Still pondering this beauty & truth & goodness stuff. I want to see the connection as inseparable but...
As an adolescent I loved Thoreau's "Walden". I thought it the most magical piece of literature. Now I have misgivings about the somewhat misanthropic sentiments. Certainly the message to 'simplify' is a great one, but sometimes what most appeals to us is that thing in the literature or art that appeals to our special vice, our Achilles heel. If Thoreau appeals to slothfulness or lack of generosity, I might see it as a great 'truth' and revel in it. In other words, it can be very beautiful to have a worldview constructed that appears to fit what we consider it should be.
Let's take a look at nature herself - astonishingly beautiful, right? And good, indeed good - but good before the Fall, right? Nature can be pretty ruthless, amoral, in the whole sense of prey or be preyed upon. Natural selection isn't pretty. Can't art be beautiful but deadly, like some gorgeous but poisonous coral? Satan was the highest of angels before he fell and presumably could produce something beautiful in imitation. St. Paul writes in Romans 8 that all creation groans in anticipation, seemingly implying that this physical world is inadequate to what even it was intended to be. He seems to have come close to saying that nature was fundamentally altered by the Fall, although Aquinas would never accept that interpretation.
August 13, 2002
Interesting article on Seasonal Preferences
Summer's tide is high and soon will turn. That's how it always is. On July 4, the entire summer lies before us. A few short weeks later, we're on the homestretch to Labor Day. Among us, there are those who will cling by our fingernails to the last shred of summer right through September and others who are secretly already a little sick of sand, chlorine, endless days and bored kids. Which camp are you in?
Some scientists believe that a person's outlook may come down to neurotransmitters in the brain.
Craig H. Kinsley, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Virginia, said his friends accuse him of being "an evangelist for the brain.'' He believes that everything from whether you like chocolate or vanilla to whether you enjoy relaxing on a beach is related to the brain chemistry.
People who can't sit still, who crave new experiences, who desire new challenges and who are bored with summer relaxation may be driven by their brain's appetite for a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Kinsley said that dopamine is released during new experiences and enhances good feelings. Some of us have a greater need for dopamine than others. Those who are more content with a relaxed, low-key routine apparently have sufficient supplies of dopamine and don't need more, Kinsley said.
Dr. Michael Nuccitelli, a psychologist and executive director of SLS Health in Brewster, N.Y., said chemicals play a role in people's reactions to everything, but environmental factors play a role in how people feel about summer.
One of those factors is wealth. If you can afford beach houses, camps for your kids and summer toys such as boats or jet skis, you probably like summer better than someone who can't afford such luxuries. Nuccitelli considers himself a risk-taker, an adventuresome type, but he's not a big fan of summer because he can't stand the heat.
Dr. Nicholas DeMartinis, a psychiatrist at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, Conn., said that whether you mourn the demise of summer probably has a lot to do with whether you're an outdoorsy person.
"A lot of people find summer less stressful,'' said DeMartinis. "One of the best antidotes to stress is getting out and exercising. People may do less of that in the winter and it's easier for stress to build up.''
For those who are reactive to light, the days also grow shorter, which can lead to seasonal blues in the fall and winter.
Some people will find any transition rough-going. "These may be people with a more obsessive-compulsive personality, not a disorder,'' said DeMartinis. "They like to do things the same way, over and over and over. You start changing things and it's stressful.''
As for thrill-seekers, DeMartinis, they may be as likely to enjoy winter as summer if they are skiers or snowboarders.
In, general, Kinsley said, human beings weren't really made for a two-week beach vacation.
If you go back to early man, the competition for resources and for mates defined us, Kinsley said. We needed time for rest, but rest amounted to a good night's sleep. And then we were ready for more challenge.
"The animal, humans included, were not designed nor were we shaped by the crucible of natural selection, to just sit around,'' Kinsley wrote. "We crave stimulation, work, competition. Or most of us do.''
Perhaps that means that those of us who are able to look - without nausea - at the fall clothes already in department stores are more like our prehistoric relatives.
And those of us who long to sit on the beach till sunset in October have accepted change. You could even say we've evolved. By Kathleen Megan The Hartford Courant
Summer's tide is high and soon will turn. That's how it always is. On July 4, the entire summer lies before us. A few short weeks later, we're on the homestretch to Labor Day. Among us, there are those who will cling by our fingernails to the last shred of summer right through September and others who are secretly already a little sick of sand, chlorine, endless days and bored kids. Which camp are you in?
