The Pope’s Extraordinary Defense of Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: August 14, 2024
Pope Francis

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Thursday

My jaw dropped recently after receiving word from two friends, Scott Lee and Valerie Hotchkiss, that the pope has passionately and intelligently endorsed literature. Given the Catholic Church’s long and dark history of banning books, I initially wondered whether this was another Francis apology tour for past church misbehavior.

Francis may indeed have past church book bans in mind, but his letter goes far beyond any apology. Rather, he sees literature as absolutely essential to our spiritual, intellectual, and physical well-being. The letter is one of the most extraordinary defenses I have encountered, up there with those of Sir Philip Sidney and Percy Shelley.

To look at the Vatican’s dark past for a moment, here a list of some of the works that have have, over the centuries, appeared on its Index Librorum Prohibitorum or Index of Prohibited Books:

–Dante, The Divine Comedy (partially redacted)
–Boccaccio, The Decameron
—John Milton, Paradise Lost
–Daniel Defoe, The Political History of the Devil
–Jean Jacques Rousseau, La Nouvelle Éloise
–all of Honoré de Balzac’s Human Comedy novels
–Stendahl, The Red and the Black
–Victor Hugo, Les Misérables and Notre Dame de Paris
–Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
–Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary  and Salambo
–all of Émile Zola’s work (with Nana singled out)
–all of André Gide’s work
–all of Jean Paul Sartre’s work
–all of Alberto Moravia’s work
–Nicolai Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ

Francis begins by saying that he wrote his letter originally to point out how literature can contribute to “the path of personal maturity” for Catholic priests but adds that “this subject also applies to the formation of all those engaged in pastoral work, indeed of all Christians.” You can read the letter in its entirety here, but I have pulled out some of the highlights. I quote Francis directly because he articulates his points so well:

–In moments of weariness, anger, disappointment or failure, when prayer itself does not help us find inner serenity, a good book can help us weather the storm until we find peace of mind. Time spent reading may well open up new interior spaces that help us to avoid becoming trapped by a few obsessive thoughts that can stand in the way of our personal growth.

–A book demands greater personal engagement on the part of its reader [than audio-visual media]. Readers in some sense rewrite a text, enlarging its scope through their imagination, creating a whole world by bringing into play their skills, their memory, their dreams and their personal history, with all its drama and symbolism. In this way, what emerges is a text quite different from the one the author intended to write. A literary work is thus a living and ever-fruitful text, always capable of speaking in different ways and producing an original synthesis on the part of each of its readers. In our reading, we are enriched by what we receive from the author and this allows us in turn to grow inwardly, so that each new work we read will renew and expand our worldview.

–I would agree with the observation of one theologian that “literature… originates in the most irreducible core of the person, that mysterious level [of their being]… Literature is life, conscious of itself, that reaches its full self-expression through the use of all the conceptual resources of language.”

–Literature…has to do, in one way or another, with our deepest desires in this life, for on a profound level literature engages our concrete existence, with its innate tensions, desires and meaningful experiences.

–In the end, our hearts always seek something greater, and individuals will find their own way in literature. I, for my part, love the tragedians, because we can all embrace their works as our own, as expressions of our own personal drama. In weeping for the fate of their characters, we are essentially weeping for ourselves, for our own emptiness, shortcomings and loneliness. Naturally, I am not asking you to read the same things that I did. Everyone will find books that speak to their own lives and become authentic companions for their journey. There is nothing more counterproductive than reading something out of a sense of duty, making considerable effort simply because others have said it is essential. On the contrary, while always being open to guidance, we should select our reading with an open mind, a willingness to be surprised, a certain flexibility and readiness to learn, trying to discover what we need at every point of our lives.

–How can we reach the core of cultures ancient and new if we are unfamiliar with, disregard or dismiss their symbols, messages, artistic expressions and the stories with which they have captured and evoked their loftiest ideals and aspirations, as well as their deepest sufferings, fears and passions? How can we speak to the hearts of men and women if we ignore, set aside or fail to appreciate the “stories” by which they sought to express and lay bare the drama of their lived experience in novels and poems?

–From a practical point of view, many scientists argue that the habit of reading has numerous positive effects on people’s lives, helping them to acquire a wider vocabulary and thus develop broader intellectual abilities. It also stimulates their imagination and creativity, enabling them to learn to tell their stories in richer and more expressive ways. It also improves their ability to concentrate, reduces levels of cognitive decline, and calms stress and anxiety.

–Even more, reading prepares us to understand and thus deal with various situations that arise in life. In reading, we immerse ourselves in the thoughts, concerns, tragedies, dangers and fears of characters who in the end overcome life’s challenges. Perhaps too, in following a story to the end, we gain insights that will later prove helpful in our own lives.

–When I think of literature, I am reminded of what the great Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges used to tell his students, namely that the most important thing is simply to read, to enter into direct contact with literature, to immerse oneself in the living text in front of us, rather than to fixate on ideas and critical comments. Borges explained this idea to his students by saying that at first they may understand very little of what they are reading, but in any case they are hearing “another person’s voice”. This is a definition of literature that I like very much: listening to another person’s voice. We must never forget how dangerous it is to stop listening to the voice of other people when they challenge us! We immediately fall into self-isolation; we enter into a kind of “spiritual deafness”, which has a negative effect on our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with God, no matter how much theology or psychology we may have studied….This approach to literature, which makes us sensitive to the mystery of other persons, teaches us how to touch their hearts.

