Can I ask readers to pray for me. I'm really struggling with things at the moment and I need the Holy Spirit to guide and sustain me. Please pray especially for me to know the right thing to do and to see the direction forward.
I know you will, as you always do, so thank you.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
The Russians are Coming!
Or, rather, they're already here. Every day for the past couple of weeks this blog has had a huge amount of traffic directed from websites with the suffix .ru. These sites look so dodgy I daren't even click on them to check them out.
However, just in case there are some REAL Russians here, perhaps surprised to find themselves here, let me just say how much I admire your culture and history. I could listen to someone speaking in Russian all day long, and I value the 'Russian idea' in history and civilization. Nobody can really say what the 'Russian idea' is, which makes it even better. I'd like to go there some day.
The only Russian I can remember meeting was Alexander Baburin, the highest ranking chess player to play for the Irish chess team. He is ethnically Russian and grew up in the Soviet Union. I interviewed him for a student magazine in a McDonald's in Blackrock once. He was very charming.
However, just in case there are some REAL Russians here, perhaps surprised to find themselves here, let me just say how much I admire your culture and history. I could listen to someone speaking in Russian all day long, and I value the 'Russian idea' in history and civilization. Nobody can really say what the 'Russian idea' is, which makes it even better. I'd like to go there some day.
The only Russian I can remember meeting was Alexander Baburin, the highest ranking chess player to play for the Irish chess team. He is ethnically Russian and grew up in the Soviet Union. I interviewed him for a student magazine in a McDonald's in Blackrock once. He was very charming.
Friday, April 10, 2015
A Meditation on Snow-Globes
I love snow-globes. Who doesn't love snow-globes? If such a person exists, it's probably not someone you'd like to have with you on a desert island.
I would guess that I'm even fonder of them than most people are, though. I have two snow-globes on my desk in work. One was given to me by a colleague as a Kris Kindle gift (the same colleague just passed and said hello; yes, I'm writing this at work, but I'm manning a service desk so that's OK.)
The other snow globe was given to me as a Christmas present by my wife, and it's my favourite Christmas present ever.
Both of the snow-globes on my desk are Christmas snow-globes. The one my colleague gave me shows Santa's workshop. The one my wife gave me shows a nativity scene. The Santa's workshop one is battery-operated and, when supplied with batteries, will perform a light show and play music. The Nativity scene has no such bells and whistles but is much bigger, more solid, and more handsomely produced.
Snow-globes are a popular motif in cinema and story-telling, though now I come to think of it only one example comes to mind; the most famous example, the snow-globe that Kane drops at the beginning of Citizen Kane, while uttering his dying word: "Rosebud!".
Since I wrote that sentence another example occurs to me; the snow-globe in the final scene of the medical drama St. Elsewhere, a television show I've never seen, but whose final scene I've read about. If you don't want to know what happens in that final scene, skip to the next paragraph. For everyone else, here it is; it is suggested that the entire series was a prolonged daydream in the mind of an autistic boy, based upon a snow-globe containing a model of the hospital at the show's centre.
In both of those examples, the snow globe seems to stand for two things; immense wistfulness, and a kind of ultimacy. 'Rosebud', in Citizen Kane, is assumed by the journalists investigating Kane's life to be the key to his story. And, of course, the entire series of St. Elsewhere, in a sense, happens in the snow globe.
When I think of snow-globes, wistfulness is the dominant atmosphere in my own mind. Perhaps this is because snow-globes are usually connected with childhood. They are toys as much as ornaments, and they often contain scenes appropriate to childhood.
Childhood itself seems to have a certain wistfulness native to it. I don't remember being a child. I have flashes, but they're only flashes; they are like the friezes from Pompeii. I do, however, remember being immensely nostalgic and wistful about childhood even when I was a child. I know I'm not the only person who feels this. The horror writer Clive Barker made much the same claim.
