No, I'm not referring to global warming. I have been thinking a lot about this poem in light of Russia's recent actions in Georgia. This poem is found in the epilogue of the German Bertold Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui Translated by George Tabori [Arturo Ui is a fictitious representation of Adolf Hitler as a mafia gangster in the United States]. This prophetic (and poetic) warning is very relevant to our day and age, and may always be.
If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We’d see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn’t always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
The Dumb Ox by G.K. Chesterton
Reading this book about Saint Thomas Aquinas by GKC was an odd experience for me. First, I was reading about a man whom I knew very little about, which gave me a great perspective. Some actually consider this book the best book about Aquinas to be written. But what made this truly odd was that I possibly thought as much about GKC as I did Aquinas as I read. GKC has such a brilliant mind, and thus, writing style, that I had to refrain from highlighting every sentence. To learn a fact about one man while admiring, and being amazed by, the man writing about the man is a unique encounter for me. Hopefully in the following quotes you will see what I mean.
Additionally, it was amazing how often I thought of myself as I read about Thomas (not with grandiose familiarity, but an odd "oh, there's someone else like that..."). And then there were the moments I found St. Thomas wholly unique, as when GKC described him as "one of those large things who take up a little room" (130). A few delightful bits of insight about Aquinas that encouraged me were:
1) "He maintained controversy with an eye on only two qualities; clarity and courtesy. And he maintained these because they were entirely practical qualities..." (140). For regular readers of this blog you will recognize the similarity of this trait with another man I highly respect - Dennis Prager.
2) "Aquinas is almost always on the side of simplicity" (150). Also for frequent readers, you will recall my fondness for the quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I would not give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity. But I would give my right arm for simplicity on the other side of complexity."
3) Something that my Seminary preaching prof taught -- the importance for preachers to understand humanity, both his nature and condition -- was also underscored in this book. He prescribed reading good literature to aid this pursuit. Interestingly, GKC explained, "...there ought to be a real study called Anthropology corresponding to Theology [as opposed to corresponding to biology]. In this sense St. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps more than he is anything else, he is a great anthropologist" (161).
I wish I could have met St. Thomas, and look forward to the day I will. There is much to learn from him and I hope to marinate in his life story a bit for that purpose. Here are the excerpts I underlined:
About St. Thomas' Personality:
Thomas actually studied under Albert the Great. And being known to be shy, Albert lured Thomas out of his shell by exercising his great knowledge, as GKC explains: "He had studied many specimens of the most monstrous of all monstrosities; that is called Man. He knew the signs and marks of the sort of man, who is in an innocent way something of a monster among men"....And because of Thomas' shyness, he had earned the nickname 'the dumb ox'. But Albert declared: "You call him a Dumb Ox; I tell you this Dumb Ox shall bellow so loud that his bellowings will fill the world" (71). And he was right.
"St Thomas was always ready, with the hearty sort of humility, to give thanks for all his thinking" (71).
"He had been a man with a huge controversial appetite, a thing that exists in some men and not others, in saints and in sinners" (96).
"...when he was reluctantly dragged from his work, and we might almost say from his play. For both were for him found in the unusual hobby of thinking, which is for some men a thing much more intoxicating than mere drinking" (97).
"But there is a general tone and temper of Aquinas, which it is as difficult to avoid as daylight in a great house of windows. It is that positive position of his mind, which is filled and soaked as with sunshine with the warmth and wonder of created things" (119).
"...if his daydreams were dreams, they were dreams of day; and dreams of the day of battle. If he talked to himself, it was because he was arguing with somebody else. We can put it another way, by saying that his daydreams, like the dreams of a dog, were dreams of hunting; of pursuing the error as well as pursuing the truth; of following all the twists and turns of evasive falsehood, and tracking it at last to its lair in hell" (125,126).
"He was interested in the souls of all his fellow creatures, but not in classifying the minds of any of them; in a sense it was too personal and in another sense too arrogant for his particular mind and temper" (128).
"... and he goes out of his way to say that men must vary their lives with jokes and even with pranks" (131).
St Thomas' faith was very intellectual, to say the least. However, that doesn't mean it was only intellectual. There was an emotional element to it for him, although "it would always have embarrassed him to write about [this emotional side] at such length. The one exception permitted to him was the rare but remarkable output of his poetry. All sanctity is secrecy; and his sacred poetry was really a secretion; like the pearl in a very tightly closed oyster" (140). "It may be worth remarking, for those who think that he thought too little of the emotional or romantic side of religious truth, that he asked to have The Song of Solomon read through to him from beginning to end [on his deathbed]" (143).
"...this philosopher does not merely touch on social things, or even take them in his stride to spiritual things; though that is his direction. He takes hold of them, he has not only a grasp of them, but a grip. As all his controversies prove, he was perhaps a perfect example of the iron hand in the velvet glove. He was a man who always turned his full attention to anything; and he seems to fix even passing thins as they pass. To him even what was momentary was momentous" (187).
"It never occurred to Aquinas to use Aquinas as a weapon. There is not a trace of his ever using his personal advantages, of birth or body or brain or breeding, in debate with anybody" (196).
About St. Thomas' Philosophy:
It was not only a primary idea of Thomist doctrine that a central common sense is nourished by the five senses, but "a truly and eminently Christian doctrine" as well. Unfortunately, GKC comments, "For upon this point modern writers write a great deal of nonsense; and show more than their normal ingenuity in missing the point" (32).
"Thomas was a very great man who reconciled religion with reason..., who insisted that the senses were the windows of the soul and that the reason had a divine right to feed upon facts, and that it was the business of the Faith to digest the strong meat of the toughest and most practical of pagan philosophies" (32,33).
"...the philosophy of St. Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs.... The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God" (148).
