Today, a new essay, The Checker King, under Essays in the website.  

Many years ago when we were looking for a house in Wisconsin, our realtor took us to Stoughton to see a place on the outskirts of town.  As we drove down main street  through this typical small-city setting of late 19th century buildings, she whispered to us: "I am not supposed to tell you this, but Stoughton has a problem." Ooh, I thought, she isn't going to give us an account of some troubled minority neighborhood, is she?  Her pause was only for a few seconds."  Well - this town is mostly Norwegian."  We thought it was a joke and laughed, but she did not.  We never were told WHY Norwegians were a problem, though - apparently, everyone in Wisconsin knew that without saying.  

We did not move to Stoughton, but not because of the "minority" problem.  We have also been to Stoughton many times since, and I still can't find the problem with it.  In fact, is has a great cheese store and a fantastic brew-pub that features an extremely potent beer named "Dragon's Milk."  But in Rolvaag's tale of late 19th century immigrants to South Dakota, Giants of the Earth, one gets to understand the problem with Norwegians.  

First, they were extremely ethnocentric, but what newly- arrived immigrant group isn't?  Second, they were very religious, but again,weren't many from the Old Country back then?  But it is not until the last part of the book that we get to understand the meaning of "Dark Lutherans," made famous by Garrison Keillor, the author of the Lake Wobegon books about a fictional small town in Minnesota.  In Giants, however, there is nothing comical about the darkness.  It has mean edges with sharp consequences. 

Rolvaag, though, was clearly not anti-religious.  His sympathetic portrayal of a traveling minister allows that religion can, and should, be the very glue that keeps desolate and struggling communities together, and gives the people hope.  But one woman, Beret, loses her mind out in the great emptiness of the prairie, to the point where she endangers the lives of her smallest children.  Obsessed with the belief that they had come into the Devil's land, she wanders about possessed by fear and anxiety until the preacher is able to persuade her that God is here, too. 
Thus she becomes competent again, but obsessively religious. Every non-solemn word and act, from drinking liquor to mild profanity to joking  becomes a sign that the originator of such things is doomed to hellfire.  

In this way, she becomes a nuisance for the men in the community - but it gets much worse.  Norwegian worse.  She persuades a man who has come down with a harsh cough that he is going to die, and if a preacher is not brought to him, that he will go to Satan's lair.  The man worsens and pleads continually that someone bring him the preacher, although they are in the midst of the worst winter ever experienced there.  Finally, the pressure of the women, especially Beret, forces her husband Per Hanson to ski out into the deep snow toward a distant town as another blizzard comes. What becomes of him can be guessed.

There may be a dark side to every religion.  In the current Catholic Church, we are told both to rejoice and be glad, for we are saved, and to hang our heads in shame over our many, many inevitable sins.  It is for this reason that many have left organized religion, and why many religions, including Catholicism, have become softer.  Still, the sting remains.  And it is not only the Christian religions that demand a certain sacrifice - even the free-wheeling Dakota peoples of the old Plains would offer themselves to torture in the Sun Dance, would starve themselves to find favor with the gods, and would even offer themselves to death to serve the tribal spirit.  As Beret felt, the wild nature of the frontier seemed to demand suffering as well as life itself from all who sought to live there.

So we run from these dark philosophies of the past, and, as Rolvaag shows, often for good reason.  However, when we stop our running, we are caught short.  Either we are left with no representation of the greater reality to help us make sense of things, or we are left with an ersatz religion that gives us candy and hugs but does not prepare us for what is inevitable - for, just as it is a waste to not enjoy the good things of life, so it is a grand mistake to not accept its realities.  We do suffer and die and there is nothing we can do about it.  That must be figured into any reality system.  It also seems necessary that we offer some form of sacrifice - not for the thirst of the gods, but to prepare ourselves for the troubles that will come.  To be spoiled and pampered does not serve us well when inevitable pain, loss and death find us.

