A short one today, as last year festivities and games and resolutions call.

Just finishing an historical fiction , "The Quiet Light" by Louis de Wohl about the life and times of 13th century Italian Dominican, scholar, and later Saint, Thomas Aquinas.  It is more about the fiery times than of Aquinas, which I regretted, but there were many gems within. One: As a Dominican novitiate in Paris under Master Alburtus Magnus, he was thought stupid and slow by his fellow friars.  His placid mannerisms, his great bulk, and his lack of ego led them to believe that he (the greatest Catholic scholar in history) was a dumb ox.  And so they devised this cruel joke: shouting beneath his window, they cried, "Thomas!  Look quick! There  is an ox who has grown wings and has taken to the sky!" When he came to the window to look, they all laughed.  "Idiot! He actually thought an ox could fly!"  Upon which Thomas replied, "better to believe that an ox could fly than that a Dominican could lie."  Touche.  Oh, to be that quick on the feet!

In another, Master Albertus approached him in his cell just as he had finished an appointed treatise on he names of saints.  "Read the last  page for me, Thomas," he asked, and Thomas complied:

"Again there is another very lofty manner of knowing God, by negation: we know God by unknowing, by a manner of uniting with God that exceeds the compass of our minds, when the mind recedes from all things and then leaves even itself and is united with the superresplendent rays of the Divinity."  

There it is: the territory unknown by our own science and our daily thought.  Beyond brain, beyond even our minds, but ourselves, our eternal selves.  The greatest mystery in the world, and the pearl of great price.

Happy New Year, FK          

The weather here has been fairly warm, but unusually cloudy, such that acquaintances who hardly say more than "hi" have been complaining.  I started complaining about this weather two weeks ago, feeling somewhat lethargic and uninspired, but finally, by this weekend, came to a truce with it, and with that, things mellowed to a dull monotony rather than a surly depression.  About this, I felt for the first time superior.  Hey, I'm over it!  Move along!

And so it was this Christmas weekend, gray as usual when on Saturday morning I bit into some Amish fruitcake.  I am one of the few who love real fruitcake, and while this had no rum, being Amish, it had just the right touch of vanilla and lots - lots - of pecans.  Delicious.  

The trouble with fruitcake, though, is its density, and as I stood chewing hard, I noticed some sharp bit of grit in the cake.  Ah, I thought, they must have missed a shell.  Searching in the bit of mush that contained it, I did find a chip - except that it was white; except that it was a fairly large bit of tooth.  Oh no!  Oh, yes - my bottom molar had broken, leaving a knife-sharp edge that I quickly found cut my tongue each time I spoke or swallowed. Certainly a penance for talking too much, for sure, and for eating too much.  

Still, being who I am, I did not take it in saintly manner.  Instead I suffered and moaned and complained - damn, it had to be on a holiday weekend!  And so it was, and so it took until this morning, first thing AM, that I was able to go to the dentist.  

But an unusual thing had happened - the weather had gotten unusually cold, and with that came the brightest of bright suns. As sat in the dentist chair getting X-Rays, sure to soon have the discomfort of Novocain (thank god for Novocain!), the grinding away of the old molar and the fitting for a cap, I found that I didn't care.  Not only didn't I care, but I felt something akin to the gentle brush of angel wings.  I sat facing a window that let in the sun and the bright blue, and all was well with the world. Grind away, my good dentist, life is great!  Life, in fact, it better than great - it is an elixir to the soul, a wonder of magnificent creation.  Bring it on, whatever, I am content with the world.

As it turned out, the news got better: the broken tooth was already a cap, and all the dentist had to do was file down the sharp edge.  5 minutes later, I was out of there, still happy as a lark, pain free, and ready to eat bagels or crusty bread or even - I still gasp at the thought - dense Amish fruitcake loaded with nuts.

As usual, I could not leave this good feeling and great fortune to itself.  Rather, it made me think - sitting in a dentist chair, waiting for pain, my cut tongue aching, not having eaten anything but soft bread and oatmeal for three days while everyone else finished off the turkey - with all of this, I was more than happy, even elated. All because of a freak accident of nature here in winter Wisconsin - a broad shining of the sun.  So instead of angel wings, it seems my good humor was spiked rather by a shot of melanin or whatever body chemical makes for good moods.  I was, instead of a gratefully inspired soul, just another animal responding to an external stimulus.  

Of course, the question has been asked again and again, and for most biochemists, the answer has been found - elation, even the feeling of God, is nothing more than a chemical response.  Why, take some mushrooms or LSD and one can be cast into, as Aldous Huxley put it, Heaven or Hell.  

