Nicholas Berdyaev:
There are two symbols,
bread and money;
and there are two mysteries,
the eucharistic mystery of bread,
and the Satanic mystery of money.
We are faced with the great task;
to overthrow the rule of money,
and to establish in its place
the rule of bread.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.
Mourning is a process of diminishment, a weakening of purpose, the reflexive ache of the human heart traumatised by loss. The death of someone whose life is entwined with ours in friendship, loving commitment or long years of shared experience creates an abyss of loss at the edge of which we tremble.
But there are other deaths – the dying of a loving relationship that is now suffering from a sclerosis of those channels of trust and communication that are the oxygen of of love. The loss of work, when a hoped for career doesn't work out, when redundancy means more than the technical word for being paid off, but takes on a note of fixedness that defines a human being as being superfluous to economic requirements. Illness and the loss of health, the recognition that the human body is so made that it naturally slows down, grows old and gradually loses its powers. The loss of place, when home no longer feels that secure, familiar retreat where welcome, renewal and belonging simply happen because that's what home is.
Comfort is more than the emotional security invested in a 'comfort' blanket. The word is about strength, fortification, en-couragement. But what strengthens and fortifies is the presence of the one who stands alongside, the one who is there for us. There is something to be said for holding on to the now obsolete name of the Paraclete. And even if it needs recovered significance, refreshed meaning, semantic repristination, there are few words that say better what it is that the mourner needs. A Paraclete, someone who is there for us.
The Matthean text uses the divine passive – comofort isn't available on demand from our own resources. It is that which is given, the gift of presence, the accompaniment of one who understands us, and stands under us, upholding with a strength that supplements our own weakness, and with a persitence and constancy that remains despite the changes that loss has made inevitable.
Mourning is the slow process of sorrow adjusting to loss, of reduced vitality and struggling hopes; comfort is the presence of one who is there for us, looks out for us, who enourages us towards a future still possible.The marble relief below is a moving image of the two poles of this beatitude – mourning and comfort, loss and presence, the reality of sorrow and the alternatiuve reality of hope.
The Director of Edinburgh Botanic Gardens spoke in the aftermath of the recent gales about the unprecedented damage to trees and glasshouses. One of the casualties was an ancient oak, lying on its side. He pointed out that this was the best view of the top of the tree they had ever had, sadly now possible. What amazed him was the rich variety of lichens that were flourishing in the higher branches. Lichens are amongst my favourite things. Their soft colours and delicate tracery I find fascinating, beautiful, and yet often hidden, unassuming and unannounced. The importance of lichen flourishing is that lichen are so sensitive to air quality that they are badly affected by contemporary forms of pollution. The rich forests of lichen on this oak tree was a sign that the air quality in Edinburgh has drastically improved in recent decades. Not everyone needs to know this I realise – but it confirms further my liking for these lovely plants.
Below is a photo taken during a recent walk up the hills, of lichen, growing out of a moss-covered tree stump. One of nature's annunciations of the gratuitous artistry of on permanent display in God's world.
Haiku Prayer II
Such Beauty! Hidden!
Fragile jade green filigree
set in sphagnum moss.
Titian, "The Tribute Money," about 1560-8I am two men; and one is longing to serve thee utterly,
and one is afraid.
O Lord have compassion upon me.
I am two men; and one will labour to the end,
and one is already weary.
O Lord have compassion upon me.
I am two men; and one knows the suffering of the world.
and one knows only their own.
O Lord have compassion upon me.
And may the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ fill my heart
and the hearts of all people everywhere.
– Austen Williams (1912-2001), Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields (1956-1984)
I went to visit an old friend on Wednesday. Actually two old friends. One I've known for over 40 years, the other I first encountered 30 years ago. My friend of 40 years shared a coffee, then lunch, then much talking about the things that matter and some things that don't. That friendship has settled into an unspoken but mutually understood trust that enables us to speak with freedom not merely in confidence, but in the confidence that what is said is heard, listened to and attended to.
The second old friend now resides in a setting that does justice to its beauty, power and commanding presence. Salvador Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross needs neither accolade nor commendation. It is a masterpiece. That it excites argument and admiration, creates controversy while depicting reconciliation, and draws you into the spiritual realities of Christian faith while resisting facile devotional reductionism, simply confirms its status as on of the greatest paintings of the 20th Century.
It also excited the hostility of someone with a knife who ripped and scarred it half a century ago, and subsequently inspired the restorers to work with painstaking patience to repair it. Which brings me to one of those epiphany moments that perhaps it takes the context of Kelvingrove Art Gallery, and the love Glasgow folk have for their art collection, and this particular painting.
