wanting it to happen

My favorite part of Perelandra, the first book in Lewis' space trilogy, is the part in which Weston is making a speech which Ransom is translating into Malacandrian. It brings an amazing amount of clarity to silly humanist reasoning. Here's just the last bit.

"I may fall," said Weston. "But while I live I will not, with such a key in my hand, consent to close the gates of the future on my race. What lies in that future, beyond our present ken, passes imagination to conceive: it is enough for me that there is a Beyond."
"He is saying," Ransom translated, "that he will not stop trying to do all this unless you kill him. And he says that though he doesn't know what will happen to the creatures sprung from us, he wants it to happen very much."

I just finished reading Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge. I was really impressed.

Goudge has some slightly unorthodox views of religion, I think, or at least there are hints of that kind in this book. However there is a great deal of wisdom contained within its pages.

It is not a nice book at all. Happiness is elusive for most of the characters in the book. Also it holds a mirror up to the selfish, striving complaining woman that I am, and that really wasn't pleasant at all.

The lessons to be learned about the nature of love and humility are priceless. Most wonderful of is for a book to show honestly what the cost of real self-sacrificing love. I have been encouraged to work harder, and more importantly to complain less.

This book would certainly be much more appealing to women than men. I think its intended audience is women, but I do believe that a guy could learn a lot from it as well. It has its silly, sentimental moments, but has many poignant, awesome insights as well.

Progress? What progress?

What did I learn from Winston Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples? I learned a sort of drearily hopeful thing: people have always blundered through life. Politics (at least in England and the US) have always involved crazy legislation that generally makes things worse...and yet the human race limps onward.

I learned that people are blinded by their own culture.

I learned that small mistakes have awful consequences.

I learned that few people actually do learn from history, and the mistakes of the past are repeated over and over again.

AND

I learned that the nobility, humility, power, brilliance, or virtue of some people can still inspire and fascinate hundreds of years after they lived and died, even when they seem to be on 'the wrong side' or when you've no idea which side is the right side.

Which leads to the conclusion that we should obey God and love our neighbors, be as wise we can be, and maybe not struggle too hard to always be right, because there are things we cannot see. This may be encouraging in the present chaos concerning money and politics and all that.

The Great Gatsby

We read The Great Gatsby in English class. It is my favorite, so far of the novels we have read in class. Anyway, I was really proud of my essay, so I'm posting it. I think one of the reasons I felt the way I did about the book was that I had been meditating on Ecclesiastes, and Fitzgerald does a fantastic job of showing the vaporous, nature of life.

In the Great Gatsby, emphasis is placed on the emptiness of modern life. The characters float here and there, trying to fill their purposeless lives, but continually finding themselves bored by everything. Gatsby is in contrast to the bored masses of people he collects around him. However, it is Gatsby's differentness, the very purpose in his life, that dooms him to misery and loneliness in the end,

Throughout the book there is a great contrast between East Egg and West Egg and between Daisy and Tom's tranquil, soporific life and Gatsby's fantastic, lively parties. Daisy's life could be said to simply happen to her, she is a passive observer and although she is somewhat dissatisfied with her life as it is, she does not like to take action to change it. Jordan Baker exemplifies the carelessness of this set of people. When Nick speaks to her about her careless driving, she says in that case the other drivers had better be careful. Daisy, Tom, and their friends are essentially careless, and leave other people to clean up the messes they make.

Gatsby, on the other hand is not so careless. He has been planning his life in grand detail since his childhood, as Nick discovers from reading the schedule Gatsby had written in the back of “Hopalong Cassidy.” Everything he has done for the past several years has been with the purpose of getting Daisy. He has a purpose in his life which is everything to him, and he will do anything to gain his object. In the end, however, all of Gatsby's attempts at control fail miserably, his sense of purpose is insufficient to make him happy, and after his death his former friends desert him. Gatsby is, indeed, “great” in some ways, but he is ultimately as pathetic and lonely as the others.