But we here on these pages do not really believe this, but rather try to put things into the context of the great spiritual masters. For the Buddha, all is a type of illusion, whether it be pain or pleasure, sun or clouds; and while these may be reflections of the great creation, they are only pale reflections.  What, then, would be true ecstasy?  Where would this come from?  For Christians, we might look to the Gospels - weren't the sick and poor of spirit those most blessed?  But how can that be?  Would grumpy pessimism be more pleasing to the cosmos than the jubilant optimism of a sunny day? 

The answer, it seems to me, is to be found in the biochemist's lab book, for as long as we rely upon the stimuli of the things of the world, we are only sophisticate lab rats; we are only our brains and our guts and our biochemistry.  It is rather those who have gone beyond this, who can rejoice in the dark with an abscessed tooth, who have found something real, more real than the being with a nervous system alone.  Thus are the suffering blessed when they are forced outside of stimulus-response to find ecstasy; thus are the contemplatives blessed when they reach beyond the thin veil of flesh and cold and sun.  

And so we are only a brain as long as we stay there, just as the biochemists say; but there is another seat of consciousness, or so the masters say, that remains well above this.  In this resides the soul, and in this, the true self - or so they say.  For right now, I'll take my sunny skies and good tooth, but these, too, will end, as will my brain and everything to do with it.  But somewhere, they say, there is something much more.  Perhaps I will return to seek it on a cloudy day, or when misery strikes again.  Such, they say, is the way of the pilgrim.  FK   

            

Last weekend before Christmas our son was home from college, and after we came in from doing something, I saw that if we really rushed, we could make 5:00 mass.  Knowing that he has issues with his future, I seriously suggested that we go - hey, God answers all questions worthy of answers, no?  His reply: "Sure - I really want to hear the same bad voices sing the same lame songs for the same boring service."  Yes, I thought, that is at least partially true.  We did not go.

However, Christmas mass, if one is in town, is always mandatory. My father always used to joke about holiday Catholics, and he was right, of course - people who never ordinarily show up do show up on Christmas and Easter, much to the light derision of the faithful.  With that, the masses, particularly the more convenient one that we went to this year, are always crowded to the hilt. Folding chairs are set up in the vestibule (narfex? I forget the term) and the last of the travelers are forced to park their cars out on the street.  Inside, the church is awash in colored lights and trees and glittery things, and if you are older, the chorus of children who always are brought out to sing brings a soothing nostalgia to the soul.  

Most interesting, though, are the people.  While I try to focus on the mass normally, on Christmas, the packed- in crowds of the unknown call ceaselessly for attention, and in that I have to comply; and in watching, dozens of stories come from them, whether they know it or not.  In front of us was a young couple with a rambunctious boy of about three who was alive with curiosity and questions.  He also had on very thick glasses and a contraption strapped to his head that looked like Jordy Laforge's (or some name similar) from Star Trek: the Next Generation.  It even pulsed with electronic lights, a technological innovation obviously meant to overcome a congenital deafness.  He was irresistible in his happy curiosity, but his parents seemed warn-out, less than happy, and one has to wonder: did the kid's maladies break the bank?  Are they disappointed with having an imperfect kid?  Is their marriage strained?  Did they come to church with an eye towards some magical intervention that would save their young marriage?  

Who knows - but it quickly became apparent that this couple's troubles were, or should have been seen as, nothing; there were the old, obviously on last legs, with air tubes and crutches and large bumps under their clothing necessary for God knows what; and those with children in wheelchairs, some needing breathing devices of their own; and there were those others with perpetual children, those born mentally defective with tortured skulls and walking gates like zombies.  So many of those parents looked worn, too, and no wonder.  Oh boy, you have to say to yourself, count your blessings.

And then there was the elderly man, in his 70's but in good physical condition.  Passing him after communion, he alone of everyone was deeply, passionately in prayer as if no one but he and God were present.  He continued as such, and at the end of mass, he went to the candle area on the side of the church, this one dedicated to Mary, where it is believed that if one lights a candle and prays for something, that prayer will be continued for the duration of the flame, a plea to Mary to intercede with God and help whatever troubles one has.  There again he got on his knees in full view and prayed passionately, regardless of others, alone with his suffering and his need.  What was it?  A dying wife?  A grandchild in the hospital?  A child in prison or addicted to drugs?  

What stories, what stories.  The first inclination is to bless our lucky stars that those with huge troubles are not us - for now.  It is no wonder on seeing our maladies even now in this age of medical miracles, that a god that offered mercy instead of pure might, like the gods of Olympus, would become so popular.  The second is, I think, to begin to grasp the strength of people, how any situation can be suffered, and how pivotal faith can be.  If god is ultimate mercy, if the suffering shall be relieved now or in the hereafter, if it all makes sense in the grand scheme, then our suffering becomes not only endurance, but a light, a path to spirituality and another world greater than our own.  

