430 pp. paper $34.95
Archimandrite Zacharias, spiritual child of Elder Sophrony (a student of Saint Silouan the Athonite) writes fluently, and with astonishing precision, to the struggle of the spiritual life:
"Hope against hope," then, is the very definition of that faith by which insurmountable obstacles are overcome. It gathers all our thoughts and all the powers of our heart into one single point, into one purpose...So do we resolve to struggle, with God's help, to overcome every difficulty even unto death. And overcome we must, for our salvation depends on it. At this point man's heart becomes like a tight knot in which his whole being is concentrated, and he hangs everything on the mercy of God.
Remember Thy First Love contains an abundance of such passages—solemn and grace-filled, without a trace of judgment. Archimandrite Zacharias lays out the life of faith as taught by Elder Sophrony, assembling his book to correspond to three different manifestations of faith. The first (relatively brief) stage is marked by "the personal covenant we make with God when the first grace dawns." It is "full of joy, full of divine consolation, full of the vision of God."
The second is characterized by great struggle, through which one must "hope against hope." This period of faith deservedly receives the most emphasis. Like Elder Sophrony before him, Archimandrite Zacharias sees "a great need for the correct understanding of it and a right frame of mind." The great temptation here is to draw back, to withdraw from the struggle—"to give way to slothfulness and pride, to enter upon a lax way of life, to slacken in spiritual courage." But even this warning is followed by loving encouragement: "The path of faith...is the path of dynamic increase in our life in God, leading as it does from faith to faith."
Archimandrite Zacharias notes that when Elder Sophrony elaborated on this second faith, "his concern was the question of how this 'death', this state of spiritual dryness, can be changed into the incorruptible life of God." Years of hardship and affliction teaches the soul humility, leading her to the permanent reacquisition of grace. Through the fidelity of the heart, man convinces God that he desires to belong to Him alone.
Echoing the teaching of Elder Sophrony, Archimandrite Zacharias consistently returns to the idea of personhood as the soul's ultimate destination. As Father Sophrony expresses it, the one who has attained to personhood perceives "the mystery of the ways of salvation for each particular person." Not only has the soul been made perfect in her own particular and unique way, she has also gained invaluable insight into the lives of others and is able to help them navigate their own spiritual journeys.
But no matter which stage the soul travels, humility is the animating force by which we progress, step by step. "Humility attracts the energy of God's grace," write Archimandrite Zacharias, "and as it accumulates, the image of Christ is traced in the heart...he begins to see, with increasing clarity, Who the Lord Jesus is, what kind of Being He is, how wonderful a God He is. So wide and deep is the enlargement of man's heart…"
Not much to be added there, except you may enjoy this stop-motion video of a Toronto bookshop that seems to understand The Joy of Books as we do. There's an art to books; and truth be told, certain books are beautiful, in and of themselves. The consonance of a book's content and design deserve a little celebration. At the very least, a moment of appreciation.
If you missed the previous links, click HERE to see that art in motion.
A miscellany of sorts that synthesizes a particular life of writing (Barkat's own), Rumors of Water is unconcerned with systems or procedure. "This is the secret of the prolific writer," Barkat posits, "to agree to use small beans and the ingredients at hand. To cultivate out of potlucks and basement-bargains" (an allusion to the overstock in her own cellar). William Stafford was known for this kind of receptivity and productivity. As he put it, "To get started I will accept anything that occurs to me. Something always occurs, of course, to any of us. We can't keep from thinking" (from "A Way of Writing").
An instinctual poet, Barkat revels in the physical reality of words. She lists them and follows them--"two girls clutching peonies, with the taste of the reddest strawberries they ever saw still on their tongues...a teapot tree with cobalt, crimson, and copper kettles hanging from it. Some of the pots hold dirt and star-leaved nasturtiums...Jemima's oversized duck eggs in a cooler...worn wooden planks; porcelain; kale; greens with pink rose petals, purple clover and marigolds; sugar snap peas I forget to buy because thoughts of Jemima distract me."
The "two girls" are Barkat's daughters, and they fuel the book's impetus. She riffs on their interactions and takes inspiration from their creativity. She follows them in the same way she follows words, and their voices point her to the questions she's most interested in asking. Those questions become topics, and the book is roughly divided into seven sections: Momentum, Voice, Habits, Structure, Publishing, Glitches, and Time.
A small press publisher and managing editor of The High Calling, Barkat offers concrete and sensible counsel for anyone who wants to write better--trim, mix it up, rearrange, simplify, delete. She writes about audience and networking; she isn't hesitant to discuss delusions of grandeur and attends to the subject of rejection by attending first to the subject of community. Seldom is the craft separated from the art. For Barkat, writing is a way of living, and Rumors of Water is an authentic and worthwhile addition to the If You Want to Write genre.
Atheist humanism, as de Lubac concedes to name it for practical purposes, has three principal aspects typified by Auguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach (with his disciple, Karl Marx), and Friedrich Nietzsche. Their common foundation, he writes, is the rejection of God and "the annihilation of the human person." What was once man's highest glory, the fundamental mystery of God-made-man, became a tyranny. In de Lubac's words, "That same God in whom man had learned to see the seal of his own greatness began to seem to him like an antagonist, the enemy of his dignity." He does not speculate on the distortions and infidelities that altered man's understanding of God and himself, choosing rather to follow the particular ways in which Comte, Feuerbach and Nietzsche propagated their own systems, drawing from and refining the work of those who came before them.
On these three he is very particular, and over half the book discusses the thought behind and connections between each man's particular design. Feuerbach and Nietzsche he names protagonists of the drama. Comte's positivism he classifies as ally to the Nietzchean and Marxist currents. "Like them," de Lubac comments, "it [positivism] is one of the ways in which modern man seeks to escape from any kind of transcendency and to shake off the thing it regards as an unbearable yoke—namely, faith in God." Comparing Nietzche with Soren Kierkegaard, de Lubac conducts an engaging discussion regarding myth and mystery. Like he does throughout the entirety of the book, de Lubac evenhandedly represents both figures and their ideas while steadily reinforcing his own theme: "Mystery is not a rational system; faith is not a 'starting point for thought'; belief is not speculative; the real individual is face to face with a real God: that is the quite simple truth that Kierkegaard is never weary of repeating, turning it this way and that."
In the second half of The Drama of Atheist Humanism, de Lubac makes a dramatic turn. "The sun did not cease to rise!" he proclaims. "Marx was not yet dead, and Nietzsche had not yet written his most searing books, when another man, another disturbing but more truly prophetic genius, announced the victory of God in the human soul, and his eternal resurrection." Fyodor Dostoevsky may have "originated no system...supplied no solution for the terrible problems with which our age is confronted in its efforts to organize social life," but (as de Lubac provocatively claims) he did "foreshadow a new state of humanity."
Unlike Comte, Feuerbach and Nietzsche, Dostoevsky does not ultimately abandon God in favor of man. Though his heroes observe that "there is nothing more foolish than this eternal conversation" (Brothers Karamazov), they continually go back to it. "What torments these beings," writes Dostoevsky biographer Henri Troyat, "is not illness or fear of tomorrow: it is God. Their author obligingly relieves them of petty everyday worries in order to leave them, naked, face to face with Mystery. Their active life corresponds to our underlying life." Where Nietzsche and the rest finally submitted to the "impatience of limitations" (to quote Catholic writer and critic Stanislas Fumet), Dostoevsky "has given us so much hope that one day we may be freed from them."
If you're not familiar with Mars Hill Audio, here's a little background. Started in 1993 by Ken Myers---a seasoned radio journalist and former arts and humanities editor for NPR's Morning Edition---Mars Hill Audio grew out of an editorial project Myers worked on with Richard John Neuhaus and Charles Colson. Their mission is to provide "incisive commentary on our culture’s present state and formative past," primarily through their audio magazine, The Mars Hill Audio Journal.
While the Mars Hill Audio audience is primarily Christian, the mission of MHA to provide incisive Christian commentary takes into account the breadth of cultural experience and inquiry; not all of the program guests are Christian individuals. That said, Mars Hill Audio considers "the mandate for the task of cultural understanding and interaction" to be found "in historic Christian doctrine." We at Eighth Day believe that the growth and circulation of the Journal is an "opportunity to shape the public conversation in the Church and society."
As an introduction of good things to come, the following list (and links to books on our website) includes guests featured in Issue 110. We'll keep you posted on the arrival of Issue 111. Check here and on our website in coming weeks. Happy browsing!
Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life and Impact of G.K. Chesterton
Kevin Belmonte, on how G. K. Chesterton embraced a "defiant joy" in spite of the cynical pessimism of many of his contemporaries.
Christianity and Literature:
Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind
The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue
Herman Dooyeweerd:
Jonathan Chaplin on the outlines and sources of the social and political thought of Herman Dooyeweerd and on his understanding of the relationship between theology and Christian philosophy.
Also of note:
G. K. Chesterton: A Biography by Ian Ker
Chesterton: The Nightmare Goodness of God by Ralph Wood
Started as a collaborative writing experiment between friends and fellow poets, T.S. Poetry gathers writers, forming an online community and hosting Twitter writing parties toward the cooperative creation of new work. In that same vein, they own and have a hand in running the award-winning T.S. Poetry Press. They also publish Every Day Poems.
Subscription is easy (and cheap). You receive a poem a day in your inbox five days a week. You also get updates on writing projects, announcements about Twitter writing parties, resources for poetry teachers and writer's groups, and maybe most importantly, "a way to read and write together with a growing community of committed yet fun-loving poets."
