Our attempts to connect with other like-minded spirits
/Gerringong - Kiama - Shellharbour, NSW
“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?
‘No, thank you,' he will think. 'Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.’” (Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning)
“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied.” (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man)
“Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour.” (Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence)
“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago)
“Theology is the content of our prayers.” (Saint Sophrony Sakharov)
“Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.” (Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook)
“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.” (Toni Morrison, Beloved)
For the seeds of both do work within me
My belief in Christ is not dependent on my experiences with others from the community of believers, though for sure faith can be greatly encouraged by saintly souls, and it is certainly not determined by the sanctity or lack thereof of the priesthood. We let each other down and oftentimes we expect too much one from the other. Priests too, are not different to me, subject to the same foibles and temptations. I must decide which road to take when I come across a ‘Judas Iscariot’ or a ‘Saint Peter’, learning from both, for the seeds of both do work within me. Kallistos Ware, the beloved English bishop and theologian of the Eastern Orthodox Church, has summarised this perfectly for me: “There is no greater force within creation than the free will of beings endowed with self-consciousness and spiritual intellect; and so the misuse of this free will can have altogether terrifying consequences.” Remembering that for the greater part the Church is a hospital overflowing with wounded, all seeking to be healed. Ordinary people, just like myself, wanting to be loved, to be forgiven for transgressions both known and unknown. And to be given a chance to flourish and to practise some small charity before it is all over.
The benefit of the doubt is uppermost
C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves (1960) his classic contemplation on the nature of love which he divides into four categories (storge; philia; eros; agape), inspired by Aristotle's own examination in the Nicomachean Ethics on the 'friend bond' [Gk. philia], uses striking language to describe one of the foundations of friendship, vulnerability, when he writes: “Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship naked personalities.” Why do I speak of friendship so often? I mean true friendship, the kind where you know, best you can, that the other would never consciously discourage or hurt you . “A sweet friendship refreshes the soul” (Prov. 27:9). It is one of the most beautiful dances of all, where giving the ‘benefit of the doubt’ is uppermost when one steps on the other’s foot. Friedrich Schiller, in his poem “Ode to Joy” made famous by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, speaks with experience on friendship given that it was also a central idea in his aesthetics: “If you’ve mastered that great challenge: Giving friendship to a friend.” Few things in life are more hurtful than someone you considered a brother-in-arms, turns to you one day to say: “We never were true friends, anyway”. Almost as hard to walk away when you first hear it, because you refuse to believe it. But maybe they were right. A good peace and a reconciliation can come after such an agreement that this was indeed just an acquaintance after all.
Something wholly immediate to a magical poem
Our great literature, all good writing, can inspire and have an enduring effect on our spirits. Dante, Cervantes, Milton, Goethe, Jane Austen, Dumas, Hugo, Flaubert, ‘Currer Bell’ Brontë, Stendhal, Mary Shelley, Dickens, Gogol, Melville, Mark Twain, Papadiamantis, Jules Verne, Rabindranath Tagore, Proust, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Lagerlöf, Pessoa, Borges, Hesse, Mann, Lu Xun, Vesaas, James Joyce, E. M. Forster, Kazantzakis, Kahlil Gibran, J.R.R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf, Hemingway, Golding, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Beckett, White, Murdoch, Márquez, Llosa, Kundera, V.S. Naipaul, Ellison, Greene, Camus, Bellow, Asimov, Solzhenitsyn, Baldwin, Günter Grass, Saramago, Fuentes, Mahfouz, C.S. Lewis, Lessing, Achebe, George Orwell, Primo Levi, Tasos Leivaditis, Toni Morrison, Roth, Kenzaburō Ōe, Farah, McCarthy, Wole Soyinka, Atwood, J.M. Coetzee, Alice Walker, Astley, Malouf, Octavia E. Butler, Calvino, Vonnegut, McCourt, Assia Djebar, Momo Kapor, Raymond Carver, Annie Ernaux, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Murakami, Grenville, Banville, Eribon, Ishiguro, Ama Ata Aidoo, Handke, Marilynne Robinson, Salman Rushdie, Karen Tei Yamashita, Vikram Seth, Arundhati Roy, Shin Kyung-sook, Yu Hua, Sorokin, Yan Lianke, Franzen, Winton, Kim Scott, Fosse, Yann Martel, Vodolazkin, Zafón, Olga Tokarczuk, Khaled Hosseini, Anita Heiss, Madeleine Thien, Ahmed Saadawi, Yanagihara, Zadie Smith, Thirlwell, Prosser... where to begin and where to end with this breathtaking unrolling of the glow. And this without even mentioning the twin colossi of Homer and Shakespeare. Yet, there is something wholly immediate to a magical poem that can reach our inner core in ways few other things can. Is there a more effective example than Aram Saroyan’s famously or infamously minimalistic [typo intended] single word: “lighght”. “Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration”, said Percy Bysshe Shelley in his essay A Defence of Poetry (1821). Compare, for instance, Les Misérables with Cavafy’s Ithaka, or The Brothers Karamazov to Eliot’s Four Quartets. The former rightly take time to be ingested, to get into the skin and minds, as well you can, of the characters and worlds which the words inhabit, but the latter, the poetry, can provide quick respite during moments of need, similarly to a verse from Scripture or like one of our favourite songs. Even if some poems are only good for their ambiguity or their ability to surprise, then that would be enough [1]. Matthew Arnold the 19th century English poet and essayist got it right when he wrote: “Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.”
