Church Community, cont'd

Either Peters has been reading the comments of this-a-here web-log or there's something in the air. In the midst of a discourse on writers and place, he drops this gem:

It can hardly be a matter of bewilderment to anyone who has read O’Connor’s work, especially the letters and the lectures, that this woman of formidable intellectual abilities was fiercely loyal to the Church Universal and stubbornly committed to attending daily mass at the local parish, where gossip was sure to be high and intelligence low. O’Connor knew that although we participate in universals we don’t inhabit them.

We must make do with a particular place, with all its annoyances. Yes. But I wonder whether this is a defense of one's local church (Flannery was born into Catholicism), or a defense of the Church Universal?

Herbsttag, R.M. Rilke

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiel den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird Es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

-----
Rilke, they say, is impossible to translate. But that's not to say people haven't tried...

Creed and Community

A little while ago I was pondering the Church Divided. There's certainly no shortage of choices for the discriminating prospective churchgoer; we Christians have proven ourselves better at division than charity. But before discussing these choices I'd like to back up and analyze, if briefly, what constitutes a "Christian".

What, or who, is a Christian? In the broadest sense—that of the census, for example—one's status as a Christian is decided merely by self-appellation. But this is problematic enough that I'd rather ignore it and move on to the next sense, that of creed. Let's agree, for argument's sake, that there is a set of beliefs expected of Christians. (In a better age than this one we could've agreed that said beliefs were articulated in the Creeds of the Church; such is not the case nowadays. I will not, however, go so far as to exclude those who would deny, for example, the Virgin Birth: perhaps it is a matter of integrity for them.) Etymologically speaking, our word "creed" comes, of course, from the Latin credo, "I believe", the first word of both the Nicene and the Apostles' Creeds. You will note that it is singular. (It is curious that the Roman Catholics altered this to "we believe" in their current English translation; however, the new translation coming out soon will correct this.) Belief, then, is a personal decision: though we express the creed communally, it is by its nature an act of an individual. The Protestants are generally more insistent about this. Kierkegaard, for example, emphasized that we relate to God as individuals, we attain truth as individuals, we are judged and saved as individuals. There's a good deal to be said for this.

But at the same time, no man is a church unto himself. The sacraments—let's also assume that Christians have those, shall we?—are by their nature administered communally. Paul, in his first letter to Corinth, insists that we are baptized into the mystical "body of Christ": we cannot exist as independent individuals and remain a part of this unity. Once we have established that to be a Christian is to belong to a community, we must then ask ourselves what constitutes a community.

The Sage of Kentucky calls a community a "membership", a term he borrows from Paul (whom, he adds, he doesn't always approve of!). This implies that an individual is not only accepted by the community, but also that he knows himself to be a part of it. Elsewhere we are reminded that community is necessarily local, even though it belongs to a larger order of things:

A healthy community is a form that includes all the local things that are connected by the larger, ultimately mysterious form of the Creation.

(That's from Berry's Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, by the way. It's worth a look-see.) Very well, then: when we say Christians belong to a community, it is necessarily the particular church they attend, with all their fellow congregants—the people who, in better times, we could've assumed are all neighbors anyway. Here, then, is the first problem with Christianity in these United States: a Christian "community" no longer need be defined by close proximity. That is to say, it is no proper community at all.

But how, you may ask, can we balance the imperative for a real community with our personal integrity: that is to say, should I attend the nearest church possible, regardless of its doctrinal errors? That's the question. It's late; let's continue this some other time.

Andrew Bird

This past weekend I visited wonderful Madison, Wisconsin, for a concert by Mr Andrew Bird. He is an absurd scarecrow of a man; the cut of his jeans suggests they are supposed to be tight, but they are baggy on him. He frenetically juggles instruments — violin (bowed and pizzicato), guitar, glockenspiel — often singing, or whistling, at the same time. While performing, he gesticulates like a third-rate Hamlet: he'll turn his extended hand over and over upon itself, or tilt his head to the side. (Unlike the bevy of third-rate Hamlets out there, though, the gestures are not affected; they seem to flow out of him along with the music itself.) His lyrics are at times maddeningly obscure, perhaps irrational. "We'll fight," he sings, "we'll fight for your music halls and dying cities". He tells us of "malarial alleys where the kittens have pleurisy", and "fake conversations on a nonexistent telephone". For much of the music Bird effectively accompanies himself, recording a pattern, transmuting it, and then adding another: his is a contrapuntal mind, always considering the ins and outs of a harmonic landscape and the melody he will build upon it. The music swerves from classical etudes to Appalachian waltzes to electronica to bossa nova; at times it simply dissolves in a series of loops. It is a thinking man's music, ill-suited to those who prefer the stale and and the comforting. It can make you weep.