Perhaps this is because the idealized childhood that we all would have liked-- and I'm not criticizing that ideal, because ideals are important-- is rather rare. Or perhaps childhood, just like a snowglobe, can only be seen from the outside-- and even a child has to step outside his own experience to look at it. Unselfconsciousness is the very essence of childhood-- and when a child becomes self-conscious about his own childhood, he becomes an adult for a moment.
Or perhaps snow-globes make us feel wistful for that very reason-- that we can never get inside them. We can never enter the world of the snow-globe, except imaginatively. We can't touch the figures under the glass, unless we were to smash the glass.
This is also part of the charm. The snow-globe is a little world of its own, out of bounds but also unchanging. It inspires us with the same feelings that Keats expresses in "Ode to a Grecian Urn" (which is, in my view, a candidate for the greatest poem in English language):
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
(Having quoted this, though, it strikes me that its air of grandeur and loftiness is rather out of keeping with the atmosphere of most snow-globes, which are picturesque rather than grandiose. And there is a big difference between Keats's urn and a snow-globe; a snow-globe is not entirely immobile, but is somewhat kinetic, since you can shake the globe and the snowflakes whirl. That, after all, is its whole appeal.)
To me, snow-globes evoke not only childhood but the past in general. The poignancy of the past is that it is completed. Nineteen-eighty-five is as inaccessible as Ancient Egypt. You can't go there. Everything back then was as solid and real as it is today, but it has now disappeared completely. The Mount Everest and Westminster Bridge and Stonehenge of nineteen-eighty-five no longer exist. All the eggs that were hatched that year have been eaten; all the school timetables are completely irrelevant now; all the business plans drawn up have either failed or succeeded. Despite all the videotapes that were made, all the diaries that were kept, all the sound recordings in archives from that time, the overwhelming majority of moments in that year are irretrievably lost, even to those who experienced them. You can look at a photograph taken in 1985 and know that something real and tangible lay just beyond that corner, just behind that wall, just through that window; but nobody can look now to see what it was. At the time, everything was up in the air; now everything is fixed in place forever.
(And yet, as I said above, a snow-globe isn't entirely immobile-- you can shake the flakes-- and neither is the past. We don't see the past in freeze frames, we see it as a drama in which things happen-- though they can only ever happen one way, the way they actually happened. So a snow-globe's combination of fixity and motion is a perfect metaphor.)
As well as being a symbol of the past, I find snow-globes to be a symbol-- or maybe even an example-- of wholeness. Wholeness is something that we strive towards in life, but we never attain-- though sometimes we attain a kind of working approximation of it. But even this is rare and fragile.
All my life I have been haunted by the questions; What is a moment, and what makes it a whole? What is a story, and what makes it a whole? What is a thought? What is a journey? How can we ever pluck one of these wholes out of the all-encompassing flux?
The easiest answer, and one that leaves me both unsatisfied and rather queasy, is: "There are no wholes. There is only the flux." Not only does this seem to be refuted by how we talk and act, every day, but it's a singularly horrible idea. An opposition to this idea has become one of my guiding principles, one of the ways I judge the world and its inhabitants. The more a person or a school of thought is infected with the idea that "there is only the flux", the less I like them (or it). This might seem harsh, since it seems like a purely philosophical idea. But I think it's more than philosophical. I think it reflects a desire, and an ignoble desire. We know the rhetoric loved by these kind of people: "Childhood is a modern idea...gender is a social construct....Irishness is a cultural fiction...Catholic doctrine has changed over the centuries...X is fluid, Y is indeterminate, Z is imaginary..."
Against all this gooeyness, and this all this decadent love of gooeyness, I prize that which is distinct and whole and separate; even if it is not perfectly distinct or whole or separate. I don't see why we can't cheer for one side, instead of the other. Nor do I see that nominalism-- the doctrine that there is nothing but the flux-- is any more obviously true than essentialism-- the belief that things are real and have an essential nature. I am in favour of man and woman, and childhood, and the nation, and stories, and moments, and journeys, and the integrity of each thing being what it is and not something else.
And this is part of what a snow-globe symbolizes for me; something that is itself, rather than a mere episode in the flux; whether it is the elves in Santa's grotto, or the Holy Family caught in a fleeting and eternal moment on the first Christmas.
