Peter’s Blog for November
The Great BeautyT
The Great Beauty
I went to see this film partly because it was highly recommended by the critics but I was also drawn to it by my interest over the years in the theme of beauty. During the film’s opening scenes I wondered if I had made a mistake for they were a sensual overload of hedonism and decadence in the tradition of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. What they portrayed seemed to me more the ‘the sick soul of Europe’ than its great beauty.
Then Jep introduces himself. He is a man about town who lives at the centre of Rome’s night life. He has been 40 years in Rome where he has attained his own niche in society after writing a novel for which he has become a celebrity. He works as a journalist and is seen as a connoisseur of the highlife, knowing everyone who matters but he is gradually becoming politely disenchanted with it.
The Beauty that transforms
He is ready for something more when well into the film he is visited by someone who married the woman he first fell in love with. His visitor revealed to him that his wife had recently died and that going through her belongings he had found her diary. On reading it he discovered that Jep was the one she had been in love with all her life and that he was spoken of as her lifelong companion. This and a relationship he had with a woman much younger than he who was terminally ill caused Jep to reappraise his life in relation to love, sex, society, art and Rome. He often returns to his memories of his first love and to the invitation of that which he had turned down but in doing so he feels he has turned aside from ‘the great beauty’ he could have found. Compared to the beauty of this experience he feels that all else is so much “blah, blah, blah” but that seen in the light of it everything has a new radiance.
“Thy sweet love remembered”
Literature is full of experiences of our dream of love and of how its beauty, radiance or splendour draws us into a relationship in which joy prevails. Being the second last of a family of ten I never ceased to wonder at how my brothers and sisters were grasped by love’s beauty and transformed by it from being difficult teenagers to affable adults. Few have expressed the extraordinary power of beauty to transform us as Shakespeare in his 29th Sonnet.
When, in disgrace with fortune and in men’s eyes,
all alone between my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee – and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
As I mentioned above a large part of what drew me to this film was my curiosity about what it would say about beauty for over the years I have had a profound interest in how central beauty is to our dream. When I studied Philosophy I became aware that from early in its history it concluded that we see reality, as through a prism, in three very distinct ways: as true, as good and as beautiful. Now, while what is true and what is good were reflected on exhaustively during my years as a student, what is beautiful hardly received a mention. Then in my late fifties I came across van Balthasar who wrote extensively about how beauty emerged in the Bible and in works of literature right into modern times. As a result, I began to see beauty as an essential part of the human dream as it is the intense attractiveness of the love that creates and sustains the main relationships of life and the joy we find in them.
When I came to write Love Remembered I devoted a chapter to the role of beauty in the realisation of this dream and in my final book, A World Alight with Splendour, I devoted two chapters to it. One of these is about the role of beauty in the realisation of our dream and the other is about how beauty is found in our relationships with family and friends.
Where beauty is found
Like William Wordsworth, we tend to seek beauty initially in nature and in art but fail to find it where it essentially is in the relationships that love establishes and maintains.
Vain is the glory of the sky,
The beauty vain of field or grove,
Unless, while with admiring eye
We gaze, we also learn to love.
In this context, Erich Fromm’s comment in his book, The Art of Loving is poignant. He says that the greatest and yet the most neglected art is that of loving. This is the art that the Great Commandment says is central to life, the art of getting our whole person, body and soul, heart and mind involved in the way we love and relate. (Lk 10:25)
There is a touching example in the film Calendar Girls of how a person has learned to notice this kind of art and its beauty. Jim who is terminally ill with cancer speaks to his wife of the glory he has seen grow in her over the years of their marriage. He says to her, ‘The women of Yorkshire are like the flowers of Yorkshire; every stage of their growth is more beautiful than the last; but the last phase is always the most glorious’.
What makes these words truly striking is that, at a time when we no longer associate beauty with the way people relate, a man would notice the glory in his wife’s life and be willing to express it so eloquently. Yet, there is a unique style of relating, a presence and aura that each of us develops in our efforts to communicate. It is a style of relating we need to notice and appreciate, first of all in ourselves, for if we do not find it in ourselves we will not find it in others and more seriously still we will not find it in Jesus in the gospel stories.
The Grace of God is in Courtesy
This art of relating or communicating and its beauty is found at a number of levels at which we love and relate. For example it is found at a physical, sensate or bodily level in people’s language, demeanour and in that delicate refinement of manners we call courtesy. This art creates something so beautiful that we can say with the poet, that ‘The Grace of God is in Courtesy’ Yet, this beauty or glory is often dressed in such ordinary clothes that it can easily be missed; our finest hours are often the most ordinary.
I am sure it was from those days that I take the belief that the best of life is lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the precious life is everything. (John Mc Gahern – Memoir)
People who radiate good feeling
A second aspect of the beauty we find in those around us is the aura they create by the positive or negative feelings they choose to live with. We are attracted by the radiance given out by people who are grateful for the past, joyful about the present and enthusiastic about the future. A very different atmosphere is created by people who complain about the past, are sad about the present and cynical about the future.
The fruit of the Spirit
There is a third level of beauty we are invited to appreciate in people in the glimpses they give us of their unique style of loving and relating. As a student of the Enneagram I have become aware of the distinct style of loving that is peculiar to each of its nine types of people and of how Grace radiates in a distinctive way from each of them. When this third kind of beauty we find in those around us matures, it becomes what Paul calls the ‘fruit of the Spirit’. This fruit appears as the Spirit brings to perfection in us a number of basic ways of relating that often seem so ordinary and inconspicuous that we need to develop an eye for them in ourselves and in others. Paul lists them as, ‘joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’. (Gal 5:22)
“To the Father through the features of men’s faces”
A fourth and deepest kind of beauty becomes apparent when we reflect on the lives of those we admire. What is most striking or noble about them is the wisdom or the vision and the values they have lived out of, the virtues that have led them to relate and love in a way that is distinctly theirs. Therefore, anything we can do to help people to become aware of and to believe in what we admire most about them, that their lives ‘are charged with the grandeur of God’, is the greatest service we can do them.
Most of the lines of Hopkins’ poem As Kingfishers Catch Fire may not mean much to us but the final three lines express the wonderful truth that Christ reveals himself to us in the “limbs” and in the “eyes” of those who love us and in the “features of their faces”. Their “loveliness” or beauty makes that of Jesus more real, more tangible and thus more credible.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
When we come to realise that the beauty of Jesus is revealed in others we also get to know through them how Jesus sees and loves as well as the style with which he relates with us. In a gospel story like that of Zacchaeus (Lk 19:1-13) we see how Jesus highlights what is best in us and reflects back to us the beauty or glory of our lives, much in the same way that Jim revealed the beauty of his wife’s life when he said:
‘The women of Yorkshire are like the flowers of Yorkshire; every stage of their growth is more beautiful than the last; but the last phase is always the most glorious’.
Peter’s blog for September
This film made in 1974 and recently re-released is based on the true story of a 16-year-old youth who appeared out of nowhere in Nuremberg in 1828. Even though in fact his origins remain a mystery, Werner Herzog the director of the film imagines him as being kept in a dark basement where he never sees anything but the grim walls of the basement and never learns to walk or speak.
When he was left in the town square of Nuremberg with a bible in one hand and a note bearing his name Kaspar Hauser in the other, the townspeople were initially mystified. However they soon adopted him and in spite of being bound by the official procedures of the time they treated him with a remarkable degree of kindness and humour. The film thus becomes the story of Kaspar’s and also of the people’s basic human goodness.
A taste of human goodness
In this way it is comparable to a film like, The Elephant Man in that Kaspar, even though he always remains oddly impassive to what is going on around him, retains a remarkable innocence, gentleness and honesty that is strangely beautiful. Perhaps, his lack of responsiveness is due to the fact that for the first 16 years of his life he was not exposed to the subtle learning process that is part of the way we normally learn the art of loving, relating and communicating.
From the time the people find him in their town square Kaspar’s defencelessness and childlike innocence disarms them so that rather than making fun of him they seem to vie with one another to treat him with sensitivity, respect and concern. It is comparable to the way people who are normally insensitive and aggressive become receptive and gentle in the presence of a defenceless baby.
An alternative view
It was not that everyone treated Kaspar in a sensitive and humane manner. There was a famous philosopher who visited Kaspar to test his intelligence. To do this he asked Kaspar a very profound question but when Kaspar did not give him the answer he wanted, dismissed him as a fool. Similarly, the local pastor, the medical profession and the members of polite society all came with their preconceived expectations of Kaspar and when he did not meet these they dismissed him as a curiosity or even as not being fully human. These preconceived ideas and expectations people had of Kaspar in the film leads us to suspect that Kaspar rather than they with all their artificiality was the most authentic person in the story.