Some scientists believe that a person's outlook may come down to neurotransmitters in the brain.
Craig H. Kinsley, an associate professor of neuroscience at the University of Virginia, said his friends accuse him of being "an evangelist for the brain.'' He believes that everything from whether you like chocolate or vanilla to whether you enjoy relaxing on a beach is related to the brain chemistry.
People who can't sit still, who crave new experiences, who desire new challenges and who are bored with summer relaxation may be driven by their brain's appetite for a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Kinsley said that dopamine is released during new experiences and enhances good feelings. Some of us have a greater need for dopamine than others. Those who are more content with a relaxed, low-key routine apparently have sufficient supplies of dopamine and don't need more, Kinsley said.
Dr. Michael Nuccitelli, a psychologist and executive director of SLS Health in Brewster, N.Y., said chemicals play a role in people's reactions to everything, but environmental factors play a role in how people feel about summer.
One of those factors is wealth. If you can afford beach houses, camps for your kids and summer toys such as boats or jet skis, you probably like summer better than someone who can't afford such luxuries. Nuccitelli considers himself a risk-taker, an adventuresome type, but he's not a big fan of summer because he can't stand the heat.
Dr. Nicholas DeMartinis, a psychiatrist at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, Conn., said that whether you mourn the demise of summer probably has a lot to do with whether you're an outdoorsy person.
"A lot of people find summer less stressful,'' said DeMartinis. "One of the best antidotes to stress is getting out and exercising. People may do less of that in the winter and it's easier for stress to build up.''
For those who are reactive to light, the days also grow shorter, which can lead to seasonal blues in the fall and winter.
Some people will find any transition rough-going. "These may be people with a more obsessive-compulsive personality, not a disorder,'' said DeMartinis. "They like to do things the same way, over and over and over. You start changing things and it's stressful.''
As for thrill-seekers, DeMartinis, they may be as likely to enjoy winter as summer if they are skiers or snowboarders.
In, general, Kinsley said, human beings weren't really made for a two-week beach vacation.
If you go back to early man, the competition for resources and for mates defined us, Kinsley said. We needed time for rest, but rest amounted to a good night's sleep. And then we were ready for more challenge.
"The animal, humans included, were not designed nor were we shaped by the crucible of natural selection, to just sit around,'' Kinsley wrote. "We crave stimulation, work, competition. Or most of us do.''
Perhaps that means that those of us who are able to look - without nausea - at the fall clothes already in department stores are more like our prehistoric relatives.
And those of us who long to sit on the beach till sunset in October have accepted change. You could even say we've evolved. By Kathleen Megan The Hartford Courant
August 11, 2002
The Lady of Shalott & Flos Carmeli have had some interesting posts, especially Flos' comments on Keats. I have started, but not finished, "Dawn to Decadence" which makes the case that art has suffered greatly over the past 500 years due in part to modernism. I guess the stuff of art comes out of the muck and mire the culture has handy - since the Enlightenment we've had less to work with in terms of "healthy" (i.e. good) thinking and that must and is reflected in art.
Now I'll really butcher this concept, and I don't even hardly believe it but feel compelled to offer it. A year or two ago I read that art over the past 200 years have consciously intended to skew (i.e. like surrealism) creation because it is rejecting the Creator and also his creation. In other words, the fact that paintings no longer mirror nature was done in a way to devalue creation, devalue the earth, reject the line in Genesis where God says, "it is good". Now I don't know what to think about that because I certainly like Monet and Dali and others. But it was interesting, given how the increase in "non-real" art has followed the decrease in faith since the Enlightenment. Art glorified God for many centuries and there was a fierce resistance when the humanists came in and made man the central subject. And from there artists began to paint 'fractured" man (like Picasso), which was to symbolize the monster that he considered man to be (or especially women).
Shelby Foote to Walker Percy:
"One of the things I've most admired about the Catholic religion for is its unwillingness to compromise and its essentially realistic outlook. But the Catholic intellectuals seem to destroy all this. Here we've been better than 500 years (since the Divine Comedy - which, incidentally, is as much a spiteful paying-off of personal animosity as it is 'Catholic') without a single devoted Catholic writer producing one big lasting thing in the field of poetry or fiction; adn yet, mind you, these intellectuals insist that the advantage lies with writers with an orthodox background to fall back on; it gives them a scale of reference, they say. It ought to be true; it out to - but look at the result. Graham Greene, or a bare handful of minor poets like Hopkins.."