–T.S. Eliot, the poet whose poetry and essays, reflecting his Christian faith, have an outstanding place in modern literature, perceptively described today’s religious crisis as that of a widespread emotional incapacity. If we are to believe this diagnosis, the problem for faith today is not primarily that of believing more or believing less with regard to particular doctrines. Rather, it is the inability of so many of our contemporaries to be profoundly moved in the face of God, his creation and other human beings. Here we see the importance of working to healing and enrich our responsiveness. On returning from my Apostolic Journey to Japan, I was asked what I thought the West has to learn from the East. My response was, “I think that the West lacks a bit of poetry”. 

–What profit, then, does a priest gain from contact with literature? Why is it necessary to consider and promote the reading of great novels as an important element in priestly paideia?… Let us try to answer these questions by listening to what the German theologian [Karl Rhaner] has to tell us. For Rahner, the words of the poet are full of nostalgia, as it were, they are like “gates into infinity, gates into the incomprehensible. They call upon that which has no name. They stretch out to what cannot be grasped.” Poetry “does not itself give the infinite, it does not bring and contain the infinite.” That is the task of the word of God and, as Rahner goes on to say, “the poetic word calls upon the word of God.” For Christians, the Word is God, and all our human words bear traces of an intrinsic longing for God, a tending towards that Word. It can be said that the truly poetic word participates analogically in the Word of God, as the Letter to the Hebrews clearly states (cf. Heb 4:12-13).

–As far as content is concerned, we should realize that literature is like “a telescope”, to use a well-known image of Marcel Proust. As such, it is pointed at beings and things, and enables us to realize “the immense distance” that separates the totality of human experience from our perception of it. “Literature can also be compared to a photo lab, where pictures of life can be processed in order to bring out their contours and nuances. This is what literature is ‘for’: it helps us to ‘develop’ the picture of life,” to challenge us about its meaning, and, in a word, to experience life as it is.

–In terms of the use of language, reading a literary text places us in the position of “seeing through the eyes of others,” thus gaining a breadth of perspective that broadens our humanity. We develop an imaginative empathy that enables us to identify with how others see, experience and respond to reality. Without such empathy, there can be no solidarity, sharing, compassion, mercy. In reading we discover that our feelings are not simply our own, they are universal, and so even the most destitute person does not feel alone.

–In reading about violence, narrowness or frailty on the part of others, we have an opportunity to reflect on our own experiences of these realities. By opening up to the reader a broader view of the grandeur and misery of human experience, literature teaches us patience in trying to understand others, humility in approaching complex situations, meekness in our judgement of individuals and sensitivity to our human condition. Judgement is certainly needed, but we must never forget its limited scope. Judgement must never issue in a death sentence, eliminating persons or suppressing our humanity for the sake of a soulless absolutizing of the law.

–The wisdom born of literature instils in the reader greater perspective, a sense of limits, the ability to value experience over cognitive and critical thinking, and to embrace a poverty that brings extraordinary riches. By acknowledging the futility and perhaps even the impossibility of reducing the mystery of the world and humanity to a dualistic polarity of true vs false or right vs wrong, the reader accepts the responsibility of passing judgement, not as a means of domination, but rather as an impetus towards greater listening. And at the same time, a readiness to partake in the extraordinary richness of a history which is due to the presence of the Spirit, but is also given as a grace, an unpredictable and incomprehensible event that does not depend on human activity, but redefines our humanity in terms of hope for salvation.

At one point in his letter, Francis  worries about what happens when literature is seen as non-essential. He is talking about the education of seminarians, but his observation extends to everyone. Dismissing literature as a frill, he contends, “can lead to the serious intellectual and spiritual impoverishment of future priests, who will be deprived of that privileged access which literature grants to the very heart of human culture and, more specifically, to the heart of every individual.”

He also talks about his own teaching experiences in Argentina. When he encountered students who wanted to read the contemporary poet Garcia Lorca rather than the canonical El Cid, he decided to discuss Lorca in class while having the students read El Cid at home. In the process, he discovered that discussing the contemporary poet led his students to appreciate the older one.

I can’t say much more in response to Francis’s letter than a loud “Amen!”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Harris as Potter, Biden as Dumbledore

By Robin Bates | Published: August 13, 2024

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Wednesday

One of the loveliest aspects of the large Kamala Harris rallies is the periodic chants of “We love you, Joe.” They are testimony to the deep affection that Democrats have for the current president, including many who were pressuring him to step down. We are so unaccustomed in politics to seeing selflessness win out over ego—of people putting the welfare of the community over themselves—that it seemed miraculous when it happened. Joseph Robinette Biden deserves much of the credit for the Democrats’ smooth transition to Harris.

I’ve written about how the transition taps into the Fisher King archetype. But there’s another mythic narrative at work as well, one which J.K. Rowling uses in the conclusion of the Harry Potter series.

In The Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter gives up his life in order to defeat Voldemort. Having received a final message from a dying Snape, Harry realizes what he must do to defeat his archenemy. Voldemort has issued an ultimatum—if Harry does not meet him at a designated time in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort will “punish every last man, woman , and child who has tried to conceal you from me”—and Harry realizes he must surrender to save them:

Lying with his face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where he had once thought he was learning the secrets of ciry, Harry understood at last that he was not supposed to survive. His job was to walk calmly into Death’s welcoming arms.