“It has been rediscovered./ What? -Eternity./ It’s the sea fused/ With the sun.” Arthur Rimbaud (Eternity)
“Whoever you are, go out into the evening,/ leaving your room, of which you know every bit;/ your house is the last before the infinite,/ whoever you are.” Rainer Maria Rilke (Initiation)
“As you set out for Ithaka/ hope the voyage is a long one/ full of adventure, full of discovery./ Laistrygonians and Cyclops/ angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:/ you’ll never find things like that on your way/ as long as you keep your thoughts raised high/ as long as a rare excitement/ stirs your spirit and your body.” Constantine Cavafy (Ithaka)
“Beyond time or place I keep the faith./ Follow a path or follow no path,/ never fearing the night, the wind,/ call to me, come to me, now at the end,/ walk with me, life of my life, my friend.” Gabriela Mistral (The Song You Loved)
“Footfalls echo in the memory/ Down the passage which we did not take/ Towards the door we never opened/ Into the rose-garden. My words echo/ Thus, in your mind.” T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, 11-15)
“Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Old age should burn and rave at close of day;/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Dylan Thomas (Do not go gentle into that good night)
"Oh open, apostolic height!/ And tell my humbug how to start/ Bird balance, bleach: make miniature/ Valhalla of my heart.” Gwendolyn Brooks (A Light and Diplomatic Bird)
“Things were invisible and visible/ While what was hidden trembled into sight — /Or was it that I shivered in the cold?” Kevin Hart (A Kindness)
Our attempts to connect with other like-minded spirits
Ultimately, “Art” is created from the ‘mud’ and to the ‘mud’ it will return, irrespective of whether we are realists (beauty is a real property) or anti-realists (beauty is in the eye of the beholder) when we respond to the age-long question: “What is Art?” The American abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell who was also trained in philosophy, said something on art which was not only extremely profound but also very confronting: “It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception.” Mandalas made of a circle enclosing a square, one of the distinguishing features of Tibetan Buddhist art, is to aid the focus through meditation to follow the path to the central image of the Buddha. Byzantine art with its focus on iconography and Islamic art with its emphasis on patterns and balance, all point to similar conclusions as Motherwell’s discerning observation. This realisation helps put things into their proper perspective and allows for the light to cast its burn into the essential everyday dimensions of our existence. In the end, all art is ephemeral, like sculptures made from sand or blocks of ice. If you have a moment do reflect on Shelley’s sonnet, Ozymandias, this magnificent meditation on the fragility of even the most impressive of our monuments: “Look on my Works, ye Mighty and despair!” When, however, there is an acknowledgement of our artistic expression, whether great or small, that in some way we helped to make another’s day brighter and revealed something new, it is to be welcomed. It goes some way to justifying our efforts of trying to bring a little order to the ‘chaos’ and recognises our attempts to connect with other like-minded spirits. It was Simone Weil, the French mystic, philosopher and political activist, who memorably said: “Everything beautiful has a mark of eternity.”