Now I'll really butcher this concept, and I don't even hardly believe it but feel compelled to offer it. A year or two ago I read that art over the past 200 years have consciously intended to skew (i.e. like surrealism) creation because it is rejecting the Creator and also his creation. In other words, the fact that paintings no longer mirror nature was done in a way to devalue creation, devalue the earth, reject the line in Genesis where God says, "it is good". Now I don't know what to think about that because I certainly like Monet and Dali and others. But it was interesting, given how the increase in "non-real" art has followed the decrease in faith since the Enlightenment. Art glorified God for many centuries and there was a fierce resistance when the humanists came in and made man the central subject. And from there artists began to paint 'fractured" man (like Picasso), which was to symbolize the monster that he considered man to be (or especially women).
Shelby Foote to Walker Percy:
"One of the things I've most admired about the Catholic religion for is its unwillingness to compromise and its essentially realistic outlook. But the Catholic intellectuals seem to destroy all this. Here we've been better than 500 years (since the Divine Comedy - which, incidentally, is as much a spiteful paying-off of personal animosity as it is 'Catholic') without a single devoted Catholic writer producing one big lasting thing in the field of poetry or fiction; adn yet, mind you, these intellectuals insist that the advantage lies with writers with an orthodox background to fall back on; it gives them a scale of reference, they say. It ought to be true; it out to - but look at the result. Graham Greene, or a bare handful of minor poets like Hopkins.."
At the risk of pulling this out of context:"It is pretty generally recognized that woman is 'by nature' more sentimental, and man more sensual." - K. Wojtyla "Love & Responsbility"
By sensual, he means more along the lines of enjoying the senses rather than limited to the sexual. And by sentimental, he means of the feelings and emotions rather than simply nostalgia.
I wonder if the reason the church doesn't attract as many men (i.e. Podles thesis that the Church is feminized) is partly because the liturgy has been stripped of many of the 'sense' sensations if you will - the 'smells and bells'. The Eastern rite and Orthodox Judiasm both have strong male participation and both have liturgies that appeal to the senses.
By sensual, he means more along the lines of enjoying the senses rather than limited to the sexual. And by sentimental, he means of the feelings and emotions rather than simply nostalgia.
I wonder if the reason the church doesn't attract as many men (i.e. Podles thesis that the Church is feminized) is partly because the liturgy has been stripped of many of the 'sense' sensations if you will - the 'smells and bells'. The Eastern rite and Orthodox Judiasm both have strong male participation and both have liturgies that appeal to the senses.
I am back. Thursday and Friday were glorious self-appointed sea dog days, days spent under a glittering, unquenchable sun, days spent continuously outdoors from 10 am to 6 or 7 pm, days which landed me in the surf, on bike, btwn the pages of a book or quaffing Guinness or drinking Corona as the sun's corona faded. The other days were more or less pinched by responsibility, and tested my ever-weakening tolerance for chatter. Chatter this, chatter that. Lots of social bookings. "The Imitation of Christ", written for monks I think, has it that unnecessary talking is nearly sinful. Jeesh that sounds appealing sometimes. (And that is supposed to be a cross?). The actor Larry Hagman never speaks on Mondays - a whole day of complete silence. (I read it years ago in the Nat'l Enquirer so you know it's true). I thought it odd. Now.... But of course I am doing the equivalent of chattering here, never letting a thought slip by unpublished.
So a week later, 50 miles of bike rides and a 12-pack later here I am – inflight – carrying back a better man? Surely the break in routine was precious. What did I learn? Valuing hope over experience, I always imagine that from vacations will spring a well of good ideas that I can take back to 'the real world'.
It seems the problem with purity is that the greater the purity the more affected you are by impurities. So in trying to shield myself from nudity via R-rated movies and any other kind of soft-porn has apprently left me particularly vulnerable to 'beach shock'. The shielding seems to have resulted in more keen antennae, such that the merest whiff of viva le’ difference is detected. And so, returning to the beach this year was like laying before a drug addict this huge spread of the latest pharmaceuticals.
Fortunately I could behold the Cross and it is so catechetical – one finds many assurances. One is love, of course, and there is also the sense that he will accept our buffets and stings willingly (indicated by the posture of open arms). The vertical nature of it – the fact it leads from ground skyward – neatly incarnates the doctrine that Jesus is the bridge between heaven and earth and there is no getting from here to there without Him.
