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#2 — Drawn to Chains

Thursday 14 February 2013

We are drawn toward a thing because we believe it is good. We end by being chained to it because it has become necessary.

Certainly the image of being caught in chains or wire is a common image, but for me, the most vivid comes from Legends of the Fall, definitely the most vivid because of the conscious decisions of the writer and director, who juxtapose two such images in the film. The first comes during the First World War: a brother struggles to free another brother, tangled in barbed wire and blinded by mustard gas, as German troops prepare to fire on the helpless young man. The second appears later in the film, as the surviving brother tries to free a calf from a barbed wire fence on his father's ranch, thus triggering the painful war memories. In both cases, the greater the struggle, the tighter the barbed wire held. It's probably why sin -- or its modern, secularized equivalent, addiction -- is so often pictured as a chain.

But the more telling part of Weil's thoughts here is the phrase "because we believe it is good." I don't know where I read it, but a couple of years ago, one of those deliberately incomplete statements meant to be somewhat initially provocative: no one ever commits evil. The knee-jerk reaction is simple: "But of course they do! Just look around the world!" What's left out in this initial formulation is simple idea that every act we commit we justify until we think everything we do, in some way or another, is good. Even the sadist, who commits awful atrocities against others, somehow thinks his actions are good -- at least good for him. Even when we say to ourselves, "I know this is wrong, but I'm going to do it anyway," we're adding elliptically, "But in this case, it's good, not evil." And thus we are drawn to all sorts of evils because we believe all our acts to be good. Soon, this so-called good becomes necessary, just like nicotine or caffeine.

That's what I love about Lent. It forces me to look at those things in my life that I have come to regard as necessary and try to loosen the chains a little by simply abandoning them. Lent encourages me to hit a cosmic reset button on myself -- inasmuch as that is possible, or even exists, without supernatural aid.

#1 — Gravity and Grace

Wednesday 13 February 2013

It might be an odd choice for Lenten writing: a book by a Jewish thinker, a woman who spent a significant amount of her life under the banner of "radical leftist." Yet in later life, Simone Weil came as close to converting to Catholicism as one can without actually crossing the line.

Born in France in 1909, Weil studied philosophy before doing the fairly typical leftist "live like the proletariat masses" move. It's easy to slight that, to suggest that because she had an upper-middle class family to return to it somehow invalidated her effort. Yet reading Weil's later work and knowing how she died, I'd suggest it was genuine.

For a while, early in World War Two, she stayed on the farm of Gustave Thibon, a philosopher and farmer. It was due to this time spent on the farm that we even have any writings from Weil: when she left for America in 1942, she left a satchel of notebooks with Thibon for editing. She later wrote a letter that informed him that, if he didn't hear from her for three or four years, he should consider the contents of the manuscripts his own. He didn't hear from her, and after editing the manuscripts, he published them as Gravity and Grace.

For 40 Things this year -- I am trying it yet again -- I will be sharing passages from Gravity and Grace (one of the most remarkable books I've read) and the thoughts they prompted.

God in the Dative

Sunday 10 February 2013

We must not help our neighbor for Christ, but in Christ. [...] In general, the expression "for God" is a bad one. God ought not to be put in the dative.

One of the more difficult, perhaps the most difficult, challenges to learning Polish was getting accustomed to its inflected nature. In English, we tell who did what to whom in a sentence by syntax, where it appears in relation to other words. In the sentence "The dog bites the man," we know who is doing the biting and who is being bitten by the order: subject verb object; biter bites bitee. Polish and other inflected languages determine these things by adding endings (inflections) to the words. Instead of meaning coming from word order (subject verb object), it comes from word endings. The different meanings are called cases. The subject of a sentence is in nominative case. The direct object is usually in accusative case in most inflected language, but Polish is an odd ball because some direct objects are in genitive case, and all direct objects of negative verbs are in genitive case. Indirect objects, to whom or for whom (i.e., "We gave the dog some treats."), are in the dative case. In Polish, that usually means adding "-owi", "-ze", "-u", or "-i"to the end of the noun. In English, we just slip it between the verb and the direct object.

So what puzzles me about Weil's contention that we shouldn't put God in the dative is how it seems to fly in the face of so much we hear in contemporary Christianity in America. We have "10 Things Young People Can Do for God" and "How to Work for God Effectively" and "Working for God in the Public Square" to name a few articles one can find easily enough. Indeed, it seems to have a Biblical basis. So I wondered what Weil might mean. Perhaps it's a case of not limiting oneself to the dative case but also the instrumental, accusative, genitive, locative, and vocative cases.

Lenten Fail, Redux

Tuesday 27 March 2012

I'm not even keeping track of the days, let alone posting on time...

Lent 2012: Day 30

Thursday 22 March 2012

There is always one bright thought in our minds, when all the rest are dark. There is one thought out of which a moderately cheerful man can always make some satisfactory sunshine, if not a sufficiency of it.