Click on the poem titles below for a few delivery samples, and check out the Tweetspeak blog. It includes poetry reviews, short essays on the craft, and published collaborative poems.
The Way in Which
Driftwood
Every Morning
Read a poem a day, become a better writer.
Considering as a whole her dark humor, droll (if heavy-handed) character portrayals, use of the grotesque, and penchant toward themes of redemption (or is that heresy?) and grace, Flannery O'Connor can be downright mystifying. O'Connor called Wise Blood "comic," noting that "all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death." Wise Blood is certainly that, though portions of it border on the surreal and absurd. In her note to the second edition she comments, "The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that way." At a tight 248 pages, the book is cinematic and is best read at a fair clip to appreciate its visual effect. It has a feeling of the disparate about it, which may be a result of O'Connor's assembling and reworking it from her thesis, "The Train," and three of her short stories: "The Peeler," "The Heart of the Park," and "Enoch and the Gorilla." But it works. Like any enduring piece of literature, the narrowest of margins keeps Wise Blood on a compelling (if sometimes rickety) track.
The novel centers on Hazel Motes, maybe the most unreligious religious soul in all of fiction. Recently returned from war, he finds his home and hometown deserted and sets out for the city. Grandson of a preacher, he is determined not to be one, though every choice he makes and person he encounters brings him back 'round to it. He comes across the blind preacher, Asa Hawks, and his daughter Sabbath Lily early on, prompting him to proselytize for a church of his own making (The Church Without Christ). He meets the young Enoch Emory, a park guard and zookeeper of sorts, who begs for Hazel's friendship but is sadly met with revulsion wherever he goes. Enoch claims to have "wise blood" that tells him what to do, though his choices seem fueled by little more than animal instinct―a compulsion to which Enoch ultimately hands himself over.
Motes alternates between preaching from the hood of his "rat colored car" at night and driving fast and far from the city by day. He escapes nothing, least of all himself. O'Connor's use of the violent, while expected, nevertheless surprises. The violence Motes inflicts upon himself as a result of the violence he inflicts upon others is a study of a soul preoccupied with the truth. By all appearances, his is a lost soul; but for all his denial of redemption, Hazel is the only character to encounter it―in the form of a "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind." Whether or not he undergoes redemption is uncertain. "Does one's integrity lie in what he is not able to do?" asks O'Connor in her preface. "I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom...is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen."
Do we choose our desires? To put a finer point on it, from where, or whom, do we borrow the desires we claim as our own? The French literary critic, historian and philosopher René Girard suggests—drawing upon a long line of mimetic theory including Plato, Aristotle, Coleridge, Freud, and Auerbach—that we do not experience desire spontaneously. We imitate and borrow, more often unconsciously than not. Girard terms this phenomenon the "triangular desire." Between the subject (doing the desiring) and the object (of that desire) is a mediator "radiating toward both the subject and the object." The purpose and limitations of this geometry, write Girard, always "allude to the mystery, transparent yet opaque, of human relations."
His analysis of the novel as a form encompasses far more than literary criticism, rendering an incisive critique of individualism and penetrating the processes of human being. Girard tracks his thesis through the work of several great novelists whose work lies on a mimetic continuum of sorts, comparing the heroes of Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert, Proust and Dostoevsky. Each embodies their own spin on the idea of triangular desire. Don Quixote's Amadis is imaginary, though the effect of his mediation is not. In Flaubert's Madame Bovary, the mediator is a flesh and blood rival—acting as both model and obstacle. Dostoevsky, "by a stroke of genius places the mediator in the foreground and relegates the object to the background."
Girard is fundamentally concerned with the idea of Choice, which "always involves choosing a model...true freedom lies in the basic choice between a human or a divine model." Quoting Louis Ferrero, he asserts that "passion is the change of address of a force awakened by Christianity and oriented toward God." All "novelistic works of genius" (Girard) express this truth; the great writers intuitively and concretely embody their characters through the struggle with this central conflict. Girard likewise embodies his critical thought, knitting together his theory with the characters from these works and living up to his own high standards of literary criticism:
"The value of a critical thought depends not on how cleverly it manages to disguise its own systematic nature or on how many fundamental issues it manages to shirk or to dissolve but on how much literary substance it really embraces, comprehends, and makes articulate."
The majority of Russell Kirk's writing involves a working toward "the old truths," as he calls them. His tack begins with diagnosis, stating that "a recovery of norms can be commenced only when we moderns come to understand in what manner we have fallen away."
In Enemies of the Permanent Things, Kirk focuses on literature and politics, laying his cornerstone on Burke's statement that "Art is man's nature." It follows that "the art of the man of letters, and the art of the statist, determine in large part whether we become normal human beings, or are perverted into abnormal creatures."
The modern temper, he maintains, is inclined toward "the abnormal, the enormous, the monstrous—often disguised in the garments of humanitarianism, amusing innovation, or delusive security." The recovery and/or maintenance of normality, then, is the goal of human striving, and Kirk recognizes three means of normative perception: divine revelation, custom or common sense, and the insights of the seer.
Kirk doesn't really address divine revelation in Enemies of the Permanent Things, stating its relative scarcity. He loosely allies custom and common sense with the beginnings of civil social order (and its transformation into modern politics) and the seer with "the prophets and poets and philosophers of the Great Tradition." The bulk of the book is an exploration of the struggle between the normal and the abnormal in twentieth-century letters and politics.
Published in 1969, Enemies is a product, in part, of a wrestling with Soviet communism and its effect on the world at large. But twenty-first century civilization would do well to revisit Kirk's assessments, which include careful readings of Lionel Trilling, T.S. Eliot, Ilya Ehrenberg, Max Picard, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Karl Marx, John Locke, Woodrow Wilson, Edmund Burke, Anthony Trollope, and Eric Voegelin. Kirk's ultimate concern is a restoration of transcendence in both literature and politics, with the understanding that "prescription and tradition cannot stand forever if the living do not sustain them by vigorous application and prudent reform."
March 29-31: Newman Literary Festival---Wichita, KS
(featuring Scott Cairns, Bryan Dietrich and Clare Vanderpool)
April 16-19: National Workshop on Christian Unity---Oklahoma City, OK
April 19-21: Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing
May 31-June 2: C.S. Lewis and Friends Colloquium at Taylor University
---Upland, IN
June 6-9: Diocese of Wichita and Mid-America Parish Life Conference
June 10-17: Glen East Workshop---Mt Holyoke, MA
July 18-21: Circe Institute Conference---Louisville, KY
(featuring Wendell Berry)
July 29-August 5: Glen West Workshop---Santa Fe, NM
Partakers of the Divine Nature is an uncommon anthology. Born from an academic conference exploring the topic of theosis/deification at Drew University, it is a collection of essays by writers representing the perspectives of both East and West, "across cultures and historical periods within the Christian tradition" (from the Introduction). From its early Greek origins to more modern constructions, the idea of theosis and its "compelling vision of human potential for transformation and spiritual perfectibility" (again, from the Introduction) has been increasingly explored in academic circles and simultaneously tarnished by deviations imposed upon it by the New Age movement. The editors of Partakers seek a restoration of sorts. This volume includes never-before-published essays by scholars on the concept of deification in the New Testament, as well as in ancient Greek, Syriac, and Copto-Arabic cultures. The authors parse its development in patristic, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions as they consider the works of Athanasius, Ephrem the Syrian, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Maximus the Confessor, Gregory Palamas, St. Anselm, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley, Sergius Bulgakov, and Karl Rahner. The contributors list is just as impressive: Andrew Louth, Stephen Finlan, J.A. McGuckin, Vladimir Kharlamov, Stephen J. Davis, J. Todd Billings, Boris Jakim, and Francis J. Caponi (among others). Also included is an extensive bibliography of works on theosis with nearly 300 entries. In the words of one reviewer, Partakers of the Divine Nature is "a broad and reliable collection that...provides a sense of what is at stake."
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Classified as one of Waugh's "early works," A Handful of Dust is considered by many to be one of his best. Written shortly after Waugh's conversion to Catholicism in 1930, the story follows the breakdown of a marriage while satirizing the absurdities of upper-crust English society. Waugh borrows his title (Waugh is quite fond of borrowing, especially from his experiences but also from his own published work) from Eliot's Wasteland―a not-so-subtle indication of the rather dark terrain he means to travel:
I will show you something different from eitherMuch has been made of the autobiographical nature of A Handful of Dust. Waugh wrote it in a relatively short time directly following the dissolution of his first marriage to Evelyn Gardner—a painful, nasty affair, that permanently and demonstrably impacted the whole of Waugh's fiction. Whatever Waugh's motivation (or cathartic need) might have been, the novel is darkly funny and sometimes hysterical, balancing out the essentially tragic milieu it reveals.
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
The story revolves around Tony and Brenda Last, a mismatched couple who move between their Gothic manor house and London's high society. Tony spends his time tending to his ancestral home, Hetton Abbey, while Brenda embarks on an affair with an impoverished social climber (John Beaver) and takes a flat in London to escape her own boredom. Their young son, John Andrew, is exceptionally drawn. His curiosity, childish honesty and comic impertinences are a much needed foil to Brenda's small-minded betrayals and Tony's inability to recognize them.
