Walking the Labyrinth, June 26, 2009—Today the old Latin calendar celebrates the Feast of St Mary Magdalene Fontaine and her Companions. These four pious nuns were guillotined in 1794, victims of the French Revolution, for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the new government. On the old, old Latin calendar (the one predating the first Christmas), this latter part of June was under the patronage of the goddess Juno, the protectress of marriage (who, if mythology is to be believed, didn’t do such a good job protecting her own). The Romans considered this the most auspicious time of year to be married, hence our lingering notion of “June brides.” It is the 177th day of the year, and 188 days remain in 2009. According to the town rolls of Hamelin, Germany, today in 1284 the Pied Piper led 130 children out of the city, none of them ever to return. It seems the old Grimm Fairy Tale is actually grounded in history. A stained glass window in the town, dating from about 1300, depicts the odd event, and the town roll dated 1294 cryptically says, “It is ten years since our children left.” One hundred and ninety-nine years later, in 1483, Richard III seized the throne of England following the mysterious deaths of the two young princes in the Tower of London (this seems to be a bad day for children). In Lima, Peru, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro was murdered at a dinner party this night in 1541, when 20 armed men burst into the hall and took turns stabbing him. The other guests left; dessert was canceled. Finally, in 1817, the United States Patent Office issued the first American patent for a bicycle. For those who keep up with such things, the United States Congress has declared this “Carpenter Ant Awareness Week” (now you know why we send them to Washington); today is also Take Your Dog to Work Day in some States. Pearl S Buck, the author of The Good Earth, was born this day in 1894 (according to her biography, she wrote more than 80 other books, but I can’t name any of the rest of them), so too, in 1904, was László Löwenstein (we know him better as Peter Lorre). Along with the perhaps-still-hungry Pizarro, the Roman Emperor Julian (called “the Apostate”—that’s what happens when your enemies end up writing history) died on this day in 363 AD, killed in a battle with the Persians. One thousand and six hundred years later, to the day, President John F Kennedy spoke to a crowd in communist-surrounded West Berlin and said “Ich bin ein Berliner"—a phrase which has been variously translated.
IT’S EASY TO BE outraged. In fact, sometimes it’s hard not to be. I did my weekly fulminating when I read the words of a womanpriest in a national Episcopalian magazine assuring her readers that God was pleased whenever a woman exercised her right to abort her child. If my teeth were better, I would have gnashed them. Instead, I wrote a sharp satirical piece proposing liturgical rites for the blessing of abortion clinics and “Prayers for an Easy Termination,” but my little production will remain (pardon me) “unbirthed.” Outrage and anger are easy, and the road they lead down is broad and wide; once we get accustomed to that walk, our steps aren’t easily retraced. You’ve known people who are on it. Complaints are their daily fare; whining is one of the few things they’ll share with others. Whenever anything good is said about someone, they quickly remind us everyone’s motives are mixed. Good news evokes the cynical response “how long do you think that will last?” Anger seethes and bubbles in some of us like witch’s brew in a cauldron, and it’s poison to the human soul. Those Seven Deadly Sins (and Anger is one of the leaders of the list incidentally; poor old Lust is just a straggler) are deadly not because they make God mad at us, but because they shrivel us up. They transform our souls into petrified prunes, and when they’re finished with us, even we don’t like ourselves.