In the book, however, most of the Norwegians had found a suitable balance - and that is why Beret was seen as such a pest. Common sense does seem to come into play when juggling the sacred and the profane in equal measure.  But many people, and societies, have erred on one side or the other.  Muslim fanaticism today shows us the dark side - but American pop culture shows us the candy-cane fairy tale side.  A sense of proportion should bring us all around, but it seems to be moving very, very slowly.  Heads continue to roll in the name of Allah, and every day in AMerica, we are introduced to another Caitlin Jenner-like frivolity that passes for real life.  Lord, give us wisdom.  FK       


              

This morning, I got up at 5:30 due to some intestinal discomfort - I blame it on the pizza - and realized that I had time to go to the very early church service.  I had not gone the afternoon before because of the Belmont Stakes and the possibility of the Triple Crown.  I was not disappointed, and figured, ah, well, another Goin' to Meetin' week-end lost to horse racing!  But there I was this morning, compelled by circumstances to make the drive into town.  I do not worry about black cats crossing my path, or walking under ladders for bad luck (stupidity is not bad luck), but I do believe in circumstances.  And so, tired and somewhat uneasy of disposition, there I was, driving in the early morning rain.

Of course, I pushed the button on the radio.  NPR was having a man talk in a section about "books we should read."  He was a professor of something, and was going on and on about Roland Barthes and his ground-breaking work, "Mythologies." Written in the 1970's, the professor claimed the work made us understand the greater depth to our customary activities - what small things like cleaning clothes meant about our reality construct.  Why, for instance, do the adds tell us we need our clothes to be "sparkling clean?"  What does this tell us about our attitudes towards our biological selves, and about our natural world?

Ah, Barthes.  He had been a prime member of a class of authors called "deconstructionists" which I studied with great seriousness in graduate school.  Indeed, such were eye-opening and they have forever, as the professor said, "made me look at the world differently." 

Yes, but I remember a problem with such studies: after the classes, as the day turned to evening, I would become depressed, not my natural condition.  Life seemed pointless somehow, all a reflection of something else, which also was pointless.  All arrows led to a bottomless pit of nothingness.  In the old days of new philosophy, they called this "existential angst," that which was brought to us all because capitalism universalized the world and made every meaning merely a cultural construct in a multi-cultural world.  

And here I was going to church, which is not only filled with endless symbols, but purposefully so.  I knew as I turned off the radio that I was not only going because stomach problems had gotten me up early.  Rather, the last few days had been filled with this existential angst, as cultural meaning and ultimate meaning collided.  What had I done with my life?  How much have I wasted?  But- wait!- was it wasted, or was that only a cultural construct speaking to me?  If so, what WAS important?  Oh, and did I mention that this morning was my birthday?  

But I did not have an epiphany this morning.  Rather, I had the same one I often get the night before, each just as meaningful every time, and this morning only reminded me of it.  It reiterated the idea that this daily world is a mishmash of cultural symbols, of goals and desires and self-perceptions that are manufactured for us out of the populist fabric.  But unlike Barthes's "groundbreaking work," this epiphany always gives an answer after the expose, one that I always forget and need constant reminders of, especially when the night wolves have been out devouring the meat of meaning, turning us into less than wolves ourselves.  The epiphany says that there is a meaning, or a doorway to meaning, that is accessible somehow, every now and then. One may be led to the door by a seeming accident, or by icons, or by the ritual of a church itself, for that is what the symbols are there to do - to lead us away from our daily selves and stylized realities.  But however one gets there, there it is: this gateway to a deeper truth, this WAY beyond the grasp of Barthes and his fellow intellectuals.  The Way does not depend on faith, although that might help; nor does it depend on reason, although that might help - or hinder - as well. Rather, it is the third way.  It is beyond Barthes. He is stuck in his three-dimensional mental chess game and cannot see beyond the board.  Most of us can't most of the time.  But the door is there.  And here is what it begins to tell us just beyond the door:

"Nothing else matters but this.  It is the key.  You know simply by being presented with it that this is true.  Everything else is a pale reflection of this.  You cannot know this with anything but that special sense that you have been given, but once you are there, you know."  

With that, sometimes too my memory begins to work, and I sense again what I should have sensed when I was five and at the ocean, or 45 and on the river in a canoe - in fact, what I should have sensed every time.  But some of these times call out louder, and when they do, it is of this Way, of this door that they speak, if I am aware. Which most often I am not.  And that is why the darkness of discontent, of being lost, revisits again and again.  FK                   

Way, way back in high school, we were made to read a collection of short stories by Earnest Hemingway about his semi-autobiographical adventures with his physician father in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the early 1900's.  In one story, the boy goes with his father to an Indian village to help a woman through a difficult child birth.  During the long night she screams and cries while her husband lies by stoically in a nearby bed. By dawn, she makes it through, but when the husband is sought to be notified, they find that he has slit his own throat.  Tragedy. Hemingway's father would kill himself some years later, as would Hemingway, after suffering from severe depression and the primitive remedies of electric shock therapy.  