We are challenged by the film to notice how we see and feel about Kaspar, how we view and value him. In my book, The Quiet Revolution I look at two ways we see and feel about people, two ways we view and value them that compete for our allegiance. One of these called the mechanistic world view and value system sees the world in material terms and people are seen and valued on the basis of what they do and what they have. A lot of the people in the film view Kaspar from this point of view and see him as deficient or abnormal. The other way we see and feel about others is called the systems view and value system and it looks at the world in terms of relationships and of the care and compassion that maintain these. There is no doubt where the director of this film stands as he challenges each of us to look at how we view and value Kaspar.
“It has always seemed strange to me,” said Doc, “The things we admire in men – kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling – are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest – sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest – are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.” Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
Being meek and humble of heart
In spite of the fact that Kaspar carries the wounds of his past – we see the physical symbols of this on his body at the beginning of the film – we also see from the start a truly human and sane individual. Like Jesus he says to us, “Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart and you will find rest for your souls”. What brings this rest or contentment is learning, like Kaspar obviously has, that we come to this present moment of life bruised by our human limitations and moral failures as well as by those of others but that we also come to it with the assurance of our worth that we have learned from those who love us. Part of the enigma expressed in the film’s title is the mysterious self assurance or sense of worth that Kaspar manifests from the time the people find him in their town square. What is very clear is that from then on it is the respect and concern of the ordinary people he meets that sustains this sense of worth.
“Folks need a lot of loving all the while”
Recently someone told me the story of twins who were born prematurely. To help them survive they were put in incubators. One of them quickly developed while the other gradually declined. The nurse looking after them decided as a last resort to put them into the same incubator and shortly after this she noticed that the arm of the stronger twin was around the sickly one who from then on began to recover and grow normally.
Perhaps, the film is all about the fundamental truth expressed pithily in the Greek proverb, It is care that makes and sustains us and in the story that provides a context for the proverb.
Care makes and sustains us
Care was crossing a river one day when she took some soft mud and shaped it into a human being. She wanted to give what she had made her own name but Earth also laid claim to this right. It was, after all, of Earth that the human being was formed. Care then asked Jupiter, who was passing by, to give her creation a spirit. This he gladly agreed to do but then he too wanted it called after him. They decided to ask Saturn to be arbiter and he gave the following decision which seemed a wise one. Jupiter had given it spirit, so he would receive that back when death came. Since it was of earth or humus that it was fashioned, it would be called a human being. However, since Care had formed this human being, it would be her role, as long as this being lived, to continue to make and sustain it.
Folk need a lot of loving in the morning;
The day is all before, with cares beset
The cares we know, and they that give no warning;
For love is God’s own antidote for fret.
Folk need a heap of loving at the noontime
In the battle lull, the moment snatched from strife
Halfway between the waking and the croon time,
While bickering and worriment are rife.
Folk hunger so for loving at the nighttime,
When wearily they take them home to rest
At slumber song and turning-out-the-light time
Of all the times for loving, that’s the best.
Folk want a lot of loving every minute
The sympathy of others and their smile!
Till life’s end, from the moment they begin it,
Folks need a lot of loving all the while.
(Strickland Gillilan)
Peter’s Blog For August
This film tells the true story of Diane the mother of the Canadian film director Sarah Polly. It tells of the three relationships Diane had and how her six children of these relationships got together after she died to tell her story. The film is also about storytelling and how engrossing a story like that of Diane can be when told by those with such an intimate knowledge of her strengths and weaknesses. Even though the film sets out to be a portrait of Diane it also provides a wonderful portrait of each of the people who tell her story.
The film starts in a recording studio with Sarah setting the stage for Diane’s second husband Michael to tell his version of the story. From this and from the many fragments of film featuring her that he had recorded as well as from her children’s reflections on what Michael says there emerges a buoyant, free spirit who enchanted everyone she met. As wife, parent, actress and singer she was a woman with a vibrant talent
Diane’s story
She had first married someone whom her parents thought was a suitable match for her but she soon realised that the relationship was stifling her. So, soon after the birth of their two children she got a divorce but lost her custodial right to the children on the grounds that, in the Toronto of that time, she was an irresponsible mother. She then married Michael after acting in a play with him but her children felt that she had not fallen in love with Michael so much as with the character he had portrayed in the play.
Michael’s story
Even though Michael was a gifted actor and writer Diane became disappointed in him for not making more of himself. So, after the birth of three children she became restless and wanted to move to Montreal for three months to take a part she was offered in a play. While there she had an affair with one of the actors and soon realised that she was pregnant. When she returned home and her relationship with Michael became like it was when they first married he never suspected that their fourth child, Sarah, was not his.
Sarah’s story
Sarah grew up her siblings often remarked jokingly how different she was in appearance and temperament from them. As this seed of suspicion germinated and grew in her Sarah began to investigate and found out that her real father was one of the actors in the play her mother was in. It is Sarah then who decides that there is a story here that must be told so she cajoles Michael, her brothers and sisters as well as her real father to tell this story, each from his or her own perspective. It was in remembering and articulating the events of Diane’s life that they got in touch with who she really was.
My memory is certainly in my hands. I can remember things only if I have a pencil and I write with it and I can play with it, I think your hand concentrates for you. I don’t know why it should be so. Rebecca West
The power of a story remembered
The film begins with a voiceover reflecting on the nature of the stories we tell. We are told that these stories are initially a jumble of events but that if we take the time to return to them, they can reveal interesting patterns that we work out in our minds and hearts in our unending search for meaning and for what is important for us in life. In this reflection that prefaces the film it is noted how inaccurate memory can be but for me this is inconsequential. What matters as the story unfolds is the power that it has over us once we retell it and are thereby forced to reflect on its emerging patterns of meaning and how these can be so tangible, insightful and moving.
I often experience a sense of confusion when, after seeing a film with someone, I am asked what I think or feel about it. It initially seems like a mass of thoughts and feelings with no clear pattern and I know that I will need to give my senses and soul, my heart and mind the time they need to sort things out. I will have to return to the story and retell it if it is to reveal what it is saying to me about the dream that all our stories are about.
This initial experience I have on seeing a film reminds me of something that happened when I was working as a teacher in Africa. The incident stayed with me for it said a lot to me about my work of teaching young people to read and write and about my own efforts to write.
Is life all loose ends?
I was taking part in an assembly at which a new leader called Jack had been appointed. It was a time of major change and we were not sure as a group where we were going. So we asked this new man for some clarification of the direction in which he thought we might move. In an effort to explain he told us about the miniature tapestries which his mother used to weave. Using odd bits of wool she had left over from the garments she knitted she would weave a design on to a piece of gauze. When she was finished, there was a very colourful design woven onto one side of the gauze. On the other side, however, there was a mass of disorganised loose ends. In answer to our question Jack said that he had to admit that all he could see as he took over his new job was a mass of loose ends. His hope was that God who was working out through us his beautiful design for our world would in time make it clear to us.
Muddy waters, left stand, become clear
This reverse side of the tapestry is what life seems to be like when what happens to us appears to be a series of unconnected events with no apparent pattern or design to them. It was thus for those involved in the engrossing story of Diane’s life. However, for us in the audience who were able to stand back and see the big picture or pattern that was emerging from the story there was a revelation of the essential human nobility of the people involved. It is obvious that they did not see themselves or their story in this way for they were all reluctantly drawn into the telling of it, and even at the end when the story was all out in the open I don’t think any of them, apart from Sarah, were happy about washing what they saw as their dirty linen in public.
This divergence of what I saw and felt and what they saw and felt at the end of the story illustrates something very profound about telling our story. Most of us feel that it is best to leave sleeping dogs lie or that it is a mistake to stir up the mud lying at the bottom of the river for you never know what nasty creatures are lurking there ready to devour you. But there is another profound truth about stirring up the past revealed in the saying, Muddy waters, left stand, become clear.
The Doughnut Principle
There is no doubt that what is negative about the past tends to fixate us and that, as the book of Wisdom says, “The consciousness of evil throws good things into the shade.” The 10% of our past that is deficient, if it is not brought out into the open and accepted, can in time colour the whole way we see and feel about ourselves and others. If, however, we face our demons by developing a way of relating with the limited and sinful side of ourselves and others, we can free ourselves from being fixated with the hole in the doughnut and so be enabled to appreciate all the ways we are so wonderfully gifted by nature and by Grace.
