Not the Perfect Family

Not the Perfect Family

At Mass Saturday night Father chanced to remark that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are referred to as “the Holy Family” rather than “the Perfect Family.”

The principle can, of course, be taken too far.  “Perfect” in its Latin root means thoroughly or completely made—as we might say in modern English, “finished” or perhaps “perfected.”  And in that sense, the Holy Family was quite likely the most perfect family in history, because they totally fulfilled their roles (to use traditional terminology) or totally fulfilled themselves (as we have said since the sixties)—which, if both phrases be rightly understood, comes to the same thing.

But of course, not every family looks like the Holy Family.  Indeed, they had what might well be described as a nontraditional arrangement, inasmuch as Joseph was Jesus’s foster father, etc., etc.  And from that fact, broken and blended families can take heart.  There is a normal, a normative arrangement of father, mother, and biological children; but exigencies ranging from death to any number of lesser evils can change that shape.  And when need imposes a different order upon a given family, it is comforting to think that they still have as good a chance (speaking supernaturally, though certainly not by nature) of being a “perfect family.”  Not the “perfect” arrangement of a father, mother, and two or twelve children; but perfect in the way that the Holy Family was perfect: in their dedication to “My Father’s business” which is summed up in that other line: “Little Children, love one another.”

Spiritual Childhood

"... We must conclude then that the Divine Master was particularly anxious that His disciples should see in spiritual childhood the necessary condition for obtaining life eternal.
"Considering the insistence and the force of this teaching it would seem impossible to find a soul who would still neglect to follow the way of confidence and abandonment, all the more so, we repeat, since the divine words, not only in a general manner, but in express terms, declare the mode of life obligatory, even for those who have lost their first innocence.  Some prefer to believe that they way of confidence and abandonment is reserved solely for ingenuous souls whom evil has not deprived of the grace of childhood.  They do not conceive the possibility of spiritual childhood for those who have lost their first innocence.
…
"Any such thought as that of reassuming the appearance and helplessness of early years would be ridiculous; but it is not contrary to reason to find in the words of the Gospel the precept addressed alike to men of advanced years to return to the practice of spiritual childhood.  During the course of centuries, this teaching was to find increased support in the example of those who arrived at heroic Christian perfection precisely by the exercise of these virtues."~~Pope Benedict XV, quoted in Boylan, This Tremendous Lover, ch.17.

"Unless a man be born again …"

In Excelsis Gloria

When you have children, you rediscover things.

For example: the Wee Sing recordings (the older ones, anyway), some of which can be found on YouTube and Archive.org.

And other things you discover for the first time, like their Christmas recording, which like any good Christmas album contains a mixture of predictable standbys and mildly exotic old folk songs.  Among the latter was one I hadn’t heard before, but which the narration explained had been written by a priest in the 1600s to teach the Indians about Jesus.

I liked the song enough that, a brief internet search later, I had my title: the “Huron Carol,” also known as “’Twas in the Moon of Wintertime.”  It is the oldest Canadian Christmas hymn, having been written by the Jesuit missionary and martyr Jean de Brébeuf.

At some point in my research the cynical thought occurred to me that, were anyone to do what Brébeuf did today, and adopt another culture’s language and forms to convey their culture’s information, it would be deemed both cultural appropriation and colon(ial)ization.  On the other hand, one generally imagines appropriators to be casual users; Brébeuf’s commitment to learning the language and culture of the Indians he sought to convert was anything but lackadaisical.  And however great his temerity in proselytizing, one can hardly come up with a greater penalty than martyrdom …

On the other hand (for it is Christmas), it is interesting to consider that the most universally appropriated culture on earth is Christianity.  Oh, I know the history of forced conversions; I am referring to the main of Christianity’s spread.  From a slaves’ religion two thousand years ago to the courts of the empire by 300 A.D. to wherever we are now …

But Christians have always wanted to share their “culture,” their cultus.

And Christianity has a way of revenging itself upon those who appropriated it merely to mock it.  The story of St. Genesius is instructive.

But this is straying far from Jean de Brébeuf and the Hurons.  Here is a solid recording of the song.  The usual English lyrics are not an especially good translation; the one below the video is supposedly more accurate.

 

 

Have courage, you who are humans, Jesus, he is born
Behold, the spirit who had us as prisoners has fled
Do not listen to it, as it corrupts our minds.
Jesus, he is born, he is born; Jesus, he is born.

They are spirits, coming with a message for us, the sky people
they are coming to say, "Rejoice" (ie., be on top of life)
"Marie, she has just given birth. Rejoice."
Jesus, he is born, he is born; Jesus, he is born.

Three have left for such a place, those who are elders
A star that has just appeared over the horizon leads them there
He will seize the path, he who leads them there
Jesus, he is born, he is born; Jesus, he is born.

As they arrived there, where he was born, Jesus
the star was at the point of stopping, he was not far past it
Having found someone for them, he says, "Come here"
Jesus, he is born, he is born; Jesus, he is born.

Behold, they have arrived there and have seen Jesus
They praised (made a name) many times, saying "Hurray, he is good in nature"
They greeted him with reverence (i.e., greased his scalp many times), saying "Hurray"
Jesus, he is born, he is born; Jesus, he is born.

"We will give to him praise for his name"
"Let us show reverence for him as he comes to be compassionate to us."
"It is providential that you love us and wish, ‘I should adopt them.’"
Jesus, he is born, he is born; Jesus, he is born.

