The Narrow Road to the Deep North

From Richard Flanagan's extraordinary novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North. 

It was hot in the room, but it felt to him far less stifling than the poetry reading below. He pulled out a book here and there, but what kept catching his attention were the diagonal tunnels of sunlight rolling in through the dormer windows. All around him dust motes rose and fell, shimmering, quivering in those shafts of roiling light. He found several shelves full of old editions of classical writers and began vaguely browsing, hoping to find a cheap edition of Virgil's Aeneid, which he had only ever read in a borrowed copy. It wasn't really the great poem of antiquity that Dorrigo Evans wanted though, but the aura he felt around such books--an aura that both radiated outwards and took him inwards to another world that said to him that he was not alone.

And this sense, this feeling of communion, would at moments overwhelm him. At such times he had the sensation that there was only one book in the universe, and that all books were simply portals into this greater ongoing work--an inexhaustible, beautiful world that was not imaginary but the world as it truly was, a book without beginning or end.

Any lover of books recognizes this sentiment. This is why Kindles and other electronic formats can never best the printed word. I go into my office or my living room or my family room and I am surrounded by artifacts of civilization, imagination, and learning. One of the jokes of Western philosophy is that everything written in the past 2500 years is a footnote to Plato, and the sentiment Flanagan expresses here gets at the truth in that truism. As we read and write we participate in a conversation that was begun thousands of years before us and will continue thousands of years after us. 

World without end, amen.

Commonplacing: N.T. Wright on the Parables

I am reading N.T. Wright’s book on Jesus right now and am really enjoying it. I have written about Wright’s work a couple of times in the recent past. While an orthodox believer, Wright takes a more historical approach to the life of Jesus before treating the theology of his message. I have long struggled with how we Christians are to view the life and work of Jesus: he gave some hard teaching and a) is it our job to follow it, or b) did he give it merely to show us how in need of grace we are? I have heard this question answered both ways and usually with some sort of vague harmony of the two. I am reading this book in the hopes of coming to a more settled answer to that question. Before I try to engage with any thoughts of my own, such as they are, I thought it would be good to pass along an excerpt from the book on the parables that I found to be quite beautiful, especially considering the academic nature of the work:

“It should therefore be clear that the parables, by their very form, place Jesus firmly within his Jewish context. The genre itself puts into effect that double-edged message of welcome and warning which is the parables’ regular theme. The parables are not simply information about the kingdom, but are part of the means of bringing it to birth. They are not a second order activity, talking about what is happening at one remove. They are part of the primary activity itself. They do not merely give people something to think about. They invite people into the new world that is being created, and warn of dire consequences if the invitation is refused. Jesus’ telling of these stories is one of the key ways in which the kingdom breaks in upon Israel, redefining itself as it does so. They also function, for the same reason, as explanation and defence of what Jesus is doing. As Meyer argues, the parables are not merely theme, they are also performance. They do not merely talk about the divine offer of mercy; they both make the offer, and defend Jesus’ right to make it.” (176)

I think this is exactly right and calls into question my habits of reading the gospels as mere preparation for the bigger thing—the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Wright is encouraging the reader to think of the life and work of Jesus as both the fulfillment of Israel’s story and the inauguration of the kingdom. Too often when we go straight to the cross we deny that Jesus’ earthly ministry had any purpose whatsoever and Jesus becomes a Jew in name only. It would have been all the same, really, if he had just been a divine carpenter crucified for our sins without having bothered with three years of itinerancy. To do my Savior justice, and to know him as He is, I need to be disabused of that notion. 

