I am amazed at your breath of knowledge and interest and discernment in walking the narrow path in an age that tries to entice us away from the hard work of love. Neither denying the depth of mystery and suffering in life nor accepting a faux sentimental acceptance that we make our joy leads us to the real co-creative work of love. You are clear that the complexity of bringing the word to voice, ever mindful that these are guesses - hits and misses, is the work toward the authentic. I love your sense of humor. I laughed out loud twice I can’t wait for the book
Coming from such a fine poet, this lifts my spirits - thank you Therese! There are so many misses as well as hits when thinking aloud, but I'd rather be shown where I'm wrong than wait until I'm sure I'm right before I risk an idea.
This is my second attempt to make a post. The system seems very complicated!
I have read your post twice now and have benefited from learning about your sources and reading your thoughts.
Although there are practical explanations for birds circling on thermals I have always found seeing this to be an uplifting experience. It seems to me to be an expression of joy which which has often taken me to a deeper place. The call of the Curlew has had a similar effect on me since childhood. I have just discovered that in Protestant circles that is something called Ornitheology.
Yes, I'm still getting to grips with the system and have to keep rectifying glitches I've inadvertently introduced! Thank you for such an attentive reading - it's an author's dream to be read not once but twice.
My friend Mary Colwell (mentioned above) dedicates her life to saving the curlew: https://www.curlewcall.org/. She has taught me that if we want to save the world it's better to do one thing that's attainable than to try to do everything and despair. She also ran the successful campaign to have a Natural History GCSE included in the curriculum.
I haven't heard of Ornitheology, but here's a question that I grapple with. Academics - including theologians - have a tendency to categorise and specialise, and I become more and more suspicious of that trend because in my experience of academia it began to feel a bit like 'divide and rule'. I have an image of a flock of Ornitheologians muttering disapproval about my post, because what do I know about it when they've spent their lives studying how seagulls pray? (Imagine a smile emoji here)! In fact, I think I'll stop there, because I'd really like to write a reflection on this - thank you for inspiring me. And thank you again for such careful reading and comment.
Reading this is a bit like jumping into the deep end and trying to remember how to swim… So here are some fragments that emerged for me.
I completely agree that Pope Francis needs to listen to and engage with all the voices and experiences from all the rooms, and nooks and crannies, of ‘our common home’, as do we all, if the thinking begun in “Laudato Si’” is to be developed and to become rooted in the practice of the Church.
As well as the seagulls I think that flowers, plants, trees, seeds, are also praying. For me the natural world is especially full of joy in Springtime, as Denis Potter found; there is so much gratuitous beauty…
Personally I find the concept of silence quite difficult (though maybe less difficult than grappling with ‘de creation’). Silence has been stolen from me by tinnitus. So I’m trying to find some more precise definition. It is the absence of words - but also of thought? What can we think without words? Is it only feeling/emotion? Can I hear it through the white noise in my head?
And a question - are you linking the inability to find one’s inner core with the absence at the centre of the decreated being? Or do we find God as Spirit in that absence?
Thank you so much for this Alison. I'm encouraged that Laudato Si' isn't just aimed at the Church but at the whole human family. I hope that my book will also be of interest to those outside the Church with an interest in theological approaches to language, desire, and creation.
Your question on silence gave me food for thought. I can't comment on tinnitus but I think it must be a very challenging condition to live with. The silence I'm referring to - which I rarely experience - is that associated with a deeply contemplative state that rests in letting be. So it wouldn't be about finding God, but perhaps in Meister Eckhart's idea of praying God to free us from God. The silence of decreation would be a silencing of those inner voices that question, conceptualise, speculate, hypothesise. It becomes a sense of complete absorption, the dissolution of boundaries between self and other, and an ability to be fully present in the moment - like Potter's description.
An example would be occasionally on the tube, I take out the earphones, switch off the screen, and just immerse myself in the faces, gestures and postures of the people around me. I begin to feel completely immersed in being human, but not thinking about that, just being there. I've experienced that once or twice, and the London underground is very far from a place of physical silence!
Thank you for making me think more about what I mean when I refer to silence. This will be an ongoing process.
Jan 11, 2023·edited Jan 11, 2023Liked by Tina Beattie
In Spring 1994, afflicted with terminal cancer, Dennis Potter was interviewed by Melvyn Bragg. The following passage from the interview was widely quoted:
"At this season, the blossom is out in full now … and instead of saying 'Oh that's nice blossom' … last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance. Not that I'm interested in reassuring people – bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it."
