotten this far with me then I can assure you you will never actually be spontaneous, ever. On the rare moments when a spontaneous impulse emerges, you will seize it with such glee that it bursts at once. So you will find that, forbidding yourself all artificial action, you have become a mere watcher of other people's action, adding no flourishes of interest and beauty to the human gallery. You hoped that, by now, self-consciousness might have retired a bit, having little of interest to watch, but she shows no signs of slackening.
Better accept that, for you, authenticity is only to be found in the shifting scopes of artifice, in costumes and poses which you assume as the mood strikes you, parading before the mirror, and before an audience if you can find one. Construct; fabricate; dazzle; entertain. The truth may be in there somewhere. It is not for you to find.
Absolutely I am posing, posing for myself if no one else (but there is always the hope of an observer.) Many years ago I grew conscious of my self-consciousness, and was repulsed by my own artifice. How could I be so stagy, my words and actions orchestrated for effect? What was I really like, who would I be if I was not constantly performing for some unseen observer?
This proves a much more difficult question than it would seem. First of all, the in-turned eye cannot be shuttered. It does blink occasionally, but by definition those are the very moments we're unaware of. The moment we realize we are (at last, at last!) having a moment of unselfconsciousness, it is over.
Here irony is born, born with a squint, born in the act of catching yourself trying to look at yourself with your eyes closed. An ugly child, but some hypnotic glint peeps from under her half-closed eyelids. She spends most of her time playing with parallel mirrors, watching the curved chamber of reflected frames grow deeper as it straightens-- but at the moment it becomes perfectly straight, and the chamber on either side stretches to infinity, her head blocks the reflection and she can only see her own face. And she laughs.
Irony, once born, is with you for good as far as I can tell. Then the best you can hope for is a semblance of unselfconsciousness; the best you can do is to stifle actions and words that come with too-conscious artistic pride. If you think, before doing something, "What a fine picture this would make!" then refrain, in the name of authenticity. You do not want to be like those dramatic ones who are forever saying things for effect (though how you do envy them for how easy and carefree they are with their studied artifice!)
But beware-- since the self-scrutinizer rarely sleeps, the only actions this rule will permit are dull ones. You may wait and wait for lovely and dramatic actions to spring forth spontaneously in your life, but if you have actually gotten this far with me then I can assure you you will never actually be spontaneous, ever. On the rare moments when a spontaneous impulse emerges, you will seize it with such glee that it bursts at once. So you will find that, forbidding yourself all artificial action, you have become a mere watcher of other people's action, adding no flourishes of interest and beauty to the human gallery. You hoped that, by now, self-consciousness might have retired a bit, having little of interest to watch, but she shows no signs of slackening.
Better accept that, for you, authenticity is only to be found in the shifting scopes of artifice, in costumes and poses which you assume as the mood strikes you, parading before the mirror, and before an audience if you can find one. Construct; fabricate; dazzle; entertain. The truth may be in there somewhere. It is not for you to find.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
on methods of displaying word-snippets, and possibly a mental illness
I have way too many blogs. Thank goodness I stopped trying to have a system for which entries to post to which... now I just kind of go with whatever feels right. And I'm trying to keep it simple by usually cross-posting from Raid or Chronicles onto the myspace blog, but sometimes I don't. The result is that my three blogs (I've contemplated trying to post blog entries into my facebook notes too, since that's the only one my brother would read, but that way madness lies) read like alternate universes of the Ginny mind: lots of overlap, but each one presents a slightly different picture.
But that's not what I came here to talk about. It's just a thought that arose as I was trying to decide which blog to post this to.
What I came here to talk about was this: I miss away messages. I don't miss talking on IM (note that I do not call it AIM, first because I use ichat and second because people have started pronouncing it like the word "aim" which drives me BATTY) but I do miss away messages. So often a phrase comes to me, either internally or externally, that I want to display before the world. The away message was terrific for this. Actually, college in general (which was the last time I used IM with any frequency) was terrific for this. There was the quote wall, the quote book, there was scribbling lines and excerpts on the back of one's notebook when one was bored in class, there was, heck, just standing in the middle of the quad and shouting stuff. Though I don't think I did that. Much.
I was going to use that little headline quote in myspace for this purpose, but the current quote is so perfect, in origin and applicability, that I can't bear to change it. But I have three other quotes waiting in the wings that desperately need to be broadcasted somewhere. What's a girl to do?
WAIT!!! I know!!! I will start another blog! A quote of the day blog! Or week, or whatever. Displayed on the front page will be whatever snippet of wisdom, cleverness, compositional beauty, or just absurdity I feel the need to place before the world. And then I will have an archive of all the thoughts that struck me as displayable during this phase of my life. Which, for some reason, I value.
...
I have this sinking feeling that somewhere in the universe, something just went horribly wrong.
But that's not what I came here to talk about. It's just a thought that arose as I was trying to decide which blog to post this to.
What I came here to talk about was this: I miss away messages. I don't miss talking on IM (note that I do not call it AIM, first because I use ichat and second because people have started pronouncing it like the word "aim" which drives me BATTY) but I do miss away messages. So often a phrase comes to me, either internally or externally, that I want to display before the world. The away message was terrific for this. Actually, college in general (which was the last time I used IM with any frequency) was terrific for this. There was the quote wall, the quote book, there was scribbling lines and excerpts on the back of one's notebook when one was bored in class, there was, heck, just standing in the middle of the quad and shouting stuff. Though I don't think I did that. Much.
I was going to use that little headline quote in myspace for this purpose, but the current quote is so perfect, in origin and applicability, that I can't bear to change it. But I have three other quotes waiting in the wings that desperately need to be broadcasted somewhere. What's a girl to do?
WAIT!!! I know!!! I will start another blog! A quote of the day blog! Or week, or whatever. Displayed on the front page will be whatever snippet of wisdom, cleverness, compositional beauty, or just absurdity I feel the need to place before the world. And then I will have an archive of all the thoughts that struck me as displayable during this phase of my life. Which, for some reason, I value.
...
I have this sinking feeling that somewhere in the universe, something just went horribly wrong.
Friday, April 20, 2007
and what do you want to be when you grow up, little girl?
On the wall of my dorm room freshman year were many scraps of paper, more or less artistically cut, bearing some phrase or slogan, or occasionally a stanza from a poem. I still have them all in a folder; "Hamlet Schmamlet" is my favorite, for assorted subtle "you had to be there" kinds of reasons. But one of them, written much smaller, reads: "Another day at Oglethorpe: slack off, drink coffee, and develop a new plan for our lives." One of us said it at Starbucks one evening, I think just after we had been detailing plans for the coffee shop/ice cream bar we were going to establish some day (the ice cream was at my insistence.) Or perhaps that was the week we decided we would all get PhDs-- Joy in philosophy, me and Rachel in English I think-- and come back and teach together at Oglethorpe. We loved to sit around and design futures for ourselves, new ones coming as regularly as paper assignments (there might have been a correlation, actually.) This never seemed to get old.
That was six years ago. Apparently it still hasn't gotten old. I've spent the last several months coming up with new plans. It's all hovering around the academic lately, and the list of graduate degrees I've "decided" to get since January is prodigious. On Monday I came up with a definitive plan, one that encompassed all my hopes and ideals for a satisfying life, and contained several contingency plans and branching possibilities. A settled, workable plan, so I could stop trying to figure out what to do with my life and start actually doing it. A map of my future, drawn in ink. I've already started revising it.
Meh, it's a fun game. And judging by my parents, it's a game that I won't stop playing any time in the next several decades. Anyway all those things that I want to do with my life are secondary. I know what I want to be when I grow up: I want to be honest. I want to be someone who can speak the truth without having to concentrate. I want to be transparent. I want to be so secure in who I am that it's okay for people to actually see me, and even dislike me if they want to.
I want to be willing to learn, to change, to be wrong. I want to get rid of the idea that I have to be unapproachably excellent at everything I do. I want to learn NOT to laugh at my mistakes; laughter is a defense, a hastening to poke fun at myself before anyone else does. I want to champion my mistakes, to stand by them, to proclaim, "Yes! I screwed up. But didn't I screw up grandly?" I want to get through a game of go without undergoing a personal crisis.
I want to occupy my own place in the universe. I want to be generous with the gifts I have, instead of worrying that they're not welcome or not sufficient or not the right kind. I want to accept that I can't be everything to everyone, and to love the people I'm given to love in the way I'm capable of loving. I want to reach out to people freely, when I have the impulse, even when I don't know how they'll respond.