That’s not the path God wants us on. That road is narrow, strewn with obstacles, a labyrinth the end of which is not clearly visible. But God put us on it so we could bring ourselves to walk upright like men and women, not slither like slugs or wander like moles. Aristotle said the proper “end” of man is happiness (he meant “woman” too, but in those days everybody didn’t have to be explicitly told their gender, ethnic group, and ‘faith community’ was included for them to be able to understand that). By happy he didn’t mean “winning the lottery” happy or happy as in “He was happy when he learned his ex-wife was being audited.” The Philosopher understood that genuine happiness isn’t the result of something that happens to us. “The Kingdom of God is within you.” There’s a wonderful old Spanish phrase, from the days of medieval pilgrimage, which is apt for a modern-day pilgrim on today’s labyrinthine path: “If God isn’t with you on the first step of your journey, you won’t find him by walking all the way to Jerusalem.” Happiness comes from doing your job, whatever it is, well; from doing something good for someone else when you know they’ll never find out about it; from looking for beauty—if you seek, you will always find it. The world God has given us is stuft’d full of beauty, and He’s given us the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it. It’s not that it’s not all around us; it’s that we make ourselves blind and deaf to it, with self-centeredness and anger and jealousy and—but you know the rest of the list of Seven.
So don’t rush through the steps of your labyrinth. Enjoy the journey, savor the pace. The scenery along the way is there just for you.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, comes a mirthful little volume titled Misreadings by Umberto Eco, author of the very long novel, The Name of the Rose. Misreadings is a collection of fifteen small pieces of fun. Eco was hired, in 1959, to write a monthly column for Il Verro, an Italian literary magazine. He began submitting parodies of the ponderous contents of the magazine to the magazine itself. It says something of the editors that they published them all. One is a set of internal critiques, supposedly from a publishing company, on why they’re rejecting certain books as unsuitable, including the Bible (“I must say the first few hundred pages of this manuscript really hooked me…sex (lots of it), murders, massacres and so on…but as I kept reading, I realized this is actually an anthology, involving several writers…I’d suggest getting the rights to just the first few chapters, but using a different title. How about Red Sea Desperadoes?”), Homer’s Odyssey (“…remember in his first book, how the Achilles-Patroclus story, with its not-so-latent homosexuality got us into trouble?”), and a dozen or so others, including refusal letters to Cervantes and Dante. Another piece is an account of Columbus discovering America, accompanied by modern-day news media and their attendant host of experts, in this case including Leonardo da Vinci, who gets short-shrift from the reporters when he becomes too technical.
Any of the selections can be read in ten or fifteen minutes. The satire is rich, at times thick, written to mock scholarship which labors on the ephemeral and a society which concerns itself with the trivial. But I read it with such pleasure partly because the satire and mockery isn’t bitter or angry or malicious. Eco’s Misreadings holds up a mirror and lets us see ourselves; he helps us see how silly we can sometimes be when we make more of things than they are. I’m going to put this book on the bookshelf in my bedroom, so I can pick it up frequently for a refreshing sip.
Quotes from the Principals:
Julian the Apostate—“So long as you are a slave to the opinions of the many you have not yet approached freedom.”
Pearl S Buck—“The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.” And one more from her, because it seems so wonderfully apt. Remember, her parents were missionaries to China. “We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.”
John F Kennedy, in Berlin—“All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’ ”
Peter Lorre—“Don’t you think we should drive a stake through his heart, just in case?” (to Vincent Price at Bela Lugosi's funeral)
Friday, June 26, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Walking the Labyrinth, June 19, 2009—Today, on the Greek Orthodox Calendar of Saints, is the Feast of All the Saints of Mount Athos (the “Holy Mountain”); the old Latin calendar celebrated St Juliana Falconieri, a fourteenth century nun who founded an order devoted to the care of the sick. It is the 170th day of the year, and 195 days remain in 2009. Today is “Juneteenth,” freedom day for the slaves of the old South. James Charles Stuart, called James the First (of England), who was also James the Fourth (of Scotland), the son of Mary, the Queen of Scots, was born today in 1566. He ascended the Scottish throne when he was thirteen months old. Much later, he wrote a book, in three parts, titled Daemonologie, wherein he encouraged his subjects to hunt down and exterminate witches. You probably know he also wrote “A Counterblaste to Tobacco,” in 1604, condemning the use of the product. Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, was also born on this day in 1947. He still has a price on his head (or fatwa on his pate). In 1786, General Nathaniel Greene, whom George Washington considered his most gifted subordinate, died of a sunstroke at his new home outside Savannah. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in 1953 at Sing Sing for passing American atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. They insisted on their innocence, but the publication of Nikita Khrushchev’s dairies conclusively proved otherwise. Perhaps most interesting of all, on June 19, 1917, in the midst of a World War (“I” in this case), King George V decreed that the British royal family would dispense with its German-sounding surname, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha; from that time till this, the family bears the name Windsor.