"...I am not so silly as to suggest that all the writings of St. Thomas are simple and straightforward; in the sense of being easy to understand. There are passages I do not in the least understand myself;...there are passages about which the greatest Thomists still differ and dispute. But that is a question of a thing being hard to read or hard to understand: not hard to accept when understood. that is a mere matter of "The Cat sat on the Mat" being written in Chinese characters; or "Mary had a Little Lamb" in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The only point I am stressing here is that Aquinas is almost always on the side of simplicity, and supports the ordinary man's acceptance of ordinary truism" (150).
"This is, in a very rude outline, his philosophy; it is impossible in such an outline to describe his theology. Anyone writing so small a book about so big a man, must leave out something. Those who know him best will best understand why... I have left out the only important thing" (181).
Below are some general thoughts by GKC that seem to be as relevant today as they were when he wrote and as much as they applied to the days of St. Thomas:
About the recent SCOTUS Decision...
"...he is emphatic upon the fact that law, when it ceases to be justice, ceases even to be law" (188).
About China...
"...things which men produce only to sell are likely to be worse in quality than the things they produce in order to consume" (189).
About The War in Iraq...
"War, in the wide modern sense, is possible, not because more men disagree, but because more men agree. Under the peculiarly modern coercions, such as Compulsory Education and Conscription, there are very large peaceful areas, that they can all agree upon War. In that age men disagreed even about war; and peace might break out anywhere" (56). It may be that we are seeing a repeat of that era when there was more disagreement, and thus the more difficulty in finding a consensus regarding war.
About Global Warming...
"...most men must have a revealed religion, because they have not time to argue. No time, that is, to argue fairly. There is always time to argue unfairly; not least in a time like ours.... As a matter of fact, it is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer. That is why, in recent literature, there has been so little argument and so much sneering" (127).
"Behold our refutation of the error. It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers [or environmentalists] themselves. If then anyone there be who, boastfully taking pride in his supposed wisdom, wishes to challenge what we have written, let him reply openly if he dare. He shall find me there confronting him, and not only my negligible self, but many another whose study is truth. We shall do battle with his errors or bring a cure to his ignorance" (94). Unfortunately, Al Gore has consistently refused to debate anyone publicly. I guess that's why he can say the debate is settled - since it never actually started.
GKC responded to this reaction by observing: "After the great example of St. Thomas, the principle stands, or ought always to have stood established; that we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours" (95,96).
About The Emergent Church...
"In short, a real knowledge of mankind will tell anybody that Religion is a very terrible thing; that it is truly a raging fire, and that Authority is often quite as much needed to restrain it as to impose it. Asceticism, or the war with the appetites, is itself an appetite. It can never be eliminated from among the strange ambitions of Man. But it can be kept in some reasonable control..." (104).
"In truth, this vividly illuminates the provincial stupidity of those who object to what they call 'creeds and dogmas.' It was precisely the creed and dogma that saved the sanity of the world. These people generally propose an alternative religion of intuition and feeling. If, in the really Dark Ages, there had been a religion of feeling, it would have been a religion of black and suicidal feeling. It was the rigid creed that resisted the rush of suicidal feeling.... A thousand enthusiasts for celibacy, in the day of the great rush to the desert or the cloister, might have called marriage a sin, if they had only considered their individual ideals, in the modern manner, and their own immediate feelings about marriage. Fortunately, they had to accept the Authority of the Church, which had definitely said that marriage was not a sin.... when Religion would have maddened men, Theology kept them sane" (110,111).
About Feelings vs. Intellect in Faith...
"Mystics can be represented as men who maintain that the final fruition or joy of the soul is rather a sensation than a thought. The motto of the Mystics has always been, 'Taste and See'.... [It] is equally right in saying that the intellect is at home in the topmost heavens; and that the appetite for truth may outlast and even devour all the duller appetites of man" (73,74).
About Knowing History - Remembering...
"Perhaps there is really no such thing as a Revolution recorded in history. What happened was always a Counter-Revolution. Men were always rebelling against the last rebels; or even repenting of the last rebellion.... Nobody but a lunatic could pretend that [modern trends of rebellion toward the last generation] were a progress; for they obviously go first one way and then the other. But whichever is right, one thing is certainly wrong; and that is the modern habit of looking at them only from the modern end. For that is only to see the end of the tale; they rebel against they know not what, because it arose they know not when; intents only on its ending, they are ignorant of its beginning; and therefore of its very being" (76, 77).
About The Debate Between Science and Religion/the Church...
"Albert, the Swabian, rightly called the Great, was the founder of modern science. He did more than any other man to prepare that process, which has turned the alchemist into the chemist, and the astrologer into the astronomer.... Serious historians are abandoning the absurd notion that the medieval Church persecuted all scientists as wizards. It is very nearly the opposite of the truth. The world sometimes persecuted them as wizards, and sometimes ran after them as wizards; the sort of pursuing that is the reverse of persecuting. The Church alone regarded them really and solely as scientists" (66).
"...private theories about what the Bible ought to mean, and premature theories about what the world ought to mean, have met in loud and widely advertised controversy, especially in the Victorian time; and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion" (88).
"It is the fact that falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true. It is when the stab comes near the nerve of truth, that the Christian conscience cries out in pain." This was proved by St Thomas' final stand against heresy in his day. "He had cleared the ground for a general understanding about faith and enquiry; an understanding that has generally been observed among Catholics, and certainly never deserted without disaster. It was the idea that the scientist should go on exploring and experimenting freely, so long as he did not claim an infallibility and finality which it was against his own principles to claim. Meanwhile the Church should go on developing and defining, about supernatural things, so long as she did not claim a right to alter the deposit of faith, which it was against her own principles to claim. And when hd had said this, Siger of Brabant got up and said something so horribly like it, and so horribly unlike, that (like Antichrist) he might have deceived the very elect.
