...in circumstances that are confused and unclear, thousands or tens of thousands must be condemned to death.
The eagerness with which this has been seized by elements within the Irish media and political classes is disturbing. I am reminded of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Engaged Encounter in Richmond, Virginia
The photo aboves shows me and my fianceé Michelle immediately after last weekend's "Engaged Encounter" retreat (a Catholic initiative), which took place in the Holiday Inn hotel beside Richmond Airport in Virginia. And we are all smiles because the retreat turned out to be well worth it-- I would even say it was one of the best experiences I've ever had.
When I told my father I was going on a pre-marital retreat, he scoffed. "Me and your Ma never did anything like that", he said. And it is true that I would do well to achieve a marriage as happy and (mostly!) harmonious as that of my parents, who had no formal preparation at all.
In fact, I shared something of my father's scepticism, and I have to admit that I was rather dreading the retreat. I expected lots of workshopping, role-playing, public speaking, silly "ice-breaking" games, and-- basically-- embarrassment.
I couldn't have been more wrong. I learned that Engaged Encounter is a very serious, focused, faith-filled event, and that nobody was going to push me to participate, or chivvy me into "sharing with the group". Discussions remain private between the spouses-to-be. If a couple just wants to turn up and go through the motions, they could do that. But it seems to be the case that, when you treat people like adults, they tend to react in the same spirit. There were some sixteen couples on the retreat we attended, and all of them seemed to take it seriously.
The weekend began on a Friday evening, continued through all of Saturday, and finished in the afternoon of Sunday. As well as this, attendees are expected to attend Mass at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday (the team that presented the retreat included a priest). Yes, it is intense, but personally I liked that. I've always loved immersive experiences. (And the Mass itself-- celebrated in the hotel-- was beautiful, as improvised Masses usually are, since they fill humdrum settings with a sacramental glow, and the simple setting concentrates the mind upon what is actually happening.)
Not only does the retreat run for a good forty hours or so, but that forty hours is conducted with quite a sense of urgency. This was also a good thing, as it stopped the retreat from becoming boring.
The retreat was given by two married couples, along with the priest. Engaged Encounter is an international phenomenon, but it has managed to avoid having a single paid employee. The fact that couples are willing to sacrifice more than forty hours of their lives to helping others-- and to openly discussing their home lives and difficulties, not avoiding the subject of physical intimacy-- is quite staggering.
It's hard to think of any relevant topic that was left out during the weekend. Money, family, faith, communication, intimacy (which was not simply a euphemism for sex but took in a lot more), Natural Family Planning, decision-making....it was all there, along with a lot more besides. The general format was that, after listening to presentations by the priest and the married couples, the engaged couples went to separate rooms to write down their thoughts on the topics raised, and then got together to discuss them. It's a good format; formal and focused, but also relaxed. There was also time for general discussion, for prayer, and for shared meals.
It was a very Catholic weekend, even though it is not restricted to Catholic couples. One of the reasons (one of the many, many reasons) that I'm a Catholic, and that I love being a Catholic, is that the Catholic Church is, as far as I can see, the only thing in this world that truly is catholic-- in the sense of being universal, all-encompassing, fully-rounded. Because the Catholic Church has never let its creed become something private, or something purely "spiritual" and cut off from all the messy and mundane aspects of life, it remains the one great philosophy that can cover a man like the sky. Not only does the Church span every continent and culture; not only does it reach its roots back to the apostles, and unite generation with generation; but it makes sense of the whole of a man's (and a woman's) life, too.
I don't know of any other creed, secular or religious, that finds so much meaning and importance in every aspect of life-- and in every life. It prizes human life, in all of its forms, from its very first moment to its very last. Just take one example (if I may be allowed a digression)-- take all of the suffering souls out there who have met with some accident or disease that has robbed them of their economic usefulness, and of what the world calls their "quality of life". Society, in its sentimental or soft-hearted moods, may pay lip service to the human worth of people in such a predicament. But what conclusion, really, could they draw from the images they see on book covers, magazine covers, television screens and advertisements? Can somebody who is condemned to a life of paralysis believe that he or she remains an actor in the drama of life?
Probably not, if they only look at the magazine covers and television screens. But there is one place where such people will see their own drama echoed and honoured-- on the Crucifix above a Catholic altar, and in the lives of the saints, and in the whole thought and prayer and striving of the Catholic Church. And there is not a single state of life into which a man might fall-- not disease, not danger, not crime, not drug addiction, not failure, not anything-- in which the Catholic creed would cease to apply to him, would cease to take an interest in him, would disqualify him from playing a heroic part. As far as I can see, Catholicism is the only light that reaches into every crevice of human existence. You might say that you're never alone with a saint.
One thing about the Engaged Encounter struck me more than any other-- it occurred to me again and again, as a matter of fact. We were sitting in a hotel conference room, in several rows of chairs, listening attentively to a panel of very earnest and business-like speakers. It was much the same format as a press conference, or a business seminar, or a committee meeting. And it seemed positively weird to me that, in such a formal and focused format, we should be discussing things like lifelong happiness, lifelong commitment, emotions, aspirations, values, family, prayer and the meaning and purpose of life. I expect a scenario like that to be devoted to more grown-up matters, like yoghurt sales, or sanitary engineering, or marketing techniques, or at the furthest stretch (since man cannot live by bread alone, and sometimes beliefs have to break through) Marxism or environmentalism or consumer's rights.
But to have a serious discussion in a hotel conference room about something as vague and uncompartmentalised as life, love and eternity-- who does something like that?
Well, Engaged Encounter does it, thank goodness.
When the end of the forty hour marathon came, I found myself feeling more than a little sad. After having taken such an emotional ride with these people-- not really strangers, anymore-- it was poignant to think that we would never meet as a group again, even if individuals and couples did keep in touch by email, or meet up in person (and there were plenty of contact details being exchanged). I'd like to think I wasn't the only one who felt this-- certainly, as we said our goodbyes, there was quite a powerful atmosphere in the room.
And so, when all those faces fade into the background and become faint memories, what about the woman who left the hotel with me? Did the retreat help me and Michelle?
Obviously, it's impossible to say for sure yet, but I'd like to believe that it has, and that it will. God grant that it be so!
