Pithy quotes from our current reading which give us pause to reflect

Faith & Science Conversation
928

We are to see Jesus in all kinds of lowercase ‘o’ others, and through serving them we also serve the uppercase Other. Too many miss the latter though, and while there is nothing at all wrong with enjoying the gratification that comes giving and service to others, even sacrificially, it does not constitute a personal encounter with the Good Shepherd, the true and truly Other.

Phil Yancey’s personal but objectively describable experience with the truest Good Samaritan does. Phil is a fairly well known Christian author who had been in Christian circles for a long time without being one himself, and he describes his conversion:

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929

Kapuściński’s use of Other, rather than other is entirely unrelated to writing conventions related to divinity or humanity, but to demonstrate a recognition of that Other person as person, whose individual name (which we would capitalize) we may not know (yet) but who is not nameless, not merely a mote in the mass. At present the only name we have is the respectfully-used name: Other. We may also even use it in awe, as we would use for any highly respected person, in which case Other is a title of respect as well.
This is normally not the case, is it?
“Other” is generally used as a term of distrust as well as derivations such as “otherness.”
Kapuściński seeks to turn our normal, wrong, human tendencies on their head by treating this unknown, yet-to-be-seen person with great respect and an eagerness for acquaintance.
This is a Christ-like view of encounter and hospitality that any of us should pursue.

930

From MacDonald’s unspoken sermon series: “The Hardness of the Way”

The man who for consciousness of well-being depends upon anything but life, the life essential, is a slave; he hangs on what is less than himself. He is not perfect who, deprived of every thing, would not sit down calmly content, aware of a well-being untouched; for none the less would he be possessor of all things, the child of the Eternal. Things are given us, this body first of things, that through them we may be trained both to independence and true possession of them. We must possess them; they must not possess us. Their use is to mediate—as shapes and manifestations in lower kind of the things that are unseen, that is, in themselves unseeable, the things that belong, not to the world of speech, but the world of silence, not to the world of showing, but the world of being, the world that cannot be shaken, and must remain. These things unseen take form in the things of time and space—not that they may exist, for they exist in and from eternal Godhead, but that their being may be known to those in training for the eternal; these things unseen the sons and daughters of God must possess. But instead of reaching out after them, they grasp at their forms, reward the things seen as the things to be possessed, fall in love with the bodies instead of the souls of them. There are good people who can hardly believe that, if the young man had consented to give up his wealth, the Lord would not then have told him to keep it; they too seem to think the treasure in heaven insufficient as a substitute. They cannot believe he would have been better off without his wealth. ‘Is not wealth power?’ they ask. It is indeed power, and so is a wolf hid in the robe; it is power, but as of a brute machine, of which the owner ill knows the handles and cranks, valves and governor. The multitude of those who read the tale are of the same mind as the youth himself—in his worst moment, as he turned and went—with one vast difference, that they are not sorrowful.

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931

Okay - I can’t leave well enough alone. From a bit later in the same sermon as the above …

Thus death may give a new opportunity—with some hope for the multitude counting themselves Christians, who are possessed by things as by a legion of devils; who stand well in their church; whose lives are regarded as stainless; who are kind, friendly, give largely, believe in the redemption of Jesus, talk of the world and the church; yet whose care all the time is to heap up, to make much into more, to add house to house and field to field, burying themselves deeper and deeper in the ash-heap of Things.

But it is not the rich man only who is under the dominion of things; they too are slaves who, having no money, are unhappy from the lack of it. The man who is ever digging his grave is little better than he who already lies mouldering in it.

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932

God have mercy on me, a sinner!

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933

You and me both, sister!

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934

Still talking about the Other that we capitalize though, any imagining and being content with merely a concept of an unknowable entity that arose from a New Age-ish materialistic mysticism (aka woo) is not holding any kind of person or personhood with great respect and eagerness for acquaintance, just the opposite.

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935

Dale, we couldn’t possibly be talking about the same thing.

936

Not sure how you’re drawing that historical relation. The concept of the Other is nevertheless problematic for me as I see it arising from the phenomenological concept of Nothing.

937

I direct you and @dale to Kapucinski’s book to understand what he is talking about, rather than speculating about what it could mean and basing critique on that speculation. You might be surprised. Relieved even.
I’m not proposing new age heresy but rather Jesus’s view of our neighbor and what it means to love him or her.

In the end, though, I find it tiresome, exhausting even to continually justify my Christian views as Christian to other Christians who continually seem to bring into question my words, values, beliefs, thinking, and willingness to engage with the Other or a Brother (or Sister).

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938

I don’t think I was making a historical relation really, just a characterization. The same fallacious thinking can certainly pre-date the descriptor.

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939

Sorry Kendel, this feels disingenuous. However, I don’t think I ever felt your Christian confession was disingenuous. Similar and different from mine, but that’s ok.

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940

Yes, I misspoke in that I did explicitly indicate that I was talking about something different.

941

Your feelings mislead you regarding my truthfulness. You’ve accused me of being disingenuous before and on bases I cannot comprehend.
I thought I could try to interact productively with you again, but I see that is not going to work.