There's a close link here between Potter's overwhelming awareness of his own mortality, and his uncluttered perception of "the nowness of everything".
I wonder, does this give us a clue as to what Weil's "decreation" might mean?
In Gravity and Grace, Weil says that absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. Was Potter describing a mode of prayer?
Thank you so much for reminding me of that interview. I remember being blown away by it when I watched but had forgotten all about it. Yes, I think Potter is describing prayer at its most focused, which is not the prerogative of the religiously inclined. (I don't denigrate being religious - I'm religious - but I do think religion can be one of the greatest obstacles to prayer if it surrounds us with rules, obligations and instructions). I usually avoid the word 'pure', but there is something about this purity of focused, decluttered 'nowness of everything' which seems to me to be what 'listening to the essence of things' means - a quote from Heraclitus in Josef Pieper's book, 'Leisure: The Basis of Culture'.
People facing their own immanent death do sometimes acquire that purity of vision, though I don't want to romanticise death or deny its capacity for the raw negation of all that sustains us in life. I'm struggling with the association between death and decreation, which is part of my struggle with Weil. She sometimes repels me with her unflinching intellectual morbidity. But all this is food for thought and continuing reading, reflecting and writing.
I think Potter's words will find a way into the book - so thank you again.
I'm so glad you liked being reminded of the Potter interview.
I share your struggle with Weil. Yes, she can repel, or baffle. But there are also passages I return to repeatedly.
I sometimes think religious people have a one-sided fixation with death. The Four Last Things ... why not devise Four First Things, beginning with birth (and what might the other three be?)
But for some people at some times the prospect of death can indeed bring purity of vision. The ars moriendi is now a secular genre - Irvin Yalom's "Staring at the Sun" is an outstanding example.
I haven't heard of Irvin Yalom, but thank you for the reference. Would you be willing to share a passage from Weil that you return to? It's always interesting to know what sustains and attracts people when they read great thinkers. I want this book to be dialogical in the writing, so the more suggestions, references, and insights readers offer, the more it will enrich the book.
I think the Christian story is much better told from the perspective of birth and Hannah Arendt's idea of natality, than from the perspective of the crucifixion. I'm not saying the crucifixion isn't vital, but if we start with birth and vulnerability, then the violence that the world does to innocent victims becomes a divine lament with and for the tormented, rather than a divine demand for somebody to be punished. That will all be somewhere in the book!
What would the Four First Things be? Conception, birth, nurture, and love maybe.
Jan 17, 2023·edited Jan 17, 2023Liked by Tina Beattie
Passages from Weil that I return to?
Here are a couple from "Gravity and Grace".
This, from the section entitled Atheism as a Purification:
"A case of contradictories which are true. God exists: God does not exist. Where is the problem? I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure that my love is not illusory. I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I am able to conceive when I pronounce this word. But that which I cannot conceive is not an illusion."
And this, from the section entitled Metaxu:
"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link."
Elsewhere, I've taken this latter passage as a starting-point for some reflections about how Quakers diverge in their use of religious language:
Thank you so much for Helen Dunmore's poem, and also for your Four First Things.
I certainly hope that natality will feature in the book. It occurs to me that there is a secular equivalent of the Four Last Things - namely, the idea of human life as being lived "towards death" (I've seen this in Yalom, who is heavily influenced by Heidegger). Your reference to natality prompts me to ask, what if instead we frame human life as being lived "from birth"?
Thank you Timothy. That quote from Weil about God existing and not existing is immensely thought-provoking and helpful, and I appreciated your blog on language in the context of Weil's prison wall very much. I hope you'll continue engaging. Arendt is - if I remember correctly - challenging Heidegger's "being towards death" with her idea of natality.
Very beautiful expression of complex ideas. I really enjoyed reading the comment on imperfect loves and found it helpful. I don't know if it I am a bit lazy but it seems to me it is all a lot simpler than that. I think we are made perfect (which means whole) by being United with God 's love not in order to win it. And where else is there to be anyway
Thank you Maggs, and lovely to have you here. I write my theology in the margins, where my tenuous faith can sometimes feel more at home with those who are on the outside looking in, than those who are more assured. We need all voices, and I learn so much from people whose faith is less complicated, but I also identify with the seekers and sceptics. I think that's why my thought processes can seem somewhat convoluted!