They were normal people just like us
We often think of saints as those whose icons we see in church or whose pictures we might find in books, but before we gave them that extraordinary distinction, they were normal people just like us, and from every walk of life… fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, orphans, cooks, cobblers, soldiers, doctors, farmers, artists, clergy and lay, yes, kings and slaves. There is something uniquely powerful about sanctity. It cares nothing for status or gain, does not look unto itself, but the more ego empties of itself, [‘self-centeredness’], the more love is expelled, the greater and more enduring the acts of charity. And this is the place of miracles and wonders. Here is the unfathomable mystery of the ‘kenosis’ [the emptying] of the Godman of His divine glory in putting on flesh (Phil. 2:7). All forms of social activism, however worthy and necessary, when they are compelled by ego and not fuelled by compassionate love, will eventually die out, or worse still, cause great devastation. The inspired words of Saint Francis of Assisi would seem appropriate here: “Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.”
The true value and meaningfulness of life
The true value and meaningfulness of life strikes us at the heart when we are at our most vulnerable. When both the light and the darkness, as they come and go, are at their most intense levels. When we are seriously ill, or when we grieve for the loss of a loved one, when we are robbed of our most prized possessions, when huge obstacles which seem insurmountable, are put in the way of our dreams and hopes. The celebrated Roman poet Ovid, writes in the Amores: “Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.” We somehow become more enlivened when tested [as if ‘tried’ in a pot to separate the good metals from the bad], more sensitive to all of those things around us which we might have previously dismissed or merely given a cursory glance. Consider the heartrending beauty of the African-American spiritual and the unmatchable profundity of the survival literature which came out of the Holocaust. If we are people of faith, we understand in some tangible way, the words of the psalmist: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Ps. 23:4). Even if we do not belong to a community of believers, still we share in the mystery of endurance and of that unidentifiable love from some deep place within, which beckons us forward like a magnet pulls on steel.
Beethoven was already profoundly deaf
Amazingly, Beethoven was already profoundly deaf when he wrote the final movement to his celebrated Ninth Symphony which served as we have noted above, the musical setting for Friedrich Schiller's An die Freude. It is said that the famous composer could not hear the wild applause when the symphony premiered in Vienna on May 7th, 1824. It is considered by most critics to be Beethoven’s greatest composition. How is it possible, we might ask, when the man was deaf? Ironically, too, when we think on the poem’s title, that a suffering soul, for that he was at the time, could put down such gloried music to push our hearts to the highest of raptures. Of course, only he could tell what it was that exactly drove him, the source behind his unrelenting passion, the desire to create. Except to say that outside his perfect pitch [and this despite his tinnitus], it was the innate need ‘to be’, to keep ‘the flicker’ in the heart burning placed there when the stars were made. Incredibly, as Beethoven’s hearing became worse, not few critics argued that his music became more and more bizarre. Self-belief and endurance make for the best allies, particularly if we can keep the ‘naysayers’ out.
The delightful joy of gardening
Source: @gabrielj_photography - Unsplash - https://unsplash.com/photos/jin4W1HqgL4
I have discovered later in life the delightful joy of gardening. “If you have a garden in your library, everything will be complete”, wrote the famed Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero in a letter to his friend [though some might say his ‘frenemy’] and fellow scholar, Varro. And just like great libraries, the library of Alexandria for instance, there were also the great gardens in the ancient world, the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. There are many lessons to be learnt from gardening, perhaps more correct to say, there are many truths which are reinforced. A great deal of it comes down to the importance of planting, weeding, and watering. What you plant [and where, of course] will determine your fruits. If you do not weed regularly, these seeds you have painstakingly cultivated will be overrun by all manner of weeds and eventually will be destroyed. And, of course, without water, the source of life, the garden will soon wither and many of its plants die. Not surprisingly then, that Christ’s Parable of the Sower, the allegory of the Kingdom of God (Mk. 4:1-20), strikes at me often when I’m gardening. Simple things, I understand this, yet they point to the greater realities and good disciplines of life.
P.S.
“Silence is death, and you, if you talk, you die, and if you remain silent, you die. So, speak out and die.” (T.D.)
An afterthought after having revisited the story of the slain Algerian novelist and journalist, Tahar Djaout (1954-1993).[2] Where are our watchdog journalists today? The fourth estate is dying a slow and public death. Let us remember the many brave ones, like Tahar, that we might encourage and inspire a new breed of heroes which I dare to call ‘neo-martyrs’ . Please visit Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and spare a thought and a prayer [if you are so inclined].[3] CPJ has been called the ‘Red Cross of Journalism’.[4]
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/what-is-a-poem/281835/
[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-tahar-djaout-1490353.html
[3]https://cpj.org/data/killed/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&start_year=1992&end_year=2021&group_by=year