942

It’s right there in the quoted lines. You don’t have my background so you cannot speak to my concern with phenomenological philosophy, and yet you are bothered by my concern which was addressed to Dale anyhow.

I believe you are mistaken about this. I did a search and I have only used the term a handful of times. Maybe you felt I was insinuating this by the previous comment where you cut off communication. A comment which I apologized for even if I… yeah to think about I did feel you were disingenuously disregarding what I had to say then.

943

Thanks for these, Merv. I’ve missed MacDonald. Should probably read him for myself, eh? Someday.

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944

I am still grateful for you and what you contribute here. Best regards

945

“Metaphysics, transcendence, the welcoming of the Other by the Same, of the Other by Me, is concretely produced [se produit] as the calling into question of the Same by the Other, that is, as the ethics that accomplishes [accomplit] the critical essence of knowledge.”

Levinas “Totality and Infinity”

947

It’s longish, but weighty. I’ll be thinking this over for quite some time. From Kierkegaard: a Very Short Introduction by Patrick Gardiner:

Both failures, however, were rooted in a pervasive incapacity to come to grips with something which Kierkegaard believed to be of more fundamental significance and which therefore called for prior consideration. In his own words:

My principal thought was that in our age, because of the great increase of knowledge, we had forgotten what it means to exist, and what inwardness signifies, and that the misunderstanding between speculative philosophy and Christianity was explicable on that ground. I now resolved to go back as far as possible, in order not to reach the religious mode of existence too soon, to say nothing of the specifically Christian mode of existence … If men had forgotten what it means to exist religiously, they had doubtless also forgotten what it means to exist as human beings; this must therefore be set forth. But above all it must not be done in a dogmatising manner, for then the misunderstanding would instantly take the explanatory effort to itself in a new misunderstanding, as if existing consisted in getting to know something about this or that. (from Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 223)

…His point is a relatively unproblematic one and concerns the manner in which he believed the majority of his contemporaries were prone to think of themselves and to lead their lives. Thus he considered that they had succumbed to an impersonal and anonymous mode of consciousness which precluded spontaneous feeling and was devoid of a secure sense of self-identity. Everything tended to be seen in ‘abstract’ terms, as theoretical possibilities which could be contemplated and compared but to the concrete realization of which people were unwilling to commit themselves. If they attended to their own attitudes or emotions it was through a thick haze of pseudo-scientific expressions or cliché-ridden phrases which they had picked up from books or newspapers rather than in the direct light of their own inner experience. Living had become a matter of knowing rather than doing, accumulating information and learning things by rote as opposed to taking decisions that bore the stamp of individual passion or conviction. What this led to was the formation of an outlook in which everything was approached through the medium of set responses and automatic reactions; people knew what they were supposed to say, but they no longer attached any real significance to the words they used. As Kierkegaard wrote in the long section of A Literary Review entitled ‘The Present Age’:

In fact there are handbooks for everything, and very soon education, all the world over, will consist in learning a greater or lesser number of comments by heart, and people will excel according to their capacity for singling out the various facts like a printer singling out the letters, but completely ignorant of the meaning of anything.
(The Present Age 88-9)
Moreover, these trends were accompanied by a propensity to identify with amorphous abstract entities like ‘humanity’ or ‘the public’, people thereby absolving themselves from individual responsibility for what they thought and said. **To put it crudely, there was safety in numbers: ‘everyone can have an opinion; but they have to band together numerically in order to have one’ **(The Present Age 91). And somewhat similar considerations applied at the level of practical behaviour. People were ready enough to talk of doing things ‘on principle’, but they were apt to treat the principles they appealed to as if they were endowed with a purely external or impersonal authority, unrelated to the agent’s own preferences and concerns; in this sense, one could 'do anything “on principle” and avoid all personal responsibility’ (The Present Age 85).

As Kierkegaard remarked elsewhere, ‘no man, none, dares to say I’; instead, a species of ‘ventriloquism’ had become de rigueur- the ordinary person had become a mouthpiece of public opinion, the professor a mouthpiece of theoretical speculation, the pastor a mouthpiece of religious meditation. All were in different ways submissive to abstractions to which they attributed an independent reality. Rather than confront the fact that everyone is finally accountable to himself for his life, character, and outlook, they took refuge in a depersonalized realm of reified ideas and doctrines.
(Bookshare edition, 30-31%)

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948

Thanks for this. I agree with him that being can get caught up in the repetitious espousing of set opinions which one hardly remembers coming by and feels no intrinsic conviction for. Making time for interiority and less mental running ahead to seize and repeat the same verbal phrasings is what is needed. More percolating, less ruminating. Holding questions lightly and holding space available for realizations if and when they may come rather than hurrying ahead on well rehearsed pathways. In short, doing what needs doing but thinking only what is necessary. Everything can become a set piece, even this.

Soon there will be only preparations for meals and gathering and, for those of us who procrastinate, last minute shopping. Happy holiday, Kendal.

I found myself repeating this as if I’d dropped a word before I noticed the scare quotes. Something about checking in with others to see what might achieve consensus before seeing where inner conviction might lead. Communal living is something we must accomplish. Balancing that with autonomy is one of the many challenges of being persons.

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