I am amazed at your breath of knowledge and interest and discernment in walking the narrow path in an age that tries to entice us away from the hard work of love. Neither denying the depth of mystery and suffering in life nor accepting a faux sentimental acceptance that we make our joy leads us to the real co-creative work of love. You are clear that the complexity of bringing the word to voice, ever mindful that these are guesses - hits and misses, is the work toward the authentic. I love your sense of humor. I laughed out loud twice I can’t wait for the book
Coming from such a fine poet, this lifts my spirits - thank you Therese! There are so many misses as well as hits when thinking aloud, but I'd rather be shown where I'm wrong than wait until I'm sure I'm right before I risk an idea.
This is my second attempt to make a post. The system seems very complicated!
I have read your post twice now and have benefited from learning about your sources and reading your thoughts.
Although there are practical explanations for birds circling on thermals I have always found seeing this to be an uplifting experience. It seems to me to be an expression of joy which which has often taken me to a deeper place. The call of the Curlew has had a similar effect on me since childhood. I have just discovered that in Protestant circles that is something called Ornitheology.
Yes, I'm still getting to grips with the system and have to keep rectifying glitches I've inadvertently introduced! Thank you for such an attentive reading - it's an author's dream to be read not once but twice.
My friend Mary Colwell (mentioned above) dedicates her life to saving the curlew: https://www.curlewcall.org/. She has taught me that if we want to save the world it's better to do one thing that's attainable than to try to do everything and despair. She also ran the successful campaign to have a Natural History GCSE included in the curriculum.
I haven't heard of Ornitheology, but here's a question that I grapple with. Academics - including theologians - have a tendency to categorise and specialise, and I become more and more suspicious of that trend because in my experience of academia it began to feel a bit like 'divide and rule'. I have an image of a flock of Ornitheologians muttering disapproval about my post, because what do I know about it when they've spent their lives studying how seagulls pray? (Imagine a smile emoji here)! In fact, I think I'll stop there, because I'd really like to write a reflection on this - thank you for inspiring me. And thank you again for such careful reading and comment.
Reading this is a bit like jumping into the deep end and trying to remember how to swim… So here are some fragments that emerged for me.
I completely agree that Pope Francis needs to listen to and engage with all the voices and experiences from all the rooms, and nooks and crannies, of ‘our common home’, as do we all, if the thinking begun in “Laudato Si’” is to be developed and to become rooted in the practice of the Church.
As well as the seagulls I think that flowers, plants, trees, seeds, are also praying. For me the natural world is especially full of joy in Springtime, as Denis Potter found; there is so much gratuitous beauty…
Personally I find the concept of silence quite difficult (though maybe less difficult than grappling with ‘de creation’). Silence has been stolen from me by tinnitus. So I’m trying to find some more precise definition. It is the absence of words - but also of thought? What can we think without words? Is it only feeling/emotion? Can I hear it through the white noise in my head?
And a question - are you linking the inability to find one’s inner core with the absence at the centre of the decreated being? Or do we find God as Spirit in that absence?
Thank you so much for this Alison. I'm encouraged that Laudato Si' isn't just aimed at the Church but at the whole human family. I hope that my book will also be of interest to those outside the Church with an interest in theological approaches to language, desire, and creation.
Your question on silence gave me food for thought. I can't comment on tinnitus but I think it must be a very challenging condition to live with. The silence I'm referring to - which I rarely experience - is that associated with a deeply contemplative state that rests in letting be. So it wouldn't be about finding God, but perhaps in Meister Eckhart's idea of praying God to free us from God. The silence of decreation would be a silencing of those inner voices that question, conceptualise, speculate, hypothesise. It becomes a sense of complete absorption, the dissolution of boundaries between self and other, and an ability to be fully present in the moment - like Potter's description.
An example would be occasionally on the tube, I take out the earphones, switch off the screen, and just immerse myself in the faces, gestures and postures of the people around me. I begin to feel completely immersed in being human, but not thinking about that, just being there. I've experienced that once or twice, and the London underground is very far from a place of physical silence!
Thank you for making me think more about what I mean when I refer to silence. This will be an ongoing process.
In Spring 1994, afflicted with terminal cancer, Dennis Potter was interviewed by Melvyn Bragg. The following passage from the interview was widely quoted:
"At this season, the blossom is out in full now … and instead of saying 'Oh that's nice blossom' … last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance. Not that I'm interested in reassuring people – bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it."
There's a close link here between Potter's overwhelming awareness of his own mortality, and his uncluttered perception of "the nowness of everything".
I wonder, does this give us a clue as to what Weil's "decreation" might mean?
In Gravity and Grace, Weil says that absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. Was Potter describing a mode of prayer?