Meanwhile, the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleberg look down on everyone. The old billboard represents God. Mr. Wilson points to it when he is speaking about God seeing what goes on. The billboard was put up by an optometrist who has long since disappeared. Likewise, God is apparently absent from the empty lives of the residents of the East and West Eggs. The empty eyes of a missing deity look down on the empty lives of people below. It would appear that, not only is there no immediate purpose in their lives, but neither have they any greater hope than whatever enjoyment can be drawn out of their own dull lives.

The Great Gatsby is an honest book, that presents truthfully the horribleness of a life without God (and thus without meaning). Lives may be bright, even beautiful, but they are brief, without meaning, and often destructive. There is no interconnectedness in life, people are not connected with one another, or with anything- there is no accountability for the damage people cause one another, and there is no change. Everyone continues as they were before, until the light goes out and they die.

Whose wish?

"'I see,' said John, 'But what was the second interpretation?'
'In the second,' said Reason, 'the bridge signifies the giant's own favorite doctrine of the wish-fulfillment dream. For this he also wishes to use and not to use.'
'I don't see how he wishes not to use it'
'Does he not keep on telling people that the Landlord is a wish-fulfillment dream?'
'Yes. Surely that is true- the only true thing he did say.'
'Now, think. Is it really true that the giant and Sigismund, and the people in Eschropolis, and Mr. Halfways, are going about filled with a longing that there should be a Landlord, and cards of rules, and a mountain land beyond that brook, with a possibility of a black hole?'
Then John stood still in the road to think. And first he gave a shake of his shoulders, and then he began to laugh until he was almost shaken to pieces. And when he had nearly finished, the vastness and impudence and simplicity of the fraud which had been practiced came over him all again, and he laughed harder. And just when he had nearly recovered and was beginning to get his breath again, suddenly he had a picture in his mind of Victoriana and Glugly and Gus Halfways and how they would look if a rumour reached them that there was a Landlord and he was coming to Eschropolis. This was too much for him, and he laughed so hard that the broken chains of the Spirit of the Age fell off his wrists altogether. But all the while Reason sat and watched him
'You had better hear the rest of the argument,' she said at last, 'It may not be such a laughing matter as you suppose.'
'Oh yes- the argument, said John, wiping his eyes.
'You see now the direction in which the giant does not want the wish-fulfillment theory used?'
'I'm not sure that I do,' said John.
'Don't you see what follows if you adopt his own rules?'
'No,' said John very loudly: for a terrible apprehension was stealing over him.
'But you must see,' said Reason, 'that for him and all his subjects disbelief in the Landlord is a wish-fulfillment dream.'
'I shall not adopt his rules.'
'You would be foolish not to have profited at all by your stay in his country,' said Reason, 'There is some force in the wish-fulfillment doctrine.'
'Some, perhaps, but very little.'
'I only wanted to make it clear that whatever force it had was in favour of the Landlord's existence, not against it- specially in your case.'
'Why specially in mine?' said John sulkily.
'Because the Landlord is the thing you have been most afraid of all your life. I do not say that any theory should be accepted because it is disagreeable, but if any should, then belief in the Landlord should be accepted first.'" C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter IV

To reason or not to reason

"In the warmth of the afternoon they went on again, and it came into John's mind to ask the lady the meaning of her second riddle.
'It has two meanings,' said she, 'and in the first the bridge signifies Reasoning. The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument.'
'How is that?'
'You heard what they said. If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true.'
'I see. And what is the cure for this?'
'You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.'"
C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter IV

What is the colour of things in the dark?