Postscript: I was fascinated to discover a Gideon Bible in one of the drawers in my hotel room. This is the first time I have encountered a Bible in a hotel room. I don't know if it's done in Ireland or England, but I don't think I've ever come across one-- but then again, my experience of hotels is not huge, and maybe they were there but I just didn't look. Does anyone know what the norm is in Ireland and England? I really hope that militant atheism doesn't do away with this-- I can easily envisage atheist societies organizing campaigns to complain about the practice. But I hope not, because it seems like a nice tradition, no matter what your beliefs might be.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
In America
I am in America, here to do a pre-marriage course ("Engaged Encounter"; it involves comparing experiences with other Catholic engaged couples) with my American bride-to-be. I don't imagine I will be blogging till I return on Tuesday.
I had a strange and uplifting experience touching down in America. (I flew in through Philadelphia Airport.) In my previous American trips, I've really been straining to spot the differences between Ireland and America-- motivated partly, I have to admit, through a fear that developed Western countries barely differ from each other at all any more. Perhaps inevitably, I didn't spot as many differences as I hoped to.
This time around my mind was on other things and I wasn't self-consciously trying to "get" America. But-- for that very reason, I think-- the sense of being "back in the USA" almost overwhelmed me when I stepped off the plane.
It's not any particular thing. It's not a set of things. It's everything. I even think it's mostly in the things you don't notice, or that you barely notice.
The experience has cheered me up no end. Greetings from Richmond, Virginia!
I had a strange and uplifting experience touching down in America. (I flew in through Philadelphia Airport.) In my previous American trips, I've really been straining to spot the differences between Ireland and America-- motivated partly, I have to admit, through a fear that developed Western countries barely differ from each other at all any more. Perhaps inevitably, I didn't spot as many differences as I hoped to.
This time around my mind was on other things and I wasn't self-consciously trying to "get" America. But-- for that very reason, I think-- the sense of being "back in the USA" almost overwhelmed me when I stepped off the plane.
It's not any particular thing. It's not a set of things. It's everything. I even think it's mostly in the things you don't notice, or that you barely notice.
The experience has cheered me up no end. Greetings from Richmond, Virginia!
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Monday, November 5, 2012
The Harpenden Parish Magazine
As soon as I saw her, I knew that I had to have her.
She was lying in a box on a bargain stall outside the UCD Campus Bookshop. The UCD Campus Bookshop is pretty much an exercise in daylight robbery, and even the books on their "bargain" stall can be fifteen euro or so. But the sweetheart who caught my eye was going for a mere three euro.
What was she? She was a bound volume of old Anglican parish magazines. To wit: The Harpenden Parish Magazine, running from August 1904 to February 1915. Really, what red-blooded book-lover could fail to have his pulses set racing by that?
It is possible, Dear Reader, that you don't know where Harpenden is. Wikipedia tells us: "Harpenden is a town in Hertfordshire, England. The town's population is just under 30,000." (It must have been significantly smaller at the beginning of the twentieth century, because the rector writing the Parish Notes in these magazines is very pleased to get an Easter service attendance of a hundred or so.)
There is no pleasure in the world like that of old books-- really old books, books with yellowed pages and a musty scent and the aroma of a vanished era hanging over them-- but old periodicals are better yet. An old book is a lone voice, coming to us across the ages; but an old periodical contains a whole medley of voices within its pages. It swarms with life. And in the case of the Harpenden Parish Magazine, it is the life of a single parish that survives within its crinkly pages. It is a round of births, marriages, and deaths, parish fundraisers, magic lantern shows, Lad's Brigade outings, lectures by foreign missionaries, all culminating in the cataclysm of the First World War, which throws a tinge of tragedy over the whole. These magazines have all the warm, poignant appeal of How Green was my Valley by Richard Llewellyn, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas or Thomas Gray's Lines Written in a Country Churchyard-- but with the added savour of reality.
As reading material, I find them utterly compelling, but also very sad. They make me sad because they remind me how today's Church of England has betrayed its forebears. One thing is obvious from reading these Harpenden Parish Magazines; these were serious Christians who attempted to live a life true to historical, orthodox Christianity. And they worked very hard at it. Again and again, the clerics of Harpenden Parish urge their parishioners to a serious reformation in Lent, or to more regular worship, or to support the parish charities or the adornment of their places of worship.
Who (aside from an ardent secularist) can see the wreck of English Christianity without feeling an icy grief? Think of how much effort went into the creation and preservation of a Christian England; not only the early missionaries and martyrs, but all the millions of nameless rectors and vicars, all the housewives and Sunday school teachers and unlettered peasants and fishermen and artisans, down all the generations, who strove to conform their lives to the Gospel, who squeezed out their meagre pennies to keep a roof above their local church, who kept the light of faith burning through plague and civil war and industrialisation and all the twists and turns of English history-- all to end in today's Church of England, which has flung orthodox Christianity to the wind and has all but passed into utter irrelevance.
As a Catholic, of course I believe that the greatest disaster to befall English Christianity was the Reformation. But the Church of England was a Church that once seriously claimed to retain the apostolic succession, to be a branch of the worldwide Catholic Church. How can we not be dismayed to see its degeneration? And because of my deep-seated anglophilia, I have a certain fondness for historical Anglicanism in itself; I cherish Orwell's image of "old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist". So reading these old issues of the Harpenden Parish Magazine fills me with a special wistfulness.
Perhaps I am the only person who now owns a copy of these magazines. (I did email the current Harpenden parish to see if they had any, but there was no reply; possibly they were all too busy attending gay rights marches or Transcendental Meditation classes.) It is a moving thought, that all that is left of this parish's life in those years might be between these salmon-coloured covers, sitting on my bookshelf. I regularly remember these long-deceased parishioners of Harpenden in my prayers.
So, what sort of thing might you come across in these magazines? Well, under the heading "Church Missionary Society", in the issue for April 1908, we find this:
"Dr. Tisdall gave a very interesting account of 'Mohammedanism', from his personal experience of Persia. He showed very clearly that though Mohammedans believed in only one god, their conception of that god is so debased that far from being a pure religion it is one of cruelty and sensuality, and one which degrades, particularly the position of women."
Now, it is a good thing that inter-faith relations have become more sensitive and diplomatic since that time. But I can't help feeling that the writer here takes Islam, and the differences between Islam and Christianity, more seriously than the multiculturalist of today.