In the book that I am currently reading, Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag, we find ourselves in a similar situation.  A group of Norwegians have come to America in the 1870's to claim "quarters," or quarter square mile lots (160 acres) for homesteading in the Dakota Territory, lured by this incredible gift of land.  Per Hansa, the central male in the story, loves its vast isolation because of its potential; his wife Beret immediately takes a different view - why, there are no trees to hide behind!  There are no people!  They will all revert to savagery!  It is no joke - she keeps this to herself, and her mind wanders to distraction, to anxiety, and to deep depression.  The  reader is given to know that she is well along in her pregnancy, and we start to wonder - is this the reason for her dark moods?  

Finally, on Christmas Eve, she goes into labor.  It is a difficult one, and Beret is already sure she is going to die.  Even the women attending her begin to believe it.  Her shrieks and moaning go out through the night, where Per Hansa paces in the snow, unable to talk to anyone.  Finally, it is quiet.  In time, one of the women summons him in to the house.  He is convinced that Beret is dead, and as he passes the barn, he notices the high, strong beam that lays on the walls.  He thinks of the rope he has - good, strong rope.  He does not think of his other children.  We believe we know what he will do, if...

As it turns out, his wife survives, as does the infant, a boy born with "The Helmet" a birth crown that is very rare, on Christmas day.  It is said that he will grow - if he lives - to be very special.  We have the rest of the book to find out how.

In both cases, the death of the father is or would have been tragic.  Neither considered the lives of others who would survive them - only that they could not stand the suffering of the women that they loved, or could not live without them.  But in both cases, continued life would have or was better.  Their's was a temporary problem, which would have been solved by time, one way or the other.  In both cases, the results would have been or were so much better with life.  

In my youth, besides being forced to read the classics, I also talked with quite a few young people who were considering suicide.  I would tell them that their problems were temporary, and that life, after all,was short.  Why not ride it out?  And why not, if the situation seemed intolerable, just run away?  What could hurt more than suicide?  And one would still be alive, able to mend fences later if desired, or start another life that was more compatible.   

This was true of the two men in the stories.  It was the situation that made them suffer.  But what of some others?  I have read of people so consumed by schizophrenia that they make themselves freeze, as if statues, to avoid the life that their tortured minds gave to them.  Then there are the others, those with intense depression, who seem absolutely normal and blessed with the common needs, but who none-the-less are absolutely miserable.  Hemingway and his father were two of those.  In such cases, is suicide such an irrational thing?  It leaves behind the blackest of holes for friends and family, but how can we judge the degree of unrelieved suffering that they might be living?  Theirs was not a misery of the moment, but perhaps of a lifetime.  Just as I perfectly understand the suicide of the old with terminal diseases, so might I understand these others.  

Whether one cares or not, the Catholic Church now allows 'suicides' to be buried in consecrated ground, recognizing the suffering of the person rather than the taking away of life that was given him by God.  This surely seems the more merciful perspective.  Still, we pray for resolutions to our problems, and often they come - more often than not - and in surprising ways. Someone who has failed at one thing may find his true passion in something else; someone who's child was killed by a drunk driver finds she can help other children with health problems or in need of financial assistance.  And sometimes the very mental disease that tortures us allows for a genius to emerge that might make it worthwhile in the end.  Hemingway wrote books, the mathematician in "A Beautiful Mind" made discoveries that are still being used.  The resolutions may not end like novels, but they are resolutions of a sort.  