All in all, it was a good weekend.

Links:
Andrew Bird Official Website
MySpace Page (music samples)
Daytrotter Session (streaming, downloads)

"Popular Scientism"

There's been an awful lot of public debate lately about things that most people are grossly unqualified to discuss. This has not stopped them from doing so. C.S. Lewis elegantly touches on this — apparently it was a problem even in his day — in The Discarded Image, his masterwork on the Middle Ages.

In our age I think it would be fair to say that the ease with which a scientific theory assumes the dignity and rigidity of fact varies inversely with the individual's scientific education. In discussion with wholly uneducated audiences I have sometimes found matter which real scientists would regard as highly speculative more firmly believed than many things within our real knowledge; the popular imago of the Cave Man ranked as hard fact, and the life of Caesar or Napoleon as doubtful rumour. We must not, however, hastily assume that the situation was quite the same in the Middle Ages. The mass media which have in our time created a popular scientism, a caricature of the true sciences, did not then exist. The ignorant were more aware of their ignorance then than now.

The problem is not ignorance; the majority of people have been and will remain ignorant about most things. The problem is that we're not aware of it. We have a large contingent of loud, angry, and increasingly armed Americans who are under the impression that they are being told the truth by popular demagogues. (Come to think of it, one doesn't hear much about unpopular demagogues, does one?) It's human nature, I suppose, to seize on "facts" that confirm our prejudices. But it is not humble, and it is not wise. We must learn to accept our own ignorance.

(But then, where does this leave us? Are we to submit to the "experts", with their "professional opinions"? This is almost equally intolerable. Is there some sort of tertium quid to be found, here?)

Cultus as Commodity

I was at Mass the other day. (You see, I'm in the Liturgical Choir, and thus am required at Sunday morning masses, vespers, and the occasional feast day.) While the rest of the choir went down for Eucharist, I stayed up in the loft, as Canon Law prevents me from partaking. One of my fellow choir members asked me, "Are you Catholic?" After responding in the negative, I was asked, "What's your brand?" "Lutheran", I curtly responded; I had no desire to continue such a conversation. It is interesting, this identification of sect as brand. Has it come to this?— is one's denomination simply another choice we make as consumers? I will grant that the average American could care less about the nature of the Eucharist, or apostolic succession, or the Filioque clause. The great majority of professed Christians, if pressed, will claim to agree with the tenets of whichever church they happen to find themselves members of. Those who do not belong to the church of their parents (or of whichever parent was more insistent) are usually drawn to another sect by its form of worship and social message, more than anything else.

There is something amiss, here. I won't launch, again, into a diatribe against the materialism of modern culture; you've already heard that one, I suppose. What I'd like to examine is the basis of community: is it a shared doctrine, or culture, or worldview... or even, musical taste? (Certainly all of these have proved cause for union or disharmony. Churchgoers can be remarkably petty, as you may know.) Is any one of these worthy cause for joining or leaving a congregation? Yes, probably. But is any cause for leaving or joining a denomination? There, the matter becomes murkier.

Protestants are accustomed, rightly or wrongly, to some fluidity here. A Methodist can swap places with a Disciple of Christ without much cognitive dissonance. Rare is the Presbyterian who hesitates to marry an Episcopalian. And the various evangelicals are indistinguishable. It is different for Roman Catholics, whose church makes a claim to universality: those who've been paying attention have heard that there is no salvation outside the(ir) Church. We thus have a great many Roman Catholics who profess membership in a Church whose doctrines they routinely ignore (for various reasons, which I neither condone nor condemn).

This is more of an essay topick than a web-log post, innit? The hour being late, I shall continue it at another time. Suffice it to say that I miss, as I have never missed before, Lutheran worship. Even among the Anglicans (both in Vienna and Rock Island), there were enough similarities to sustain me, enough good Lutheran hymns slipped in. Here at Notre Dame I feel alienated among the teeming masses of Catholics, and I wonder whether I am truly justified in my longing for the church of my forefathers. There's a groan-inducing pun here: am I missing the Lutherans for the right reasons? Or for the rite reasons?

Piano, D.H. Lawrence

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

1918

O Infinite Love

Thou loving Father, everything goes wrong for me and yet Thou art love.

I have even failed in holding fast to this—that Thou art love, and yet Thou art love.

Wherever I turn, the only thing that I cannot do without is that Thou art love, and that is why, even when I have not held fast to the faith that Thou art love, I believe that Thou dost permit through love that it should be so, O Infinite Love.

from The Prayers of Kierkegaard

Santa Teresa de Ávila nos dice:

Nada te turbe;
nada te espante;
todo se pasa;
Dios no se muda,
la paciencia
todo lo alcanza.
Quien a Dios tiene,
nada le falta.
Solo Dios basta.

