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Zen Flesh, Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen & Pre-Zen Writings
compiled by Paul Reps
175 pages - Anchor Books Gusan instructed his adherents one day: "Those who speak against killing and who desire to spare the lives of all conscious beings are right. It is good to protect even animals and insects. But what about those persons who kill time, what about those who are destroying wealth, and those who destroy political economy? We should not overlook them. Furthermore, what of the one who preaches without enlightenment? He is killing Buddhism." (pg.56) This book contains four separate works related to Zen Buddhism. The first, 101 Zen Stories, is the one I enjoyed the most. It consists of a collection of very very short stories, some thoughtful, some funny, some wise, some enigmatic. The section after that, The Gateless Gate, is a collection of koans, and I'm not sure if it's just too much of a cultural gap or something with my personal thought process, but I didn't get these at all. Well, apart from one, which I thought was wonderful, so maybe that makes slogging through the rest worthwhile? I feel like I didn't really understand what role these would play in Zen practice, or what a reasonable range of responses would be. The third section is 10 Bulls, which is a set of ten illustrations accompanied by text, which uses the metaphor of someone searching for a bull, finding it, taming it, transcending it, and entering back into the world. The fourth section is Centering, an Indian document from before the Buddha's time, which is an example of what Buddhism grew out of. Like the koans, I was mostly lost with this. A student of Tendai, a philosophical school of Buddhism, came to the Zen abode of Gasan as a pupil. When he was departing a few years later, Gasan warned him: "Studying the truth speculatively is useful as a way of collecting preaching material. But remember that unless you meditate constantly your light of truth may go out." (pg.47)
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The Perennial Philosophy (1945)
by Aldous Huxley
312 pages - Perennial Library
'To find or know God in reality by any outward proofs, or by anything but by God Himself made manifest and self-evident in you, will never be your case either here or hereafter. For neither God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor the devil, nor the flesh, can be any otherwise knowable in you or by you but by their own existence and manifestation in you. And all pretend knowledge of any of these things, beyond and without this self-evident sensibility of their birth within you, is only such knowledge of them as the blind man hath of the light that hath never entered into him.' - William Law (quoted on pg. 130) In this book Huxley examines the writings of all the major monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc.) to draw a unifying picture of what he terms a 'Perennial Philosophy', as all these testimonies describe a 'divine Ground' with similar characteristics. This is a God that is both immanent and transcendent, a Creator who is the source of all things, but primarily love, and the experience of which is open to everyone be they willing to undertake the proper physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual steps. Indeed, Huxley's view of the material world is that it is entirely supported by God, and that the purpose of everyone's existence is to arrive at a union with Him. It's a very impressive book in terms of its scope and depth, but I have to say that it takes a lot of work to get through - I've probably been reading this in bits for a few months, and that's after it's been on my shelves for years. The only things I'd read previously from Huxley were Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited so it was a bit surprising to discover how intensely religious he was. The book is somewhat a product of its time and, written right after the Second World War, Huxley directs a lot of blame at technology and the march of 'progress' - something I don't entirely agree with. He does make an interesting comment near the end about how one of the utilitarian goals that we should have in creating the society we live in is to minimize the influences that 'lead us into temptation,' which take advantage of people's weaknesses and distractibility; and so with those negative influences minimized, increase the possibility of every person realizing their potential. This is almost entirely opposite to the society we're living in now, which seems to prize and honour the person who can create things which other people buy into by thoughtless reflex, and which eat up hours and hours of the limited time they have on earth. I guess a one-word summing-up of what this book is about is 'mysticism'. But Huxley does take pains to state again and again that this isn't something just for a chosen few or the specially gifted, but available to everyone who wishes to glimpse the way things really are; to let God's presence grow within themselves. It made me think that one of the unfortunate aspects of the modern world's gradual drift away from religion (even though I feel that the pervasiveness of religion in the past is way overstated, because of the type of record it's based on) is that by exiling God from life in the community people grow ignorant of even the potential of any supernatural assistance (I'm not talking about physical miracles exclusively). The book ends thus: "It is they [mystics] who, dying to themselves, become capable of perpetual inspiration and so are made the instruments through which divine grace is mediated to those whose unregenerate nature is impervious to the delicate touches of the Spirit."