There’s more at work here than merely offering himself up as a sacrificial lamb. In a complicated plot twist that confuses even Harry Potter fans, Harry carries within him a fragment of Voldemort’s soul. (I’ll have more to say about the political applicability of this symbolism.) Therefore, when Voldemort thinks he is killing Harry, he is actually killing his own soul. And because Harry is one of the remaining horcruxes that Voldemort uses to stay alive, the dark lord renders himself vulnerable to defeat at the very moment when he thinks he has vanquished his foe.

I suspect you can see where I’m going with this. By choosing selflessness over ego and by designating a dynamic woman of color as his successor, Biden unleashed a positive energy that is buoying the Democrats. While the dynamic Harris and her vice-presidential pick Tim Walz certainly bring their own energy, Biden created the narrative.

His selfless decision has utterly flummoxed Trump, who is flailing at the moment and may not recover. After all, according to his understanding of the universe, people do not willingly surrender power. What Dumbledore says to Harry in the limbo world to which he has gone after Voldemort “kills” him applies equally to the past president:  

He was more afraid than you were that night, Harry. You had accepted, even embraced, the possibility of death, something Lord Voldemort has never been able to do. Your courage won. Your wand overpowered his.

During his time in this limbo world, Harry sees the fragment of the Voldemort soul that he has been carrying, the fragment that Voldemort blasted with his wand. Think of it as Trump’s own inner self:

[Harry] recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.

This figure fits the image that psychologist Mary Trump gives of her uncle. Much about Trump can be explained by the emotional neglect he suffered when he was growing up, she writes:

When Donald was a young child, his mother, my grandmother, was very ill. For about a year, starting when Donald was two and a half, he didn’t have a primary caregiver because she was physically and emotionally unavailable to him. There was nobody there to do the essential parenting that children at that extremely crucial developmental period need. Toddlers need to be seen; they need to be soothed. He didn’t get any of that, not only because my grandmother wasn’t there for him, but because the person who replaced her, my grandfather, was a straight up textbook sociopath.

The result is the whimpering, thumping man who for four years was our president and who is striving to become so again. When Harry and Dumbledore look down at the figure, however, Dumbledore tells his protégé to look toward the future:

Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we say good-bye for the present.

My parallel with Election 2024 breaks down a little here because, of course, it is not Biden who returns to battle Voldemort but a successor. Biden in this scenario is more Obi-Wan Kenobe giving himself up so that Luke Skywalker can triumph. So shift gears for a moment and think of Biden as Dumbledore and Harris as Harry. Imagine Harris squaring off in a final confrontation with the dark lord, the two circling with wands out.

At first glance, it appears that Harry doesn’t have a chance. After all, Voldemort is wielding the Elder Wand, which like Tolkien’s Ring of Power is the ultimate weapon. To obtain it, Voldemort has killed ruthlessly.

Harry, however, has access to a deeper magic. He has seen in Dumbledore what Harris has seen in Biden, that love of others is more powerful than authoritarian power trips. He informs Voldemort of this in their faceoff:

“I know things you don’t know, Tom Riddle (Voldemort’s human name). I know lots of important things that you don’t. Want to hear some, before you make another big mistake…”

“Is it love again?” said Voldemort, his snake’s face jeering. “Dumbledore’s favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, although love did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old wax work?”…

“Yes Dumbledore’s dead,” said Harry calmly, “but you didn’t have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying…”

That manner of dying, it so happens, ultimately leads to Harry becoming the master of the Elder Wand, just as Biden’s symbolic death led to the ascendency of a woman of African-Asian descent. When Voldemort tries to use the wand against him, therefore, the curse rebounds, killing Voldemort instead. The wand meanwhile finds its way into Harry’s hand.

Could it be that Biden’s determination to be president of all Americans—a vision that Harris shares—will win out over Trump’s attempt to demonize those who don’t look and think like him? As I write this, things are looking up.

The difference between how Voldemort sees the Elder Wand and how Dumbledore and Harry see it is also significant for our purposes. Trump, J.D. Vance, and the authors of Project 2025 regard the presidency as the Elder Wand, a means of imposing a Christian nationalist state on all Americans. They have even persuaded our rightwing Supreme Court to grant the president absolute immunity for all “official duties.”

Rather than use this power himself, however, Biden has proposed laws stripping the president of this power. Meanwhile Harry, although himself now possessor of the Elder Wand, gets rid of it at the end. He uses it once—to repair his old wand—and then gives it up. It’s worth noting that he dismisses total power with little more than a shrug:

“That wand’s more trouble than it’s worth,” said Harry “And quite honestly…I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.”

I promised you a further observation on the significance of Harry and Voldemort being intertwined so here it is. Biden is not without ego. To run as long and as hard for president as he did would be impossible without it. In other words, although not the narcissist that Trump is, he had that Trumpian element within him. Harry’s development throughout the series is in part an internal struggle with his Voldemort side. Or as Jung would describe it, his shadow side.