I would guess that I'm even fonder of them than most people are, though. I have two snow-globes on my desk in work. One was given to me by a colleague as a Kris Kindle gift (the same colleague just passed and said hello; yes, I'm writing this at work, but I'm manning a service desk so that's OK.)
The other snow globe was given to me as a Christmas present by my wife, and it's my favourite Christmas present ever.
Both of the snow-globes on my desk are Christmas snow-globes. The one my colleague gave me shows Santa's workshop. The one my wife gave me shows a nativity scene. The Santa's workshop one is battery-operated and, when supplied with batteries, will perform a light show and play music. The Nativity scene has no such bells and whistles but is much bigger, more solid, and more handsomely produced.
Snow-globes are a popular motif in cinema and story-telling, though now I come to think of it only one example comes to mind; the most famous example, the snow-globe that Kane drops at the beginning of Citizen Kane, while uttering his dying word: "Rosebud!".
Since I wrote that sentence another example occurs to me; the snow-globe in the final scene of the medical drama St. Elsewhere, a television show I've never seen, but whose final scene I've read about. If you don't want to know what happens in that final scene, skip to the next paragraph. For everyone else, here it is; it is suggested that the entire series was a prolonged daydream in the mind of an autistic boy, based upon a snow-globe containing a model of the hospital at the show's centre.
In both of those examples, the snow globe seems to stand for two things; immense wistfulness, and a kind of ultimacy. 'Rosebud', in Citizen Kane, is assumed by the journalists investigating Kane's life to be the key to his story. And, of course, the entire series of St. Elsewhere, in a sense, happens in the snow globe.
When I think of snow-globes, wistfulness is the dominant atmosphere in my own mind. Perhaps this is because snow-globes are usually connected with childhood. They are toys as much as ornaments, and they often contain scenes appropriate to childhood.
Childhood itself seems to have a certain wistfulness native to it. I don't remember being a child. I have flashes, but they're only flashes; they are like the friezes from Pompeii. I do, however, remember being immensely nostalgic and wistful about childhood even when I was a child. I know I'm not the only person who feels this. The horror writer Clive Barker made much the same claim.
Perhaps this is because the idealized childhood that we all would have liked-- and I'm not criticizing that ideal, because ideals are important-- is rather rare. Or perhaps childhood, just like a snowglobe, can only be seen from the outside-- and even a child has to step outside his own experience to look at it. Unselfconsciousness is the very essence of childhood-- and when a child becomes self-conscious about his own childhood, he becomes an adult for a moment.
Or perhaps snow-globes make us feel wistful for that very reason-- that we can never get inside them. We can never enter the world of the snow-globe, except imaginatively. We can't touch the figures under the glass, unless we were to smash the glass.
This is also part of the charm. The snow-globe is a little world of its own, out of bounds but also unchanging. It inspires us with the same feelings that Keats expresses in "Ode to a Grecian Urn" (which is, in my view, a candidate for the greatest poem in English language):
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
(Having quoted this, though, it strikes me that its air of grandeur and loftiness is rather out of keeping with the atmosphere of most snow-globes, which are picturesque rather than grandiose. And there is a big difference between Keats's urn and a snow-globe; a snow-globe is not entirely immobile, but is somewhat kinetic, since you can shake the globe and the snowflakes whirl. That, after all, is its whole appeal.)
To me, snow-globes evoke not only childhood but the past in general. The poignancy of the past is that it is completed. Nineteen-eighty-five is as inaccessible as Ancient Egypt. You can't go there. Everything back then was as solid and real as it is today, but it has now disappeared completely. The Mount Everest and Westminster Bridge and Stonehenge of nineteen-eighty-five no longer exist. All the eggs that were hatched that year have been eaten; all the school timetables are completely irrelevant now; all the business plans drawn up have either failed or succeeded. Despite all the videotapes that were made, all the diaries that were kept, all the sound recordings in archives from that time, the overwhelming majority of moments in that year are irretrievably lost, even to those who experienced them. You can look at a photograph taken in 1985 and know that something real and tangible lay just beyond that corner, just behind that wall, just through that window; but nobody can look now to see what it was. At the time, everything was up in the air; now everything is fixed in place forever.