In the issue for November 1904, we get this interesting description of a meeting for the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts:
"The speaker gave a most interesting account of his experiences during the late Boer War, he being one of only six resident English priests who were allowed to remain in the Transvaal after war was declared. They remained on condition that they signed an oath of neutrality, and refrained from using in Church the prayers for Queen Victoria and the Royal Family. In order to see that the condition was complied with, two Boer soldiers stood inside the church with loaded rifles. Mr. Vyvyan signed the oath, but told them he should break it when the English arrived; this the Boers took no exception to, telling him that the English would never come there. With regard to the other condition, a pause was made in the service when the forbidden prayers were reached, while the congregation could use them in silence....
"Another incident was the attempt on the part of some of the enemy, who were escaping with Kruger, to take the Missionary's kitchen stove. On their arrival they were told to call in the morning, meanwhile the native Kaffir servant worked hard all night keeping up a big fire, with which he made the stove so hot that when the Boers came for it they could not possibly move it. This state of affairs was kept up by the servant's industry for a whole week, till they gave it up as a bad job. This story was related as an example of what the native Christians will do for the English, who brought them Christianity, and to whom they are strongly attached."
The Temperance movement was influential at this time, and there are many references to Temperance events in the parish. In the issue for December 1905 we are told:
"On Wednesday we had the advantage of two very forcible addresses by the Rev. F. Swainson, in which he likened sin in general and intemperance in particular to the loathsome and almost incurable disease of leprosy. As the words of a man who had himself experienced fiery temptation, and is now working amongst a set of people to whom total abstinence is entirely advisable, his uncompromising utterances were duly appreciated."
A long way from 'Thought for the Day'!
Imperialism had not yet become a dirty word, and the people of Harpenden unabashedly celebrate Empire Day:
"At the County Council Schools, Colonel Durnford, the Chairman of the Managers, gave the young people an address on "The growth of Empire", and later, when all were assembled in the playground, an address on "The Flag" was given by the same gentleman. Patriotic songs were heartily sung, and the children afterwards dispersed to spend the rest of their holiday away from school."(July 1906)
There is a sterling defence of denominational education in the September 1906 issue, which is very interesting (and perhaps, to us today, surprising) in its choice of arguments:
"The aim, therefore, of Churchmen should be to make clear their ideal of Christian Education. Just as in secular matters, the aim of schooling was to teach a child to think clearly and broadly, to express itself fully and clearly, and to train its character as a citizen, so the aim of religious education was to make the child think fearlessly and broadly on religious subjects, to teach it a dignified and adequate expression (in prayer and worship) of its religious life, and to train it to be a loyal member of Christ's kingdom on earth. Education of thought was secured not merely by learning facts: the child is encouraged to ask questions, to learn to get to the bottom of things, and in the variety of lessons the mind is expanded to wider interest. In the same way, in religious things the child learns to meet intellectual difficulties in after life. A full teaching of an unmutilated creed, and the laying before the child of a broad survey of Christian faith as mapped out in the Church year was not possible with undenominational education. Education in religious expression was taught by familiarizing with the Services of the Church and storing the memory with hymns and Psalms which would, in after years, become hallowed by association."
How interesting that denominational education is here defended as leading towards freedom and indpendence of mind, rather than away from it! But how insightful, too!
I could quote and quote and quote; and, indeed, I have every intention of blogging more selections from these magazines. But I think it is inevitable that I should finish on a grimmer note; I think that anybody, turning the pages of this magazine, would turn to the War numbers with a morbid compulsion, curious to see how the shadow of World War fell upon the quiet life of Harpenden.
It is sobering indeed to read how the very real virtues of these people-- their sense of duty, patriotism and nobility-- impelled them, along with their countrymen, to rush to the support of the flag in this most questionable of causes. In the February 1915 issue, Reverend Kean M. Pitt writes:
"I am glad that the list of those who have joined the Army from Harpenden still swells. Though at present the crucial question "Why did you not join?" may possibly be evaded or ignored, it must surely be realised that it is no light matter thus to be interrogated; nor is it a question that will die out with the coming of peace. As long as the young man lives the question will present itself directly and indirectly, it will ever be sounding in the inner consciousness of the man, "Why did you not join?" Good for that man, if he is of suitable age, if he is able to give to himself and his countrymen a real honest and valid reason. If not, I do not envy the life of the man who without real tangible reason, evaded the present call upon his manhood".
Oh Lord, may the good Christian people of Harpenden, every one of the names mentioned in the pages of these magazines, find their way to the eternal banquet!
She was lying in a box on a bargain stall outside the UCD Campus Bookshop. The UCD Campus Bookshop is pretty much an exercise in daylight robbery, and even the books on their "bargain" stall can be fifteen euro or so. But the sweetheart who caught my eye was going for a mere three euro.
What was she? She was a bound volume of old Anglican parish magazines. To wit: The Harpenden Parish Magazine, running from August 1904 to February 1915. Really, what red-blooded book-lover could fail to have his pulses set racing by that?
It is possible, Dear Reader, that you don't know where Harpenden is. Wikipedia tells us: "Harpenden is a town in Hertfordshire, England. The town's population is just under 30,000." (It must have been significantly smaller at the beginning of the twentieth century, because the rector writing the Parish Notes in these magazines is very pleased to get an Easter service attendance of a hundred or so.)
There is no pleasure in the world like that of old books-- really old books, books with yellowed pages and a musty scent and the aroma of a vanished era hanging over them-- but old periodicals are better yet. An old book is a lone voice, coming to us across the ages; but an old periodical contains a whole medley of voices within its pages. It swarms with life. And in the case of the Harpenden Parish Magazine, it is the life of a single parish that survives within its crinkly pages. It is a round of births, marriages, and deaths, parish fundraisers, magic lantern shows, Lad's Brigade outings, lectures by foreign missionaries, all culminating in the cataclysm of the First World War, which throws a tinge of tragedy over the whole. These magazines have all the warm, poignant appeal of How Green was my Valley by Richard Llewellyn, Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas or Thomas Gray's Lines Written in a Country Churchyard-- but with the added savour of reality.
As reading material, I find them utterly compelling, but also very sad. They make me sad because they remind me how today's Church of England has betrayed its forebears. One thing is obvious from reading these Harpenden Parish Magazines; these were serious Christians who attempted to live a life true to historical, orthodox Christianity. And they worked very hard at it. Again and again, the clerics of Harpenden Parish urge their parishioners to a serious reformation in Lent, or to more regular worship, or to support the parish charities or the adornment of their places of worship.