In short, I want to be free from self-absorption and cringing pride, to inhabit my own skin with peace, to stand in the world with all the grace and self-possession of the tree that is flowering outside my window.
Anyway, it's a start.
That was six years ago. Apparently it still hasn't gotten old. I've spent the last several months coming up with new plans. It's all hovering around the academic lately, and the list of graduate degrees I've "decided" to get since January is prodigious. On Monday I came up with a definitive plan, one that encompassed all my hopes and ideals for a satisfying life, and contained several contingency plans and branching possibilities. A settled, workable plan, so I could stop trying to figure out what to do with my life and start actually doing it. A map of my future, drawn in ink. I've already started revising it.
Meh, it's a fun game. And judging by my parents, it's a game that I won't stop playing any time in the next several decades. Anyway all those things that I want to do with my life are secondary. I know what I want to be when I grow up: I want to be honest. I want to be someone who can speak the truth without having to concentrate. I want to be transparent. I want to be so secure in who I am that it's okay for people to actually see me, and even dislike me if they want to.
I want to be willing to learn, to change, to be wrong. I want to get rid of the idea that I have to be unapproachably excellent at everything I do. I want to learn NOT to laugh at my mistakes; laughter is a defense, a hastening to poke fun at myself before anyone else does. I want to champion my mistakes, to stand by them, to proclaim, "Yes! I screwed up. But didn't I screw up grandly?" I want to get through a game of go without undergoing a personal crisis.
I want to occupy my own place in the universe. I want to be generous with the gifts I have, instead of worrying that they're not welcome or not sufficient or not the right kind. I want to accept that I can't be everything to everyone, and to love the people I'm given to love in the way I'm capable of loving. I want to reach out to people freely, when I have the impulse, even when I don't know how they'll respond.
In short, I want to be free from self-absorption and cringing pride, to inhabit my own skin with peace, to stand in the world with all the grace and self-possession of the tree that is flowering outside my window.
Anyway, it's a start.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
on description vs. decision
A more refined way of asking about fundamental beliefs: not "do you believe in X?" but "what is X like?" Instead of asking someone if they believe in God, or free will, or the soul, or true love, ask them to describe the God or free will or soul or true love in which they believe or don't believe.
The merit of this approach should be obvious. Many popular conceptions of God are puerile and inane; the white-bearded thunder-hurler, gleefully dispensing either candy or spankings in accordance with one's "naughty or nice" status, is not worthy of being believed in by any but the most childish mind. If this is what one means by God, one is far better off not believing in God at all. Throw that word out; find some other language for the truths of the universe that are being unfolded to your eyes.
In some cases, the answer to the descriptive question provides the answer to the belief question. I was asked, several months ago, whether I believed in the soul. I hadn't given it much thought up to that point, but when a definition of "soul" was chosen (in this case, we agreed upon the idea of a non-material entity which is attached to a material body and dictates, like a puppet-master, the movements of that body) it became clear to me that I did not believe in it. It offended all my aesthetic sensibilities: whatever linkage there is between my physical brain and body and my consciousness must be much more fluid than that, much more organic. The idea of mix-and-match souls and bodies, of a reservoir of souls that are plucked out and placed into physical bodies, just seems silly to me.
That doesn't mean that the word "soul" cannot be useful to me, as a believable concept. As I stand right now, the word has two meanings: one, the puppet-master soul which I have described and rejected, and the other, a collection of perceived realities that I'm still working to understand. What is this thing that I experience as consciousness and sense of identity? Where does it arise from? How is it related to the movements of pulses in my brain? I don't know, but "soul" is a useful name for it.
To say, as some do, that thought, emotion, and consciousness are only a product of a particular pattern of chemical impulses, does little to answer the most important questions about them. Our instinctive human reaction is to feel that this deprives them of meaning. "Only" a pattern of chemical impulses... that's tantamount to saying that self-awareness is an illusion, that our thoughts and emotions are trivial byproducts of an electrical wiring system!
Well hold on a minute. To say that what we call "the soul" arises from the material processes of the brain is not by any means to say that it is a trivial byproduct. And to say that self-awareness is an illusion is nonsensical. We are self-aware; if any statement of reality can be verified by perception alone, it is that one. To know more clearly the processes by which a particular event happens, like the perception of identity or the formation of the earth, should not rob that event of its significance for life. On the contrary, it should increase the significance, yielding new insights into the truth of the world and our relation to it, and helping us understand better the consequences our actions and decisions.
If, however, one cannot see it this way, if a materially-based conception of the soul does nothing but deprive human thought, emotion, and consciousness of its meaning and reduce everything to a mere chemical sludge, then one is far better off holding to a more traditional belief about the soul. And so you see again what I mean about description as opposed to decision. If someone actually believes that self-awareness is an illusion, then that person is a moron; in the same way, if someone actually believes that God delights in torturing bad people, that person is a blackguard. A very sophisticated moron; a very moral blackguard.
In conclusion, then: I think the proper way to deal with questions of belief is to delve descriptively into the exact notions that one is believing or disbelieving. And if one finds at any time that, in one's own understanding, a particular belief leads to either idiocy or villainy, to drop it, and search for something better.
The merit of this approach should be obvious. Many popular conceptions of God are puerile and inane; the white-bearded thunder-hurler, gleefully dispensing either candy or spankings in accordance with one's "naughty or nice" status, is not worthy of being believed in by any but the most childish mind. If this is what one means by God, one is far better off not believing in God at all. Throw that word out; find some other language for the truths of the universe that are being unfolded to your eyes.
In some cases, the answer to the descriptive question provides the answer to the belief question. I was asked, several months ago, whether I believed in the soul. I hadn't given it much thought up to that point, but when a definition of "soul" was chosen (in this case, we agreed upon the idea of a non-material entity which is attached to a material body and dictates, like a puppet-master, the movements of that body) it became clear to me that I did not believe in it. It offended all my aesthetic sensibilities: whatever linkage there is between my physical brain and body and my consciousness must be much more fluid than that, much more organic. The idea of mix-and-match souls and bodies, of a reservoir of souls that are plucked out and placed into physical bodies, just seems silly to me.
That doesn't mean that the word "soul" cannot be useful to me, as a believable concept. As I stand right now, the word has two meanings: one, the puppet-master soul which I have described and rejected, and the other, a collection of perceived realities that I'm still working to understand. What is this thing that I experience as consciousness and sense of identity? Where does it arise from? How is it related to the movements of pulses in my brain? I don't know, but "soul" is a useful name for it.
To say, as some do, that thought, emotion, and consciousness are only a product of a particular pattern of chemical impulses, does little to answer the most important questions about them. Our instinctive human reaction is to feel that this deprives them of meaning. "Only" a pattern of chemical impulses... that's tantamount to saying that self-awareness is an illusion, that our thoughts and emotions are trivial byproducts of an electrical wiring system!
Well hold on a minute. To say that what we call "the soul" arises from the material processes of the brain is not by any means to say that it is a trivial byproduct. And to say that self-awareness is an illusion is nonsensical. We are self-aware; if any statement of reality can be verified by perception alone, it is that one. To know more clearly the processes by which a particular event happens, like the perception of identity or the formation of the earth, should not rob that event of its significance for life. On the contrary, it should increase the significance, yielding new insights into the truth of the world and our relation to it, and helping us understand better the consequences our actions and decisions.
If, however, one cannot see it this way, if a materially-based conception of the soul does nothing but deprive human thought, emotion, and consciousness of its meaning and reduce everything to a mere chemical sludge, then one is far better off holding to a more traditional belief about the soul. And so you see again what I mean about description as opposed to decision. If someone actually believes that self-awareness is an illusion, then that person is a moron; in the same way, if someone actually believes that God delights in torturing bad people, that person is a blackguard. A very sophisticated moron; a very moral blackguard.
In conclusion, then: I think the proper way to deal with questions of belief is to delve descriptively into the exact notions that one is believing or disbelieving. And if one finds at any time that, in one's own understanding, a particular belief leads to either idiocy or villainy, to drop it, and search for something better.
Friday, March 23, 2007
one for sorrow two for joy
What broke you, you lovely one, to make you now so hard against giving and taking life?
You have graceful hands, did you know? and honest eyes.
And you are tender towards the hurt ones-- to this I can bear witness--
and you can speak truth with gentleness. And you wear your wisdom without pride.
And you love the lovely things of the world.
And you laugh when you dance.
These are gifts enough for a man to bring before us.
You are not measured by what you lack. None of us has sufficiency.
Limping, we carry what we have, and offer it to those we can.