The Demonization of Authority

My dear Wumpick,

So. The patient is questioning her attitude towards authority, and you are not sure what to do with it? I can almost hear your tremulous stutters as you pour out your concern. Never fear, Wumpick. Change is always dangerous for us—we prefer the slow, steady, stable road to the depths of Our Father Below. But changes present opportunities for us as well as for the Enemy, and with a little finesse you can make good use of this one.

The first thing is to get your facts straight. You must remember that authority, like so many other things, is neither here nor there for us demons: it is what the human beings make of it. This great rule, dubbed by its discoverer Screwtape the “Principle of Relativity,” is simply a practical extension of one of the first doctrines promulgated by Our Father Below, that all things are subjective, meaning subject to him (or else they soon will be).

You, it appears, have forgotten this fact, being misled by the human beings’ endless debates on the topic of authority, and how much of it is good for them, especially in the political arena. Monarchy, democracy, republic, anarchy—can you not see, Wumpick, it is none of our business? The point is to get the patient to make it her business. See if you cannot drive her into some extreme on the matter. Extremes are always to be desired.

Past ages had a tendency to valorize authority. The current age by and large decries it. Only in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries would anyone dare, as the anarcho-libertarians have done, to commend the absence of all authority! (Of course, even while the Left and the Right are in various ways demonizing “authority,” there is plenty of good old authoritarianism going around, in the Church and in government and the universities. But don’t allow them to notice that.)

One of the most useful things about this demonization of authority is that we can get people to blame all sorts of sins on it. Where past ages might have recognized lust or greed or pride at work, this age looks rather at the station of the lusty, greedy, and proud man and concludes that everything would be solved if only there were enough oversight to prevent “that kind of person” from doing any harm. Of course, the real answer would be to make sure that no child grows up to be “that kind of person” in the first place. But by having Authority to blame rather than the vices really at fault, we evade ever having to face such a surplus of virtuous people.

Read the rest at the Register.

To Let One's Pride Appear

"In the practice of humility, it is a very sound principle never to display a humility that is not sincere.  It is far better and far more humble to let one's pride appear where there is no danger of scandal, than to assume a humility that is not ours.  For that reason, the cultivation of humility should commence in the interior.  It will be learned by keeping good company, and the best company is that of Jesus and Mary.  If we but read the life of our Lord as that of a friend, we cannot help being influenced by His constant example.  Frequent meditation on the Passion will bring us more quickly to humility than anything else, and while humility is dependent upon true self-knowledge, such knowledge is better obtained by studying what God is, than what we ourselves are.  The continual remembrance of God is one of the best ways of ensuring humility, for humility is really reverence for God, and advance in humility means advance in reverence for God.  Here again we find that the Christian life is but a continuation of the Mass."~~Boylan, This Tremendous Lover, ch.17.

Cf.: https://girlwhowassaturday.blogspot.com/2017/08/order-our-days-in-your-peace.html

To have the Doing of It Ourselves

"The truth is that we do not understand the value of our own weakness.  We want to be conscious of our strength, and we want others to be conscious of it also; we want to do great things--for God, we say--and we want others to know that we have done them: we want to acquire a store of merit and an armory of virtues so that we can feel secure in our own spiritual riches; we want good to be done--but we want to have the doing of it ourselves so that we may be rich in what we think are good works.  We forget what the Holy Spirit writes:
"'There is an inactive man that wanteth help, is very weak in ability, and full of poverty: Yet the eye of God hath looked upon him for good ...'"~~Boylan, This Tremendous Lover, ch.17.

In the Desert a Highway

At Mass yesterday, Father drew the familiar connection between the Old Testament injunction, repeated in the New in the Sunday Gospel, to “make straight in the desert a highway” (HST, Handle Standard Translation) and our need to prepare our own souls to receive Christ this coming Christmas.  That the Bible has a personal as well as a historical and a communal application is, of course, no news to any Christian.  But something from Father’s emphasis struck me this time: we are to make straight our lives, yes, by clearing away any impediments that stand in our souls preventing Christ’s passage; but the area we are making straight is a desert.

The soul and barren land: here is an old pairing indeed.  John goes into the wilderness, the Fathers into the desert; seed is dropped on rocky ground; the dark night of the soul; sicut cervus desiderat ad fontem aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te deum … etc., etc.  Behind all the pairs, one way or another, stands the idea of the utter poverty and nakedness of the soul before God.

A comforting idea, actually.  It’s that moment when, as you face the dinner party with mild social anxiety and the stress of too much to do, the host says, “Just bring yourself.”  Of course, you’ll haul along a bottle of wine or a batch of muffins to show your good will, but it is a comfort to know You don’t need to bring anything.

It’s alright to be a desert.  You are one, whether you know it or not.  You don’t need to bring anything—just to strip a few of the cacti away.

Learning to Create

One of the rules of good parenting seems to be to allow oneself to be interrupted.  I am not, of course, talking about permitting older children to blatantly interpose their questions and comments into the middle of adult conversations; rather, I am thinking of those moments in the day when one is in the middle of some household task—washing, weeding, folding, cleaning, cooking—and is asked to “Build somefing” or “Draw somefing.”  Sometimes it may be good for a child to learn to wait; but sometimes it is good to be a child with the child.

I recently realized, though, that while these requests are frequently vague invitations to companionship (make “somfing”), I rarely succumb to producing an offering of my own brain.  I do not, in other words, offer to draw a train, a car, or an airplane, or indeed any specific thing.  Rather, I say, “Tell me what you want, and I’ll draw it.”