SOMETIMES EVEN WATCHING television can be fun. I don’t recommend it in regular doses, but a fortuitous blend of the right (or maybe, the wrong) people can unexpectedly produce odd and funny moments. One such I recall was a “debate” between Christopher Hitchins, a disheveled but erudite proponent for atheism, and the Reverend Al Sharpton, most well-known for blustering wherever a television camera is turned on. Sharpton posed the not-fully-thought out proposition that without religion there is no basis for morality. For the next nine minutes the reverend was deftly eviscerated by Hitchins, but fortunately, Al didn’t seem to realize it. On Chris Matthews’ program (miscalled “Hardball”) the other night came another fun wundermoment: Matthews fatuously observed to Pat Buchanan, “…you Pat Buchanan, although you are a libertarian in many ways, you do not--no, you're a nationalist actually--you are not what you like to call, derisively, a democratist.” Buchanan responded, “No, I don't believe there's a great salvation in a political process at all. I believe in different--in far different things. I put democracy far down the line in the--I think a devoutly Christian, conservative traditionalist country, even if it's a monarchy, is fine…” The fun part though, was less the words than the picture. When Buchanan espoused this political heresy, both Matthews and the other guest sat open-mouthed. After a couple of seconds of crackling, empty airtime, Matthews croaked “Your Franco is talking, Pat. Franco is speaking even now.”
Fun as it was to watch, at the heart of this exchange is something worth pondering. One of the sacred cornerstones in the world we’re now a-building we call “democracy,” and it’s seen as an end in itself. Buchanan was saying the cornerstone isn’t sacred; there are things more important than how the world is governed. That is undoubted heresy to American politicians, who see—and want us to see—their careers as Very Important to the Public. Buchanan was not saying our form of government is unimportant or irrelevant, but that some things in life are more important. Faith and family, art and joy, a close friend and a field of bluebonnets, these things are sacred; they make life worth the living. Government is a device, a tool: in some hands good, in some bad. Hitler was democratically elected. So, too, was Hamas. In a speech made to the House of Commons in 1947, Churchill famously said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." His hidden caveat is worth remembering. Churchill wasn’t slyly winking at us and cleverly saying “democracy really is best, you know.” He was telling us that it’s flawed. The core of his words is theological. It was an acknowledgment that, try as we might, we cannot build the New Jerusalem out of social programs and government grants. We have a problem, and, as Pogo said, it “is us.”
Some of our Founders (not all of them), understood that America is an experiment, one which could fail. Towards the end of his life, Jefferson lamented “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” About the same time, his friend, John Adams, wrote to a correspondent, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Shortly after the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1789, Benjamin Franklin said in a letter to a French well-wisher: “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” We all know the last part of this quote, but its value is to warn us that few things, governments among them, last. Monarchies, republics, theocracies, dictatorships, democracies, none endure. Artists, thinkers, writers, musicians, poets and priests have lived and worked in places of freedom and times of oppression. Buchanan was reminding us that the basic things that make life worth living are not the gifts of government but the gifts of God. Some people, it seems, just don’t know the difference.
