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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard – Thomas Gray

May 24, 2013
Musical, eloquent, moral, the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is not only a beautiful poem in its own right, but opens a network of cultural pathways. It connects the reader to English history and to European literature: Dante, Milton, the classical writers. Its ideas about society and education are deeply relevant today. The first stanza is often memorized: not only a visual masterpiece, it has an impressive array of sound-effects. In fact, there is a striking quantity of alliteration stowed away in the whole poem's tidy, iambic portmanteau. It's particularly audible in the first four lines, where the mournful, vowel-heavy sounds of the cattle lowing and the bell's tolling are grounded by the earthier throb of tired, heavy, mud-caked footfall

Musical, eloquent, moral, the “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is not only a beautiful poem in its own right, but opens a network of cultural pathways. It connects the reader to English history and to European literature: Dante, Milton, the classical writers. Its ideas about society and education are deeply relevant today. The first stanza is often memorized: not only a visual masterpiece, it has an impressive array of sound-effects. In fact, there is a striking quantity of alliteration stowed away in the whole poem’s tidy, iambic portmanteau. It’s particularly audible in the first four lines, where the mournful, vowel-heavy sounds of the cattle lowing and the bell’s tolling are grounded by the earthier throb of tired, heavy, mud-caked footfall

Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard’ was a poem of uncommon power on grief and the afterlife.

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The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire’s return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Memory o’er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll;
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.

The applause of listening senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

Yet even these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their name, their years, spelt by the unlettered muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev’n from the tomb the voice of nature cries,
Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee, who mindful of the unhonoured dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
“Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

“There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

“Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove,
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

“One morn I missed him on the customed hill,
Along the heath and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

“The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne.
Approach and read (for thou can’st read) the lay,
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.”

The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (’twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

 

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Meditation on Mortality — John J. Miller

 Mr. Miller is director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College and national correspondent for National Review. This essay was featured in the WSJ recently.

Shortly afterAbraham Lincoln secured the Republican presidential nomination in 1860, a reporter traveled to Springfield, Ill., to learn about the candidate’s background. In an interview, Lincoln said his early life could be condensed into a single phrase: “the short and simple annals of the poor.”

The words didn’t belong to Lincoln, but rather to the 18th-century English poet Thomas Gray, and they came from “Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard.” Lincoln almost certainly had encountered Gray’s “Elegy” as a boy, possibly by one of those hearth fires in his family’s log cabin.

There was a time when most educated people would have recognized Lincoln’s reference: “Gray’s Elegy,” wrote Leslie Stephen (the father of Virginia Woolf), “includes more familiar phrases than any poem of equal length in the language.” Its 32 stanzas burst with celebrated passages: “The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day”; “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen”; “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”; and so on. Robert L. Mack, Gray’s definitive biographer, has observed that a recent edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations draws from 15 stanzas and reproduces 13 of them whole.

Gray was born the day after Christmas in 1716. He was one of a dozen children, but only he survived childhood. As a boy, he attended Eton College, and later he would write “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” a poem that is the source of what may be his best-known phrase of all: “where ignorance is bliss / ‘Tis folly to be wise.” Another poem, the amusing “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes,” apparently recounts a true story involving an unfortunate feline owned by Gray’s close friend Horace Walpole, a politician and writer.

For Gray, poems were the product of long, careful and hard work — and he often had trouble finishing what he started. In 1750, however, he sent a complete version of his “Elegy” to Walpole: “You will, I hope, look upon it in light of a thing with an end to it; a merit that most of my writings have wanted.” He appears to have fiddled with the elegy for at least four years and possibly as many as eight.

It begins with a description of a rural cemetery in darkness, turning to the fates of the people who lie six feet below. Do their ranks include “some mute inglorious Milton”? The poem goes on to ponder the pain of grief, the challenge of commemoration and the mystery of what lies beyond this life.

As a meditation on human mortality, its theme is one of the most common in literature. Yet the poem possesses uncommon power. When Walpole received his copy, he seems to have recognized its merits at once. He behaved as a publicist, distributing the poem throughout London. It struck at a popular moment for “graveyard poetry,” which mixed themes of death, gloom and Christian belief, prefiguring the coming Gothic movement. (Walpole, in fact, wrote what is widely regarded as the first Gothic novel, “The Castle of Otranto,” published in 1764.)

Yet Gray’s “Elegy” also rose above the ghetto of a genre, expressing universal ideas in lines that worked their way into collective memory. Samuel Johnson didn’t care for most of Gray’s poetry, but even he confessed an admiration for the elegy, praising its “images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.”

In 1759, on the night before the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Quebec City, British Gen. James Wolfe either recited the poem or listened to it read aloud (accounts vary). “I would rather have been the author of that piece than beat the French tomorrow,” he is reported to have said. Wolfe defeated the French the next day, but he famously perished in the effort, providing a testament to what may be the central truth of Gray’s “Elegy”: “The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

It might be said that Gray’s path of glory started at a grave — and very possibly one occupied by his aunt, Mary Antrobus. She died as Gray composed the elegy and was entombed in the churchyard of St. Giles, in the village of Stoke Poges, west of London. Gray attended church services there with his mother, and they would have routinely walked by his aunt’s final resting place, in an activity that may have provided Gray with the determination to finish his poem.

Fans of the James Bond movies have caught a glimpse of the churchyard in the opening moments of “For Your Eyes Only.” Bond, played by Roger Moore, lays roses by his wife’s burial plot, in a scene filmed on the grounds that Gray immortalized. It looks a bit different from its appearance in Gray’s life. In 1924, the locals tore down the owl-haunted, “ivy-mantled” tower, fearing its imminent collapse.

Another grave lies there too: the one belonging to Gray himself. “On some fond breast the parting soul relies, / Some pious drops the closing eye requires,” he wrote in the elegy. Yet when he died in 1771, few people attended his funeral. As a lifelong bachelor, he had no wife or children to mourn him, and most of his friends didn’t even know he had passed. Walpole learned of Gray’s death from a newspaper.

