What’s the name of the book? I like the passage!
Oh… Jayber Crow?
Yes, end of chapter 6. Another of Berry’s books I found interesting, perhaps because of my age, is The Memory of Old Jack. Old Jack sort of fades in and out of the present into the past throughout the book.
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I’m looking to put a hold on it.
@jpm I’m not finding it as a book, any chance it is part of a short stories collection?
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As I have already written to you, I am impressed by Robert Bly’s intention in putting that book together. I have put it on hold because I currently have many projects, but I would still like to engage with your quotes here.
The first lines seem to express a sceptical and rational perspective towards religious beliefs and deities, emphasising a rejection of traditional gods and a preference for rationality. It also makes me think of the objections brought against the Pharisees or a similar kind of criticism. Many people talk insincerely or hypocritically about gods, which only promotes a disdain for religious hypocrisy.
On the other hand, can we talk about gods at all, except with a reference to a literary source “pointing at the moon”? I think that hypocrisy is unavoidable, and take my lead from Aldous Huxley:
“The Perennial Philosophy is primarily concerned with the one, divine Reality substantial to the manifold world of things and lives and minds. But the nature of this one Reality is such that it cannot be directly and immediately apprehended except by those who have chosen to fulfil certain conditions, making themselves loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit.”
We all tend to reject the requirement to fulfil these particular conditions, at least in the brashness of youth, and this makes our criticism at least questionable. I’m sure that we spontaneously feel hypocrisy, even if we are just as hypocritical at that point, and it takes something in our lives that breaks through such brashness that helps us learn to be loving, pure in heart, and poor in spirit – and even then, do we keep it up? This would require some kind of participation, or as Huxley says, a practice that enables us to regularly re-focus.
The poem praises rationality, suggesting that it is what they possess instead of belief in traditional gods like Helios (the sun god), the sea god, or the god of thunder. In his footnote to prayer, CS Lewis was aware of this danger and says he dreams “of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart, Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.” Perhaps the reference to the earth as a corpse implies a lack of gratitude towards the earth, possibly contrasting with the idea of thanking it in religious rituals. I’m not sure.
I get the feeling that the gods are described as mere decorations in the poem, and the suggestion is that the energy or significance associated with their names has faded or drained away. The poem acknowledges a reverence for nature, referring to it as the “Mother of Nature,” perhaps because he implies that nature is more immediate. This would at least explain why today, when a powerful or impactful reference is needed, people tend to remember or invoke nature and not the traditional deities.
I think, too, that the traditional religious or dualistic view that humans consist of both a physical body and an immortal soul is problematic. Instead, the body is the physical expression of the soul and the basis of its physical experience. They only separate at death. Consequently, any conventional idea that energy or passion (often associated with the body) is inherently evil, while reason (associated with the mind/soul) is considered good, is problematic.
The traditional religious notion of divine punishment for indulging in worldly desires or “energies” is equally problematic because our bodies and energies are something we must learn to cope with, which can badger a life for its whole duration. Quite contrarily, our mind is the basis of sin and separation, and our bodies often try to tell us of our folly. We need a balance between the two, which only contemplative exercises help us achieve, and it entails regulating the mind as much as the body.
The quote from Wendell Berry’s Jaber Crow confirms that impression.
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I will soon answer your last message to me and look forward to reading the Huxley book which I shall put a hold on ASAP. Did I already tell you I read another by him in a psychology class in junior college before transferring to Cal? The professor was one of the most cynical and (not surprisingly) mean and unhappy people I’ve ever had to deal with. As a final assignment we were to choose a self help book and critique it. Not a genre I would ever pick up, I instead picked up a copy of A. Huxley’s The Art of Seeing which contained a number of good insights. The clown dinged my paper for its lack of snark.
About the Bly book, I’m mostly rereading the poems but this time I’m also zeroing in on what he says in the beginning of each section and in two meditations that form the an Afterword at the end of the book. But more than that the title of the book alone had been an eye opener as I reflect on in what way our consciousness can be thought of as “twofold”.
Mostly what comes to mind is how, from our perspective, we can see how we are one of the many … a person apart with a particular story line. But we also recognize that everything we experience and the world itself is from God. God transcends it but is also immanent in every object and being. He is the source as well as the manifestation. So in addition to our awareness of being one of the many we can also recognize that we are a part of the One. Our consciousness is also His consciousness. We can’t bring what is His into focus since we only know this one part, the part He sees through our eyes. But that part we know well and I’ve always been aware of something greater that was not narrowly mine but whose reactions formed my conscience and whose vision inspired my sense of awe and wonder. I can’t bring Him into focus but not because He is so far removed from me but rather because He is too near.