Waugh is an instinctive writer with excellent pitch. He uses reticence to great effect (especially when revealing to the reader that Brenda is going to have an affair with Beaver) but stumbles a bit when he resorts to telling rather than showing, resulting in brief inconsistencies of character and plot. At first he seems to want us to like Brenda; she is sweet and loving toward Tony. The ease and shamelessness with which she enters into and perpetuates her adultery seem improbable. But when tragedy strikes, Waugh's cinematic approach strikes the right balance of understatement and horror.
Much has been made of the strange direction the novel takes after Tony refuses Brenda a divorce. Waugh seems to have wanted him to come to a terrible end. He accomplishes this by inserting a previously published short story that sends Tony to the Brazilian jungle in search of a hidden city. The exchange of urban savagery for a savage landscape is thought-provoking, if somewhat erratic, but the shift provides a welcome departure.
Whatever inconsistencies Waugh falls prey to, his strength lies in his capacity to inhabit a place without illusion. His view may be dark, but the darkness has a clarifying quality. In the words of Hebrews 13:14, "for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come" (RSV).
[Note: Due to a dispute over publication rights, Waugh wrote an alternate ending for the initial American edition of A Handful of Dust, which is not included here but is available to order. Just ask for The Everyman's Library edition.]
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149 pp. cloth $34.95
Book One―presented here for the first time in English―endures as a complete work in itself and contains a preface by Rufinus, a summary of Origen's teaching based on one of Origen's most disputed works, On First Principles, and a list of charges against Origen with accompanying rebuttals based on Origen's other writings. Pamphilus begins by stating that Origen's accusers overlook his deep humility and fear of God, adding that Origen did not claim to speak definitively and was, in fact, at a loss concerning many of his subjects. Pamphilus simply asks that Origen be assessed with charity and fairness. He also points out Origen's own hostile stance toward heretics and the anti-heretical nature of Origen's theology, based in the Trinitarian structure of his thought.
The second part of Pamphilus' Apology tackles specific accusations raised against Origen's doctrine, including: 1) Origen's statement that the Son of God was not born; 2) his belief that the Son of God came into existence as an emission; 3) his view that Christ is a mere man; 4) that (in conflict with the preceding statement) Christ's actions were allegorical rather than historical; 5) Origen's proclamation of two Christs; 6) his denial of the literal historical narratives concerning the deeds of the saints in Holy Scripture; 7) his denial that penalties will be inflicted upon sinners at the resurrection; 8) his erroneous understanding of the origin of souls; and 9) his teaching of metensomatosis, the transmigration of human souls after death into animals.
Rufinus' accompanying letter On the Falsification of the Books of Origen may, in the words of Francis Xavier Murphy, suffer from Rufinus' "intense respect of the man's [Origen] genius" and is "certainly exaggerated in claiming that all the contradictions to be met with in Origen's works were due to interpolations," but it is also invaluable for Rufinus' discussion of literary frauds and forgeries carried out by heretics and the effect these had on a number of writers throughout this period.
Sacrament, Sacramental, and the Sacred in Her Fiction
Maybe the most interesting aspect of Flannery O'Connor's legacy is the way she came to resemble the rural evangelists she so often brought to life in her fiction, rather than the priests of her native Catholicism. "With Wise Blood she climbed into the pulpit as a pious young handmaiden," writes Jon Peede in the introduction, "and left it twelve years later as an immutable voice through which a creator God powerfully spoke." O'Connor made no secret of the fact that she wrote as a Roman Catholic, from a Roman Catholic worldview. To quote Jon Parrish Peede again, "her supporters not only believed her, but they helped to spread the gospel." The same could be said of her dissenters. O'Connor isn't known for subtlety, and readers tend to fall into one of two categories―the lovers and the haters.
This collection of essays is noteworthy for its inclusion of both voices. The dissenters―namely Joanne Halleran McMullen and Timothy Caron―find themselves at odds with O'Connor's own interpretations as well as the majority of existing scholarship concerning her, namely, the work of W.A. Sessions, John Desmond, Jill Baumgaertner, Ralph Wood and John May (all included here), who share an affinity with O'Connor's own views of her work. Also included are Helen Andretta, Stephen Behrendt and Robert Donahoo, whose theological, philosophical and cultural interests exist outside the believer/skeptic dichotomy.
The diversity of O'Connor scholarship being undertaken today speaks to a shift in O'Connor studies across the board; the scholars who knew her personally continue to decline "in number and canonical authority" (Peede) even as those approaching her as a field of study continues to grow. The editors of Inside the Church of Flannery O'Connor have arranged the essays to form a kind of dialogue among and between them. Work that explores the influence of John Henry Newman and Thomas Aquinas as well as "the rapid demystification of the Eucharist" are followed by more cultural takes on her work, including a discussion of Catholic womanhood, the influence of cartoon catechisms (popular during O'Connor's youth), and a comparison of O'Connor and William Blake, especially in terms of apocalyptic language and thematic preoccupations.
Timothy Baron takes exception with the True Believers (his term), arguing that O'Connor's fiction is plagued by "theological whiteness"―that is to say, she is preoccupied with the spiritual lives of white characters. Joanne Halleran McMullen also presents a contrarian view, arguing that O'Connor's representation of baptism in "The River" does not conform to Church doctrine. Ralph Wood's interpretation of that same story directly follows Ms. McMullen's, celebrating the lead character's escape from nihilism to "temporal and eternal salvation." The final essay continues in this vein, exploring the difference between a Catholic writer and a writer of Catholic fiction.
In O'Connor's words, "The Catholic novel can't be categorized by subject matter, but only by what it assumes about human and divine reality. It cannot see man as determined; it cannot see him as totally depraved. It will see him as incomplete in himself, as prone to evil, but as redeemable when his own efforts are assisted by grace...so that a door is always open to possibility and the unexpected in the human soul" (Mystery and Manners).
(2012-04-12)
[Over the next few days, we'll be featuring three books by the religious thinker Nicolas Berdyaev, beginning with the following short bio:]
As legend has it, Nicolas Berdyaev once talked his way out of arrest by outlining to his Communist interrogators the moral and religious principles by virtue of which he did not adhere to their party politics. In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "Now there is a man who had a point of view!" Born in 1874, religious and political philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev lived in the midst of Russia's most tumultuous century, falling in and out of favor with the revolutionaries and their ideologies. A practicing member of the Russian Orthodox Church for the entirety of his life, Berdyaev was a proponent of Orthodox thought, which he believed "did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos" (from "The Truth of Orthodoxy"), though he was often critical of the Church as an institution. Eventually exiled by the Bolshevik government and sent to Germany on the so-called philosophers' ship (along with some 160 other writers, scholars and intellectuals no longer sympathetic to the Bolshevik/Communist cause), Berdyaev eventually made his way to Paris after a time in Berlin, where he founded an academy of philosophy and religion. He brought his academy with him to France and wrote fifteen books in the last twenty-five years of his life, including most of his important works.
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Freedom and the Spirit by Nicolas Berdyaev
translated by Oliver Fielding Clark; foreword by Boris Jakim
370 pp. paper $26.95
Berdyaev calls himself a "Christian theosophist, in the sense in which Clement of Alexandria, Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa...and Vladimir Solovyov were Christian theosophists. All the forces of my spirit and of my mental and moral consciousness are bent towards the complete understanding of the problems which press so hard upon me. But my object is not so much to give them a systematic answer, as to put them more forcibly before the Christian conscience." To that end, Freedom and the Spirit is bound up with the problem of the spirit and its relationship with matter, myth, revelation, faith, redemption, evil, mysticism, spiritual development, eschatology, the Church and the world. While Berdyaev is obviously a philosopher, his writing is straightforward—fathomable but not undemanding. His philosophy is set on the attainment of authentic life, which for him means the replacement of the kingdom of this world with the kingdom of God. We are all capable of this creative act, Berdyaev claims, because divine creativity constitutes our true nature. To quote Boris Jakim in his appended overview of Berdyaev's life and works, "Our mission is to be collaborators with God in His continuing creation of the world."
The Meaning of the Creative Act by Nicolas Berdyaev
The Meaning of the Creative Act is the foundational embodiment of Nicolas Berdyaev's philosophical convictions. Completed in 1914 (and significantly influenced by the revolution of its time), it reveals the philosopher at his most optimistic. "To-day I am inclined to greater pessimism," he writes in his 1926 preface to the German edition. "But now as then, I still believe that God calls men to creative activity and to a creative answer to His love." Berdyaev is often provocative, innovative even, in his thought. Discussing the antagonism between the saint and the artist, he writes, "The geniuses have created, but they were less: the saints have been, but they created little...A twofold tragedy of creativeness reveals the truth that there has not yet been in our world a religious epoch of creativity." In the new creative epoch Berdyaev calls us to (and sees just over the horizon), creativity will bring about a new life and a new world—"man's perfection and the perfection of what he creates will become one." His thoughts tumble one upon another, ranging through philosophy, redemption, freedom, asceticism, sex, marriage, family, beauty, art, ethics, mysticism and culture, amassing a suggestive and rich—if not always comprehensible—trove of ideas. Berdyaev's later books hone the tripping quality of his thought to solid, graspable theory, but The Meaning of the Creative Act stands as his brightest and sharpest critique of culture and his most impassioned call for "a Christian renaissance" through which man becomes "a free participant in the divine process."
