A not very well liked ability....

I'm blogging!!! WOO HOO!! I know its a miracle. There seems to be times when blogging comes so easily to me, and then there are other times where it is probably one of the hardest things to do. I wish I could give an excuse as to why, but after a pretty laid back summer, which included a serious lack of blogging, I find that I have none. I wonder if part of the determining factor for the amount that one blogs, has to do with the people they hang out with? Being that it is the middle of football season, I find myself in the company of jocks. The conversation really is not worth while or even half way intellectually stimulating to make one want to blog. Unless of course it were some sort of ranting and raving (but nobody really cares to read such things). So I now am at a point, a very brief point of my life, where I must take the initiative to keep my mind thinking by reading books and attempting meaningful dialogue where ever I get the chance. However, during this very brief point, I think I am beginning to see what the life of the mind is truly about. It is not an easy lifestyle and it is not one where the goodness of it alone is motivation enough. Because ultimately I have a very tainted idea of what truly is good for me. It becomes far to easy to stray from what is Good, True, and Beautiful. Now as I continue to embark on this very short journey, I will practice thinking when it is not fun anymore, and hopefully come out of this stage in my life more educated and prepared to tackle an even greater examined life!

Now on to the topic at hand!! :~)

Over the past month or so, I have come to appreciate the natural ability that some people have at pissing other people off. It shows somewhat strength in character, or having the courage enough to state what they believe is true without feeling embarrassed. This seems to be a very rare attribute these days, one that is not looked to highly upon because it is intolerant. For if one states what they believe to be true, then inevitably they are saying that it must be true for everyone else. It is not something to be sorry for, in fact, what one finds to be true obligates them to defend it. Otherwise it is not truth at all and merely a make believe world suited for oneself, putting it in an entirely different category than truth. If subjective truth reigned, it would be impossible for cultures to survive because the people could not communicate.

Pope Benedict XVI has recently done this in his speech at the University of Regensburg. He talks about the need for reason in the Christian faith. Often faith is viewed as some kind of blind trust which explains the mysteries of Christianity (i.e. the trinity, and God becoming incarnate). We often categorize reason as some sort of worldly wisdom, devoid of any divine adherence. I love what the Pope said about this in his speech. He states, "A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures." But how can the divine be reasonable if it is above and beyond our human intellect? I have come to the conclusion again, that maybe my definition of reason was a little messed up.
Through wisdom God created the world. God did not create the world superfluously making it impossible to have any contact with Him. It could very well be that reason and wisdom and knowledge are the very keys to understanding the divine. Because it is through those that God created the world.

The beginning of his speech however, is what really got the Islam world all fired up. He was reading from a historical text of a dialogue between "Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian" regarding the difference between Christianity and Islam. I am not going to go into detail of what was said, but here is the link if you are interested in reading it. http://romancatholicblog.typepad.com/roman_catholic_blog/2006/09/faith_reason_th.html#more

When it comes to pissing people off there is a middle ground that must not be compromised. Because if taken to the extreme it often denotes an air of arrogance. An arrogance that does not allow learning or the ability to follow the dialect where it leads. On the other end of the pendulum, however, there are the passive, "tolerant" people who believe there is no truth. And despite their best efforts, try not to offend people. Both extremes will get one no where. The middle ground always seems to be the hardest place to find and the easiest to compromise. And yet of the two, it appears to be the most extreme!

"All those who wander far away and set themselves up against you are imitating You, but in a perverse way; yet by this very mimicry they proclaim that You are the creator of the whole of nature, and that in consequence there is no place whatever where we can hide from Your presence." ~St. Agustine

"Know Thy Self"

I have recently returned from once again another intellectually stimulating, mind blowing, self-esteem shattering, flourishing of my soul....Wheatstone Academy!! The week is intense, more intense than anything I have ever experienced. I can literally feel my mind expand into uncharted territory with the selfish fear of never returning. It is a thorough examination of oneself, to understand how completely useless our culture has rendered us by mechanizing our education. It is at the Wheatstone academy that they teach us "true" education. An education that can't help but transform one's life by self examination and rigorous discourse. There one is freed from the noise of business and brainless socialization, compensated by taking part in the great dialectic and the constant intake of beauty through art, music, and dance. I cannot give a sufficient definition of this conference without belittling it in some way. However, I think the best I have heard so far is: "I go BOOM!!!"