I imagine Biden taking Harry’s walk to the Forbidden Forest as he wrestled with whether or not to drop out of the race. Harry almost turns back, and it is only because of supportive voices from his past, including those of his father and mother, that he can continue on. Biden must have been bolstered by his own supportive voices in agreeing to what, at times, felt like a kind of death.

Again, accepting the death of the ego is so far beyond anything Trump could imagine that Biden’s move has left him utterly bewildered. Reality has shifted under his feet and he can’t adjust.

Further thought – As I was rereading the end of Deathly Hollows for this blog entry, I realized how much Rowling has borrowed from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, with Voldemort as the White Witch and Harry as the Christ-figure Aslan. While Biden is no Christ, his self-sacrifice is very much in that spirit. As a devout Catholic, Biden would know the words from John, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments closed

What to Make of a Diminished Month

By Robin Bates | Published: August 12, 2024
ovenbird

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Tuesday

August is not a glamor month, what with the heat and the dust and summer coming to an end and school beginning. Perhaps that’s why Robert Frost shines a light on it in “The Oven Bird.” Although August flowers are to spring flowers as one is to ten, he says, the month confronts us with essential life questions. Someone has to address our diminishment, which is where the oven bird comes in.

Feeling somewhat diminished myself (possible heart arrhythmia, a prostate cancer diagnosis), I am heartened that there’s a poet that sings, like the oven bird, to my condition. What am I to make of it all? I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out.

In the meantime, however, I’m struck once again about how there’s a poem for every occasion.

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird.
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Is Trump Set to Inherit the Wind?

By Robin Bates | Published: August 11, 2024
Tracy, Morgan and March in Inherit the Wind

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Monday

Watching Donald Trump rage posting while hunkered down in his Florida home, I am reminded of the final scene in Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s 1955 play about the 1925 Scopes monkey trial, which I read as a high school student. There we see a larger-than-life political figure collapse like a balloon with a slow leak.

Inherit the Wind is loosely based on the prosecution of biology teacher John T. Scopes for teaching Darwinian evolution in a Dayton, Tennessee high school. The main drama involves a clash between three-time presidential candidate and populist politician William Jennings Bryan (Matthew Harrison Brady in the play) and legendary defense lawyer Clarence Darrow (Henry Drummond). Darrow and Scopes lost the case—Scopes was fined $100—but won the publicity war. The verdict, meanwhile, would be overturned on a technicality.

In applying the play to our current political situation, Brady (Bryan) would be Donald Trump, carrying the flag for Christian fundamentalism, whereas Drummond (Darrow) is the Harris/Walz ticket, liberals arguing for science, free speech, and teachers.

While the parallels are hardly exact—unlike Bryan, Trump actually won a presidential contest—what strikes me is how diminished Brady (Bryan) is by the end of the play. He begins an imposing figure, descending upon this small Tennessee town to impose his values. Even though he wins his case, however, he himself has been humiliated on the stand and no longer towers over everyone else. He dreams of giving a grand speech at trial’s end but the judge rules it irrelevant (just as Trump’s Manhattan judge did) and postpones it to after the trial. Here’s the final scene, which begins with Brady objecting to what he regards as a ridiculously small fine:

Brady: Did your Honor say one hundred dollars?
Judge: That is correct. (Trying to get it over with) This seems to conclude the business of the trial.
Brady (thundering) Your Honor, the prosecution takes exception! Where the issues are so titanic, the court must mete out more drastic punishment…To make an example of this transgressor! To show the world—

The trial complete, the Judge invites Bryan to give his speech:

Judge (to public): We beg your attention, please, ladies and gentlemen! Colonel Brady has some remarks to make which I am sure will interest us all! (A few of the faithful fall dutifully silent. But the milling about and the slopping of lemonade continues. Two kids chase each other in and out among the spectators. annoying the perspiring Radio Man. Brady stretches out his arms, in the great attention-getting gesture.)
BRADY My dear friends … ! Your attention, please! (The bugle voice reduces the noise somewhat further. But it is not the eager, anticipatory hush of olden days. Attention is given him, not as the inevitable due of a mighty monarch, but grudgingly and resentfully)

Fellow citizens, and friends of the unseen audience. From the hallowed hills of sacred Sinai, in the days of remote antiquity, came the law which has been our bulwark and our shield. Age upon age. man have looked to the law as they would look to the mountains, whence cometh our strength. And here, here in this –  (The Radio Man approaches Brady nervously.)

Radio Man: Excuse me. Mr. – uh, Colonel Brady; would you … uh … point more in the direction of the enunciator …? 
(The Radio Man pushes Brady bodily toward the microphone. As the orator is maneuvered into position, he seems almost to be an inanimate object, like a huge ornate vase which must be precisely centered on a mantel. In this momentary lull, the audience has slipped away from him again. There’s a backwash of restless shifting and murmuring. Brady’s vanity and cussedness won’t let him give up, even though he realizes this is a sputtering anticlimax. By God, he’ll make them listen!)
Brady (Red-faced, his larynx taut, roaring stridently): As they would look to the mountains whence cometh our strength. And here, here in this courtroom, we have seen vindicated – (A few people leave. He watches them desperately, out of the comer of his eye) We have seen vindicated – 
Radio Man (After an off-stage signal): Ladies and gentlemen, our program director in Chicago advises us that our time here is completed. Harry Y. Esterbrook speaking. We return you now to our studios and “Matinee Musicale.” (He takes the microphone and goes off. This is the final indignity to Brady; he realizes that a great portion of his audience has left him as he watches it go. Brady brandishes his speech, as if it were Excalibur. His eyes start from this head, the voice is a tight, frantic rasp.)
Brady: From the hallowed hills of sacred Sinai … (He freezes. His lips move, but nothing comes out. Paradoxically, his silence brings silence. The orator can hold his audience only by not speaking.)