His gravesite marker is modest. For a poet, however, Gray left behind the best kind of epitaph — one etched into a literary heritage.

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Soave Sia Il Vento – Così Fan Tutti

May 23, 2013
Detail of the face of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Cropped version of the painting where Mozart is seen with Anna Maria (Mozart's sister) and father, Leopold, on the wall a portrait of his deceased mother, Anna Maria. Painted by Johann Nepomuk della Croce (1736-1819)

Detail of the face of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Cropped version of the painting where Mozart is seen with Anna Maria (Mozart’s sister) and father, Leopold, on the wall a portrait of his deceased mother, Anna Maria. Painted by Johann Nepomuk della Croce (1736-1819)

Fair be the breeze
And calm the seas,
May earth, fire, water, air,
Kindly answer this our prayer.

Quite probably the most beautiful music written for a trio of voices. Five lines that convey longing, despair and heartbreak because a loved one has left. One of the voices here is the incomparable Renée Fleming.

The novelist McCall Smith writing in the WSJ revealed this about his writing habits:

Music may get in the way of words, but only if it is too loud, too strident, or creates the wrong mood. Music has the ability to affect how we feel: Its capacity to evoke emotions lies at the heart of what it is. For this reason I believe that music may help the novelist to write with the passion and feeling that fiction needs if it is to be convincing.

I choose the music according to the novel that I am writing, and that can vary a great deal. Sometimes I need to hear from Arvo Pärt, sometimes from Peter, Paul & Mary (my taste is eclectic). But there is one piece of music above all others that inspires me in my work and that I listen to a great deal when writing. This is the trio “Soave Sia Il Vento” from Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte.”

It is a morally disturbing opera. Two young women are saying goodbye to lovers who are about to deceive them in a way that will reveal the women’s own weakness. Nasty and cynical things are about to happen, yet Mozart graces a grubby tale of deception and inconstancy with a score that soars effortlessly above the libretto’s limitations.

Not only is this one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed, but the words are extraordinarily peaceful, generous and resolved. “On your voyage, may the winds be gentle; may the waves be calm; may all the elements respond to your desires…”

What more can we wish anyone setting off on life’s journey? I listen to this several times a day; I never tire of it. It is music suffused with the greatest possible sympathy and humanity. It expresses what I want to feel about the world. It is the deepest truth.

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Reading Selections from Trinity Spermatiké (1.1-1.4) by Giorgio Buccellati

May 22, 2013
We are, in other words, conditioned by the identity of the object towards which we tend. If so, it stands to reason to say that, God being the Trinity, every human relation to the divine sphere is “intentionally” Trinitarian . But how? You are drawn to these daffodils and they are part of a universal apprehension of the divine: in other words, the divine commands our attention, our intention. Reduced to its most universal common denominator, such intentionality is found in facing that which we cannot control but which de facto conditions, and limits, us. The recognition of such uncontrollable external conditions is and has ever been an objective factor in the life of every single human being.

We are, in other words, conditioned by the identity of the object towards which we tend. If so, it stands to reason to say that, God being the Trinity, every human relation to the divine sphere is “intentionally” Trinitarian. But how? You are drawn to these daffodils and they are part of a universal apprehension of the divine: in other words, the divine commands our attention, our intention. Reduced to its most universal common denominator, such intentionality is found in facing that which we cannot control but which de facto conditions, and limits, us. The recognition of such uncontrollable external conditions is and has ever been an objective factor in the life of every single human being.

GIORGIO BUCCELLATI is the director of IIMAS — The International Institute for Mesopotamian Studies, co-director of the Mozan/Urkesh Archaeological Project, director of the Mesopotamian Lab of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Professor Emeritus of the Ancient Near East and of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. This is all part of a much larger piece that has most recently been published in Communio and is available here. In these sections Professor Buccellati contrasts the monotheistic Trinity with polytheism and the significance of both, how they contrast and complement each other.

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“The Trinity is inevitably present in seed form wherever God is sensed.”

Non chiederci la parola che squadri da ogni lato l’animo nostro inform: …

Don’t ask of us the word that might our shapeless soul squarely and neatly frame.

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The Central Concept
One way to approach the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is to explore the experience through which the reality behind the dogma came to be apprehended in the New Testament; and that the Old Testament experience of Yahweh, already essentially Trinitarian, was as if a catechumenate that ultimately made such apprehension possible.

By way of contrast, I have also argued that the polytheistic stance towards the divine is essentially non-Trinitarian, because it emphasizes the aspect of control and ownership vis-à-vis the monotheistic stance that sees an interpersonal sharing within the absolute as fully real without implying fragmentation.

I will argue here for a converse point of view that will complement the considerations made in the second paper. While a pagan, or polytheistic ethos is indeed essentially non-Trinitarian in the articulation of its sensibilities and thought processes, it cannot, at the same time, escape from the deeper Trinitarian dimension of the divine reality.

A Polytheistic Opposition
The explicit polytheistic opposition to a monotheistic dimension is dramatically complemented, in my view, by a deeper, inescapable apprehension of what is ultimately the only proper configuration of the divine, i.e., the Trinity. The Trinity is inevitably present in seed form wherever God is sensed.

The Church Fathers spoke of a lógos spermatikós referring to the inevitability of Christ being present as seed in the human experience of the divine even when not so recognized explicitly. But recognizing the Logos as seed implies, inevitably, a seed-like Trinitarian apprehension — a Trinity spermatiké. The equivalent Latin term, semina verbi, “the seeds of the word” is also central to the understanding of the commonalities among world religions. We should then ask: what, if any, is the difference between the Old Testament catechumenate and such a veiled polytheistic perception of the Trinity?

