Oh goodie, can’t wait to look at what you found. That is quite a coincidence Twain and William James going in the same year. Unfortunately I’m on the boundary of extra innings here so it is time to read some more Jonathon Haidt until the sandman comes.
At the risk of seeming cheeky, I’m not at all sure WJ had non-believers in mind when he said …
Getting back to McGilchrist’s worry about an over reliance on the rational (which your quote from Chesterton certainly seemed to echo), it seems to me that it afflicts believers every bit as much as it does the scoundrels on my side. I regularly get the impression that some of the Christians I meet approach God simply through the Bible and with more of a lawyerly concern for improving their position than anything else. Of course being clue-challenged is rampant among atheists too. I try to remind myself how new all of these human practices really are and take it easy on others in hope they’ll do the same for me.
Also, going deeper than just a man’s philosophy, Nietzsche asserts:
It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up till now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious auto-biography; and moreover that the moral (or immoral) purpose in every philosophy has constituted the true vital germ out of which the entire plant has always grown. Indeed, to understand how the abstrusest metaphysical assertions of a philosopher have been arrived at, it is always well (and wise) to first ask oneself: “What morality do they (or does he) aim at?” - Beyond Good and Evil, I.6.
Oh, absolutely. One of the reasons I’m so taken with “The Maniac” in Orthodoxy is that when I first read it, I saw myself in the madman. It was quite an epiphany. I have not been the same since.
While I don’t doubt that there are some for whom that is the case, I suspect for many it’s just that human drive for certainty… the need for it all to fit together tidily. A sufficiently motivated intellect can rationalize anything, even if it ends up looking very, very strange (and even contradictory) to the outside observer. It’s completely natural and our entire culture these days only seems to reinforce it.
I think GKC sees the best response:
if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument.
This is the approach I strive for… I have a long way to go, but I’m better than I used to be.
Frederick Buechner said:
Theology is the study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study man and his ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.
I was reluctant sending the original thinking it may come across brash or whatever. Hopefully not because my intent is simply to exchange thoughts and having a conversation. Similar to friends simply havIng a conversation about their favorite team, restaurant or whatever. In this case a conversation about faith and what our faith is in and why. I really find your and others honesty very refreshing. My natural default is agnosticism but over time I became uncomfortable with it in view of what I was finding. But obviously I understand some of agnosticisms roots. I have not read the post you mentioned but will try finding the time. Keep in mind my skepticism which in a way is not a reasoning response but natural.
Well, I’ve broken discipline and given in to the old habit of a period a wakefulness between sleeps and checked in here. Just have to say how much I appreciated your confession and how much I identify with it.
I suspect that is a common reaction to confronting the realization that one has gone too far down the rabbit hole. It feels like the dethronement of reason but at the same time it is a huge weight lifted off our shoulders. For me it felt like a shift from deciding what to think to just noticing what it is I do think with a bit more detachment and a whole lot less urgency and defensiveness. I can’t imagine it leaves anyone unchanged. But I’d best leave it there for now so that second sleep has a better chance of amounting to something.
I would like that. The first time we crossed paths here I did find you brash and that left me thinking there wouldn’t be much more to follow. As I just told Ron, I’m presently cheating sleep so I shouldn’t say much more now. But please do feel free to explore this conversation whenever you like. But I will say I’m not at all interested in pursuing conversion, either yours or mine. I respect Christian faith. I understand it can be a struggle and I believe that struggle can be worth it. I wish you luck in finding what you seek.
I started by scrolling up to the previous chapter to get my bearings and came across his description of his younger brother. Words certainly do know how to roll of his tongue and onto the page, don’t they?
My brother, Cecil Edward Chesterton, was born when I was about five years old; and, after a brief pause, began to argue. He continued to argue to the end; for I am sure that he argued energetically with the soldiers among whom he died, in the last glory of the Great War. It is reported of me that when I was told that I possessed a brother, my first thought went to my own interminable taste for reciting verses, and that I said, “That’s all right; now I shall always have an audience.” If I did say this, I was in error. My brother was by no means disposed to be merely an audience; and frequently forced the function of an audience upon me. More frequently still, perhaps, it was a case of there being simultaneously two orators and no audience.
Okay, on to the chapter where his sparring with WJ may give me more insight into who that guy was.
Indeed. That’s a good way to put it. In my case, I felt like I desperately needed to keep everything connected and explained, but just couldn’t keep up anymore. A lot of rationalist Christians defect at that point and become rationalist atheists. The band changes, but not the tune. Chesterton showed me that it wasn’t my Christianity that was the problem, but my rationalism. Once his “cleaner and cooler” air blew in, I realized that my “crisis” was of my own making and that the world – including the Christian world – was much larger and grander (and more mysterious) than I had supposed.
This isn’t an abandonment of reason, as I think you know. But there is a deliberate choice (as GKC puts it) to allow something to remain mysterious so that everything else might become lucid. It has rearranged not only my own thinking, but how I interact with the thinking of others.
Upon his reception into the Roman church, GKC wrote a poem entitled “The Convert”. I think it captures this experience vividly, especially the second stanza:
After one moment when I bowed my head
And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.
The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.
Boy is that ever the truth, and a very tiresome tune it is.
Correct, I agree. Reason is splendid except when played solo.
That is a nice turn of phrase.
Do you sometimes feel that thinking is just something that goes on and that there is no reason to shove our hand into a sock puppet in an effort to take ownership over it? What is ours? What are we? Whatever else we may be, we are recipients of innumerable gifts.