I suppose the impulse was born of the tired creativity of a creative writer who needs some part of life to be mere direction-following.  It was certainly not intended to be a way of ensuring that the budding young artiste gets exactly what he or she wants.  But I realized recently that it had an unintended side effect.  Oftentimes, after hearing the magic words (“Tell me what you want, and I’ll draw it”), Young Monet will stand and contemplate for as long as a minute.  What does he want?  Then, usually, eventually he comes up with it, and it is drawn, to be further embellished with strokes from his own marker or chalk.

~~~

It struck me the other day that this is The Problem with higher education.  (I know it is as riddled with The Problems as a Swiss cheese with holes, but hear me out.)  For two years I taught Freshman composition at a moderately-sized university attended by above-average students.  My job was to teach them how to write.  Their job at the university, as far as they were concerned, was to get a diploma so they could get a job.  Usually after a day or so I had managed to convince the doubtful that learning to write was an important part of their twofold goal, so they were at least willing to try to succeed in my class.

Most of them didn’t.  I was not an exceptionally difficult instructor.  Nor am I willing to blame our materials, for though there were certain base level requirements that instructors were supposed to follow, we had a fair amount of leeway to tailor the class to our ideas of what would work.  Nothing did.  Oh, we all had splendid successes with a student here or there, and frequently small successes with the majority of our students.  But they could hardly be said, upon leaving the one-semester course, to be writers, let alone good writers.

Without a doubt, the single greatest issue was their inability to come up with stuff.  They simply had no ideas.  No matter how creative the prompt or assignment given to them, and no matter how interested they were in it, it failed to spark material of their own.  (The sole exception in my experience was a paper I gave instructing the students to write about some change in their childhood, such as moving, and explain the causes for it.  Well over a third of my students went with “moving,” and the cause was “divorce.”  Those papers could tell a sad story all of their own.)

Nor was the students’ inability to come up with ideas merely a benign problem.  All sorts of things are blamed for plagiarism: lack of time, lack of understanding of what constitutes academic dishonesty, lack of moral fiber.  In my experience—and, I think, that of most of the instructors I knew, including instructors in other subjects—the greatest cause is the student’s inability to have an idea of his own.  Lack of time may sometimes be the immediate cause, but even when that is the pressure-builder, it is usually not because the student cannot physically write the paper fast enough to turn something in, but because he cannot conceive of himself creating ideas fast enough.

Creating ideas is hard.  Tell me what you want, and I’ll draw it.

…

…

…

“A mowble home.”

“A mobile home?”

“OK.”

So we draw a mobile home.

Of course, Young Monet only knows about those from books or parents anyway: it is not as if he is creating the concept of “mobile home” de novo.  But he is creating an idea in the moment of what he wants to draw right now, by searching through his memories and deciding what should be produced from this blue chalk on this patch of concrete this morning … All creativity is combining what we already know.  The magic lies in the combinations.

But to learn to make those combinations, to tap what we know so as to make something quasi de novo, is a long and difficult process.  And I can only guess that most students, at least the students I saw as college Freshman, aren’t being put through the process often enough or early enough or consistently enough.

Maybe the fault is not enough free play, and too much structured learning.  Maybe it’s helicopter parents and teachers.  Maybe it’s video games and social media.  Maybe it’s an all-of-the-above cocktail.  Regardless, the solution seems clear.

Let the kids (at least partly) figure it out.  Let them be a little bored.  Don’t abandon them to their picture-less fate, of course (not if you want them to grow up human, anyway).  But do let them figure out how to fill the somefing-hole in their brains.  If they aren’t learning how to do it at two, how on earth will they learn to do it at twenty?

No Other Hope for Their Happiness

"One of the reasons why men are so anxious to exalt themselves--to overestimate their own value and their own powers--to resent anything that would tend to lower themselves in their own esteem or in that of others--is because they see no other hope for their happiness save in themselves.  That is often why they are so 'touchy,' so resentful of criticism, so impatient of opposition, so insistent on getting their own way, so eager to be known, so anxious for praise, so determined on ruling their surroundings.  They clutch at themselves like drowning men clutch at a straw.  And as life goes on, and they are still far from being satisfied, their attitude borders on the feverish and the hysterical; whatever they may have got, they are certainly far from having found peace."~~Boylan, This Tremendous Lover, ch.17.

God's Ocean

At Mass yesterday, Monsignor quoted saying: “God’s ocean is so big, and our boat is so small.”  He called it as “a prayer,” which initially struck me as an odd description.  But in a way, it is precisely the sort of prayer of which the Old Testament, especially the psalms, are full.  Sometimes, of course, when we acknowledge God’s tremendousness, we do so as a preface to requesting something of Him: Grant us this or Spare us that.  But sometimes the prayer of God’s largeness is just that: an acknowledgement that He is big.  It is the sort of thing one must have well implanted in one’s psyche before one can appreciate the fact that He became small.

And of course, while the prayer of greatness may be a prelude to the prayer of petition, it works the other way around also.  A prayer of petition is, ultimately, only answerable by an exercise of God’s greatness, either in righting the situation about which heaven is stormed, or in resolving that situation into its place in the sea.  In either case, whether the petition is answered with a “yes” or the “no” which widens perspectives, the thanksgiving tends towards that acknowledgement of God’s tremendousness, the tremendousness that is so great that to voice it gratefully “is itself [His] gift” (Common Preface IV).