And in turn, how does the fuller disclosure, as offered by Jesus, impact our human experience of divine reality? In other words, how is our basic human confrontation with God enriched as a result of being, through Christ, more explicitly Trinitarian?The thrust of this article aims to give an answer to this question.

Monotheism and Trinitarianism
Semantically, it would appear sufficient to say that Trinitarian is not three-theism: the three persons are not three gods. But there is a more subtle conceptual dimension that may easily hide behind the semantic veneer. It emerges when, in a converse (vocab: All S is P, the converse is All P is S) sort of way, monotheism comes to be understood as “one-theistic”: there is only one god, but with the emphasis on the numerability of the “one.” He is still subject of counting.

This means that conceptually he is seen as one in a series of units, a series that belongs to a broad set where everything is numerable. “One-theism” is not very different from henotheism, a term which refers to the process of rarefaction whereby pre-eminence is given to a single deity out of a pantheon of many, to the point where the other gods almost disappear. In such a perspective, the characteristic of oneness remains one of superiority rather than of utter otherness.

It is such utter otherness that is, instead, the hallmark of monotheism. Oneness means, in this case, a one that is not so much above a multitude of other ones as it is, rather, wholly set apart. The semantic trap to which I was alluding lies in assuming that the one is opposed to the many. Where polytheism admits many deities, monotheism is assumed to admit one.

It comes down to a matter of scale: the one is of the same order as the many, except that it is numerically limited. But it is a trap. The insight of monotheism lies in proposing an altogether different scale, a different plane of reality where, we might say, one is opposed to one. The “one” of polytheism is a mononumerical set, but remains a set within a series of numerical sets. The “one” of monotheism is outside any such series of sets.

Metábasis Eis Állo Génos
The notion of transcendence refers to just such an understanding. The monotheistic God transcends human concepts in the way described by Kierkegaard as a metábasis eis állo génos, a “rising to another genus,” using language borrowed from Aristotle. The “other genus” is not something higher within the same range. It is rather a distinct range altogether. Nor is it a truly parallel order of being, because it is wholly outside our concept of order, related to ours only analogically.

If we take seriously transcendence as metábasis, and parallelism as analogia entis, then the point made above, about the importance of considering the oneness of God outside of any notion of numerical sets, will become clearer. So will, also, the realization that there is no contrast between monotheism and Trinitarianism. The Trinity is not a set any more than the One God is a set.

We may think of the Trinity as the inner articulation of the altogether different order of being which we call absolute. An excessive conceptual reliance on the notion of oneness may easily work against the very impetus of monotheism, as if the reductiveness of the single count could give us control on transcendence, as if transcendence could in effect be imprisoned in the immanent function of the numeric concept.

“Understanding” God
If transcendence implies transference to an altogether different plane of reality, an állo génos, then how is it possible for humans to rise to this other level, how does the metábasis (vocab: a passing from one thing to another; transition.) take place? In particular, within our present context, what kind of basic human understanding is possible of the Trinitarian mystery?

Is the Trinitarian állo génos (other kind) so alien that there are no footholds in normal human experience on which to stand in order to reach for some kind of plain and simple human comprehension? Are we called to love what we can- not possibly understand? But if our love is to be genuine, how can it not be human, how can it be directed to what is alien to experience, to understanding?

These considerations are valid for any attempt to reach the divine sphere, but they are especially pertinent when reflecting on the Trinity. If revelation is seen as merely the acquisition of information, then we may develop the wrong feeling that knowing about the Trinity means that we can “explain” God. But we would be wrong in equating understanding with explanation.

Understanding = An Inner Disposition Of Love
Understanding does not mean explicating in the sense of dissecting, analyzing, breaking down a composite into its constituent parts. In the traditional sense of wisdom, understanding means to apprehend the whole as meaningful apart from, or rather beyond, its being the sum of its components. When reflecting on the Trinity, we must, accordingly, relate to the mystery as a whole, without the tacit pretense that by describing it as a triadic sum we have exhausted its inner significance. Knowing about the Trinity is not a call to acquire and exchange information, it is not an explanation. It is, rather, a call to develop a relationship.

Ultimately, this means that “understanding” the Trinity entails an inner disposition of love. We cannot love without understanding the target of our love, nor can we understand without the inner thrust of a full and genuine human love. Not, however, as though love were an irrational feeling. True, it would be a sad day when we could “explain” why we love someone, for explanation would entail love as a necessary consequence.

But it would also be a sad day when we felt love to be irrational, i.e., wholly divorced from reason. Rather than in conflict, love and reason are in a mutual relationship of harmony, and it is through reason that we, lovers, “understand” our beloved.

The Role of Apologetics
It is in fact valid to say that explanation plays a propaedeutic [vocab: (of an area of study) Serving as a preliminary instruction or as an introduction to further study.] role in nurturing understanding, hence love. We cannot convince someone, through argument, that he or she must love someone else. On the other hand, arguments can direct the inner movement of souls to where, beyond the dissecting arguments, the whole explodes in its own clarity.

Analogously, no amount of analytical criticism can force you to enjoy a poem or a painting; but the same criticism can predispose your sensitivity so that it is trained to accept modalities and styles that might at first have seemed alien. It is in this sense that we can bridge the gap between positive and negative theology, by seeing the first as preparing the ground for the second, by seeing argument and explanation shaping our consciousness and preparing it for the explosion of understanding.

Knowing And Understanding
There is an analogous distinction between knowing and understanding. “Knowing” relates to capturing information, “understanding” to an inner disposition of apprehension and readiness. Thus it is that when we seek to do the will of God, we do not properly seek explicit orders or a clarification of situations, wherein we are told do A rather than B.