Siger of Brabant said this: the Church must be right theologically, but she can be wrong scientifically. There are two truths; the truth of the supernatural world, and the truth of the natural world.... It was not two ways of finding the same truth; it was an untruthful way of pretending that there are two truths.... Those who complain that theologians draw fine distinctions could hardly find a better example of their own folly. In fact, a fine distinction can be a flat contradiction" (92,93).
About Past Ages...
"The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint [and maybe we could also use the word prophet] is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age.... Christ did not tell his apostles that they were only the excellent people, or the only excellent people, but that they were the exceptional people; the permanently incongruous and incompatible people..." (23).
"...as the eighteenth century thought itself the age of reason, and the nineteenth century thought itself the age of common sense, the twentieth century cannot as yet even manage to think itself anything but the age of uncommon nonsense" (25). And what would GKC think of the twenty-first century?
"Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century [when St. Thomas lived], who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the Renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing" (41).
"That is what makes the riddle of the medieval age; that it was not one age but two ages. We look into the moods of some men, and it might be the Stone Age; we look into the minds of other men, and thy might be living in the Golden Age.... There were always good men and bad men; but in this time good men who were subtle lived with bad men who were simple" (63,64).
"I think there are fewer people now alive who understand argument than there were twenty or thirty years ago; and St. Thomas might have preferred the society of the atheists of the early nineteenth century, to that of the blank sceptics of the early twentieth" (126).
Referring to the Reformation of Martin Luther, "It had a peculiar horror and loathing of the great Greek philosophies, and of the Scholasticism that had been founded on those philosophies.... Man could say nothing to God, nothing from God, nothing about God, except an almost inarticulate cry for mercy and for the supernatural help of Christ, in a world where all natural things were useless. Reason was useless. Will was useless. Man could not move himself an inch any more than a stone. Man could not trust what was in his head any more than a turnip. Nothing remained in earth or heaven, but the name of Christ lifted in that lonely imprecation; awful as the cry of a beast in pain" (194,195).
Additionally, it was amazing how often I thought of myself as I read about Thomas (not with grandiose familiarity, but an odd "oh, there's someone else like that..."). And then there were the moments I found St. Thomas wholly unique, as when GKC described him as "one of those large things who take up a little room" (130). A few delightful bits of insight about Aquinas that encouraged me were:
1) "He maintained controversy with an eye on only two qualities; clarity and courtesy. And he maintained these because they were entirely practical qualities..." (140). For regular readers of this blog you will recognize the similarity of this trait with another man I highly respect - Dennis Prager.
2) "Aquinas is almost always on the side of simplicity" (150). Also for frequent readers, you will recall my fondness for the quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I would not give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity. But I would give my right arm for simplicity on the other side of complexity."
3) Something that my Seminary preaching prof taught -- the importance for preachers to understand humanity, both his nature and condition -- was also underscored in this book. He prescribed reading good literature to aid this pursuit. Interestingly, GKC explained, "...there ought to be a real study called Anthropology corresponding to Theology [as opposed to corresponding to biology]. In this sense St. Thomas Aquinas, perhaps more than he is anything else, he is a great anthropologist" (161).
I wish I could have met St. Thomas, and look forward to the day I will. There is much to learn from him and I hope to marinate in his life story a bit for that purpose. Here are the excerpts I underlined:
About St. Thomas' Personality:
Thomas actually studied under Albert the Great. And being known to be shy, Albert lured Thomas out of his shell by exercising his great knowledge, as GKC explains: "He had studied many specimens of the most monstrous of all monstrosities; that is called Man. He knew the signs and marks of the sort of man, who is in an innocent way something of a monster among men"....And because of Thomas' shyness, he had earned the nickname 'the dumb ox'. But Albert declared: "You call him a Dumb Ox; I tell you this Dumb Ox shall bellow so loud that his bellowings will fill the world" (71). And he was right.
"St Thomas was always ready, with the hearty sort of humility, to give thanks for all his thinking" (71).
"He had been a man with a huge controversial appetite, a thing that exists in some men and not others, in saints and in sinners" (96).
"...when he was reluctantly dragged from his work, and we might almost say from his play. For both were for him found in the unusual hobby of thinking, which is for some men a thing much more intoxicating than mere drinking" (97).
"But there is a general tone and temper of Aquinas, which it is as difficult to avoid as daylight in a great house of windows. It is that positive position of his mind, which is filled and soaked as with sunshine with the warmth and wonder of created things" (119).
"...if his daydreams were dreams, they were dreams of day; and dreams of the day of battle. If he talked to himself, it was because he was arguing with somebody else. We can put it another way, by saying that his daydreams, like the dreams of a dog, were dreams of hunting; of pursuing the error as well as pursuing the truth; of following all the twists and turns of evasive falsehood, and tracking it at last to its lair in hell" (125,126).
"He was interested in the souls of all his fellow creatures, but not in classifying the minds of any of them; in a sense it was too personal and in another sense too arrogant for his particular mind and temper" (128).
"... and he goes out of his way to say that men must vary their lives with jokes and even with pranks" (131).
St Thomas' faith was very intellectual, to say the least. However, that doesn't mean it was only intellectual. There was an emotional element to it for him, although "it would always have embarrassed him to write about [this emotional side] at such length. The one exception permitted to him was the rare but remarkable output of his poetry. All sanctity is secrecy; and his sacred poetry was really a secretion; like the pearl in a very tightly closed oyster" (140). "It may be worth remarking, for those who think that he thought too little of the emotional or romantic side of religious truth, that he asked to have The Song of Solomon read through to him from beginning to end [on his deathbed]" (143).
"...this philosopher does not merely touch on social things, or even take them in his stride to spiritual things; though that is his direction. He takes hold of them, he has not only a grasp of them, but a grip. As all his controversies prove, he was perhaps a perfect example of the iron hand in the velvet glove. He was a man who always turned his full attention to anything; and he seems to fix even passing thins as they pass. To him even what was momentary was momentous" (187).