And then this:

(There seems to be some violent, volcanic upheaval within him. His lower lip quivers, his eyes stare. Very slowly, he seems to be leaning toward the audience. Then, like a figure in a waxworks, toppling from its pedestal, he falls stiffly, face forward…The sheaf of manuscript, clutched in his raised hand, scatters in mid-air. The great words flutter innocuously to the courtroom floor.)

Historically, Bryan died five days after the trial’s completion but in the play he dies at this moment, at which point the journalist in attendance (based on H.L. Mencken) makes some cynical remark. In response, Drummond unexpectedly defends Brady, noting that he was once a great man.

I don’t want to be premature here since Trump could still win the election, but I could well imagine him going out in a similar way. “Not with a bang but a whimper,” as Eliot puts it.

Trump, however, is no Bryan, who once defended midwestern farmers against rapacious east coast banks insistent upon maintaining the gold standard (“You shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold”). For his part, Trump has never cared about anyone but himself. Rather than invoking “the hallowed hills of sacred Sinai,” he seethes with jealousy at his rival’s crowd sizes and tweets out things like the following:

Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive “crowd” of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake “crowds” at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING – And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!

[Narrator: “The photos weren’t faked and the crowd sizes were real.”]

A man who desires to command center stage and strike fear in his rivals risks becoming reduced to a weird sideshow. The more panicked Trump becomes, the more likely he is to lose an election to this woman of color—which for him would be the ultimate humiliation.

Or as Solomon puts it in Proverbs (CSB 11:29), “The one who brings ruin on his household will inherit the wind, and a fool will be a slave to someone whose heart is wise.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Poetry Brings Us Closer to God

By Robin Bates | Published: August 10, 2024
Delphin Enjolras, Young Woman Reading by a Window

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Sunday

Victoria Emily Jones’s Art & Theology blog is must reading for those interested in how literature can deepen one’s spiritual life. A few weeks ago she reported on a fascinating interview with author and poetry teacher Abram van Engen on “why Christians in particular should read poetry.” At one points he notes how literature can speak to us in ways deeper than expository prose:

I often think that ministers in particular—and especially the heavier the preaching tradition, the more true this is—need creative literature—poetry, novels, and other things—to enliven what it is they’re doing from the pulpit. Not just to understand human life in all of its flourishing and misery, but to connect to people in different kinds of way than pure principle and message can do.

The observation reminds me of the poem “Windows” by 17th century poet George Herbert, who points out the difference between transparent glass and stained glass. The former, like Engen’s “pure principle and message,” fails to convey God’s “light and glory.” Unless preachers “anneal in glass thy story,” Herbert writes, God’s “eternal word” appears “waterish, bleak, and thin”:

But when thou dost anneal in glass thy story,
    Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glory
    More reverend grows, and more doth win;
    Which else shows waterish, bleak, and thin.

Of course, Herbert’s own version of conveying God’s shining is through poetry.

In her blog post, Jones also cites pastor and author Russ Ramsey and singer-songwriter Sandra McCracken, who talk about how one should, essentially, read the Bible as literature:

Scripture calls for reading with a fully engaged imagination, Ramsey says, because that’s how literature works and that’s how people work. “How are you supposed to understand Scripture if you’re not trying to empathize or get into a situation and walk around inside of it?” he asks. They discuss wonder, mystery, and paradox—the unresolved dissonance and complexity present in many Bible stories—and the need to take a Bible story on its own terms instead of always trying to extract a moral or “life application” from it.

Jones notes that the two are

basically advocating for Ignatian contemplation, a.k.a. the Ignatian method of Bible reading and prayer, in which you put yourself into the story and try to experience it with all your senses.

Ramsey provides a fascinating example. Since Mary had recently anointed Jesus with nard (much to Judas’s displeasure), that means he would have smelled “opulent” when he was being arrested, tried, flogged, and crucified. Ramsey imagines a first-century Christian thinking, “He left a lingering scent as he went down the Via Dolorosa, and it was the scent of royalty. And it was the scent of extravagance.”

Poets who take up Biblical themes, either directly or indirectly, have therefore something particularly valuable to offer us. The Bible is not only poetry and fiction and drama itself but it invites poetic and fictional and theatrical interpretation (as the works I share on Sundays make clear). Just as poets “tell the truth but tell it slant” (to quote Emily Dickinson), so literature that echoes Biblical language and literature that explores Biblical stories is a way of engaging with spirit at the deepest level. And this includes literary works that have been condemned by church establishments, such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Molière’s Tartuffe, D. H. Lawrence’s The Man Who Died, and Kazantzakis’s Last Temptation of Christ.