Commonplacing: Rowan Williams on Dostoevsky

Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury, basically the Anglican pope, and he is a man that I admire very much, a man attempting in his own delicate way to restrain the Anglican church from a headlong fall into irreligious liberalism. He is also a world-class scholar, reflecting the old adage of the Puritans that the ministers of a congregation be the "best and brightest" in the parish, an adage that has fallen into hard times recently. Dr. Williams wrote a book about Dostoevsky, perhaps my favorite writer of all time, a few years ago for a series sponsored by Baylor University Press, called The Making of the Christian Imagination. The other titles in the series also have me salivating and my wife slightly lamenting my near obsessive love of books. I started reading the Dostoevsky book last night and this is what I encountered on the first page:

"The world we inhabit as readers of his novels is one in which the question of what human beings owe to each other--the question standing behind all these critical contemporary issues--is left painfully and shockingly open, and there seems to be no obvious place to stand from where we can construct a clear moral landscape. Yet at the same time, the novels insistently and unashamedly press home the question of what else might be possible if we--characters and readers--saw the world in another light, the light provided by faith. The novels ask us, in effect, whether we can imagine a human community of language and feeling in which, even if we were incapable of fully realizing it, we knew what was due to each other; whether we could imagine living in the consciousness of a solidity or depth in each other which no amount of failure, suffering, or desolation could eradicate. But in order to put such a challenge, the novels have to invite us to imagine precisely those extremes of failure, suffering, and desolation."

This encapsulates the movement of Dostoevsky's novels, at least the four that I have read, so well. We tend to parcel Dostoevsky out, read him in chunks. The Grand Inquisitor scene from The Brothers Karamazov is routinely excerpted as if it was meant to stand on its own. As if it was not a small part of a larger trajectory. But Dostoevsky never showed us a simple truth, because truth is not simple. It is hidden, yet real, in the interactions and dialogue that shape the world he conjures. And at its heart, is the Christian faith.

Commonplacing: Hilary Mantel on Thomas Cromwell on Thomas Wyatt

This is from Hilary Mantel's excellent work on the reign of Henry VIII, Bring Up the Bodies. Following up on the first book in the series, Wolf Hall, Mantel explores this turbulent period through the eyes of Lord Chancellor Thomas Cromwell, an enigmatic figure who went from being the low-born son of a drunken blacksmith, to a mercenary fighting on the continent, to the most powerful man in England short of the king himself. Indeed, Cromwell pulled the strings in the empire, until, that is, he fell out of favor with Henry, suffering the fate all such people who experienced a similar fell, a grisly and public spectacle of a death. 

Cromwell has fascinated me for a long time, mostly because I felt that he never got a fair shake from historians who most often associate him with his heir, Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the Puritan revolution (or English Civil War, depending upon your preference) and executioner of King Charles I. Cromwell is an incredible character and this series of books told from his perspective are wonderful storytelling and wonderful history (though speculative, of course, as anything from this period must be). The following quote is his feeling toward Thomas Wyatt, the most beautiful of poets from the Henretian period. For those of you who have read and loved Wyatt, these words will ring true and say what you have always seemed to feel about him:

“It is not easy to explain to a young man like Wriothesley why he values Wyatt. He wants to say, because, good fellows though you are, he is not like you or Richard Riche. He does not talk simply to hear his own voice, or pick arguments just to win them. . . He writes to warn and chastise, and not to confess his need but to conceal it. He understands honour but does not boast of his own. He is perfectly equipped as a courtier, but he knows the small value of that. He has studied the world without despising it. He understands the world without rejecting it. He has no illusions but he has hopes. He does not sleepwalk through his life. His eyes are open, and his ears for sounds others miss.” 

It is the latter part of Cromwell's internal monologue, beginning with Wyatt's unblinking yet hopeful assessment of the world, that most appeals to me. This is poetry, this is humane: to look into the world in all of its vice and sin and fallenness and fallibility and yet to hope. To have your eyes open as you walk through life and to see and hear things that others are too jaded, hurried, blind or deaf to see. 