Who (aside from an ardent secularist) can see the wreck of English Christianity without feeling an icy grief? Think of how much effort went into the creation and preservation of a Christian England; not only the early missionaries and martyrs, but all the millions of nameless rectors and vicars, all the housewives and Sunday school teachers and unlettered peasants and fishermen and artisans, down all the generations, who strove to conform their lives to the Gospel, who squeezed out their meagre pennies to keep a roof above their local church, who kept the light of faith burning through plague and civil war and industrialisation and all the twists and turns of English history-- all to end in today's Church of England, which has flung orthodox Christianity to the wind and has all but passed into utter irrelevance.
As a Catholic, of course I believe that the greatest disaster to befall English Christianity was the Reformation. But the Church of England was a Church that once seriously claimed to retain the apostolic succession, to be a branch of the worldwide Catholic Church. How can we not be dismayed to see its degeneration? And because of my deep-seated anglophilia, I have a certain fondness for historical Anglicanism in itself; I cherish Orwell's image of "old maids cycling to holy communion through the morning mist". So reading these old issues of the Harpenden Parish Magazine fills me with a special wistfulness.
Perhaps I am the only person who now owns a copy of these magazines. (I did email the current Harpenden parish to see if they had any, but there was no reply; possibly they were all too busy attending gay rights marches or Transcendental Meditation classes.) It is a moving thought, that all that is left of this parish's life in those years might be between these salmon-coloured covers, sitting on my bookshelf. I regularly remember these long-deceased parishioners of Harpenden in my prayers.
So, what sort of thing might you come across in these magazines? Well, under the heading "Church Missionary Society", in the issue for April 1908, we find this:
"Dr. Tisdall gave a very interesting account of 'Mohammedanism', from his personal experience of Persia. He showed very clearly that though Mohammedans believed in only one god, their conception of that god is so debased that far from being a pure religion it is one of cruelty and sensuality, and one which degrades, particularly the position of women."
Now, it is a good thing that inter-faith relations have become more sensitive and diplomatic since that time. But I can't help feeling that the writer here takes Islam, and the differences between Islam and Christianity, more seriously than the multiculturalist of today.
In the issue for November 1904, we get this interesting description of a meeting for the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts:
"The speaker gave a most interesting account of his experiences during the late Boer War, he being one of only six resident English priests who were allowed to remain in the Transvaal after war was declared. They remained on condition that they signed an oath of neutrality, and refrained from using in Church the prayers for Queen Victoria and the Royal Family. In order to see that the condition was complied with, two Boer soldiers stood inside the church with loaded rifles. Mr. Vyvyan signed the oath, but told them he should break it when the English arrived; this the Boers took no exception to, telling him that the English would never come there. With regard to the other condition, a pause was made in the service when the forbidden prayers were reached, while the congregation could use them in silence....
"Another incident was the attempt on the part of some of the enemy, who were escaping with Kruger, to take the Missionary's kitchen stove. On their arrival they were told to call in the morning, meanwhile the native Kaffir servant worked hard all night keeping up a big fire, with which he made the stove so hot that when the Boers came for it they could not possibly move it. This state of affairs was kept up by the servant's industry for a whole week, till they gave it up as a bad job. This story was related as an example of what the native Christians will do for the English, who brought them Christianity, and to whom they are strongly attached."
The Temperance movement was influential at this time, and there are many references to Temperance events in the parish. In the issue for December 1905 we are told:
"On Wednesday we had the advantage of two very forcible addresses by the Rev. F. Swainson, in which he likened sin in general and intemperance in particular to the loathsome and almost incurable disease of leprosy. As the words of a man who had himself experienced fiery temptation, and is now working amongst a set of people to whom total abstinence is entirely advisable, his uncompromising utterances were duly appreciated."
A long way from 'Thought for the Day'!
Imperialism had not yet become a dirty word, and the people of Harpenden unabashedly celebrate Empire Day:
"At the County Council Schools, Colonel Durnford, the Chairman of the Managers, gave the young people an address on "The growth of Empire", and later, when all were assembled in the playground, an address on "The Flag" was given by the same gentleman. Patriotic songs were heartily sung, and the children afterwards dispersed to spend the rest of their holiday away from school."(July 1906)
There is a sterling defence of denominational education in the September 1906 issue, which is very interesting (and perhaps, to us today, surprising) in its choice of arguments:
"The aim, therefore, of Churchmen should be to make clear their ideal of Christian Education. Just as in secular matters, the aim of schooling was to teach a child to think clearly and broadly, to express itself fully and clearly, and to train its character as a citizen, so the aim of religious education was to make the child think fearlessly and broadly on religious subjects, to teach it a dignified and adequate expression (in prayer and worship) of its religious life, and to train it to be a loyal member of Christ's kingdom on earth. Education of thought was secured not merely by learning facts: the child is encouraged to ask questions, to learn to get to the bottom of things, and in the variety of lessons the mind is expanded to wider interest. In the same way, in religious things the child learns to meet intellectual difficulties in after life. A full teaching of an unmutilated creed, and the laying before the child of a broad survey of Christian faith as mapped out in the Church year was not possible with undenominational education. Education in religious expression was taught by familiarizing with the Services of the Church and storing the memory with hymns and Psalms which would, in after years, become hallowed by association."
How interesting that denominational education is here defended as leading towards freedom and indpendence of mind, rather than away from it! But how insightful, too!
I could quote and quote and quote; and, indeed, I have every intention of blogging more selections from these magazines. But I think it is inevitable that I should finish on a grimmer note; I think that anybody, turning the pages of this magazine, would turn to the War numbers with a morbid compulsion, curious to see how the shadow of World War fell upon the quiet life of Harpenden.
It is sobering indeed to read how the very real virtues of these people-- their sense of duty, patriotism and nobility-- impelled them, along with their countrymen, to rush to the support of the flag in this most questionable of causes. In the February 1915 issue, Reverend Kean M. Pitt writes:
"I am glad that the list of those who have joined the Army from Harpenden still swells. Though at present the crucial question "Why did you not join?" may possibly be evaded or ignored, it must surely be realised that it is no light matter thus to be interrogated; nor is it a question that will die out with the coming of peace. As long as the young man lives the question will present itself directly and indirectly, it will ever be sounding in the inner consciousness of the man, "Why did you not join?" Good for that man, if he is of suitable age, if he is able to give to himself and his countrymen a real honest and valid reason. If not, I do not envy the life of the man who without real tangible reason, evaded the present call upon his manhood".