And the Lord answering Job out of the whirlwind, said: Gird up thy loins like a man … Behold behemoth whom I made with thee, he eateth grass like an ox.  His strength is in his loins, and his force in the navel of his belly. He setteth up his tail like a cedar, the sinews of his testicles are wrapped together. His bones are like pipes of brass, his gristle like plates of iron. He is the beginning of the ways of God, who made him, he will apply his sword. To him the mountains bring forth grass: there all the beasts of the field shall play. He sleepeth under the shadow, in the covert of the reed, and in moist places. The shades cover his shadow, the willows of the brook shall compass him about. Behold, he will drink up a river, and not wonder: and he trusteth that the Jordan may run into his mouth. In his eyes as with a hook he shall take him, and bore through his nostrils with stakes. Canst thou draw out the leviathan with a hook, or canst thou tie his tongue with a cord? Canst thou put a ring in his nose, or bore through his jaw with a buckle? Will he make many supplications to thee, or speak soft words to thee? Will he make a covenant with thee, and wilt thou take him to be a servant for ever? Shalt thou play with him as with a bird, or tie him up for thy handmaids? Shall friends cut him in pieces, shall merchants divide him? Wilt thou fill nets with his skin, and the cabins of fishes with his head? Lay thy hand upon him: remember the battle, and speak no more. Behold his hope shall fail him, and in the sight of all he shall be cast down. (Job, 40:1-2, 10-28)

The End of the World, the End of Marriage?

As the liturgical year draws to a close, the gospels offer one insight after another into what to expect at the end of time. Mostly, they suggest that it is not something that can be expected: that whatever we imagine will be grossly insufficient preparation for what is to come. Nonetheless, we are encouraged to try to envision it as best we can (or else, surely, the Church would have selected a different set of readings!). It’s a bit like telling a one-year-old you’re moving house: the vastness of the change is so great that any words used to convey it will surely be beyond comprehension; yet it is better to give some notion of the coming upheaval, however inadequate such preparation will prove. So it is with us, and the end of (our) time.

One of the things that boggles the adult mind when it sets to contemplating mansions is the abolition of marriage in heaven. Marriage on the natural level is so much a part of life—if not a part of yours, at least a part of most lives around you—that a life without marriage is for many people well nigh inconceivable. No doubt there are some for whom this inconceivable appears in the light of a blessing. But for most, to the extent that we can conceive of life without marriage, many of our attempts paint a sad, dull picture. Marriage is a sacrament (Ephesians 5:32); a spouse is (in the words Milton puts in Adam’s mouth about Eve), “Heaven’s last best gift, my ever-new delight.” Yet Christ assures us that heaven has no marriages.

Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” (From the Gospel of Friday, November 24.)

The story (invented by the Sadducees) to which Jesus replies is designed to make the idea of heaven sound ridiculous; Jesus suggests that their mistake is to conceive of heaven as a glorified earth. Heaven is not ridiculous, but it is radically different.

Given the radical difference of heaven, and the error of imagining earthly marriages in heaven, what ought we to imagine will be the relationship there between those who were married on earth? Will formerly fond couples be indifferent to one another, either because the Beatific Vision is so consuming, or because they have equal charity for all the Blessed?

Read the rest at the Register.

The Real Fruit of Our Labors

"It is true, especially where we have a clear duty to strive for a particular purpose, that we have to use prudence in choosing means which are likely to achieve that purpose.  But that is the end of our obligation.  It is God who giveth the increase, and if He does not give it, that is His business.
"It very often happens that the real fruit of our labors is gathered elsewhere.  Some priest, perhaps, wearing himself out in a non-Catholic district and failing to produce any conversions, may be drawing souls into the Church in great numbers out in the mission field as the result of his apparently fruitless labors.  Such a form of apostolate is quite common, and is obviously the only way which at present is available for the conversion of Russia.  If, therefore, the efforts of apostolic zeal are frustrated in one particular place, that is no reason to be despondent; if they are done according to God's will, they will surely bear fruit somewhere."~~Boylan, This Tremendous Lover, ch.16.

How to Say “Thanks” for that Honorary Degree

But it’s Wednesday, you’re saying.  But it’s time for MidWeekMuse!

Ah, mon frères, I am glad that you pay attention to these details.  It indeed time for midweek muse.  Today, it comes to you with a story.

When Johannes Brahms was in his late forties, the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław, Poland) awarded him an honorary doctorate of music.  “The degree came with a pompous Latin sentence describing Brahms as ‘the foremost composer of serious music in Germany today.’”  (Source.)

Usually these days one gets honorary degrees in return for speaking at a commencement or some such occasion, but Brahms was a composer, rather than a public speaker, so they expected him to do what he did best: write music.

“Apparently he initially wrote them a simple thank you note but the conductor Bernard Scholz, who had nominated him for the degree, convinced him that protocol required him to make a grander gesture of gratitude. The University expected nothing less than a musical offering from the composer. ‘Compose a fine symphony for us!’ Scholz wrote to Brahms. ‘But well orchestrated, old boy, not too uniformly thick!’” (Source.)

Can you imagine writing that to a world class composer, as if you were ordering up a pudding?  No, neither can I.

Alas, no new symphony was forthcoming.

“Rather than composing some ceremonial equivalent of Pomp and Circumstance—a more standard response—Brahms crafted what he described as a ‘rollicking potpourri of student songs,’ in this case mostly drinking songs. It is easy to imagine the amusement of the assembled students, as well as the somewhat less-amused reaction of the school dignitaries, to Brahms’s lighthearted caprice.