Thank you so much for reminding me of that interview. I remember being blown away by it when I watched but had forgotten all about it. Yes, I think Potter is describing prayer at its most focused, which is not the prerogative of the religiously inclined. (I don't denigrate being religious - I'm religious - but I do think religion can be one of the greatest obstacles to prayer if it surrounds us with rules, obligations and instructions). I usually avoid the word 'pure', but there is something about this purity of focused, decluttered 'nowness of everything' which seems to me to be what 'listening to the essence of things' means - a quote from Heraclitus in Josef Pieper's book, 'Leisure: The Basis of Culture'.
People facing their own immanent death do sometimes acquire that purity of vision, though I don't want to romanticise death or deny its capacity for the raw negation of all that sustains us in life. I'm struggling with the association between death and decreation, which is part of my struggle with Weil. She sometimes repels me with her unflinching intellectual morbidity. But all this is food for thought and continuing reading, reflecting and writing.
I think Potter's words will find a way into the book - so thank you again.
I'm so glad you liked being reminded of the Potter interview.
I share your struggle with Weil. Yes, she can repel, or baffle. But there are also passages I return to repeatedly.
I sometimes think religious people have a one-sided fixation with death. The Four Last Things ... why not devise Four First Things, beginning with birth (and what might the other three be?)
But for some people at some times the prospect of death can indeed bring purity of vision. The ars moriendi is now a secular genre - Irvin Yalom's "Staring at the Sun" is an outstanding example.
I haven't heard of Irvin Yalom, but thank you for the reference. Would you be willing to share a passage from Weil that you return to? It's always interesting to know what sustains and attracts people when they read great thinkers. I want this book to be dialogical in the writing, so the more suggestions, references, and insights readers offer, the more it will enrich the book.
There are two very different poems on the ars moriendi that I find fascinating in the contrast between them. One is Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night," and the other is by a very dear friend of mine, the poet Helen Dunmore, who died of cancer in 2017, "Hold out your arms": https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jun/06/helen-dunmores-family-reveal-poem-written-in-the-authors-last-days.
I think the Christian story is much better told from the perspective of birth and Hannah Arendt's idea of natality, than from the perspective of the crucifixion. I'm not saying the crucifixion isn't vital, but if we start with birth and vulnerability, then the violence that the world does to innocent victims becomes a divine lament with and for the tormented, rather than a divine demand for somebody to be punished. That will all be somewhere in the book!
What would the Four First Things be? Conception, birth, nurture, and love maybe.
Thank you again for engaging so insightfully.
Passages from Weil that I return to?
Here are a couple from "Gravity and Grace".
This, from the section entitled Atheism as a Purification:
"A case of contradictories which are true. God exists: God does not exist. Where is the problem? I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure that my love is not illusory. I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I am able to conceive when I pronounce this word. But that which I cannot conceive is not an illusion."
And this, from the section entitled Metaxu:
"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link."
Elsewhere, I've taken this latter passage as a starting-point for some reflections about how Quakers diverge in their use of religious language:
https://thismagpiemixture.blogspot.com/2021/06/weils-wall.html
Thank you so much for Helen Dunmore's poem, and also for your Four First Things.
I certainly hope that natality will feature in the book. It occurs to me that there is a secular equivalent of the Four Last Things - namely, the idea of human life as being lived "towards death" (I've seen this in Yalom, who is heavily influenced by Heidegger). Your reference to natality prompts me to ask, what if instead we frame human life as being lived "from birth"?
Thank you Timothy. That quote from Weil about God existing and not existing is immensely thought-provoking and helpful, and I appreciated your blog on language in the context of Weil's prison wall very much. I hope you'll continue engaging. Arendt is - if I remember correctly - challenging Heidegger's "being towards death" with her idea of natality.
I hadn't realised Arendt was directly challenging Heidegger, but yes, that makes sense. I look forward to your next post.
Very beautiful expression of complex ideas. I really enjoyed reading the comment on imperfect loves and found it helpful. I don't know if it I am a bit lazy but it seems to me it is all a lot simpler than that. I think we are made perfect (which means whole) by being United with God 's love not in order to win it. And where else is there to be anyway
Thank you Maggs, and lovely to have you here. I write my theology in the margins, where my tenuous faith can sometimes feel more at home with those who are on the outside looking in, than those who are more assured. We need all voices, and I learn so much from people whose faith is less complicated, but I also identify with the seekers and sceptics. I think that's why my thought processes can seem somewhat convoluted!