Should those who suffer hope?  For those miserable in a life situation, sure - that situation will change or can be changed.  But for those others, it remains a question.  It seems to me that anything can be altered, at least enough, with a strong faith. But how does an average person have faith when it seems the whole world has abandoned him?  I cannot judge - but only hope that my own faith would carry me through with what might be.  It reminds me of how serious one's faith can be, and how little the jokers and mockers (myself included, at times) really understand or serve anyone.  FK             

A few years ago, I wrote a novel, Remission, about multiple layers of reality that could be entered from our own reality -and with the proper knowledge, the natural laws of these other realities could be brought back to bear on our own, creating actual "miracles" or "magic."  I had first come across that idea in my youth, and have since come to understand it better, and to believe it.  However, this is still only a kind of map of a more complex greater reality.  I have never been able to use the idea practically, and more, cannot fully explain how it could work.  This is because the science, the explanation for it in verbal and logical terms, does not exist for me.  Thus the book, as much as I like it overall, remains an unpublished problem.  In the many attempts to bring that reality to the reader, I still was not able to do so.  And so, the major work of rewriting remains.  Perhaps I bit off more than I could chew.

The same could be said of an off-the-wall movie we saw this weekend, Frequencies.  Here, we have a special school for gifted youth (placed in London) which operates on the principle of natural resonances - that is, that each of us is born with a certain vibration that makes us either more or less in tune with the universe.  Those of high resonance always have things go their way; those of low-resonance are always obstructed.  With this, in the movie we start with two characters, a high-resonance female and a low-resonance male who somehow still resonate with each other.  The male comes to greatly desire the female as they grow; she, on the other hand, can feel no emotions, although she is brilliant and, as understood, gets anything she wants (as they say, "the universe is working hard for her.")  As a grown man, the low-frequency guy finds a way to alter one's wave-lengths with the help of a genius son of a  composer.  Certain words, they find, have vibrational influence.  Those words can be found using the algorithms of the genius son.  

The man uses them to alter the woman, who wants the one thing the universe is unwilling to give her - emotions.  They fall in love.  But then the government finds out about the experiment and freaks - use of "magic" words have been used throughout time to enslave people.  Those involved now are forbidden to speak outside a quarantined setting.  They must find an antidote.

The antidote is music, which brings everyone into an equal resonance - it is the one common human bond that surpasses hierarchy and power.  But wait!  The genius son believes that even music is mechanical - that, indeed, all life is mechanical and can thus be understood and foreseen as easily as any natural process, such as the fall of an object through space.  In the end, he believes he has found the perfect algorithm, and can predict EVERYthing.  At the same time, the loving couple discuss this possibility - that the man was only made for the woman's use by the universe - and as such is only, in a way, an object.  But they laugh it off - so what?  They are in love!

Too many threads were left untied, as can be imagined, precisely because the science was not there for the writers.  Still, the questions remaining are haunting. The composer Dad insists to his son that music is not a precise mechanical work - that it has to be played with feeling to be effective, and that this feeling was propelled by free will.  But what do the young lovers say of this?  And, is the universe primarily mechanical?  If so, then why should humans not be, when so much of everything else seems to be?  But what of "seems?"  Is that mechanical vision of the universe true, or only a shallow map of a much greater potential? We could know if the genius's son's work was tested for us.  If he could predict everything, then we are indeed determined.  But we never are let to know. 

These are questions of real importance, and here's how I see it: that our daily lives, and what we normally believe to be ourselves, are highly mechanical, run by impulses that are effected by the environment in near stimulus-response fashion.  That we have different body chemistry, or better, resonances, is true - some will be "luckier" or more adapted to this environment than others, but will still be no more free.  On the other hand, the stimulus-response model is highly reductionistic. We are potentially so much more than that.  It shows in music, and in the other arts, that we are somehow, nearly inarticulately, something else.  LIke the model in my own novel, we can have access to other worlds.  And this access is determined by our will - unless, of course, there is some "uber world" where our will is formed.  Still, It is a fathomless "onion" of reality, where logically, everything eventually has to be based on free will - on the very act of creation.  

And to this we are tied.  But the strands are long and tenuous. For the lovers in the movie, they decide to forget the problem and live with their affection for one another.  And that's what the writers had to do - and eventually, what I had to do in my own novel: to just leave it to viewer or reader.  For one cannot convince anyone of anything that cannot be reasoned by that person, unless he desires it. Understanding, then, is itself an act of magic and an act of will.  And where the imagined reality and the will to embrace them come from is problematic and mysterious at the very roots.  It is here where the rubber  hits the road, and what makes life so much more than a chemical, vibrational, or mechanical action.                 

Today, the last chapter of Hurricane River, "Henry,"under the site of the same name.