And what we can build with all our combined gifts, whether it is towering and strong or slight and frail, is of secondary importance. The first thing is the giving.
Why then do you hide from us? Why do you skulk in tombs and wrap yourself in graveclothes?
Come forth; we are weeping for you. All we ask is the light of your eyes.
Love will bear so much: haven't you seen it? Can't you believe it?
With patience for what you lack and gratitude-- yes, gratitude-- for what you have. We are not so full ourselves that your gifts are not missed.
Only this love will not do, cannot do: love cannot crawl into the tomb with you.
Cannot wrap herself in matching shrouds and sit, blind and cold, until you both stiffen and decay to nothing.
To bring you out, she would do anything, even that,
but you would only shrink further and wrap yourself tighter. And she, without a sharer inside or out, would cease to be love.
***
I would have carried you through fire.
I would have breathed in ash till my lungs were choked, would have let my flesh burn down to bones.
I would have held you high and been consumed-- I swear I would-- even to nothing, would have let every inch of me burn to dust,
If I could only have set you safe on a high place, a place of fresh water and clean air, where you could be at peace.
I learned very quickly that I could not do this.
I could do nothing more than dip my finger in water to cool your tongue, whenever you asked it. And the only burning I could feel was in this small touch--
One finger of mine, against your whole tormented body.
But in the end--
Oh joy--
You found your own way through.
And though I have never seen you in a place of peace
(I suspect peace is foreign to your nature)
It is a greater gift than I could have hoped for, to see you standing where the air is clean.
You have graceful hands, did you know? and honest eyes.
And you are tender towards the hurt ones-- to this I can bear witness--
and you can speak truth with gentleness. And you wear your wisdom without pride.
And you love the lovely things of the world.
And you laugh when you dance.
These are gifts enough for a man to bring before us.
You are not measured by what you lack. None of us has sufficiency.
Limping, we carry what we have, and offer it to those we can.
And what we can build with all our combined gifts, whether it is towering and strong or slight and frail, is of secondary importance. The first thing is the giving.
Why then do you hide from us? Why do you skulk in tombs and wrap yourself in graveclothes?
Come forth; we are weeping for you. All we ask is the light of your eyes.
Love will bear so much: haven't you seen it? Can't you believe it?
With patience for what you lack and gratitude-- yes, gratitude-- for what you have. We are not so full ourselves that your gifts are not missed.
Only this love will not do, cannot do: love cannot crawl into the tomb with you.
Cannot wrap herself in matching shrouds and sit, blind and cold, until you both stiffen and decay to nothing.
To bring you out, she would do anything, even that,
but you would only shrink further and wrap yourself tighter. And she, without a sharer inside or out, would cease to be love.
***
I would have carried you through fire.
I would have breathed in ash till my lungs were choked, would have let my flesh burn down to bones.
I would have held you high and been consumed-- I swear I would-- even to nothing, would have let every inch of me burn to dust,
If I could only have set you safe on a high place, a place of fresh water and clean air, where you could be at peace.
I learned very quickly that I could not do this.
I could do nothing more than dip my finger in water to cool your tongue, whenever you asked it. And the only burning I could feel was in this small touch--
One finger of mine, against your whole tormented body.
But in the end--
Oh joy--
You found your own way through.
And though I have never seen you in a place of peace
(I suspect peace is foreign to your nature)
It is a greater gift than I could have hoped for, to see you standing where the air is clean.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
a confession
Friends, I have defied a cultural norm. I have broken a taboo. There is an impulse which most of us have felt as children, and many of us indulged it-- but when we did, we found out quickly, from the shock and anger our mothers expressed, that it is NOT DONE. Shame and disgrace were poured out upon the innocent, experimenting child, and the lesson took root: in a decent, civilized society, people do not cut their own hair.
So swiftly was the social shame invoked that most of us never even asked why. To take scissors to one's own hair was FORBIDDEN, and that was all the child needed to know. As mother fusses and frets, trying desperately to cover up the great gap and the too-blunt ends where a hand more bold than skillful has severed a lock or two... as she shakes her head and clicks her teeth and worries aloud that she may have to shear the whole head to make it even, the prohibition is burned into the child's soul. What, exactly, the calamity consists of is unclear, but children are constrained by many such reasonless disasters.
It is necessary that it be so: but should not we, as thinking adults, look at the matter with a more lucid appraisal? It is for us to assess the validity of the prohibitions we accepted as children. Some we will approve and uphold without further experiment: "Don't put your hand on that stove!" Some we will modify into an appropriate form for adulthood: "Don't talk to strangers!" Some we will test and see for ourselves what the alleged dire consequences really consist of. Various primal urges will be indulged in, in a more or less infantile way, until we reach our own understanding of good boundaries and self-imposed constraints.
But of all these primal urges, one that gets relatively little press time is the urge to cut hair. I myself did not recognize until recently what a powerful and vital impulse it still is. The taboos imposed in childhood are strong; it generally takes a fair amount of external encouragement even to recognize them, let alone to break through them. So that, among the many taboos whose breaking has become fashionable, a subtler and less publicized prohibition remains as entrenched as ever.
It began, for me, about two months after I first got my hair cut short (by, of course, a qualified professional.) I had been for one trim, by another qualified professional, and it was getting shaggy again. They had warned me about this: Short hair needs to be maintained, they said. You'll need to get it trimmed every four to six weeks. And I found, crinkling my nose every morning at too-long wisps of hair down my neck, that they were right.
I hate appointments. I strive, as much as possible, to keep my life to a small, routine circle of activities: even an enjoyable break in routine, like a concert or a day trip somewhere, is met with some reluctance. Tedious and compulsory breaks in routine are worse, and to be eliminated wherever possible. And even more than appointments I hate these little, eternally repeating chores, these things which never stay done but must be done over and over, at regular intervals (e.g., bed-making, which I usually eschew, and tooth-brushing, which I usually succumb to.) And here I had introduced into my life the tedious, compulsory, eternally repeating chore, of going to get my hair cut. Gah.
So as I stared at myself in the mirror, these few offending wisps (only a few... most of it was quite acceptable), my mind railed in frustration that I would be compelled to make an appointment over such a small problem. And then, furtively, the image of a pair of scissors in the other room crept into my mind. Could I not just attend to these wisps myself, and put off the trouble of an appointment for another couple of weeks?
NO! the childhood prohibition boomed. We do not cut our own hair! That is work for trained experts! You don't have the education for that! For a moment, the thought of cutting my own hair seemed as wrong-headed as performing my own appendectomy. But then reason reasserted itself. It's only hair, after all. What's the worst that can happen?
I got the scissors. And with the first snip, a new freedom flooded through me. This was not some esoteric art, to be practiced only by the initiate. This was hair, and making it shorter. I could do this. I had the technology.
I stuck to my plan of just trimming the scraggly edges, but the thought of those scissors haunted me. Could I not do more? Could I not maintain my own haircut, without any professional help at all? It was only scissors and hair. How hard could it be?
I was timid at first. I picked an evening when I would be free the next day, to have the ravages repaired by a professional if necessary. I used a bathroom in my parents' house, where the arrangement of mirrors allows you to see yourself from just about every angle imaginable. I cut sparingly, conservatively. The result was favorable: there was barely a difference, only it was tidier than it had been. The success of this effort gave me boldness in subsequent essays. I bought a comb and a large hand-mirror. I began keeping my little vacuum cleaner in the bathroom to tidy up. I found that the more I cut, the more I wanted to cut. It had, at moments, the power of an addiction. I would have to firmly tell myself, "Lay down the scissors. Step away from the mirror."
I am still trying to analyze the peculiar enthrallment. It has its root, I think, in the simple experimental urge: "What happens if I do this?" It appeals to both curiosity and power: I have learned something, and I have made something happen. Fascinating. Let's try it again. Anyone who has spent time in the company of infants can see how primitive and basic this urge and appeal is.
Atop the appeal of experimentation, there are overtones of image and identity. I have never liked walking out of a hair salon feeling like my head had become someone else's sculpture. I don't care if you tell me it looks great. It is my hair, not some medium for modern art. My first desire, on returning from a hair salon, is usually to frantically wash and brush until it has started to look like my hair again. In the past, I told myself this was because I was uncomfortable having a fashionable or put-together image, had some pathological aversion to looking like I was trying to be stylish. But can one not as easily put the opposite spin on it? If I don't want to look like a magazine picture, why should I have to? Is there some rule saying that women must be designed and coordinated? And if there is, why am I trying to obey it?