(And yet, as I said above, a snow-globe isn't entirely immobile-- you can shake the flakes-- and neither is the past. We don't see the past in freeze frames, we see it as a drama in which things happen-- though they can only ever happen one way, the way they actually happened. So a snow-globe's combination of fixity and motion is a perfect metaphor.)
As well as being a symbol of the past, I find snow-globes to be a symbol-- or maybe even an example-- of wholeness. Wholeness is something that we strive towards in life, but we never attain-- though sometimes we attain a kind of working approximation of it. But even this is rare and fragile.
All my life I have been haunted by the questions; What is a moment, and what makes it a whole? What is a story, and what makes it a whole? What is a thought? What is a journey? How can we ever pluck one of these wholes out of the all-encompassing flux?
The easiest answer, and one that leaves me both unsatisfied and rather queasy, is: "There are no wholes. There is only the flux." Not only does this seem to be refuted by how we talk and act, every day, but it's a singularly horrible idea. An opposition to this idea has become one of my guiding principles, one of the ways I judge the world and its inhabitants. The more a person or a school of thought is infected with the idea that "there is only the flux", the less I like them (or it). This might seem harsh, since it seems like a purely philosophical idea. But I think it's more than philosophical. I think it reflects a desire, and an ignoble desire. We know the rhetoric loved by these kind of people: "Childhood is a modern idea...gender is a social construct....Irishness is a cultural fiction...Catholic doctrine has changed over the centuries...X is fluid, Y is indeterminate, Z is imaginary..."
Against all this gooeyness, and this all this decadent love of gooeyness, I prize that which is distinct and whole and separate; even if it is not perfectly distinct or whole or separate. I don't see why we can't cheer for one side, instead of the other. Nor do I see that nominalism-- the doctrine that there is nothing but the flux-- is any more obviously true than essentialism-- the belief that things are real and have an essential nature. I am in favour of man and woman, and childhood, and the nation, and stories, and moments, and journeys, and the integrity of each thing being what it is and not something else.
And this is part of what a snow-globe symbolizes for me; something that is itself, rather than a mere episode in the flux; whether it is the elves in Santa's grotto, or the Holy Family caught in a fleeting and eternal moment on the first Christmas.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Wit and Wisdom Not Wanted
Well, that may be an overstatement, but the website where I put all the articles from my 'Wit and Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton' column hasn't exactly taken off like I hope it would, with a tiny dribble of visitors. Shoot. Somehow I thought that would be a winner.
Anyway, I've been updating it since-- here is the latest article.
And here is the site itself, in case you hadn't seen it before.
Anyway, I've been updating it since-- here is the latest article.
And here is the site itself, in case you hadn't seen it before.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Easter Prayer
Last year, I made an 'Easter prayer' at this time. I think it might be a custom worth following.
My first prayer is for my beloved Michelle, and a prayer of thanks for a course of study she just completed with flying colours. I have other personal intentions that are right at the top of the list, but that I don't want to make public (though they are perfectly ordinary and not at all unusual). Still, I mention them because I never want them to lack precedence.
My second prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving for my father's recovery and apparent convalescence. He has had to make some drastic lifestyle changes and, though he is making no complaint, I know he is finding it hard. I pray that he will be strengthened in this.
I pray for all my family members who are not Christians (or believers at all) to be given the gift of faith.
I pray for the children and the adult who were baptised at the Easter Vigil in Ballymun last night to persevere in the faith, and to enjoy earthly happiness and security. I pray also for the woman who approached me after Mass, asking me to pray for an intention which she kept confidential (and who asked me what country I came from, saying: "You don't have an Irish accent"!)
I pray that traditional marriage may be upheld in the referendum to be held in Ireland in May.
I pray for all the Christians now being persecuted and living in fear all over the world.
I pray for the Jewish people all over the world.