"It never occurred to Aquinas to use Aquinas as a weapon. There is not a trace of his ever using his personal advantages, of birth or body or brain or breeding, in debate with anybody" (196).
About St. Thomas' Philosophy:
It was not only a primary idea of Thomist doctrine that a central common sense is nourished by the five senses, but "a truly and eminently Christian doctrine" as well. Unfortunately, GKC comments, "For upon this point modern writers write a great deal of nonsense; and show more than their normal ingenuity in missing the point" (32).
"Thomas was a very great man who reconciled religion with reason..., who insisted that the senses were the windows of the soul and that the reason had a divine right to feed upon facts, and that it was the business of the Faith to digest the strong meat of the toughest and most practical of pagan philosophies" (32,33).
"...the philosophy of St. Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs.... The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God" (148).
"...I am not so silly as to suggest that all the writings of St. Thomas are simple and straightforward; in the sense of being easy to understand. There are passages I do not in the least understand myself;...there are passages about which the greatest Thomists still differ and dispute. But that is a question of a thing being hard to read or hard to understand: not hard to accept when understood. that is a mere matter of "The Cat sat on the Mat" being written in Chinese characters; or "Mary had a Little Lamb" in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The only point I am stressing here is that Aquinas is almost always on the side of simplicity, and supports the ordinary man's acceptance of ordinary truism" (150).
"This is, in a very rude outline, his philosophy; it is impossible in such an outline to describe his theology. Anyone writing so small a book about so big a man, must leave out something. Those who know him best will best understand why... I have left out the only important thing" (181).
Below are some general thoughts by GKC that seem to be as relevant today as they were when he wrote and as much as they applied to the days of St. Thomas:
About the recent SCOTUS Decision...
"...he is emphatic upon the fact that law, when it ceases to be justice, ceases even to be law" (188).
About China...
"...things which men produce only to sell are likely to be worse in quality than the things they produce in order to consume" (189).
About The War in Iraq...
"War, in the wide modern sense, is possible, not because more men disagree, but because more men agree. Under the peculiarly modern coercions, such as Compulsory Education and Conscription, there are very large peaceful areas, that they can all agree upon War. In that age men disagreed even about war; and peace might break out anywhere" (56). It may be that we are seeing a repeat of that era when there was more disagreement, and thus the more difficulty in finding a consensus regarding war.
About Global Warming...
"...most men must have a revealed religion, because they have not time to argue. No time, that is, to argue fairly. There is always time to argue unfairly; not least in a time like ours.... As a matter of fact, it is generally the man who is not ready to argue, who is ready to sneer. That is why, in recent literature, there has been so little argument and so much sneering" (127).
"Behold our refutation of the error. It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers [or environmentalists] themselves. If then anyone there be who, boastfully taking pride in his supposed wisdom, wishes to challenge what we have written, let him reply openly if he dare. He shall find me there confronting him, and not only my negligible self, but many another whose study is truth. We shall do battle with his errors or bring a cure to his ignorance" (94). Unfortunately, Al Gore has consistently refused to debate anyone publicly. I guess that's why he can say the debate is settled - since it never actually started.
GKC responded to this reaction by observing: "After the great example of St. Thomas, the principle stands, or ought always to have stood established; that we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours" (95,96).
About The Emergent Church...
"In short, a real knowledge of mankind will tell anybody that Religion is a very terrible thing; that it is truly a raging fire, and that Authority is often quite as much needed to restrain it as to impose it. Asceticism, or the war with the appetites, is itself an appetite. It can never be eliminated from among the strange ambitions of Man. But it can be kept in some reasonable control..." (104).
"In truth, this vividly illuminates the provincial stupidity of those who object to what they call 'creeds and dogmas.' It was precisely the creed and dogma that saved the sanity of the world. These people generally propose an alternative religion of intuition and feeling. If, in the really Dark Ages, there had been a religion of feeling, it would have been a religion of black and suicidal feeling. It was the rigid creed that resisted the rush of suicidal feeling.... A thousand enthusiasts for celibacy, in the day of the great rush to the desert or the cloister, might have called marriage a sin, if they had only considered their individual ideals, in the modern manner, and their own immediate feelings about marriage. Fortunately, they had to accept the Authority of the Church, which had definitely said that marriage was not a sin.... when Religion would have maddened men, Theology kept them sane" (110,111).
About Feelings vs. Intellect in Faith...
"Mystics can be represented as men who maintain that the final fruition or joy of the soul is rather a sensation than a thought. The motto of the Mystics has always been, 'Taste and See'.... [It] is equally right in saying that the intellect is at home in the topmost heavens; and that the appetite for truth may outlast and even devour all the duller appetites of man" (73,74).
About Knowing History - Remembering...
"Perhaps there is really no such thing as a Revolution recorded in history. What happened was always a Counter-Revolution. Men were always rebelling against the last rebels; or even repenting of the last rebellion.... Nobody but a lunatic could pretend that [modern trends of rebellion toward the last generation] were a progress; for they obviously go first one way and then the other. But whichever is right, one thing is certainly wrong; and that is the modern habit of looking at them only from the modern end. For that is only to see the end of the tale; they rebel against they know not what, because it arose they know not when; intents only on its ending, they are ignorant of its beginning; and therefore of its very being" (76, 77).
About The Debate Between Science and Religion/the Church...
"Albert, the Swabian, rightly called the Great, was the founder of modern science. He did more than any other man to prepare that process, which has turned the alchemist into the chemist, and the astrologer into the astronomer.... Serious historians are abandoning the absurd notion that the medieval Church persecuted all scientists as wizards. It is very nearly the opposite of the truth. The world sometimes persecuted them as wizards, and sometimes ran after them as wizards; the sort of pursuing that is the reverse of persecuting. The Church alone regarded them really and solely as scientists" (66).