“The Academic Festival Overture showcases four beer-hall songs that were well known to German college students. … It was the first melody, however, that was most notorious in the composer’s day. ‘Wir hatten gebauet’ was the theme song of a student organization that advocated the unification of the dozens of independent German principalities. This cause was so objectionable to authorities that the song had been banned for decades. Although the proscription had been lifted in most regions by 1871, it was still in effect in Vienna when Brahms completed his overture. Because of this ban, police delayed the Viennese premiere of the Academic Festival Overture for two weeks, fearing the incitement of the students.”  (Souce.)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, what what?

Play by play of the songs (pun intended?) can be found here.

I’ve always (by which I mean, for at least a few years now) wanted to found my own university, which will be practically perfect in every way and one hundred percent free of politics and only hire my friends.  Now I have reached a further decision: Our graduates and deans and boards will never, never march to “Pomp and Circumstance.”  Gaudeamus juvenesdum summus!

And a final fun fact: This is the piece that is used as a leitmotiv for the delightful and very Chestertonian movie People Will Talk, which I described some time ago in another blog post.  (There, I called the music Beethovenian—my sincere apologies to both composers.)  If you haven’t seen the movie, find a copy—it is delightful.  Kitschy?  Only if you decide it’s kitsch as opposed to brilliance that you happen to enjoy.

And so it is with the Brahms.  Play on, Johannes.

Bonus on top of the boni: Bernstein a delight to watch.

Kings, Bad Guys, and Propaganda Misfires

At Mass yesterday, Father recalled the recent feast of St. Miguel Pro, and remarked on the relation between that priest’s martyrdom and the present feast of Christ the King.  It was Fr. Pro who, sent up before a firing squad, stretched his hands in a cross and cried out ¡Viva Cristo Rey! (“Long live Christ the King!”).

And last week the (thankfully-not-permanent) deacon’s homily treated of the same martyr.  Deacon observed that this is a rare situation in which we have photographic evidence of the events—a fact of which I had long been aware.  The deacon supplied the reason for the photograph’s existence, and made me shake my head at myself for my long-time incuriosity on the topic.  Apparently Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles wanted evidence of the cowardice that he was sure Pro would show while being shot, as a way of discrediting Catholics and Catholic clergy.  Instead, the world got this:

There are many other pictures as well, 
but they are not for the faint of heart.

Reportedly, Calles tried to recall the photographs, but they had already been released to international news organizations.  Pro’s display of heroism—and his reminder that no government can claim to hold sway over Christ’s kingdom—was a matter of historical record.

As was another reminder, to the rest of us.  One writer (whose piece on Pro is well worth reading in full) relates seeing a depiction of the martyrdom in a church:

Not being an especially pious fellow, my first thought when I saw this wonderful window was: “Can you imagine being the guy with the gun? I don’t suppose he thought, ‘I’m going to be in a beautiful stained-glass window some day for doing this—as the bad guy!’” This should give us all pause about things we’re ordered to do.

Can you imagine, decades later, one of those soldiers showing the famous images to his grandchildren, pointing exuberantly, and saying: “You see that rifleman third from the left? That’s me! Look; there’s your grandpa shooting a saint down in cold blood!” Not likely.

I’m not sure I can improve on all these insights, so I’m just going to leave this right here.

Ten Rules for Writers, or, We're All a Little Mad Here

Jonathan Franzen (whom, true confession, I had never heard of before a few days ago) apparently just got himself in trouble for producing a list of ten rules for aspiring novelists.  Without having the foggiest whether Franzen’s work is any good, much less anything I’d enjoy, the furor strikes me as amusing.  One expects writers to be a bit pretentious about their writing (who, me, what? moving right along here …), and Franzen’s list is that.  One expects writers to be quirky, and his list is that too.  And as for his anti-internet rule(s) (two by my count), I suspect he is hyperbolically stating what all writers know deep in their souls to be true: that the internet is a foe of productivity, even as it is a friend of research.  This is not new information.

The truly funny thing about the resentment Franzen has sparked is that the internet is ALIVE with people offering advice on writing, and not infrequently in the “ten rules” format.  It is ubiquitous.  I don’t have time to read them all, but I suspect that between Marion Harmon, Sarah Waters, Elmore Leonard, Denis Lehane, Neil Gaiman, Zadie Smith, Margaret Atwood, Monica Ali, Janet Fitch, various and sundry asked by the Guardian, and LifeHack, … someone has produced a list that is even more offensive than Franzen’s.

Just for fun (and maybe it will help you write better) here are two sterling prose compositors speaking from their podia (that’s on their feet, which is probably Greek for “off the cuff”), offering their take on how to produce a bestseller.

Mark Twain:
1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.
2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help develop it.
3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.
4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.
5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.
6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.
7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a Negro minstrel at the end of it.
8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader by either the author or the people in the tale.
9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.
10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.
11. The characters in tale be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.
12. An author should say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage.
15. Not omit necessary details.
16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
17. Use good grammar.
18. Employ a simple, straightforward style.

P.S.  You will notice that these are actually eighteen rules, not ten.  Despite the fact that some on the internet have deigned to abridge Mark Twain, I see no particular reason to fit so sprawling and ingenious a writer into a box.