****
My beach reading was Clive Clusser's “Inca Gold”, JP2’s “Love & Responsibility” and Dineson’s “Out of Africa”; a perfect admixture of good, bad and saintly writing. (You guess which).
And I noticed that after a week of relaxation, of white sand and white sun, of Guinnesses, after long bike rides to puffy sand beds with elliptical petals shading me, of hard runs down a hard-packed beach to any good tune I could find, that well, I liked it. One day I rode around a retirement community with conflicted emotions. On the one hand it was a retirement community, symbol of tragic things (i.e. loss of freedom, diminishing bodily powers, enforced artificial community, etc) and yet also at once attractive (i.e. no job, beautiful island, quiet, peaceful pathways and spacious balconies).
So a week later, 50 miles of bike rides and a 12-pack later here I am – inflight – carrying back a better man? Surely the break in routine was precious. What did I learn? Valuing hope over experience, I always imagine that from vacations will spring a well of good ideas that I can take back to 'the real world'.
It seems the problem with purity is that the greater the purity the more affected you are by impurities. So in trying to shield myself from nudity via R-rated movies and any other kind of soft-porn has apprently left me particularly vulnerable to 'beach shock'. The shielding seems to have resulted in more keen antennae, such that the merest whiff of viva le’ difference is detected. And so, returning to the beach this year was like laying before a drug addict this huge spread of the latest pharmaceuticals.
Fortunately I could behold the Cross and it is so catechetical – one finds many assurances. One is love, of course, and there is also the sense that he will accept our buffets and stings willingly (indicated by the posture of open arms). The vertical nature of it – the fact it leads from ground skyward – neatly incarnates the doctrine that Jesus is the bridge between heaven and earth and there is no getting from here to there without Him.
****
My beach reading was Clive Clusser's “Inca Gold”, JP2’s “Love & Responsibility” and Dineson’s “Out of Africa”; a perfect admixture of good, bad and saintly writing. (You guess which).
And I noticed that after a week of relaxation, of white sand and white sun, of Guinnesses, after long bike rides to puffy sand beds with elliptical petals shading me, of hard runs down a hard-packed beach to any good tune I could find, that well, I liked it. One day I rode around a retirement community with conflicted emotions. On the one hand it was a retirement community, symbol of tragic things (i.e. loss of freedom, diminishing bodily powers, enforced artificial community, etc) and yet also at once attractive (i.e. no job, beautiful island, quiet, peaceful pathways and spacious balconies).
August 02, 2002
I must be off for vacation in South Carolina, blogging will resume on Aug. 12!
Will leave you with a quote, forgive me for not remembering which blog I got it from. It is from one of his letters:
J. R. R. Tolkien
"The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals. Also I can recommend this as an exercise: make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children -- from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn -- open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same as a Mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. (It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand -- after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come."
I went to Mass after reading this and...yes...there were many loud children behind me. I smiled.
Will leave you with a quote, forgive me for not remembering which blog I got it from. It is from one of his letters:
J. R. R. Tolkien
"The only cure for sagging or fainting faith is Communion. Though always itself, perfect and complete and inviolate, the Blessed Sacrament does not operate completely and once for all in any of us. Like the act of faith it must be continuous and grow by exercise. Frequency is of the highest effect. Seven times a week is more nourishing than seven times at intervals. Also I can recommend this as an exercise: make your Communion in circumstances that affront your taste. Choose a snuffling or gabbling priest or a proud and vulgar friar; and a church full of the usual bourgeois crowd, ill-behaved children -- from those who yell to those products of Catholic schools who the moment the tabernacle is opened sit back and yawn -- open necked and dirty youths, women in trousers and often with hair both unkempt and uncovered. Go to Communion with them (and pray for them). It will be just the same as a Mass said beautifully by a visibly holy man, and shared by a few devout and decorous people. (It could not be worse than the mess of the feeding of the Five Thousand -- after which our Lord propounded the feeding that was to come."
I went to Mass after reading this and...yes...there were many loud children behind me. I smiled.
of the Rosary
Some interesting posts on the Rosary going around on Disputations, Steven Riddle's & GoodForm among others. I have something of a scattershot approach with prayer, hoping the variety gives me maxim receptivity to what God wants to say. I consider the rosary a wonderful tool in the prayer toolbag even though often my concentration is terrible with it. There is great consolation in the asking Mary to pray for us at the time of our death and of its imminence in the grand scheme. It's also good to review the human events in the family life of Jesus & Mary, as all families remember their history and we are a part of that family.