This is a debate that cycles over and over for me. I oscillate between declaring that I want to develop a "style" for myself, and declaring that I don't care how I look. Neither is strictly true, and whether I will ever settle the matter remains to be seen. Meanwhile, I have begun cutting my own hair. And some days (today, for example) it looks like it. And I don't much mind. If my chief object, hair-wise, was to look great, I'd hire someone to do it. But there are things I want more: I want time, I want freedom, I want self-determination and the fun of experiment. And I want the play of scissors in my hand, the clean decisive snip, and the soft dark tufts falling into the bathroom sink.
So swiftly was the social shame invoked that most of us never even asked why. To take scissors to one's own hair was FORBIDDEN, and that was all the child needed to know. As mother fusses and frets, trying desperately to cover up the great gap and the too-blunt ends where a hand more bold than skillful has severed a lock or two... as she shakes her head and clicks her teeth and worries aloud that she may have to shear the whole head to make it even, the prohibition is burned into the child's soul. What, exactly, the calamity consists of is unclear, but children are constrained by many such reasonless disasters.
It is necessary that it be so: but should not we, as thinking adults, look at the matter with a more lucid appraisal? It is for us to assess the validity of the prohibitions we accepted as children. Some we will approve and uphold without further experiment: "Don't put your hand on that stove!" Some we will modify into an appropriate form for adulthood: "Don't talk to strangers!" Some we will test and see for ourselves what the alleged dire consequences really consist of. Various primal urges will be indulged in, in a more or less infantile way, until we reach our own understanding of good boundaries and self-imposed constraints.
But of all these primal urges, one that gets relatively little press time is the urge to cut hair. I myself did not recognize until recently what a powerful and vital impulse it still is. The taboos imposed in childhood are strong; it generally takes a fair amount of external encouragement even to recognize them, let alone to break through them. So that, among the many taboos whose breaking has become fashionable, a subtler and less publicized prohibition remains as entrenched as ever.
It began, for me, about two months after I first got my hair cut short (by, of course, a qualified professional.) I had been for one trim, by another qualified professional, and it was getting shaggy again. They had warned me about this: Short hair needs to be maintained, they said. You'll need to get it trimmed every four to six weeks. And I found, crinkling my nose every morning at too-long wisps of hair down my neck, that they were right.
I hate appointments. I strive, as much as possible, to keep my life to a small, routine circle of activities: even an enjoyable break in routine, like a concert or a day trip somewhere, is met with some reluctance. Tedious and compulsory breaks in routine are worse, and to be eliminated wherever possible. And even more than appointments I hate these little, eternally repeating chores, these things which never stay done but must be done over and over, at regular intervals (e.g., bed-making, which I usually eschew, and tooth-brushing, which I usually succumb to.) And here I had introduced into my life the tedious, compulsory, eternally repeating chore, of going to get my hair cut. Gah.
So as I stared at myself in the mirror, these few offending wisps (only a few... most of it was quite acceptable), my mind railed in frustration that I would be compelled to make an appointment over such a small problem. And then, furtively, the image of a pair of scissors in the other room crept into my mind. Could I not just attend to these wisps myself, and put off the trouble of an appointment for another couple of weeks?
NO! the childhood prohibition boomed. We do not cut our own hair! That is work for trained experts! You don't have the education for that! For a moment, the thought of cutting my own hair seemed as wrong-headed as performing my own appendectomy. But then reason reasserted itself. It's only hair, after all. What's the worst that can happen?
I got the scissors. And with the first snip, a new freedom flooded through me. This was not some esoteric art, to be practiced only by the initiate. This was hair, and making it shorter. I could do this. I had the technology.
I stuck to my plan of just trimming the scraggly edges, but the thought of those scissors haunted me. Could I not do more? Could I not maintain my own haircut, without any professional help at all? It was only scissors and hair. How hard could it be?
I was timid at first. I picked an evening when I would be free the next day, to have the ravages repaired by a professional if necessary. I used a bathroom in my parents' house, where the arrangement of mirrors allows you to see yourself from just about every angle imaginable. I cut sparingly, conservatively. The result was favorable: there was barely a difference, only it was tidier than it had been. The success of this effort gave me boldness in subsequent essays. I bought a comb and a large hand-mirror. I began keeping my little vacuum cleaner in the bathroom to tidy up. I found that the more I cut, the more I wanted to cut. It had, at moments, the power of an addiction. I would have to firmly tell myself, "Lay down the scissors. Step away from the mirror."
I am still trying to analyze the peculiar enthrallment. It has its root, I think, in the simple experimental urge: "What happens if I do this?" It appeals to both curiosity and power: I have learned something, and I have made something happen. Fascinating. Let's try it again. Anyone who has spent time in the company of infants can see how primitive and basic this urge and appeal is.
Atop the appeal of experimentation, there are overtones of image and identity. I have never liked walking out of a hair salon feeling like my head had become someone else's sculpture. I don't care if you tell me it looks great. It is my hair, not some medium for modern art. My first desire, on returning from a hair salon, is usually to frantically wash and brush until it has started to look like my hair again. In the past, I told myself this was because I was uncomfortable having a fashionable or put-together image, had some pathological aversion to looking like I was trying to be stylish. But can one not as easily put the opposite spin on it? If I don't want to look like a magazine picture, why should I have to? Is there some rule saying that women must be designed and coordinated? And if there is, why am I trying to obey it?
This is a debate that cycles over and over for me. I oscillate between declaring that I want to develop a "style" for myself, and declaring that I don't care how I look. Neither is strictly true, and whether I will ever settle the matter remains to be seen. Meanwhile, I have begun cutting my own hair. And some days (today, for example) it looks like it. And I don't much mind. If my chief object, hair-wise, was to look great, I'd hire someone to do it. But there are things I want more: I want time, I want freedom, I want self-determination and the fun of experiment. And I want the play of scissors in my hand, the clean decisive snip, and the soft dark tufts falling into the bathroom sink.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
a theory of moral sentiments, continued
I had lots more to say on the subject of my last post, but I was out of time and whenever I start a post and save it to finish later, it lingers in my "drafts" box for weeks and months, and by the time I get back to it my ideas have so evolved that I can't continue it. So I decided to just post it and continue later, if moved.
The state of mind I ended with in the last post-- the understanding, not just intellectual but emotional, that my neighbor's suffering is an evil equivalent to my own suffering-- is most clearly felt when the neighbor is loved. In fact I might make this one of the cornerstone definitions of love. A strange thing happens, only in moments and glimpses mind you, but even these moments and glimpses are peculiar and powerful... a strange thing happens when we love someone, and that someone suffers. For a moment we feel that suffering, and it is just as potent and painful an evil as if it had happened to us. It is not simply the discomfort of having a loud crying in our ears (though that occurs too, and is a factor at times even in the most loving relationships); it is, for moments and glimpses, a true fellow-feeling. Not that we ever think, at such times, "I feel just as bad as if this was happening to me"... that thought belongs to a different state of mind. What I am talking about is sitting beside a friend in pain, and feeling their pain without reference to oneself, or to the friend, but as a wound on the face of the world, under which we all suffer.
This is not to denigrate the individual sufferer's place in suffering. If there were no individual sufferer, there would be no suffering at all. But the suffering of the individual, if we only understood it properly, acts as a wound and a blight to all of us-- to the whole of humanity, and possibly to the nonhuman world as well. To feel this-- not to know it but to feel it-- persistently and wholly, would be in the truest sense to love our neighbors as ourselves. Possibly it would also crush us.
Then comes the final question of my last post. If one person's experience of suffering is a universal wound, should not one person's experience of joy be a universal blessing? I don't know; the second conclusion doesn't seem nearly as intuitively sound to me as the first. I will have to think about it more.
I have strayed a long way from my fable of the infants. But the connections should be obvious. If the infant loves his twin in the deepest sense, then it truly will not matter to him which of them receives the pinch. It is because he does not see clearly enough that he and his twin are the same kind of creature that he prefers the pinch to fall on his sibling's foot rather than his own. He has learned that they are the same, but he keeps forgetting it; he keeps thinking there is some grander distinction than simply which feet they are connected to. But that is all it boils down to. I occupy a particular place in space and time; I am connected to a particular set of receptors-- eyes, ears, skin-- by which the world touches me. But whether a pain is given to these receptors, or those to which my neighbor is connected, is a trivial matter; the important thing is that there is pain. And if I could know this, and feel it in my gut, and never forget it, then I would be incapable of hurting another person by either activity or neglect.