Nietzche (source):
1. Of prime necessity is life: a style should live.
2. Style should be suited to the specific person with whom you wish to communicate. (The law of mutual relation.)
3. First, one must determine precisely “what-and-what do I wish to say and present,” before you may write. Writing must be mimicry.
4. Since the writer lacks many of the speaker’s means, he must in general have for his model a very expressive kind of presentation of necessity, the written copy will appear much paler.
5. The richness of life reveals itself through a richness of gestures. One must learn to feel everything — the length and retarding of sentences, interpunctuations, the choice of words, the pausing, the sequence of arguments — like gestures.
6. Be careful with periods! Only those people who also have long duration of breath while speaking are entitled to periods. With most people, the period is a matter of affectation.
7. Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.
8. The more abstract a truth which one wishes to teach, the more one must first entice the senses.
9. Strategy on the part of the good writer of prose consists of choosing his means for stepping close to poetry but never stepping into it.
10. It is not good manners or clever to deprive one’s reader of the most obvious objections. It is very good manners and very clever to leave it to one’s reader alone to pronounce the ultimate quintessence of our wisdom.

For a bonus, here’s a digest of a Rex Stout interview in which he explains the difference between himself and Dostoyevsky (which, as an admirer of both, I found fascinating).

I can’t really top that, and maybe I shouldn’t try, but reading Franzen’s list did make me think about my top rules.  And maybe that’s the good thing about the proliferation of pseudo-advice on the internet: it has the potential to produce some self-examination that may lead to the development of best practices.

Now excuse me while I go wash my mouth out of contemporary jargon.  Here, without further ado, is The Girl Who Is Saturday’s Ten Rules for Writers, which comes with no guarantees whatsoever attached.

1. When you sit down to write, set a double timer to ring once in three minutes, and once in thirty-three.  The first bell ensures that you actually start writing, and the second that you have written a good deal before you stop.
2. Spend your good ideas; do not hoard them.  The best way to have more good ideas is to let the ones you have get out and play.
3. Outline down to the scene.  Be pleased rather than chagrinned when your scene turns out to have a good deal more occurring in it than your outline let on.
4. Read what you enjoy, and then forget about it.  Your subconscious will remember the bits worth stealing.
5. Write what makes you happy, whether that’s “what will sell,” or “what I like to read,” or “what I think is important and worthy.”  Writing is hard enough without making yourself miserable with the produce.
6. Don’t be afraid to sound pretentious.  Make sure to ask truthful and wise people if you actually do sound pretentious.
7. Give all your characters arcs.
8. Don’t forget the trail mix.
9. Keep it to one swig every half page.
10. Unless you’re drinking cocoa, in which case the sky is the limit.

And finally, because I don’t like boxes either, but also lastly, because I’m not Mark Twain …

11. Pick up the phone when it cries and the baby when it rings.  Real people are always more important (and you’ll write better for acting on that fact).

Our Principal Duty

"But the result of popular misconception is that one often forgets that our principal duty to our neighbor is a supernatural one, and that the principal way of satisfying that duty is also a supernatural one.  The most destitute man in the world is the man in the state of mortal sin.  He cannot rise out of his sin without the help of a grace, which he cannot merit strictly for himself.  The greatest work then of fraternal charity is that by which grace is obtained from God for those in mortal sin.  And grace is only obtained by a spiritual life.  The greatest service we can render to our neighbor is to sanctify ourselves."~~Boylan, This Tremendous Lover, ch.16.

The King of Blah

There are worse hymns than “The King of Love my Shepherd Is,” a text based closely on Psalm 23 (or 22? the DRV has ruined my sense of psalm numbering for life).  The old text is indeed a gem:

1 The King of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness faileth never.
I nothing lack if I am his,
and he is mine forever.
2 Where streams of living water flow,
my ransomed soul he leadeth;
and where the verdant pastures grow,
with food celestial feedeth.
3 Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.
4 In death's dark vale I fear no ill,
with thee, dear Lord, beside me;
thy rod and staff my comfort still,
thy cross before to guide me.
5 Thou spreadst a table in my sight;
thy unction grace bestoweth;
and oh, what transport of delight
from thy pure chalice floweth!
6 And so through all the length of days,
thy goodness faileth never;
Good Shepherd, may I sing thy praise
within thy house forever.

Unfortunately, the text they gave us on Sunday was … well, not bowdlerized or demasculinized but certainly dumbed down.

1 The king of love my shepherd is,
whose goodness fails me never;
I nothing lack if I am his
and he is mine for ever.
2 Where streams of living water flow
a ransomed soul, he leads me;
and where the fertile pastures grow,
with food from heaven feeds me.
3 Perverse and foolish I have strayed,
but in his love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.
4 In death's dark vale I fear no ill
with you, dear Lord, beside me;
your rod and staff my comfort still,
your cross before to guide me.
5 You spread a banquet in my sight
of grace beyond all knowing;
and, oh, the wonder and delight
from your pure chalice flowing!
6 And so through all the length of days
your goodness fails me never:
Good Shepherd, may I sing your praise
within your house for ever!

Is it really so difficult for modern churchgoers to understand words like “celestial” or phrases like “transports of delight”?  Does the occasional “thee” or “-eth” burn the ears of our modern Puritans?  (Indeed, I’m astonished that the word “perverse” escaped the censor’s snip.)  Oh, those old fashioned words wouldn’t be relatable.  Pardon me.  That’s why we read two-year-olds books with only a two-year-old’s vocabulary and grammatical structure: so the toddlers can “relate” to their entertainment.