The Joyful mysteries teach me that beneath the surface of the seemingly banal - a Jewish girl saying her prayers, a visit to her cousin, a baby born and presented - lay spectacularly universe-altering events. It serves to remind one that our lives, at times banal, are never really so.
Insights are infrequent, but they come. I always considered the Resurrection the greatest of the mysteries but then it occurred to me that it was the Crowning with thorns. For which is greater - power exercised or power restrained? ('Schindler's List' has a great pardon scene that illustrates this). That God would approve of Jesus' submission to the baptism of John, how much greater must be the Father's approbation when his son submitted to the crowning of thorns? In Japanese culture one would rather die than be humiliated, and so there is a sense in which this humiliation was greater even than His death.
The rosary also forces me to think about HIM instead of the petitionary prayer that seems to be the 'default' prayer of life and even the reading of Scripture can be about us, in the sense of reading it historically or apologetically or ....i.e. not spiritually.
Some interesting posts on the Rosary going around on Disputations, Steven Riddle's & GoodForm among others. I have something of a scattershot approach with prayer, hoping the variety gives me maxim receptivity to what God wants to say. I consider the rosary a wonderful tool in the prayer toolbag even though often my concentration is terrible with it. There is great consolation in the asking Mary to pray for us at the time of our death and of its imminence in the grand scheme. It's also good to review the human events in the family life of Jesus & Mary, as all families remember their history and we are a part of that family.
The Joyful mysteries teach me that beneath the surface of the seemingly banal - a Jewish girl saying her prayers, a visit to her cousin, a baby born and presented - lay spectacularly universe-altering events. It serves to remind one that our lives, at times banal, are never really so.
Insights are infrequent, but they come. I always considered the Resurrection the greatest of the mysteries but then it occurred to me that it was the Crowning with thorns. For which is greater - power exercised or power restrained? ('Schindler's List' has a great pardon scene that illustrates this). That God would approve of Jesus' submission to the baptism of John, how much greater must be the Father's approbation when his son submitted to the crowning of thorns? In Japanese culture one would rather die than be humiliated, and so there is a sense in which this humiliation was greater even than His death.
The rosary also forces me to think about HIM instead of the petitionary prayer that seems to be the 'default' prayer of life and even the reading of Scripture can be about us, in the sense of reading it historically or apologetically or ....i.e. not spiritually.
What a difference a translation makes....Dostoyevsky's Karamazov can come off as either humbly seeking his sonship of Christ or presumptively making demands on God
Walker Percy, in a letter to Shelby Foote on the Catholic novels in this book:
What is it about? Screwing and God (which all Catholic novels since Augustine have been about) - to use "Catholic" somewhat loosely since you were right the other day about me not being a Catholic writer as Flannery [O'Connnor] was.
...
FROM SHELBY FOOTE:
She [Flannery O'Connor] is a minor-minor writer, not because she lacked the talent to be a major one, but simply because she died before her development had time to evolve....That, and I think because she also didn't have time to turn her back on Christ, which is something every great Catholic writer (that I know of, I mean) has done. Joyce, Proust, and I think Dostoevsky, who was just about the least Christian man I ever encountered except maybe Hemingway. The Jesuitical strain, as Joyce said, can be injected the wrong way. Inject it the right way and you've killed the artist; he's guilty of idolatry and has comitted the greatest sin of all - putting something ahead of his art, avoiding the total commitment, keeping soft inside while pretending to be tough....Don't take personal offense at any of the above; I don't consider you a Catholic writer at all, except in your spare time out of hope of heaven."
More Foote:
"..The best novelists have all been doubters; their only firm conviction, the only one never shaken, is that absolute devotion and belief in the sanctity of art which results in further seeking, not a sense of having found. THe part of any writer's book which says, 'Look here I've found the answer' is always the weakest.'" It was Dostoevsky's doubt that made him great - Ivan is a portrait of his doubt, as Mitya is a portrait of his lust.."
Unfortunately we don't have WP's replies; he obviously disagreed.
What is it about? Screwing and God (which all Catholic novels since Augustine have been about) - to use "Catholic" somewhat loosely since you were right the other day about me not being a Catholic writer as Flannery [O'Connnor] was.
...