The Destiny of Man by Nicolas Berdyaev;
318 pp. paper $26.95
Nicolas Berdyaev's "new ethics" encompasses not only knowledge of good and evil but also of the tragic, which, in his words, "is constantly present in moral experience and complicates all our moral judgments." It is an ethics that emphasizes the personality, an ethics that arises in freedom and strives for compassion. Consistent with the whole of Berdyaev's work, creativity not only animates but interprets moral life, bearing witness to man's vocation as collaborator with God in the work of instituting goodness in the world. True creativity, he maintains, is not concerned with the new but with the eternal. "Eternity is attained in the actual moment, it comes in the present," he writes. "Eternity is not a cessation of moment and of creative life; it is creative life of a different order...it is a mystery play of the spirit which embraces the whole tragedy of cosmic life." In essence, Berdyaev's is an ethics of Divine Humanity. He seeks to move beyond simplistic thinking about evil by recognizing its complicated nature. "If evil has a positive meaning and does not result in everlasting hell...evil proves to be an unrealized form of the good." This "good" lies solely in "the enrichment of life brought about by the heroic struggle against it [evil] and the victory over it"—that is, evil's transfiguration and redemption.
Man lives in the middle. Plato wrote that he is neither god nor beast, but someone in between. In Pensées Pascal adds, "What else can [man] do then but perceive some semblance of the middle of things, eternally hopeless of knowing either their principles or their end? All things come out of nothingness and are carried onwards to infinity. Who can follow these astonishing processes?" Hegel scholar and philosopher William Desmond means to take a stab at it, and his effort is nothing short of a fully developed, comprehensively argued, philosophical system.
Being and Between is essentially a study of metaphysics. Desmond offers a system by which to understand "the nature of metaphysical thinking, and of the fundamental senses of being consonant with that thinking" and rethinks basic metaphysical questions in this light. Put more succinctly, Part I thinks on metaphysics; Part II thinks in metaphysics.
In particular, Desmond addresses the metaphysical themes of origin, creation, things, intelligibilities, selves, communities, being true and being good. His fourfold understanding of being includes the univocal (the sameness of mind and being), the equivocal (the difference of mind and being), the dialectical (a self-mediated reintegration of mind and being), and—uniquely—the metaxological. Desmond's metaxolgical gives a logos of the middle. It suggests the intermediation of multiple sources rather than the singularity of self-mediation. In Desmond's words, "the metaxological sense keeps open the spaces of otherness in the between, including the jagged edges of rupture that we never entirely smooth out."
His resurrection of the metaphysical seeks to serve the being of the between, a place to stand and live in an honest and sustainable perplexity before the mystery of transcendence. "In a mindfulness beyond determinate knowing, the Unequal comes toward us, offering over and over again, the unearned gift of the agape of being, singing to our deafness the unbearable music of the ultimate amen."
The Glen East (at Mt. Holyoke College, MA) is a relatively new endeavor. We've been traveling out to Santa Fe for the Glen (West) going on sixteen years now, and it's become one of the highlights of our year. Sponsored by Image Journal (and the brainchild of Greg Wolfe), The Glen combines the best elements of workshop, retreat, arts festival and conference. Daily classes taught by nationally regarded artists and writers offer, according to their website, "attention to artists of all levels." Evenings incorporate lectures, concerts, readings, and worship centered in the arts.
The book table is something of a speciality (and source of pride) around here. Warren Farha, our fearless leader, has transformed our traveling bookstore into its own art form, utilitarian as it may be. You can click HERE to see the finished product of Glen East 2012.
We'd also like to direct you to a terrific review of the conference at the blog Iambic Admonit, written by a loyal Glen participant and Eighth Day supporter. Just click on the following link (which includes three separate reports): Glen East Workshop 2012.
Cosmos, Life, and Liturgy sets after revealing the inner world of an Orthodox Christian village in Greece, corresponding beautifully with Du Boulay's first book, Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village, which considers the external pattern of this life. Juliet Du Boulay's work is of the deepest anthropology—more specifically, ethnography (an exploration of cultural phenomena that reflects the knowledge and system of meaning guiding the life of a cultural group). This particularity does not, however, detract from the book's appeal; rather, it creates the sense of being at the very center of the world—a member of a community undamaged and whole, built around the deep structure of Orthodox faith and still influenced by fragments of Greek and Jewish antiquity. Beginning with the assertion "that this world is created and upheld by God," Du Boulay portrays a rich, rural life that manifests the polarity of good and evil not only throughout creation but also in the rituals of the Liturgy. In this world, man has been set in the middle, "between the heights of the skies and the hollows of the earth, on whom the sun shines and for whom the waters flow...the centre where all things meet. The consequence of this cosmology is profound, for...actions that are conducted within this scheme, however small, can never ultimately be meaningless." She proceeds through the rituals and meanings of time, work, hospitality, family, death, and mourning before attending to an earthy exposition of Orthodox theology as manifest in the saints, the Mother of God, the incarnate Christ, and "the dance of life" encompassed within Orthodox culture and the liturgy. The microcosm of the Greek village powerfully illustrates how "the liturgy in eternity, the liturgy in the Church, and the liturgy in the community have to resonate together if the cosmos is to become one."
(2012-07-09)
Mother Tongue Theologies is a very loosely gathered collection of essays that explore the intersections, syncretisms, and cultural translations (or mistranslations) of Christianity with the non-Western world. The power of literature—in particular, poetry and the novel—acts as both catalyst and vehicle for these explorations of Christianity as inhabited by Native Americans, Koreans, Africans, Russians, Greeks, Indians, South Americans, South Pacific post-colonials, and the Chinese. This is an eccentric and far-reaching work.
Part One focuses on Eastern Orthodoxy, from the perspectives of Dostoevsky's fiction and the poetry of Constantine Cavafy and Scott Cairns. Evgenia Cherkasova considers the tradition of suffering, and also its ambiguity, in the work of the famous Russian. J.A. Jackson fleshes out the typologies of American poet Scott Cairns, while John Estes makes a suggestive case for a hesychastic understanding of Cavafy.
Part Two shifts to Africa and the Carribean with a discussion of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and the arrival of Christianity in Nigeria. Darren Middleton examines the Africanization of Christianity as it relates to the topography of the continent and the poetry of Madam Afua Kuma, and Mozella Mitchell reflects on the concept of essential being in Caribbean works that explore the dimensions of human survival.
In Part Three, the editors take us to Roman Catholic Nicaragua via poet Ernesto Cardenal and examine the syncretism of Afro-Brazilian religions through the lens of slavery and Helena Parente Cunha's Woman between Mirrors. Skipping ahead to Part Five, we find another investigation of syncretism as seen in Native American Christianity and the novels of Louise Erdrich.
Part Four takes a substantial look at the Christianity of Asia and the Pacific Islands. Two essays travel through India, contemplating the Syrian Christianity revealed in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things and the use of children's fiction by British missionaries to convert the "idolatrous heathens." Stephen Pearson writes an absorbing essay on the conflicts between Christianity and Korean shamanism in Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Woman while Di Gan Blackburn delves into the rich world of Chinese American Amy Tan and Jack interprets Albert Wendt's depiction of South Pacific islanders in Pouliuli.
While not every essay may appeal, the eclectic nature of this collection engagingly considers the reality of globalization and is certain to lengthen many a curious reader's list of newly discovered work.
Eminently quotable, Austin Farrer brings one 'round to the plain sense of things. He doesn't get caught up in himself or in language for the sake of language, not even in his sermons. Writing about St. Mark he says, "Happy is the man who learns from his own failures. He certainly won't learn from anyone else's." Farrer's three line reduction of Mark's Gospel is at once candid and astute: "God gives you everything. Give everything to God. You can't." Though he ends with a negative declaration, he clarifies by focusing on the power of failure to empty us—"It is not in us to follow Christ, it is Christ's gift." A close friend of C.S. Lewis, Austin Farrer (1904-68) was a priest and college chaplain at Oxford, as well as an original thinker in the fields of biblical studies, theology and philosophy. He became an Anglican as an undergraduate and was ordained not long after. Described by the editors as "a man with an unequalled intellectual and imaginative range," Farrer famously described the arc of his work in creative terms: "Scripture and metaphysics are equally my study, and poetry is my pleasure. These three things rubbing against one another in my mind, seem to kindle one another, and so I am moved to ask how this happens." This reader is a collection of selections from his books, sermons, meditations and essays—the majority of which are out-of-print. Farrer's belief that reason was deeper than logic but also limited in the face of divine mystery put him at odds with his contemporaries but set him up as a prophetic figure in terms of his literary approach, his attention to Trinitarian theology, the engagement of contemporary philosophy with ancient and medieval thought, and his interest in the intersections of theology and spirituality.
The trouble with anthologies like Echoing Silence is succinctly expressed by Merton himself in a letter to Henry Miller: "There is very fine material everywhere, one insight on top of another." The nice thing about anthologies like Echoing Silence is the contemplative quality of the work. Certain passages return to you in the midst of conversations, while you're out walking, as you sit down or rise to do your work, when you consider what must be done next. Thomas Merton's unique contribution to modern literature was signaled by his book of social criticism, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966). As editor Robert Inchausti writes in his introduction, Merton was transformed into "a contemplative culture critic whose essays built a bridge from the sacred to the secular and from the modern to the millennial mind." It's doubtful Merton would have seen himself this way. He says as much in a journal entry from 1949: "They can have Thomas Merton. He's dead. Father Louis—he's half dead too. For my part my name is that sky, those fence-posts, and those cedar trees. I shall not even reflect on who I am and I shall not say my identity is nobody's business because that implies a truculence I don't intend." He had no interest in solitude for it's own sake. "We need a profound questioning," he writes in "Message to Poets," "which will not separate us from the sufferings of men." Merton eventually came to terms with his dual and often dueling vocations of monk and writer. It was an uneasy peace, though also, thankfully, edifying for those of us who followed. "It seems to me that writing, far from being an obstacle to spiritual perfection in my own life, has become of the conditions on which my perfection will depend. If I am to be a saint—and there is nothing else that I can think of desiring to be—it seems that I must get there by writing books in a Trappist monastery. If I am to be a saint, I hve not only to be a monk, which is what all monks must do to become saints, but I must also put down on paper what I have become. It may sound simple, but it is not an easy vocation."