As you travel through life
My brother or sister
Whatever be your goal
Keep your eye on the doughnut
And not upon the hole.
Singing hymns at heaven’s gate
The doughnut here speaks to us of our need to count our blessings, to remember, to appreciate and to be grateful for all the ways our lives are gifted and graced. The supreme way of doing this is the Mass and is what my book called, Love Remembered is all about. It is prefaced by one of Shakespeare’s sonnets in which after listing the things in life that diminish him he remembers a person who loved him and then describes the way this transformed his whole way of seeing and feeling about himself.
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee – and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
The essential human sadness
This reluctance to tell our story and accept what went wrong, with a view to appreciating so much that went right, is central to the conclusion Ernest Becker came to in his book The Denial of Death. In it he says that the reason why we leave so much of our human potential unrealised is that we wont face the limited or poor side of ourselves and are, as a result, unable to cultivate a growing appreciation of how gifted and rich our lives are. This fact that we leave so much of our potential as human beings, and even more so as Christians, unrealised, is what John Powell terms “The essential sadness of our human family”.
The essential sadness of our human family is that very few of us ever reach the realization of our full potential. I accept the estimate of the theoreticians that the average person accomplishes only 10% of his potential. … He is only 10% open to his emotions, to tenderness, to wonder and awe. His mind embraces only a small part of the thoughts, reflections and understanding of which he is capable. His heart is only 10% alive with love. He will die without having really lived or really loved. To me this is the most frightening of all possibilities. John Powell
“Earth’s crammed with heaven and every bush afire with God”
I have become conscious in recent years of how difficult it is in a world so preoccupied by work to find and to appreciate not only the good but also the beautiful or the sublime that is all around us. It is always on offer in nature, in our own story, but above all in being loved by the persons of the Trinity just as they love each other. (Jn 17:23) People like Wordsworth discovered the sublime in something as simple as daffodils while living in a society that he felt ‘lays waste our powers’ with its addiction to ‘getting and spending’.
Daffodils
I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: –
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth
Yet, there is so much more of the sublime on offer in our own story, in the stories we are told in a film like Stories We Tell but above all in the style with which Jesus loves and relates with us in each gospel story. This is the vision and the joy it inspires that Jesus would have us live with.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. … I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. (Jn 15:9-11)
This joy is not easy to maintain, especially at difficult times in our life, but Neil Diamond has a suggestion of how to handle this. If you wish to listen to this, click the following link:
Peter’s Blog for July
BEFORE MIDNIGHT
This is the third movie in this series that tells the story of a relationship between an American man and a French woman, between Jesse and Celine, It is an intimate story intelligently told of two people who have all the questions and cares of middle age but still retain something of the idealism and lightheartedness of their youth. What is wondrous about this film as was about its two predecessors (Before Sunrise and Before Sunset) is the non-stop conversation that is central to it and that makes it as engaging and even as gripping as a thriller.
Jesse and Celine are now in their early forties and living in Paris with their twin girls. He is a celebrated writer with two autobiographical novels about his first and second meetings with Celine. She is an environmental activist but her career has not worked out well so she feels demoralized and is thinking of a career change. In the previous two films she occupied the higher ground being the more sophisticated European but now Jesse is flying high in his career while Celine lives with a sense of failure. The pair are currently on holiday in Greece as guests of Patrick who is a well-known literary figure.
Is love a thing apart or our whole existence?
A meal at Patrick’s house provided for me a backdrop for the whole film as the guests introduce themselves and reveal how they see their relationships. The guests include a young couple, two couples in their forties and the elderly Patrick and his partner Nina. From them we get the whole spectrum of how people envisage the world of relationship today. The young couple who have been together for a year and communicate through Skype do not envisage themselves ever being in a life-long relationship. Patrick speaks about his marriage to his wife who has died as between two people who lived their own lives and yet made space to be together. “We were never one person, we were two.” Patrick’s present partner, Nina is a widow and she speaks of her marriage in almost mystical terms as she recalls the way her husband was present to her when he was alive and how she now lives with glimpses of him her memories offer her. She says:
What I miss most is the way he laid beside me at night with his arm across my breast, so that I could not move. But I felt safe and complete and I miss the way that he whistled walking down the street. Every time I do something I think of what he would say, “It’s cold today, wear a scarf”. But I have noticed that I am forgetting him and he is fading – like losing him again. So sometimes I make myself remember every detail of his face, his eyes, the texture of his skin, his hair – which was all gone by the time he went. But sometimes I can actually see him, a cloud moves away and I can almost touch him but then the real world rushes in and he vanishes.
Patrick and Nina’s description of their relationships sounds like a commentary on the saying: Love for a man is a thing apart; it’s a woman’s whole existence.
It is obvious that for Jesse and Celine there is still a lot of idealism and physical attraction left in their relationship and they are living witnesses to the reality that a relationship is as good as the communication going on within it. However, in Celine we can see the storm clouds of emotion growing around an anger that she can no longer contain. She is facing her frustration with a failed career, with a sense of fading physical beauty, with Jesse’s inability to listen to rather then argue with how she feels. Then there is his renewed interest in his son, which she feels is drawing him back to America where she knows she would be culturally overwhelmed.
A choice that awaits us
The midlife crisis
In her sense of disillusionment, confusion, restlessness and discontent we hear an echo of Dante’s words, “In the middle of my years, I find myself in a dark wood the way ahead not clear.” Her sense of bewilderment and frustration that has been trickling out from the beginning of the film bursts forth into the open in the second half of the film. She is at a crossroads as she contemplates walking out of the relationship or alternately accepting the midlife invitation to take her relationship with Jesse down onto a deeper level.
This is where the inner journey that Carl Jung, one of the founders of modern psychology, felt we are being invited to go “in the middle of our years”. It is an inner journey in the sense that it takes us into the world of love and relationships as we learn how to deepen these and to make them last. It is also a journey we make largely on our own as the road we are invited to travel is unique to each person and we can only set out on it when life’s circumstances readies us for it. So in one way Celine and Jesse are living in two different worlds in that he is still on his outer journey enjoying his life as a successful writer. He has not yet run into the buffers that bring our first journey to a halt and invite us in the middle of our years to find a new way forward.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less travelled
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Some profound issues the film raised
What made Before Midnight such a profound experience for me is that it deals with issues that are central to my human life and to my life as a Christian and it did this in such an intelligent, challenging and attractive way. It raises the issue of how men and women grow by balancing the male and female sides of themselves. Most of what I write below about this issue is taken from a chapter called, In Search of Your Soul in my book, Follow Your Dream.
The film also raises the fascinating question about why, for over a thousand years, Christians saw their lives in the context of the Song of Songs or in terms of two people who are in love. I make some suggestions about how and why this is so in the first four chapters of A World Alight With Splendour. Finally, in the recent edition of The Quiet Revolution I have inserted a chapter on marriage, suggesting that it is the most dynamic image we have of what our Christian life within the Trinity is like. So, Before Midnight finds resonances in a profound Christian tradition.
Two ways of seeing life and how it develops
For now, I would like to reflect on what Before Midnight said to me about the first of these issues or about how the relationship between men and women and between the female and male within each person never ceases to fascinate. I learned a lot about this from Irene Claremont de Castillejo in her book, Knowing Woman. There she uses the term ‘inner clarity’ to describe what the female and male sides of us are searching for as we strive to grow. She believes that women have the ‘inner’ part while men have the ‘clarity’. The animus or male side of a woman will be seeking a clear way of expressing the inner world with which she is familiar. She is seeking ‘to know what she knows and to articulate this’. The man’s anima or female side wants to put him in touch with his inner world of relationships, which he can then give expression to with his facility for clarity. It is in answering this first call of adult life to know ourselves that we can best answer the second call which is to intimacy or to make ourselves known to another.
The woman’s way
From my experience of helping people as they seek to answer these calls of adult life I have found that women approach this from a very different angle than men. There are elements of a woman’s quest that she is naturally at home with while others are a problem for her. A woman will welcome the prospect of being in her inner world and is at home with the relationships, feelings and intuitions that form a large part of it. However, a woman finds difficulty in gaining clarity about where she is on her journey, where she feels she should be moving and how she should get there. She is called to make space in her life to reflect or to attend to and articulate, for example, the love she has received and given in life so that through prayer she might savour this and bit by bit make our her of it.