FROM SHELBY FOOTE:
She [Flannery O'Connor] is a minor-minor writer, not because she lacked the talent to be a major one, but simply because she died before her development had time to evolve....That, and I think because she also didn't have time to turn her back on Christ, which is something every great Catholic writer (that I know of, I mean) has done. Joyce, Proust, and I think Dostoevsky, who was just about the least Christian man I ever encountered except maybe Hemingway. The Jesuitical strain, as Joyce said, can be injected the wrong way. Inject it the right way and you've killed the artist; he's guilty of idolatry and has comitted the greatest sin of all - putting something ahead of his art, avoiding the total commitment, keeping soft inside while pretending to be tough....Don't take personal offense at any of the above; I don't consider you a Catholic writer at all, except in your spare time out of hope of heaven."
More Foote:
"..The best novelists have all been doubters; their only firm conviction, the only one never shaken, is that absolute devotion and belief in the sanctity of art which results in further seeking, not a sense of having found. THe part of any writer's book which says, 'Look here I've found the answer' is always the weakest.'" It was Dostoevsky's doubt that made him great - Ivan is a portrait of his doubt, as Mitya is a portrait of his lust.."
Unfortunately we don't have WP's replies; he obviously disagreed.
August 01, 2002
That rarest of hothouse flowers, true peace of mind, found me yesterday amid the fields of Athenry, in the bowels of my sweet liberty, my library, where I found four hours of John Paul II’s “Love & Responsibility” and Steinbeck’s “East of Eden”. It was there I found repose and respite, there I found safety in my God, safety in the form of hope. My fruit so often sucks or lay stillborn, and I cannot help but notice it. How can I not, when Jesus tells of seeds that were choked by worries or cares or carried off by the evil one? How can one not stand, paralyzed, in the middle of the field, willing oneself to bear fruit, desperately wanting to see fruit so that we can know that weI love Him since His test is stark: "they love Me who love do My will."
Okay, this is going to be a real struggle of a post. Exceedingly politically incorrect to boot. But, as Bill O'Reilly says, 'tell me where I'm wrong'. I want to be wrong. It was provoked by Dissertations & her riveting post on the literature & orthodoxy, mentioning how T.S. Eliot's earlier works are generally considered better than his later, more Christianized works...
Point 1: The Feminization of Christianity
My reading lately has consisted of Leon Podles, "The Church Impotent" which tries to explain why Christianity, as opposed to say Islam or Orthodox Judiasm, struggles to attract men in terms of church attendance and other outward signs of commitment. Priests, for instance, tend to have lower testosterone levels than average. Podles argues that Christianity has been feminized soon after the heroic age of martyrs and the Church Fathers.
Point 2: Genius as Masculine
IQ tests have shown men to have a more extreme range of intelligence (or lack thereof) than women. The bell curve seems to include lots more points to the right side (i.e. geniuses) and more points to the left (dunces). And although women have not had nearly the opportunities men have in the arts, still the Joyces, Shakespeares, Dantes, Beethovens, Bachs are nearly universally male.
Point 3: Combine the two and ...?
Okay that was going nowhere. Let's move to a different solution. Walker Percy & Shelby Foote argued about this incessantly in their letters (published as "The Correspondence of W.P. & SF") and Foote argues that art requires that nothing be placed before it, which is what religion also requires. Hence the incompatibility. You cannot serve both art and God. I'll try to find exact quotes tomorrow.
Point 1: The Feminization of Christianity
My reading lately has consisted of Leon Podles, "The Church Impotent" which tries to explain why Christianity, as opposed to say Islam or Orthodox Judiasm, struggles to attract men in terms of church attendance and other outward signs of commitment. Priests, for instance, tend to have lower testosterone levels than average. Podles argues that Christianity has been feminized soon after the heroic age of martyrs and the Church Fathers.
Point 2: Genius as Masculine
IQ tests have shown men to have a more extreme range of intelligence (or lack thereof) than women. The bell curve seems to include lots more points to the right side (i.e. geniuses) and more points to the left (dunces). And although women have not had nearly the opportunities men have in the arts, still the Joyces, Shakespeares, Dantes, Beethovens, Bachs are nearly universally male.
Point 3: Combine the two and ...?
Okay that was going nowhere. Let's move to a different solution. Walker Percy & Shelby Foote argued about this incessantly in their letters (published as "The Correspondence of W.P. & SF") and Foote argues that art requires that nothing be placed before it, which is what religion also requires. Hence the incompatibility. You cannot serve both art and God. I'll try to find exact quotes tomorrow.