Of course, a work doesn’t have to deal specifically with religious themes to be spiritual. God moves through us in all kinds of ways. The best poetry and fiction gives us glimpses of that movement.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

On Mary Oliver, Joy, and Harris-Walz

By Robin Bates | Published: August 8, 2024
August 6 rally in Philadelphia


Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Friday

Poet Tess Taylor has turned to Mary Oliver’s prose poem “Don’t Hesitate” to express the change in mood Democrats are experiencing since Kamala Harris became their nominee. Here’s the poem:

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Taylor savors the final sentence, noting that

it reminds me that joy is maybe so much bigger than we often let it be. It’s no crumb but the whole pie, the full nutty loaf, the full raucous potluck. Joy might be the meal that sustains us. Noticing joy can be a guiding force, helping us name what matters in our lives. Joy, Oliver suggests, helps us discern what we love, and, just maybe, helps us figure out how we want to live.

Taylor finds that joy in the Harris/Walz campaign. “It’s telling,” she writes,

that one of the signs that Kamala Harris might be an awesome candidate is that right now, she helps us imagine a world where we are happy and happier together. She seems, well, joyful.  As much as I love Harris, (and I really do), the end of this column is not really about her. It’s about the fact that it’s important to discover our joy.  When we find that joy, it’s important to savor it.  And it’s important to let that joy point us toward naming the big dreams about what our lives might feel like.

Perhaps Taylor is thinking of Harris’s laugh or how she and her running mate Tim Walz are calling themselves “happy warriors.” There’s certainly been a shift from the constant worry many of us were experiencing as Trump, bolstered by the mainstream media, battered Joe Biden over his age. Optics seemed to matter far more than substance.

The substance pretty much remains the same with the succession but the optics have changed radically. The slogan “Make America Laugh Again” appears to be driving Trump crazy. It’s as though we have spent years in an abusive relationship and have finally packed up our bags and walked out of the house.

The shift has me wondering if we have been far more traumatized by the Covid pandemic and the Trump presidency than we realized. We’ve been hunkered down so long in a defensive crouch—holding our breaths as we prayed that Joe Biden would hang on and that our Trumpian nightmare wouldn’t return—that we forgot what it was like to breathe freely.

Then the transition to Kamala Harris occurred and we realized (in Oliver’s words) that “life has some possibility left.” There’s no doubt that this “way of fighting back” against the darkness is far, far better “than all the riches or power in the world.” People are so starved for joy that they are packing into Harris and Walz’s rallies, with the result that we are watching Donald Trump melt down before our very eyes.

The moment seems even more powerful than the Barack Obama ascendancy and not because Harris is more charismatic than Obama (although she has plenty of charisma of her own). Rather, she and Walz are modeling the positivity that we’ve desperately needed. If Trump gave Americans a permission structure to indulge in grievance, Harris is giving us cause to hope again.

A sizable portion of the electorate sensed the instant that the joy began, which Oliver tells us is “often the case.” So don’t be afraid of joy’s plenty. Don’t fret about the honeymoon ending or about a possible letdown. Rather, stand fully in the joy. That crumb is enough, and more than enough, to make a full meal.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments closed

Abdul-Jabbar on Art’s Importance

By Robin Bates | Published: August 7, 2024


Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Thursday

I always love learning about the favorite literary works of well-known figures as my mind instantly goes into motion to figure out why. Reading a blog post by basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, I learned that, growing up, he was a fan of one of my childhood favorites, Alexander Dumas’s The Three Musketeers. That tidbit appears in a wonderfully reflective essay about the importance of art in our lives. Here’s what Abdul-Jabbar has to say:

Most people remember books they read as children that opened their eyes to new possibilities and nudged them in a different direction in life. That, too, is the purpose of art.

For me, many books inspired me, but two books come immediately to mind. Alone in my room, I was barely a teen when I read Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. It was exciting and suspenseful with lots of swordplay, intrigue, and betrayal. But it taught me something about teamwork, about being part of a group that was more important than the individual. I spent most of my youth and adulthood as part of a team in which we celebrated “All for one and one for all.” The passage occurs when D’Artagnan and the three musketeers decide to go all in on their feud with Cardinal Richelieu. You can see why a champion like Abdul-Jabbar would find it so thrilling:

“And now, gentlemen,” said D’Artagnan, without stopping to explain his conduct to Porthos, “All for one, one for all—that is our motto, is it not?”
“And yet—” said Porthos.
“Hold out your hand and swear!” cried Athos and Aramis at once.
Overcome by example, grumbling to himself, nevertheless, Porthos stretched out his hand, and the four friends repeated with one voice the formula dictated by D’Artagnan:
“All for one, one for all.”
“That’s well! Now let us everyone retire to his own home,” said D’Artagnan, as if he had done nothing but command all his life; “and attention! For from this moment we are at feud with the cardinal.”

The other book Abdul-Jabbar mentions, incidentally, is The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

It so happens that another fan of The Three Musketeers was W.E.B. Du Bois. In Souls of Black Folk, the great author, activist, and founder of the NAACP writes,

I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed Earth and the tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil.

I devote a chapter to Du Bois in my forthcoming book Better Living through Literature because of the importance he attached to literature. Challenging African American authors to be courageous, in his essay “Criteria of Negro Art” he writes that

it is the bounden duty of black America to begin this great work of the creation of Beauty, of the preservation of Beauty, of the realization of Beauty, and we must use in this work all the methods that men have used before. And what have been the tools of the artist in times gone by? First of all, he has used the Truth — not for the sake of truth, not as a scientist seeking truth, but as one upon whom Truth eternally thrusts itself as the highest handmaid of imagination, as the one great vehicle of universal understanding. Again artists have used Goodness — goodness in all its aspects of justice, honor and right — not for sake of an ethical sanction but as the one true method of gaining sympathy and human interest.