We are all of us walking God's labyrinth, even if many of us insist it's of our own building.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I read Tennessee Williams’ last major play, “A House Not Meant to Stand.” Williams called it “a Gothic Comedy,” and it is, in parts, hilariously funny. It’s a play and to really appreciate it as the author intended, it’s best seen and heard, not read. Still, Williams’ ability to draw fascinating and eccentric characters, while at the same time keeping them accessible (by calling to mind bits of people we have known) comes across even on the page. Though in two acts, the movement is continuous and act two picks up just where act one drops off. The action takes place during a single night, set in the leaky, old Pascagoula home of Cornelius McCorkle and his wife Bella. For the duration of the play, a particularly long and noisy thunderstorm rages outside. The old couple returns home after a trip to Memphis for their eldest son’s funeral. Cornelius is a big-mouthed bully and a failed politician and Bella is a fat old woman who fades in and out of what we used to call ‘senility.’ Doesn’t sound like the ingredients for comedy, but Williams does it, though not without some preachiness (the most dated part of the play) along the way. The naked girl at the top of the stairs helps you pay attention, too. My copy, published in 2008 by New Directions, has an excellent introduction, titled “A Mississippi Funhouse,” by Thomas Keith.
Quotes from Today’s Principals:
“We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."—Nathaniel Greene
“…this filthy novelty…is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the Pit that is Bottomless.”—King James (yes, of Bible fame), “A Counterblaste to Tobacco”
“Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.”—Salman Rushdie
“Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance.” King George V
SOMETIMES EVEN WATCHING television can be fun. I don’t recommend it in regular doses, but a fortuitous blend of the right (or maybe, the wrong) people can unexpectedly produce odd and funny moments. One such I recall was a “debate” between Christopher Hitchins, a disheveled but erudite proponent for atheism, and the Reverend Al Sharpton, most well-known for blustering wherever a television camera is turned on. Sharpton posed the not-fully-thought out proposition that without religion there is no basis for morality. For the next nine minutes the reverend was deftly eviscerated by Hitchins, but fortunately, Al didn’t seem to realize it. On Chris Matthews’ program (miscalled “Hardball”) the other night came another fun wundermoment: Matthews fatuously observed to Pat Buchanan, “…you Pat Buchanan, although you are a libertarian in many ways, you do not--no, you're a nationalist actually--you are not what you like to call, derisively, a democratist.” Buchanan responded, “No, I don't believe there's a great salvation in a political process at all. I believe in different--in far different things. I put democracy far down the line in the--I think a devoutly Christian, conservative traditionalist country, even if it's a monarchy, is fine…” The fun part though, was less the words than the picture. When Buchanan espoused this political heresy, both Matthews and the other guest sat open-mouthed. After a couple of seconds of crackling, empty airtime, Matthews croaked “Your Franco is talking, Pat. Franco is speaking even now.”
Fun as it was to watch, at the heart of this exchange is something worth pondering. One of the sacred cornerstones in the world we’re now a-building we call “democracy,” and it’s seen as an end in itself. Buchanan was saying the cornerstone isn’t sacred; there are things more important than how the world is governed. That is undoubted heresy to American politicians, who see—and want us to see—their careers as Very Important to the Public. Buchanan was not saying our form of government is unimportant or irrelevant, but that some things in life are more important. Faith and family, art and joy, a close friend and a field of bluebonnets, these things are sacred; they make life worth the living. Government is a device, a tool: in some hands good, in some bad. Hitler was democratically elected. So, too, was Hamas. In a speech made to the House of Commons in 1947, Churchill famously said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." His hidden caveat is worth remembering. Churchill wasn’t slyly winking at us and cleverly saying “democracy really is best, you know.” He was telling us that it’s flawed. The core of his words is theological. It was an acknowledgment that, try as we might, we cannot build the New Jerusalem out of social programs and government grants. We have a problem, and, as Pogo said, it “is us.”
Some of our Founders (not all of them), understood that America is an experiment, one which could fail. Towards the end of his life, Jefferson lamented “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” About the same time, his friend, John Adams, wrote to a correspondent, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Shortly after the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1789, Benjamin Franklin said in a letter to a French well-wisher: “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” We all know the last part of this quote, but its value is to warn us that few things, governments among them, last. Monarchies, republics, theocracies, dictatorships, democracies, none endure. Artists, thinkers, writers, musicians, poets and priests have lived and worked in places of freedom and times of oppression. Buchanan was reminding us that the basic things that make life worth living are not the gifts of government but the gifts of God. Some people, it seems, just don’t know the difference.