Sometimes, I wonder. Some of the students I work with on a daily basis seem to have few bright images in their minds. Life is a constant crisis for them: everything from someone bumping them in the hallway to a perceived injustice from a teacher sets them off. They wear a scowl on their faces most of the time, and life seems to be one big trial for them.

Faber, in the quote above, is speaking of the belief in a joyous afterlife, but sometimes I wonder about the usefulness of that hope for someone who's already lost all hope for a happy life here and now, and all by the age of fourteen.

The quoted excerpt is from Father Frederick Faber’s Spiritual Conferences, excerpted here.

Lent 2012: Day 29

Wednesday 21 March 2012

No one was ever corrected by a sarcasm; crushed perhaps, if the sarcasm was clever enough, but drawn nearer to God, never.

Fr. Frederick Faber

Lent 2012: Day 28

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Conversation often turns into an excuse to discuss oneself, and talking with someone who seems to have a knack for turning the conversation back to himself is exhausting.

The unselfishness of speedily and gracefully distracting ourselves from self is also singularly difficult to practice.

Yet it's somehow a natural conversational occurrence. Whether it's a sincere desire to help someone by sharing a similar experience or an unconscious competitive streak, we hear a story and we want to add something from our own lives into the mix. Resisting this urge is critical for what Faber calls "kind listening. But like many other kindnesses, it involves a degree of self-sacrifice.

I think of the Girl dating at some point in the future -- within the next, say, 25-30 years -- and one of my most deeply held requirements (as if I'd have any say) for any young man interested in her would be that he show the ability to listen. It's a rare gift these days, and I fear it will be rarer still when the time comes.

The quoted excerpt is from Father Frederick Faber’s Spiritual Conferences, excerpted here.

Lent 2012: Day 27

Monday 19 March 2012

There is also a grace of kind listening, as well as a grace of kind speaking. Some men listen with an abstracted air, which shows that their thoughts are elsewhere. Or they seem to listen, but by wide answers and irrelevant questions show that they have been occupied with their own thoughts, as being more interesting, at least in their own estimation, than what you have been saying. Some listen with a kind of importunate ferocity, which makes you feel, that you are being put upon your trial, and that your auditor expects beforehand that you are going to tell him a lie, or to be inaccurate, or to say something which he will disapprove, and that you must mind your expressions. Some interrupt, and will not hear you to the end. Some hear you to the end, and then forthwith begin to talk to you about a similar experience which has be fallen themselves, making your case only an illustration of their own. Some, meaning to be kind, listen with such a determined, lively, violent attention, that you are at once made uncomfortable, and the charm of conversation is at an end. Many persons, whose manners will stand the test of speaking, break down under the trial of listening. But all these things should be brought under the sweet influences of religion. Kind listening is often an act of the most delicate interior mortification, and is a great assistance towards kind speaking.

One of the curses of teaching middle school is multi-tasking one must do during certain times when a student is trying hard to clarify something that happened in class -- homework, a proofreading trick, a comprehension check, or any number of little things that might require some additional explanation. And these moments come, often enough, as I'm standing at the door, supervising students as they change classes. Hardly the time to be able to listen kindly.

I once had a young lady terribly upset -- unbeknownst to me -- because of this. She felt I was never listening to her, that I never had time for her questions. She was a most studious, hardworking girl. It took a while to work out, but I learned, again, the value of kind listening.

The quoted excerpt is from Father Frederick Faber’s Spiritual Conferences, excerpted here.

Lent 2012: Day 26

Sunday 18 March 2012

After a beautiful day yesterday, it seemed only appropriate that this morning begins with rain -- a drizzle that suggests an afternoon movie and, if we're lucky, a nap. But by noon, it's sunny, and the backyard calls.

There, we find that the cabbage in the backyard planter, growing since sometime in October or November, has reached the point that putting off consuming it would be almost wasteful -- at the very least, it would hint of sin.

So what's a Polish girl to do but make a surowka out of it -- basically, a vinegar cole slaw. The Girl helps with the sauce/marinade. But that only keeps us busy for so long: our newly discovered park is only four miles away, so K packs some fruit while I entertain the Girl in the swing, then just before four, we head out.

We take a different route, with a trail head buried in the back of a Little League park I've passed almost every day for five years. Who knew?

Same park, different sights.

A quick stroll through the woods brings us to the lakeside and a small observation platform built out into the water.

With the temperature and the amount of green, it's difficult to believe that spring is still technically two days away. And from what I've been reading, it seems to be the same situation through most of the States.

"If it's this warm now, what will it be like in August?" people wonder, as if weather had a cumulative effect.

Cumulative effect or not, there is a cumulative effect of all this walking: a tired, fussy girl who's ready to head home and get some food. We make it across the largest bridge in the park just to sit long enough to decide it's time to head back