The state of mind I ended with in the last post-- the understanding, not just intellectual but emotional, that my neighbor's suffering is an evil equivalent to my own suffering-- is most clearly felt when the neighbor is loved. In fact I might make this one of the cornerstone definitions of love. A strange thing happens, only in moments and glimpses mind you, but even these moments and glimpses are peculiar and powerful... a strange thing happens when we love someone, and that someone suffers. For a moment we feel that suffering, and it is just as potent and painful an evil as if it had happened to us. It is not simply the discomfort of having a loud crying in our ears (though that occurs too, and is a factor at times even in the most loving relationships); it is, for moments and glimpses, a true fellow-feeling. Not that we ever think, at such times, "I feel just as bad as if this was happening to me"... that thought belongs to a different state of mind. What I am talking about is sitting beside a friend in pain, and feeling their pain without reference to oneself, or to the friend, but as a wound on the face of the world, under which we all suffer.
This is not to denigrate the individual sufferer's place in suffering. If there were no individual sufferer, there would be no suffering at all. But the suffering of the individual, if we only understood it properly, acts as a wound and a blight to all of us-- to the whole of humanity, and possibly to the nonhuman world as well. To feel this-- not to know it but to feel it-- persistently and wholly, would be in the truest sense to love our neighbors as ourselves. Possibly it would also crush us.
Then comes the final question of my last post. If one person's experience of suffering is a universal wound, should not one person's experience of joy be a universal blessing? I don't know; the second conclusion doesn't seem nearly as intuitively sound to me as the first. I will have to think about it more.
I have strayed a long way from my fable of the infants. But the connections should be obvious. If the infant loves his twin in the deepest sense, then it truly will not matter to him which of them receives the pinch. It is because he does not see clearly enough that he and his twin are the same kind of creature that he prefers the pinch to fall on his sibling's foot rather than his own. He has learned that they are the same, but he keeps forgetting it; he keeps thinking there is some grander distinction than simply which feet they are connected to. But that is all it boils down to. I occupy a particular place in space and time; I am connected to a particular set of receptors-- eyes, ears, skin-- by which the world touches me. But whether a pain is given to these receptors, or those to which my neighbor is connected, is a trivial matter; the important thing is that there is pain. And if I could know this, and feel it in my gut, and never forget it, then I would be incapable of hurting another person by either activity or neglect.
Friday, February 16, 2007
a theory of moral sentiments
Imagine twin infants in a crib. They're pretty new to this whole life thing, but they're slowly picking it up... sights and sounds that are repeated become familiar, some of them are associated with pleasure or pain. As these associations build up, they perhaps begin to experience anticipation, both positive and negative. When big sister's face appears over the horizon and she is smiling, they may feel a positive anticipation, because usually this means she is about to play with them or tickle them or sing to them. If she looks angry, though, they feel some apprehension, because sometimes she is resentful, and takes out her resentment by pinching their feet in not at all a nice way.
(By the way, this is a fable, not a treatise on child emotional development. I'd be interested to know in what order these various associations and emotions actually emerge, but it's beside the point here.)
One thing that neither of them knows is that they are twins. While to outsiders they are more or less a doubled unit, identical and interchangeable (and even in the family they are usually lumped together in talk as "the babies"), to themselves they are entirely different types of entity. One of them may indeed have noticed that there are four more or less identical feet in the crib-- but for two of the feet, when big sister tickles them, there is a delightful sensation and urge to laugh. For the other two, in appearance so similar, no shred of such sensation results. So clearly the four feet, though they look so similar, belong to two vastly different classes of object. So that, whether big sister tickles or pinches those two feet really makes little difference.
The infant may later observe that in fact it does make a difference whether the other two feet are tickled or pinched. First of all, the other object in the crib either laughs or cries, and if the object's laughter is pleasant and crying unpleasant, then the infant has good reason to prefer that the object be tickled. Second, if the object's feet are pinched, chances are that the infant's feet will be pinched imminently. The fate of the object's feet is a reliable indicator of the mood of the big sister, and for that reason too it makes a difference to the infant.
All this emotional range is quite plausible for the infant, and out of it may come a very strong appearance of sympathy. The infant doesn't like it when its twin's feet are pinched. He is likely even to begin expressing his dislike by crying even before his own feet are pinched. But the infant is worlds away, probably years away, from even beginning to have a real sympathy for his twin. The pinching of his twin's feet affects his world negatively; that is why he cries.
At some point, though, he makes the shocking discovery that that other object, the twin, is analogous to himself. It flies in the face of many observed facts (those feet produce no sensation! How can they possibly be like mine?), but there it is. The world must now be re-ordered to contain many subjects, not just one. He begins to understand that the twin's feet do produce sensation--for the twin. How odd.
Suppose, now that everybody is a little older, big sister has become more refined in her resentment. Instead of hating or loving both babies at once, she deals with her conflicted feelings by hating one of them and loving the other-- switching more or less randomly between each. (If you think this is implausible, consider the black sheep-white sheep phenomenon that arises in most families.) So any time she approaches the twins, she will tickle one's feet, and pinch the other's.
This changes the emotional landscape considerably. Now, for one of the babies, the pinching of the other feet means two things: the other twin will start to cry, which is unpleasant, and the sister will tickle his own feet, which is pleasant. And there is, too, in the back of his head the knowledge that the twin has experienced pain, very like what the infant himself would have experienced had the sister's wrath fallen on him instead. What does the child do? Does he cry because his twin is making such an infernal noise? Does he laugh because his feet are being tickled?
Or does he really, in a flash of inhuman insight, internalize the fact that, for the whole state of the universe, it makes no difference whose feet are pinched, his or his twin's? In the universe, someone's feet are being pinched-- whether the pinching happens to fall on my foot or my twin's matters only to the two of us, and only because we're so locked inside our own bodies. Whether the pulse of pain happens to flow to me or to my neighbor clearly is not the important thing: the important thing is that there is a pulse of pain.
And then the yet more unthinkable thought: is it the same for joy?
(By the way, this is a fable, not a treatise on child emotional development. I'd be interested to know in what order these various associations and emotions actually emerge, but it's beside the point here.)
One thing that neither of them knows is that they are twins. While to outsiders they are more or less a doubled unit, identical and interchangeable (and even in the family they are usually lumped together in talk as "the babies"), to themselves they are entirely different types of entity. One of them may indeed have noticed that there are four more or less identical feet in the crib-- but for two of the feet, when big sister tickles them, there is a delightful sensation and urge to laugh. For the other two, in appearance so similar, no shred of such sensation results. So clearly the four feet, though they look so similar, belong to two vastly different classes of object. So that, whether big sister tickles or pinches those two feet really makes little difference.
The infant may later observe that in fact it does make a difference whether the other two feet are tickled or pinched. First of all, the other object in the crib either laughs or cries, and if the object's laughter is pleasant and crying unpleasant, then the infant has good reason to prefer that the object be tickled. Second, if the object's feet are pinched, chances are that the infant's feet will be pinched imminently. The fate of the object's feet is a reliable indicator of the mood of the big sister, and for that reason too it makes a difference to the infant.
All this emotional range is quite plausible for the infant, and out of it may come a very strong appearance of sympathy. The infant doesn't like it when its twin's feet are pinched. He is likely even to begin expressing his dislike by crying even before his own feet are pinched. But the infant is worlds away, probably years away, from even beginning to have a real sympathy for his twin. The pinching of his twin's feet affects his world negatively; that is why he cries.
At some point, though, he makes the shocking discovery that that other object, the twin, is analogous to himself. It flies in the face of many observed facts (those feet produce no sensation! How can they possibly be like mine?), but there it is. The world must now be re-ordered to contain many subjects, not just one. He begins to understand that the twin's feet do produce sensation--for the twin. How odd.
Suppose, now that everybody is a little older, big sister has become more refined in her resentment. Instead of hating or loving both babies at once, she deals with her conflicted feelings by hating one of them and loving the other-- switching more or less randomly between each. (If you think this is implausible, consider the black sheep-white sheep phenomenon that arises in most families.) So any time she approaches the twins, she will tickle one's feet, and pinch the other's.
This changes the emotional landscape considerably. Now, for one of the babies, the pinching of the other feet means two things: the other twin will start to cry, which is unpleasant, and the sister will tickle his own feet, which is pleasant. And there is, too, in the back of his head the knowledge that the twin has experienced pain, very like what the infant himself would have experienced had the sister's wrath fallen on him instead. What does the child do? Does he cry because his twin is making such an infernal noise? Does he laugh because his feet are being tickled?