I, too, can be a skeptic; I know something of the history of religions, and how easy it is to see that they come and go with the times and circumstances.  For Jews, their religion was made whole by suffering, through the Egyptian captivity and the Babylonian exile; and for Christians, by a single act of supreme suffering by God Himself. We see in these stories a kin to our own lives, but that does not make them any truer; for some, these stories are just that, security blankets for bad times.  But even skeptics - honest skeptics - know that we do not understand the reason for our being, and have to admit that we cannot deny that there might be a reason for being.  And to the faithful - of any god of mercy and meaning - suffering may indeed create a portal for them to a higher reality, for in suffering they are forced to try to understand greater meaning.  They are forced to realize that it is an intricate web, this life, that goes far beyond our understanding, but never-the-less enfolds us all.  Suffering can truly be the beginning of wisdom, the opening to whatever greater reality is hiding behind the bad voices of the choir and boring service.

Not that I want suffering - no!  But we can see how suffering can serve just as plainly from afar.  Like death, its presence can bring a magical quality to life, as if the two tug us, however reluctantly, into a more grown-up version of reality - where, if one has faith, mercy reigns and all suffering ends in the incomprehensible being of God.  FK           

Today, a new chapter, "Dereck", under "Hurricane River" in the website, after the chapters "Henry" and "Devil's Choice"   FK

Today, a reprint of the essay, "The Night My Father Shot Santa," under "Essays" in the website.

A brief one today, as we are all abuzz like most everyone else with Christmas.  This I could not pass up: while having breakfast, we listened to the music of our local avant-guard radio station, and this morning they had a Blue Grass Christmas.  We first head the sincere strains of simple country people (or so they represent themselves) singing about Bethlehem and the baby Jesus and such, all very good.  But then the selection veered to the "trailer park" red necks, with songs about houses dead cold from dead cold marriages, and one that I think is a bit famous, about a dysfunctional hick family's Christmas, where we repeatedly hear about more runs to the Quicky Mart for booze mixers, cigarettes and tampons.  "Noel, noel" our singer croones in sloppy, maybe even drunk Southern.  Ah, yes, a Christmas without enchantment, as dead as a holiday hangover.  

Yes, one of my greatest fears, this disenchantment, because it would be so easy to fall into it, like a drunk into a culvert.  Right now, it is dark with clouds outside, as it has been for two weeks straight, the temps in the mid-thirties, the ground thawed and the ice running out of the rivers.  Every now and then, the clouds spit out a little rain mixed with sloppy frozen stuff, and if there were a good game on now, it would be nice to simply pop a beer or three and forget about the whole Noel thing, as gray and lifeless as it is.  

For those raised Christian, we can recall what this season means, as historically inaccurate as it is (the timing of it to 25 December).  God on Earth, a reprieve from darkness, a way out of our conundrum of exactly what ails us, disenchantment.  Yet, disenchantment is oddly a product a civilization, for as filled with revenge and blood lust as many primitives were, disenchantment was never a problem. For them, life was full of spirits, even to the point of distraction and worry.  Magic was not only possible but probable and a regular occurrence.  Less so, but still alive in spirit were the peasants of near-present day and the medieval past.  Life by then was often a drudgery, but still, mystery filled the local woods and late nights - again, not always welcome, but alive none the less.  

For me, and for most of us I believe, we have to conjure this spirit of enchantment, for in daily life it is gone, lost to the world of sensibleness, of common sense.  That our common sense is dead wrong in the aggregate cannot penetrate our way of thought -  life is cause and effect, as predictable in most ways as billiard balls on a slate table.  What, then, do we of such sensibilities make of Christmas?  

We look to the children, and to our memories of ourselves as children.  They can believe in anything, even Elves - and even God on Earth.  For the rest of us, who knows?, for we can be of any religion in our current world and never act or feel as if the truths of these religions affect us.  We have, in large part, been made numb.  

Why this is so has been explored many times in this blog ,and will be again, for it essential to understand this if any re-enchantment of the world is to begin.  But for those of us who are Christians, and for those others who are close to the heartbeat of the cultural ethos, we know what Christmas calls for - not  a tear-filled admission of our sins for redemption, but a return to the time when we could feel enchantment.  In that way, Christmas is for everyone, for we all need this, this return, this break in the billiard ball mentality.  