We are all of us walking God's labyrinth, even if many of us insist it's of our own building.
FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I read Tennessee Williams’ last major play, “A House Not Meant to Stand.” Williams called it “a Gothic Comedy,” and it is, in parts, hilariously funny. It’s a play and to really appreciate it as the author intended, it’s best seen and heard, not read. Still, Williams’ ability to draw fascinating and eccentric characters, while at the same time keeping them accessible (by calling to mind bits of people we have known) comes across even on the page. Though in two acts, the movement is continuous and act two picks up just where act one drops off. The action takes place during a single night, set in the leaky, old Pascagoula home of Cornelius McCorkle and his wife Bella. For the duration of the play, a particularly long and noisy thunderstorm rages outside. The old couple returns home after a trip to Memphis for their eldest son’s funeral. Cornelius is a big-mouthed bully and a failed politician and Bella is a fat old woman who fades in and out of what we used to call ‘senility.’ Doesn’t sound like the ingredients for comedy, but Williams does it, though not without some preachiness (the most dated part of the play) along the way. The naked girl at the top of the stairs helps you pay attention, too. My copy, published in 2008 by New Directions, has an excellent introduction, titled “A Mississippi Funhouse,” by Thomas Keith.
Quotes from Today’s Principals:
“We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."—Nathaniel Greene
“…this filthy novelty…is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the Pit that is Bottomless.”—King James (yes, of Bible fame), “A Counterblaste to Tobacco”
“Doubt, it seems to me, is the central condition of a human being in the twentieth century.”—Salman Rushdie
“Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance.” King George V
Walking the Labyrinth, June 12, 2009—This is the Feast of St Leo III, the Pope who crowned Charlemagne Holy Roman Emperor (as every schoolchild used to know) on Christmas Day, 800. It is the 163rd day of the year, and 202 days remain in 2009. In one of the few worthwhile “modern” holidays (because today is also National Peanut Butter Cookie Day, in case you didn’t know), June 12 is Diary Day. I’ve long kept a diary and find it helpful in countless ways. On June 12, 1929, Anne Franck was born, perhaps the 20th century’s best known diarist, and on her 13th birthday she was given her diary as a birthday present. In 1987, on this day, Ronald Reagan called out “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” To the amazement of the world, on November 9, 1989, the people of Germany did just that. Each of us has our own Days We Will Always Remember. For me, that was one. In 2003, Gregory Peck died. Despite all the roles of his long career, in my mind he will always be Atticus Finch.
WALKING, JOURNEYING, MAKING a pilgrimage, these and similar words have for a long time given us one of the best analogies of what life is. I, obviously, can think of few better descriptions of one’s pathway through life than walking a labyrinth. A journey, and certainly a pilgrimage, is supposed to take the traveler somewhere. This week past has been more a case of stumbling backwards than pressing on, for me personally. I received some shocking medical news (my ankle bone has completely deteriorated), took a bit of a financial hit (it cost more than $1000 for a car repair), and almost three thousand words of my novel disappeared overnight because of a computer problem (that taught me to back it up every night). At week’s end I consider it all in the context of the labyrinth. Not every step moves us forward, and it’s best to know it. We stumble and fall, sometimes we get tripped, sometimes we collapse under the weight of things we insist on carrying. Even on the ground, though, we’re in the labyrinth. God won’t let us out of it. He’s not playing with us, at least not maliciously (another time-worn analogy of life sees it as a game). “We see through a glass, darkly.” I’ve come to the realization that God is not too interested in whether or not we understand what goes on in our lives, or why things happen to us, as He is in growing us up. “To whom much is given, of him much is required.” St James reminds us we won’t be tempted (“tested” is just as good in Greek) above our abilities to deal with the test.