Or does he really, in a flash of inhuman insight, internalize the fact that, for the whole state of the universe, it makes no difference whose feet are pinched, his or his twin's? In the universe, someone's feet are being pinched-- whether the pinching happens to fall on my foot or my twin's matters only to the two of us, and only because we're so locked inside our own bodies. Whether the pulse of pain happens to flow to me or to my neighbor clearly is not the important thing: the important thing is that there is a pulse of pain.
And then the yet more unthinkable thought: is it the same for joy?
Friday, January 26, 2007
Simone on attachment, reality, and loss
I have recently begun reading Simone Weil. I learned about her through reading Czeslaw Milosz, who loved her. She was quite a woman... anyway, I am going to post now and then some of my favorite of the paragraphs. I'm posting them without commentary... I have a hope that it will get a conversation going in the comments.
***
The reality of the world is the result of our attachment. It is the reality of the self which we transfer onto things. It has nothing to do with independent reality. That is only perceptible through total detachment. Should only one thread remain, there is still attachment.
Attachment is a manufacturer of illusions and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.
As soon as we know that something is real, we can no longer be attached to it.
Attachment is no more nor less than an insufficiency in our sense of reality. We are attached to the possession of a thing because we think that if we cease to possess it, it will cease to exist. A great many people do not feel with their whole soul that there is all the difference in the world between the destruction of a town and their own irremediable exile from the town.
The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it. If we can let our whole good rest with something hidden in the ground, why not with God?
But when God has become as full of significance as the treasure is for the miser, we have to tell ourselves insistently that he does not exist. We must experience the fact that we love him, even if he does not exist.
It is he who, through the operation of the dark night, withdraws himself from us in order not to be loved as the treasure is by the miser.
To lose someone: We suffer because the departed, the absent, has become something imaginary and unreal. But our desire for him is not imaginary. We have to go down into ourselves to the abode of the desire which is not imaginary.
Hunger: we imagine kinds of food, but the hunger itself is real: we have to fasten onto the hunger. The presence of the dead person is imaginary, but his absence is very real; henceforward it is his way of appearing.
***
The reality of the world is the result of our attachment. It is the reality of the self which we transfer onto things. It has nothing to do with independent reality. That is only perceptible through total detachment. Should only one thread remain, there is still attachment.
Attachment is a manufacturer of illusions and whoever wants reality ought to be detached.
As soon as we know that something is real, we can no longer be attached to it.
Attachment is no more nor less than an insufficiency in our sense of reality. We are attached to the possession of a thing because we think that if we cease to possess it, it will cease to exist. A great many people do not feel with their whole soul that there is all the difference in the world between the destruction of a town and their own irremediable exile from the town.
The miser deprives himself of his treasure because of his desire for it. If we can let our whole good rest with something hidden in the ground, why not with God?
But when God has become as full of significance as the treasure is for the miser, we have to tell ourselves insistently that he does not exist. We must experience the fact that we love him, even if he does not exist.
It is he who, through the operation of the dark night, withdraws himself from us in order not to be loved as the treasure is by the miser.
To lose someone: We suffer because the departed, the absent, has become something imaginary and unreal. But our desire for him is not imaginary. We have to go down into ourselves to the abode of the desire which is not imaginary.
Hunger: we imagine kinds of food, but the hunger itself is real: we have to fasten onto the hunger. The presence of the dead person is imaginary, but his absence is very real; henceforward it is his way of appearing.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
the story of my life, so far
Recipe for a crisis
Layer in an individual:
20 years upbringing instilling conservatism of morals, inquisitiveness of intellect, and independence of will.
1 church attended in formative years where most of the people appeared to be feeling or experiencing things not felt or experienced by this particular individual
4 years education in a liberal environment, reading beautiful, tormented, difficult books and meeting beautiful, tormented, difficult people
1 year spent mostly in the company of secure, more or less fundamentalist Christians, who are quite confident in what they believe and why
Add, in quick succession:
1 father converting to Catholicism
2 friends with hard questions, who won't take crap for answers
Stir vigorously. Watch the mix boil.
So if you haven't heard from me in the last month or two, and you're the kind of person who expects to hear from me more frequently and talk at great lengths, this is why. Not that I've intentionally gone into hiding, but just that I haven't reached out to talk as much because I haven't known what I would say. I still don't, exactly.
There are a few snowflakes blowing around outside. I mention it because I love snowflakes, and also because it is important to remember how much of the world actually takes place outside of my head.
Here are some questions I am not asking right now:
Who am I? I'm not really very worried about this. Actually I'm obsessed with it, but that's nothing new, so I'm not counting it as a question which makes up the current crisis. Asking who I am is not so much an activity as a continual mode of being.
What is my purpose in life? This is even less of a worry than "Who am I?" Teleology, naturalism, extrinsic and intrinsic finality... these are interesting ideas to play with, but from a practical standpoint they all break down to much simpler questions like "What should I do for the next hour?" (or possibly, depending on your philosophical view, "What will I do for the next hour?") Much like "Who am I?" this is a question which does not wait for an answer. It merely exists, to be answered further every moment.
Is there a God? I tried asking this one for a little while, about a month ago. It didn't stick. My aesthetic framework doesn't seem able to support such a question in its purest form. Taking "God" in a very broad sense, as some force or entity which drives, shapes, and/or evaluates the universe... well either there is or there isn't. And if there isn't any such thing, then there is no story to the world (an equivalent phrase might be "no meaning.") And if there's no story, I'm really not that interested. Stories are to my mind what blood is to my body. If there is no God, then I, as a maker of stories, am the most interesting thing in the universe. And since I'm going to go on making stories whether there is a God or not, then finding out that there's not a God (if such is the case) is not a high-priority activity for me.
Now we move to the questions I am asking right now:
What is God like? This is huge. I don't know if you noticed, but "some force or entity which drives, shapes, and/or evaluates the universe" leaves a lot of room for specification. There are many possibilities within this category. I haven't even begun to try and rule some of them out. An important sub-question to this is "What, if anything, does God require of me?" On this I have some thoughts, which I may try to flesh out in a later entry.
What is the source of the Christian belief which I have held as long as I remember? To say that my parents taught me to be a Christian is true, and trivial. Why did I believe them? Why did I never, seriously, doubt that what they told me was true? Does it owe more the to quality of my relationship to my parents (and friends and teachers who reinforced what they said) or to the quality of the universe? This may be the biggest piece of this task I'm embarked on: rejecting unsatisfactory sources of my belief and replacing them, if possible, with sounder ones.
What is the Bible? In the gamut of possibilities, from "every word is stamped with God's approval" to "it's a handful of literary works cobbled together by various religious and political bodies" where does the truth lie? I don't know where the answer to this question will come from, though I'm going to begin by investigating, in detail, the historical background and origins of various parts of it. So we'll see.
There is another question, one which I can't seem to either ask or not ask. In one way, it is the most important question of them all. But it deserves its own essay, and maybe soon I will write it.
What does all this mean? I don't know. It will come as a shock to many of you... it did to me. At times I think that faith, whatever it is, exists independent of intellectual belief; that all these doubts, which for me are real and vital concessions to intellectual honesty, may persist for months, years, even a lifetime, while my identification with Christ still lives on some fundamental level where it cannot be shaken. This is a comforting thought... though it still leaves a lot of questions about the shape my life will take, particularly my place in various social worlds.
Other times I listen to songs, or read poems or passages from books, that I once sang and read and celebrated as containing truths, truths which were as real-- though not as tangible-- as the tree in my front yard. And I feel like I've been robbed of my most precious possession.
Layer in an individual:
20 years upbringing instilling conservatism of morals, inquisitiveness of intellect, and independence of will.
1 church attended in formative years where most of the people appeared to be feeling or experiencing things not felt or experienced by this particular individual
4 years education in a liberal environment, reading beautiful, tormented, difficult books and meeting beautiful, tormented, difficult people
1 year spent mostly in the company of secure, more or less fundamentalist Christians, who are quite confident in what they believe and why
Add, in quick succession:
1 father converting to Catholicism
2 friends with hard questions, who won't take crap for answers
Stir vigorously. Watch the mix boil.
So if you haven't heard from me in the last month or two, and you're the kind of person who expects to hear from me more frequently and talk at great lengths, this is why. Not that I've intentionally gone into hiding, but just that I haven't reached out to talk as much because I haven't known what I would say. I still don't, exactly.
There are a few snowflakes blowing around outside. I mention it because I love snowflakes, and also because it is important to remember how much of the world actually takes place outside of my head.