The man’s way
My experience of the men who have come to me seeking help on their inner journey is that they prefer to deal with facts and ideas rather than with the feelings and intuitions that tell us so much about where we need to work with ourselves. Men like analysing the meaning of situations and the implications of these for action and thus listening or being receptive and contemplative is much more difficult for them than being active. In processing their experience men have difficulty letting things move from their heads down into their hearts or feelings where in fact we live most of our relational life. Having to put aside their plans to make space to relate with others or to process their experience through reflection and prayer does not come easily to men. Therefore, to develop, a man is called to attend to the whole of what happens in his life as he remembers the love he has received and given and to savour how he sees and feels about this. Is this the thinking “in a marrow-bone” that Yeats believes we must move towards?
God guard me from those thoughts men think
In the mind alone;
He that sings a lasting song
Thinks in a marrow-bone.
Forces that unite and others that separate
Before Midnight is an intriguing story about the powerful forces that attract men and women to each other but also those that can separate them. It illustrates the saying that men and women find it very difficult to live together and even more difficult to live apart. The Greek legend about the origins of this perennial quest attempts to explain its extraordinary persistence, inside as well as outside each of us.
In the beginning man and woman were one being. They were joined back to back so that they could see in all directions and be in touch with all that was going on in the world around them. With their four legs and four arms they could respond to all eventualities with great skill. This human being, a rich combination of the powers of a man and of a woman, was a very perfect creation, so much so, that the gods became jealous of so powerful a being that they split it in half. Ever since men and women feel incomplete by themselves. So they spend their lives trying to get back together again with their other half.
The real enemy is “creeping separateness”
Recently I came across a book called, A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken that told the story of the forces that drew a man and a woman together and of what he called “creeping separateness” that insidiously drove them apart.
One day in early spring we thought we saw the answer. The killer of love is creeping separateness. Taking love for granted, especially after marriage. Ceasing to do things together, finding separate interests, we turning into I, into what I want to do. This was the way of creeping separateness. And in the modern world, especially in the cities, everything favoured it. …. The failure of love might seem to be caused by hate or boredom or unfaithfulness with a lover; but these were results. First came the creeping separateness; the failure behind the failure.
At the end of the film we are left with Celine and Jesse sitting some distance apart just before midnight and we are left wondering if the chasm that has been growing between them can be bridged. There is room for a fourth film in the series.
Peter’s Blog for June
This excellent, hard-hitting film is disturbing and challenging. It takes us outside our comfort zone to face the grim reality of a world where poverty, drugs and squalor are pervasive. But it also shows us a world where people’s capacity to relate and care for each other comes to the fore; in times when our survival is threatened we return to basics. The film centers on two dedicated priests, the Argentinean Father Julian and the Belgian Father Nicolas. These two have known each other since they were students and at the beginning of the film Julian journeys into the remote area where Nicholas has been ministering to an Indian village. This was before the villagers were massacred by a group of people in uniform who wanted to take over their land. Nicholas manages to escape but afterwards is consumed by guilt for not having died with the people he had devoted his life to. Julian helps him battle with this guilt, trying to convince him that it is more important to live than to die for the people he is sent to serve.
The film is set in the Villa Virgin barrio, the toughest shantytown in Buenos Aires. This is a grim place dominated by the gigantic ruined hospital built in the 1930s to be the biggest in South America. Several efforts over the years to complete work on this gigantic building have each failed and it is now a deserted wreck and symbol of the people’s abandonment by the political system that is there to care for them as much as for anyone else. The derelict building is known locally as the “white elephant” and gives the film its name. There the homeless seek refuge and drug-dealers ply their trade while those they prey on live in a twilight zone where people have reduced themselves to a stupor.
The two priests battle with their own feelings of hope and hopelessness and with their cautious church leaders who only partially support them. They also have to negotiate funding for their projects with politicians who do not believe in what they are trying to do. They have to live too with the devastation and violence caused by the warring drug gangs that control the area. In these circumstances the two priests work tirelessly to help people even though they differ about how involved they should become in the social and political problems that beset the area, for example, in mediating with the drug gangs. While Nicholas believes in actively negociating with them, when for instance they take hostages, Julian thinks this will only contaminate and compromise their priesthood. Julian for his part promotes the cult of Father Carlos Mujica, the local Marxist priest who was (in real life) killed there in 1974. He now provides the people with a Christ figure who is a focal point for their hopes and their enthusiasm. Tension between the priests is evident too when Julian realises that Nicolas and Luciana, the local social worker, are in love. Added to the drama is what is hinted at in the opening scene of the film in which Julian is having a brain scan. The reason for this gradually dawns on us as we become aware that Julian is dying from a brain tumour. Battling with seemingly hopeless odds the strain on both priests is palpable as they struggle to retain their faith and their hope as well as the peace of mind these give them.
How we evaluate people
These dramatic elements in the story White Elephant tells have all the ingredients of a melodrama. The fact that, in spite of lacking a clear focus at times because it is dealing with too many issues, the film remains movingly credible is what makes it such a worthwhile experience. However, it is a deeply disturbing and challenging one as it brought to mind the poignant words of the letter of St James:
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assemby, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,”have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters.Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? (James 2:1-5)
The Emmaus road walk
The challenge of the film for me was to face in a positive way the sense of helplessness that it confronted me with because faced with such circumstances that the film confronts us with I easily drift into anger, sadness, frustration and hopelessness about the situation it so graphically depicts. However, another part of me realises that where I may not be able to do anything about the situation portrayed in the film or very little about the poverty nearer home, there are two aspects of it I can do a lot about. The two are what Jesus was striving to help his disciples deal with when he met them on the road to Emmaus. (Lk 24)
They had drifted into a deep sense of guilt, sadness and hopelessness as a result of the events of his suffering and death and how they had abandoned, denied and betrayed him. They were confronted by the poverty of their response to him, by their human limitations and by their moral failure as his companions when they had deserted him in his hour of need. What Jesus did to help them face their own poverty or limitations and sinfulness and that of those around them was highly effective because at the end of their meeting with him their sadness had turned into joy and their hopelessness or despair into enthusiasm. This change from seeing ourselves as worthless to the exhilaration of seeing our true worth in the eyes of those who love us is beautifully described in Shakespeare’s 29th Sonnet.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
A transforming experience
We may ask ourselves how Jesus brought about this change, particularly in times when there is much happening around us, such as we see in White Elephant, that erodes our joy, our hope and our enthusiasm. Jesus does two intimately dependent things. He first of all seeks to set us free from the tyranny of negative feeling such as the prolonged sadness, resentment, guilt and the loss of hope that sap our energy. He then wants to free us from the distorted ways of seeing ourselves that have become habitual with us and that are the source of the bad feeling that erode our joy and our hope. Nowadays we would say that Jesus is helping us with two kinds of therapy or healing; one of these is a talking it out therapy and the other vision therapy. There is a full description of how we use these two forms of therapy in my book called, Follow Your Dream
Two ways we must choose between
This change in the way we see things and how we feel about them is the essential thing Jesus invites us to do in the gospels when he says, “Repent and believe the good news”. (Mk 1:14-15) In other words Jesus wants us to see and value ourselves and those around us in the way that he does and to enjoy the good feeling this generates. What makes this change so difficult is that the atmosphere in which we live is dominated by another vision and value system that distorts the way we see, value and feel about ourselves. This distorted vision and value system has a long history and is so firmly established that it dominates and diminishes our sense of inner worth. It believes that life is about work and wealth, about what wealth can buy and the outer worth, honour or prestige we get from this. From this point of view, if we are unemployed and poor we are, like most of the people in the slum area in which Julian and Nicholas work, seen to be insignificant or of little worth and even as an embarrassment to society.
“Today I put before you life and death. Choose life!”
It is of this conflict between these two cultures or ways of seeing what is meaningful and of value for us that I wrote about in my book, The Quiet Revolution. The following description of the book on its back cover could be seen as what the film, White Elephant is all about:
This book is about a momentous choice, which faces each of us today for on it depends how fulfilling our human and Christian life will be. Our choice is between two ways of seeing life, each of which is bidding for our allegiance and each of which proposes its own distinctive vision, value system and lifestyle. One view of life makes a priority of material things, of what we have and what we do. This is the dominant view of life today and since it has little time for the inner, spiritual world where we learn the art of loving and relating, it leaves a vacuum at the heart of society. The alternative view of life makes a priority of the love which the three persons of the Trinity reveal to us and of the relationships with ourselves, others and all things their love creates and sustains.
Since the first of these two views of life is firmly established, to choose the second one will involve us in a revolutionary change of mind and heart. The nature of this quiet revolution, and the time, energy and resources it calls for is the central theme of this book.