So what to do? How do we deal with the fact that sometimes we’re not even taking baby steps forward but giant steps back? While the answers are myriad, a few seem best: and the best of the best is gratitude. We are surrounded by wonder, from the far-flung stars to the sea shore’s sand; the shades of green in a tree, the sun’s warmth, an arpeggio by Bach or a friend’s familiar voice. I recall somewhere reading that the great tragedy of the atheist is not damnation, but that there is no One to thank when he needs to be thankful. In spite of the frequently-predicted doom about to be immanently wrought by global warming or nuclear terrorists, our cultures have produced amazing and wonderful things. Go to a library and look at the rows and rows of books. Watch an airplane take off. Watch even a bad movie and think about what it took to produce this piece of trash—better, watch a masterpiece. We live in a world that God has created and we have made. Not perfect (remember we’re looking at this from the labyrinth floor), but still grand and good, and—for some reason—it has pleased God to put us here in the midst of it. We may never know why; if I ever get out of Purgatory, I may not even remember to ask why about the past given What Is About To Follow. Maybe it’s enough to bear in mind, as we slowly pick ourselves up from the ant’s-eye view of the labyrinth, that we are not here for ourselves alone, but for the others walking the labyrinth with us.
A GREAT BOOK I found this week: The Majesty of the French Quarter by Kerri McCaffety, published by Pelican Publishing in 2000. It’s pages are resplendent with the colors of the Vieux Carre, and leafing through its big pages is like an evening walk through the old city. One of the most fun things about the Quarter (if you’re not one of the hoi polloi of Bourbon Street) is the amazing contrast between the sometimes demur view an old house presents to the street, and the lush, water-spangled courtyards hiding behind the old walls. This book shows you the house from the street, then invites you inside for a tour of the rooms, and finally into the old Creole patios, the heart of each home. A book to look through over and over and over again!
“We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”—Aristotle
WALKING, JOURNEYING, MAKING a pilgrimage, these and similar words have for a long time given us one of the best analogies of what life is. I, obviously, can think of few better descriptions of one’s pathway through life than walking a labyrinth. A journey, and certainly a pilgrimage, is supposed to take the traveler somewhere. This week past has been more a case of stumbling backwards than pressing on, for me personally. I received some shocking medical news (my ankle bone has completely deteriorated), took a bit of a financial hit (it cost more than $1000 for a car repair), and almost three thousand words of my novel disappeared overnight because of a computer problem (that taught me to back it up every night). At week’s end I consider it all in the context of the labyrinth. Not every step moves us forward, and it’s best to know it. We stumble and fall, sometimes we get tripped, sometimes we collapse under the weight of things we insist on carrying. Even on the ground, though, we’re in the labyrinth. God won’t let us out of it. He’s not playing with us, at least not maliciously (another time-worn analogy of life sees it as a game). “We see through a glass, darkly.” I’ve come to the realization that God is not too interested in whether or not we understand what goes on in our lives, or why things happen to us, as He is in growing us up. “To whom much is given, of him much is required.” St James reminds us we won’t be tempted (“tested” is just as good in Greek) above our abilities to deal with the test.
So what to do? How do we deal with the fact that sometimes we’re not even taking baby steps forward but giant steps back? While the answers are myriad, a few seem best: and the best of the best is gratitude. We are surrounded by wonder, from the far-flung stars to the sea shore’s sand; the shades of green in a tree, the sun’s warmth, an arpeggio by Bach or a friend’s familiar voice. I recall somewhere reading that the great tragedy of the atheist is not damnation, but that there is no One to thank when he needs to be thankful. In spite of the frequently-predicted doom about to be immanently wrought by global warming or nuclear terrorists, our cultures have produced amazing and wonderful things. Go to a library and look at the rows and rows of books. Watch an airplane take off. Watch even a bad movie and think about what it took to produce this piece of trash—better, watch a masterpiece. We live in a world that God has created and we have made. Not perfect (remember we’re looking at this from the labyrinth floor), but still grand and good, and—for some reason—it has pleased God to put us here in the midst of it. We may never know why; if I ever get out of Purgatory, I may not even remember to ask why about the past given What Is About To Follow. Maybe it’s enough to bear in mind, as we slowly pick ourselves up from the ant’s-eye view of the labyrinth, that we are not here for ourselves alone, but for the others walking the labyrinth with us.