Oh Lord, may the good Christian people of Harpenden, every one of the names mentioned in the pages of these magazines, find their way to the eternal banquet!
Sunday, November 4, 2012
My Little Purple Notebook
I would like to admit to a rather odd practice of mine. I often wonder if other people do anything like it.
I have a little purple notebook, which I sometimes carry in my pocket. I acquired this particular notebook a few months ago, but it has progenitors of one kind or another going back to my teens.
If it fell out of my pocket and somebody discovered it, I can't imagine what he or she would make of it. This is the first few entries (with names omitted):
The Greek philosophy lecture with Dr. W---- D-----.
N---'s star-sign book.
Tea in Charlotte airport.
Reading Hollywood vs. America for the first time.
Reading Yeats and Von Hugel book in Richmond Airport.
221B Baker Street board game.
Well, I think they would probably throw it away. Either that or decide there was some elaborate code hidden within it and spend nights of black-coffee-fuelled study trying to crack it.
But there's no code. My little purple notebook simply exists to remind me of precious moments in my life, moments charged with inspiration and wonder and even a kind of ecstasy. The very memories of these moments fill me with a new zest. They swell the sails of my spirit.
It is very difficult to explain this properly. They are not (for the most part) the happiest moments in conventional terms. Some of them could hardly be described as moments at all, since they don't refer to anything that actualy happened. If I use the term "revelations", the reader should understand I don't mean it in a mystical or religious sense.
But I think everybody has probably had these moments.
Dear Reader, do you recognise this phenomenon at all? You are going about your everyday life, perhaps listening to the radio while chopping mushrooms, or sitting on a bus gazing out into the misty morning, or looking at the shelves of a toy shop. And then suddenly-- it happens. For no obvious reason-- or for no reason that seems adequate-- your spirit is filled with a kind of quiet ecstasy. Your soul breaks its banks. The world, in that moment, seems to glow. It appears to you as almost unbearably full of delight and promise. More than anything else, there is a sense of giddy abundance, of utter profusion.
Such moments are always unexpected. They come when they come. They can be absent from the happiest moments of your life. In fact, it is unlikely they would accompany the happiest moments of your life, since those moments are so self-conscious and (often) so eagerly anticipated, and this sudden transport invariably comes out of the blue. Opening the letter that tells you that you've got your dream job, holding your newly-born child, meeting your hero, kissing the love of your life for the first time-- these may be genuinely the happiest moments of your life, but they are unlikely to be this kind of happiness.
And furthermore, though it seems strange for me to say this given my description, sometimes you are not even aware of these moments at the time they occur. They seem to develop like photographs in the dark room of your memory.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about these moments, looking for echoes of them in what others have written. The moments of inspiration described by poets express it best, I have found.
This is how Philip Larkin explained the conception of a poem: "Poetry (at any rate in my case) is like trying to remember a tune you’ve forgotten. All corrections are attempts to get nearer to the forgotten tune. A poem is written because the poet gets a sudden vision-- lasting one second or less-- and he attempts to express the whole of which the vision is a part."
("One second or less" makes a lot of sense to me-- in fact these "revelations" are so instanteous that, in a strange way, they seem outside time altogether.)
This verse from Yeats, I think, also describes the sensation, though he describes the phenomenon as lasting for twenty minutes or so:
My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.
Wordsworth wrote a lot about these moments, and called them "spots of time". (They are mentioned often in his extended poem The Prelude.) This account of a conversation between him and Thomas De Quincey describes very well another aspect of these moments; that they often occur, not only unexpectedly, but in the moment of relaxation after the mind has been exerted upon something entirely different:
"At intervals, Wordsworth had stretched himself at length on the high road, applying his ear to the ground, so as to catch any sound of wheels that might be going along at a distance. Once, when he was slowly rising from this effort, his eye caught a bright star that was glittering between the brow of Seat Sandal and the mighty Helvellyn. He gazed upon it for a minute or so ; and then, upon turning away to descend into Grasmere, he made the following explanation : ' I have remarked, from my earliest days, that if, under any circumstances, the attention is perfectly raced up to a steady act of observation, or of steady expectation, then, if this intense condition of vigilance should suddenly relax, at that moment any beautiful, any impressive visual object, or collection of objects, falling upon the eye, is carried to the heart with a power not known under other circumstances. Just now my ear was placed upon the stretch, in order to catch any sound of wheels that might come down upon the lake of Wythburn, from the Keswick road ; at the very instant when I raised my head from the ground, in final abandonment of hope for this night, at the very instant when the organs of attention were all at once relaxing from their tension, the bright star hanging in the air above those outlines of massy blackness fell suddenly upon my eye, and penetrated my capacity of apprehension, with a pathos and a sense of the Infinite, that would not have arrested me under other circumstances."
One characteristic of these moments, at least in my experience, is that, though they come out of the blue, and they can't be sought, the memory of them never loses its freshness or its galvanising effect. And the reason I jot them down in my notebook is because, in those moments, the world (in the words of the poem) seems to be "better than ever we thought it could possibly be". In those moments, it as though a film has been removed from our eyes, and we see the world with all the awe, wonder, excitement, gratitude and hunger that we should always feel.
But what kind of thing am I talking about?
It is almost impossible to describe the individual experiences-- and I do think that this particular ecstasy is inevitably private, unless you are a great poet and can make the vision manifest through your words.
That is too hard a task for me, but I will at least try to describe some of the first entries from my little purple notebook, the ones that I listed at the beginning of this post.
The Greek philosophy lecture with Dr. W---- D-----.: This is a memory from the time I was pursuing an evening degree (abandoned in my second year) in UCD. Philosophy was one of my subjects and in this particular class we were learning about Plato's Symposium. The class was small, the atmosphere was relaxed, and I was drowsy.
And then, out of the blue as always-- it hit me. I seemed to be filled with the ideal of beauty and grace and nobility that animated the ancient Athenians. Names like Socrates and Alciabiades did not seem to be references to a vanished world but present, contemporary, right there in the classroom with me. However poor and inaccurate my idea of the Athenian ideal or the teachings of Socrates might have been, the sensation was one of being "plugged in" to them.