Here are some questions I am not asking right now:
Who am I? I'm not really very worried about this. Actually I'm obsessed with it, but that's nothing new, so I'm not counting it as a question which makes up the current crisis. Asking who I am is not so much an activity as a continual mode of being.
What is my purpose in life? This is even less of a worry than "Who am I?" Teleology, naturalism, extrinsic and intrinsic finality... these are interesting ideas to play with, but from a practical standpoint they all break down to much simpler questions like "What should I do for the next hour?" (or possibly, depending on your philosophical view, "What will I do for the next hour?") Much like "Who am I?" this is a question which does not wait for an answer. It merely exists, to be answered further every moment.
Is there a God? I tried asking this one for a little while, about a month ago. It didn't stick. My aesthetic framework doesn't seem able to support such a question in its purest form. Taking "God" in a very broad sense, as some force or entity which drives, shapes, and/or evaluates the universe... well either there is or there isn't. And if there isn't any such thing, then there is no story to the world (an equivalent phrase might be "no meaning.") And if there's no story, I'm really not that interested. Stories are to my mind what blood is to my body. If there is no God, then I, as a maker of stories, am the most interesting thing in the universe. And since I'm going to go on making stories whether there is a God or not, then finding out that there's not a God (if such is the case) is not a high-priority activity for me.
Now we move to the questions I am asking right now:
What is God like? This is huge. I don't know if you noticed, but "some force or entity which drives, shapes, and/or evaluates the universe" leaves a lot of room for specification. There are many possibilities within this category. I haven't even begun to try and rule some of them out. An important sub-question to this is "What, if anything, does God require of me?" On this I have some thoughts, which I may try to flesh out in a later entry.
What is the source of the Christian belief which I have held as long as I remember? To say that my parents taught me to be a Christian is true, and trivial. Why did I believe them? Why did I never, seriously, doubt that what they told me was true? Does it owe more the to quality of my relationship to my parents (and friends and teachers who reinforced what they said) or to the quality of the universe? This may be the biggest piece of this task I'm embarked on: rejecting unsatisfactory sources of my belief and replacing them, if possible, with sounder ones.
What is the Bible? In the gamut of possibilities, from "every word is stamped with God's approval" to "it's a handful of literary works cobbled together by various religious and political bodies" where does the truth lie? I don't know where the answer to this question will come from, though I'm going to begin by investigating, in detail, the historical background and origins of various parts of it. So we'll see.
There is another question, one which I can't seem to either ask or not ask. In one way, it is the most important question of them all. But it deserves its own essay, and maybe soon I will write it.
What does all this mean? I don't know. It will come as a shock to many of you... it did to me. At times I think that faith, whatever it is, exists independent of intellectual belief; that all these doubts, which for me are real and vital concessions to intellectual honesty, may persist for months, years, even a lifetime, while my identification with Christ still lives on some fundamental level where it cannot be shaken. This is a comforting thought... though it still leaves a lot of questions about the shape my life will take, particularly my place in various social worlds.
Other times I listen to songs, or read poems or passages from books, that I once sang and read and celebrated as containing truths, truths which were as real-- though not as tangible-- as the tree in my front yard. And I feel like I've been robbed of my most precious possession.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
on sharing
How to speak-- and to whom-- and of what? For me nearly all difficulty and all reward in human relation resolves to this: speech or silence. Was it always this way? Is this essential to who I am, or is it a state brought about by some sequence of experiences, or is it a phase I will grow out of? To be understood-- why is it still so important?
Maybe it is the search for an ally. Everything out there is so big, and so hostile, and so confusing, that I seek for one, just one, companion in my thoughts: one place where the battle and the search can cease, and I can rest. I have no such person-- probably no such person exists-- and even worse than the loneliness is the sense of being perpetually under attack.
And yet the impulse is to reach out, even with these thoughts, to present them to other eyes. What is it I want in response? What is the hope that these words fly on? Why do I permit myself such a ridiculous, overprecious phrase as "the hope these words fly on?"
It is at this point in writing, in my notebook with my fountain pen, whose current ink color is a bright pink, that I stopped to post those three poems. I wrote them three or four years ago, and there are lines and phrases in each that make me shudder. I want so badly to write well, to write elegantly, irreproachably, without cliche or evasion, convincingly, and beautifully. That there should be works of mine out there that betray the staggering weaknesses of those three poems is painful to me. I don't want those weaknesses aired.
Some of you will protest. Some of you will say, "But Ginny, I really liked those poems! I thought they were good." I know. In the genre they belong to, the genre of amateur poems which exist mainly to express to the author's own satisfaction some feeling or experience, they're not half bad. And in fact they do express, to my satisfaction, the things each of them were meant to. There are lines and stanzas in each of them that I will recite to myself, pleased. But it is my vanity, my aspiration, that says, Not enough! If I am to be a poet, I must be a great poet, an irreproachable poet, a poet without weaknesses and clumsy moments. And if I cannot do this, and I cannot, then my poems will be for myself only. If I must have weaknesses, they will be for my eyes only.
One of the beauties of learning to play go is that it shines a pitiless light on this vanity of mine. There is a beauty in good play that I crave, that I strive for, and that constantly eludes me. Instead I play sluggish, vulgar, fumbling moves; and if I ever tried to convince myself that it is not so, the final score would show me the lie. Worse yet, there is no end in sight. My teacher, who beats me four times out of five with a nine-stone handicap, loses as badly to people who lose as badly to still more people. This is well understood in the world of go; which does not make it any less painful to me. I hit a very bad wall early in my learning to play, where the gap between my aspirations and my abilities was so frustrating that it crippled me. I got over it-- I had to, or I would have had to stop playing-- but it still stings.
My teacher tells me that to improve I must play lots of games. This means lots of bad games, lots of weak and clumsy games which are still the best I can do. I have been making my peace with this. Now it is time to turn the same eye to writing. If I am to write, I must write a lot, and I must write much less brilliantly than I desire to (it is the only way I can write; so high is my vanity.) And I must, God help me, submit to criticism, as I submit to the review of one of my games.
One of the reasons this blogs sees so few posts is that I once designated it my "quality-controlled" blog. My other one, Chronicles of the Ephemeral, (which I do not want to delete, only because I'm so fond of the title) is where I post whatever thoughts or stories I feel like sharing, without worrying about whether they'll be of general interest or whether they're written well. Of course, once I put the expectation of quality on this blog, it was doomed to receive only rare updates. (Chronicles has been neglected, too, these last few months, but there are other reasons for that.) And of course the beauty of it is that Chronicles has many posts that are, in retrospect, much more interesting and witty and insightful than anything posted here. Bah.
So I am going to try and demolish the barrier between "quality-Ginny" and "regular-Ginny." It's an artificial distinction, and it causes harm in ways I'm only beginning to identify. There is only Ginny, foolish and weak and clumsy at times, but also, also, having her moments of quality. (This applies to much more than writing, by the way, but it is a good place to start.) After all, the world can absorb a few more bad poems without sustaining too much damage. If I hide my weaknesses, it is for my protection, not theirs. I think-- we will see-- I think I can do without that kind of protection.
Maybe it is the search for an ally. Everything out there is so big, and so hostile, and so confusing, that I seek for one, just one, companion in my thoughts: one place where the battle and the search can cease, and I can rest. I have no such person-- probably no such person exists-- and even worse than the loneliness is the sense of being perpetually under attack.
And yet the impulse is to reach out, even with these thoughts, to present them to other eyes. What is it I want in response? What is the hope that these words fly on? Why do I permit myself such a ridiculous, overprecious phrase as "the hope these words fly on?"
It is at this point in writing, in my notebook with my fountain pen, whose current ink color is a bright pink, that I stopped to post those three poems. I wrote them three or four years ago, and there are lines and phrases in each that make me shudder. I want so badly to write well, to write elegantly, irreproachably, without cliche or evasion, convincingly, and beautifully. That there should be works of mine out there that betray the staggering weaknesses of those three poems is painful to me. I don't want those weaknesses aired.
Some of you will protest. Some of you will say, "But Ginny, I really liked those poems! I thought they were good." I know. In the genre they belong to, the genre of amateur poems which exist mainly to express to the author's own satisfaction some feeling or experience, they're not half bad. And in fact they do express, to my satisfaction, the things each of them were meant to. There are lines and stanzas in each of them that I will recite to myself, pleased. But it is my vanity, my aspiration, that says, Not enough! If I am to be a poet, I must be a great poet, an irreproachable poet, a poet without weaknesses and clumsy moments. And if I cannot do this, and I cannot, then my poems will be for myself only. If I must have weaknesses, they will be for my eyes only.