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Lives of the Saints: From Mary and St. Francis of Assisi to John XXIII and Mother Teresa (2001)
by Richard P. McBrien
646 pages - HarperSanFrancisco
'Lives of the Saints' is a fairly common moniker for a book or series of books, and there's a number of works that take that title (the most famous in english being the work of Alban Butler, which in a recent edition took up 12 volumes). This particular book is a fairly recent attempt at a single-volume collection.
There is introductory material at the beginning that takes a look at the role of saints, and the history of sainthood. As the author states, "The saints confirm us in the hope that holiness is an achievable goal; they manifest holiness in the concrete texture of ordinary human existence. They live in history, and are shaped by it, and, in turn, often shape it as well. Consequently, they function as 'the initiators and the creative models of the holiness which happens to be right for, and is the task of, their particular age. They create a new style; they prove that a certain form of life and activity is a really genuine possibility; they show experimentally that one can be a Christian even in 'this' way; they make such a type of person believable as a Christian type.'" Material at the end of the book provides more historical data, as well as various charts and lists, such as those of patron saints.
But the main body of the book is the biographical sketches of the saints themselves. They are organized by date, and correspond to the feast days. On some days only one person is highlighted, while others have three or four different biographies. The entries can range from the length of a paragraph to several pages. Though the emphasis is on those saints recognized by the Catholic Church, the book also features figures that play significant roles in other churches, such as the Eastern Orthodox, or various Protestant denominations, and the author even includes some non-Christian saints, such as Gandhi.
I've read about a quarter of the profiles so far, and usually try to keep up with the real calendar. It's a decent book, but to be honest the main reason I bought it is that it was remaindered at a book store, and if I'd done a bit of research before my purchase I might have bought another book that covers similar territory. Occasionally the opinions of the author do sneak into the text, in terms of praising people he agrees with, and attacking those he does not - I would have much preferred a more neutral author. Also, some of the profiles read as being very dry and a bit dull, to the point where a lot of the times you wonder why this person was declared a saint at all.
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No Man is an Island (1955)
by Thomas Merton
264 pages - Barnes & Noble Books
'We make ourselves real by telling the truth. Man can hardly forget that he needs to know the truth, for the instinct to know is too strong in us to be destroyed. But he can forget how badly he also needs to tell the truth. We cannot know truth unless we ourselves are conformed to it.' (pg.188) This book of meditations on various subjects is one which Merton, in his introduction, considers in a way a sequel to his book New Seeds of Contemplation, though it covers more basic and down-to-earth material than the previous book. With chapter titles such as "Conscience, Freedom, and Prayer", "Being and Doing", "Sincerity", and "Recollection", each chapter is further broken down into numbered sections consisting of a few paragraphs where Merton expands on a thought. The title of the book comes from a line by John Donne, "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." Merton returns to this theme throughout the book, not treating it simply as metaphor but instead as a quite literal description of reality, both in the sense that each Christian is a part of the Mystical Body of Christ, and also that God dwells within each and every person, and indeed in every single atom of existence. We work out our own destiny individually, but at the same time we are tied inexorably to the fate of other souls, both living and dead. It's pretty good, but I'd probably start elsewhere if I was reading Merton for the first time.
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Rogue Messiahs: Tales of Self-Proclaimed Saviors (2000)
by Colin Wilson
274 pages - Hampton Roads Publishing Company
Colin Wilson takes a look at the phenomenon of cults and cult leaders, and how the stories often end in tragedy and violence. A lot of the famous names are here, such as Charles Manson and David Koresh and Shoko Ashara, but the author also profiles lesser-known figures, such as the phenomenon of Sabbatai Zevi in 1666, and the LeBaron family which headed a break-away Mormon sect. Wilson also includes figures who follow the same pattern, but did not end quite so sensationally, such as Auguste Comte, who created his own 'rational religion', and Sigmund Freud and the psychoanalysts who followed him. I also found interesting the amount of Canadian content in the book; the story of Brother Twelve, who built a mini-Jonestown in British Columbia, and Rock (Roch) Theriault, who tended to isolate himself with a small group of followers in the woods, and actually presided over some incredibly gruesome and savage things just a few hours away from here. Eeep.