My favorite part of the poem:
It made me think of how you said being liberated from excessive reason made it possible listen to what others say differently. For Chesterton, conversion seems to have been a satori experience too. My wife, stepson and I once hiked from Mammoth Lakes into Yosemite valley over about ten days. At the outset, each human face was a distraction if not an intrusion in our reverie with nature. Before long, once we left all marked trails our encounters with other humans became very scarce and not so bothersome. But on that last day as we walked down past the falls into the valley and we passed lots of people on day hikes I remember looking at each one as one might leaves on the ground in fall, really seeing them afresh.
If humans could not die, we would not have to eat, drink, or breathe. We would not have to wear clothing or need shelter . We also would not have to work or go to school or even procreate. We would be free to do whatever we want, but we would have nothing to do.
Yeah, sometimes. I’ve been in intense discussions or doing public presentations or teaching when I’ve had the disorienting sensation of listening to the words coming out of my mouth and not feeling entirely in control of them. I’ve seemed to invent points or even entire lines of argument on-the-fly… but “invent” feels like the wrong word. At some level, I didn’t feel responsible at all. I’m no artist, but I’ve wondered if perhaps that’s what they mean by “inspiration”, or why the ancients had the idea of the Muses.
That said, I don’t experience being entirely passive either. And I do think I can intentionally do things that maybe alter or facilitate that experience of inspiration. I suspect religious ritual works this way… I find one day that doing something I’ve done many times before takes on an entirely new significance that I have trouble believing it would have, had I not become so familiar with it.
That was a lovely story… Thank you.
When I was in 8th grade, I got glasses. Somewhere along the line I’d grown very nearsighted, without realizing it. I’ll never, ever forget coming home from the optometrist’s office. I could actually see the leaves on trees. It was the strangest experience… I knew they were there, of course – but for so long trees were just big, vague clouds of green. For some time afterward, I was fascinated by all the brilliant detail in the world that I’d somehow simply forgotten.
One of Chesterton’s most endearing traits to me is how he is, always, that 8th-grader seeing the world again, for the first time. He never misses a detail, and in every detail he sees the beauty of the wondrous whole. (Tremendous Trifles is a collection of just such essays.) He felt that way about people too, especially the ordinary ones.
Another poem of his:
Here dies another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
And with tomorrow begins another.
Why am I allowed two?
Indeed. Not unlike the requirement that we be like children (childlike, not childish! ) before God, which points to the fact that Jesus liked children and (implicitly, I think) that children liked him.
Much more on his brother Henry about whom I know very little. Apparently the James family is interesting for multiple generations but I only know Varieties of Religion and a book on Seeing of all things from William and nothing at all about the others. But that book did impress me and it brought to mind a distinction between religious experience and participation in religious rituals which seems from the outside to make the business of churches.
In the chapter you kindly linked I found only one brief passage for William James. Apparently his brother’s boorishness made the greater impression on Chesterton. Looking for a way to spin that as positive given GK’s advocacy of the Boors in South Africa … but coming up empty.
I’ve been in the town of Rye, in the old section for a day back in 2008. It was on a tour of British gardens I put together for us with the help of several old flickr (a photo hosting website) friends, a few of which I got to meet. We got into the area on our first day out of London to visit Sissinghurst. The next day we made it to Great Dixter, sadly just after the passing of the great Christopher Lloyd who I’d heard speak in the states. Loved his garden. After our visit there the guide book suggested Rye as a place to gawk and eat and it didn’t disappoint. We paid something for the opportunity to climb the rustic staircase in the old church to get the view to the sea and over the town. The memory of whatever we ate hasn’t left as lasting an impression, though that could be the fault of my decaying memory.
I remember seeing that one in a decade past and thinking, “Anyone that assumes that there will be nothing to do in heaven has either no imagination or no creativity, or both.”
An interesting take on time in heaven is in A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken in which he describes being on a walk, if I recall. He has agreed with Davy to meet her at a particular place and time, but runs into C.S. Lewis, his mentor and friend. They go to a pub together and they spend a couple of hours (beyond the scheduled meeting time with Davy), but when he leaves and goes to meet her, she is just arriving, on time, and has not been waiting.
An idea that I adapted from William James (via David Brooks) is that we make a continuous moral choice as to what we are paying attention to. Pretty implicit in that is that all of us are being and have been immoral at least some of the time. I think Christians would say that it is immoral to think wrong thoughts about God or to not pay enough attention to our Father’s desires.
Right. I wish I could find a copy of the article he wrote upon James’ death. It was published on Sept 17, 1910 in the Illustrated London News, and reprinted in the New York Times. I have the volume of The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton right before the one that would contain that ILN article. I can’t get the internet to cough it up beyond this tantalizing glimpse of the first page.
Nice try, though! It would have been a jolly Chestertonian bit of wordplay.
Your visit to Rye sounds like it was great fun. I’ve been to the UK once, fifteen years ago. You can’t turn around without bumping into such incredible history. I swear, I would never get a thing done if I lived there. One day I’d like to make a Chesterton Pilgrimage.
David Brooks brings up authors writing on morality frequently in his NYT column. I’ve also enjoyed his sparring with Mark [last name redacted by memory] on the Friday edition of the PBS News Hour.
) before God, which points to the fact that Jesus liked children and (implicitly, I think) that children liked him.