And it should be noted that this naivete, this child-like wonder that we call back to, is more real than our dead world of function.  We know, really, almost nothing, and if we could admit it, we would have to admit that our collective knowledge is that of a small child still.  For still, we are as dependent on the forces around us as ever, and still as strangely protected, like children who have no idea why they have earned such protection.  

But we know why, and that is what Christmas proclaims: rejoice! In this vast turmoil of wind and sun and surf and stars, a spirit reigns to protect you, to guide you.  It lives through the world, in all things at all times.  Life is not dead, but alive, and ultimately, overwhelmingly good.  And if we can't see that always, then we must see it now and then, especially in the star of Bethlehem as the banjo pickers sing.  It is there and has always been there, and now is the time, once again, to begin our re-enchantment.  Merry Christmas, FK     
        

It's Christmas time again, the end of the year, and with that we always get a very interesting letter from one of our neighbors telling us all the things the family has done the past 12 months. The one I just received is little different from the ones before: there are several trips abroad, some to exotic places like the Galapagos; there are grandchildren born and hikes in the Appalachians and canoe trips in the Boundary Waters; there are meetings with friends and parties in odd places, snowshoeing in the Minnesota wilds, a river trip in the Peruvian Amazon, and more - lots more. Me, I could write about plowing the driveway in last year's blizzard, or building a woodshed in the UP, or making a batch of Scottish Ale. Oh, there's other stuff, but nothing more exciting. That's it for us. 

I have no idea how I came to be a fuddy-duddy, but that's what's looking back in the mirror.  Having just read the letter, I kind of resent it, too.  Heck, you only live once!

It is not that I am exactly green with envy, although maybe a little pale yellow, but such tales of adventure bring a sense of longing - of a need to fulfill life.  The problem is certainly not a new one, and there are many old tales from fuddy-duddys like me that speak of the wisdom of place.  The book I recently read, Cathar's "Shadows on a Rock," depicts the way of life of 17th century French Canadians, where most resisted any change in life whatsoever.  What they had was "them" and all was right with the world just as it was.  A book by Thomas Merton on the desert fathers - those early Christians who lived severe lives in the deserts of Arabia and Egypt- contains a quote from a wise man saying that no one should go more than a few leagues, or some odd measurement, from his abode - ever.  Dorthy of the Wizard of OZ learns, as we all know, that there is no place like home. Closer to my own home, when I was a child and used to beg my father to take me or us on camping trips or hikes or any kind of adventure whatsoever, he would reply, "I have worked hard to have the place and bed I want.  Why would I give it up for another place or a sleeping bag?"  I can see me gritting my teeth even now.  

But of what interest are people of place?  Robert Luis Stevenson would have died a pauper had he written about a young Scottish lad who was born into a poor house, stayed in that poor house, and then died.  No - he wrote that the young fellow fell in with pirates, escaped, and came to have all their treasure, to return to his poor home a rich man.  It was then, I suppose, that he settled down, but nowadays, he probably wouldn't.  He would continue to jet-set to the Seychelles Islands or whatever place was hip for the well-heeled and continue to have adventures until his mysterious and portentous death.  He would be, as the commercial goes, "The most interesting man in the world." 

We read that the already wise eschew travel; they are content with place, for to them, one place is no less or more interesting or fulfilling than another.  And so we read of tales where the pilgrim goes round the world to find a dragon, only to discover after returning tired and disappointed that his house was built on an ancient mound depiction of a dragon - he had had his heart's desire there at home all along.  And so, I suppose, it is with us. On my greatest adventure, my fieldwork with the Amazon Indians, I had been looking for a dragon of sorts, a way of life that could tell me life's secrets.  What I found was not worthless, for in another way of life we can see an aspect of the whole that we did not know before, but I did not find the whole.  I know now that I would not find it in India either, or in the Australian Outback, or wherever.  I might find beautiful or inspiring scenery, interesting people or dangerous outings on mountain ridges or wild rivers, but I would be no closer to the whole.  The wise men, as always, are correct - the whole is right there with you and around you, the dragon in your very heart.  

But most of us aren't wise. If we have given up looking for Truth in the outside, then we continue to go out for diversion. We sleep in beds that are not our own and jiggle uncomfortably in old buses for adventure, for something to tell us that we are alive and not wasting our limited time.  My experience has shown me that if there is no discomfort, then it is not an adventure; and that if there is discomfort, I cannot enjoy the experience until I have returned safely to home, to tell my friends and myself about it. There is something perverse in that, this need, but there it is, this yellow envy and sense of in-completion, of losing the limited time that I have left.