How you see is how you will treat yourself and others
This is also the choice that White Elephant challenges us with when it asks us how you and I evaluate people. The authorities think the slum is a wasteland and its people non productive, an embarrassment that they would like to be rid of. Those who work for the community and the parish are there because they believe in human dignity and in the dignity God mirrors back to us. How this sense of dignity and the respect it deserves is to be achieved at a spiritual, social and political level is where there is confusion in their minds and I must admit in mine.
What is clear is that we must on the one hand face our feelings of guilt and resentment, of sadness and hopelessness as Jesus helped the two disciples to do on the road to Emmaus. On the other hand we need to examine how we see and how we evaluate the poor person in each of us so that we might appreciate and respect what is true, good and beautiful about each of us as human and as Christian.
Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Mt 11:11)
Going to this place where we find our own and others’ greatness, our “soul’s queer miracle”, long enough for our belief in it to grow is difficult. The urgency of what is more interesting and exciting takes us elsewhere.
Poet
Winter encloses me
I am fenced
The light, the laugh, the dance,
Against.
I am like a monk
In a grey cell
Copying out my soul’s
Queer miracle.
What goes on out there
In the light
Is less than a blue-bottle’s flirtation,
Yet spite!
I would be a blue-bottle
Or a house fly
And let the monk, the task
In darkness lie.
Patrick Kavanagh
Peter’s Blog for May
A Late Quartet
The film quietly observes the internal dynamics of the Fugue String Quartet, an internationally acclaimed musical group that has been together for many years. We encounter them as an entity, working together thoughtfully, and gradually we get to know them as ordinary and yet extraordinary individuals.
Peter, who brought the group together, is much older than the others and is a wise, unifying influence in the group. His wife, a well-known concert singer, has recently died. Robert who plays second violin is married to the quartet’s graceful and serene viola player, Juliette. They have a daughter, Alex herself a student of the violin and a pupil of Daniel the first violinist of the group. The group has been together for a quarter of a century and has found satisfaction not in discarding their individuality but in unselfishly contributing to a collaborative endeavour.
Maintaining the harmony
However, this harmony is disrupted when Peter reveals that he has Parkinson’s disease and will have to withdraw from the group. Now, while Peter accepts his fate with resigned equanimity the quartet is thrown into confusion. In facing an uncertain future, they begin to consider their own careers as musicians and individuals even though Peter himself is involved in seeking a cellist who will replace him and assure continuity. However, despite his best efforts, fissures occur, fears are released as life without his unifying influence is threatened. Tensions arise between Robert and Daniel as to who will play first violin and Juliette feels that an affair that Robert is having is threatening their marriage.
The divisive issues that Peter’s decision gives rise to and their efforts to maintain the unity and harmony of the group are symbolized by a piece of music which is central to the group’s repertoire. This is Beethoven’s Op 131, the String Quartet No 14 in C sharp minor the seven movements of which are meant to be played without a break. This means that some instruments do not remain in tune over the duration of the quartet, as there are no breaks to retune them. The members of the quartet are therefore involved in a constant struggle to adjust to each other in order to maintain the harmony between them.
A lesson about life
The key to how they learned to maintain this harmony or unity is given in a scene quite late in the film. In it Peter is teaching a class of young musicians to play in a group like the quartet he is part of. As they play together one student gets very frustrated with how the group are playing so Peter intervenes and tells the story of an experience when he had when he met Pablo Casals, the greatest cellist of his time. When Pablo asked Peter to play for him he felt so daunted by the experience that in his own estimation he was disappointed with how he played so that he was surprised and even confused when Casals congratulated him on how well he played. When he was asked to play a second time Peter felt he was given a chance to redeem himself but again was not pleased with how he performed. Again Casals told him how wonderful his playing was but rather than being excited by what the master said he left the meeting with a sense of inadequacy and feeling that Casals had been less than honest in commending him so highly.
Years later when he had become an internationally recognised cello player Peter met Casals again and felt he needed to talk about their previous meeting. Casals was taken aback by how Peter had interpreted his comments and set about reconstructing what for him had happened. He said that Peter’s playing at that time had shown signs of greatness and he detailed these moments in a very specific way. He concluded by saying something that remained a beacon in Peter’s own life as an artist and in his efforts to cultivate the talent of each of his pupils. This is the reality that any critic can find fault with even the greatest artists but that it takes perceptiveness and magnanimity to notice and to appreciate the signs of greatness.
Getting the balance right
What Peter was saying to his class was that they should not become so preoccupied with their own deficiencies and those of their fellow students that they would become blind to their moments of greatness. This is something every parent and teacher sooner or later is forced to realise This is that we tend to become so fixated with what is lacking in our own performance and that of others that we have great difficulty appreciating of all that is good and even beautiful around us.
It is in the light of this experience and what Peter learned from it that an earlier scene in A Late Quartet becomes particularly significant. It occurs just after Peter has announced that he must leave the quartet and the other members of the group leave the beautiful warm interior of Peter’s house and walk out into the cold winter snow. Robert suggests that he may leave the group and make a career for himself on his own while Juliette and Daniel after arguing with him for some time walk away in disgust. Much of the rest of the film concerns itself with how they learn to live in harmony in spite of Peter no longer being around as a unifying force. They gradually learn what Peter had learned from Pablo Casals about building relationships first of all by accepting or being at home with each others weaknesses so that they might then be free to appreciate each others greatness, the “immortal diamond” in each other.
Finding the diamond in ourselves and others
Gerard Manley Hopkins was a poet who wrestled to come to terms with his demons in what are called his “dark sonnets”. The freedom he found in doing this led to an extraordinary appreciation of the “immortal diamond” in each of us or to his realisation that “I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am”. All that is ordinary, laughable, common and faulty about us is the setting in which we are invited to discover the real worth or glory that is ours as Christians.
A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, 1 joyless days, dejection.
Across my foundering deck shone
A beacon, an eternal beam. 1 Flesh fade, and mortal trash
Fall to the residuary worm; | world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, | since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
Our abiding splendour
To grow in awareness of this “immortal diamond” or of our abiding splendour is difficult. It involves the essential Christian struggle to find freedom from being fixated with what is deficient so that we might see ourselves in the light of the glory Jesus shares with us. This glory is primarily a radiance, an attractiveness or splendour we are invited to notice in the love we receive and give especially in our most significant relationships. This glory is the glue that holds these relationships together and makes us one.
The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (Jn 17:22-23)
And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Cor 3:18)
‘From one degree of glory to another’
Becoming aware of this reality that we “are being transformed from one degree of glory to another” involves what Jesus calls repentance or a radical change in the way we see and feel about ourselves. The struggle to do this can be compared to that of realising the many faceted splendour of a diamond.
The uncut diamond looks very like any other stone; it is very ordinary or common. It is only to the discerning eye that it has got such immense potential, that its splendour can be seen beneath the drab exterior. Its luster or sparkle is unimaginable before it is cut. Then the master craftsman with an eye for what it might be works with a knowing and steady hand to uncover the riches of the diamond. It is a great labour for the diamond is the hardest of stones and does not readily admit its glory. When it is cut this glory is a many splendoured thing for the diamond has many facets each reflecting the light in a different way, each competing with the others for splendour.
Returning to ‘the eternal root of true love’
Realising the immortal diamond and making sure that we do not lose sight of it amid the cold starkness of our winter world is what my book, Follow Your Dream, is all about. With the poet John Donne, it sees our winter world not just as a time when we appear to die but as a time when we retreat to our roots, to “the eternal root of true love” we find in Christ.
A Hymn To Christ
I sacrificed this island unto thee,
And all whom I loved there, and who loved me;
When I have put seas `twixt them and me,
Put thou thy sea betwixt my sins and thee.
As the tree’s sap doth seek the root below
In winter, in my winter now I go
Where none but thee, the eternal root
Of true love, I may know.
John Donne
Peter’s Blog for April
To The Wonder
Two reviews by well known film critics show the very different reactions to this film called To the Wonder. One reviewer says, “Though Malick (the director) goes unhesitatingly out on a limb and the branch creaks a bit … I can only say that I responded to its passion and idealism. It is a bold and often beautiful movie, unfashionably and unironically concerned with love and God, and what will happen to us in the absence of either”. After expressing some reservations he has about the film, he concludes, “But what delight there is in this film”. The other critic dismisses the film as “a rambling disappointment with wonderful moments, mostly visual”.
