The most ominous news item of the week is being overshadowed by other events both foreign and domestic.
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Al-Aqsa is the third holiest site in all of Islam behind only Mecca and Medina. And Ramadan has begun. Stay tuned folks. This is how world wars get started.
At such a fraught and perilous time aren’t we fortunate to have such ** you do not have permission to see this link **!
** you do not have permission to see this link **
As an ex-believer I remain curious how the community that shaped me is facing an uncertain future where they will no longer be privileged but will merely be one voice among many in that fabled “marketplace of ideas”.
Alisa Childers is one of fiercest proponents of something called “Historical Christianity” in conflict with something called “Progressive Christianity”.
As an outsider who was once inside I observe this intramural quarrel with fascination. If the pious hate anything worse than unbelief, it’s heresy.
What is the current heresy? To accommodate modern ethical norms in any way. (You know, the gays and the trans folks!) Of course the absurdity of this view is obvious to anyone who seriously looks at church history. The church has always accommodated contemporary ethical norms. These prog Christians are just trying to keep up with the center of gravity of ethical discourse which has shifted somewhat since the first century.
The accusation? Going against the plain, clear, reading of scripture. Of course they’re right. Both Jesus and Paul would have doubtless found same-sex relationships and gender-bending as morally repugnant. For me the question is, who cares? But the poor prog Christians are in the situation of having to claim they value scripture while simultaneously rationalizing its obsolete views. (This is where you get all that parsing about whether or not the concept of homosexuality is actually in the Bible.)
A note on “deconstruction”:
I’m old enough to remember when Deconstruction was a literary/philosophical movement. One of my teachers in school was Richard Ellmann, ** you do not have permission to see this link **, participated. As a reader I “got” Joyce immediately. (It was scary how similar growing up Southern Baptist in the rural south turned out to be to growing up Catholic in Ireland.) I was pretty clueless otherwise. There was no question of me saying anything of course. I watched and noticed everything. Looking back the whole event wasn’t really about Joyce. The work of Joyce was used as a field on which these folks presented their own complexes and obsessions. Such is academia. Naively, I just loved to read. (Still do. Not an academic. I have often wondered if there is a connection.)
One defining moment in the experience for me was when a local Atlanta prof stood up and asked Derrida a question. She read a lengthy quote from one of his books and then presented her interpretation of his words. She asked him if it was correct. He nodded and a murmur of approval washed over the crowd, made up of a lot his disciples apparently. Was I or was I not in church?
Every cultural accretion requires its own vocabulary. “Deconstruction” has become the word to describe the process whereby one interrogates one’s own faith commitments. Sorry, it’s so easy to slip into that semi-intellectual grammar gloop. One doesn’t “lose one’s faith” anymore. That would be vulgar. Now, one “deconstructs”. Oh well. I suppose it’s only natural to want to abstract a bit what for most people is fairly painful experience.
Lastly, in the video I note Denny’s half-smirk and Alisa’s constant steely glare. Do you suppose those were fairly common expressions on the faces of Inquisitors back in the Middle Ages when you were drug before them?
One of my teachers in school was Richard Ellmann, ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
I’d love to hear of your experiences with Ellmann, whose biography of Joyce I gobbled up in my early 20s.
I brought Ulysses with me on my first trip to Europe in 1984 and was lucky enough to be in Dublin on** you do not have permission to see this link **
Looking back the whole event wasn’t really about Joyce. The work of Joyce was used as a field on which these folks presented their own complexes and obsessions.
Very nice.
One defining moment in the experience for me was when a local Atlanta prof stood up and asked Derrida a question. She read a lengthy quote from one of his books and then presented her interpretation of his words. She asked him if it was correct. He nodded and a murmur of approval washed over the crowd, made up of a lot his disciples apparently. Was I or was I not in church?
Indeed.
I had a similar experience.
I have a good friend who was an English major at the University of Minnesota, and his friend was the editor of the U of M’s literary journal. He had arranged for a poet of some renown, ** you do not have permission to see this link **, to do a reading. Afterwards, a handful of us met with him for drinks. As Ashbery sat at the head of the table pontificating, everyone nodded their heads approvingly, fawning acolytes. Well, almost everyone…
Prof Ellman was really a nice person, genial and patient with his students. He was also frightenedly erudite and meticulous. Somewhat driven, as you would expect. His amiable personality got him access he might not have been able to achieve otherwise. Especially with Joyce’s notoriously prickly family. (He got ahold of Joyce and Nora Barnacle’s steamy private correspondence before anybody else.) The amusing part to me was that in private conversation he discussed these famous artists in the same manner as my aunts did sitting around gossiping about their relatives. That is, if your relatives included Maude Gonne!
I have to confess that I preferred his book on Yeats. Even though Joyce’s writings were a much bigger influence, Yeats always seemed to me to be the more interesting person. I went through a period when I wanted to be a poet. Yeats was my guiding light. Eventually I realized that what Yeats was doing wasn’t what I was doing. Not even close. Oh well. Sad, but it better not to fool yourself. At least I figured it out early.