Commonplacing: John Calvin and Liberality

John Calvin is one of my heroes. I was raised under our popular cultural belief that he was the Tyrant of Geneva, a cold-hearted apologist for a sadistic God and the preacher of a calloused, unfeeling gospel. And then I read him, a basic charity that most of his detractors never paid him. And I read stuff like this:

“The Lord commands us to do ‘good unto all men,’ universally, a great part of whom, estimated according to their own merits, are very undeserving; but here the Scripture assists us with an excellent rule, when it inculcates, that we must not regard the intrinsic merit of men, but must consider the image of God in them, to which we owe all possible honour and love; but that this image is most carefully to be observed in them ‘who are of the household of faith,’ inasmuch as it is renewed and restored by the spirit of Christ. Whoever, therefore, is presented to you that needs your kind offices, you have no reason to refuse him your assistance. Say he is a stranger; yet the Lord has impressed on him a character which ought to be familiar to you; for which reason he forbids you to despise your own flesh. Say that he is contemptible and worthless; but the Lord shows him to be one whom he has deigned to grace with his own image. Say that you are obliged to him for no services, but God has made him, as it were, his substitute, to whom you acknowledge yourself to be under obligations for numerous and important benefits. Say that he is unworthy of your making the smallest exertion on his account; but the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, deserves your surrender of yourself and all that you possess. If he not only deserved no favour, but, on the contrary, has provoked you with injuries and insults,--even this is no just reason why you should cease to embrace him with your affection, and to perform to him the offices of love. He has deserved, you will say, very different treatment from me. But what has the Lord deserved? Who, when he commands you to forgive all men their offences against you, certainly intends that they should be charged to himself.”  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.7

There is a lot to be said about a passage like this, but instead of me saying it, just read it again and ask yourself if this measures up with your ideas about God and our duties to our fellow man.

Commonplacing: The New Radical

From Ewan Morrison at the Guardian:

Consumerism now wants you to be single, so it sells this as sexy. The irony is that it's now more radical to attempt to be in a long-term relationship and a long-term job, to plan for the future, maybe even to attempt to have children, than it is to be single. Coupledom, and long-term connections with others in a community, now seem the only radical alternative to the forces that will reduce us to isolated, alienated nomads, seeking ever more temporary 'quick fix' connections with bodies who carry within them their own built-in perceived obsolescence. 

The solution: Get radical, get hitched, demand commitment from partners and employers. Say no to the seductions of the disposable singles market.

Read the whole thing. As someone who made what felt like a very countercultural decision to get married when I had just turned 23, this resonates deeply. For someone who also flirts with a Marxist view from time to time as well, in the sense that I hate the commodification of  pretty much everything in our culture, this also makes perfect sense.

Commonplacing: The Immortal G.K. Chesterton

For those of you who know me well, you have undoubtedly heard me talk about how much I love the second greatest British public intellectual of the previous century: Mr. Gilbert Keith Chesterton. I simply love the way he saw the world. To wit, from Orthodoxy, the second best of his books:

"It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore."

I love almost everything about this quote and have nothing to add to it, except the minor reflection that, apart from being beautiful and clever, it more closely approximates my vision of the truth of this world than any other reflection on the majesty of nature.

Commonplacing: Andrew Sullivan on the Chick-fil-A Controversy

Our place here in Tulsa is close to a Chick-fil-A restaurant and on my way home from work tonight there was a line around the building and several cars deep into the road. It seemed like a party atmosphere. But, alas, chicken caesar salad beckoned me back here in the hotel room. I have been reading quite a bit about the controversy and one of the most nuanced reflections I have come across is that of the gay blogger, Andrew Sullivan. Sullivan has long been one of my favorite commentators and his prolific output has produced many deep reflections and he has helped my intellectual development in a way that I don't believe anyone else has. It is therefore unsurprising that I find his thoughts on this subject valuable.

Intimidating a business because its chairman expresses his perfectly legitimate - if to me, misguided - views, should have absolutely nothing to do with a civil rights movement. Civil rights movements are about expanding freedom, including for those with whom we disagree. The impulse by some well-meaning heterosexual allies to ban or shut down or somehow use the power of the state to police thought in this way is simply anathema to what we ought to stand for. There is no contradiction between marriage equality and a robust defense of the rights of those who oppose marriage equality - including maximal religious freedom and maximal free speech. In fact, it is vital that we eschew such tactics, as they distract from a positive argument that has been solidly winning converts for two decades.