"...private theories about what the Bible ought to mean, and premature theories about what the world ought to mean, have met in loud and widely advertised controversy, especially in the Victorian time; and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion" (88).
"It is the fact that falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true. It is when the stab comes near the nerve of truth, that the Christian conscience cries out in pain." This was proved by St Thomas' final stand against heresy in his day. "He had cleared the ground for a general understanding about faith and enquiry; an understanding that has generally been observed among Catholics, and certainly never deserted without disaster. It was the idea that the scientist should go on exploring and experimenting freely, so long as he did not claim an infallibility and finality which it was against his own principles to claim. Meanwhile the Church should go on developing and defining, about supernatural things, so long as she did not claim a right to alter the deposit of faith, which it was against her own principles to claim. And when hd had said this, Siger of Brabant got up and said something so horribly like it, and so horribly unlike, that (like Antichrist) he might have deceived the very elect.
Siger of Brabant said this: the Church must be right theologically, but she can be wrong scientifically. There are two truths; the truth of the supernatural world, and the truth of the natural world.... It was not two ways of finding the same truth; it was an untruthful way of pretending that there are two truths.... Those who complain that theologians draw fine distinctions could hardly find a better example of their own folly. In fact, a fine distinction can be a flat contradiction" (92,93).
About Past Ages...
"The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote. Indeed that is why the saint [and maybe we could also use the word prophet] is mistaken for a poison because he is an antidote. He will generally be found restoring the world to sanity by exaggerating whatever the world neglects, which is by no means always the same element in every age.... Christ did not tell his apostles that they were only the excellent people, or the only excellent people, but that they were the exceptional people; the permanently incongruous and incompatible people..." (23).
"...as the eighteenth century thought itself the age of reason, and the nineteenth century thought itself the age of common sense, the twentieth century cannot as yet even manage to think itself anything but the age of uncommon nonsense" (25). And what would GKC think of the twenty-first century?
"Nobody can understand the greatness of the thirteenth century [when St. Thomas lived], who does not realize that it was a great growth of new things produced by a living thing. In that sense it was really bolder and freer than what we call the Renaissance, which was a resurrection of old things discovered in a dead thing" (41).
"That is what makes the riddle of the medieval age; that it was not one age but two ages. We look into the moods of some men, and it might be the Stone Age; we look into the minds of other men, and thy might be living in the Golden Age.... There were always good men and bad men; but in this time good men who were subtle lived with bad men who were simple" (63,64).
"I think there are fewer people now alive who understand argument than there were twenty or thirty years ago; and St. Thomas might have preferred the society of the atheists of the early nineteenth century, to that of the blank sceptics of the early twentieth" (126).
Referring to the Reformation of Martin Luther, "It had a peculiar horror and loathing of the great Greek philosophies, and of the Scholasticism that had been founded on those philosophies.... Man could say nothing to God, nothing from God, nothing about God, except an almost inarticulate cry for mercy and for the supernatural help of Christ, in a world where all natural things were useless. Reason was useless. Will was useless. Man could not move himself an inch any more than a stone. Man could not trust what was in his head any more than a turnip. Nothing remained in earth or heaven, but the name of Christ lifted in that lonely imprecation; awful as the cry of a beast in pain" (194,195).
Facism Today
Thomas Sowell writes a review of the book Liberal Facism that has piqued my interest. He explains:
It really does sound like the Liberal (or Progressive) agenda today. Who would have thought the US could be susceptible to this, considering we fought a war to demolish the fruit of this worldview? It reminds me of a poem from the epilogue of the German Bertold Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui , which I came across while writing my Master's thesis (language warning):
"Because the word "fascist" is often thrown around loosely these days, as a general term of abuse, it is good that "Liberal Fascism" begins by discussing the real Fascism, introduced into Italy after the First World War by Benito Mussolini.
The Fascists were completely against individualism in general and especially against individualism in a free market economy. Their agenda included minimum wage laws, government restrictions on profit-making, progressive taxation of capital, and "rigidly secular" schools.
Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call the shots as to how businesses would be run.
They were for "industrial policy," long before liberals coined that phrase in the United States.
Indeed, the whole Fascist economic agenda bears a remarkable resemblance to what liberals would later advocate."
It really does sound like the Liberal (or Progressive) agenda today. Who would have thought the US could be susceptible to this, considering we fought a war to demolish the fruit of this worldview? It reminds me of a poem from the epilogue of the German Bertold Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui , which I came across while writing my Master's thesis (language warning):
If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We’d see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn’t always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don’t yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.
August Rush
This movie gave me chills! I can't think of the last time I had an experience like this watching a movie. There is something about music that has always captivated me. I have written poems about it (I'll add below), and sometimes just try to "swim" in the sound of a song and allow the chords to reverberate through my soul and shake the dust from the rafters when it strikes me just right. There's even a fascinating story by Tolkien that talks about Creation actually happening in a chorus of music [The Silmarillion]. There is something about it that I can't explain.
So this movie, August Rush, gave me chills as I watched it tonight. Here's a clip:
There are some great actors, including the young Freddie Highmore (from Finding Neverland), and the story weaves the magic of music, lost love, and the journey of an orphan into an amazing tale. Highly recommended. There is a line in the movie: "Music is all around us. All you have to do is listen." This is exactly the point of this poem I wrote about 8 years ago.
So this movie, August Rush, gave me chills as I watched it tonight. Here's a clip:
This page contained an embedded video. Click here to view it.
There are some great actors, including the young Freddie Highmore (from Finding Neverland), and the story weaves the magic of music, lost love, and the journey of an orphan into an amazing tale. Highly recommended. There is a line in the movie: "Music is all around us. All you have to do is listen." This is exactly the point of this poem I wrote about 8 years ago.