One of the beauties of learning to play go is that it shines a pitiless light on this vanity of mine. There is a beauty in good play that I crave, that I strive for, and that constantly eludes me. Instead I play sluggish, vulgar, fumbling moves; and if I ever tried to convince myself that it is not so, the final score would show me the lie. Worse yet, there is no end in sight. My teacher, who beats me four times out of five with a nine-stone handicap, loses as badly to people who lose as badly to still more people. This is well understood in the world of go; which does not make it any less painful to me. I hit a very bad wall early in my learning to play, where the gap between my aspirations and my abilities was so frustrating that it crippled me. I got over it-- I had to, or I would have had to stop playing-- but it still stings.
My teacher tells me that to improve I must play lots of games. This means lots of bad games, lots of weak and clumsy games which are still the best I can do. I have been making my peace with this. Now it is time to turn the same eye to writing. If I am to write, I must write a lot, and I must write much less brilliantly than I desire to (it is the only way I can write; so high is my vanity.) And I must, God help me, submit to criticism, as I submit to the review of one of my games.
One of the reasons this blogs sees so few posts is that I once designated it my "quality-controlled" blog. My other one, Chronicles of the Ephemeral, (which I do not want to delete, only because I'm so fond of the title) is where I post whatever thoughts or stories I feel like sharing, without worrying about whether they'll be of general interest or whether they're written well. Of course, once I put the expectation of quality on this blog, it was doomed to receive only rare updates. (Chronicles has been neglected, too, these last few months, but there are other reasons for that.) And of course the beauty of it is that Chronicles has many posts that are, in retrospect, much more interesting and witty and insightful than anything posted here. Bah.
So I am going to try and demolish the barrier between "quality-Ginny" and "regular-Ginny." It's an artificial distinction, and it causes harm in ways I'm only beginning to identify. There is only Ginny, foolish and weak and clumsy at times, but also, also, having her moments of quality. (This applies to much more than writing, by the way, but it is a good place to start.) After all, the world can absorb a few more bad poems without sustaining too much damage. If I hide my weaknesses, it is for my protection, not theirs. I think-- we will see-- I think I can do without that kind of protection.
three poems, from a time past, presented not out of pride but of necessity
Iron Maiden
This room is like a stone
Both of us sitting here motionless
Pressing wads of silence and pride over unspoken wounds.
When I look at you, my eyes bleed.
You are careful not to look at me at all.
If I should get up
To wash my face or get a drink
It would remind us both that we are here.
Once I called you by my name
And we laughed as at a perfectly understandable mistake.
The remote is handled with perfect courtesy:
“Would you like to watch something else?”
“Oh no, go ahead.”
“Are you sure?” “I wasn’t really watching anyway.”
Your books stacked beside you
are an unassailable wall.
This room is like a stone
And the floor is lined with knives
And I shudder to pierce in you or me
Some yet unbroken piece of skin.
If I should smile
It might pull open a crack in chapped and blistered lips
And pour forth a salty rush of red that you, or I, or both, may choke on.
They say salt water heals.
I have always been afraid of the sting.
***
Freshwater
Something broke—
ice or a storm
or a black crust
fragmented and floating
carried away on a newborn river.
A gladness like white flowers
springs along the banks.
The river breathes
in and out with the tide
of quiet awakening...
That life is still possible
that the thunder cries of birth
that the ice hatches the river
that you and I can lie side by side in the dark
talking of the stars.
***
White Christmas
I. Visitation
Snow falls from another place; layered
On trees in black-white limbs, it lies like
Eternity settled over that which dies.
Cold crystallizes air, splintering breath
And piercing silence into every throat;
Changeless it spreads, forcing blued fingers stiff,
Beating pliant flesh brittle.
Freezing, sharpening, it descends, shadow of
The hard bright dagger coming to split the earth.
II. Homecoming
Homecoming was a crawl, not a march,
A bloodied drag over frozen ground,
Toward a remembrance of warmth.
But she and he were gone to warm each other,
And on Christmas morning my father exploded
Because the juice pitcher was empty.
The sun bleeds pink every morning
Or fades up in grey invisibility.
Shall I tell you of the war and waste?
The grey lands, filled with the snap of invisible bows
And sting of arrows I could not duck—
I, the only pink and pulsing thing
In all the unwoundable cold.
I carry it with me
In my hard and black toes—
Let me sleep in sight of your fire.
III. The Party
His apartment was clean and white-walled;
Her influence was plain.
The graham-cracker cookies his sister taught me to make
Were laid on the table on a green plastic plate.
In the kitchen she talked with her friends
About the dresses– navy blue,
Which would not have flattered me anyway.
Their mothers both smiled and asked about my year
And told me to say hello to my family.
I was very cold.
IV. The Death
On Christmas morning my father exploded
Because the juice pitcher was empty.
That was the end.
Nothing was left except
The struggle not to break over
The scrambled eggs hardening on my plate.
V. The Fall
Cold is born soft
Leaving the iron air to fall
With the delicacy of an eyelash,
To blacken with the spit of a tire,
To fade with the heat of a breath.
Once I dug a foxhole in a snowbank
And lay there until nightfall.
Unthinkable: the dagger which descends
To pierce the earth and freeze its core
Comes with the lightness of dandelion seed,
Softly as a breath layering the earth
With eternity;
Draping frozen rocks and bitter trenches
With grace.
This room is like a stone
Both of us sitting here motionless
Pressing wads of silence and pride over unspoken wounds.
When I look at you, my eyes bleed.
You are careful not to look at me at all.
If I should get up
To wash my face or get a drink
It would remind us both that we are here.
Once I called you by my name
And we laughed as at a perfectly understandable mistake.
The remote is handled with perfect courtesy:
“Would you like to watch something else?”
“Oh no, go ahead.”
“Are you sure?” “I wasn’t really watching anyway.”
Your books stacked beside you
are an unassailable wall.
This room is like a stone
And the floor is lined with knives
And I shudder to pierce in you or me
Some yet unbroken piece of skin.
If I should smile
It might pull open a crack in chapped and blistered lips
And pour forth a salty rush of red that you, or I, or both, may choke on.
They say salt water heals.
I have always been afraid of the sting.
***
Freshwater
Something broke—
ice or a storm
or a black crust
fragmented and floating
carried away on a newborn river.
A gladness like white flowers
springs along the banks.
The river breathes
in and out with the tide
of quiet awakening...
That life is still possible
that the thunder cries of birth
that the ice hatches the river
that you and I can lie side by side in the dark
talking of the stars.
***
White Christmas
I. Visitation
Snow falls from another place; layered
On trees in black-white limbs, it lies like
Eternity settled over that which dies.
Cold crystallizes air, splintering breath
And piercing silence into every throat;
Changeless it spreads, forcing blued fingers stiff,
Beating pliant flesh brittle.
Freezing, sharpening, it descends, shadow of
The hard bright dagger coming to split the earth.
II. Homecoming
Homecoming was a crawl, not a march,
A bloodied drag over frozen ground,
Toward a remembrance of warmth.
But she and he were gone to warm each other,
And on Christmas morning my father exploded
Because the juice pitcher was empty.
The sun bleeds pink every morning
Or fades up in grey invisibility.
Shall I tell you of the war and waste?
The grey lands, filled with the snap of invisible bows
And sting of arrows I could not duck—
I, the only pink and pulsing thing
In all the unwoundable cold.
I carry it with me
In my hard and black toes—
Let me sleep in sight of your fire.
III. The Party
His apartment was clean and white-walled;
Her influence was plain.
The graham-cracker cookies his sister taught me to make
Were laid on the table on a green plastic plate.
In the kitchen she talked with her friends
About the dresses– navy blue,
Which would not have flattered me anyway.
Their mothers both smiled and asked about my year
And told me to say hello to my family.
I was very cold.
IV. The Death
On Christmas morning my father exploded
Because the juice pitcher was empty.
That was the end.
Nothing was left except
The struggle not to break over
The scrambled eggs hardening on my plate.
V. The Fall
Cold is born soft
Leaving the iron air to fall
With the delicacy of an eyelash,
To blacken with the spit of a tire,
To fade with the heat of a breath.
Once I dug a foxhole in a snowbank
And lay there until nightfall.
Unthinkable: the dagger which descends
To pierce the earth and freeze its core
Comes with the lightness of dandelion seed,
Softly as a breath layering the earth
With eternity;
Draping frozen rocks and bitter trenches
With grace.
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