20 March 2006

Where there is mystery, there can be hope. Where mystery does not dwell, there can be no hope -- merely expectation or despair. How can a man hope when he knows what will be? There is more hope in a man that knows but one thing (that the world is strange), then a man who knows all things but one (that the world is strange). A man ought to understand at least this: that the world is a strange place and (in a strange place) the absurd and impossible can sometimes happen, and therefore there is hope even in the most difficult of circumstances.

Again, the mighty truth in myth*: hope against the impossible. And myth, here, stands against modern Christianity with its expectation of the impossible -- if one expects an impossible event, the event is hardly possible and the act of the mind is hardly hope. A hope can only occur when the event may or may not occur, when it’s possible that the heavens may save me, but they may not.

If I hope for snow and no winter dust falls, I am sad, but I move on -- for I acknowledge that events may or may not occur and I shrug and continue on with my tasks. But if I read a forecast, and I expect a snow and wake to a barren and dead world, bereft of the elegant white jewel -- I am angry at the false world and its deception.

But if my expectation is met, I am unsurprised and unmoved. Why be effusive in rejoicing over the unsurprising thing? I move about my day, having prepared myself for it, and the snow becomes a common thing.

But if I hope and it snows, against my expectation, but for my hope -- then I rejoice, my spirits rise and there seems -- in the snow -- a sort of secret blessing, as if my my impossible desire had been fulfilled by some loving Father. I am surprised by the audacity of the weather, but the strangeness of it all, that my wish be fulfilled.

Expectation is entitlement; hope is humility.

*All related to a particular myth I’ve been perusing, Ireland’s founding. I’ll perhaps post on the particulars of the wonderful story, but one character stood out to me -- that of Tuon mac Carell, who saw the founding of Ireland and watched its history for -- perhaps -- a thousand years, in the flesh of a stag, then a boar, then a sea-eagle, then a salmon. He arrived with the first settlers, and watched in despair,as his people died of plague. Soon -- alone, old and decrepit -- he lay down for a final rest to discover himself remade, the king of all deer. In such cloth he watched, until near the end of his years he lay to rest and lo! he was a black boar. This happened, again and again, until he was reborn a human.

Wonderful was his reaction to these rebirths -- the rebirth was a surprise, yet it was not. He rejoiced and danced and sang of times, past, when he sat at the table of warriors, and passed judgment in royal halls, always ending on a note of joy for his new body. (“And, today! I am a black boar.”) He never questioned the transformation, the oddness of it. He never asked, “Why might this be? Who has caused this?” -- he accepted the oddness of the world, and always returned to discover, shaded in the night, yet another form to be had. There’s a certain unspoken mystery and hope in all of this -- he didn’t seem to expect the transformation, as hope for it, and rejoice when it occurred. It’s really a glorious tale.

And -- for that tale -- we have a Saint to celebrate. I’m forgetting his name, but a particular monk entreated Tuon mac Carell to tell his tale, the tale of Tara. And the tale I relayed, above, the monks faithfully recorded and thought it good. Can you imagine this scene? A holy man listening to this pagan tell of his long and magical history, and nodding his head with wonder, as the pagan Tuon told of his ancient life and the transmitigration of his self from noble boar to mighty eagle, the tales of wonder and beauty and life. I can imagine the monks nodding the heads, smiling and clapping their hands -- and, when the tale ended, the Saint rising to his feet and crying, “Well met! How true, indeed.” As he clasps his hand upon Tuon’s shoulder, I can see the Saint forming a noble friendship with the Pagan. And I imagine the good monk saying, “My friend, allow me -- someday -- to tell you another mighty tale.”

( C: 5 )

19 March 2006

I snapped some pictures, today:

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14 March 2006

G.K. Chesterton was a prolific writer, at the turn of the last century. He was a newspaperman, a fiction writer, a philosopher, a theologian, an apologist, and one who unabashedly lived and loved life. I’ve read several of his apologetics, as of late. The two non-fiction books I’ve read are “The Everlasting Man”, which is a fascination interpretation of religious evolution as paganism turned toward Christianity (though Chesterton might say those who adhere to a strict religious-evolutionary mindset are those who are rather stuck in a primitive stage of evolution) and “Orthodoxy”, which is his autobiography, a tale of his movement from strict atheism to the Church. Chesterton is known for his wit and humor, and even for his wisdom. (It was he who coined the phrase, “He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.”)

His fiction suffers the same sickness -- it is frequently humorous, and frequently wise. I’m currently reading “The Flying Inn”, the tale of two men, a burly and angry Irishman and a intelligent and introspective barkeep, as they do battle against English prohibitionists. The men (the barkeep’s name is “Humphrey Pump” -- he’s known as “Hump Pump”. Chesterton says, “Upon few children of men has the surname of Pump fallen, and of those few have been maddened into naming a child Humphrey in addition it.”) have been tossed from their bar, and with naught but a keg of run and a wagon-wheel sized round of cheese, they traverse the country spreading noble and cheery insurrection.

It’s absolutely hilarious, as a bit of the books prosy demonstrates:

Old Noah, he had an ostrich farm, and fowls on the greatest scale;

He ate his egg with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail,

And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and the fish he took was Whale;

But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail;

And Noah, he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,

“I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”

I’m very much enjoying it.

( C: 2 )

12 March 2006

... of this bit of poem, as a result of an earlier conversation:

There is no justice for my soul
For my mind’s genius is defeat
The more I know, the darker my soul
The less I am able to see.

( C: 4 )

02 March 2006

... I understand why Kierkegaard so often wrote indirectly, in pseudonym and in story and letter. His reason relates to how human learn morality -- through models, more than ideas. We observe how others live, take the good and discard the bad. While ideas are important, we are drawn to the final test -- its living. We’re compelled by the living, we follow movements through time, imitate our peers and our betters. Watching their lives proves their ideas. Only rarely does an idea prove a life...

But fiction condenses a life to a four hour form, and there is the novel’s power. We can watch another life as it accelerates and completes, we can see its motions in time, know deeply where it succeeds and fails. -- and all of this, in a day. Our wisdom accelerates, too, as we assimilate a life’s wisdom without the wait of a life. -- for not only do we objectively measure the life, but we imaginatively enter that life, see through its eyes... not wholly, but enough.

Seen through a life, the theory becomes tangible, the thought, enacted. Thus, story would seem the highest mode of expression, or revealing of idea...

... “A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste.” -- Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, p. 67

... Windows splashed to my life, day light tumbling through those incidental pieces. I appreciate them as a man appreciates a grand surprise, caught in the moment more than the thing.

My room’s light wraps me in gloom, discarding my inner focus, purchasing dullness. About noon, I found that focus difficult, my eyes failed to grasp their sight. On a whim, I left the room, walked toward a stairwell.

How’s this! Dead step and flighty dust owns more day than I!

The upper platform is fully window, on its east side. And so is the lower, with its glass doors, flanked by transparent landscape pieces. I stood above, looked at the pressed-coal lot, at the metal and plastic creatures laid across the surface; my gaze rose past the medical buildings, past that physical symbol of physical pain -- my bleary eyes lifted toward the sky, landing softly, their unfocus absorbing all the of the uniform and sanguine blue.

I couldn’t feel the sun’s love-touch; but I understood it, I conceded it, I remembered it. A moment passed, the bell tensed and prepared, I returned to my room, much cheered...

... just outside, the water gently rolls to shore. It’s as if the earth were a very sleepy child, woken in the midst of a very happy dream -- smiling, the child rubs his eyes and (beneath the blanket) makes the small movements of contentment, seen only in the rippling blanket above...

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