The God Who Loves You, Carl Dennis

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.

from Practical Gods

A Prayer by Thomas Merton

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

from Thoughts in Solitude

On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour, John Keats

[Hat tip to Margaret]

Give me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;
Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,
Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen
The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:
And let there glide by many a pearly car,
Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,
And half discovered wings, and glances keen.
The while let music wander round my ears,
And as it reaches each delicious ending,
Let me write down a line of glorious tone,
And full of many wonders of the spheres:
For what a height my spirit is contending!
’Tis not content so soon to be alone.

The Bee Box, Lowell Parker

In this small box, my love,
you'll not find a ring,
but instead, a brave, little bee.
He'll be dead by morn, having given his life
defending his flowers against me.
I felt his sting
while picking the small, purple pansies
growing wild along the roadside,
in hopes of an afternoon bouquet for you.
And I grieved the sting,
more for him than me,
knowing full well the price he paid
for my small pain.
And I allowed him his victory,
leaving his flowers as a memory,
and brought you instead
this brave, little bee,
who proves there is love
even in the smallest
of things.

maggie and milly and molly and may, E.E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Hoy he nacido, Amado Nervo

Cada día que pase, has de decirte:
"¡Hoy he nacido!
El mundo es nuevo para mí; la luz
ésta que miro,
hiere, sin duda, por la vez primera
mis ojos límpidos;
la lluvia que hoy desfleca sus cristales
es mi bautismo."

"Vamos, pues, a vivir un vivir puro,
un vivir nítido. Ayer, ya se perdió: ¿fui malo?, ¿bueno?
... Venga el olvido,
y quede sólo, de ese ayer, la esencia,
el oro íntimo
de lo que amé y sufrí mientras marchaba
por el camino"

"Hoy, cada instante, al bien y a la alegría,
será propicio;
y en la esencial razón de mi existencia,
mi decidido
afán, volcar la dicha sobre el mundo,
verter el vino
de la bondad sobre las bocas ávidas
en redor mío."

"Será mi sola paz la de los otros;
su regocijo, su soñar mi ensueño;
mi cristalino
llanto, el que tiemble en los ajenos párpados;
y mis latidos,
los latidos de cuantos corazones
palpiten en los orbes infinitos."

Cada día que pase, has de decirte:
"¡Hoy he nacido!"

Julio, 12 de 1914.

She Weeps over Rahoon, James Joyce

Rain on Rahoon falls softly, softly falling,
Where my dark lover lies.
Sad is his voice that calls me, sadly calling,
At grey moonrise.

Love, hear thou
How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,
Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling,
Then as now.

Dark too our hearts, O love, shall lie and cold
As his sad heart has lain
Under the moongrey nettles, the black mould
And muttering rain.

Marriage, Wendell Berry

to Tanya

How hard it is for me, who live
in the excitement of women
and have the desire for them
in my mouth like salt. Yet
you have taken me and quieted me.
You have been such light to me
that other women have been
your shadows. You come near me
with the nearness of sleep.
And yet I am not quiet.
It is to be broken. It is to be
torn open. It is not to be
reached and come to rest in
ever. I turn against you,
I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt,
and have each other for healing.
It is healing. It is never whole.

[Attributed to St. Francis]

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Danza negra, Luis Palés Matos

Calabó y bambú.
Bambú y calabó.
El Gran Cocoroco dice: tu-cu-tú.
La Gran Cocoroca dice: to-co-tó.
Es el sol de hierro que arde en Tombuctú.
Es la danza negra de Fernando Poo.
El cerdo en el fango gruñe: pru-pru-prú.
El sapo en la charca sueña: cro-cro-cró.
Calabó y bambú.
Bambú y calabó.

Rompen los junjunes en furiosa-u.
Los gongos trepidan con profunda-o.
Es la raza negra que ondulando va
en el ritmo gordo del mariyandá.
Llegan los botucos a la fiesta ya.
Danza que te danza la negra se da.

Calabó y bambú.
Bambú y calabó.
El Gran Cocoroco dice: tu-cu-tú.
La Gran Cocoroca dice: to-co-tó.

Pasan tierras rojas, islas de betún:
Haití, Martinica, Congo, Camerún;
las papiamentosas antillas del ron
y las patualesas islas del volcán,
que en el grave son
del canto se dan.

Calabó y bambú.
Bambú y calabó.
Es el sol de hierro que arde en Tombuctú.
Es la danza negra de Fernando Poo.
El alma africana que vibrando está
en el ritmo gordo del mariyandá.
Calabó y bambú.
Bambú y calabó.
El Gran Cocoroco dice: tu-cu-tú.
La Gran Cocoroca dice: to-co-tó.