"'You said that there were two things to say,' said John, 'What was the second?'
'The second was this. Did you think that the things you saw in the dungeon were real: that we really are like that?'
'Of course I did. It is only our skin that hides them.'
'Then I must ask you the same question that I asked the giant. What is the colour of things in the dark?'
'I suppose no color at all.'
'And what of their shape? Have you any notion of it save as what could be seen or touched, or what you could collect from many seeing and touchings?'
'I don't know that I have.'
'Then do you not see how the giant has deceived you?'
'Not quite clearly.'
'He showed you by a trick what our inwards would look like if they were visible. That is, he showed you something that is not, but something that would be if the world were made all other than it is. But in the real world our inwards are invisible. They are not coloured shapes at all, they are feelings. The warmth in your limbs at this moment, the sweetness of your breath as you draw it in, the comfort in your belly because we breakfasted well, and your hunger for the next meal- these are the reality: all the sponges and tubes you saw in the dungeon are the lie.'
'But if I cut a man open I should see them in him.'
'A man cut open is, so far, not a man: and if you did not sew him up speedily you would be seeing not organs, but death. I am not denying that death is ugly: but the giant made you believe that life is ugly.'
'I cannot forget the man with the cancer.'
'What you saw was unreality. The ugly lump was the giant's trick: the reality was pain which has no colour or shape.'
'Is that much better?'
'That depends on the man.'
'I think I begin to see.'
'Is it surprising that things should look strange if you see them as they are not? If you take an organ out of a man's body- or a longing out of the dark part of a man's mind- and give to the one shape and colour, and to the other the self-consciousness, which they never have in reality, would you expect them to be other than monstrous?'
'Is there, then, no truth at all in what I saw under the giant's eyes?'
'Such pictures are useful to physicians.'
'Then I really am clean,' said John. 'I am not- like those.'
Reason smiled, 'There, too,' she said, 'there is truth mixed up with the giant's conjuring tricks. It will do you know harm to remember from time to time the ugly sights inside. You come of a race that cannot afford to be proud.'" C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim's Regress, Book 4, Chapter III

Brief Update

On Resident Aliens, I read chapter 2 and it is becoming evident that it's a liberal book, but I still think there are quite a few pearls of wisdom in there. It is somewhat a matter of presuppositions, though; it's the sort of thing where you'll tend to read in your own views when the author is using words quite differently.

My little sister meanwhile is a budding classics scholar, she said something like this the other day, "Aeneas is the slave of duty, just like Frederick from Pirates of Penzance."

Worth noting

``Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?'' said Wilfred.
``ffinch-ffarrowmere,'' corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capitals." P.G Wodehouse, A Slice of Life

Real Christianity

I've been reading bits and pieces of a book we have floating around our house called Resident Aliens, which claims in it's subtitle to be "A provocative Christian assessment of culture and ministry for people who know that something is wrong," and it may well be just that. I've only made it through the first chapter and so far it's been insightful. I know nothing about it's authors, had never heard about it before, but it's first chapter is certainly enough to keep me reading. I'll probably post more about it; it's quite quotable.

Who cares, modern theologians asked, whether or not Jesus walked on water, or Moses split the Red Sea, or Christ bodily rose from the dead? The important matter is not these prescientific thought forms but the existential reality beneath them. Everything must be translated into existentialism in order to be believed. Today, when existentialism has fallen out of fashion, the modern theologian is more likely to translate everything into Whiteheadian process theology, the latest psychoanalytic account, or Marxist analysis to make it believable.

"We have come to see that this project, though well intentioned is misguided. The theology of translation assumes that there is some kernel of real Christianity, some abstract essence that can be preserved even while changing some of the old Near Eastern labels. Yet such a view distorts the nature of Christianity. In Jesus we meet not a presentation of basic ideas about God, worlds, and humanity, but an invitation to join up, to become part of a movement, a people. By the very act of our modern theological attempts at translation, we have unconsciously distorted the gospel and transformed it into something it never claimed to be- ideas abstracted from Jesus, rather than Jesus with his people." Resident Aliens, Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon