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From N.T. Wright’s Gifford lecture #6 (about 48 min in)
If even in the ordinary world, something like love insists on making its presence felt within “knowing” as a whole person activity, a communal activity, an engaged activity - then even in the present creation, “knowing” needs to be redeemed by love, rescued from the Epicurean instinct that you find from Machiavelli onward, unmasked but ultimately shared by Nietzsche with his will to power. And this is why, after all, it is love that believes the resurrection. Because to believe it takes a whole person, not just a convinced mind. It takes a community to confess it properly; not a bunch of isolated individuals. It’s a kind of knowing which is caught up in and fully engaged with the drama of the reality which is known. Love in this sense involves humility, recognizing that all knowing involves us small, shortsighted creatures engaging with a wide and complicated world.
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Last week, I finally got to reading the book review that @Jay313 shared of the printed lectures. The reviewer challenged that Wright wasn’t really “doing” natural theology in these lectures, and he explained what “real” natural theology is.
But I think Wright is pretty clear early on that he sees his project in these lectures as redefining or reimagining natural theology in a way that depends on history performed through a hermeneutic of love.
The quote above reminds me of Penner’s term “lived hermeutic” (I think that was it).
Particularly this part:
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The more a person learns, the less certain they become about a great many things. And yet - the provisional confidence held by such humility is far stronger and more trustworthy than the many ‘certainties’ proclaimed by persistent ignorance.
-Merv
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Well I’ve lost all restraint and bought an actual copy of Old Jack when it became clear none of the libraries here would have it. Finally, fiction!
I also bought a copy of Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy which @Rob_Brewer recommended but this one for the Kindle. So far it isn’t winning me over. I don’t find spirituality is something I want to read a lot about in the abstract. Of course the McGilchrist’s book was in part about that but it wasn’t authoritative in any way or a how-to do it kind of manual. I think I may prefer to keep life in the foreground and spirituality on the periphery. But I’ll keep at it a bit further and see what I find.
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Sorry, Mark, I didn’t assume that you would go out and buy it, i just wanted to tell you what I was reading. I should have considered the possibility. His reading of the traditions is, for someone not familiar with them, a little dry. I can see that. I have a long history with such texts, going back to the 1990s, so I have a different approach.
I’m the one with impulse control issues. Not your fault at all and the jury is still out. I did like his Art of Seeing in college and Brave New World in high school so he may yet win me back.
That was my first purchase for the Kindle since TMWT. It really is revelation in instant gratification over and above what Amazon delivers. I’m sure I’ll be using it more now. Hope I become more confident navigating around the Kindle.
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TO EAT THE AWFUL WHILE YOU STARVE YOUR AWE
To eat the awful while you starve your awe,
to weasel misery like a suck of egg,
to be ebullience’s prick and leak,
a character pinched to characteristic,
hell-relisher, persimmon-sipper, sad Tom, sane Tom,
all day licking the cicatrix where your Tomhood lay.
Christian Wiman, Survival is a Style
These are hard poems, because they are dark, but I thought this one helps us focus on awe by showing what happens, when we abandon it.
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I want to put “sans Tom?” at the end of that one line.
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Sadly not a rare condition. Those for whom it applies will not understand it or, if they do, be unable see that the shoe fits. Just got to give thanks for those with eyes to see.
Fallen? Were we ever risen? Maybe we are only now attempting to … in fits and starts. I’d rather imagine it as a difficult start than a miserable end. I only wish I had more confidence in my hope.
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Aah, Mark. Welcome to the club of grace hopers, whatever our hope.
There is no need for confidence, when our hope is only what is observable.
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From Tim Alberta’s “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory” (Ch. 6)
Quoting a pastor, (Bunker), speaking at a Wheaton conference of church leaders …
The next generation of would-be believers, Bunker warned, is watching us. “They want to know if we love Jesus first” - more than money, more than social status, more than a political party, more than a country.
And this provokes more thought for me (dovetailing with how Alberta’s chapter continues from there…)
If how ‘Christians’ live and behave doesn’t pass the smell test, then it doesn’t matter what they say … or rather - it tragically (or not?!) does matter, because in reality, it tells everybody else (especially the young) what to stay away from, if that’s the kind of fruit it leads to.
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This made me think of an instance in university where in a snowstorm someone’s car jumped the curb and got stuck on it right outside a house of fifty Christian guys. Out of twenty or so in the TV room right off the front door, eighteen couldn’t be bothered to take their attention away from the basketball game on the tube.
That made a mockery of the sign on the porch that said “As for me and mine, we will serve the LORD”.
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From the Holy Post commentary (Skye Jethane speaking this bit) … about 47 minutes in.
“Religious ideas make you into a jerk, but religious community makes you into a good religious person …”
…spoken into the context of how those groups most thinking about religion tend to be some of the least religiously appealing voices heard today, while those practicing some religion (which in this context was measured by church attendance - i.e. community involvement) tend to be some of the most tolerant voices toward how to cultivate wider, pluralistic community life together.
Actually - the whole episode is worth a listen! … the dangers of building religious identity that is bereft of any actual or real religious community.
This caught me right at the start–
He says Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, and Coca-Cola have done more to influence how we celebrate the birth of Jesus than gospel writers.
I’m not sure what it says about me that I know exactly what they’re talking about in each instance!
Great pair of interviews.
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