Tea in Charlotte Airport: This is a memory from my last trip to the States-- during which I proposed to my girlfriend Michelle. Of course, I was full of carried-over excitement from that event. I was catching a connecting flight from Charlotte and, as usual, I felt a good deal of anxiety about everything going smoothly. (I always have fears, perhaps irrational, of missing my connecting flight and being stuck in a city where I don't know anybody and have nowhere to stay.) I had found my boarding gate and I was plenty of time, so I felt a wave of relief and relaxation. (Remember Wordsworth with his ear to the road.) I decided to have a cup of tea (or perhaps coffee, I can't remember), and suddenly the fact that I was all alone, in a city where I was a complete stranger, thousands of miles from my home, seemed no longer frightening but liberating and exciting. I felt terribly grown-up, alone in a foreign country, hugging my big news to myself. And the simple pleasure of cradling a hot cup of tea (or coffee), and the exciting atmosphere of the airport, all came together to fill me with a wave of exhilaration, of sheer jubilation in life.
Reading Hollywood vs. America for the first time: This is a memory from several years ago, a time when I was going through a spiritual crisis and deep depression. I was struck with a profound yearning for God. I was searching for Him, but I was stuck in my atheism.
The reality of my atheistical worldview was lying heavily upon me, and nothing seemed to matter. Not only was everything transient, but nothing even mattered in itself. There weren't even any things, so to speak. Just a chaotic flux, lumps of which we arbitrarily named people, furniture, animals, and so forth. And everybody else seemed so mindlessly cheerful about this.
In this frame of mind, I found myself reading Hollywood vs. America, a polemic by the American film critic Michael Medved (who is a conservative and a practicing Jew). The general theme is that the entertainment industry of that time (it was written in 1992) had "broken faith" with the values of Middle America and cynically attacked religion, marriage, America and traditional values in general. The book is not a masterpiece, nor do I agree with everything Medved says (I agree with most of what he says). But all of a sudden I was flooded with comfort, since-- within the mental landscape of the book-- everything I craved was treated as a reality. The existence of God, the old-fashioned ideal of family life, the expectation that movies would be uplifting and life-affirming-- everything that I longed for, and that my society denied me, was not only accepted but argued for within the pages of the book. The sense of sanctuary was overpowering, and I still feel it whenever I open the book.
Well, that is enough. Either you know what I'm talking about, Dear Reader, or you don't. If not, the fault is with me. I think this post is more of a message in a bottle than anything else I have written-- it may be that it won't be of interest to anybody, that nobody who reads this will have shared this experience. But if even one person has shared it, and is pleased to see it described, it will have been well worth it.
I have a little purple notebook, which I sometimes carry in my pocket. I acquired this particular notebook a few months ago, but it has progenitors of one kind or another going back to my teens.
If it fell out of my pocket and somebody discovered it, I can't imagine what he or she would make of it. This is the first few entries (with names omitted):
The Greek philosophy lecture with Dr. W---- D-----.
N---'s star-sign book.
Tea in Charlotte airport.
Reading Hollywood vs. America for the first time.
Reading Yeats and Von Hugel book in Richmond Airport.
221B Baker Street board game.
Well, I think they would probably throw it away. Either that or decide there was some elaborate code hidden within it and spend nights of black-coffee-fuelled study trying to crack it.
But there's no code. My little purple notebook simply exists to remind me of precious moments in my life, moments charged with inspiration and wonder and even a kind of ecstasy. The very memories of these moments fill me with a new zest. They swell the sails of my spirit.
It is very difficult to explain this properly. They are not (for the most part) the happiest moments in conventional terms. Some of them could hardly be described as moments at all, since they don't refer to anything that actualy happened. If I use the term "revelations", the reader should understand I don't mean it in a mystical or religious sense.
But I think everybody has probably had these moments.
Dear Reader, do you recognise this phenomenon at all? You are going about your everyday life, perhaps listening to the radio while chopping mushrooms, or sitting on a bus gazing out into the misty morning, or looking at the shelves of a toy shop. And then suddenly-- it happens. For no obvious reason-- or for no reason that seems adequate-- your spirit is filled with a kind of quiet ecstasy. Your soul breaks its banks. The world, in that moment, seems to glow. It appears to you as almost unbearably full of delight and promise. More than anything else, there is a sense of giddy abundance, of utter profusion.
Such moments are always unexpected. They come when they come. They can be absent from the happiest moments of your life. In fact, it is unlikely they would accompany the happiest moments of your life, since those moments are so self-conscious and (often) so eagerly anticipated, and this sudden transport invariably comes out of the blue. Opening the letter that tells you that you've got your dream job, holding your newly-born child, meeting your hero, kissing the love of your life for the first time-- these may be genuinely the happiest moments of your life, but they are unlikely to be this kind of happiness.
And furthermore, though it seems strange for me to say this given my description, sometimes you are not even aware of these moments at the time they occur. They seem to develop like photographs in the dark room of your memory.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about these moments, looking for echoes of them in what others have written. The moments of inspiration described by poets express it best, I have found.
This is how Philip Larkin explained the conception of a poem: "Poetry (at any rate in my case) is like trying to remember a tune you’ve forgotten. All corrections are attempts to get nearer to the forgotten tune. A poem is written because the poet gets a sudden vision-- lasting one second or less-- and he attempts to express the whole of which the vision is a part."
("One second or less" makes a lot of sense to me-- in fact these "revelations" are so instanteous that, in a strange way, they seem outside time altogether.)
This verse from Yeats, I think, also describes the sensation, though he describes the phenomenon as lasting for twenty minutes or so:
My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
An open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
While on the shop and street I gazed
My body of a sudden blazed;
And twenty minutes more or less
It seemed, so great my happiness,
That I was blessed and could bless.
Wordsworth wrote a lot about these moments, and called them "spots of time". (They are mentioned often in his extended poem The Prelude.) This account of a conversation between him and Thomas De Quincey describes very well another aspect of these moments; that they often occur, not only unexpectedly, but in the moment of relaxation after the mind has been exerted upon something entirely different:
"At intervals, Wordsworth had stretched himself at length on the high road, applying his ear to the ground, so as to catch any sound of wheels that might be going along at a distance. Once, when he was slowly rising from this effort, his eye caught a bright star that was glittering between the brow of Seat Sandal and the mighty Helvellyn. He gazed upon it for a minute or so ; and then, upon turning away to descend into Grasmere, he made the following explanation : ' I have remarked, from my earliest days, that if, under any circumstances, the attention is perfectly raced up to a steady act of observation, or of steady expectation, then, if this intense condition of vigilance should suddenly relax, at that moment any beautiful, any impressive visual object, or collection of objects, falling upon the eye, is carried to the heart with a power not known under other circumstances. Just now my ear was placed upon the stretch, in order to catch any sound of wheels that might come down upon the lake of Wythburn, from the Keswick road ; at the very instant when I raised my head from the ground, in final abandonment of hope for this night, at the very instant when the organs of attention were all at once relaxing from their tension, the bright star hanging in the air above those outlines of massy blackness fell suddenly upon my eye, and penetrated my capacity of apprehension, with a pathos and a sense of the Infinite, that would not have arrested me under other circumstances."