"'How wonderful,' says the poet, 'is Death, Death and his brother Sleep!' And having asked whether Ianthe will wake again and being assured that she will, he proceeds to weave many beautiful thoughts about Ianthe's sleep. From this we may fairly deduce that he (like Henry who kneeled in silence by her couch) felt tenderly toward Ianthe. For another person's sleep is the acid test to our own sentiments. Unless we are savages we react kindly to death, whether of friend or enemy. It does not exasperate us; it does not tempt us to throw things at it; we do not find it funny. Death is the ultimate weakness, and we dare not insult it. But sleep is only the illusion of weakness and, unless it appeals to our protective instincts, is likely to arouse in us a nasty, bullying spirit. From a height of conscious superiority we look down on the sleeper, thus exposing himself in all his frailty, and indulge in derisive comment on his appearance, his manners and (if the occasion is a public one) the absurdity of the position in which he has placed his companion, if he has one, and particularly if we are that companion." -Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

Anglicans have more fun

It is often a lot of fun to read a book by an Anglican/Episcopalian author (Dorothy Sayers' books, or even Jan Karon's Mitford series) because liturgy ends up in the mouths of the characters. Occasionally I even recognize it because we sometimes use the same prayers in our church, although I'm sure an actual Anglican would catch more references. Anyway it gives one the feeling of a sort of "in-joke" as well as making one see that, since they have scripture and prayer always on the tip of their tongue (no matter how interesting the application must be) that liturgy cannot be all bad.

A quote from (the fictional) Lord Peter Wimsey: "I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone that which it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether."

The italicized portion is adapted from a prayer of confession. Typing it out, after the last 'done,' I nearly typed 'And there is no health in us.' which is what comes next.

For pondering

I'm currently reading the book Original Sin by P. D. James. It's a mystery novel and a good one at that. James is brilliant really. She brings out human misery so naturally; I'd have to say she's got a very good grasp of the human condition really. Anyway, a paragraph about belief that caught my eye, this from the perspective of a Jewish police officer.

"His mother, of course, would never bring herself to say, 'I don't care whether you believe or disbelieve, I want you to be here with us on the Sabbath. I want you to be seen in the synagogue with your father and brother.' And it wasn't intellectual dishonesty, although he tried to tell himself that it was. You could argue that few adherents of any religion believed all the dogma of their faith except the fundamentalists and, God knew, they were a bloody sight more dangerous than any non-believer. God knew. How natural it was an how universal to slip into the language of faith. And perhaps his mother was right, although she would never bring herself to speak the truth. The outward forms were important. To practice religion wasn't only a matter of intellectual assent. To be seen in synagogue was to proclaim: This is where I stand, these are my people, these are the values by which I try to live, this is what generations of my forebears have made me, this is what I am. He remembered his grandfather's words, spoken to him after his bar mitzvah: 'What is a Jew without his belief? What Hitler could not do to us shall we do to ourselves?' The old resentments welled up. A Jew wasn't even allowed his atheism. Burdened with guilt from childhood, he couldn't reject his faith without feeling the need to apologize to the God he no longer believed in. It was always there at the back of his mind, silent witness of his apostasy, that moving army of naked humanity, the young, the middle-aged, the elderly, flowing like a dark tide into the gas chambers."

Surprised by Joy

"In reading Chesterton, as in reading MacDonald, I did not know what I was letting myself i for. A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere-- 'Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,' as Herbert says, 'fine nets and stratagems.' God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous."

I just finished reading Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis's telling of his early life. It's very interesting (and closely related to his book The Pilgrim's Regress). It isn't child friendly actually, because Lewis's life was not G rated. But it's full of insights and quotable quotes like the above. It's definitely worthwhile in helping to understand how the great man thought.

Marriage and dancing

Well, one of my favorite books is Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey if only for the wit of her hero, one Henry Tilney by name. This is taken from said book, Chapter 10.