This past week I have grown more than in the past 17 years of my life. The week challenged me to step outside the box (an all to0 comfortable place) and to truly talk with others about my ideas and questions. Because if one does not make audible one's own thoughts, they will end up with many false beliefs which only leads to damaging their soul (narcissism is not healthy!). However, this growth does not happen without the help of the staff. They are all incredibly committed to helping the young chums (students) who are slowly but surely growing more and more in the life of the mind.

So what did I take away most of all from this conference you're wondering? Probably more than I could articulate in order to satisfy your curiosity. "Ok", you might say, "buy why? Why put yourself through that if living a normal schedule life is just fine?" I'm not going to pretend to have the answer, if by answer you mean something you can remember to use for a test. No I think the answer lies in the actual experience of the examined life itself. It is like trying to define the timeless. It is an experience, rather a lifestyle, so right, so intrinsically complicated and fulfilling that words become entirely false propaganda. In its essence however, it is healthy. Healthy in relation to the soul, and the flourishing of.

A sort of fragmentation has occurred in our culture causing us to pull ourselves apart in order to "succeed" in life. Instead of bringing our head, heart, and hands, to the work field, we bring our hands alone. Likewise in academia, where the only part of our beings we use is our mind. This cannot be healthy, not just because it makes us ineffective (however that is a huge part of it) but because it does not allow us to live. There is no education in academia if we leave the doing and loving out of sync with our mind.
Wheatstone academy in a sense is the introduction to and the actual training of bringing all three parts of our soul together.

Through the course of the week we read many short stories by the inklings (Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, George Macdonald, etc.), who realized the power of story and the sub-creation of ideas through stories (e.g. fairy tales). However, the week culminated to the final discussion of G.K. Chesterton's book, "The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare". It is an amazing book with many parallels between characters and the creation story from Genesis. The mind of G.K.C. is incredibly sharp and witty, that truly he is the only man who could ever conceive of such a fairy tale! While reading the book, I was so caught up in the action of the story that I was entirely unaware of the deep implications and even relationship between the characters and the days of creation. After the discourse of this profound book, the words of Dr. Sanders rang even more true in my mind, "Unless a well rounded mind is brought to a book, one will only find himself in a text."

Well, I have not even scratched the surface of the incredible week I have had, so you can expect more topics being written as I slowly work through everything I learned and realized I didn't know. I will try not to wait another month before posting!!

A Poem

I came across this poem by C.S. Lewis while checking out other blogs who had been talking about the very same thing I just posted. The poem is about those eternal moments or rather "Sudden Heaven" that one gets a glimpse of every once in a while in this life. It is the unexplainable Joy that cannot be relayed to others unless they too, have had the same experience. Lewis here attempts to explain the psychological aspect of what happens to a person when they experience such a phenomenon. What is most interesting about this poem however, is it was written while Lewis still considered himself an agnostic. Which probably made it even harder for him to place his finger on the cause of what had happened.
Now without further a due (sp?), here is the poem:

"The Day With A White Mark"

All day I have been tossed and whirled in a preposterous
happiness:
Was it an elf in the blood? or a bird in the brain? or even
part
Of the cloudily crested, fifty-league-long, loud uplifted
wave
Of a journeying angel’s transit roaring over and through my heart?

My garden’s spoiled, my holidays are cancelled, the
omens harden;
The plann’d and unplann’d miseries deepen; the knots
draw tight.
Reason kept telling me all day my mood was out of season.
It was, too. In the dark ahead the breakers only are white.

Yet I –I could have kissed the very scullery taps. The colour of
My day was like a peacock’s chest. In at each sense there stole
Ripplings and dewy sprinkles of delight that with them drew
Fine threads of memory through the vibrant thickness of the soul.