I pray that the arts, entertainments and manners of our society will reflect more gentleness, idealism, chivalry, respect and wonder. I pray especially that childhood innocence will be protected and valued, in this era when there are so many forces ranged against it. I pray, too, that our societies will come to have a greater honour and esteem for old age.
I pray that the national traditions of every nation, the regional traditions of every region, the folk traditions of every people, and the family traditions of every family will be strengthened and celebrated. I pray especially that the Irish people will come to a greater love of their own traditions and distinctiveness.
I pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and for all our priests and our seminarians.
I pray for everybody who feels lonely, unloved and inadequate-- that they will find companionship, love and a sense of their own worth.
I pray for all my blog readers, those whose names (or aliases) I know, and those whose names I don't know.
I pray for Pope Francis, for the Holy Catholic Church, and for all Christian churches and communions around the world.
Amen.
My first prayer is for my beloved Michelle, and a prayer of thanks for a course of study she just completed with flying colours. I have other personal intentions that are right at the top of the list, but that I don't want to make public (though they are perfectly ordinary and not at all unusual). Still, I mention them because I never want them to lack precedence.
My second prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving for my father's recovery and apparent convalescence. He has had to make some drastic lifestyle changes and, though he is making no complaint, I know he is finding it hard. I pray that he will be strengthened in this.
I pray for all my family members who are not Christians (or believers at all) to be given the gift of faith.
I pray for the children and the adult who were baptised at the Easter Vigil in Ballymun last night to persevere in the faith, and to enjoy earthly happiness and security. I pray also for the woman who approached me after Mass, asking me to pray for an intention which she kept confidential (and who asked me what country I came from, saying: "You don't have an Irish accent"!)
I pray that traditional marriage may be upheld in the referendum to be held in Ireland in May.
I pray for all the Christians now being persecuted and living in fear all over the world.
I pray for the Jewish people all over the world.
I pray that the arts, entertainments and manners of our society will reflect more gentleness, idealism, chivalry, respect and wonder. I pray especially that childhood innocence will be protected and valued, in this era when there are so many forces ranged against it. I pray, too, that our societies will come to have a greater honour and esteem for old age.
I pray that the national traditions of every nation, the regional traditions of every region, the folk traditions of every people, and the family traditions of every family will be strengthened and celebrated. I pray especially that the Irish people will come to a greater love of their own traditions and distinctiveness.
I pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and for all our priests and our seminarians.
I pray for everybody who feels lonely, unloved and inadequate-- that they will find companionship, love and a sense of their own worth.
I pray for all my blog readers, those whose names (or aliases) I know, and those whose names I don't know.
I pray for Pope Francis, for the Holy Catholic Church, and for all Christian churches and communions around the world.
Amen.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Even Odder Than Usual
Some readers have been kind enough to reassure me that my 'rambling essays' are not the worst thing in the world, after I resolved to give them up recently. I'm glad to hear it, because I do like writing them! I also like putting ALL my thoughts on cyber-paper, even those not immediately related to anything Papistical.
So I am going to write about something idiosyncratic even by my standards. The video above, as a matter of fact.
I have quite a fascination with Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the controversial Premier of Queensland from 1968 to 1987. (I first heard about him through a satirical song by the English band The Stranglers, which intrigued me.) He was a right-wing populist who grew up in a poor farming family, became a very wealthy farmer through his own efforts, and then entered politics. He was a partisan of low tax and put a huge emphasis on economic development. He also had an authoritarian streak; he declared a state of emergecy to deal with protests against the South African rugby team playing a competitive game in Queensland (this was in the Apartheid era, obviously). He permitted the demolition of a very historic hotel in Brisbane, having it done at night to avoid protests. He also had little respect for environmentalists or for the aboriginal rights lobby.
He was a devout Lutheran, although he was more likely to have the Christian churches in Australia opposing him than supporting him. But he did take his faith seriously, in his own way; as Wikipedia puts it: "He demonstrated a strong moralistic streak, banning Playboy magazine, opposing school sex education and condom vending machines and in 1980 proposing a ban on women flying south for abortions. In May 1985 the government conducted a series of raids on so-called abortion clinic." (This is certainly a lot more of a genuinely conservative social policy than Margaret Thatcher, another politican who was seen as economically liberal but socially conservative. She wasn't really very socially conservative, apart from rhetoric.)