One characteristic of these moments, at least in my experience, is that, though they come out of the blue, and they can't be sought, the memory of them never loses its freshness or its galvanising effect. And the reason I jot them down in my notebook is because, in those moments, the world (in the words of the poem) seems to be "better than ever we thought it could possibly be". In those moments, it as though a film has been removed from our eyes, and we see the world with all the awe, wonder, excitement, gratitude and hunger that we should always feel.
But what kind of thing am I talking about?
It is almost impossible to describe the individual experiences-- and I do think that this particular ecstasy is inevitably private, unless you are a great poet and can make the vision manifest through your words.
That is too hard a task for me, but I will at least try to describe some of the first entries from my little purple notebook, the ones that I listed at the beginning of this post.
The Greek philosophy lecture with Dr. W---- D-----.: This is a memory from the time I was pursuing an evening degree (abandoned in my second year) in UCD. Philosophy was one of my subjects and in this particular class we were learning about Plato's Symposium. The class was small, the atmosphere was relaxed, and I was drowsy.
And then, out of the blue as always-- it hit me. I seemed to be filled with the ideal of beauty and grace and nobility that animated the ancient Athenians. Names like Socrates and Alciabiades did not seem to be references to a vanished world but present, contemporary, right there in the classroom with me. However poor and inaccurate my idea of the Athenian ideal or the teachings of Socrates might have been, the sensation was one of being "plugged in" to them.
Tea in Charlotte Airport: This is a memory from my last trip to the States-- during which I proposed to my girlfriend Michelle. Of course, I was full of carried-over excitement from that event. I was catching a connecting flight from Charlotte and, as usual, I felt a good deal of anxiety about everything going smoothly. (I always have fears, perhaps irrational, of missing my connecting flight and being stuck in a city where I don't know anybody and have nowhere to stay.) I had found my boarding gate and I was plenty of time, so I felt a wave of relief and relaxation. (Remember Wordsworth with his ear to the road.) I decided to have a cup of tea (or perhaps coffee, I can't remember), and suddenly the fact that I was all alone, in a city where I was a complete stranger, thousands of miles from my home, seemed no longer frightening but liberating and exciting. I felt terribly grown-up, alone in a foreign country, hugging my big news to myself. And the simple pleasure of cradling a hot cup of tea (or coffee), and the exciting atmosphere of the airport, all came together to fill me with a wave of exhilaration, of sheer jubilation in life.
Reading Hollywood vs. America for the first time: This is a memory from several years ago, a time when I was going through a spiritual crisis and deep depression. I was struck with a profound yearning for God. I was searching for Him, but I was stuck in my atheism.
The reality of my atheistical worldview was lying heavily upon me, and nothing seemed to matter. Not only was everything transient, but nothing even mattered in itself. There weren't even any things, so to speak. Just a chaotic flux, lumps of which we arbitrarily named people, furniture, animals, and so forth. And everybody else seemed so mindlessly cheerful about this.
In this frame of mind, I found myself reading Hollywood vs. America, a polemic by the American film critic Michael Medved (who is a conservative and a practicing Jew). The general theme is that the entertainment industry of that time (it was written in 1992) had "broken faith" with the values of Middle America and cynically attacked religion, marriage, America and traditional values in general. The book is not a masterpiece, nor do I agree with everything Medved says (I agree with most of what he says). But all of a sudden I was flooded with comfort, since-- within the mental landscape of the book-- everything I craved was treated as a reality. The existence of God, the old-fashioned ideal of family life, the expectation that movies would be uplifting and life-affirming-- everything that I longed for, and that my society denied me, was not only accepted but argued for within the pages of the book. The sense of sanctuary was overpowering, and I still feel it whenever I open the book.
Well, that is enough. Either you know what I'm talking about, Dear Reader, or you don't. If not, the fault is with me. I think this post is more of a message in a bottle than anything else I have written-- it may be that it won't be of interest to anybody, that nobody who reads this will have shared this experience. But if even one person has shared it, and is pleased to see it described, it will have been well worth it.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Homophobic Bullying and Suicide
There is an excellent letter on the subject of homosexuality and suicide in this week's Irish Catholic, written by a Margaret Hickey from Cork.
She writes: "If social or religious stigma was a significant factor in young gay people taking their lives then one would expect higher suicide rates in Muslim countries where homosexuality is less tolerated, to put it mildly, than in any Christian denomination. Equally one would expect low rates in Scandinavian countries where there is a very liberal approach to all matters of sexuality. In fact the opposite is true in both cases".
The spectre of suicide is increasingly used as a kind of emotional blackmail against the teaching of Christian ethics on both sexuality and abortion. And it is a very powerful argument, because nobody wants to put any vulnerable person into a suicidal frame of mind.
But the same objection could be made against pretty much any teaching whatsoever. The Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, as a young man oppressed by the scientistic orthodoxy of his day, made a pact with his wife that they would commit suicide together within a year if they could find no deeper meaning to life. Surely it is no small danger that sensitive and thoughful young people might be driven to a dangerous depression if they are taught that life has no purpose and that their existence is an accident. And yet powerful voices in our culture do indeed demand that religious instruction of children be outlawed.
One of my former teachers recently spoke out, through the media, against homophobic bullying. This teacher was herself a bully who saw nothing wrong in ridiculing students in front of their classmates, or even (in their absence) in front of other students. She boasted of hearing kids celebrate when they found out she wouldn't be teaching them that day. I can remember how she once told a story to our class, in a comic tone, of coming across one of her students-- one of her current students-- either seriously drunk or high on drugs (I forget which it was) on Grafton Street. And I should say here that this teacher never picked on me especially, so I am not writing out of spite.
I think school bullying, and teenage bullying, is an enormous problem and one which society has to take much more seriously. There have been two horrific recent cases in Ireland where teenagers have been hounded to their deaths through online persecution by their peers. I have first-hand experience of being bullied in school myself and I know how it grinds a person's self-esteem and confidence to powder. There is nothing character-building about it.