As though there were transparent earths and luminous trees should grow there,
And shining roots worked visibly far down below one’s feet,
So everything, the tick of the clock, the cock crowing in the yard
Probing my soil, woke diverse buried hearts of mine to beat,

Recalling either adolescent heights and the inaccessible
Longings and ice-sharp joys that shook my body and turned me pale,
Or humbler pleasures, chuckling as it were in the ear, mumbling
Of glee, as kindly animals talk in a children’s tale.

Who knows if ever it will come again, now the day closes?
No-one can give me, or take away, that key. All depends
On the elf, the bird, or the angel. I doubt if the angel himself
Is free to choose when sudden heaven in man begins or ends.


As a side note: if you wanted to check out the blog from whence this poem came here is the link.http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/middlebrow/archives/sudden-heaven/#more-151

Motionless Motion

That’s kind of an odd title... seems to be a little bit of an oxymoron and maybe even untrue. Because how can one be moving and yet...not moving. It is difficult to think of stillness without fixity or even an on going moment where there are ever perpetual possibilities but no linear line of movement. There is no getting closer to the object yet there is no retracting from it either. Could this be a land where routine rules and monotonous living flourish? Or could that "monotonous" living be the very thing we long for??

I should first, before I go on, give a more glamorous definition of the word monotonous. First off, I don't mean it in a condescending way (as it usually co notates) rather a constant recurrence of a beautiful or good thing. Such as the sun rising, or the blooming flowers found during May time. It is my intention to use it in the setting of a type of Elysium (see Virgil). Because who would say to the sun, "stop rising every morning, it rather irritates my eyes. Could you find a new hobby?". So it is in the timeless moment of complete and utter joy, the ever ensuing encore of beauty in reality.

T.S. Elliot seemed to have the most insight into the realm of timelessness. He calls it the eternal present, or the still point of the turning world. Where motion is evident but time is not. There seems to be this longing or desire inside of us for the timeless. And still there is a constant frustration that eats away at us, a slow deterration caused by the inability to satisfy the insatiable desire for the eternal moment. Our attempts are futile because we go about it the wrong way by trying to step into the "alongside" as if our life were some kind of movie. A terrible lie that has crept into our culture is that we can satisfy our eternal desire by not taking part in our lives, by living yet not living. We are indoctrinated into this easy slumber (especially among the youth); where it is taught that materialism is reality, however, reality is elusive so don't bother your head over it to much. Inevitably however, there follows the crude awakening from that peaceful ignorance that had once so wonderfully enveloped us. Immediately after awakening we attempt to go back through various roads, whether it be living vicariously through another or simply going into an unstable state of denial.

To describe such a moment, would for me, be to describe beauty. Its not gonna happen!! :~) However, just because our linguistics fall short do not make the moment less real. Once again, another false notion! Our language does not describe, completely, reality. It has done a wonderful job at hinting to something out side of its walls, but never has it broken through. Often I become short sighted in this area, and fall back on the fact that, if I can't explain it, it must not have happened. When really this is doing injustice so some many different aspects of life, it’s a wonder why there is no law against such an egotistical ideology.
Lewis talks about these sorts of experiences he had during his childhood. He called them, stabs of joy, that stabbed him when it was least expected but immediately went away as soon as he began to cognitively think about the experience at the moment. There was no linear sequence by which he could relay such feelings, nor was it something that happened often. T.S. Eliot describes the same situation in his book "The Four Quartets":

“Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.”

And so it is. We cannot, while temporarily living in this sinful body, endure much reality. We cannot endure it because we cannot contain it cognitively, which would make sense why the moment leaves as soon as we become aware of what is happening. Lewis called it Joy; Eliot called it reality, but whatever name it would prefer to go by, we could not contain it still.

"We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness." ~T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages

Hell

Just recently I finished the first book of the Divine Comedy by Dante the "Inferno." And I can justly say that I have yet to see or read a book that mutilates all of five of my senses within a matter of a few pages!! As weird as it may sound, I meant that as a compliment. Dante has a way of getting across what he is talking about by giving one the ability to see what he is talking about with the eyes of their imagination.