All sarcasm aside, here is a lovely polyphonic setting of the psalm by Bach.  And if Bach isn’t quite to your taste, CPDL has a setting by Hassler, if only some kind soul would record it!  I think the words are appropriate enough for Thanksgiving, no?  And also for funerals.  Thus we hit all the end-of-November stops.  You may thank me when we meet … later.

Der Herr ist mein getreuer Hirt, BWV 112 (Johann Sebastian Bach)

The Only Way out of Life Is to Die

Gloomy words, eh?

At Mass yesterday, that was Father’s thesis.  And yet, he said, in the many times he had asked congregations if they were “ready to go today,” no more than a few people ever raised their hands.  (Thankfully, Father did not try the experiment in this homily.)  And he went on to suggest that part of the reason for people’s reluctance to die is their attachment to human goods.

I would be the last person to deny that a desire to enjoy life could be an obstacle to spiritual readiness.  And yet, I think there may be other reasons for failing to raise one’s hand when a preacher asks “Are you ready to go?”  First and foremost, perhaps, is a feeling that most regular churchgoers (at least churchgoing Catholics) have: the feeling that they are not in fact ready, that there is a good deal of purification left to endure.  If “to go” meant simply “to see God,” I doubt many hands would stay down.  But when “to go” means more purgation of the sort that can more easily be acquired on earth … the choice is perhaps less obvious.  So in a sense, it is their attachment to human goods, or at any rate their awareness of it, that makes people (not wrongly) reluctant to die.

Of course, “ready or not,” the answer should still be “Whenever God wants me.”  I am reluctant to imagine that He does anything deleterious to individual salvations; and the soul that has a long purgatory is perhaps saved from a longer one by dying sooner.  Regardless, it is good to realize that there is a tension between what God might want and what one feels advisable, for that leads to realization that there is a good deal of detaching left to do, a good deal of dying before one can die properly.  In a very real sense, the only way into life is to die before you’re dead.

Bach Gets His Apocalypse On

More on the cantata (BWV 90) here; lyrics here.  "A horrible end will carry you off, you sinful scoffers …"

Enough said?  Enough said.

A Lesson for Homilists

Every now and then—any parent with children will testify—the state of family affairs at Mass becomes so—familial—that very little of the homily hits home.  Still, there are usually tidbits here and there that make it through, and hopefully provide fodder for meditation later in the day or even during the rest of the week.

Pity, O Priest, the condition of the parent who (in between snatches of crying and sushing and darting in and out of the vestibule in attempts to cordon off the offending infants from the larger congregation) obtained from your homily the following edifying theological and spiritual insights:

1.     You grew up at this parish.

2.     You belong to [order redacted].

3.     You were nervous about your first assignment.

4.     Your superiors assigned you to Ohio rather than to Latin America.

5.     Decades later, you are happy to be visiting your home parish.

6.     It’s interesting—they were getting rid of Latin when you entered seminary, and now they’re doing the Novus Ordo in Latin.  Interesting.  Huh.

7.     Your stole, based upon the colors contained in it, could make shift for any liturgical season and was probably borrowed from a community theater production of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.*

*Technically not a part of the homily, but noticeably present during its delivery nonetheless.

In sum, if there was something substantive, these parents didn’t catch it.

And the moral of the story, good priests everywhere, is …

No Truth to the Darkness

I have long though I didn’t like dystopian fiction per se.  After a discussion that followed my husband and I beginning to watch, and then abandoning, a popular video series, I had a realization.  I don’t dislike dystopias; I dislike dystopias with no room for final order.

A clarification: I don’t mean that things need to end happily for the characters for me to enjoy the story.  Nor do I mean that there needs to be some obvious solution around the corner which will resolve or even ameliorate the horrible state into which things have sunk.  What I do mean is that the dystopia needs to have, even in its brokenness, indications that there is a mastering wholeness within which it is housed.  In other words: a dystopia should show original sin run rampant.  Most dystopias I think rather show the absence of God.  That is what I find repulsive and terrifying.

I am afraid I cannot quantify exactly what it means for a work to “show the absence of God.”  I am certainly not requiring that he appear like Aslan in the Narnia Chronicles, nor even asking for the sort of numinous hints which Tolkien gives in The Lord of the Rings.  And obviously there are lots of books which don’t intrude on territory that demands a sense of the divine; books which are purposely kept small and human by their writers.  Indeed, I think the vast majority of books are like this; and some books I very much enjoy—and which are vast in their own way—are included.  Anne of Green Gables; the Rex Stout mysteries; Cheaper by the Dozen (except perhaps for its closing reference to mumblety-peg, which is curiously redemptive); the works of Jane Austen and Dickens.

But there are other works which in one way or another signal a sense of the divine: the works of Shakespeare, Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour Trilogy (a darn sight more than Brideshead, actually), The Wind in the Willows, even something as horrific as Brave New World.

And then there are other books in which the divine is not merely unmentioned but absent.  I hardly know how else to describe the distinction.  It is as if the story requires a numinous presence, however slight of subtle, and instead there is a hole which, however small, leaves a mark upon the book, not merely as a matter or irreligiosity, but as a flaw in its artistry.  Dorothy Sayers talks in her masterwork The Mind of the Maker about what it means to be faithful to the story one is working on (not her phrase, but the best I can remember at the moment to convey what she means).  My best guess for the works with God-shaped holes is that their “father” (Sayers’ term) included the Father, but they would not (Matt. 23:37).  And that rejection colors their whole works, down to their “spirit,” such that the reader can feel sometimes a sense of oppression.