(Incidentally, some conservatives ridicule the whole concept of instilling "self-esteem", presuming that it simply means not challenging the child and teaching him or her to be complacent. If this is the form that teaching self-esteem takes, it is indeed wrong. But self-esteem is not self-complacency. A child with a serious self-esteem problem is in no danger of feeling arrogant or self-satisfied. He or she feels barely entitled to breathe the same air or to stand on the same ground as others. He feels that he will fail at everything he attemps. She thinks that everybody has an automatically low opinion of her. Instilling self-esteem is not a matter of teaching that "all must have prizes". It's a matter of convincing some children that it is worth making the effort in the first place.)
There is nothing unique about homophobic bullying. Bullies are not animated by Judaeo-Christian ethics, or even the afterglow of Judaeo-Christian ethics. They are animated by sadism, and they will use whatever is convenient to persecute their victims-- whether that be homosexuality (or supposed homosexuality), ugliness, fatness, skinniness, red hair, unpopularity, poverty, or any other pretext whatsoever.
But what to do? I have been thinking about this for years and I still don't know the answer. Sometimes, given the apparent inevitability of bullying in schools, I have thought that homeschooling is the only course for responsible parents. But this is an enormous undertaking, and it simply might not be possible in many cases. And besides, the experience of school does bring a lot of good things with it-- maybe even things that simply can't be experienced elsewhere. This is probably why Isaac Asimov's famous short story "The Fun They Had" speaks to so many readers, and is so often reprinted. (The story is set in a future where computers have replaced school and teachers, and the the central character-- a little boy-- ends up thinking fondly of "the fun they had" in the old days). I have painful memories of school. I also have magical memories of school-- the smell of paint in art class, the glow of the overhead projector showing us slides of great masterpieces, the haunting beauty of adolescent voices raised in choir, the excitement of hearing poetry and literature taken seriously in English class, the sound of basketballs thumping on the floor in P.E. (or gym class for my American readers), and so many others.
I'm pretty sure, though, that heavy-handed state regulations and government anti-bullying schemes are unlikely to achieve anything besides paperwork and, possibly, more ideological brainwashing of hapless children. Saying that our society should take something more seriously is today almost inevitably interpreted as saying that we need a new law or a new government scheme. But I think the problem of bullying will require a response much closer to home.
She writes: "If social or religious stigma was a significant factor in young gay people taking their lives then one would expect higher suicide rates in Muslim countries where homosexuality is less tolerated, to put it mildly, than in any Christian denomination. Equally one would expect low rates in Scandinavian countries where there is a very liberal approach to all matters of sexuality. In fact the opposite is true in both cases".
The spectre of suicide is increasingly used as a kind of emotional blackmail against the teaching of Christian ethics on both sexuality and abortion. And it is a very powerful argument, because nobody wants to put any vulnerable person into a suicidal frame of mind.
But the same objection could be made against pretty much any teaching whatsoever. The Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, as a young man oppressed by the scientistic orthodoxy of his day, made a pact with his wife that they would commit suicide together within a year if they could find no deeper meaning to life. Surely it is no small danger that sensitive and thoughful young people might be driven to a dangerous depression if they are taught that life has no purpose and that their existence is an accident. And yet powerful voices in our culture do indeed demand that religious instruction of children be outlawed.
One of my former teachers recently spoke out, through the media, against homophobic bullying. This teacher was herself a bully who saw nothing wrong in ridiculing students in front of their classmates, or even (in their absence) in front of other students. She boasted of hearing kids celebrate when they found out she wouldn't be teaching them that day. I can remember how she once told a story to our class, in a comic tone, of coming across one of her students-- one of her current students-- either seriously drunk or high on drugs (I forget which it was) on Grafton Street. And I should say here that this teacher never picked on me especially, so I am not writing out of spite.
I think school bullying, and teenage bullying, is an enormous problem and one which society has to take much more seriously. There have been two horrific recent cases in Ireland where teenagers have been hounded to their deaths through online persecution by their peers. I have first-hand experience of being bullied in school myself and I know how it grinds a person's self-esteem and confidence to powder. There is nothing character-building about it.
(Incidentally, some conservatives ridicule the whole concept of instilling "self-esteem", presuming that it simply means not challenging the child and teaching him or her to be complacent. If this is the form that teaching self-esteem takes, it is indeed wrong. But self-esteem is not self-complacency. A child with a serious self-esteem problem is in no danger of feeling arrogant or self-satisfied. He or she feels barely entitled to breathe the same air or to stand on the same ground as others. He feels that he will fail at everything he attemps. She thinks that everybody has an automatically low opinion of her. Instilling self-esteem is not a matter of teaching that "all must have prizes". It's a matter of convincing some children that it is worth making the effort in the first place.)
There is nothing unique about homophobic bullying. Bullies are not animated by Judaeo-Christian ethics, or even the afterglow of Judaeo-Christian ethics. They are animated by sadism, and they will use whatever is convenient to persecute their victims-- whether that be homosexuality (or supposed homosexuality), ugliness, fatness, skinniness, red hair, unpopularity, poverty, or any other pretext whatsoever.
But what to do? I have been thinking about this for years and I still don't know the answer. Sometimes, given the apparent inevitability of bullying in schools, I have thought that homeschooling is the only course for responsible parents. But this is an enormous undertaking, and it simply might not be possible in many cases. And besides, the experience of school does bring a lot of good things with it-- maybe even things that simply can't be experienced elsewhere. This is probably why Isaac Asimov's famous short story "The Fun They Had" speaks to so many readers, and is so often reprinted. (The story is set in a future where computers have replaced school and teachers, and the the central character-- a little boy-- ends up thinking fondly of "the fun they had" in the old days). I have painful memories of school. I also have magical memories of school-- the smell of paint in art class, the glow of the overhead projector showing us slides of great masterpieces, the haunting beauty of adolescent voices raised in choir, the excitement of hearing poetry and literature taken seriously in English class, the sound of basketballs thumping on the floor in P.E. (or gym class for my American readers), and so many others.
I'm pretty sure, though, that heavy-handed state regulations and government anti-bullying schemes are unlikely to achieve anything besides paperwork and, possibly, more ideological brainwashing of hapless children. Saying that our society should take something more seriously is today almost inevitably interpreted as saying that we need a new law or a new government scheme. But I think the problem of bullying will require a response much closer to home.
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