Explicit Divine Requests
Explicit divine requests are the exception. Consider the three fiats (vocab: a command or act of will that creates something without or as if without further effort):

  1. Only the first is Mary’s response to an explicit “word”: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Luke 1:38).
  2. The second is the Our Father, where we are asked to accept a will that does not necessarily translate into any explicit word: fiat voluntas tua (Matthew 6:10).
  3. The third is Jesus’ own Our Father, when, in the agony at Gethsemane, he contrasts his own instinctive desire to avoid the Passion with the will of the Father that the Passion should take place, a will that is perceived but is not confirmed as an articulate command: fiat voluntas tua (Matthew 26:42) | non mea voluntas sed tua fiat (Luke 22:42).

A Christian Epistemology I
This last fiat is especially tragic and meaningful. It is preceded, in each of the two gospel narratives, by an if-clause that projects uncertainty. Jesus does not seem to “know” for sure what the Father’s will is: “Father, if it is possible, let this chalice go away from me — except, not as I wish, but as you do… . If this cannot go away unless I drink it, let your will take place” (Matthew 26:39.42); “Father, if you wish, remove from me this chalice — except, not my will, but let yours take place” (Luke 22:42).

It seems as though part of the agony is the obscurity that involves uncertainty about the Father’s precise intentions. Jesus’ surrender is more important, it would appear, than his acceptance of any specific marching orders. The will of the Father is not information to be articulated in words that one can “know,” but rather a creative power to be adhered to with understanding. The if-qualifications of the last fiat do not seem resolved as, in his agony, Jesus cries from the height the cross: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46 | Mark 15:34). No direct answer is forthcoming. No explicit explanation. No spoken word of comfort. Instead, the final understanding of the Father’s will comes to the dying Jesus, extraordinarily, through a fellow human being: one of the two men who have been crucified alongside him — Dismas, as tradition calls him.

There is a startling dimension to this episode (Luke 23:39–43), one that can nurture much awed reflection. Think about it: Jesus finds the strength to accept his final collapse (Luke 23:46) through the unexpected support of an unknown criminal. It is, mark well, the lowliest human on the social scale, one who had never received anything from Jesus, one whose name was unknown to even the few bystanders (Dismas being a later appellation).

It is this very man who is called to give the Father’s answer to the Son, to give Jesus the courage to die. Remember: Jesus had been asking for help from the three apostles he took near him at Gethsemane, and they fell asleep; there, he had asked the Father for direction, and had met with silence; as he is led to the summit of the skull, he sees his closest friends disappear (except for his mother and a young disciple), and it is the outsiders who then begin to rally around his loneliness.

In this darkness we can see how Jesus’ own fiat, his “understanding” of the Father’s will, is not rooted in the acquisition of a specific, overt, articulate command that might confirm his mission, but in his fundamental posture of availability and openness, ready to accept whatever sign may come his way. Any source, even the most unexpected, may be the effective conduit to an understanding of what we are to be available for. For Jesus, it was, first, a foreigner along the way (Simon of Cyrene, Matthew 27:32 | Mark 15:21 | Luke 23:26), and then, at the top, an unnamed confessed criminal.

Jesus lives a profoundly human situation as he seeks through uncertainty the will of the Father.

A Christian Epistemology II
So did his mother when facing the behavior of her adolescent son. Having found him in the Temple after an anguished search, and having heard his explanation as to why he had not alerted them regarding his whereabouts, we are told that Mary and Joseph “did not comprehend the spoken (explanation) (ou sunē’kan tò rē’ma)

[In the Annunciation, the “word” to which Mary assents is lógos in Greek. The term used here instead is rē’ma, which has more the connotation of “saying, speech, statement,” hence “explanation” and then even “event, fact.” The same term is used in the plural in what follows immediately in the text, where it is said that Mary pondered in depth “all the spoken (events) (pánta tà  rē’mata).”] which he had spoken to them” (Luke 2:50).

But reflect on it they did, after the fact, and intensely so: “His mother was watching-and-guarding-through-and-through (dietē’rei) in her heart all the spoken (events) (pánta tà rē’mata)” (Luke 2:51). She accepts and basically understands her son even when, offered an explanation, she does not fully comprehend it. At the root, and in a nutshell, this is the Christian epistemology, particularly when facing the Trinity.

“Intentionality”
It is also, in a way, the common Trinitarian epistemology, i.e., the non-Christian confrontation with the Trinity. The central question we are asking here concerns precisely the way in which, however veiled, the Trinity may be sensed outside of the framework unveiled through the Incarnation of the Logos. If even in the wake of that revelation our “understanding” is at once piercing and obscure; if even Mary and Joseph “did not comprehend the explanation” explicitly offered by Jesus; how then do the countless humans who are not privy to the same revelation face the inescapably Trinitarian dimension of the divine?

The phenomenological concept of “intentionality” is helpful in this respect. On the analogy of planets held in orbit by the pull of their sun, so are we tending towards objects that exert their attraction regardless of how explicit our perception of their precise identity may or may not be. We are, in other words, conditioned by the identity of the object towards which we tend. If so, it stands to reason to say that, God being the Trinity, every human relation to the divine sphere is “intentionally” Trinitarian . But how?

There is, in the first place, a universal apprehension of the divine: in other words, the divine commands our attention, our intention. Reduced to its most universal common denominator, such intentionality is found in facing that which we cannot control but which de facto conditions, and limits, us. The recognition of such uncontrollable external conditions is and has ever been an objective factor in the life of every single human being.

There is, however, a fundamental difference in how we articulate our perception of this reality, a difference that comes down to two basic alternatives. Common to both is the realization that we can progressively gain an ever greater measure of control over what could not previously be controlled — for instance, control of the outer spaces through astronomy, of disease through medicine, of our own remote past through paleontology and archaeology.

Peculiar to the first mode of thought is the belief that this “progress” is, itself, unconditional. In other words, nothing will ultimately condition progress because progress will achieve full ultimate control on whatever external conditions seem to limit us now (see in the next installment, 4.3).