In truth, the most notable experiences have come from the interior - the realization, that is, that we are set in a vast and intelligent universe, in a far stranger and more wonderful land than we could ever find on this earth or even this galaxy.  But the desire, the need continues, as do all other needs, basic or otherwise. A trip or two might be as simple as a need to recharge after long hours at a tough job, but the need could also come from the urge to discover the dragon.  For me, that is what it is.  I know where the dragon is, but I would rather the fantasy of Treasure Island over the reality of hard interior work; the fantasy of the returning hero rather than the reality of a weak self that ages, fears and dies.  Wealth and the leisure travel it can bring would then be the curse that the wise often say it is.  Ah, but still - if not the galaxy, why not the Seychelles?  Who knows what wonders work there that do not here?  As if a dragon were so easy to find, but still, the wander lust calls.  FK           
    

Sometimes, if you are a talking parrot like me, you have to give advice before you can realize it yourself.  This happened the other night as my son and I talked about his future options.  After 3 semesters of classes and a few very bad starts, he is still left wondering - what to major in?  If not, maybe trade school?  We have in the past gone over his assets and found, the hard way, his liabilities, and still the question lingers.  He had claimed he had hardly slept the night before, worrying about this.

Of course I had to give him the American guilt trip - hey, at least you HAVE a choice!  Why, a garbage picker in the Philippines can only look to the lowly career of his family for his future - or a lucky surge of money that will buy him a ticket to the US.  But that choice, like many things in this contrary life, is also a curse.  He would have no blame for his low status - my son or the garbage picker - in a world where there was no choice.  This is the way many nations and tribes have always lived - there is but one way. It is part of the reason for the French "art of living," and the centered spirituality of India, for in those nations there is a long history of stasis.  In the case of India, there is an actual caste system that officially relegates people to certain professions.  It is here that we can truly say, "if you are a garbage collector, be the best garbage collector there is!"

I've heard this said in the US, but we all know that here it is not really true.  Few people suggest to their children to be the best garbage collector, for we have a status hierarchy, and garbage doesn't figure very highly in it.  "My son the doctor" is not just the boasting of the Jewish mother - it is the hope for one's children that most of us in America have.  But I cannot push too hard for status without being a hypocrite, nor can anyone with a commitment to higher truths.  And besides, some, like myself and my son, are not the nose- to-the- grindstone types.  Rather, like most of us, we wish to have a good life, a balance of work and play.  And why not be the best garbage collector?

It's true, but it's also true that many of us wouldn't last in that job, for a variety of reasons.  We'd be failures as garbage collectors, plain and simple.  And so we look for all sorts of ways to find our way, to what would satisfy our nature, not just our need for prestige.  With me, it came from out of the blue sophomore year, to be an anthropologist.  After years of side tracking and hurdling of obstacles, that is what I became.  That it didn't pan out in the end is not the point of this blog - and is of little interest to anyone besides myself.  But the truth is, I would have been good at it.  It fits my nature.  How, then, did this come to me?

On that night, I told my son: "You know, if you can't figure it out through thinking, you have to let it come to you.  Pray for an answer to whatever higher source you imagine, and then keep open.  Your question is often answered, usually first thing in the morning, but it could be at anytime.  Stop your frustration and anxiety and let it be.  If nothing comes, continue as you are. Maybe the time isn't ripe."  

As far as I know, the answer has not come to him, and perhaps he thinks my advice is hogwash.  However, it did work on me - not the answer, but the truth of the advice which, after all, is simply borrowed wisdom.  Yes, it is true - it is no use to worry continually about that decision.  Think of it and then leave it to a higher power, or interior self if you prefer to call it that.  That is how we come to the Eureka moment so often experienced by the greatest thinkers.  For me, it is a spiritual thing, and in letting it go, peace is allowed.  If nothing else, that peace will allow one to think more clearly.  The answer will probably not come as a Eureka moment in this case, but as something clear and obvious. Oh, yeah, sure, how could I have missed that?  Success is not assured with this answer; rather, one is given something that one could do well, given the attributes one has.  

Is freedom of choice worth the effort?  I have read that arranged marriages and chosen ones have about the same probability of success, but I do not think it is a wash.  Free choice gives us the possibility to discover more, to go deeper.  It also allows us to throw everything we have away, or be swept off our feet by a big bank account or a pretty face.  In the "art of living" world, we are given the choice to make beautiful whatever we have been given; in the world of free choice, we are able to choose what we can make most beautiful.  It seems the latter is the best alternative, although Indians would disagree.  As far as I now know, maybe my son would, too.  But I believe the answer, the real answer to a greater path, is there and best served by freedom.  To find it takes, as with anything good and lasting, faith and at times a certain courage, to give things we cannot grasp over to faith.  Now, if only an answer will come for my writing career...FK  
  

Today - Two new chapters posted under "Hurricane River" in the website, "Henry" and "Devil's Choice."  These follow last week's chapter "A Sweater."  