I am sitting on the bench and all but paddling in the sea shallows at the edge of the painting. In came two Glasgow punters, one who had never seen the painting before and one who thought it was a "braw picture". They stood up close and the experienced art guide who had seen it "hunners o' times" helped his pal to stand at just the right angle, in line with the lights, and pointed out the L shaped scar, barely visible, but there to be seen if you knew where to look. They talked for a while describing in Glaswegian discourse the perpetrator of the damage, and spoke with wondering gratitude (but in that same Galswegian discourse) of those who "sorted it". Then they went away. At no time did they stand and look at the painting as it is. Having inspected the damage and the repair, away they went. I was offended for my friend, and should have gone and asked them to come and meet the masterpiece properly. I'm glad I didn't.
A few minutes later as I walked out of that small place of peace and prayer that is the right setting for this painting, there the two of them were, sitting there and taking in the visual presentation of the history of the painting and how it came to be in Kelvingrove, and how £8,200 was an enormous amount of money 60 years ago, and how one man's vision and persistence resulted in Glasgow owning a work of art that is now all but priceless. It was just ending, and they got up and went back in to the painting. And I smiled a deep inner smile – now they were going to meet my friend properly, having done their background research.
Several times I've taken a class to look at this painting – online just doesn't work. They go having discussed it in class, looked at the background, and with some idea of what to look for. What they don't have an idea of, is what it will be like to stand before this astonishing artistic statement – Dali's professed aim to paint a beautiful Christ of the Cross. Then we go walkabout, in company or alone, and meet some time later for round the coffee table discussion in the cafe downstairs. Some of my most rewarding and moving experiences of teaching and learning (and both are so intermingled we are all learner / teachers) have taken place round such a table, having encountered Dali's masterpiece. And the irony is, in achieving his aim, an act of vandalism has left a scar that is still visible if you know where to look. And in that irony is one of the great theological mysteries, of created beauty, damaged and restored, having the power to subdue our worst and renew our best.
The Beatitudes –
these are such potent and condensed logia of Jesus
that there should never be a claim to definitive exegesis –
more a docile yet energetic receptiveness
before a wisdom that subverts the most cherished notions
of a materialist, consumerist and hedonistic mentality
bent on reducing all of life to barcodes, images and strap lines,
in the service of the self-centred project of secular salvation,
and doing so through radical practices and redemptive gestures.
No’ a bad wee rant that! Made it up myself!
More seriously, I've had reason to revisit the Beatitudes for a study project.
I'm currently reading them slowly each day
in a kind of receptive repetition,
wondering if such attentive pondering
will become a slow absorption of truth,
and create a transformative patience
with values and virtues too outrageously odd
to take at anything other than their face value.
The photo is of Dorothy Day, whose outrageous opposition to racism and injustice led to this outrageous redemptive gesture. She is an embodied Beatitude.
Haiku Prayer I
Dangerous beauty:
Wild freedom of wind and waves,
O Lord have mercy
PRAYER TO START THE DAY
May we accept this day at your hand, O Lord,
as a gift to be treasured,
a life to be enjoyed,
a trust to be kept,
and a hope to be fulfilled,
and all for your glory.
Succinct.
Precise.
Positive.
The spirituality of multum in parvo.
The photo isn't brilliant – but the sun is, and it shines on the righteous and the unrighteous, which I guess covers it all!
Having finished the Dickens biography I'm now well into the biography of Steve Jobs. Both men whose gifts, hard work, drivenness and early insecurity were harnessed by acute intelligence and a flair for entrepreneurial opportunism. Comparisons are hard to make though – the contrasting contexts of Victorian England and 21st Century Silicon Valley; the very different media through which they worked, one a novelist who pushed the genre in radically new directions, the other a technical geek for whom technology held the secrets of an accelerating can-do attitude.
I was struck by the recurrence of one word, describing a character disposition, and used by both biographers, to describe their subject. It's a word I'd hope was never applied to myself, or anyone I cared much about. Yet it seems to be a required term to describe how each of these great men went about their business, their relationships and influenced some of the key moral choices in their lives. And it has left me wondering if it is an essential component of the entrepreneurial and ambitious drive of those utterly committed to sustained innovation, product marketing and the can do no matter what mentality. They are both described as cruel.
I underlined the word in both books, and have reflected on the examples given, and the personal contexts that provoked the use of such a specific term of moral deficit. I've no intention of singling out either Dickens or Jobs – I'm more interested in the use of the word, the aptness of the word, and the cultural context that enables such a word to be used. And I am asking a deeper question about our culture in which we are increasingly careful of our terminology lest we discriminate against, abuse or diminish the dignity of other human beings – I'm absolutely on the side of moral correctness in the way we use words, and address other people.