Dante starts off his story by describing a time about "Midway along the journey of our life..", a time when he has found himself in a dark wood. He does not remember how he got there only he was feeling drowsy when he began to stray from the "straight path." He later runs into two beasts (a leopard and a she-wolf) whom he cannot get past on his own. Dante (I should mention that Dante the poet, writes himself as a character in his own book) runs into Virgil who tells him that he has been sent by God to lead him to the Gates of Saint Peter (aka. Heaven).

It is here that Dante sets up his theme as Virgil being a symbol of reason. Virgil becomes Dante's guide through Hell and Purgatory but later tells him that he will be unable to guide Dante through paradise. However, it is Virgil that slowly but surely brings Dante to his senses as they journey through hell.

While entering the gates of eternal punishment, Dante begins to feel pity for the wretched souls that must endure such punishments for their sin. Virgil quickly reproves Dante by telling him that they are receiving their just punishment because of their carelessness while in this life. They were given mercy and grace while they lived beneath the sun, however, now they are experiencing true justice without mercy. Down through the circles of hell, one begins to see Dante grow and rebuke those souls whom he engages in dialogue. It is at these times that Virgil (aka. reason) praises Dante.

When recognizing Vigil as a representation of reason, it is interesting to note that he cannot guide Dante through heaven. Virgil says that he can bring Dante to the gates of heaven but no further. There seems to be an implication of the boundaries of reason and the need for faith. Sheldon Vanauken describes it as "the leap". That great chasm where reason will lead but cannot build the bridge in order to cross. Reason (for most people) is a very tangible guide by which we are led. A leader that can get us through most struggles in life. But reason also seems to be a very humanistic ideology in that it is confined mostly to our physical realm. Reason is the back bone to math and science and most philosophy. However, it is not the back bone to theology. When discussing the death of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, it usually (to non-believers) sounds like an irrational, unreasonable conversation. And when faith is left on the way side, it is!!

Reason does not make someone a Christian; much less get them into heaven. It is like that old saying, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." So it is with Virgil, he can lead Dante to the Gates of Saint Peter, but he cannot make him cross. I have not read the rest of the divine comedy, but I am curious what Dante's guide through heaven will represent. Will it be a figure of faith?? That seems to be the only "reasonable" answer! :~)

Song of the month

Yes I am a little bit behind on this...Ok so I'm really behind!!! The song this month is: "Within a Room Somewhere" by Sixpence. I especially like the end of the song when they go into an instrumental. The guitar solo is awesome!

"The Da Vinci Code" Not So Great?

I ran accross this article http://movies.msn.com/movies/cannes06/davincicode_critics and figured it would be this huge promotion for the coming of, "The Da Vinci Code" movie...however, it was a completely bashing the movie, which was just recently released to the press. The reviewers called it a "stodgy, grim thing..." One of the reviewers recounted what it was like during the movie, "Sitting through all the verbose explanations and speculations about symbols, codes, secret cults, religious history and covert messages in art, it is impossible to believe that, had the novel never existed, such a script would ever have been considered by a Hollywood studio!". That certainly isn't the reaction Ron Howard was expecting! I am doubtfull however, about the lack of success this movie will still have. The fans of the book will remain faithfull and buy their tickets to see the movie regardless.
The end of the article kind of goes down hill when it starts talking about the news conference....but nonetheless it was not a good plug for the movie. :~)

I'll stop there and let you read the article for yourself.

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Finals suck!! Only a week and a half to go!! Then more posting! :~)

"He had read of 'Space': at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much it affected him till now-now that the very name 'Space' seemed a blasphemous libel for this empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam. He could not call it 'dead'; he felt life pouring into him from it every moment. How indeed should it be otherwise, since out of this ocean the worlds and all their life had come? He had thought it barren: he saw now that it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even upon the earth with so many eyes-and here, with how many more! No: Space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens-the heavens which declared the glory- the 'happy climes that ly; where day never shuts his eye; up in the broad fields of the sky'".

C.S. Lewis ~ "Out of the Silent Planet"