Nearing the end of Willa Cather's "Shadows on the Rock," this son of change and glitz (me) learned of the French "art of living."  We have as a central character Cecile, who at this point is just 13 years old, on the final step of childhood.  Here she is taken to the Ile d' Orleans, an island in the middle of the St Lawrence River below the rock of Quebec.  For years now, she has never been, although she has longed to go, looking at it daily from her perch in Quebec.  It is an island of fruit and honey, where the best lands of the region are and where much of the fresh food for Quebec comes from. Her ferry man is Pierre Charron, a fierce but good man of the woods, and although he gets her there safely, she is shocked by the manner of life there.  While the flowers and trees and grass are lush, the food in the house where she stays is coarse and, to her, almost inedible. She is to sleep with three other smaller girls of the house, and she notes that they do not wash their legs before bed, but jump in, bleeding mosquito bites and mud and all.  She is horrified by the dirt, but she is no brat - she simply stays up, starring out the window, waiting for dawn.  After two days, Pierre notes her tired composure and asks what is wrong; it is then that she pleads with him to take her back to her home, which he does.

When she arrives at the Rock, she feels like kissing the ground (but does not - she is not given to theatrics).  Once home, she immediately goes about the chores and cooking, which has become her lot since the death of her mother three years before. After a bit, she understands something that she had not before; while before she had thought her chores were for her father and the memory of her mother, she now discovers that they are for her, too.  She loves the life she has, loves the house she cares for, and loves her habits and chores.  They are, she realizes, not just what she does and has, but who she is.  She now understands, while not thinking it, contentment and place, her meaning and duty in the world one and the same.

It is, as the French are fond of saying, the essence of the "art of living."  It is that each thing, every meal, every room or house cleaning, is a ritual, the ritual of life.  For Cecile in her time, it is also a ritual with God included, what she does a part of God's design, but the idea of a specific god is not necessary - rather, it is the notion that one's place is integral to the whole, and as such one's life work much be treated with respect and even reverence.  In that, one does reverence to one's self and to life.

It is the Buddhist way, and the way of all saints, and it is something that I do not come by naturally.  A chore to me is something to get over.  The house can get messy, the food can be from the freezer to the microwave, my dress only adequate for the weather.  Life is not art, nor is place - I have moved so many times in life that I still confuse phone numbers and zip codes. Life is to have enough money, and if I am lucky, enough time to watch a game or play guitar.  That is the point - to get past the annoying necessities of life.  For those of us looking for more, we might have hobbies or church or something to bring us to a more meaningful place, but much of life is something to get done with so we can enjoy the evening or the weekend.  TGIF would not be the motto of Old France.

I do not say this to inculcate guilt: we have our reasons for thinking as we do.  But there is something to learn here, of others and how we might make our lives more content.  As such, the book itself drifts back and forth, from daily life to the life of the Church, and we see how the connections and the order and meaning of life were once maintained.  As a cathedral was the dome of the celestial sky writ small, so life was to be the life of sacred meaning writ small.  In a way, a wonderful way of life, if one can find it in oneself.  A good notion, I think, to keep in mind.  FK       

Imagine a world of perfect order: where God rules from a heaven just beyond the fixed stars, where rulers govern according to God's will, where every action is met with a proper response, even if we do not understand it; a world that is divinely guided, and where one's place and one's culture is held in high esteem and without question; a world where the family is supreme, the father at the head, the woman the support of the children, the children obedient to the parents, with all a microcosm of the one orderly universe.  

This is the world painted beautifully by Willa Cather in her book, "Shadows on the Rock," the Rock being Quebec City in the 1690's.  Having read more than half, I have been waiting for some slant, for some more modern intrusion into this world from the author, but this has not come.  Instead, she leaves an impression of what the people she depicts would approve of.  It would not be a bustling world of novelty, but rather one of custom, for this has been tested by the genius from centuries before.  Steadiness of character and humility, as well as attention to work and aid to the less fortunate would trump novelty and excitement every time.  

It is the way of the French at the time of King Louis the XIVth, the era of the Sun King as he radiates his greatness throughout his Kingdom and beyond, even to the far-flung corners of darkest Canada.  Yet, in spite of this, there is excitement: a big snowstorm,  a new war with England, the military engagements with the Iroquois, personal hardships and sickness - and the miracles.  It is this last that the French people of Canada look for most, for in their unchanging world, it is the direct signs from God that most inspire - that give anyone inspiration.  And miracles abound: angels come and fix spinning wheels, a touch of a bone relic converts a pagan, and religious vocations are pronounced through incredible acts of personal abnegation. This is the world of New France, of custom, of tradition, of God's implacable rule, and of His divine exceptions to the rule, for with Him everything is possible under a ceaseless sky.

