Swimming Upstream

 

From Thomas Merton's essay "Love and Solitude," contained in the collection entitled "Love and Living":

The power of genuine love is so deep and so strong that it     cannot be deflected from its true aim even by the silliest of wrong ideas. When love is alive and mature in a person, it does not matter if he has a false idea of himself and of life: love will guide him according to its own inner truth and will correct his ideas in spite of him. That may be dangerous, but the danger is nothing new and the human race has lived with it for a million-odd years. The trouble is, though, that our wrong ideas may prevent love from growing and maturing in our lives. Once we love, our love can change our thinking. But wrong thinking can inhibit love. Overemphasis on the aspects of need and fulfillment, and obsessions which en­courage a self-conscious and narcissistic fixation on one's own pleasure, can easily blight or misdirect the growth of love. That is why the advertising imagery which associates sexual fulfillment with all the most trivial forms of satisfaction-in order to separate the buyer from his dollar-creates a mental and moral climate that is unfavorable to genuine love. Un­consciously the power that should go into creative and positive love for the other person is being short-circuited by images of infantile oral fulfillment and other narcissistic symbols. The lover then becomes the beautiful glowing icon of self-satisfac­tion, the desirable, slick, and infinitely happy package, rather than the warm presence of one who responds totally to the value and being of the beloved. Even the advertising images of those beatified couples, for whom the years of early middle age are an unending ball, do not convince us of the reality of love: they merely enshrine the cool and consummated deal that our society believes in with superstitious reverence.

What are we going to do about it? Well, for one thing, we can be aware of these immature and inadequate ideas. We do not have to let ourselves be dominated by them. We are free to think in better terms. Of course, we cannot do this all by ourselves. We need the help of articulate voices, themselves taught and inspired by love. This is the mission of the poet, the artist, the prophet. Unfortunately, the confusion of our world has made the message of our poets obscure and our prophets seem to be altogether silent-unless they are devot­ing their talents to the praise of toothpaste.

Meanwhile, as our media become more sophisticated and more subtle, there is no reason why they should not also create for us a better and saner climate of thought-and present us with a less fallacious fantasy world of symbolic fulfillments.

There is no reason except, of course, that it is easier to make money by exploiting human weakness!

Running around town the other day, flipping radio channels to find something to dampen the embers of road rage threatening to flicker into flames, I heard a conservative talk show host express wonder at how parents could hope to counteract the influence of the popular culture on their children. As he put it, children swim all day in "the cesspool that is our popular culture." I wonder about that myself. I certainly don't have the answers, and wouldn't dream of advising parents, inasmuch as I'm not one.

On the other hand, parents could do worse than focus on first things first: "to be aware of these immature and inadequate ideas" and to realize that neither they, nor their children, need to be dominated by them. On a deeper and perhaps more fundamental level, parents could spend time contemplating what constitutes "genuine love"--the "agape" that Pope Benedict XVI so eloquently addressed in his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est"--and what influences of our popular culture, in fact, of our entire way of life, produce "wrong ideas" that "may prevent love from growing and maturing in our lives." That will be a difficult task, subject to understandable bouts of rationalization, denial, and all the other roadblocks we throw in the way of the Truth and in defense of the immature and inadequate physical and emotional gratifications served by our immature and inadequate ideas.

I may not know kids, but I know about "wrong ideas" and the way to obtain and sustain them, and I understand the ceaseless struggle required to overcome them. That said, Merton's on to something about the power of genuine love and its self-correcting power. I see it working, hour by hour, day by day, even in the seemingly worst of us. Even in what appear to be hopeless cases.

Forgiveness

From a homily delivered decades ago by a now-deceased Texas priest:

The statement, “Yes, I forgive you” can be either a genuine desire to restore a wounded relationship, or it can be used as a power play.  We see this a great deal in sick romantic relationships when one person always plays the role of the screw-up and the other partner plays the role of the morally superior martyr.   Mercy is based in truly desiring to restore relationship with another human being; it is not a way of condescendingly exerting power over another human being.   “Yes, Kobe, I forgive you:  now where is my six million dollar ring?” 