My Unwritten Books by George Steiner; 192 pp. cloth $23.95
George Steiner has had a decades-long, illustrious career as a torchbearer of high Western culture, writing as a translator, novelist, educator, essayist, and literary critic (After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, The Poetry of Thought: From Hellenism to Celan and Martin Heidegger). But even for someone like Steiner, there still aren't enough hours in the day to put all your thoughts and observations on paper. Enter My Unwritten Books, Steiner's collection of seven long essays on seven different topics. The topics are thematically bound with the premise that there are books that Steiner had always wanted to write, but for myriad reasons was unable to pen.
Though the first essay, “Chinoiserie,” which is about Joseph Needham's work on the multi-volume Science and Civilisation in China (1954), borders on the impenetrable, the remaining topics are more accessible. “The Tongues of Eros” examines how different cultures approach the language of sex. “Zion” expounds on his theory why the Jewish people have been persecuted for centuries, and “Of Man and Beast” begins with a sad history of humankind's barbaric treatment of animals, but ends as a sweet ode to Steiner's English sheepdog Rowena.
In the final essay, “Begging the Question,” Steiner ruminates on lifelong questions on the inequalities of the human condition, the mysteries of the Divine and why bearing one’s soul in print is something akin to reality television. At the end of the essay, Steiner takes a similar leave of absence as he does in the previous essays:
What I would advance fervently is this: faith or the lack thereof is or ought to be the most private, the most discreetly guarded constituent of the human person. The soul, too, must have its private parts. Publication cheapens and falsifies belief irremediably. The adult believer seeks to be alone with his God. As I strive to be with His sovereign absence. Already I have said, I have failed to say, too much.
by Murray Browne of The Book Shopper
(Musings about books, book culture and local book-related events)
If you're looking for an exclusively Judeo-Christian take on poetry, spirituality and craft, look elsewhere.
Collected over the course of years, A God in the House is a series of interviews conducted with nineteen American poets and assembled as a string of candid, if somewhat peculiar, monologues. The questions and answers have been removed to, in the words of the editors, "allow the continuity of less formal responses in a single voice for each chapter." The result is a candid and exploratory account of mystery's role in the creative process. The straightforwardness of the text can be refreshing, though the biographical nature of the editing produces a strangely homogenized voice by and large. One wonders if the contributors knew what they were getting themselves into, though each was given the chance to review the edited text before publication.
Regardless of these speculations, the work represents wonderfully diverse perspectives on prayer, faith, poetry, community, activism, music, mysticism, politics and protest. Muslims and Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Pagans speak of God, and the practice of the presence of God, in wildly different terms. "Zen is not about belief," says Jane Hirshfield, "but about what happens when belief is unfastened." Both Christian Wiman and Gerald Stern speak of the possibility of God, about the inability to separate praise from condemnation. Stern comments, "Condemnation is at least attention." Wiman adds that abundance and destitution are but "two facets of the one face of God," and that the poem is an instrument "to experience one always in the context of another."
The defining and shared sine qua non of these poets is wonder. "This world is simply great and mysterious," says Grace Paley. "I don't have to find a god or not find a god." Fanny Howe adds (as if they were in conversation with one another): "Only a few can go free to the far God--probably the last, the weakest, and the most good-natured."
Other contributors include (but are not limited to) Alicia Ostrik, G.C. Waldrep, Carolyn Forche, Joy Harjo, Li-Young Lee, Kazim Ali, and Gregory Orr.
(Second Edition, Revised and Expanded); 191 pp. paper $22.95
by Archdeacon Vasiliy Marushchak; translated by A.A. Vassilyeva; with excerpts from Archbishop Luke by Nektarios Antonopoulos, translated by Nicholas Palis
On his deathbed, Saint Tikhon (1865-1925) whispered, "The night will be very long and very dark," prophetically speaking to one of the most harrowing periods in Russian history. Shortly after Stalin came to power, a new law was passed dissolving the Russian Church and exiling or executing her priests and people. Saint Luke Archbishop of Simferopol, born Valentine Voino-Yassenetsky (b. 1877), lived and served and suffered through the worst of these days.
A gifted surgeon and devout man, Valentine was called to the priesthood when a bishop heard him speak at a diocesan meeting. "Doctor, you must become a priest!" "Be it as you say," replied Voino-Yassenetsky, "I will be a priest if it is pleasing to God!" He was ordained the following Sunday and was secretly administered monastic tonsure amidst a period of intense persecution not long after.
Named after the Apostle Luke, the bishop defended the Church not only against atheists but also "false brothers" and apostates—and was consequently imprisoned and/or exiled for extended periods throughout the course of his life. Everywhere he was sent he served, whether in hospital or church. The bishop never charged for his services and was a gifted diagnostician. Even after going blind, he was able to determine the exact cause of illness simply by touch and continued to serve the liturgy "directed by God, who in His wisdom guides even the blind."
While Archdeacon Marushchak's telling of Saint Luke's life is certainly hagiographic, it compels through understatement. The Blessed Surgeon never separated physical and spiritual healing, regarding every patient "as a living and suffering person whose physical recovery" was "always connected with an appeal to God. He taught his patients to pray to God for their recovery." This edition includes both the Service in Honor of, and the Akathist to, Our Father Among the Saints Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and Confessor.
Wendell Berry is not a formally trained economist, though he is a great many other things: poet, essayist, social critic and novelist. In our estimation, Mr. Berry habitually "sheds light on ultimate questions in an excellent way" (that's from the About Us page on our website) not only in his writing but through his way of living—as a farmer, philosopher, teacher, activist, devoted family man and steadfast community member. And lest you think this blurb is little more than a paean to a man seeking no such thing, we hold that what makes the man makes him particularly suited to propose a sensible, though not uncomplicated, solution.
"My economic point of view," writes Berry in the first essay, "Money Versus Goods," "is from ground-level. It is a point of view sometimes described as 'agrarian.' That means that in ordering the economy of a household or community or nation, I would put nature first, the economies of land use second, the manufacturing economy third, and the consumer economy fourth." He goes on to say that America, on the whole, has replaced economy with finance to a catastrophic degree by confusing wants with needs. "Spending is not an economic virtue...Saving is. Not-wasting is." Berry decries usury and its destabilization of the relationship between money and goods. He goes on to criticize America's overemphasis on education (it's been "oversold, overbuilt, over-electrified, and overpriced"), laying out a sixteen point agenda to promote a long-term, sustainable agricultural policy for both ecological health and true stimulation of our human economy, for "there is no good reason...to wish for the 'recovery' and continuation of the economy we have had."
And that's just the first essay. The remaining fourteen include "Faustian Economics" (a recognition of limitation amidst the myth of limitless consumption), a 50-Year Farm Bill proposing "diversification, detoxification, perennialization, and resettlement of our agricultural landscapes," and an argument for orienting the "humanities" not around the careers of their practitioners but on the diversities of local cultures and landscapes within a beloved country. In "Economy and Pleasure," Berry ruminates on the imperfection and frailty of an economy based almost entirely on the rule of competition, holding up the ideals of community ("neighborly love, marital fidelity, local loyalty, integrity and continuity of family life, respect of the old, and instruction of the young") as a vital, sustainable way of life.
About half of these essays are reprints from Berry's earlier books Another Turn of the Crank, Citizenship Papers, Home Economics, and What Are People For? Possibly the most eloquent is "The Work of Local Culture," a meditation comparing the making of earth in a battered galvanized bucket to a similar kind of accumulation—the thoughtful and active creation of local culture. Berry consistently, insistently emphasizes the vital relationship between the land and the human community: "If the local culture cannot preserve and improve the local soil, then, as both reason and history inform us, the local community will decay and perish, and the work of soil building will be resumed by nature."
Graham Greene's End of the Affair is ostensibly a cinematic mystery in need of solving. Set in medias res shortly after WWII, the story flashes back to the The Blitz of London via the narrator's memory and the stolen journal of his lover, Sarah Miles, who leaves him without word or explanation. Greene's mystery morphs into a piercingly sustained account of Sarah's wrestling journey with faith, to faith. "I've caught belief like a disease," she writes in her diary, a simple recognition that she has embarked upon the way of suffering (almost without her consent).
Greene's portrait of a woman enjoying adultery, without guilt—a scandal in its time—suggests that Sarah has been led to belief through a mortal sin. As Michael Gorra puts it in the introduction, the "erotic experience has brought her to a knowledge of the divine and even into a state of grace." For most of the book, Greene leaves the door just slightly ajar. A series of "miracles" might be coincidences. He almost batters Maurice (the primary narrator and Sarah's lover) into belief himself, and it's never quite clear if Maurice holds out against God in the end.