I started reading this because I was re-interested in the works of Colin Wilson after reading his autobiography, but as I read on I was surprised that this book was quite a bit better than I was expecting, and I mostly put all the rest of my reading aside until I finished it. I think Wilson takes a fairly unique approach as he doesn't echo the sort of view you hear people throw around; that these cult leaders are just out to make money, and that the people that follow them are just really stupid. Wilson acknowledges the religious impulse as something that is intrinsically a part of humanity, and he also believes that it's quite possible that at the beginning these leaders are able to demonstrate some degree of unusual psychic powers. What is remarkable is how often these movements start off with strong initiative and good intentions, before they spiral downward into conflict and sexual over-indulgence and violence and psychosis.
Wilson comes to the conclusion that what these people, both leaders and followers, are trying to do is to compensate for some inadequacy in 'real' life by creating an entire world which is more suitable to them. At some point, the imaginative powers of the mind, or the unconscious, actually create this world for a person or group, so that it truly becomes the only reality that they know. As always, Wilson sometimes seems a bit too ready to embrace every new idea that he hears, but I don't think that you need to agree with all of the author's conclusions, or even any of them, to get something out of this book.
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The Seven Storey Mountain: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (1948)
by Thomas Merton
467 pages - Harvest
This is the autobiography of Thomas Merton, from his birth until the time when he took his vows at a Cistercian monastery at the age of 33. Merton was born in France, but in his early years his family moved often between France and Britain and the US. His mother died when he was young, and his father also passed away before he entered university. Merton first attended Cambridge University in England, but because of his freewheeling ways he was made to understand that he did not have a future there, and so he moved back to America and enrolled at Columbia. It was during his time at Columbia that he became more and more drawn to the Catholic Church, finally converting and being baptized. In his post-university years he did some teaching as he tried to discover his calling, finally becoming a Trappist monk and closing himself up in monastic duties for the rest of his life; as he put it, "the four walls of my new freedom." His only sibling, a brother, died soon after Thomas had entered the monastery, while fighting with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II.
This is quite a remarkable book, and the above summary doesn't do much justice to it at all. People have compared it favourably to St. Augustine's Confessions, but I thought that while that book was somewhat dull and obtuse, this one was full of life and immediacy. But perhaps that's just because Merton's times are so much closer to our own. Merton does not talk down to the reader, but he doesn't try to make things too complicated either. You can see that he's intelligent and well-read, but not without his faults or weaknesses. Perhaps the book's greatest strength is that it doesn't come across on simply an intellectual level, or as a recorded series of events, but with the full force and richness of life experience. Which is what Merton thought literature should truly be.
The book was written with Merton still in the first fervour of his conversion and his decision to dedicate his life to being a Trappist, and so it can come off as very fiery and a bit absolutist at times; and I think I was helped by my earlier reading of The Life You Save May Be Your Own, which was a biography of four American Catholic writers, including Merton, and illuminated some of the things Merton continued to struggle with, drawing especially from his journals which were published after his death. Merton certainly wasn't perfect, and he sometimes seems even quite flaky and restless, but the great advantage of the sacrifices he made and of his works is that they afford the possibility for the reader to recognize some common ground in each individual soul's struggle towards the light.
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The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity (2001)
by Martin Palmer
271 pages - Ballantine Wellspring
Much of this book is based on a set of documents that were found in a walled-up cave in China around the start of the 20th century. They tell of the history of the Christian Church in China in the first millennium A.D., and also helped the author discover a still-standing seven-storey pagoda that was part of a complex of Christian buildings in the middle of a Taoist centre.