Peculiar to the second mode of thought is instead the belief that there is an ultimate “beyondness” that conditions us in ways that escape all possibility of control on our part. The intentional aspect is the same: in both cases the existence of conditioning factors that cannot be controlled is undeniable, and un-denied. The difference is in the perceptual resolution, both positions being a matter of belief.

We either believe, in the polytheistic frame of mind (the first mode of thought), that full ultimate accretion is possible (there is an ultimate explanation of everything, the last bit of which will come from the ultimate accumulation of all previous knowledge). Or else we believe, in the monotheistic frame of mind (the other mode of thought), that accretion is itself conditioned, that our own ability of control is framed by uncontrollable conditions. Neither belief can be demonstrated. But both are the result of an objective, “intentional” confrontation with a reality which we experience: a conditioning that is beyond our control.

The point I wish to stress in this context is that there is a Trinitarian dimension even to the polytheistic perception of the “beyondness.” Therein humans face, “intentionally,” a dynamics at work in the divine reality, through the very paradox of progress understood as the ultimate goal. The paradox lies in the notion that a never ending progress may in some way end. Progress entails the capturing, along the line, of fragments of a dynamic absolute, yet progress will, by necessity, come to an end when there are no more fragments — at which point the dynamics ends.

The paradox, then, is in the belief that stasis is the final outcome of forward movement, that this dynamics can be seized — do we not, in fact, gradually appropriate an ever greater share of the universal progress? In this light, the death of god appears in an even more tragic light: at the very moment that we appropriate the dynamics of the absolute, we nullify the absolute. The death of god (as in Nietzsche) is the final stasis: what we presume to kill is, in reality, the dynamics of the absolute. We kill, in fact, that veiled perception of a Trinitarian reality wherein we saw the absolute as endowed with an inner vitality and particularity. The death of god is, in fact, the abrogation of the Trinitarian dimension within the absolute.

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A Cardinal Boycotts Boston College — Anne Hendershott

May 21, 2013
In interviews with the Boston Herald and InsideHigherED.com, one professor described the display of crucifixes as offensive, while another found it "insensitive" and "indicative of a bias toward one way of thinking, elevating one set of ideals above others, honoring one group of people in preference to the rest." Complaining about the crucifixes, Boston College Chemistry professor Amir Hoyveda wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Herald, saying that he could "hardly imagine a more effective way to denigrate the faculty of an educational institution." Yes, this is Boston’s premier Catholic institution of higher learning, much the way that the Red Sox are our premier baseball organization.

In interviews with the Boston Herald and InsideHigherED.com, one professor described the display of crucifixes as offensive, while another found it “insensitive” and “indicative of a bias toward one way of thinking, elevating one set of ideals above others, honoring one group of people in preference to the rest.” Complaining about the crucifixes, Boston College Chemistry professor Amir Hoyveda wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Herald, saying that he could “hardly imagine a more effective way to denigrate the faculty of an educational institution.” Yes, this is Boston’s premier Catholic institution of higher learning, much the way that the Red Sox are our premier baseball organization.

Ignoring U.S. bishops, the Catholic university will honored an abortion-rights supporter yesterday. The companion piece to this is the post Boston Strong. You will see it is no accident that Boston was the center for the homosexual priest scandal in the U.S. or that our secular leaders in this city no longer allow priests to act as first responders and administer last rites to the dying at disaster scenes like the marathon bombing a few months ago.

Ms. Hendershott is a sociology professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, and the co-author of Renewal: How a New Generation of Priests and Bishops are Revitalizing the Catholic Church,” forthcoming from Encounter Books.

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At Boston College’s commencement ceremony on Monday, Cardinal Sean O’Malley won’t be in attendance. The leader of the Boston archdiocese announced on May 10 that he would not deliver his traditional graduation benediction at the Catholic school because the college had invited Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny — a supporter of abortion rights in Ireland — to deliver the graduation address and receive an honorary degree.

The cardinal said the invitation has caused “confusion, disappointment and harm” by ignoring the U.S. bishops “who have asked that Catholic institutions not honor government officials or politicians who promote abortion with their laws and policies.”

In April, Mr. Kenny’s coalition government introduced legislation with the curious title “The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013.” It will allow access to direct abortion for pregnant women if they claim to be so distraught about the pregnancy that they are in danger of committing suicide. Mr. Kenny has said that he “would like to see the legislation enacted before the Dail [parliament] rises for the summer.”

The prime minister’s actions have been condemned by the Catholic bishops of Ireland, who released a statement that warned: “International experience shows that allowing abortion on the grounds of mental health effectively opens the floodgates for abortion . . . it is the unborn child’s common humanity that makes his life equal in value to that of the mother.”

Boston College has responded to criticism of its invitation to Mr. Kenny — from Cardinal O’Malley, a pro-life student group at Boston College, and the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, among others — by saying that the decision was about common culture, not legislation. On May 10, college spokesman Jack Dunn told the Boston Globe that the invitation was extended “in light of our long-standing connection with Ireland and our desire to recognize and celebrate our heritage,” and was made “independent of the proposed bill that will be debated in the Irish parliament this summer.”

The abortion bill is just Mr. Kenny’s most recent clash with the Catholic Church. Last year, for instance, his government promoted a bill which would impose criminal penalties, including imprisonment, on priests who refuse to violate the seal of the confessional — normally sacrosanct — in cases of sexual abuse. On July 20, 2011, Mr. Kenny told the Irish parliament that the Vatican, in a bid to preserve its power, has “downplayed” the “rape and torture of children.” Later that year, he closed the Irish embassy to the Holy See, citing economic reasons.

Ireland’s prime minister isn’t the first abortion-rights proponent to be honored by the college. In 2010, the pro-choice Republican senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, delivered the commencement address at the Boston College School of Law. In 2007, the law school invited Edward Markey — a Massachusetts Congressman with a 100% abortion rights voting record in Congress — to speak at its commencement. In 2006, Mr. Markey joined 54 other Catholic Democrats in the House in signing a “Catholic Statement of Principles,” reserving the right to disagree with the Catholic Church on important issues like abortion. Mr. Markey is now running for John Kerry’s vacated Senate seat.