Forgiveness is rooted in trust.  To refuse to forgive in a general sense is to refuse to trust in the providence of God.  Therefore, being a forgiving person does not mean merely saying, “I accept your apology” to those who offend us, it also means forgiving the world, our own histories, our own situations… it means forgiving ourselves.

Trust is such a key component of the reality of faith.   To lack forgiveness is to lack trust.   Therefore, forgiveness is not merely a dimension of our faith; it is an essential component of our faith.  Religious scholars call our faith a “salvation faith” because it is a religion based on the forgiveness, grace, and mercy of God.   The God revealed to us is forgiving as part of his very nature and the story of his forgiveness is the key theme of our scriptures.   Saying that we do not want to forgive is tantamount to saying, “I do not want to be part of the life of God.”  Saying that we do not want to forgive is tantamount to saying, “I do not want to be Christian.”

Though not in the written record, when he delivered the homily at a Saturday Vigil Mass, he added, after the phrase "it means forgiving ourselves," the verbal parenthetical ("which can often be the hardest thing we do.").

I sat bolt upright during his presentation. I had the uncomfortable feeling that he was talking directly to me. He may have been. During the Mass, as he sprinkled holy water over the congregation, he hit me directly in the face with a full shot, then paused on his journey to whisper in my ear, "Got you good, didn't I? You're next." I have no idea what he meant by that at the time, but I'm finally beginning to get an idea.

Forgiving yourself doesn't mean forgetting that the wrong you have done was wrong, nor the reality that your penance for past misdeeds may be severe, in this world and the next. It does mean, however, that you're not greater than God, and that if God has revealed that He can forgive anything, then your refusal to accept this revelation is the ultimate assertion of a fatal pride. You're no better or worse than any other man or woman: we're all entitled to forgiveness.

To my understanding, the act of forgiving is the conscious release of your internal desire for vindictiveness and hatred, for revenge. Forgiving another's transgressions doesn't mean that you accept abuse or that you don't punish others who violate man's laws, but you should do so with a sense of humility rather than of avenging wrongs, and with more a sense of pity than hatred for a fallen man blinded by his nature from realizing God's love and acting accordingly. And you'd better have the responsibility for taking such action conferred upon you by the proper earthly authorities. If you take justice into your own hands or do it out of a sense that you, another fallen man, are meeting out justice or because you feel hatred or anger, you're taking God's work upon yourself, and you're damned by your pride and your usurpation.

This is one (of many) aspects of being Christian I find personally difficult. Anger at injustice, hatred of the dishonest and the evil, putting paid all debts of honor, revenge -- those are natural reactions to me. Kicking ass first, taking names later. That's a way of life. The wrong way, but it appeals to men and women everywhere, because they all want to be God.

As to turning the other cheek, as with most of the parables of Jesus, He seems to me to be talking to us at a level much deeper than we seem to prefer. To me, He was talking about our reaction to injustice. Only God can (and will, eventually) forge good out of evil. Man cannot. He also told His disciples that they should render unto Caesar what was Caesar's, and He told them to obey man's law. As Christians, they should not hate, they should no longer "take revenge" on those who wrong them. They should, in fact, forgive them as they forgive themselves. I may do things and not like myself much for having done them, and I may have to suffer my penance(both spiritual and earthly) as a result. But I must forgive myself. Moreover, I must treat others in the same manner when they do the same. I do not have the option of hating them and still calling myself a Christian.

He never said that as members of a civil society with a constituted legal authority, that we, when authorized by that civil authority, should not lawfully punish those who've broken the law as long as we do so in accordance with the law. Forgiveness is our action with respect to the attitude we choose to have toward another. It doesn't necessarily restrain other appropriate actions we must take against a wrongdoer as human beings living in a civil society.