(Michael O’Brien has written about a sense of oppression after reading certain works.  I agree with him that it is possible to feel such a thing, and that it is not always subjective—or at any rate, that it is something real about the works, even though only certain readers seem to feel it.  But I am not convinced by his idea that this is a demonic thing—at least, it is not more demonic than most rejections of God by sin are—it is rather a matter of the “spirit” being lacking.)

What sort of stories do I have in mind?  I can only point to examples where I felt, in one way or another, this sense of loss.  I don’t mean, by the way, to say that these books are immoral (they aren’t) or shouldn’t be read (they should) or that I don’t like them (I do, for the most part—I just find I must read them in very small doses to avoid feeling depressed).

The books include the Harry Potter series by book four (yes, yes, I know, shoot me! but I do enjoy it), Peter Pan (there’s a reason a series on this blog tackled, *ahem* is tackling its interpretation), and the recently acclaimed Station Eleven and Winter’s Tale (neither of which—full disclosure—I was able to finish, so it is possible that their holes were eventually filled).

Again, I’m not calling for Aslan.  I only know, as if by feel or smell, that there is something subtly off about these books, as there is about the walls and ceiling of the room were Mark Studdock finds himself in That Hideous Strength.

It is a subtle thing I’m talking about.  It is all the difference between Hamlet with “Let be,” and Hamlet without it.  But I do not mean by that example to say a mere word would change things for these books; the words are simply illustrative.  It is an atmosphere, a tone, a spirit.

I stress again, it is not a matter of these books being “dystopian” (as you can see, most of them aren’t), nor even of their being dark.  Rather, it is that the darkness, in missing something critical to its own very existence, is a darkness without truth.

That Presto Largo, Take Two

No doubt it's cheating to use Rossini--and the same Rossini no less!--twice in a row.  But this version of the famous aria, from Thomas Hampson, was too good not to pass on.

Again, is it just me, or does this really sound like a parent's day?

The Faults of the Tongue Are Innumerable

"The faults of the tongue are innumerable, and it is noteworthy that even in people who are otherwise quite virtuous one often finds an uncharitable tongue.  There is a wide field here for the practice of virtue and the quest of holiness.  So much so that the Holy Ghost tells us by the pen of St. James: If any man offend not in word the same is a perfect man.  Let us remember that every word we utter or every insinuation we make to the detriment of our neighbor is an injury done to Christ.  There are occasions when one must speak unpleasant truths about one's neighbor--for example, in a law court, or to avoid greater evil--but normally, we are not allowed to speak evil of him, even when what we say is true.  The Christian man does his best to hide the faults of others, and will not listen to detraction.  If detraction is wrong, calumny is still worse.  And even quite good people do not seem to realize the responsibility they have for every single word they say about anyone else.  Our neighbor's honor and good name, his professional reputation and his personal character, should be as safe in our mouth as in our Lord's.  And it must be remembered that this is true even though we know that his private behavior doe snot justify his public reputation.  There are, however, circumstances in which we may have to give someone a charitable warning.  But all tale-bearing and mischief-making, all imprudent revelations of another's secret, all sowing of discord or exciting of suspicion are quite wrong, and are altogether incompatible with a true life in Christ.  Not only do we separate ourselves form Him in the doing of these injuries, but we widen the breach inasmuch as these injuries are done to Him.  We make public the very sins of which He has taken the shame upon Himself."

               ~~Boylan, This Tremendous Lover, ch. 16.

Nature and Supernature

At Mass yesterday Father remarked that it is not the heart but the crucifix which is the real symbol of love.  A truism, perhaps, for a practicing Catholic, but one worth repeating to oneself from time to time.

I am working on a dissertation that deals—in a more direct fashion than I expected it would when I began—with the clash of medieval and Renaissance views of nature and society, or natural and human law.  The older medieval view was that nature and natural law were responsible for much of what was good in man; in the high Renaissance this view was sometimes warped into a Pelagian worship of man-as-natural being, in much the same way that post-Cartesians worshipped man-as-thinking-thing.  One of the many facets of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation was a reaction to this excessive Renaissance optimism.  Thus reformers of both stripes and secular Renaissance skeptics joined in emphasizing the insufficiency of human nature for salvation, and perhaps even for social and political life.  The later, Hobbesian view of a warlike state of man has real connection to the strong Calvinist notion of man as totally depraved.

Between their ideas and the Platonic-Aristotelian image of simple shepherds, devastated by the elements and bonding together to ensure survival for themselves and their families, gapes a wide gulf.  For the ancients and medievals nature was lively and dangerous, and human beings bonded together to find their natural place in it.  But beginning with the early modern era, nature became subject to the conquering techne of man, while human beings themselves became less and less worthy of trust and less and less natively inclined to order.

Who is right?  Both; neither; I’ll get back to you on that.  I have strong sympathies with the older view, of course; but … This much I will grant to the modern view.  On a day-to-day level, mere human virtue however advanced seems to be but rarely sufficient to deal with the trials and tribulations of ordinary life.

Too bad I wrote an undergraduate thesis arguing in the opposite direction!

But the older I become, the more convinced I am that sanctity is necessary not merely for entry into heaven, but also to live a tolerably happy life on earth.  At a certain point after being woken up for countless times in the middle of the night, nature is no longer sufficient; supernature becomes necessary.  The heart will always remain, but it can only beat on the blood of the cross.