A GREAT BOOK I found this week: The Majesty of the French Quarter by Kerri McCaffety, published by Pelican Publishing in 2000. It’s pages are resplendent with the colors of the Vieux Carre, and leafing through its big pages is like an evening walk through the old city. One of the most fun things about the Quarter (if you’re not one of the hoi polloi of Bourbon Street) is the amazing contrast between the sometimes demur view an old house presents to the street, and the lush, water-spangled courtyards hiding behind the old walls. This book shows you the house from the street, then invites you inside for a tour of the rooms, and finally into the old Creole patios, the heart of each home. A book to look through over and over and over again!
“We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”—Aristotle
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Habits—Spiritual and Otherwise
Walking the Labyrinth, June 4, 2009—Today is the feast day of St Charles Lwanga and Companions, martyred in Uganda in 1886; the birthday of Jefferson Davis, first (last, and only) President of the Confederate States of America, born in 1808; in 1989, two events of note: the Communist Chinese government began its termination of the student protests around Tienanmen Square, and Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died. Pope John XXIII died on the same date, 26 years earlier.
Our spiritual lives, like all the other aspects of our lives, are influenced by what happens to us. We are impacted by things great and small, many of them beyond our control. But the principal influence on our spiritual lives comes from inside us, from our habits and chosen dispositions. Habits, at some level, are choices. When we think of habits we might think of the man who “habitually” shakes a leg when he’s nervous, or the girl who repeatedly plays with strands of hair while she talks on the phone. But habits—good and bad—run deep in us, and can have profound influences on how we live and whether or not we are happy. Prayer can become a habit. How we deal with life’s frustrations is grounded in the disposition of our souls, and that disposition can be formed by habit. Habits of soul can give us stability in a world of uncertainty. The Church’s worship, her liturgy, is habitual. Traditions of worship, Protestant or Catholic, Jewish or Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist, provide stability to religious beliefs and outlooks. This past Sunday, some friends took me to an Eastern Rite Russian church for Pentecost. I haven’t been to a Russian liturgy for years, but you may know that I spent a year living in a Russian Orthodox monastery in New York while attending an affiliated seminary. Over that year I learned some of the basics of Russian and Old Church Slavonic (an early form of Russian which over the centuries has become the liturgical language of the Russian Church) and learned some of the basic chants of the Russian tradition. When we went into St Andrew’s Church on Sunday, I was taken back. The church is not beautiful to the eye: it has 19th century style iconography (bad imitations of Italianate Renaissance figures) throughout the church, old 1960’s style wood paneling, and it’s cluttered with stuff. But when the choir began their chants (they were surprisingly good) and I heard the clack of the censer as the deacon made his very thorough rounds of the church, swinging the censer at each and every icon and person in the building, the years and miles evaporated. I was surprised how much of the old chants I remembered; though Fr Sanchez, one of our group, put a liturgy-book in my hands, I didn’t need it and never opened it. I sang at times, at times I listened silently, and most often my eyes were drwn back, over and over, to an old Russian All Saints Day icon, three joined panels depicting the Blessed Virgin surrounded by row after row of saints, all of their hands upturned in worship. The joy or worship—the freedom to step completely out of yourself and focus on He Who Is—came to me afresh. It came from habit, a habit of a lifetime of worship, most of the time imperfect, but perhaps perfect worship here on earth can only be experienced vicariously, looking at an All Saints icon, knowing that the Day is Yet to Come when we will be “regular and frequent” (to borrow an old Prayer Book phrase) in perfect worship. Our personal habits build our spiritual lives. That’s what a daily walking of the Labyrinth means.
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