There has been an uneasy relationship between the church and the wider Boston College campus community as well. In 2009, when college administrators placed 40 crucifixes on classroom walls throughout the Boston campus, a number of faculty members were furious.

In interviews with the Boston Herald and InsideHigherED.com, one professor described the display of crucifixes as offensive, while another found it “insensitive” and “indicative of a bias toward one way of thinking, elevating one set of ideals above others, honoring one group of people in preference to the rest.” Complaining about the crucifixes, Boston College Chemistry professor Amir Hoyveda wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Herald, saying that he could “hardly imagine a more effective way to denigrate the faculty of an educational institution.”

Boston College pro-choice law students have formed BC Law Students for Reproductive Justice. On their website as of May 16, the Boston College pro-choice law students vow to “promote awareness of reproductive issues in order “to ensure that future lawyers will be prepared to successfully defend and expand reproductive rights.”

In a sense the professors and students are continuing the tradition of the longtime proponent of abortion rights, the late Rev. Robert Drinan, who was dean of Boston College Law School for 14 years (1956-70) before serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. While a congressman, Drinan could be counted on to vote for increased access to abortion, just as earlier, while a dean, he had helped counsel Catholic politicians on how to accept and promote abortion with a clear conscience. In 2011, the Boston College Law School held a symposium to honor Drinan.

Yet Cardinal O’Malley’s refusal to countenance the college’s support for Prime Minister Kenny may be a sign that things are about to change. In April, Pope Francis chose Cardinal O’Malley as one of eight cardinals to advise him on running the church and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy.

This honor brings with it a responsibility to ensure that Catholic colleges and universities are faithful to the Catholic mission. The cardinal’s Boston College boycott is a good start.

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Auden Across the Decades – J. M. Pressley

May 20, 2013
Auden's journey began with the mind and ended with the spirit. His rationality gave way to passion, which in turn opened the door to religious rediscovery. It is due to, not despite, this journey that Auden still reigns as a poetic master, and his depth progressively grows with study across the decades of his career. But, as Auden would undoubtedly argue, it is the poet's duty to discover the relevant questions of one's times -- and to do so requires the type of journey which comprised the life of W. H. Auden

Auden’s journey began with the mind and ended with the spirit. His rationality gave way to passion, which in turn opened the door to religious rediscovery. It is due to, not despite, this journey that Auden still reigns as a poetic master, and his depth progressively grows with study across the decades of his career. But, as Auden would undoubtedly argue, it is the poet’s duty to discover the relevant questions of one’s times — and to do so requires the type of journey which comprised the life of W. H. Auden

Mr Pressley’s website is here and filled with interesting stuff.

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Wystan Hugh Auden died in 1973 having accomplished a remarkable journey that spanned decades — and left him established as one of the premier poets of the 20th century. This journey began in England, deepened in America, and ended in Vienna, leaving an unrivaled legacy. It is a journey of both body and poetic voice, and is expressed forever in his verses. For a serious discussion of Auden the poet, it is necessary to explore the journey of Auden the wanderer, constantly reinventing himself along the way.

Auden was the son of a doctor, which had a profound and lasting effect upon his style of verse. As Stephen Spender says, “There is a dualistic idea running through all [Auden's] work which encloses it like the sides of a box. This idea is Symptom and Cure” (Spears, Auden: A Collection of Critical Essays, 28). Moreover, the early interest of Auden in things scientific — he originally wished to pursue a career in biology or medicine like his father — shows heavily in his use of detail and his approach to verse.

Quite frequently, Auden’s lines are densely analytical in nature, or “diagnostic” as many critics have put forth. At the beginning of Auden’s career, this scientific-rational tendency was the predominant quality of Auden’s poetry. His intellectualism and psychology predilections are demonstrated markedly in works prior to 1932, such as “The Letter” (published in 1928).

The Letter

From the very first coming down
Into a new valley with a frown
Because of the sun and a lost way.
You certainly remain: to-day
I, crouching behind a sheep-pen, heard
Travel across a sudden bird,
Cry out against the storm, and found
The year’s arc a completed round
And love’s worn circuit re-begun,
Endless with no dissenting turn.
Shall see, shall pass, as we have seen
The swallow on the tile, spring’s green
Preliminary shiver, passed

A solitary truck, the last
Of shunting in the Autumn. But now,
To interrupt the homely brow,
Thought warmed to evening through and through,
Your letter comes, speaking as you,
Speaking of much, but not to come.

Nor speech is close nor fingers numb,
If love not seldom has received
An unjust answer, was deceived.
I, decent with the seasons, move
Different or with a different love,
Nor question much the nod,
The stone smile of this country god
That never was more reticent,
Always afraid to say more than it meant.

(Ellmann and O’Clair, Modern Poems: A Norton Introduction 410)

The above lines represent Auden in his youth, a prodigy, according to some critics. There is no playfulness of craft to this work reminiscent of Auden’s later periods — the syllabic meter is strict, using rhymed couplets of nine syllables per line in the first stanza and eight per line in the second with barely a hint of variety. There is, however, a cool analytical approach to the subject matter, almost impersonal. The central theme is the cycle of life as represented through a failed love.

Most interesting — and typical of Auden — is the usage of scientific, in this case electrical, imagery in the poem. He uses terms like “arc,” “circuit,” and “shunting” in the context of the work, which I read as comparing the connection of a relationship to the connection of an electrical circuit. This provides a contrast with the more pastoral/natural elements of the poem: storm, bird, seasons, Spring and Autumn, etc.

This is Auden the post-Romantic; we don’t necessarily feel the grief of the voice character in this work, but are presented with a dialectical insight through the varying details provided within the poem. Although “The Letter” may be construed as more technically primitive and somewhat obscure as compared with Auden’s later craft, it reflects a style that would be refined and evolve into clever twists of form and content.