A quick "note:" Last night as I was about to go back to reading a new book - excellent in its own way - my wife mentioned that a movie I had rented for the Memorial Day holiday still lay unseen, and was due Friday.  So we watched it, wary, after the shorts before it: all were of teen-flicks, from action to Vampires.  And yes, The Giver was a teen flick, but with meaning and well-done, although for an adult eye, the lapses in certain sequences were all too obvious.  

It was about a "dystopia," the buzz word for the year, where there was no war or bigotry or pain, thanks to a climate-controlled little world kept atop a mesa, and certain drugs that made everyone color-blind and devoid of intense emotion.  They also were kept dumb to history, except for one special person, in who resided all the memories kept of human beings.  His post was maintained to supply the Elders with information when something special came up.  In the movie, this Keeper of Memories had become old, and it was time to give his secrets to another, a young person of special qualities called the Receiver.  Thus the old man was The Giver.

There is no need to go into the plot, for we "elders" have seen it all before.  However, there was one detail that struck me, as I have been thinking about it lately - music.  Music in this world had been forbidden, because it caused emotions and memories - and memories caused attachments, all of which could be dangerous. But the Keepers had to know of it - and the Receiver was awed by it.  

This was the greatest aspect of the movie - that it made me rethink how deep and special our lives are.  And in that special-ness is the language of music.  How does it do it?  How does it speak to us?  Yes, we are culturally conditioned to music - without an ear for it, for instance, Japanese or Chinese traditional music is particularly boring to us of the West.  And when I was in Native country in Venezuela, the Indians hated tapes I had brought of rock 'n' roll.  But all music shares a common stem - it is a language that speaks to us in tones of emotions, affecting us far more deeply, overall, than any other mass form of communication (at least as far as I can think of).  But how can this be?  If it were the tones themselves, we would all feel the same about all music - but we don't (although it is much, much easier to learn to appreciate Japanese music than to speak the language).  Usually we must learn the emotions behind the tones, although the learning is more often than not informal, just as learning one's native language is.  But there is no blanket explanation behind the tones.  They become what they were intended to become for us, almost out of nothing.  Does a song for a Hungarian wedding feast bring a festive mood to all, or is this only because it is parred with the wedding, creating an association?  

It is more likely a combination of factors, but regardless, sound without explicit meaning never-the-less gives us deep meaning.  It reminds me of one form of music that is nearly universal in its affects - that of liturgy. Such music is generally clearly recognized for what it is, and brings with it a sense of awe. To a born-again Christian, pagan music might sound like the music of Satan, but it is still recognized for what it is - a spiritual address.  People without a classical background understand the ecstasy in the Hallelujah Chorus, and the chanting and gongs and drums of the sacred music of other cultures are clearly articulating another reality to everyone.  

In the beginning was The Word.  Are we essentially a resonance? Who keeps singing our song, the song that keeps this resonance going?  And what, if we knew the language better, is it really trying to say? We cannot know by discursive logic - and somehow we all have the key to music kept somewhere in the chords of who we are.  FK         

In a personal Memorial Day tradition of several decades, last night I watched a war film, this one, "Unbroken," new enough to have to be rented. I had read the book and wasn't sure I wanted to see the graphics of torture in the Japanese prison camps, but I did want to see the later development of redemption, not because it is anything new to film, but because the book on which the movie was based was a genuine, researched biography that included commentary by the subject, Louis Zapparini (excuse my  spelling), himself.  In the book, the real-life man lived a mythological life, so perfect in its workings that it is hard to believe.  But it was true.  

My son was upset by the torture of the prisoners of war, as I expected.  Louis had gone down with his fellows in a B-24 bomber in the south Pacific, had endured 45 days in an open raft with next to no water or food, and then had been captured by the Japanese and subjected to their cruelties for the remaining two years of the war.  When the film showed the fire bombing of Tokyo next to one of his prison camps, I shouted to my son, "There's Grampa!" for my father had been a gunner on the B-29's that destroyed Tokyo.  He was, I have to say for his sake, appalled at the deaths that he helped bring, even though it was warranted by the standards of war.  After one mission, he told me that General Curtis LeMay, who would one day run for president, had stood in front of him and the other men and bragged-congratulated them for having "killed over 100,000 people last night!"  Most of the men, including my father, had turned green will nausea and guilt. 