The first representative of Christianity to reach China may have been the apostle Thomas, who is widely believed to have ended up in India, and there are some accounts that describe him travelling into China as well. However, this book properly begins with a Church delegation that met the emperor in 635, and quickly began translating texts into Chinese and establishing churches and monasteries. Christianity, referred to in Chinese at that time as the 'Religion of Light' seems to have found great favour, and quickly flourished until changes in the climate of political power brought changes, and ultimately in 850 all 'foreign' religions such as Buddhisim, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity were driven out of any visible existence. Any Christians in China that survived were driven underground until restrictions were somewhat relaxed for a time during the invasions of Genghis Khan, and later travellers to China, from Marco Polo to Jesuit missionaries, claimed to find groups of people who were familiar with parts of the gospel, worshiped the Trinity, and made the Sign of the Cross.
As for the book itself, I would say that the idea of the book is a lot more interesting than the actual text. This is really only about 20% about the existing documents and artifacts, and 80% the author's own elaboration and agenda. Obviously some of the documents explain things partly in reference to the other religions and cultural forces existent in China at the time: Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and Shamanism/Paganism. But I don't think it's such a radical departure, and I think a lot of what gets the author into flights of wonderment is just a function of these texts that we in the west are so familiar with from their translation from Greek or later Latin versions, in this case instead being translated into Chinese, and then into English. I'm reminded a bit of the story someone told me that if you put the saying "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak" into an automatic translator, convert it to Russian and then convert it back again, you will get "The vodka is good, but the meat is bad." The author also has a very narrow and unquestionably negative view of what we might call 'Western Christianity', while praising strains such as Celtic Christians and these first-millennium Chinese Christians for seemingly little reason other than that they died out a long time ago; which brings to mind another saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side."
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The Further Teachings of Lao-Tzu: Understanding the Mysteries: A Translation of the Taoist Classic Wen-Tzu
translated by Thomas Cleary
184 pages - Shambhala
The Way is so familiar it cannot be estranged, so close it cannot be put at a distance. Those who seek it afar go and then come back. (pg. 118) Lao Tzu, thought to have lived in the 6th century BC, is mostly known as the reputed author of the Tao Te Ching, a work structured as poetry. However, he is also at the centre of a prose work much less known in the West, called the Wen-Tzu, after one of his students who appears in many of these pieces asking Lao Tzu questions. As befits a prose work, this is a lot less ambiguous than the Tao Te Ching, and offers wisdom both for an individual's life as well as for that of a statesman. To let concerns produce concerns, and then take concern to stop concerns, is like brandishing fire and not trying to burn anything. To let knowledge produce troubles, and then to use knowledge to prepare against them, is like stirring water in hopes of making it clear. (pg.75) I had a really interesting experience reading this, where at times it felt really dense and hard to get through, but other times the text was speaking to me incredibly clearly and directly. I think one of the things that I realized most powerfully, and that sounds like such a piece of pop-psychology pablum, is that very often what I'm frustrated by are concepts in my head; it's just my own (likely inacurate) ideas, and not even the real world. Also, a person's determination and will can only do so much, mostly things are going to happen or not happen outside of your own control, and trying to force stuff just leaves you out of touch. These are things that are easy to say on an intellectual level, but getting a full understanding is different and much more valuable. The Way is to straighten oneself and await the direction of destiny. When a time is going to arrive, you cannot go out to greet it and bring it back with you; when a time is going to leave, you cannot stop it and pull it back. (pg.55)
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Lieh-Tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living
translated by Eva Wong
247 pages - Shambhala Dragon Editions
The Lieh-Tzu is a book traditionally attributed to a person of the same name who lived in the 4th century BC. Along with Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching and the book of Chuang Tzu, it is one of the three main texts of Taoism. This is presented as not just a translation but a "hermeneutical opening-up" of the text, which essentially means that the aim is more to get across the various layers of meaning, rather than to make a literal translation of the original text.