[The obnoxious John Thorpe has been obtruding himself on Catherine Morland as she is starting to dance with the much more enticing Henry Tilney:]...This was the last sentence by which he [Thorpe] could weary Catherine's attention, for he was just then borne off by the resistless pressure of a long string of passing ladies.
Her partner [Henry Tilney] now drew near, and said,
"That gentleman would have put me out of patience, had he stayed with you half a minute longer. He has no business to withdraw the attention of my partner from me. We have entered into a contract of mutual agreeableness for the space of an evening, and all our agreeableness belongs solely to each other for that time. Nobody can fasten themselves on the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the other. I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or marry themselves, have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbours."
[Catherine Morland:]
"But they are such very different things! --"
[Henry Tilney:]
"-- That you think they cannot be compared together."
[Catherine Morland:]
"To be sure not. People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour."
[Henry Tilney:]
"And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that light certainly, their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. -- You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else. You will allow all this?"
[Catherine Morland:]
"Yes, to be sure, as you state it, all this sounds very well; but still they are so very different. -- I cannot look upon them at all in the same light, nor think the same duties belong to them."
[Henry Tilney:]
"In one respect, there certainly is a difference. In marriage, the man is supposed to provide for the support of the woman, the woman to make the home agreeable to the man; he is to purvey, and she is to smile. But in dancing, their duties are exactly changed; the agreeableness, the compliance are expected from him, while she furnishes the fan and the lavender water. That, I suppose, was the difference of duties which struck you, as rendering the conditions incapable of comparison."
[Catherine Morland:]
"No, indeed, I never thought of that."
[Henry Tilney:]
"Then I am quite at a loss. One thing, however, I must observe. This disposition on your side is rather alarming. You totally disallow any similarity in the obligations; and may I not thence infer that your notions of the duties of the dancing state are not so strict as your partner might wish? Have I not reason to fear that if the gentleman who spoke to you just now were to return, or if any other gentleman were to address you, there would be nothing to restrain you from conversing with him as long as you chose?"
[Catherine Morland:]
"Mr. Thorpe is such a very particular friend of my brother's, that if he talks to me, I must talk to him again; but there are hardly three young men in the room besides him that I have any acquaintance with."
[Henry Tilney:]
"And is that to be my only security? alas, alas!"
[Catherine Morland:]
"Nay, I am sure you cannot have a better; for if I do not know any body, it is impossible for me to talk to them; and, besides, I do not want to talk to any body."
[Henry Tilney:]
"Now you have given me a security worth having; and I shall proceed with courage."

Racism in Disguise

I just finished reading The Last of the Mohicans. The author's treatment of Indians is terribly confusing. Uncas and Chingachgook (pronounce 'Chicago' I think, to quote Mark Twain) behave in ways that ought to be totally unacceptable, killing and scalping people unecessarily, etc. but Hawkeye (and seemingly the author) seems to think that they worship the same God as 'the white man' does and that they must be going to heaven...but it must be a different heaven because they don't like 'the white man's' ideas about heaven or something. Apparently the same standards cannot be held for white men and red men.

Apparently, salvation is not by Christ alone, 'red men' can come to God another way. Or is it that they, unlike us cannot understand the way? It is implied from time to time that it is beyond their understanding...and that they cannot live any way but the way they had been living. They cannot abandon their sinful ways (true of everyone outside of Grace) . Are Indians incapable of receiving Grace? They can't come to God? They can't stop acting like animals...but white men can? Lower standards must be had for them because they can't do as much as white men? Have they no souls? (Hmm. Maybe Cooper's red men are totally depraved and his white men resemble more of the Arminian idea of man! That makes for weird theology.)

James Fenimore Cooper didn't know it, but he didn't think much of the Indians. Then again, most people don't like logical conclusions and only go halfway with their beliefs so maybe I'm being unfair. Seems to me that his Indians are pathetic creatures. I'll let you in on a little secret: James Fenimore Cooper had a very small understanding on human nature and I don't think much of his writing. Yeah, I read too deeply into it. The Last of the Mohicans was fun but it isn't great literature.