In my book I speculate that Du Bois drew on the musketeers’ “all for one” slogan when he was founding the NAACP. Abdul-Jabbar has made me more confident in this speculation.

I’m pretty sure, from reading Abdul-Jabbar’s essay, that he is familiar with Du Bois’s writing on art and literature. And one point he writes that, whereas science shows us the possibilities of life and business the practicalities,

art shows us how to better enjoy life. What is the point of science prolonging life and business building better homes if we are miserable in that longer life and those comfortable homes?

Abdul-Jabbar opens his essay with a quote from Trappist monk, author and poet Thomas Merton—“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time’’—and talks about how it has worked this way on him. He says that art helped him in his identity quest, discovering “who I was and who I wasn’t,” and also made him realize that, to become part of a team that was bigger than him, he needed to lose his childish ego. And that’s not all that art has done for him:

Art helps one find the joy in life and reveals the source of pain so it can be addressed. But it also is a celebration of our individual and group values. We build statues of people we admire so that we can emulate them. We don’t always get it right, but like I just mentioned, getting it wrong is also part of the journey.

He also quotes Aristotle about how art helps us see beyond the outward appearance of things. And not only that. Art is also fun, he points out, citing a Richard Wilbur poem to make his point:

Finally, art is entertainment. It can be a delightful distraction from the daily dark of routine and struggles. A chance to catch our breath and regroup for tomorrow. That makes me think of the poem “The Juggler” by Richard Wilbur in which the audience watches the juggler juggling a table, a plate, and a broom—the symbols of their heavy daily responsibilities—as if they were weightless. When he’s done, the audience bursts into thunderous applause for lightening their load:

For him we batter our hands
Who has won for once over the world’s weight.

Here’s the poem in its entirety:

A ball will bounce; but less and less. It’s not
A light-hearted thing, resents its own resilience.
Falling is what it loves, and the earth falls
So in our hearts from brilliance,
Settles and is forgot.
It takes a sky-blue juggler with five red balls

To shake our gravity up. Whee, in the air
The balls roll around, wheel on his wheeling hands,
Learning the ways of lightness, alter to spheres
Grazing his finger ends,
Cling to their courses there,
Swinging a small heaven about his ears.

But a heaven is easier made of nothing at all
Than the earth regained, and still and sole within
The spin of worlds, with a gesture sure and noble
He reels that heaven in,
Landing it ball by ball,
And trades it all for a broom, a plate, a table.

Oh, on his toe the table is turning, the broom’s
Balancing up on his nose, and the plate whirls
On the tip of the broom! Damn, what a show, we cry:
The boys stamp, and the girls
Shriek, and the drum booms
And all come down, and he bows and says good-bye.

If the juggler is tired now, if the broom stands
In the dust again, if the table starts to drop
Through the daily dark again, and though the plate
Lies flat on the table top,
For him we batter our hands
Who has won for once over the world’s weight.

I like the way Wilbur describes applause as battering our hands. It is a reminder of “the daily dark” in which we spend much of our lives. Art gives us momentary reprieve, prompting Abdul-Jabbar to conclude with the following piece of advice:

As you venture forth today, notice the art that surrounds you, enlightens you, and lifts you. And rejoice.

Ditto to that.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Virgil and the Olympic Games

By Robin Bates | Published: August 6, 2024
The race in Book V of The Aeneid

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Wednesday

As the Olympic games have me looking up classical references (see yesterday’s post), here’s the description of the foot race in The Aeneid, held in honor of the recent death of Aeneas’s father Anchises. Note that it’s a much more chaotic affair than our own races—although having said that, I notice that there was controversy in the women’s 5000 meter race yesterday involving a Kenyan and an Ethiopian runner. The Ethiopian accused Faith Kipyegon of obstructing her during the race, which led to Kipyegon being stripped of her silver medal, although it was later restored on appeal.

In Virgil’s race, one runner has the race all but won until he has an unfortunate mishap involving blood on the track:

[O]n hearing the signal, they left the barrier and shot onto the course,
streaming out like a storm cloud, gaze fixed on the goal.
Nisus was off first, and darted away, ahead of all the others,
faster than the wind or the winged lightning-bolt:
Salius followed behind him, but a long way behind:
then after a space Euryalus was third: Helymus
pursued Euryalus, and there was Diores speeding near him,
now touching foot to foot, leaning at his shoulder:
if the course had been longer he’d have
slipped past him, and left the outcome in doubt.
Now, wearied, almost at the end of the track,
they neared the winning post itself, when the unlucky Nisus
fell in some slippery blood, which when the bullocks were killed
had chanced to drench the ground and the green grass.
Here the youth, already rejoicing at winning, failed to keep
his sliding feet on the ground, but fell flat,
straight in the slimy dirt and sacred blood.