The Background Music
by John Laukkanen
There are those moments in movies
when words are too weak to convey
all that the moment really means
and all that the heart wants to say.
So the script is pushed to the side
and the score is called in to speak.
The scale then sings the height and depth
of the heart when words are too weak.
Whether two lovers in a park
staring at the stars in the sky,
or two friends on a summer's night
sitting silently side by side;
It's here that we hear in the movies
the background music start to play.
And we sit in silence and understand
exactly what words couldn't say.
Each heart has a song that it's singing;
and silence is the maestros cue.
So when the words just can't be found
the heart carries the moment through.
Now the magic in the movies
is in the secret that they've found:
they can mimic the hearts music
and broadcast it in the background.
But this is not reality;
for the heart rarely sings that loud.
And most never sit still enough
to hear its whisper o'er the crowd.
But there are those rare occasions,
like I have had since I've met you,
when I can hear your heart singing.
And I hope you can hear mine too.
I love those scenes in movies
when the background music starts to play,
'cause I have heard this in real life;
something few can honestly say.
So here's the last scene of the movie (WARNING: spoiler). But this is the scene that gave me goose bumps, especially when the little girl [Jamia Nash] starts to sing.by John Laukkanen
There are those moments in movies
when words are too weak to convey
all that the moment really means
and all that the heart wants to say.
So the script is pushed to the side
and the score is called in to speak.
The scale then sings the height and depth
of the heart when words are too weak.
Whether two lovers in a park
staring at the stars in the sky,
or two friends on a summer's night
sitting silently side by side;
It's here that we hear in the movies
the background music start to play.
And we sit in silence and understand
exactly what words couldn't say.
Each heart has a song that it's singing;
and silence is the maestros cue.
So when the words just can't be found
the heart carries the moment through.
Now the magic in the movies
is in the secret that they've found:
they can mimic the hearts music
and broadcast it in the background.
But this is not reality;
for the heart rarely sings that loud.
And most never sit still enough
to hear its whisper o'er the crowd.
But there are those rare occasions,
like I have had since I've met you,
when I can hear your heart singing.
And I hope you can hear mine too.
I love those scenes in movies
when the background music starts to play,
'cause I have heard this in real life;
something few can honestly say.
Happy 60th Mom!
My mother is a wonderful, fun-loving, sometimes silly, caring woman. Although I'm sure I have produced many of those gray hairs that she wears so beautifully, my sisters declare (and I don't deny) that I am my mother's favorite. No, it's not my intelligence, or shocking good looks. It's probably just the fact that I am her only son. And even though I have always been a wandering soul, almost more comfortable in a new place than at home, she has loved me with an open hand despite her hearts better inclinations. She has taught me by example some of the values I esteem the most, more by her habit than intention. For her example I am grateful.But the most significant praise I can offer is for her unending service to her family. Her seemingly untiring hospitality and gracious welcome, her intuitive sense of making "home" comfortable with cluttered rooms of nicnacs, fluffy pillows for sleeping in, and hot chocolate or tea just before bed. And this reminds me of the following poem I include here in her honor. Thank-you for your "glorious" gift!
To Give One's Life
by Mary Carolyn Davies
To give one's life through [sixty years] is harder
Than to give it in one moment gloriously;
To make each instant a brown willow basket
Heaped with fresh flowers and ferns; to ever be
A cup of never-failing cool spring water
To those who walk a dusty road alone;
To succor with life-giving bread, regardless,
Those who expect a stone.
To give one's life, on weary days and hopeless;
To give one's life, hour after hour, and be
Ready to give again, again, is harder
Than to give it in a moment, gloriously.
I love you, Mom!
Poetry
I love poetry - both reading it and writing it. When I write poetry I thoroughly enjoy the first blink of inspiration in a phrase, a hook. Then comes the box I build to contain what is about to be poured out. It's not a physical box, but a mental one, a rhythmic one of meter and rhyme and tempo. There is something energizing about the torture that this self-imposed (yet, almost natural) structure brings. I've never quite understood it, but know that I do not like poetry that does not have it. To me, free verse is not poetry. And the elation I feel when the poem has worked its way out of me like a butterfly from its cocoon, and lifts off on its own for the first time, is unexplainable.
And then I read the following thoughts by John Piper:
"Good poetry speaks truth. Not that each line is naked fact, but lines, when taken all together, tell what really is in spite of what may seem to be.... Finite and fallen as we are, we need much help to see the light. To us there are dark places in the truth. But who can say, in this brief vapor's breath of life, what light might break upon the soul that looks, unwavering, and long enough at some dark spot, with prayer and pondering and hope that it may turn into a portal for the sun? So quickly we pass over hard words and painful stories in the Bible. The poet lingers. And looks. And looks. And looks at this dark spot. Until he weeps and rages and then, perhaps sees. Then, all too imperfectly, he tries with words to make the needle point of light more visible for others, to bore the point more wide or press the doubting face against the tiny perforation in the wall of pain. He writes a poem. [Like the prophet Jeremiah expressing his anguish in the book of Lamenations, or David his joy in the Psalms or Solomon his emotion in his Songs] Why do poets do these things to themselves? Surely, if there is any place for authentic, unencumbered spontaneity, it is here in the overflow of agony. Why bind the heart with such a severe discipline of poetic form...?"
"It is a testimony, written on the heart, that reality has contours. Being is one way and not another. There are hard, unbending facts. God said, "I am who I am." Now what we feel him to be, or wish him to be, or make him to be. He simply is. We must write the verse of our lives within the constraints of unbending, ultimate fact. Therefore, laboring to look and look and look at what is really there, until we feel what we are meant to feel, and then to say what we have seen and felt in some exacting poetic form is a testimony to the truth that we are not God."
Who Does Not Love True Poetry
by Henry Clay Hall
Who does not love true poetry,
He lacks a bosom friend
To walk with him and talk with him,
And all his steps attend.