Green's narrative choices aside, The End of the Affair belongs in the ranks of his finest works, both for his sharply drawn characters and for the portion of the book written as excerpts from Sarah's diary. The antithetical, though not contradictory, poles of love and hate are both means of grace. As Sarah writes:
"You [God] willed our separation, but he [Maurice] willed it too. He worked for it with his anger and his jealousy, and he worked for it with his love. For he gave me so much love, and I gave him so much love that soon there wasn't anything left, when we'd finished, but You. For either of us...even the first time, in the hotel near Paddington, we spent all we had. You were there, teaching us to squander, like You taught the rich man, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You. But You are too good to me. When I ask You for pain, You give me peace. Give it him too. Give him my peace—he needs it more."
Virginia Stem Owens wrote of Dillard, "Just when we thought there were no more fierce voices among us, no Jeromes or Jeremiahs or Jonahs, just when we thought the expression of our faith had degenerated to conflict management and seminars on stress, here comes Annie Dillard." Criticism of recent days focuses on Dillard as an ecocritic and memoirist, and while the centrality of religious thought in her work is almost universally acknowledged, few—if any—critics find in her corpus a specifically Christological theology. Colleen Warren, a professor of English at Taylor University, undertakes to fill this gap, as evidenced in her title. Warren contends that Dillard's theory of language is infused with the reality of Christ as the Word and compares facets of Dillard's work directly with passages from John 1:1-18 ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God..."). She alternates chapters on Dillard's belief in the revelation of the Word, the materiality of the spiritual realm, the meaningfulness of language, and the sacrificial role of the author with chapters that develop each concept using an image from Dillard's work. Though Warren's book in hand may initially feel like a doctoral dissertation (it's not), she's an engaging writer in her own right—presenting her thesis between excerpts of Dillard, drawing you into her creative force and the force beneath that force: "If there is a God, it is not an insignificant fact, but something that requires a radical re-thinking of every little thing" (Dillard).
also available by Annie Dillard:
For the Time Being---$14.95
Holy the Firm---$13.00
Living by Fiction---$13.00
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek---$14.99
Teaching a Stone to Talk---$13.99
The Writing Life---$13.99
Where Martin Laird's book, Into the Silent Land, trains its focus on the very personal and particular distractions each person must struggle with as they work to cultivate stillness—"the wounds we loathe become vehicles of the healing silence we seek"—A Sunlit Absence shows how the Christian tradition of the practice of contemplation is essentially an expansion of awareness. Because we so often derive our sense of who we are from our thoughts and feelings, we tend to habitually move through life reacting to them rather than simply experiencing them. The practice of stillness through a simple prayer creates a new habitus, an interior momentum that, in Laird's poetic phrase, "gradually excavates the present moment, revealing over time the stillness that is within us all like a buried treasure." As our practice deepens—Laird is careful to emphasize that God acts with us "according to timing beyond our control"―our relationship with our thoughts and feelings changes. "We let them be because they are." This is the point at which we come to understand that deepening concentration and expanding awareness are one. The tangle we thought was our being begins to untangle. A interior spaciousness presents itself. Our practice of presence is, in itself, a space to live from. Laird explores the necessity for silence toward the expansion of awareness as well as the acceptance of disturbances. His best contribution is a practical examination of particular difficulties―boredom, lethargy, arrogance, depression, grief and anxiety―and the opportunities they provide to practice surrender. Spiritual progress is not the cessation of struggle but the cessation of our struggle with "the fact that life is fraught with struggle." Only then can struggle and peace dwell together.
Seth Lerer's book about children's literature is a book about transformations—a reader's history and a charting of the literate imagination. Recalling an episode from The Little Prince in which a young boy draws a boa constrictor digesting an elephant, Seth Lerer relates the response of grown-ups—"Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?"—to the contrasting ways one might read stories: "On the one hand, we may look for what it seems to us; on the other, we may look for what its author meant it to be...what grown-ups find as ordinary items of experience may transform, in the child's imagination, into monstrous brilliance." Meanings can change, but they also endure.
Lerer, a dean of arts and humanities at the University of California San Diego, matches the value of a book to the person (child or otherwise) encountering it: "Each [book] becomes something of a litmus test for just what kind of reader we may be." His reader's history is full of list books (Goodnight Moon, Dr. Seuss), theater (Shakespeare, Little Women, Pinocchio, Anne of Green Gables), adventure (Where the Wild Things Are, Robinson Crusoe, Peter Pan), fairy tale and myth (Lord of the Rings, Grimm, His Dark Materials) and strange nonsense (think Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, Shel Silverstein). The aesthetic and social/political lessons a pop-up book teach dovetail into a pragmatic discussion about children's literature as a kind of system whose "value is determined out of the relationships among those who make, market, and read books." Lerer's chapter on girl's fiction is revelatory and his discussion of style and the child ("Keeping Things Straight") is a fascinating turn through all matter of self-expression—in language, dress, ethics, writing, and social etiquette (or lack thereof). We'd even go as far to call Lerer's work enchanting, a "world of snakes...seductive things that live in undergrowths and that may take us whole."
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Earthly Visions: Theology and the Challenges of Art
by T.J. Gorringe; 254 pp. cloth $45.00
A professor of theological studies at the University of Exeter, T.J. Gorringe has crafted a theological montage of great art from paintings that form what many critics consider to be a narrative of secularisation: "First, the overtly biblical elements are forced into the background, while secular aspects are given priority, and then the biblical are simply omitted." Gorringe's thesis—which turns on the parable—runs antithetical to this persuasion. As a literary form, parables "provoke, tease, challenge, illuminate, surprise," writes Gorringe. Jesus used them to place God's reality in the midst of ordinary things, employing them as a mode of revelation. In the same way, art is a secular parable and part of God's revelation, "part of a process, part of God's exercise of freedom...without losing their [its] character or undergoing any inner transformation, without any question of transfiguration or transubstantiation." The belief that art is salvific is favored by artists and philosophers of all stripes, from Kandinsky to Barth to the Marxist Ernst Fischer ("Art enables man to comprehend reality, and not only helps him to bear it but increases his determination to make it more human and more worthy of mankind." Fischer). Gorringe closely considers the various images represented and expanded upon in mythologically themed painting (which he considers to be misleadingly labeled "history painting"), genre painting and portraiture. He then candidly discusses landscape, still life and abstract art. Without making a concerted effort at rendering a systematic theology, he incorporates substantive explorations of revelation and eschatology, liberation theology, theological anthropology, a theology of creation, and the apophatic tradition. No expense was spared in the material creation of the book proper; full color reproductions appear on art stock quality paper. The index, bibliography and notes are thorough and absorbing in their own right. Taken as a whole, Gorringe's Earthly Visions is a beautiful provocation.
Just as each human voice has a unique tenor and frequency (not unlike a fingerprint) that cannot be replicated, each of the Church Fathers quoted and discussed in The Beauty of the Eucharist affords a distinct expression of the eucharistic life, fitted and framed by the particular struggles of history, yet harmonious in their cumulative effect. While some were known for their letters or Scriptural commentaries, others wrote dialogues, apologies, and treatises or gave eyewitness accounts. St. Gregory of Nazianzus' funeral oration for his sister Macrina emphasizes the centrality of the Eucharist for salvation through poetic narration: "O the wonder, she went away feeling at once that she was saved, and with the lightness of health in body, soul, and mind, having received, as the reward of her hope, that which she hoped for, and having gained bodily by means of spiritual strength."
Presented chronologically, these twenty-three voices hail from geographical locations around the Mediterranean basin and speak to the meaning of discipleship, the link between martyrdom and the Eucharist, the relationship between the Eucharist and other rites of Christian initiation, a defense against Gnosticism and Arianism, the importance of the sacrament as a source of forgiveness and spiritual nourishment, the restoration of the divine image in fallen humanity, and a mystical presentation of Christ's sacrificial death on Calvary. Each chapter begins with a quote, followed by a short biography of its author (or in the case of documents such as The Didache, a history of its origin), and then focuses on what each voice distinctly reveals concerning the Eucharist. Reflection questions concentrate on the practical and personal implications of each Father's voice—which include, but are not limited to—the Clements of Rome and Alexandria, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Tertullian and Cyprian of Carthage, Origen, Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, Leo and Gregory the Greats, and Augustine.
He of "Golden-mouthed" fame, John Chrysostom, suggestively renders his own intense love for the sacrament: "When you see [the Body of Christ] lying on the altar, say to yourself, 'Because of this body I am no longer earth and ash, no longer a prisoner, but free. Because of this Body I hope for heaven, and I hope to receive the good things that are in heaven, immortal life, the lot of the angels, familiar conversation with Christ.'"
Though Gina Ochsner's debut collection, The Necessary Grace to Fall, won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction in 2002, it received more attention after the publication of her second collection, People I Wanted to Be. Like O'Connor, Ochsner peoples her stories with oddballs (most all of them endearing) and nearly every tale turns on either the possibility or actuality of death. But before you turn aside, dear reader, know that Ochsner's luminous ruminations on terminal illness, murder, suicide, violence and war offer ample recompense, as paradoxical (and even humorous) as that might sound.
The stories move with an unexpected fluency from the Pacific Northwest to West Texas to Alaska, the Czech Republic and Siberia. The book, as a whole, is of a piece, and not necessarily because of the death leitmotif. Ochsner has the gift, or has developed the talent, of making the interior lives of her characters tangible. There's a kind of playful lightheartedness to her prose that illuminates the complexity of human relationship without simplifying or reducing it, as well as a degree of magical realism as she explores the liminal spaces between life and death.