But it does seem that we have come to tolerate cruelty in other forms – as ruthlessness replaces kindness, rudeness laughs at courtesy, resentment smirks at respect, slick cleverness pretends to be intelligence, being outrageous is better viewing than being compassionate, and selfishness replaces consideration of the other as a virtue. Is there something in a materialist, consumer driven, celebrity obsessed, virtual reality, globalised, ICT saturated, social networking culture that requires of us distance and disinterest, self-focus and self-promotion, and a redefined morality of self-survival at the expense of others?
Has our commitment to economic prosperity as the index of standards of living become so absolute that human existence and quality of life are reduced to economic indicators of growth and recession?
And in all the anxieties and uncertainties that now invades and pervades daily life, what are the safeguards in our systems and structures that prevent political decision making, commercial choices, industrial strategies from building in as a non-negotiable assumption, that you have to be cruel to be kind?
The word cruel now requires moral examination. From exploitation on reality shows to abuse of vulnerable people; from decisions made by corporations and governments about people's futures to thoise acts, words and attitudes that wound, intimidate and corrode people's sense of worth; from premeditated rejection and hurting of the other to those countless careless incidents that drain self confidence and make the world less safe for the vulnerable. By the way, the other word used of both Jobs and Dickens, is kind. The contradictions of our humanity – the capacity for cruelty and kindness, are not limited to these two people. They are integral to what we mean by moral growth, ethical maturity or sanctification.
The painting is one of the most powerful representations of human cruelty, human grief and compassion, and divine love. Rogier Van der Weyden's Triptych of The Deposition is a study in destructive cruelty and redemptive love, etched on each face, and enacted in the body language of bewildered sorrow.
Instead of reading one of Dickens' novels this Christmas, I read Claire Tomalin's biography. There are pluses and minuses in that – those who enjoy reading Dickens know well enough the humour, the acute and astute observation of human behaviour, the use and abuse of caricature and pathos, the contrived plots which would embarrass most moderate versions of the doctrine of providence, and the narrative drive frequently interrupted by long descriptive passages, some of which are the most closely documented and vivid descritpions of early and mid Victorian London.
The real gain of reading Tomalin's biography is that it is precisely these prominent features of Dickens' genius and perennial appeal that are traced to their living context in Dickens' life experience. That experience was assimilated, reconstructed and written into the characters, plots and landscapes of his novels. Most of what I learned from reading Tomalin is the significance of such contextualising both as explanation of his immediate appeal to his readers, and as exploration of how a writer's own life experience can be transmuted into fiction without losing its connectedness to the author. Dickens' experience of poverty, of thwarted ambition, his struggle to find his way, and the appearance in his novels of characters and human characteristics traceable to those he knew and observed, are all shown to be woven into Dickens' Victorian tapestries.
The biography reads well, Tomalin's research is meticulous and seldom pedantically paraded, at times she speculates about motive and argues from silence, not always convincingly, but she is in control of the content of Dickens' novels and well versed in the secondary literature. Her earlier work on Nelly Ternan, The Silent Woman, is well exploited in reconstructing the astonishing feat of secrecy and deception required to keep hidden the real relationship between Dickens and Nelly Ternan. This is told with care, understanding, but without excusing Dickens' behaviour and treatment of others in pursuing an alternative, even parallel existence, away from the public eye.
Each of the major novels is discussed and commented on from this same contextual perspective, and much light shed on the birthing process of each novel. That he wrote so much while living a life of self-consuming intensity is testimony to levels of energy and industry that at times defy belief – and adequate explanation. Today we might use the term driven, but even that diminishes Dickens' achievement, for there was undoubtedly an iron will, an obsessive determination to exact from each day of life the maximum quantity of productive experience.
Buit I finished this biography better understanding this complex and contradictory man, at times pitiless to those who thwarted him, yet capable of immense compassion and extraordinary generosity; capable of loving with utter devotion and yet equally capable of cauterising feelings and moving on without a backward glance. It's a sign of Tomalin's achievement that you read her book and have a much less romanticised view of Dickens – he is both increased and diminished in stature, because this is no hagiography, nor is it a piece of literary hatchet swinging. It is a life told mainly according to the evidence, and where there is speculation it is never unfounded. And we are left to wonder at this storytelling genius, who plays on human emotion like a virtuoso musician, bringing a country to a tearful crescendo at the death of little Nell, but who did not attend his own brother's funeral nor send an acknowledgement of his death.