Who does not love true poetry--
Its rhythmic throb and swing
The treat of it, the sweet of it,
Along the paths of Spring:
Its joyous lilting melody
In every passing breeze,
The deep of it, the sweep of it,
Through hours of toil or ease;
Its grandeur and sublimity--
Its majesty and might--
The feel of it, the peal of it,
Through all the lonely night;
Its tenderness and soothing touch;
Like balm on evening air,
That feelingly, and healingly
Cures all the hurts of care:
Who does not love true poetry
Of sea and sky and sod--
The height of it, the might of it--
He has not known his God.
And then I read the following thoughts by John Piper:
"Good poetry speaks truth. Not that each line is naked fact, but lines, when taken all together, tell what really is in spite of what may seem to be.... Finite and fallen as we are, we need much help to see the light. To us there are dark places in the truth. But who can say, in this brief vapor's breath of life, what light might break upon the soul that looks, unwavering, and long enough at some dark spot, with prayer and pondering and hope that it may turn into a portal for the sun? So quickly we pass over hard words and painful stories in the Bible. The poet lingers. And looks. And looks. And looks at this dark spot. Until he weeps and rages and then, perhaps sees. Then, all too imperfectly, he tries with words to make the needle point of light more visible for others, to bore the point more wide or press the doubting face against the tiny perforation in the wall of pain. He writes a poem. [Like the prophet Jeremiah expressing his anguish in the book of Lamenations, or David his joy in the Psalms or Solomon his emotion in his Songs] Why do poets do these things to themselves? Surely, if there is any place for authentic, unencumbered spontaneity, it is here in the overflow of agony. Why bind the heart with such a severe discipline of poetic form...?"
"It is a testimony, written on the heart, that reality has contours. Being is one way and not another. There are hard, unbending facts. God said, "I am who I am." Now what we feel him to be, or wish him to be, or make him to be. He simply is. We must write the verse of our lives within the constraints of unbending, ultimate fact. Therefore, laboring to look and look and look at what is really there, until we feel what we are meant to feel, and then to say what we have seen and felt in some exacting poetic form is a testimony to the truth that we are not God."
Who Does Not Love True Poetry
by Henry Clay Hall
Who does not love true poetry,
He lacks a bosom friend
To walk with him and talk with him,
And all his steps attend.
Who does not love true poetry--
Its rhythmic throb and swing
The treat of it, the sweet of it,
Along the paths of Spring:
Its joyous lilting melody
In every passing breeze,
The deep of it, the sweep of it,
Through hours of toil or ease;
Its grandeur and sublimity--
Its majesty and might--
The feel of it, the peal of it,
Through all the lonely night;
Its tenderness and soothing touch;
Like balm on evening air,
That feelingly, and healingly
Cures all the hurts of care:
Who does not love true poetry
Of sea and sky and sod--
The height of it, the might of it--
He has not known his God.
Oh, to slip the surly bonds of Earth....
This is true poetry (which made a memorable speech). I have always marvelled at this line ever since I heard it from President Reagan that night. I have repeated it many times and even referenced it in my blog a while back. I finally tracked down the story and the rest of the poem posted here. Enjoy.
On 28 January 1986, in his TV broadcast to the nation on the day of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, President Reagan concluded: `We will never forget them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.'
On 28 January 1986, in his TV broadcast to the nation on the day of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, President Reagan concluded: `We will never forget them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.'
This immediately sent people the world over on fruitless journeys to their quotation books. Reagan was quoting `High Flight,' a sonnet written by John Gillespie Magee, a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War. He came to Britain, flew in a Spitfire squadron, and was killed at the age of nineteen on 11 December 1941 during a training flight from the airfield near Scopwick.
Magee had been born in Shanghai of an American father and an English mother who were missionaries. He was educated at Rugby and at school in Connecticut. The sonnet was written on the back of a letter to his parents which stated, `I am enclosing a verse I wrote the other day. It started at 30,000 feet, and was finished soon after I landed.' The parents were living in Washington, DC, at the time of his death and, according to the Library of Congress book Respectfully Quoted, the poem came to the attention of the Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish, who acclaimed Magee as the first poet of the war.
Copies of `High Flight'--sometimes referred to as `the pilot's creed'--were widely distributed and plaques bearing it were sent to all R.C.A.F. air fields and training stations. The poem was published in 1943 in a volume called More Poems from the Forces (which was `dedicated to the USSR'). This is a transcription of the original manuscript in the Library of Congress:
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,--and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew--
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds,--and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor eer eagle flew--
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
The Christmas Box
I haven't written in a while because I've been focusing my creative energy on my annual Christmas letter and poem. Here is the poem.
The Christmas Box
By John Laukkanen, 2006
There was a box under the tree
this year on Christmas Eve,
wrapped in paper solid black
so dark you'd ne'er believe,
That on this gift the tag did read:
"To Jesus, with my love"
And what was put inside was not
something that I'd think of.
The wise men brought their greatest gifts.
And none were wrapped like this;
the sparkling gold and precious myrrh
and poignant frankincense.
The fabled Drummer Boy did too
present the best he could.
He beat a royal rhythm true
on skin with sticks of wood.
And Mary sacrificed e'en more
when she perfumed his feet.
An off'ring of the purest kind
where saint and sinner meet.
Santa himself is hosted well
with milk and cookies fresh.
So what would be the reason why
I'd offer Jesus less?
You have to understand it clear
(the reason he did come),
was to redeem and to destroy
the work of th’ evil one.
He did not come for treasure vast,
nor pamp'ring, nor applause.
He came to save the "naughty" ones,
including Santa Claus.
He came that he might take from us
our sins and fallings-short,
And so the box was filled to brim
with my thorough report.
Of all the things throughout the year
that truly missed the mark:
my actions, words and attitudes
that turned this box so dark.