Auden began teaching at a school in Herefordshire in the Fall of 1932, and this marks a major milestone in his poetic development. To quote The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry:

In that mellow world his poetry opened like a bud, becoming more expansive and richer in surface detail. This is the start of the second “chapter,” the phase when Auden, drawing on Marx and Freud, was able to make a brilliant stream of connections between individual guilts and pleasures and the crisis that seemed to be eating away at European civilization. Simultaneously, his interests in the possibilities of verse forms burst out in a profusion of beautifully adroit sonnets, sestinas, and ballads (Hamilton, 22).

The period from 1932 to 1940 earned Auden the praise of his contemporaries as well, including T. S. Eliot who once said, “This fellow is about the best poet I have discovered in several years” (Davenport-Hines, Auden, 121). The following poem shows a more unrestrained Auden at work; Auden has latched onto the theme of grand Love, and shows an emotion in his poetry not entirely present in “The Letter”:

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good

(Mendelson, As I Walked Out One Evening: W. H. Auden, 43).

Once again, Auden chooses his details carefully, considering each one for their effect, and each detail is given even more prominence within the poem by the use of end-stops on each line. The poem operates on two distinct levels. First, the literal interpretation of a love who has died — it is that inner state of grief over love’s loss which his younger poems lack. Can the third stanza be more plain, or more eloquent in its understated grandiosity? Here Auden is less the clinician and more the participant, for all he decried showing oneself as a poet within the poetry.

On a more ephemeral level, one can read “Funeral Blues” as bemoaning the death of God, not an altogether unfamiliar theme following the first world war and with Europe facing the prospect of another. This poem was also written after Auden’s service in Spain, which left him disillusioned with the state of the world in many respects. Stanza four is as huge as stanza three is compact.

Because of this, however, and because of this departure from Auden’s usual detachment from subject matter, I view this poem as more of an elegy for God than for a lost lover. Although Auden uses hyperbole with elan in other works, it seems somehow misplaced given the circumstances if the subject is a loved one. In a sweeping gesture, Auden calls for an end to the world in the space of four lines, dismissing the notion that there can be any good left in the world with the passing of the subject of the poem. The imagery of the stars being dampened, or pouring out the oceans, is the utter annihilation of creation — as such, it represents the death of the Creator.

The final stage of Auden’s poetic journey, and the most problematic from the critical perspective, is comprised of the years after 1946 (when Auden officially became a U. S. citizen). Age and a rediscovery of Anglicism gave new artistic bents to Auden’s poetry. 1948′s The Age of Anxiety won Auden the Pulitzer, and his verses after began to take on a more meditative air — “too religious,” according to many of the critics who had earlier hailed Auden as a poetic genius. Or, as his biography suggests, “He was now widely misunderstood as a reactionary coward who had reneged on the radicalism of his youth” (Davenport-Hines, 266).

Auden’s quest for Love in the divine sense is typified within the tercets of his poem, “Archaeology”, which was published in the posthumous volume, Thank You, Fog:

Archaeology

The archaeologist’s spade
delves into dwellings
vacancied long ago,

unearthing evidence
of life-ways no one
would dream of leading now,

concerning which he has not much
to say that he can prove:
the lucky man!

Knowledge may have its purposes,
but guessing is always
more fun than knowing.

We do know that Man,
from fear or affection,
has always graved His dead.

What disastered a city,
volcanic effusion,
fluvial outrage,

or a human horde,
agog for slaves or glory,
is visually patent,

and we’re sure that,
as soon as palaces were built,
their rulers,

though gluttoned on sex
and blanded by flattery,
must often have yawned.

But do grain-pits signify
a year of famine?
Where a coin-series

peters out, should we infer
some major catastrophe?
Maybe. Maybe.

From murals and statues
we get a glimpse of what
the Old Ones bowed down to,

but cannot conceit
in what situations they blushed
or shrugged their shoulders.

Poets have learned us our myths
but just how did They take them?
That’s a stumper.

When Norsemen heard thunder,
did they seriously believe
Thor was hammering?

No, I’d say: I’d swear
that men have always lounged in myths
as Tall Stories,

that their real earnest
has been to grant excuses
for ritual actions.

Only in rites
can we renounce our oddities
and be truly entired.

Not that all rites
should be equally fonded:
some are abominable.

There’s nothing the Crucified
would like less
than butchery to appease Him.

CODA

From Archaeology
one moral, at least, may be drawn,
to wit, that all

our school text-books lie.
What they call History
is nothing to vaunt of,

being made, as it is,
by the criminal in us:
goodness is timeless.

(Mendelson, As I Walked Out One Evening: W. H. Auden, 302-304)

The analytical muse in this poem has been turned introspective, and ultimately the internal inquisition leads to a conclusion of morality. Auden uses science to demonstrate its own weaknesses, the frailty of human knowledge with such lines as “…has not much to say that he can prove: the lucky man!” and “guessing is always more fun than knowing”. Simply put, Man can be quantified, whereas faith cannot. Science, as represented through archaeology, can but give us temporal answers at best. But does study and human learning provide deeper insight? In this poem, Auden states with his typical, unique verve: “That’s a stumper.”

The end stanzas and coda provide the keys to unlocking Auden’s meaning in the poem. He has not succumbed to religion as Eliot did in later years, yet ends the work on the note of a sermon. History is merely a recording of the misdeeds of men, whereas there is a suffusing “goodness” that exists outside the boundaries of learning. If our collected knowledge is fallible concerning ourselves, then it cannot be expected to approach an understanding of God – only the endurance of faith suggested by the final line of the poem can provide that.

By comparison with his earlier work, Auden as represented in “Archaeology” is wistful. While he does not, as I read it, repudiate his scientific bent toward detail and analysis, he admits in this poem that it means little if not coupled with faith in something beyond the human experience. Love must have its place in the world.