This is just my latest time re-reading this book, but I always find it delightful; both comforting and thought-provoking. Most of the text is short tales that span a page or two, and remind me a lot of western fables or parables. A lot of the emphasis is on the usual Taoist themes of ambivalence about the cares of the world and acknowledging our uncertainty and lack of knowledge of even the most basic aspects of our lives.
( Excerpt: 32 - Who is confused? )
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Symbols of Catholicism (1999)
by Robert Le Gall, translated by Ian Monk
128 pages - Barnes & Noble Books
This is the kind of hardcover book that has colour full-page photographs, with accompanying text on the facing page. Though the focus is on Catholicism, some mention is made of other Christian denominations when their practices differ. The text goes through the major figures (Trinity, Christ, Mary, etc), the sacraments, and various other things, such as important yearly celebrations. It was a book I picked up on sale for a few dollars, and it was a quick worthwhile read, as well as containing some very nice photography.
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Let God's Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI (2005)
edited by Robert Moynihan
215 pages - Image Books
'The deepest poverty is not material poverty but spiritual poverty: the inability to be joyful, the conviction that life is absurd and contradictory. In different forms this poverty is widespread today, both in the materially rich and in the impoverished nations.' (pg.84)
This is a collection which uses excerpts from various publications, interviews, and other sources, to give a sketch of the life and views of the current pope, Benedict XVI (formerly Joseph Ratzinger). The first part is a biography which follows his life from his childhood in Bavaria to his role at the Vatican defending and defining Church doctrine, to his election as Pope. The second half uses excerpts, usually just one or two paragraphs, to give his views on issues pertaining to the Catholic faith, the modern world, and to the life of a Christian. The format of the book allows a wide view, but the short excerpts do not allow you to follow along the development of a thought, and sometimes don't make as much sense when taken out of context. But it's a pretty good introduction to a person that many people know only by newscast snippets.
When discussing the current Pope, obviously the current world becomes a focus of attention. I was interested in how on one hand, Benedict says that consciousness of the presence of God needs to re-enter common cultural life, and indeed that the culture itself needs to be 'converted', and elsewhere he speaks about how "It is likely that there lies before us a different epoch in the history of the Church, a new epoch in which Christianity will find itself in the situation of the mustard seed, in tiny groups apparently without influence which nevertheless live intensely bearing witness against evil and bringing good into the world. I see a great movement of this type already underway." (pg.41) I don't see this as contradictory, more like what you'd like and what you'll get.
I'm not sure how I feel about the former, as my own childhood experience is a sad example of when participation just becomes an empty social obligation which occurs by default, where rituals are occasionally observed, and a little lip service is paid, if only for the sake of ethnic nationalism or nostalgia, but nobody really believes. On the other hand, I do see how when the Church retreats entirely from the public life it can lead to a culture with what I would call American-style values: a focus entirely on the individual and autonomous liberty as the highest ideal. It's all thought-provoking, at any rate.
'The future of the Church...will be a spiritualized Church that does not rely on a political mandate and that curries favor with the right as little as with the left. It will be a difficult time for the Church. For the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor, it will make her a Church of the meek. The process will be all the harder because it will be just as necessary to root out sectarian narrow-mindedness as boastful self-will. The way will be long and wearisome, just as was the way that led from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution...But after the purification of these uprootings a great strength will emanate from a spiritualized and simplified Church...It seems certain to me that very hard times await the Church. Her own crisis has as yet hardly begun.' (pg.144)
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Something I've wanted to do for a while is to read through the Bible in its entirety. So, I've decided to do just that, and I'll be posting book-by-book impressions. I'll be using the Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha put out by Oxford World's Classics, edited by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett.
Choosing a Bible translation is a tricky thing, so I'm mainly going with this one because it's the one I have :P But also, the King James version has had the greatest effect on the English language, and this version has pretty good endnotes (I'm amused to own a Bible that has notes with phrases like 'if God does exist...'). I'm not going to pretend to draw on any huge resource of commentary or analysis. Also, I'm going to start with the New Testament, and, having finished that, go back to read the Old and the Apocrypha.