The first thing I should say is that I don't hold up Joh-Bjelke Petersen as an admirable figure. I find him fascinating, and he certainly annoyed a lot of the right people (including The Stranglers, even though I like their songs), but there is too much in his career and his whole attitude that I couldn't agree with. His hostility to unions and his enthusiasm for strike-breaking is not an attitude I share, though I can see that unions (especially in industries that are public utilities) can abuse their power. Nor do I think that tearing down a historic hotel is something that should be celebrated. There were also accusations of gerrymandering and corruption in his regime, which seem quite well-founded.
Nevertheless, I have always had a fascination with people who fly in the face of fashionable opinion, who ruffle feathers, and who are only ever mentioned with scorn by the sophisticated and right-on. I can't help a sneaking admiration for such people, most of the time.
He's also a colourful character. He had famous catch-phrases like, "Don't you worry about that!" (the title of his memoirs). I've always wanted a catch-phrase so I envy that. He is said to have slept in a cow-shed six nights a week for ten yeas, when he was working his way up to wealth as a small farmer.
Here are some of the reasons I find both Joh-Bjelke Petersen and this video fascinating:
1) Australia is another world to most of us. This blog has more readers in America than anywhere else, as I see from my blog statistics. After that, most of its readers are in Ireland and England. Some are in mainland Europe. I don't know if anyone from Australia reads this (please say hi if you do!). The notion of 'the Anglosphere', a cultural community formed of English-speaking nations, has become fairly well-known recently, but the truth is that people in America, Ireland and the UK share a cultural world that rather excludes Australia. We don't know about the ordinary life of Australians in the same way that we know about the ordinary life of Americans and British and (to a lesser extent) the Irish; we don't know about their pop culture references, TV shows, politics, advertising, current affairs, and so on. And yet, they are so similar to us; English-speaking, predominantly white and of European descent, Christian or post-Christian, liberal democratic, and so forth. Whenever I do find mself interested in any story from Australia, this contradiction is part of the fascination.
2) I don't share Joh Bjelke-Petersen's free market views, but I find them strangely poetic and romantic. The older I get, the more centrist I become in my economic views, and the less time I have for people who use either 'capitalism' or 'socialism' as dirty words (or rallying cries, for that matter). I believe in private enterprise and the profit motive; I also believe in government regulation and social welfare.
But the romance of the free market...there is something thrilling about it, as an idea. The idea that work, thrift and initiative, if freed from regulation, would bring about a better society on their own is very appealing. Partly this is in account of its simplicity. Partly it because it promises to free us from a lot of guilt and concern about poverty and homelessness and exploitation and things like that. How liberating it would be, to feel we could in good conscience ignore all the lectures and sermons on these topics! Besides, the idea that anyone willing to work hard will get ahead, or at least stay afloat, is a very encouraging thought. (Unfortunately, I believe there are lots of people who do work hard and practice thrift but who sink anyway-- or who barely keep their heads above water.)
I sympathise with the romance of commerce, too. There is something strangely reassuring and jolly in the sight of an 'Open 24 Hours' sign, of a shop where the lights never go out and there is always someone waiting to serve you. One of the things I like about staying in hotels is knowing that there is always someone on the reception desk, even in the middle of the night. Perhaps that relates back to a childhood hatred of bed-time and "lights out"; perhaps it goes back to prehistoric race terrors of night and winter. Intellectually, I am all in favour of a limited working week and of shared public holidays (and of the 'Keep Sunday Special' campaign in Britain); but I can't help but be depressed by the sight of a street full of shuttered shops and businesses, or the recorded voice message on a telephone telling you a business's hours of opening. (And not because either might be inconvenient; it goes beyond that.) We all find the phrase 'the city that never sleeps' evocative. That's the poetry I'm talking about.