Realizing he can’t win, Nisus figures that he can at least help out his lover Euryalus, who is also in the race. (Euryalus, we’ve learned earlier, is “famed for his beauty, and in the flower of his youth.”)Therefore he deliberately trips up one of their competitors:

But [Nisus] didn’t forget Euryalus even then, nor his love:
but, picking himself up out of the wet, obstructed Salius,
who fell head over heels onto the thick sand.

As a result, Euryalus is first across the finish line:

Euryalus sped by and, darting onwards to applause and the shouts
of his supporters, took first place, winning with his friend’s help.
Helymus came in behind him, then Diores, now in third place.

Needless to say, Salius does not take this well:

At this Salius filled the whole vast amphitheatre, and the faces
of the foremost elders, with his loud clamour,
demanding to be given the prize stolen from him by a trick.

So what is the referee (Aeneas) to do? He comes close to using the Dodo’s strategy in Alice in Wonderland following the confusing race amongst all the animals that have fallen into the pool of tears: “Everyone has won and all must have prizes.” This means giving Salius a consolation prize:

Then Aeneas the leader said, “Your prizes are still yours,
lads, and no one is altering the order of attainment:
but allow me to take pity on an unfortunate friend’s fate.
So saying he gives Salius the huge pelt of a Gaetulian lion,
heavy with shaggy fur, its claws gilded.

But if Aeneas is giving out pity awards, then Nisus figures he deserves somethng as well. After all, he would have won had he not slipped in the ceremonial blood. No problem, says Aeneas:

At this Nisus comments: “If these are the prizes for losing,
and you pity the fallen, what fitting gift will you grant to Nisus,
who would have earned first place through merit
if ill luck had not dogged me, as it did Salius?”
And with that he shows his face and limbs drenched
with foul mud. The best of leaders smiles at him,
and orders a shield to be brought, the work of Didymaon,
once unpinned by the Greeks from Neptune’s sacred threshold:
this outstanding prize he gives to the noble youth.

By this time, it’s starting to sound like Aeneas is handing out participation trophies, which I remember well from when I was coaching my kids’ soccer teams. These were important for when the kids were little, but it didn’t take long for the adults—and even some of the kids—to become heartily sick of them.

Then again, we weren’t giving the kids shields and horses. Or, as Aeneas does following a sailing race, a Cretan born slave-girl. Seen in this light, the modern Olympic committee is getting away cheap by limiting its awards to gold, silver and bronze medals.

Further thought: Virgil tells us that Euryalus, who won only because his lover cheated on his behalf, might not have fared quite so well had he not been so good looking. We are told, “His popularity protects Euryalus, and fitting tears,/ and ability is more pleasing in a beautiful body.” Some things never change.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Homer and the Early Olympics

By Robin Bates | Published: August 5, 2024
Discobolus (cc. 460-450 BCE)

Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.

Tuesday

Somehow it happens every four years: I declare that I’m going to resist getting sucked into the Olympics and then I get sucked into the Olympics. Yesterday it seemed a matter of utmost importance whether the sublime Swedish poll vaulter Armand Duplantis would break his own world record. (He’d already won the gold so was only competing against himself at this point.) And whether Noah Lyles would stay on track to add the 200-meter gold to his 100-meter gold. And whether a Kenyan or an Ethiopian would win the 5000-meter race. And so on. Every day has moments like this.

As I watched Lyles win the “fastest man in the world” race on Sunday, I thought of the race in The Odyssey, which may have been composed around the time that the first Olympics was being held (8th or 7th century BCE for The Odyssey, 776 BCE for the first Olympics).  The race where the Phaiakians compete against each other is far less exciting than the Lyles race. Then again, at a quarter mile this race would be 400 meters, not Lyles’s 100 meters:

The runners, first, must have their quarter mile.
All lined up tense; then Go! and down the track
they raised the dust in a flying bunch, strung out
longer and longer behind Prince Klytoneus.
By just so far as a mule team, breaking ground,
will distance oxen, he left all behind
and came up to the crowd, an easy winner.

There were no oxen in this race, which everyone ran under ten seconds (!!). Lyles beat out his Jamaican opponent by .005 seconds, leaning just enough to take the victory.  

The Phaiakians have other Olympic sports as well:

Then they made room for wrestling—grinding bouts
that Seareach won, pinning the strongest men;
then the broad jump; first place went to Seabelt;
Sparwood gave the discus the mightiest fling,
and Prince Laodamas outboxed them all.

At this point the prince turns to Odysseus, who has just survived drowning and so is not exactly in shape. When one of the contestants baits him, however, the Ithacan king has to prove his mettle. I thought of this moment when American athlete Valarie Allman won her second straight Olympic gold medal in the discus:

 [Odysseus] leapt out, cloaked as he was, and picked a discus,
a rounded stone, more ponderous than those
already used by the Phaiakian throwers,
and, whirling, let it fly from his great hand
with a low hum. The crowd went flat on the ground
all those oar-pulling, seafaring Phaiakians—
under the rushing noise. The spinning disk
soared out, fight as a bird, beyond all others.
Disguised now as a Phaiakian,
Athena staked it and called out:
                                                        “Even a blind man,
friend, could judge this, finding with his fingers
one discus, quite alone, beyond the cluster.
Congratulations; this event is yours;
not a man here can beat you or come near you.”

I wonder whether, following a successful contest, the gold-medal athletes feel as though a god is announcing their victory. Athena’s words certainly apply to that magnificent pole vault.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments closed