In one tale, the narrator awakes to find the color red has disappeared: "The glowing of the sunrise pushing up from behind the hills bled in stale shades of slate and cobalt and shale. The trees, which had gone to blood and fire and all the warm colors of fall, now looked frozen as if in the photographer's silver, the leaves pale like old paper money." In "Modern Taxidermy," Ochsner spins the mythology of the Midas touch as the luckless Mirek brings death to every creature he dares to love. By blurring the boundaries between the body and the bodiless, Oschner makes contemplation of life's innate absurdities possible.
As part of Intervarsity Press' Christian Worldview Integration Series, Christianity and Literature tackles the (almost entirely secular) field of literary criticism. Their no small task: the formulation of an integrative Christian theological aesthetic. Echoing the sentiment of Justin Martyr—that which is true is ours—writer Joseph Pearce concisely expresses the why and wherefore of such an aesthetic: "Truth is at the very heart of fiction. It is the invisible yet palpable force that infuses the fictional narrative with the lifeblood of meaning. As such, Christianity and literature are inseparable" [from his review of the book].
Jeffrey and Maillet begin by asking and then putting flesh on the bones of the question, "Why truth?" They note that "general cultural confidence in literature itself as a source of meaning and value has...diminished" to such an extent that the dark judgment of Flannery O'Connor some sixty years ago rings prophetic: wherever one lives in the West, "nihilism" has become "the gas you breathe." Though fiction (by its nature) fabricates, it does so to delight, drawing on the imagination in order to teach (to borrow from Horace). Jeffrey and Maillet—alongside generations of writers before them—are on the lookout for truth and echo the book of Proverbs when they write: "To quest for truth by the means of fiction, as almost all serious literary readers come to appreciate, is to be engaged in the pursuit of discernment and wisdom."
Written as a treatise for students in Christian and secular universities, Christianity and Literature is necessarily dense with both the evolution of critical theory and the literature upon which it was built. Part One lays out the framework of a Christian aesthetic through discussions of the relationship between literature and truth, a Christian philosophy of literature and the vital connection between literary criticism and biblical study. Part Two launches into literary interpretation as it was understood in the medieval imagination, renaissance literature and the age of skepticism precipitated by the Enlightenment. In Part Three, the authors explore the Romantics' (mostly) agnostic grappling with authority, nihilism in Modern and Postmodern literature, the formation of a distinct contemporary Christian aesthetic, and a summary chapter on literary studies from a Christian perspective. If it is true that "English as a discipline that has lost its story," as Jeffrey and Maillet maintain, it is the Christian literary critic's and artist's task to take up what Tolkien called the work of "recovery."
November 8-10: Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics & Culture conference,
November 8-10: A Dickens Symposium at The Providence Hall Classical Christian School --- Oklahoma City, OK (featuring John Mark Reynolds)
November 9: Harvesting the High Plains documentary premiere ---
November 26-30: 23rd Annual Wichita Collegiate School Holiday Bookfair
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields; 240 pp. paper $15.00
One of the major advantages of blogging besides a future of large royalty checks and spam emails from virtual admirers, is the freedom to write about anything you want to in a manner that is not necessarily restricted by form. As David Shields writes in his literary montage Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (2010), forms and genres have become such hybrids, that there is little distinction between fiction and nonfiction. This is especially true with one of the more slippery genres – the memoir, which is really fiction considering the vagaries of memory. “Anything processed by memory is fiction,” writes Shields.
The book is divided into twenty-six chapters of six hundred and eighteen sequences varying in length from a short sentence to several paragraphs. Shields describes his work as taking: “various fragments of things—aborted stories, outtakes from novels, journal entries, lit crit—and build a story out of them. I really had no idea what the story would be about; I just knew I needed to see what it would look like to set certain shards in juxtaposition to other shards.” Shields makes it even more interesting by choosing not to include attributions for his material; however, to avoid possible legal problems, Shields' publisher forced him to list of source material in the appendix. (Thankfully so, because there are other authors and articles worth checking out.)
Not only is Shields entertaining as much as he is insightful, but the book serves as a manifesto to bloggers that it is more important for the prose be energetic, succinct, and not boring (the greatest sin according to Shields) than it is to worry about the exact slot your writing falls into. Or in the words of Sheilds: "Genre is a minimum security prison."
by Murray Browne of The Book Shopper
Everyday discourse defines "being modern" as "fashionable, up to date, contemporary." Michael Gillespie finds much truth in this common usage, even if the deeper meaning is overlooked or misunderstood. What it points to, Gillespie writes, is the "uncommon fact that, at [modernity's] core, to think of oneself as modern is to define one's being in terms of time." Human beings in earlier ages defined and/or located themselves in terms of place, race, the traditions of their gods, or a seminal event (the creation of the world, an exodus from bondage, etc.). Inhabitants of the Middle Ages, for example, did not "look forward to the future or backward to the past, but upward to heaven and downward to hell." Modernity revolves around the new, around self-liberation and self-making. It is not enough to be in history; one must make history, and Gillespie provokingly asks, "What can possibly justify such an astonishing, such a hubristic claim?"
He designates nihilism as the epochal game changer. Not only did the destruction of the medieval world (largely a result of the struggle between scholasticism and nominalism) open up space for new ideas and new ways of life, it gave occasion to the experience of the abyss, "in which the meaningfulness and legitimacy of all existing ways of thinking and being dissolve and the world seems to be transformed into chaos or nothingness." The Theological Origins of Modernity begins with the nihilistic crisis in late medieval thought and examines how modernity came to be, constructing "new ways of thinking, being, and acting for a world that seemed to be slipping into an abyss."
Gillespie's trajectory takes us through the growth of Aristotelianism and Franciscan theology in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and the subsequent flowering of humanism (in all of its Patrarchian, Italian, and Northern varieties) alongside Luther and the Reformation. The seeds of modernity were planted in these early movements and did not, in Gillespies' words, "spring forth full-grown from the head of Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, or Hobbes." That said, two chapters are devoted to Descartes and Hobbes respectively, as well as the Enlightenment. Gillespie closes by contrasting Western culture with Islam, emphasizing that we must come to terms with our own tradition if we hope to transform our volatile relationship. Unless and until we become aware that our genealogy is more than just a list of names on a page, "we may storm through the world like Oedipus, brilliant in our ability to answer questions and astonishing in our drive to mastery, but blind to the truth of who we are and what we are doing."
[One final note: Gillespie's insightful notes and carefully compiled index comprise almost one fourth of the book; his work in total in an excellent complement to another favorite of ours, Charles Taylor's A Secular Age.]
Acedia, listlessness, despair---whatever the name, this most painful affliction of modern times was well known among the Desert Fathers. In the first half of Despondency, Fr. Gabriel Bunge explores how the fifth-century monk Evagrius diagnoses this complex condition, emphasizing the “working mechanisms of the passions and of their accomplices, the demons.” Evagrius never underestimates his foe (he labels despondency a “conglomerate of all imaginable vices”), yet he is ultimately optimistic about its cure. “Indeed, the medication he prescribes is surprisingly simple…Since despondency is an illness of both the irrational powers of the soul—desire and anger—it is essential to heal both at the root.” Here is cogent, practical advice from a skilled therapist of troubled souls. Bunge provides expert guidance through a welter of patristic terminology, polishing the psychological gems along the way.
Marianne Moore has often been called "a poet's poet." After receiving a particularly disparaging comment on a paper, she gave up studying literature at Bryn Mawr and switched to biology, which had a profound effect on her writing.
"Do the poet and scientist not work analogously?" she asked. "Both are willing to waste effort. To be hard on himself is one...of the main strengths of each. Each is attentive to clues, each must narrow the choice, must strive for precision...The objective is fertile procedure." Ezra Pound declared that Moore's work formed "part of the small body of durable poetry written in our time, of that small body of writings, among what passes for poetry, in which an original sensibility and alert intelligence and deep feeling have been engaged in maintaining the life of the English language." No small praise.
from "Poetry," by Marianne Moore
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.
*****Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
*****it, after all, a place for the genuine.
***********Hands that can grasp, eyes
***********that can dilate, hair that can rise
*****************if it must, these things are important not because a
high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because they are
*****useful. When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible
*****the same thing may be said for all of us, that we
***********do not admire what
***********we cannot understand...
Like Moore (who was born in Kirkwood, MO, but migrated to NYC), Georgia O'Keeffe came from the Midwest. Hailing from Sun Prairie, WI, O'Keefe found her way to New York and eventually the Southwest. She may not be remembered for her precision, but her attention to the detailed essence of things made her famous. Moore's phase invoking "fertile procedure" seems particularly apt. O'Keeffe often said that she painted fragments of things "because it seemed to make my statement as well as or better than the whole could.”
Georgia O'Keeffe: Pelvis IV, 1944. Oil on canvas, 36 x 40 inches. Gift of The Burnett Foundation. © 1987, Private Collection
Georgia O'Keeffe: Pedernal--From the Ranch #1, 1956. Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 inches. Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Cowles. © The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation
Incidentally, Marianne Moore was a fan of the fragment, for her own complicated reasons. The portion of "Poetry" cited above was published in her Complete Poems simply as:
Poetry
I, too, dislike it.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it, after all, a place for the genuine.
To quote Robert Pinsky in an article he did for Slate:
Moore, as I understand her project, champions both clarity and complexity, rejecting the shallow notion that they are opposites. Scorning a middlebrow reduction of everything into easy chunks, she also scorns obfuscation and evasive cop-outs. Tacitly impatient with complacency and bluffing, deriding the flea-bitten critic, unsettling the too-ordinary reader, she sets forth an art that is irritable, attentive, and memorably fluid.