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The Pensees (1662)
by Blaise Pascal, translated by J. M. Cohen
287 pages - Penguin Classics
Blaise Pascal, 17th century mathematician and scientist, was also a theological thinker who had several religious experiences. He was planning to write a work of Christian apologetics, but died before doing so. His assorted notes, many of them just a sentence or two in length, were arranged into this book, organized according to the outline of a lecture he delivered. The book is mainly separated into two parts, 'Man Without God' and 'Man With God'.
The first part is a philosophical analysis of man's state on earth. Pascal disagrees with Descartes and other strict rationalists, and asserts that intellect is not supreme but merely an aspect of our existence, and asking all of the heart's decisions to be explained by reason is equivalent to exposing all of the intellect's decisions to the judgment of the heart. Pascal draws an effective picture of humanity as seemingly contradictory, in the process of becoming, capable of amazing highs and lows.
The second part is ironically a lot weaker, it is mostly focused on how prophecies of the Old Testament have been fulfilled in history and in the New Testament, and how various outer signs and events of history testify to the truth of Christianity, and specifically Catholicism. It reminded me a lot of people who do various calculations with the numbers of letters and words in the Bible in order to 'prove' that it's 'true', and how Kierkegaard compared this to people who start to count the words in letters from their true love -- it may be nice that you're that devoted, but perhaps in putting so much emphasis on these details you're missing the message.
Overall it's a remarkable work, though it's kind of disappointing when the superb perceptive thoughts of the first half end there, and the gears change entirely into what's mostly a discussion of details from the Bible without much application. But it is an uncompleted work that was built with scraps, so you can't assume what kind of book Pascal would have wrote if he had the chance; perhaps he would combine all of this into something greater, or perhaps he would have discarded and smoothed away all the rough edges that give this book its spirit.
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New Seeds of Contemplation (1961)
by Thomas Merton
297 pages - New Directions
This a book of thoughts about contemplation, related in a mostly conversational tone. Some of it is probably advanced enough only to be applicable to a monk or nun, but most of it easily applies to anyone with an interest in prayer or meditation. This book is a revised and expanded version of a previously-published book called Seeds of Contemplation, hence the title.
This is widely considered Merton's greatest work, and I also thought it was quite good; though at 300 pages it's a bit long. You'd probably need at least a bit of a mystic outlook to get anything out of it. I'd readily admit that several aspects of it probably went over my head, and it would be interesting to read through it again several years from now.
'To think that you are somehow obliged to follow the author of the book to his own particular conclusion would be a great mistake.' (pg.215)
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The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century (1960)
edited and translated by Thomas Merton
81 pages - New Directions
This is a little collection of sayings of the desert hermits of the 4th century who separated themselves from society and went into the desert regions of Egypt, Palestine, Arabia and Persia. Merton has selected these himself, not to any scholarly or doctrinal purpose, but just picking what he thought might be good and pleasing. Merton includes a twenty-some page introduction, which was the part I enjoyed most. The selections themselves are from the Verba Seniorum, and they range from enlightening to mundane to puzzling. It's very similar to anthologies of Taoist or Zen sayings.
It's interesting to read through, but doesn't give a lot of information about the Desert Fathers themselves, or the wider world they existed in, which was something I was curious about. I guess I'll need to find another work that deals with that.
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Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession (1847)
by Soren Kierkegaard, translated by Douglas V. Steere
220 pages - Harper Torchbooks
'As a devotional classic, the nineteenth century produced almost nothing in either Catholic or Protestant circles that can compare seriously with Purity of Heart. Designed as a preparation for the church's office of confession, it is prepared to put into the hands of the serious reader the surgical instruments for a major spiritual operation. The instruments are razor-sharp and they can cut through any cancerous worldly growth, no matter how fibrous, in order to liberate again the healthy tissues of a man's individual responsibility before the gaze of the living God' - Translator's Note
This small book is one of Kierkegaard's 'Edifying Discourses' where he states, as the title suggests, that purity of heart is to will one thing. And that one thing is The Good (as under the aspect of The Eternal). Emphasis is placed on different types of possible double-mindedness and evasion, as well as the necessity of living as an individual. As SK himself says in the text, books like these are much more about what happens inside the reader than anything that the speaker might say, or how he says it -- so I'll just say that it was a worthwhile read.