It is an odd book for me to read, for its pace reflects the slow and steady ethos of the times, punctuated by acts of God, or so the people believe.  It is not full of excitement, but it builds, slowly, giving us this different world, a fascinating one so different from our own.  And it makes me think: would I like such a world?  

In the book, there is a rebel, a woman who does as she pleases, which means sleeping with whichever man she wants, having children without accountable fathers, and taking off for a river jaunt while her young child stays home, alone.  She is haughty towards the town folk, because they all know what she is, and she must uphold whatever she can of her dignity by showing the world that no one is her boss.  Rebellious she is and without virtue, the bad woman in town.  While the rest humble themselves to their betters -and they all know who they are - and all humble themselves before God and (their version of) His morality, she throws it away, and is poor and wretched for it. In our society, she would be Madonna (no pun intended) or Miley Cyrus, reviled by the elders and esteemed by many of the young. 

Except that this image is not really true.  Social rebels are like genetic mutations - most end badly, while a very few work out for the better.  Even in our society, where individualism reigns and no one is appointed by God, it is the go-alongs, the conservative of action (not political conservatives necessarily) who have the nice house, the new car, the kids who go to college, the 401K plan.  They have boring lives, but they survive well.  They stay in their marriage and give up luxuries and desires of the moment for their perceived responsibilities.  They are the back bone of society, still.  We talk of freedom but we know that in freedom, we must limit our freedom.  It is not just for the security, even, but rather the right thing to do. 

The world is no longer the center of the universe, and god is not often seen in the workings of everyday life and politics.  Chaos is all around us, and we know it.  Change is happening before our eyes, as if it is dictated by a foreign agent; as if God is, instead of the center of a changeless universe, the center of a cyclone, of disruption and novelty.  


This brings me back to that question - would I like the world of New France in 1697? Personally, I was a rebel for most of my youth, and wouldn't have taken it then for a minute.  I could still not stand the idea of a monarch and royalty that was accepted as better than I by birth.  On the other hand, the quiet way is, really, the way of the Universe.  As our author noted, whatever thing new that humans do, it had better be slowly tested beforehand. Novelty for the sake of change can be extremely damaging, even fatal.  Fashions, ideas, recreations, drugs, whatever may be the thing of the moment, is more like the rebel - most probably harmful, and most probably doomed.  The calm person of duty, of care, of harmony with his work and land and family and neighbors, this is what endures; this, it seems, is what causes the greater happiness.  

It is, after all is said and done, the way of the wise.  Even Jesus commanded us to give to Caesar what is Caesar's.  The IChing, too, tells us to move with the current, to not fight the battles that are only battles of our ego.  And yet, I have lived the quiet life, far off from society with the forest Indians.  I became bored, my life seeming to pass by without purpose.  In this I was not a rebel, but an American, a man of the modern world who needs forward momentum, change and lively entertainment.


It seems we stand at the crossroads, between the tottering old and the ruinous young, between the closed heavens of Old Europe and the frantic pace of the growing industrial world. In 2001:A Space Odyssey, it is shown that we are casting off the old world as well as the new, the old social order as well as the technological glitzy (HAL, the computer), to emerge into a new world, one we can barely perceive now.  This leap to "something new"  will not be the handmaiden of the careful and conservative, but not that of the rebel, either.  Whatever vision there is now of a New Order, it has not yet been well defined. Perhaps we will have to wait before it is upon us - or perhaps it will never come. It will not be old, but not hasty either - rather, something just right. Old Jacques of old Kebec would be as perplexed as I, and perhaps like him I must wait - or pray - for a miracle, for what only 'that which is beyond us all' can give.  FK                 


         

We took our neighbors out this weekend for minding our dog when we travel, and on the return after wining and dining, a book the man had lent me came up.  "I have to remember to return that book [lent two years ago] because it's just too paranoid.  Sure, I can believe that bankers and kings and queens and such have conspired, but not so thoroughly throughout so much time.  I mean, they make mistakes and they fight among themselves.  And that thing about the dragon living in a cave in central Europe and eating babies..."  I was a little too blunt, I know, and I blame the wine, but that thing about the dragon was really in there. There are limits to credulity, after all.