(Before moving on from this point, such as it is, I should point out that my imagination can just as easily be stirred by the opposite. I love the movie Hot Fuzz, which features a high-powered London cop being exiled to a sleepy village, since he is showing up all the other police on the London force. I especially like the part where the Inspector in charge of the station announces (at 11:30 a.m.) that it's time for lunch, since it's the new guy's first day. I also love remembering the several days during Ireland's Big Freeze in 2010, when the library remained closed because of snow. It was such a delicious feeling, several evenings in a row, to get a text telling you not to venture out into the cold next morning! And I love to quote Chesterton's phrase: "The inn does not point to the road; the roads points to the inn.")
3) I like the video itself because it's a video of two men-- one elderly and snowy-haired, one very cosily middle-aged and avuncular-- chewing the fat over the old days. What could be more appealing? I like Joh Bjelke's sleeveless jumper and comfortable armchair. I like the interviewer's thick moustache and 'grizzled veteran' look. In fact, in trying to describe what I like about its atmosphere, I have found myself straining to avoid repetition of the adjectives 'avuncular' and 'cosy'. But why should I? Avuncular and cosy. Cosy and acunvular. Cosily avuncular. That sums up the appeal of the interview to me in two perfect words. (The interviewer, of course, is the avuncular one.)
But, most of all, I like the fact that they are looking back at events they both experienced first-hand. (The interviewer was one of Joh's 'chooks'-- the press pack he dealt with regularly.) To me, the past imperfect is a thing of great beauty. Whenever people fall into reminiscing about their own experiences, the sublime is not far away. "I remember the time..." is every bit as magical as "Once upon a time..."
Perhaps this is simply the mysteriousness of the past. The past is both real and unreal at the same time. It has no tangible, concrete existence, and yet-- there it is. It can be conjured out of nowhere, out of nothing. And, when we recall it, we are not simply 'playing it again' as though it was a DVD. It is a creative act, an act of storytelling, an act of re-creation. When somebody tells you the story of their lives-- or even a story from their lives-- they are staging a drama, making a statement about the world, their view of the world, and the meaning of their own experiences. How can that not be thrilling?
If anyone actually watches the video and finds it at all interesting, please do leave a comment. I suppose that all writing, other than purely informative writing, is an effort to get someone else excited about something that excites you. I'm always wondering how far I have succeeded, especially when it's something odd like this.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
A Holy Triduum to You All!
I came back from Maundy Thursday Mass a few hours ago. I posted this thought on Facebook, and it got a few enthusiastic responses:
One thing I like about the Catholic liturgical year is that it is independent of you. If you go to a Maundy Thursday Mass and you are not in a particularly 'spiritual' frame of mind, and maybe you are thinking of other things, and you can't concentrate on prayer....the sense of occasion and solemnity just carries you along, to some extent. And even if you're 'not feeling it' at the time, it sticks in your memory. It takes the pressure off, you don't have to be a spiritual athlete. In the same way, if you go to Mass every week, the prayers and the hymns and the readings enter into your memory and your soul by absorption. When people criticise organised religion for 'mumbled prayers' or mechanical spiritual exercises they have really hit on one of its strengths. I believe that it's the things that seep into us when we are not looking or thinking about them-- through the corner of the eye, so to speak-- that have the deepest effect on us.