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Practice in Christianity: No. I, II, III (1850)
by Soren Kierkegaard (writing as Anti-Climacus), translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong
262 pages - Princeton University Press
This is a collection of three short works that Kierkegaard published together under the pseudonym of Anti-Climacus, in contrast to his Johannes Climacus pseudonym; the 'Anti' not meaning 'against' but 'higher' or 'before'. He chose to use a pseudonym for this book as he wanted to separate himself from the high ideality of its contents. It has been previously translated as Training in Christianity.
This is a book that, broadly, is intended in two ways. It is a statement about how distant Christendom is from true Christianity. In this way SK hoped the state church in Denmark would accept his invitation to acknowledge the distance from the ideal, and labour towards a truer imitation of Christ, instead of an admiration. A second intent of the work, which comes to light when the established order rejects this, is of a criticism and attack on Christendom. As well as instruction for the individual.
There's some good material here, but I don't think it's among SK's best work. As I read what really began to wear on me is the emphasis on the single individual before God, when surely there is also importance and significance and growth in your relationship to the world and other people? Perhaps this is an example of the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism. Though, it's also important to remember that it was published under a pseudonym, and so doesn't necessarily express SK's true thoughts. But the 'individual against the world' approach does get a bit bleak.
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The Power and the Glory (1940)
by Graham Greene
222 pages - Penguin
Some time after the Mexican Revolution, a Mexican state has banned the Catholic Church, closed down all the churches, and chased out or killed all the priests. The police are on the trail of one last priest that has yet evaded capture, a 'whiskey priest' who is an alcoholic and an illegitimate father, who keeps intending to escape but keeps getting drawn back towards his duty. The police begin taking and killing hostages from every village he has visited, as the ring around him closes.
I think the most interesting character here was actually the lieutenant, the one organizing the hunt, who is a sort of model of duty in a mostly lazy and innefficient law enforcement, driven by a sort of nihilistic self-hatred to wipe the world clean. I'm not sure you get quite as deep into the main character. I suppose I did learn something about this period in Mexico's history, which I was unaware of previously. The book moves fairly quickly, but the prose has that kind of greyness and squalor (I'm not quite finding the right words here) that seems characteristic of Greene, that makes his writing duller than it really should be.
edit: I think 'flat' is the word I'm looking for to describe Greene's prose. Flat.
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The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003)
by Paul Elie
555 pages - Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
This is a well-written, deep, searching, and fascinating look at four American Catholic writers who gained prominence after WWII. In her short life, Flannery O'Connor wrote two novels and many short stories of unsurpassed artistic quality. Walker Percy, whose father and grandfather had committed suicide, was a doctor who came down with tuberculosis, and became a novelist and self-taught philosopher. Dorothy Day was the founder of The Catholic Worker, which started as a newspaper and grew into a family of missions for the poor and destitute, as well as a nonviolent peace movement. Thomas Merton gained a wide audience for his writing after he became a Trappist monk and wrote material rooted in autobiography. Though they never formed any kind of formal movement, as they grew in prominence they either met and corresponded, or at least read and were affected by each other's work.
Except for the introduction and epilogue, the book mostly flows chronologically. This means that O'Connor, because of her late birth and early death, is the last to arrive and the first to leave. However, it also gives the book the feeling of a sort of novel with four distinct, fascinating characters, and the story emerges like the exciting action of a novel, and you feel cheered by successes and heartbroken by defeats. O'Connor is the only one born and raised a Catholic, believing from the beginning to the end; all the others being converts from a sort of vague popular secularism they previously swam in.