The title of this film refers to “the wonder of the western world”, an epithet long attached to Mont-Saint-Michel, the magnificent medieval abbey on the Normandy coast. It is a monumental symbol of faith, an object of pilgrimage and an example of sublime architecture. The film begins and ends there, and among its themes are the contrast between the old world and the new, between what we create and what we spoil.
The story
To The Wonder is the story of a love affair between Neil, a stolid, handsome American engineer who has a passionate relationship in Paris with Marina whose free and exuberant spirit Neil is enthralled by but constantly struggles to keep up with. Their love achieves an almost ecstatic state of happiness when they visit Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy and are overwhelmed by its beauty. Easy-going, good-natured Neil gets on well with Marina’s 10-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. However, when he brings them to live with him in Midwestern America their relationship begins to falter; the young girl misses her companions in Paris and so returns there while Marina has a difficult decision to make as to whether she will stay when her visa runs out.
In the middle of their indecision about the viability of their relationship Neil returns to an old friend Jane looking for advice and comfort and wondering perhaps if this much quieter relationship would suit him better than struggling to maintain the roller-coaster one with Marina.
What underlies the story
Running parallel with these two stories is that of Neil’s parish priest, Father Quintana, whose consciousness of what is going on, in and around him, begins to guide the story onto a deeper level which Marina and Neil, as well perhaps as ourselves, struggle to articulate. All three are challenged to live in an environment in which they feel alien because they each in their own way have tasted the sublime in nature, in each other and in the realm of the divine which even though they are Christians they live largely unaware of. This is a realm Father Quintana is particularly conscious of when he invites us to.
Awaken the divine presence which sleeps in each man and in each woman.
The journey into solitude
It is in discovering this awareness or this vision that, in the words of C S Lewis, “they instantly stand together in an immense solitude”.
“Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening friendship would be something like, Ah What? You too? I thought I was the only one.. … It is when two such persons discover, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi articulate fumblings or with, what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision – it is then that friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.” Four Loves
When Marina and Neil are in the states, there are moments of beauty or of the sublime that has brought them together. We experience these with them when they wander through the grasslands of the prairie, in sunlight and sunsets, in bursts of glorious music that accompanies these scenes and the momeents of joy they find in each other’s company. These experiences like those they had at Mont-Saint-Michel put Marina especially in touch with a love beyond the human love she experiences with Neil.
However, this sense of the sublime is hard for them to hold on to as they become conscious of the poverty of their surroundings. Neil’s work as an inspector of water and soil, in an area where there is a lot of mining, construction work and drilling for oil, reveals our tendency to damage our environment and to mar its beauty. The people involved in building and mining do not want him around and he also becomes a focus for the unease of local people who worry about what is happening to their environment.
Marina too becomes discontent, especially when her daughter returns to Paris and she is on her own most of the day when Neil is at work. When he comes home, he is not around for her in the way she would like him to be so that her being alone becomes loneliness.
Solitude’s call to “something higher”
The priest also feels alone as he is only at home with the poor people he visits and with the prisoners in the state penitentiary with whom he is familiar and intimate. With these people he comes to life with the experience of warmth he finds in their presence. But his aloneness does not turn into loneliness with its accompanying loss of joy and hope. We hear him voicing his thirst for God in the words of the Psalm that voice his thirst for God in ‘a dry, weary land without water’. He understands what is happening to him as a call to “something higher”.
To love is to run the risk of failure, the risk of betrayal, you feel your love has died but it is waiting to be transformed into something higher.
His belief is that love is a priority, life’s fundamental imperative and something we must take responsibility for developing, for it is what creates and sustains all our relationships:
You shall love whether you like it or not and know each other in that love that never changes/ends.
From love as emotion to love as belief
This imperative to love and be loved involves taking responsibility for learning the art of loving and relating and this means distinguishing two levels at which we are invited to do this. There is first of all an initial level at which Marina and Neil relate when they fall in love and see something beautiful about each other that generates deep emotion. However when this dies down, as it inevitably tends to do, they are invited to realise in Father Quintana’s words that love is more than just a feeling or an emotion:
Emotions, they come and go like clouds; love is not only a feeling, you shall love. Love is not just a feeling, it is a duty.
There is a divine restlessness that urges us to look beyond the love we identify with emotion. Seeking to satisfy ourselves in an effort to maintain this felt love we will exhaust ourselves as we ask too much of a relationship that is based on it. As St Augustine said, we will be restless until we rest in God.
The Pulley
When God at first made Man,
having a glass of blessings standing by –
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can;
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed be,
Contract into a span.
So strength first made a way,
The beauty flow’d, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all His treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
For if I should (said He)
Bestow this jewel also on My creature,
He would adore My gifts instead of Me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.
Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.
George Herbert
“The bread of adversity” that makes us sturdy
There is a technique in gardening that may help to understand how the difficult circumstances we are often asked to face in our relationships can help us incorporate emotion into a deeper relationship.
If plants that are initially raised in the ideal conditions of the glass house are to mature they need to be “hardened off”. This means that they need to be gradually exposed to the harsher conditions outside the glass house. This exposure may initially cause the plants to die back for some time but the overall effect of this hardship is a healthy one in that it makes the plants sturdy. It is a case of nature being cruel to be kind because if they are left in the warmth of the glasshouse the plants would grow too tall too quickly and unable to support themselves they would topple over.
There is a similar “hardening off” that is essential to human growth. An example of it is what happens to us on our first day at school. It is a traumatic experience to be separated from our mother’s physical presence for those few hours we are at school. But this experience also challenges us to make her present in a new way. We gradually learn to rely on our memory of her physical presence to assure us that she has not abandoned us. So we are challenged by this time of separation to find her present in a deeper and more permanent way. In some way like this we learn our first lesson about how times of difficulty and darkness can foster belief as well as erode it.
Truly, O people in Zion, inhabitants of Jerusalem, you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when he hears it, he will answer you. Though the Lord may give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” Is 30:19-22
A transforming power
This pattern of experience by which we are invited to find that those we love are present in new and deeper ways, despite their apparent absence, keeps repeating itself. The form this absence takes may differ as those we love may not just be absent physically but emotionally as well when for example we have a row with someone we love. However the most painful experiences of the absence of others or when as Isaiah says we are asked to “eat the bread of adversity” may occur when glimpses and even convictions of their love for us and of ours for them are questioned or seem to dry up. This absence of any feeling leads us to question our basic beliefs. This questioning of our belief in another’s love can challenge our love to grow so that it is transformed into something higher. This seems to be the thinking behind Father Quintana’s statement that:
To love is to run the risk of failure, the risk of betrayal, you feel your love has died but it is waiting to be transformed into something higher.
Awakening to the divine
This “something higher” we are invited to realise is what the priest calls the love that never changes or ends.
Know each other in that love that never changes/ends
This divine love, like that of parents for their children, creates and maintains a loving or “holding” environment for us to live in, a place we call home. This is the divine presence that Father Quintana says we must awaken in ourselves:
Awaken the divine presence which sleeps in each man and in each woman
When love and God are absent
The way that Malick, as the director of To The Wonder, interprets what is going on in Marina’s and Neil’s life by using the below the surface musings of Father Quintana may seem to some unreal. Is this because the world of work and wealth, of material things and the sense of worth these give us is more real for us in practice than the world where love and relationships are a priority? Added to this is our uneasiness about mentioning God, no mind putting him at the centre of things, in our almost exclusively humanist society. This bold statement by Malick about love and relationships and about God being central to human life is what makes To The Wonder such a wonderful film. It is also interesting to note that the audience at the Vienna Film Festival hissed and booed at the end of this film.
I think what Peter Bradshaw said in his review of this film in The Guardian is just right:
“It is a bold and often beautiful movie, unfashionably and unironically concerned with love and God, and what will happen to us in the absence of either.”
Peter’s Blog for March
Lincoln is a film about statesmanship, politics and an epic moment in the history of democracy and it handles these themes with flair, intelligence and vitality. Central to the film is how Daniel Day Lewis portrays the legendary figure of Lincoln in a towering performance that glistens with such depth and intelligence, with such humanity and charm. The great strength of Lewis’s performance is that he allows us to focus on the magnificent and deeply affecting qualities of Lincoln.
The theme of the film
Lincoln begins a year before the end of the American civil war and concludes a year later with a non-triumphalist acceptance of the surrender of the Confederate general Robert E Lee. At the heart of the film is a few weeks in January 1865 between Lincoln’s second election and his inauguration. In this brief moment of opportunity he faces a crucial decision. Should he end this bloody war, one of the most costly, bitter and divisive in modern history, by a compromising peace with the Confederate enemy? Or should he make a final attempt to persuade the House of Representatives to reverse an earlier decision and enact the 13th Amendment to the constitution? This would declare that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”.