................................................................
Complete Poems, by Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore: The Cage and the Animal, by Donald Hall
Poems of Marianne Moore, by Grace Schulman
Georgia O'Keeffe: Art and Letters, by Jack Hamilton and Juan Cowart
Georgia in Hawaii, by Amy Novesky
What's most striking about the Carmina Gadelica (Latin for Gaelic songs) is the preponderance of blessings. While the Gaels never entirely rooted out the vestiges of their pagan roots—and saw no need to—you'll find in this mammoth collection a blessing or supplication for every undertaking of the day: baptism and death, blessing of the new moon and the kindling of the morning hearth, blessing upon waking and laying down, sleep prayers, bathing prayers, a prayer to be led, the blessing of the herd and the hatching, for the marking and clipping of lambs, blessing of the fish and the hunt and the loom, charms for sprains and bursting veins, for swollen breasts and toothaches, incantations for plants that heal and harm, prayers to remedy eye disease and heart attacks, to ease swelling and save the blood.
Over the course of decades Alexander Carmichael collected these charms and runes from the Highland and Island people of Skye, Uist, Kintyre, Glengarry, Sutherland and Oban, traveling as a Civil Servant of the United Kingdom for work in Customs and Excise. His friends called him "one of the folk," and it is remarkable that a customs worker not only endeared himself to a people "who saw no harm in distilling their own whisky (and selling it at a sensible profit)" but also became a trusted confident in the conveyance of their arcane spells and private prayers [from the Preface].
Although controversy remains surrounding Carmichael's precise (or not-so-precise) rendering of the material he collected, scholars of Highland folklore more or less agree that the shortcoming of Carmina Gadelica are not due to any kind of literary forgery but to the fact that "Carmichael's love for the Highlands coloured the early volumes of Carmina" with a distinctly Victorian sentimentality [Dr. John Lorne Campbell]. The reader might be best served to keep in mind the heart-felt intention of Carmichael himself—"With reverent hand and grateful heart I place this stone upon the cairn of those who composed and of those who transmitted the work"—and leave it at that.
"In this realm, reading is the most honorable of all activities, for everybody shares the need to regularly take refuge in a mind other than one's own" (from XX).
Refuge isn't exactly what Bateman offers in Locals, a kind of metaphysical science fiction fortified with fable and myth. Encountering the citizens of these realms, you run into yourself—even your many selves—vying to advise or accost or spare you pain. "If heeded, this type of chrono-visitor would leave you spiritless, enfeebled, deprived of the emotional muscle-tone developed only through full engagement with the rigors of uncertainty" (from XII). Bateman favors the encounter, be it with the book or a pint or "other music waiting to be heard," and her marriage of material realities with incorporeal powers is wonderfully folkloric. Shadows grow in tanks of water, separate from bodies until adolescence when "parents siphon it into a tall ceremonial glass. Its owner...drinks it down at one sitting, and from then on leaks darkness with every step, a sensation as exhilarating as it is disturbing" (XIX). Each newborn "undergoes a series of ultrasound scans so that the nascent death within might be identified," and as they mature and ultimately pair off, "every lover is drawn not only to the other's appearance, gait, and manner of speaking, but to that one's death as well, pulsing within their embraces" (XVII).
Bateman's language is precise, even technical. She considers all matters of the realms—be they the rituals of birth and death or the designation of clans according to a soul's capacity—in the same empirical voice. Under the humor and strangeness thrums a persistent refrain: "Engage, engage, engage."
Inspiring comparisons to Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology and George Eliot's Middlemarch, Driftless masterfully bears out the dynamic relationship between a place and its people—idiosyncratic, solitary, yet intrinsically and vitally joined. As Rhodes writes in the Acknowledgments, "the characters who wanted to be written about" contributed to his difficulty in finishing the book: "They were for the most part not the kind of characters who usually find their way into print—very private, never satisfied with their assigned roles, always wanting their voices to be more accurately rendered and their feelings better dramatized."Rhodes' description of the region in southwestern Wisconsin could just as well be used to depict the collective nature of its residents: "The last of the Pleistocene glaciers did not trample through this area, and the glacial deposits of rock, clay, sand, and silt—called drift—are missing. Hence its name, the Driftless Region. Singularly unrefined, it endured in its hilly, primitive form, untouched by the shaping hands of those cold giants." A few small towns endure, but most (like Words, the geographical center of these chapters) have shrunk and all but disappeared. As the rural members of the Thistlewaite County Highway Commission concur, in regard to the county's lack of road signs, "People already know where they are. No provisions are made for those living without a plan."
What's astonishing is David Rhodes' ability to make this handful of characters fill the place to capacity, even surplus. That a one-time drifter, an Amish-phobic retiree, a heartbroken mechanic, an ex-con, a lifelong invalid and her caregiver sister, a diminutive (almost unearthly) pastor, a family of struggling dairy farmers, and a burgeoning song-writer/factory worker can not only live alongside one another but come to support and defend each other's choices and particular ways of working out love in the world is what gives Driftless its bright poignancy and lasting power. To quote Pastor Winifred (speaking to an unfathomable tragedy):
"What I do know is that God loves us, completely, every one of us, all the time, and upon that single fact the hundred billion stars are hung. That love is both the source and the cause of all life...nothing can ever, against our will, separate us from the love of God, and we will do the best we can."
also by David Rhodes:
The Easter House---384 pp. paper $15.00
The Last Fair Deal Going Down---320 pp. paper $16.00
Rock Island Line---384 pp. paper $15.00
Editor Cynthia Haven, in her introduction, names the retrieval of "memory from oblivion" the raison d'être for Invisible Rope. In doing so, she means both Miłosz's own existential quest to keep history from being "put into single storage" (to quote literary scholar Valentina Polukhina) and Miłosz himself, "whose life and whose being we are trying to rescue in an America that, perhaps, never fully understood him" (Haven). Miłosz expresses his pressing concern in "Antigone":Fools alone believe they can live easy
By relegating Memory to the past.
Fools alone believe one city falling
Will bring no judgement down on other cities.
(translated by George Gömöri and Richard Berengarten)
An Invisible Rope is, essentially, a remembrance of the man and his work—though the man remains firmly at center. Written by poets, biographers, Nobel Prize winners, critics, foreign service officers, diplomats, translators, scholars and dissidents, this compilation (a treasury, really) requires essentially some personal encounter with Miłosz. We meet him over a slice of boiling hot wood fired pizza, through the lens of a camera shortly after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, at the Berkeley library, behind the walls of San Quentin, and in his hospital room—shortly before his death—in the midst of writing his last (unfinished) poem. He is a refugee, a rock star (as nearly as any poet can be), a bereaved widow, a professor, a colleague, a letter writer, a Catholic, a Buddhist and, always, a person "rapacious for knowledge, experience, and—though it is not a term he would use—the understandings of wisdom" (Jane Hirshfield). While Miłosz would cringe at the thought of being upheld for his spiritual capacities (he firmly disavowed any kind of comforting spirituality), "he nevertheless stands awkwardly, contestably, as one of the twentieth century's great souls, as well as one of the greatest poets of our times" (Haven).
"Psychologists tell us that we answer trouble with one of two impulses, either fight or flight," writes Scott Russell Sanders. He sets forward a third way: staying put. "When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither fight nor flight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still." Sanders goes on to clarify (the man approaches Wendell Berry in terms of quotability): "I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own. If indulged only for a moment...this reverent impulse may amount to little; but if sustained for months and years...it may yield marvels."Raised in Portage County, Ohio, Sanders has lived in Bloomington, Indiana, for much of his adult tenure. In a world of technological and physical skittering about (the former influencing the latter in ways we have yet to understand), Sanders' "impulse to commit myself wholeheartedly" to a place is a heartening sort of reckoning (from an interview at Terrain.org). Though his impulse may be to stay, his is not a painless endeavor. If anything, staying put offers terror its own right of habitation:
Surely you know the place I am talking about. You have skidded down the slope toward oblivion, for shorter or longer stays. And so you realize the pit is not a gap in something solid, like a hole in rock, but the absence of all solidity, the square root of nowhere and nothing. I go there too often, never willingly, usually dragged from bed by the scruff of my neck...Is this any way for a grown man to feel? Suitable or not, it is what I do feel. I rehearse this midnight panic because I cannot separate the bright thread of fear from the story I have to tell, which is about making oneself at home on the earth, knowing the earth as one body knows another.
Gladly, Sanders is incapable of rising through the ether, transcending his troubles, so to speak. Instead, he scratches and claws his way "out of the pit into the arms of the world."
The only sure antidote to oblivion is the creation. So I loop my sentences around the trunks of maples, hook them into the parched soil, anchor them to rock, to moon and stars, wrap them tenderly around the ankles of those I love. From down in the pit I give a tug, to make sure my rope of words is firmly hooked into the world, and then up I climb.
He mines history, religion, pacifism, poetry, and literature—from Moby Dick and Walden to the Tao Te Ching, the Quakers, Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, E.M. Forster, Charles Dickens and Flannery O'Connor—as he writes his way into place, drawing heavily from the places and people of his childhood in Ohio. "I make up the story of myself with scraps of memory, sensation, reading, and hearsay," Sanders confesses. "It is a tale I whisper against the dark. Only in rare moments of luck or courage do I hush, forget myself entirely, and listen to the silence that precedes and surrounds and follows all speech." Fortunately for us, we get to read along.
[Click HERE for more titles by Scott Russell Sanders.]
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