I've heard before the argument that forgiveness can come only with repentance. It makes logical sense if you equate forgiveness with restoring your relationship with the transgressor to the same place as it existed before he committed his wrongful acts. I don't. As a Christian, I don't find that qualifier to be persuasive, and, as a practical man who's spent his life as an advocate for sometimes less-than-sincere human beings, I realize that I have no way of judging whether a man's professed repentance is or is not sincere. I can't judge that, only God can. Therefore, I'm left with the task of doing the only thing that I can do with any certainty: forgiving the transgressor. I may also sue him in civil court, or turn him over to civil authorities for criminal punishment in accordance with man's laws, or cut off all contact with him for the good of my well-being and/or the well-being of others (my children, for instance). However, I can't hate him and I must forgive him.

Tough issues.

    Tides by Sara Teasdale

Love in my heart was a fresh tide flowing
Where the starlike sea gulls soar;
The sun was keen and the foam was blowing
High on the rocky shore.

But now in the dusk the tide is turning,
Lower the sea gulls soar,
And the waves that rose in resistless yearning
Are broken forevermore.

Stones taught me to fly
Love taught me to lie
Life taught me to die
So it's not hard to fall
When you float like a cannonball

A Night At The Movies With Villeneuve and Heidegger

It's not often that movie reviewers refer to Martin Heidegger and concepts such as "being-towards-death," but this critic managed to reach across the movie aisle and "get serious." I thought of this review last night when I, again, watched Denis Villeneuve's masterpiece "Arrival." Rather than summarize or riff on the review, just read it and give it the reflection you think it merits. I gave it more than a few minutes, but I'm slow on the uptake and getting slower by the week. "Arrival" makes great use of Max Richter's "On the Nature of Daylight."

Richter's music has featured prominently, and been used to great effect, in other movies and in recent streaming series, including The Leftovers and The Last of Us, and I encourage readers who are not familiar with him to seek out his work. I also liked a much different musical take on "Arrival" that uses a song by the group London Grammar. While it's a different genre, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. . The person who created the music video has some editing "chops." Or, perhaps, I'm just easily amused.

The Spirit Sings A Simple Song

The intellect thinks. The body dances. And the spirit sings. A song, a simple song. When love and memory are overwhelming, and the soul, though crushed, takes flight, it does so in a simple song.
Mark Helprin, "A Soldier of the Great War"

The Light Shines In The Darkness, And The Darkness Has Not Overcome It

 

I have seen fine religious communities that are faithful and fervent. They remind of the Christians who, in the twilight years of the Roman Empire, kept watch over the flickering flame of civilization. I want to encourage them. I want to tell them: your mission is not to save a dying world. No civilization has the promises of eternal life. Your mission is to live out with fidelity and without compromise the faith you received from Christ. In that way, even without realizing it, you will save the heritage of many centuries of faith. Do not be afraid because of your small numbers! It is not a matter of winning elections or influencing opinions. It is a matter of living the Gospel. Faith is a fire. A person himself must be on fire in order to transmit it.  Watch over this sacred fire!
-Robert Cardinal Sarah, "The Day Is Now Far Spent"

Pray more; pray harder; pray well.

What It Is And Is Not

If anyone says, "I love God," but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
--1 John 4:20-21

Hard cheese in a time of polarization and atomization, especially for those who've decided to render unto Caesar what is God's. Then again, as the late philosopher, Fr. James V. Schall, asserted, "We are living in a time where the logic of disorder is at work, rejecting systematically the logic of being a human being." Father Schall was also well-known for asserting that it is important for a philosopher "to say of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not." John, the "beloved apostle," declares what Christian love is and what it is not. If you don't like that, fine. Just don't call yourself a "Christian," because you're not.

As I write this, I'm gazing in a mirror, not as Narcissus would, but as St. Paul might have. 

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."
--G.K. Chesterton