Can barely keep up with all the quality blogging going on out there. All but Dissertations has a lengthy but riveting post on the literature & orthodoxy, mentioning how T.S. Eliot's earlier works are generally considered better than his later, more Christianized works. I wonder if Christianity as practiced emasculates us somehow (i.e. in Origen's case it was literal!). Thoreau was never enamored of religion because he wanted to grow wild 'according to his nature' and that wildness certainly can produce great art. Yeats, in one of his poems, says Christians are stone-faced and slumbering.
She writes:
As the editor of Mozart's letters says, "It was a paradox that the same person who wrote such sublime music used such language. But it was the case."
The awful produces the sublime.
The orthodox produces the sub-par.
What are we to do?
Of course, I would prefer to be called slumbering and produce horrible art than lose my soul, so the point is perhaps moot.
P.S.: Err 503 has a crucial post to read: here
(JP II's letter to artists).
She writes:
As the editor of Mozart's letters says, "It was a paradox that the same person who wrote such sublime music used such language. But it was the case."
The awful produces the sublime.
The orthodox produces the sub-par.
What are we to do?
Of course, I would prefer to be called slumbering and produce horrible art than lose my soul, so the point is perhaps moot.
P.S.: Err 503 has a crucial post to read: here
(JP II's letter to artists).
Quote on Amy Welborn's site:
In a game of rock-scissors-paper, evangelical Christianity seems to trump Catholicism these days. And Catholicism trumps Orthodoxy (which is why the Russian Orthodox are so defensive).
Why? Because our world seems to have rejected a sacramental view of things. The Orthodox expansive liturgies and huge emphasis on "mystery" (they call their sacraments 'mysteries') are 'more sacramental' if you will than Catholicism. In other words, low churches drive out high churches in the 21st century, and Orthodoxy is a high church compared to the RCC liturgies, and evangelical Protestantism is low church compared to the RCC.
In a game of rock-scissors-paper, evangelical Christianity seems to trump Catholicism these days. And Catholicism trumps Orthodoxy (which is why the Russian Orthodox are so defensive).
Why? Because our world seems to have rejected a sacramental view of things. The Orthodox expansive liturgies and huge emphasis on "mystery" (they call their sacraments 'mysteries') are 'more sacramental' if you will than Catholicism. In other words, low churches drive out high churches in the 21st century, and Orthodoxy is a high church compared to the RCC liturgies, and evangelical Protestantism is low church compared to the RCC.
Priceless
Read a comment (DW) in Flos Carmeli's blog that had me laughing out loud and feeling guilty afterwards, knowing it to be uncharitable to our separated brethren, but a classic in every sense. I'm only saddened I cannot use it in polite company since it is so scathing:
How can one not love a guy (the writer James Joyce) whose response to being asked whether he had become a Protestant was to say that he did not give up a rational and coherent absurdity in order to embrace an irrational and incoherent absurdity, and that he had simply lost his faith, not his reason? As a Catholic, I certainly disagree with his describing the Faith as "an absurdity", but one must admit, the quote is delicious...
Read a comment (DW) in Flos Carmeli's blog that had me laughing out loud and feeling guilty afterwards, knowing it to be uncharitable to our separated brethren, but a classic in every sense. I'm only saddened I cannot use it in polite company since it is so scathing:
How can one not love a guy (the writer James Joyce) whose response to being asked whether he had become a Protestant was to say that he did not give up a rational and coherent absurdity in order to embrace an irrational and incoherent absurdity, and that he had simply lost his faith, not his reason? As a Catholic, I certainly disagree with his describing the Faith as "an absurdity", but one must admit, the quote is delicious...
Interesting quote in David McCullough's "John Adams" in light of the "Fiction Monday" post below:
Why was it that a nation without wars to fight seemed to lose its honor and integrity, Adams pondered in one leter to Rush. 'War necessarily brings with it some virtues, and great and heroic virtues, too,' he wrote. 'What horrid creatures we men are, that we cannot be virtuous without murdering one another?'
Why was it that a nation without wars to fight seemed to lose its honor and integrity, Adams pondered in one leter to Rush. 'War necessarily brings with it some virtues, and great and heroic virtues, too,' he wrote. 'What horrid creatures we men are, that we cannot be virtuous without murdering one another?'
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