Paradoxically perhaps, just as reading great writers can make you realize you’re not one, I think knowing Ellmann helped me realize the academic life was not for me. I always thought no matter how good it was, writing someone’s biography was a tacit admission that their life was more important than yours. Not entirely rational perhaps but that’s the way I thought. I just couldn’t see myself spending my whole life parsing the life of someone else. And when tied to my lack of discipline and inability to focus on just one subject of interest, well, I made the right choice.
ps I envied Ellmann mostly because he got to meet Maude Gonne, Yeat’s “muse” and lost love. Ellmann said that even though she was in her 80s you could still see the beauty that was there when she was young. It awes me that this woman was the inspiration for some of the most passionate (and tragic) love poetry of the 20th century.
Thanks, Stephen.
He sounds just like a professor ought to be.
I was lucky in that respect with the exception of a summer course I took in Russian at the University of Minnesota where the guest lecturer either from Oxford or Cambridge, I can’t remember which, was pompous and condescending. I didn’t last long.
I have to confess that I preferred his book on Yeats.
I have not read it but will have to. I’ve always loved his poetry.
When I was in Ireland visiting my second cousin in Ballina in the north of County Mayo, I made my way to Sligo where Yeats used to spend his childhood summers, and then to the graveyard where he is buried. The area around is spectacularly ** you do not have permission to see this link **. And, of course, his epitaph is stunning:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by.
When You Are Old is ever so lovely and was one of the first poems I took to memory when I began exploring poetry in my very early 20s.
But then I think, if he had attained her love as he wished and fulfilling his desire, been made happy, would the world have really been better off without these burning words?
I can’t help but think of T.S. Eliot who finally found contentment with his second marriage, after which there wasn’t much, but, of course, other things could have played a role, I mean he was in his late 60s.
Everybody has blind spots and one of Prof Ellmann’s was that he seriously disliked Eliot’s work. I suppose after all those wild-eyed half-pagan Irishmen Eliot must have seemed a thin Anglican bowl of porridge. I love Eliot. His Four Quartets, composed after the war and published in the mid-50s, is one of my favorite works. I own a brilliant ** you do not have permission to see this link **.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
– T S Eliot, Four Quartets #4: “Little Gidding”
Wonderful.
I suppose after all those wild-eyed half-pagan Irishmen Eliot must have seemed a thin Anglican bowl of porridge.
That certainly makes sense.
There is in Eliot, I think, a certain restraint, obviously not to everyone’ s liking.
And I can’t imagine given Ellmann’s fondness for the Irish was he particularly pleased with how Eliot portrayed them in the Sweeney poems.
I love Eliot.
Although there are poems I love of Eliot (e.g. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock), for the most part, I tend to appreciate parts of them more than I do the poems in their entirety.
Judith, well done on your part. Are there other poems you’ve learned by heart?
It’s been ages since I memorized a poem. Way too long. Time to start back at it while I still can!
Prufrock is such a fine poem and nearly every line stands out as something special.
I’ve always been rather taken by these:
and
Please forgive me, everyone, if I’m thread-drifting here but I want to share a way I found to escape situations at times when it is necessary:
For twenty years I was priviledged to take care of an adored husband (heart, COPD) and the most beloved son (brain tumor against the motor strip) with every possible means for being able to do it (insurance, family and friends to help). Also, I’m a caregiver at heart and that helped.)
Even so, there were times I needed a real break. That is when I discovered by learning favorite poems, songs, jokes (!) on my morning four-mile walk, I could be free during that hour from any thoughts of the situation going on in my home.
I recommend it!
Please forgive me, everyone, if I’m thread-drifting here…
Not at all. I started this thread for this very purpose. To discuss personal views of current events. Occasionally it gets tiresome living in the ancient past.
I once met an old blind man who could recite the entire Quran from memory. I stand in awe of this.
Judith said:
Even so, there were times I needed a real break. That is when I discovered by learning favorite poems, songs, jokes (!) on my morning four-mile walk, I could be free during that hour from any thoughts of the situation going on in my home.
I recommend it!
I love both the idea of the morning walk and learning by heart things of interest.
What a great combination.
I once met an old blind man who could recite the entire Quran from memory. I stand in awe of this.
It’s absolutely amazing what people are capable of memorizing.
Any guess as to what the world record for memorized digits of π is?
** you do not have permission to see this link ** the answer.
Thank you Stephen. I’m always so sure I’m going to get clobbered. Instead, there is incredible kindness.
Judith the life experience you’ve described suggests an inner strength I doubt I possess. Never assume that others are stronger than you.
Now that I have retired and have my mornings free and the weather had begun to cooperate, I can take those morning walks myself! Terrific idea.
I love Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s
“I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find him not.
I waged His wars, and Now I pass and die.
O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world,
But had not force to shape it as he would,
Till the High God behold it from beyond
And enter it, and make it beautiful?”
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