It's a book I read deeply and reflected on much. Four very different people, each finding their own way, sometimes coming together to find understanding, while sometimes seeing the sparks of conflict fly. A very different and unique look at the development of four writers, far from the usual popular psychology and worn-out cliches. Much of that is likely due to the author Elie, who writes with impressive literary clarity (this is his first book) and seems to have read an amazing amount of primary, secondary, and tertiary material. These were all people that were very gifted, and one of the themes of the book is how their early reading of great books of fiction and non-fiction, and then, in their later life, their writing and the reading of each other's work, helped them along the way to discover their own selves, and helped them along the pilgrimage of the subtitle.
But, this is certainly not hagiography (though the process toward canonization is underway for Dorothy Day). Each person is presented with their flaws, sometimes glaring. Merton, to me personally, came across as extremely flakey, unstable, and it cast doubt on just how much basis there was for anything he wrote. Percy is the one I identify with most, but he's unfortunately the least present (or so it seemed to me) as he did not have a lot of dramatic correspondence or public presence, living a very everyday life and working at things slowly, never displaying bold strokes of genius. As I've said, certainly a book I've read deeply, though, perhaps ironically, somewhere near the end I felt a sort of ease in my heart that I, who was brought up 'nominally' Catholic, should probably stop trying so hard to believe in things that have never meant much to me, like the liturgy or holy communion or the suffering and death of Christ as atonement for our individual sins, but instead trust in the inclinations of my own soul, 'crypto-religious' (to use a term used by Czeslaw Milosz, who corresponded with Merton) as it may be. Though I don't really keep track of such things, so I couldn't say for certain, this certainly feels like the best book I have read all year.
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The Violent Bear It Away (1960)
by Flannery O'Connor
152 pages - (in Collected Works, Library of America)
From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away. - Matthew 11:12
This line really confuses me. I read it in context, I read it in different translation, and I was still stumped; which is pretty frustrating when you can't even figure out quite what the title of a book is saying. Finally, I found this page, which seems to shed some light, if you take a look at what happens in the novel (especially at the end).
This is the story of Francis Marion Tarwater, who was born in a car crash which his mother died in, while his father shot himself a short time later. He's taken in by his uncle, a schoolteacher in a city, but is soon abducted by his great-uncle and taken to a remote tract of land in the backwoods where he grows up in a ramshackle house, not going to school, and with his great-uncle, who calls himself a prophet, raising up Tarwater to be a prophet as well. When the schoolteacher is unsuccessful in getting Tarwater away from his backwoods uncle he marries a woman and has a child of his own, a retarded child who the mother abandons to his father soon after birth. Tarwater's great-uncle prophesises that Tarwater will eventually baptize this child.
When the schoolteacher was a child himself, that great-uncle kidnapped him into the backwoods for a few days, baptized him, and filled his head with all sorts of stuff about Jesus Christ. By the time he was a teen he knew to call the old man ridiculous, and now prides himself on learning and knowledge and has a generally humanistic view of the world. When the great-uncle dies Tarwater moves in with the schoolteacher. The narrative takes place over the several days following, where Tarwater, while taking the attitude of dismissing his great-uncle's fanatic rantings, still feels a powerful force, beyond his will, driving him to baptize the retarded child. The schoolteacher has focused much of his life on repressing feelings of religious love, and wants to see Tarwater make the same choice. They both know that the seed of faith in Jesus Christ has been planted in them, not just of a bourgeois faith but a fanatical, fundamentalist faith, and both, in different ways, try to find ways of fighting it down.
Well. I'm not sure what I can say about this book, other than the last twenty or so pages are incredibly powerful. It does take a while to get going for such a short book, and the narrative can be complex to hold on to at times, as there is often both something taking place and another event going on in a person's memory (so it's not as immediately engaging as O'Connor's other novel, Wise Blood), but it does all coalesce into a powerful work. Interestingly, many people seem to read this novel as an argument against fervent faith, which shows how effectively O'Connor has portrayed the world, and not overloaded any side of the argument. Very haunting ending.
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