What are the limits, though?  I use the IChing, on the notion that any time is the right time, the complete time of Heaven, and as such, the using of an augury taps into that time.  Or so I have reasoned, along with a few thousand years of Chinese philosophy.  Odd coincidences also happen, and I often wonder - what is the meaning of this (in a greater sense)?  While looking for academic transcripts last summer to renew my resume, for instance, I found the notebook I had taken along with me when hitchhiking in the mid 70's (the core of my book, Dream Weaver.) I had thought it lost almost 40 years before.  Why would I find it now?  And then, just yesterday, I found a birthday card to me from my parents dated 1997.  It had a check in it for 35 dollars, which for some reason I had never cashed.  And there it was - a little joke written inside by Dad and his signature on the check. He has been dead now for something like 10 years.  My mother will join him very soon (not a curse, just an observation.  I don't think she'd mind), or so it seems.  Why find that letter after 17 years, now?  My father, as a matter of fact, died just before Christmas - maybe on the date, yesterday, when I found it. Coincidence?

I believe I have written of this before, known generically as the "pennies from heaven" phenomena, made famous (I think) by the lovelorn syndicated columnist Ann Landers.  Every now and then, she would print a series of letters from readers who talked of finding pennies in odd places, suggesting communication with the dead.  The rational among us insist that such things are wish fulfillments, our minds actively seeking out such pennies (or letters) subconsciously to give us the comfort of that link.  

On the face of it, that sure seems a comfort, too, to not have odd things popping around us.  On the other hand, I was not looking for that letter, and did not realize that finding it coincided with my father's death until writing this blog.  Who knows?  But what we do know, fight it as we might, is that the totality of what we know of our world cannot even measure on a delicate physicist's scale. We have no idea of infinity, little of time and of space, and next to nothing concerning the reason for this or that or anything beyond the most simple of things.  All we have for sure is what we can observe from our extremely limited perspective.  Just as surely, though, the reality of our paranoid thoughts are limited - again, because they derive their meaning from an even smaller perspective.  

I am currently reading a book written in the 1920's about late 17th century French Quebec.  It is historical fiction on a small scale, its focus primarily on the everyday person, but it does have an old Catholic bishop in it who might be an historical figure.  In one chapter, he finds a 4 year old child freezing to death on the steps of a great ecclesiastic residence built by his successor and too- worldy rival.  The child has been looking for his "bad" mother who has gone off with some men to dog sled the St Laurence River for fun, forgetting in the process, and along with much brandy, her young child.  "Ah," thinks the bishop.  "Surely the Lord has meant this as a message, sending me this young child on the eve of Christmas week on the steps of my rival."  So far in the novel, it does look as if the child is destined.  I don't know if he will become a real-life famous person or not, but the thought processes of the bishop are expressed well.  

A pragmatist might think the bishop a dinosaur, and of course he is to many- but his thinking went in line with those of his profession in that age.  For them, they understood that the mystery of their god was all about them, and that His intentions would be revealed in time, or anyway His unlimited knowledge decided. The importance is that the fundamental premise of these priests, and probably of most people of that day, was that God is actively at work behind a screen which shields us from the whole truth, for ignorant we are.  To buttress this idea, there is another character in the book, a pharmacist, who resists the idea of "bleeding from the feet" to cure a host of diseases.  He correctly sees that this practice is at best useless and at worst, debilitating.  Yet it is the fashion of the rich to have it done, and he nearly goes broke by refusing to practice it.  The learned consider him a stuck in the mud fool.  We know better.  But what of the bishop?  In other words, where, then, do we draw the line between superstition and reality, and between reality and paranoia?  Is the pharmacist right because we now know better, but the bishop wrong because we now know no more about God and such than before, and are willing to give it up as hopeless? 

We have a shared reality that is, at least, built on the shared perception of the senses (although what we see and so on is often dictated by what we consider important).  Beyond that, though, we must make sense of it.  Conspiracy theories are largely inadequate because they rely on a group of people acting in harmony at a level far above average, and keeping quiet about it for decades or centuries.  And forget about the baby-eating dragon (I hope).  But pennies from heaven?  Is not God (which itself is beyond definition) as good an explanation as any sometimes, or even better?  For unless we admit to knowing the fundamentals of everything, we must admit to not knowing the fundamentals or fundamental premise(s) that hold(s) the universe together.  If we must admit to ultimate ignorance, then, how can we be so proud as to reject that which we know nothing about? 

This brings us no closer to a practical knowledge of how things work - but perhaps a finer edge is given us to decide between the "holy' - that which is unknowable and beyond us - and the paranoid - that which is knowable and highly unlikely.  Letters from Dad?  Notebooks from heaven?  Really, I don't have any better idea.  FK