Auden’s journey began with the mind and ended with the spirit. His rationality gave way to passion, which in turn opened the door to religious rediscovery. It is due to, not despite, this journey that Auden still reigns as a poetic master, and his depth progressively grows with study across the decades of his career. But, as Auden would undoubtedly argue, it is the poet’s duty to discover the relevant questions of one’s times — and to do so requires the type of journey which comprised the life of W. H. Auden.

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Start With Why – Simon Sinek

May 17, 2013
The Golden Circle is a naturally occurring pattern, grounded in the biology of human decision making, that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others. The Golden Circle is a model that codifies the three distinct and interdependent elements (Why, How, What) that makes any person or organization function at its highest ability. Based on the biology of human decision making, it demonstrates how the function of our limbic brain and the neocortex directly relate to the way in which people interact with each other and with organizations and brands in the formation of cultures and communities.

The Golden Circle is a naturally occurring pattern, grounded in the biology of human decision making, that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others. The Golden Circle is a model that codifies the three distinct and interdependent elements (Why, How, What) that makes any person or organization function at its highest ability. Based on the biology of human decision making, it demonstrates how the function of our limbic brain and the neocortex directly relate to the way in which people interact with each other and with organizations and brands in the formation of cultures and communities.

Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people. With a bold goal to help build a world in which the vast majority of people go home everyday feeling fulfilled by their work, Simon is leading a movement to inspire people to do the things that inspire them.

You would think the Church would know everything Simon seems to know and just naturally go about achieving all the things the Wright Brothers, Martin Luther King and the Apple company do. But it doesn’t. Sinek points out the Martin Luther King didn’t have a plan but a dream.

Every Sunday my parish priest gathers a group of what Simon would probably call the last adopters and reads a homily that sounds as though it was written elsewhere and not for any of the people who are gathered there. I dutifully gather with all the others and listen. But people like Simon make me think: here is an organization, the Church, that has all the right answers and doesn’t get anything done in the political or cultural marketplace. What’s wrong with that picture? What is not happening? Is Sinek on to something here?

A trained ethnographer and author of Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, Sinek has held a life-long curiosity for why people and organizations do the things they do. Fascinated by the leaders and companies that make the greatest impact in the world, those with the capacity to inspire, he has discovered some remarkable patterns of how they think, act and communicate. He has devoted his life to sharing his thinking in order to help other leaders and organizations inspire action.

He is best known for discovering the Golden Circle and popularizing the concept of Why, the purpose, cause or belief that drives every one of us. The Golden Circle is a naturally occurring pattern, grounded in the biology of human decision making, that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others. The Golden Circle is a model that codifies the three distinct and interdependent elements (Why, How, What) that makes any person or organization function at its highest ability. Based on the biology of human decision making, it demonstrates how the function of our limbic brain and the neocortex directly relate to the way in which people interact with each other and with organizations and brands in the formation of cultures and communities.

Sinek’s unconventional and innovative views on business and leadership have attracted international attention and have earned him invitations to meet with an array of leaders and organizations, including: Microsoft, MARS, SAP, Intel, 3M, the United States Military, members of the United States Congress, multiple government agencies and entrepreneurs. Sinek has also had the honor of presenting his ideas to the Ambassadors of Bahrain and Iraq, at the United Nations and to the senior leadership of the United States Air Force. Perhaps someone should add Pope Francis to that group or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and get them to listen to Simon.

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Choruses from the Rock – T. S. Eliot

May 16, 2013

Knowledge without Wisdom, Poster by Paulo Zerbato “What we call "church" is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another "helping institution" to gratify further their individual desires. One of the reasons some church members are so mean-spirited with their pastor, particularly when the pastor urges them to look at God, is that they feel deceived by such pastoral invitations to look beyond themselves. They have come to church for "strokes," to have their personal needs met. What we call church is often a conspiracy of cordiality. Pastors learn to pacify rather than preach to their Ananiases and Sapphiras. We say we do it out of "love." Usually, we do it as a means of keeping everyone as distant from everyone else as possible. You don't get into my life and I will not get into yours.”  Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens

Knowledge without Wisdom, Poster by Paulo Zerbato
“What we call “church” is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another “helping institution” to gratify further their individual desires. One of the reasons some church members are so mean-spirited with their pastor, particularly when the pastor urges them to look at God, is that they feel deceived by such pastoral invitations to look beyond themselves. They have come to church for “strokes,” to have their personal needs met. What we call church is often a conspiracy of cordiality. Pastors learn to pacify rather than preach to their Ananiases and Sapphiras. We say we do it out of “love.” Usually, we do it as a means of keeping everyone as distant from everyone else as possible. You don’t get into my life and I will not get into yours.”
Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens

 

We are taught by our secular educational masters that Eliot’s greatest poems were his early, bleak ones: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Wasteland. But this, I urge you, Choruses from the Rock, written some seventeen years after “Prufrock” and seven years after Eliot‘s conversion to the Anglican Church is just as worthy a candidate. Here we see Eliot, the older soul in search, who finally found what he was looking for in the Christian Church. Being that I’m pretty old myself, universally acknowledged as downright cranky and am searching in the Catholic Church, this strikes me as a beautiful poem and one of his best.  Read it aloud in your solitary room and see if it doesn’t echo throughout your day:

Choruses from the Rock (1934)

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.

The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.

Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks

Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor
Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore
I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”

When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.

Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of
the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and
purblind as ever before,
Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on
the way that was lit by the light;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other
way.

But it seems that something has happened that has never happened
before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has
never happened before
That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.

What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned
upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?

There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.

In spite of all the dishonour,
the broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.

Our age is an age of moderate virtue
And moderate vice

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.

Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or
lifeless
Joined with the artist’s eye, new life, new form, new colour.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal
imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the
place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.

The work of creation is never without travail

Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.

O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.

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