Forming a team of rivals
This explosive issue – involving the abolition of slavery and all this might entail for equality in all its forms – is at the centre of this drama. Lincoln must accommodate a variety of opposed interests such as those of the military, the electorate, his family, who have lost a son in the war, and above all a house of representatives who have already voted against the Amendment. The film, based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, shows how Lincoln astutely brought together gifted people who had been his opponents in order to bring about the kind of social, political and moral change he felt was critical. To do this Lincoln the principled statesman and wily politician was ready to bend rules, reinterpret the law and manipulate people, but always with the object of serving democracy and securing America’s moral leadership on the world stage.
There is, too, another strand, almost a film in itself and a source of both fun and realism, in the presence of three political fixers, Washington lobbyists before the term was coined. They are cynical idealists, getting people to change their minds by bribery, blackmail and coercion.
Elegance personified
What means most to me about this film is expressed in the following words of Philip French’s review of Lincoln in the Observer, “This great statesman who shaped history, this intimate man of the people and the mysterious, charismatic figure so fascinated Picasso that he collected thousands of pictures of him and once held up a photograph of Lincoln, proclaiming: “There is the real American elegance!” This word elegance is defined as graceful, stylishness of manner, manifesting a dignity, charm or refinement but its full significance needs to be seen in the context of a radical choice that faces each of us today.
A fundamental choice of life
This choice is between these two ways of seeing life, each of which is bidding for our allegiance and each of which proposes its own distinctive vision, value system and lifestyle. One view of life makes a priority of material things, of what we have and what we do. This is the dominant view of life today and since it has little time for the inner, spiritual world, it leaves a vacuum at the heart of society. The alternative view of life makes a priority of the love which the three persons of the Trinity reveal to us and of the relationships with ourselves, others and all things that their love creates and sustains. This was Jesus’ vision as we can see from the following description of what life meant for him.
Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” (Lk 10:25-28)
“The Grace of God is in Courtesy”
It is very obvious from the beginning of the film that Abraham Lincoln made a priority of the way we relate and treat each other. It is the style with which he loves and relates that makes the film such a wonderful display of elegance, of glory or of beauty. This stance he takes to life is epitomised in an opening sequence in which Lincoln, seated like he is in the famous statue but here with an easy smile, as he listens to two black soldiers telling him how they see the war and how it is affecting their lives. He listens to them respectfully, is perceptive of their concerns and disarmingly humane and humorous in the way he draws them out and responds to what troubles them. The scene establishes the rock-like physical presence of the war-weary president, his warmth, modesty and humanity and this sounds a mood music for the film that ebbs and flows like an incoming tide that gradually surrounds us and draws us into itself.
What towers over all this cut and thrust of political life that dominates the rest of the film is the person of Lincoln portrayed with such intelligence and depth. He is such a seductive master of charm and courtesy and yet so skilled in imposing his authority with a genial anecdote, a man with the natural leader’s ability to make people want to please him. He personifies Belloc’s words about Courtesy:
Courtesy
Of Courtesy it is much less
Than Courage of heart or Holiness,
Yet in my walks it appears to me
That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.
“Now he belongs to the ages”
This style or elegance is an essential part of a dream we have, a dream that Joseph Campbell in his lifelong investigation of the stories people tell found to be common to all these stories. This dream we all seek to realise is of a love whose elegance or attractiveness draws us into the relationships that are the main source of the contentment or joy we find in life. What Lincoln highlights is this elegance, beauty, style or glory he manifests in the way he loved and related and this was for me a delightful experience. When someone says at the end of the film when they see Lincoln’s body laid out, “Now he belongs to the ages” I think they are predicting what in fact has come to pass which is that Abraham Lincoln has become the stuff of legend. In other words the story of his life has become for us all, but especially for Americans the ideal and yet real embodiment of our dream. The film reminds us that amid all the limitations and pettiness we see around us there is a nobility about the way we struggle to love and relate and if we keep our eye on what is glorious about our life, we will be a lot more content with its twists and turns.
Where real beauty resides
In the film, Calendar Girls, there is a wonderful example of this elegance, beauty or charm in the way most people love and relate. Initially, the film centres on the local horticulturalist John Clarke who is dying of cancer and on the following words he addresses to the local Women’s Institute. “The flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire, every stage of their growth is more beautiful than the last. But the last phase is always the most glorious.” The rest of the film is about how twelve women who decided to pose semi-nude for a calendar to raise money for their local clinic came to realise their true beauty and that every stage of their lives was more beautiful than all that had gone before.
“You are God’s work of art”
The life of Lincoln like those of the saints is not told to highlight how petty we are by comparison and thus to diminish us but to put us in touch with a glory that is ours and that we need to be aware of and celebrate. This glory, elegance and beauty that we express in the way we love and relate is, according to Erich Fromm in his book The Art of Loving, the greatest of all the arts though sadly it is often the most neglected. What is sad about this is not that we are inept at the art of loving but that we are not more aware of the style with which we normally love and relate.
I have had a renewed interest in recent years in the theme of beauty, glory, splendour or radiance, especially that which we find in people’s lives. When I studied philosophy we spent a lot of time trying to understand two aspects of the world around us that we termed truth and goodness but the reality that the world is also beautiful was nowhere in sight.
Transfigured in ever-increasing splendour
In recent years I have become aware of how important for the Bible is the glory, beauty or elegance of people’s lives. For example, when Psalm 8 reflects on our being made in God’s image, it says that God has thereby “crowned us with glory and beauty” and Paul expresses his belief that here and now
“we are transfigured in ever-increasing splendour into his image and this is the work of the Lord, the Spirit”. (2 Cor3:18)
As a result of all this, when I came to write A World Alight With Splendour I devoted two chapters to beauty as an essential part of the dream that is innate to us as human beings and as Christians. One of these chapters, based on Jesus’ words, “The glory that you have given me I have given them,” (Jn 17:22) looks at a style, a radiance or a splendour there is about people’s lives. The other chapter looks at four key ways people manifest this beauty in the way they are present to us.
All of this became the atmosphere that for me surrounds the film Lincoln and gave it such a profound meaning and importance. The power of this portrait of elegance, beauty or glory reminded me of the following piece on beauty and its importance that Cardinal Danneels wrote in the Tablet some years ago.
Learning again to find beauty
I wonder whether we make sufficient use of beauty as the doorway leading to God. God is indeed, truth, holiness and moral perfection but also beauty. One can reach God through the gateway of truth, for truth attracts us. But many of our contemporaries are mini Pontius Pilots who ask, “What is truth?” And they stand at the door without entering.
God as moral perfection and holiness also attracts us. But many will say: I am drawn by the idea of moral perfection, but I am incapable of attaining it. And they also stand at the door without going in, incapacitated by their moral weakness.
Beauty on the other hand, disarms: it is irresistible for our contemporaries. Young students spend hours discussing and holding forth about dogma (truth) and ethics (goodness). But when they listen to Bach’s St Matthew Passion, they are disarmed and surrender in silence.
Beauty can achieve a synthesis between truth and goodness. Truth, beauty and goodness: they are three of God’s names and three paths that lead to him. But beauty has hardly been pressed into use by theology or religious teaching up until now. Isn’t it time we do so?” Cardinal Danneels
Peter’s Blog for February
I found Quartet a strikingly moving, amusing and truthful film, especially in the way it looks at old age. It takes a very different approach to its subject than that taken in the film Amour which focuses on how two people in their eighties live out the final months of their profound and enduring love for each other.
Quartet is Dustin Hoffman’s debut as a director and he has waited till he is 75 before taking on this role. It is a formidable undertaking to manage a group of people in or around their eighties who want to put on a gala concert to raise enough money to keep the home where they live afloat for another year. There is a rich variety of characters involved and they have all been part of the entertainment business as singers and musicians. Thus they have spent their lives performing for audiences and many of them have learned to value themselves by the loudness of the applause they have got. This form of recognition has been their life blood and many of them find it hard to come to terms with the fact that they can no longer command an audience but most resign themselves to the loss of the gift that gave meaning and worth to life. Some have not come to terms with their loss of control of a way of life which gave them a sense of importance so that they spend a lot of their time bidding for attention.