And he so willingly did take
this “gift” that was so black.
For that's the way he planned it so
that he could have me back.
And in its place on Christmas morn
a box as white as doves,
and filled with Peace, the tag did read:
"From Jesus with my love".
A Butterfly's Love
Here is a poem I wrote when thinking about my romantic temperment. Thank you Sara for being so gracious to sit still for me.
Commentary: The first "phase" of romance between boys and girls is generally antagonistic. Just think of all the ponytail-pulling and the shin-kicking that goes on in young love . And what some girls put guys through to prove their love eternal is simply cruel. I think girls have the upperhand at that stage [since the new-found intoxication from testosterone overrides all reason and strategic thinking - recall any cheesy pick-up lines from adolescent boys] and the "teasing" can seem like a boy gets nowhere for all his "crawling, crawling still". In spite of all the effort and misunderstood intention, it's amazing boys and girls still try to find love after the age of 16. Then, somehow a metamorphosis takes place and men find there's a bigger world out there. All the adventure that comes with exploring and conquering cannot be quenched in just the opposite sex - but it's definitely a part of the "sinking, soaring" that he loves. And when there is one that catches his eye, who does not appear to be a threat to his existence or opposed to his nature, who will not try to tame him or capture his wild heart -- then he settles down for her. The difference in this phase is that the man's actions are not meant to "tease" or torture the woman - but it most certainly will frustrate her [primarily because it is just so foreign to her own nature]. But the great reward in this kind of "love" is that it is willingly given - the woman offering hers by being still, and the man offering his by moving close. This love is the sweetest because it is not demanded, or forced, or extorted. This is just a simple word picture. Please don't make this "walk on all fours".
A Butterfly's Love
Little girls love to chase fluttering butterflies
in green fields on sunny days, and yet, don't realize:
The fly has not forgotten how hard it used to be
when she could simply pick him up and tease him endlessly.
At the moment he would think he just escaped her hand
she'd make him trace his steps again from back where he began.
She would muse as he would move. She'd squint and pet and squeel
as he kept crawling, crawling still, as if a mouse in wheel.
But now that they are older and he has found his wings,
it's her turn to experience some frustrating things.
She can chase and jump and grab, and never catch a one.
But if she chooses to sit still she'll see how it is done.
Butterflies are quick to learn the freedom that wings give;
loving all the sinking, soaring - for flying is to live.
But if you sit still enough and 'light the playful view,
the liberated butterfly will settle down for you.
Then you'll get what you did want: this creature to come nigh,
and the joy of willful love - exactly as will I.
Little girls love to chase fluttering butterflies
in green fields on sunny days, and yet, don't realize:
The fly has not forgotten how hard it used to be
when she could simply pick him up and tease him endlessly.
At the moment he would think he just escaped her hand
she'd make him trace his steps again from back where he began.
She would muse as he would move. She'd squint and pet and squeel
as he kept crawling, crawling still, as if a mouse in wheel.
But now that they are older and he has found his wings,
it's her turn to experience some frustrating things.
She can chase and jump and grab, and never catch a one.
But if she chooses to sit still she'll see how it is done.
Butterflies are quick to learn the freedom that wings give;
loving all the sinking, soaring - for flying is to live.
But if you sit still enough and 'light the playful view,
the liberated butterfly will settle down for you.
Then you'll get what you did want: this creature to come nigh,
and the joy of willful love - exactly as will I.
Brothers
I was inspired to write this poem in the Fall of 1999 after hearing “The St. Crispins Day Speech” from Shakespeare’s King Henry V .
Brothers
This day, if any, we’re marked to die,
so to live would cause our Savior shame.
And though only few would choose this course,
let those who will, do so in His Name.
For though our names may be forgotten;
fame and fortune given to others,
those who walk this pathway less-travelled
will be named among us as brothers.
Don’t look around at the faint of heart
who draw back from this battle we fight,
who hold their lives more dear to them
than the cause of the Kingdom of Light.
For they already have their spoils
and none from this victory will share.
To die, if we must, with the coward
is a medal I refuse to wear!
No! Today the call is for the brave,
who will bear the name of Christ with pride.
Him who just the mention of that Name
causes his heart to well up inside.
Let us live to die and die to live,
without hesitation or reserve.
To stand unashamed before our King
and claim a reward so undeserved.
And by His grace, brothers, we will have
treasures that the flames let us keep
to present to Him as tokens that
remind us our reward wasn’t cheap.
The brief sacrifices we endured,
and all the scars ~ he understands them.
How much better to have these treasures
than to come That Day empty-handed!
For he who lays his life down this day
is my brother for eternity.
And we will sing the loudest That Day,
when we sing the song of Victory.
This day, if any, we’re marked to die,
so to live would cause our Savior shame.
And though only few would choose this course,
let those who will, do so in His Name.
For though our names may be forgotten;
fame and fortune given to others,
those who walk this pathway less-travelled
will be named among us as brothers.
Don’t look around at the faint of heart
who draw back from this battle we fight,
who hold their lives more dear to them
than the cause of the Kingdom of Light.
For they already have their spoils
and none from this victory will share.
To die, if we must, with the coward
is a medal I refuse to wear!
No! Today the call is for the brave,
who will bear the name of Christ with pride.
Him who just the mention of that Name
causes his heart to well up inside.
Let us live to die and die to live,
without hesitation or reserve.
To stand unashamed before our King
and claim a reward so undeserved.
And by His grace, brothers, we will have
treasures that the flames let us keep
to present to Him as tokens that
remind us our reward wasn’t cheap.
The brief sacrifices we endured,
and all the scars ~ he understands them.
How much better to have these treasures
than to come That Day empty-handed!
For he who lays his life down this day
is my brother for eternity.
And we will sing the loudest That Day,
when we sing the song of Victory.
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