The point is that we all have to live together even while we passionately disagree. That toleration is the challenge of our time, and it goes both ways.If we gays now try to suppress others' rights, we have become nothing less than what we have opposed for so long. And there's a worrying tendency - more pronounced on the right than left, but still potent on the far left - not simply to oppose the arguments of the other side in a cultural debate, but to delegitimize them as people of equal standing. But calling a bunch of good-faith people bigots and leveraging government power against them is, in my mind, no morally different than calling a bunch of people perverts and leveraging government power against them.

No hate crimes laws; no restriction of the free speech of our opponents; no infringement on religious freedom; no delegitimization of the perfectly legitimate (if, to my mind, deeply flawed) argument that civil marriage be reserved exclusively for heterosexuals. Just equality. And freedom. If Emanuel and Menino want to know how a straight ally acts, look at Jeff Bezos. You can support civil rights by enlarging speech, not restricting it. 

Sullivan's thoughts, in my estimation, cut to the heart of the issue and why the uproar over a known conservative Christian expressing a conservative Christian point of view seems so illiberal. I don't know how this controversy will end up playing out, but I side with the pragmatism promoted by Sullivan. The bullying tactics on display by Rahm Emanuel and others are disgraceful. I hope this attitude takes deeper roots within the party currently claiming the mantle of liberalism.

 

Commonplacing: Marilynne Robinson and the Sacred/Secular Divide

I have thought for sometime now of using this space as a commonplace book as well as a traditional blog. A commonplace book, for those unfamiliar, was a popular classical model for collecting quotations on various subjects by the best authors. So, for example, Calvin kept a commonplace book that included the major authors from antiquity arranged categorically: quotations about love or justice or mercy or virtue. Some quotes, obviously, would qualify in more than one category. Many children were taught to read and write through the use of commonplace books. They would write out a famous oration by Cicero, learning how to write, read, and think like the great Roman republican. It has fallen out of fashion in the modern school system for lessons about... come to think of it, I can't remember much of what they taught us in school, mostly rote memorization of historical, grammatical, and scientific facts. Easy come, easy go, as they say. 


So consider this, without further learned explanation, the first entry in what will function as my online commonplace book. It will contain quotes from books, articles, and other things that I read. Not much further explanation is needed. And, fittingly, I begin with Marilynne Robinson, unequivocally my favorite living writer and one of my favorite living human beings, from her new collection of essays When I Was a Child I Read Books. 


This is from the first essay in the collection, which retreads some familiar territory for Robinson's work: the supposed antagonism between science and religion. The essay is called "Freedom of Thought."

“But almost everyone, for generations now, has insisted on a sharp distinction between the physical and the spiritual. So we have had theologies that really proposed a 'God of the gaps,' as if God were not manifest in the creation, as the Bible is so inclined to insist, but instead survives in those dark places, those black boxes, where the light of science has not yet shone. And we have atheisms and agnosticisms that make precisely the same argument, only assuming that at some time the light of science will indeed dispel the last shadow in which the holy might have been thought to linger. Religious experience is said to be associated with activity in a particular part of the brain. For some reason this is supposed to imply that it is delusional. But all thought and experience can be located in some part of the brain, that brain more replete than the starry heaven God showed to Abraham, and we are not in the habit of assuming that it is all delusional on these grounds. Nothing could justify this reasoning, which many religious people take as seriously as any atheist could do, except the idea that the physical and the spiritual cannot abide together, that they cannot be one dispensation.” (10)

My plan is to not add much to these quotations in the way of my own thoughts, especially in such a case where the excerpt does more than I could ever hope to do on my own. But Robinson is getting at something which has been almost constant on my mind for the past two years--the ridiculousness of our easy separation of the secular and the spiritual, the profane and the sacred. We have adopted a Manichean dualism, Christians specifically, that treats physical as bad, spiritual as good. Atheism treats physical as the only real and spiritual as delusion, but the effect is the same. In either case, it is bad. Also, neither position is true.