There is a lot of humour in the film provided, for example, by Cedric who is the organiser of the gala concert. Like many of the elderly characters in the film he suffers from memory loss. In one scene he announces to those around him that he has had a brilliant idea only to find that having told them how good it is he cant remember what the idea was and starts blaming those whom he had told about it earlier for not remembering what he had told them. Then there is Cissy who was a famous contralto but is now in the early stages of dementia. Just before she is due on stage to sing in the famous quartet from Rigoletto, she insists that she must go home to see her mother and father. There is a wonderful scene when Maggie Smith pretends to help Cissy pack her bags but skilfully leads her onto the stage where they are both involved in the quartet which is the grand climax of the concert. Then there is the character played by Billy Connolly who never misses a chance to paint a graphic picture of the quirks and common failings of old age.
Are you somebody?
This is the title Nuala O’Faolain gave to her autobiography and it is a question we often ask ourselves, especially in situations where our significance is questioned. Quartet highlights our desperate need to have our significance acknowledged as we crave worth and honour or to have our human value or dignity acknowledged. It is obvious that some of the characters in the film have sought to satisfy this need by the acclaim they have earned from performing. Their source of worth was fickle as it was always as good as their next performance. Now that their ability to perform and win applause is fading so is their sense of importance or of being somebody.
Living in a celebrity culture we often confuse outer and inner worth, the significance we get from the odd bit of acclaim we earn and the significance we see in the eyes of those who love us. Maybe, those who love us do not express their love often enough or loud enough or maybe we are so busy seeking our worth from what we achieve that we are blind to the signs of it that come our way on a regular basis.
Is old age our flowering or our declining years
A second issue that Quartet left me wondering about is how we face this period of life if we are to be at peace with all its challenges. For it does challenge us with the fading of our gifts, with letting go of so many things we have enjoyed and that have given us a sense of identity but most of all it challenges us to face the mystery of our death. For me, in my late seventies this is a very immediate and tangible issue as it is for all the people in Quartet. Some of these seemed to be at peace with this final stage of their lives and they posed the question about how we see and feel about where we are now on this issue of aging and how comfortable we will be with it in the years that remain to us. Some years ago I wrote this poem about my hope that my Autumn years would have their own glory or beauty.
Autumn Glory
Autumn’s wonderful world of leaves
Alas, in such a short, though glorious show
Of yellow and brown, of green and gold
Will soon be stripped to winter starkness.
Ravaged by cruel wind, frost and dreary rain,
Amid November’s all-encompassing greyness,
It will be hard to imagine there was a Summer
And the brilliance of this Autumn glory.
But it was not this sorry tale
Or to feed nostalgia for the Summer past
That made this passing picture glorious
But the hope of my own Autumn years.
That these may capture the beauty of this scene
And hold its glory, for my remaining years,
Less through my own all too feeble effort
Than in my growing awareness of Your Grace.
The wisdom stage of life
Erik_Erikson_200I got a lot of light about this final period of life when I was writing a book called, The Search For Something More. For a number of years before I wrote it, I was interested in the four calls of adult life that Erik Erikson spent much of his life writing about. The first of these calls is to discover our identity or to know and be at home with ourselves. Out of this experience grows the call to intimacy or to make ourselves known to those we are close to. The security that intimacy brings to our lives allows us the freedom to answer the call to become more generative or to give ourselves to others. Finally, in later life comes the call to integrity or wisdom, a call to gather together and to integrate the wisdom we have learned from our struggle to love and relate. It is in getting our whole person involved in receiving and returning this love, within the key relationships life calls us into, that Jesus tells us we will find life in all its fullness. So, even though at my age I am primarily interested in the call to wisdom or in the call of old age, all the other calls are an inseparable part of this as it is their flowering.
If this final period of our life is to be its flowering, there is something about all our relationships we must face. This is the reality that if our way of loving and relating are to develop properly, we must face two sides of ourselves: our poor self who is limited and sinful and our rich self who is gifted and graced. We must learn to forgive or accept the limited and sinful side of ourselves as well as to appreciate and celebrate how gifted we are by nature and by Grace. If we do not accept how weak and wayward we are in the way that Jesus does, this poor side of ourselves will preoccupy us and determine the way we see and feel about ourselves. If the prevailing sense of ourselves is of our human limitations and sinfulness or of our being “dust and sinne”, we will be uneasy about Love welcoming us.
Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey`d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lack`d any thing.
A guest I answer`d, worthy to be here:
Love said, you shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungrateful? Ah my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr`d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat;
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert
If we grow to forgive and accept our weak and wayward self, in the way that Jesus in his sacrament of reconciliation invites us to do, this side of ourselves will not preoccupy us and become our prevailing way of seeing and feeling about ourselves and others. As a result, we will become free to appreciate, to be grateful for and to celebrate the 90% of life that is gifted and graced.
The last of life for which the first is made
Autumn_Glory_300A very wise person I once knew said that if our final years are to be a flowering or the golden ones, we need to prepare for this period of our life when we are in our middle years. I think we need a lot of energy if we are to learn to accept ourselves and others and to develop the freedom this gives us to appreciate and celebrate the wonders of God’s love and grace. This facility to celebrate this wondrous love and the dream of intimacy it inspires appears to me to be what Jesus wants us to develop when he invites us to “abide in” his love.
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. Jn 15:9-11
Betty Davis is quoted a number of times during Quartet as saying, “Old age is not for sissies”. A sissy is defined as cowardly, effeminate or wimpish. We are invited to answer the final call of adult life in a discerning and courageous way as we struggle to love others and all creation as Jesus and all the significant people in our lives have loved us.
Old Age
The seas are quiet when the winds give o’er;
So calm are we when passions are no more.
For then we know how vain is was to boast
Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal their emptiness which age decries.
The soul’s dark cottage, batterd and decay’d,
Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
They stand upon the threshold of the new.
Edmund Waller
Peter’s Blog for January
It’s A Wonderful Life
IAWL_1_300George Bailey always wanted to leave Bedford Falls, the small town where he grew up. He wanted to travel and then to treat himself to a university education but circumstances and his own good heart led him to stay. After his father’s death he decided to give what he had saved to his brother Harry so that he might pursue his plans to educate himself. George shelved his own plans in order to keep the family-run savings and loan business afloat. He also wanted to avoid all his father worked so hard to establish from falling into the hands of Mr Potter, a greedy banker who was intent on buying up as much of Bedford Falls as he could pressurise people into selling him. However, through a foolish mistake of his uncle, who assisted him in his business, George lost all the companies savings and so he was contemplating ending his life.
Enter Clarence
IAWL_2_250At this point Clarence, George’s guardian angle, intervenes. He has been in the business of guarding people a long time but has never merited his wings and so has remained a second class guardian angle. He sees George’s predicament as his chance to change his fortunes. Clarance’s strategy is to invite George to see what life would have been like for all the people George had helped if he had not been there when they needed him. On this journey back through the key moments of his life George is led to realise, in the words of the song, that ‘if you can love somebody, then your living shall not be in vain’.
Humdrum is who you are
It’s a Wonderful Life is a story about growing up and seemingly being asked to relinquish your dreams. It is a story of being trapped, of compromising, of watching others move ahead and away to what appears to be a more exciting and fulfilling life. It is the story of how someone works through all of this and ‘finds a world beyond his imagination beneath his feet’. It is in living in the ordinary circumstances of everyday life that George is brought to realise the truth of Chesterton’s words:”Humdrum is not where you are but who you are”.
The film reminds me of the Chinese story of the twelve stages a woman who sells fish passes through in her quest for wisdom. What is intriguing about the story is that after she gains this wisdom in the rough and tumble of life she returns to selling fish but now sees the ordinariness of her life anew, as if for the first time.
With the drawing of this Love
And the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot
A conquest crowded career
At the end of the film George remains in Bedford Falls for it is there his dream has been realised. He has come to see the magnificent truth that Gerard Manley Hopkins voices so strikingly in his poem about a person of most unusual virtue. This person, St Alphonsus Rodriguez, though he spent most of his life as a porter, was seen by Hopkins to have embodied the reality that, God “could crowd career with conquest while there went / Those years and years by of world without event / That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
The poem expresses something very deep about us, about our quest to make a name for ourselves, to avoid at all costs being a nobody or being ordinary. In the first part of the poem Hopkins focuses on how we think about glory, honour, prestige and how in the outer world we achieve it by doing heroic deeds. Then he moves to the glory that comes from “the war within” in which God “with trickling increment” … can “crowd career with conquest” amid the seeming uneventfulness of our days.
Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
But be the war within, the brand we wield
Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
Could crowd career with conquest while there went
Those years and years by of world without event
That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.