I post this here because I feel I should post something for the Triduum, and that seems to fit the bill. And what else can you say about the great feasts that they don't already (so to speak) say for themselves? Chesteton expressed this brilliantly in The Everlasting Man:
“Every attempt to amplify that story has diminished it. The task has been attempted by many men of real genius and eloquence as well as by only too many vulgar sentimentalists and self-conscious rhetoricians. The tale has been retold with patronizing pathos by elegant sceptics and with fluent enthusiasm by boisterous best-sellers. It will not be retold here. The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones; and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them. Criticism is only words about words; and of what use are words about such words as these? What is the use of word-painting about the dark garden filled suddenly with torchlight and furious faces? ‘Are you come out with swords and staves as against a robber? All day I sat in your temple teaching, and you took me not.’ Can anything be added to the massive and gathered restraint of that irony; like a great wave lifted to the sky and refusing to fall? ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children.’ As the High Priest asked what further need he had of witnesses, we might well ask what further need we have of words. Peter in a panic repudiated him: ‘and immediately the cock crew; and Jesus looked upon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly.’ Has anyone any further remarks to offer? Just before the murder he prayed for all the murderous race of men, saying, ‘They know not what they do’; is there anything to say to that, except that we know as little what we say? Is there any need to repeat and spin out the story of how the tragedy trailed up the Via Dolorosa and how they threw him in haphazard with two thieves in one of the ordinary batches of execution; and how in all that horror and howling wilderness of desertion one voice spoke in homage, a startling voice from the very last place where it was looked for, the gibbet of the criminal; and he said to that nameless ruffian, ‘This night shalt thou be with my in Paradise’? Is there anything to put after that but a full-stop? Or is anyone prepared to answer adequately that farewell gesture to all flesh which created for his Mother a new Son?”
Nope.
So I will content myself with wishing all my readers a holy and peaceful Triduum. I often ask you for prayers; I keep you in mine, as well.
One thing I like about the Catholic liturgical year is that it is independent of you. If you go to a Maundy Thursday Mass and you are not in a particularly 'spiritual' frame of mind, and maybe you are thinking of other things, and you can't concentrate on prayer....the sense of occasion and solemnity just carries you along, to some extent. And even if you're 'not feeling it' at the time, it sticks in your memory. It takes the pressure off, you don't have to be a spiritual athlete. In the same way, if you go to Mass every week, the prayers and the hymns and the readings enter into your memory and your soul by absorption. When people criticise organised religion for 'mumbled prayers' or mechanical spiritual exercises they have really hit on one of its strengths. I believe that it's the things that seep into us when we are not looking or thinking about them-- through the corner of the eye, so to speak-- that have the deepest effect on us.
I post this here because I feel I should post something for the Triduum, and that seems to fit the bill. And what else can you say about the great feasts that they don't already (so to speak) say for themselves? Chesteton expressed this brilliantly in The Everlasting Man:
“Every attempt to amplify that story has diminished it. The task has been attempted by many men of real genius and eloquence as well as by only too many vulgar sentimentalists and self-conscious rhetoricians. The tale has been retold with patronizing pathos by elegant sceptics and with fluent enthusiasm by boisterous best-sellers. It will not be retold here. The grinding power of the plain words of the Gospel story is like the power of mill-stones; and those who can read them simply enough will feel as if rocks had been rolled upon them. Criticism is only words about words; and of what use are words about such words as these? What is the use of word-painting about the dark garden filled suddenly with torchlight and furious faces? ‘Are you come out with swords and staves as against a robber? All day I sat in your temple teaching, and you took me not.’ Can anything be added to the massive and gathered restraint of that irony; like a great wave lifted to the sky and refusing to fall? ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me but weep for yourselves and for your children.’ As the High Priest asked what further need he had of witnesses, we might well ask what further need we have of words. Peter in a panic repudiated him: ‘and immediately the cock crew; and Jesus looked upon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly.’ Has anyone any further remarks to offer? Just before the murder he prayed for all the murderous race of men, saying, ‘They know not what they do’; is there anything to say to that, except that we know as little what we say? Is there any need to repeat and spin out the story of how the tragedy trailed up the Via Dolorosa and how they threw him in haphazard with two thieves in one of the ordinary batches of execution; and how in all that horror and howling wilderness of desertion one voice spoke in homage, a startling voice from the very last place where it was looked for, the gibbet of the criminal; and he said to that nameless ruffian, ‘This night shalt thou be with my in Paradise’? Is there anything to put after that but a full-stop? Or is anyone prepared to answer adequately that farewell gesture to all flesh which created for his Mother a new Son?”
Nope.
So I will content myself with wishing all my readers a holy and peaceful Triduum. I often ask you for prayers; I keep you in mine, as well.
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