In the book, Louis returned emotionally crippled from the war, spending the next several years with PTSD, with terrifying real-feeling flashbacks of his imprisonment.  He became an alcoholic and nearly lost his wife to divorce - before his crucial turning point.  In the movie, however, a scene that was described in the book is underscored in epic proportions.  It relates to his time in the raft, when he promised God that he would do anything He wanted if He would only save him.  And so, in the movie, the active commander of the camp, a sergeant who was such a zealous sadist that even his commanding officers backed off and let him rule, confronted Louis, who he had a particular desire to crush.  He made Louis pick up  a large rafter and hold it over his head, threatening to have him shot if he dropped it.  And so he held it for hours, the other prisoners watching and praying, until finally the sadist sergeant himself was broken, loosing face before the prisoners and his own men for not being able to subdue Louis, who, not by accident, looked very much like a persecuted Christ at Calvary.  This was his big moment, his breakthrough for God and Man.  In the movie, that is.

In the book, his redemption happened after years of depression and alcoholism after the war.  His wife, then about to file for divorce, gave Louis a chance to stop the proceedings by going to see a new charismatic preacher who had come to L.A, - a guy by the name of Billy Graham.  Louis had stalked out of the first meeting and the second, but the third time was the charm - he then remembered his vow to God in the raft, and really, really saw the light.  He quit drinking that day, saved his  marriage, and went on to talk of this experience to others for the rest of his life.  He raised money for charities, and started his own, taking disadvantaged kids into the California wilderness for rock climbing and camping and so on.  In a phrase, he gave over his life to helping others in the spirit of God, and said so.  Everyone else who knew him agreed.  He died while the book was being finished, at the age of 97.    

The movie mentioned a bit of this in a few paragraphs at the end, leaving the viewer unaware of the true nature of his change.  It had not been achieved in a crowning moment of courage, but had come at a considerably larger price, as hard as that is to imagine, from a form of torture that acted on the soul instead of the body.  The change, too, happened at that depth, and continued for a lifetime.  In fact, he realized that he had never really been happy until that change, even before his ordeals.  He had gone to Hell to get to heaven. The analogy to the trials of Christ, although misdirected, was true over all.  

It is breathtaking to read, but also made me think - oh God, no, not me  -  don't choose me!  For most religious mythologies, one has to suffer greatly to achieve true wisdom.  But no one wants to pay the price, not even Jesus, who asked his Father to take the cup from his lips before his own trials began (and then followed by stating that if it were the Father's will, then so be it).  No, we don't want it, but sometimes we get it.  Louis was so chosen and lived a long and meaningful life.  But I for one would still beg to have that bitter drink taken from my lips. FK     
  

Today, a new essay, Tequila Sunrise, under Essays in the website. FK 

A month or so ago we were listening to a Sunday morning music program, "Musica Antigua" which plays music from the Baroque era and earlier, most of it from the late- Medieval period. Although they did have local "fun" music then, the high music of the earlier period was almost exclusively religious, and it is that which has primarily made it to the present day.  At one point while I was washing a frying pan, some celestial choral music came on, as simple as folk music, but other-wordly and mind-transporting.  Waiting to hear who the composer might be (some from that period - the 12th century - are anonymous), I was surprised to find that it was from Hildegard of Bingen.  I had read of her before - an abbess, a writer and a composer who was also counsel to kings and popes, and considered a powerful prophet of her day.  Because of this, I looked for books on her, and was able to get an odd but satisfying one, Hildegard of Bingen, by Heinrich Schipperges, translated from the German.  

One of the first things that becomes clear is that she was exceptional for her influence, particularly at a time when women where clearly considered incapable of great thought.  Said one man of her from her time after much praise, "Imagine this from a woman!"  I am only 25 pages into the short book, but have already found other gems.  She was indeed exceptional, as she challenged the powers of her time to rise above corruption, at one time telling Emperor Frederick, after he had set up his own counter-pope, that she would be coming after him with a sword (one expects she meant the sword of righteousness, but one never knows - it was the 12th century).  

But she was also a mystic who spoke of the tremendous insights that God gave her on the meaning of the Gospels and of her times.  This author, unlike one previously featured here concerning the Little Saint, quickly presented current psychological and medical explanations for her abilities, and just as quickly dismissed them.  I, of course, applauded.  But then I had to think - it is true that many gifted people have mental, emotional and physical problems.  Wouldn't it be just as true that these problems could cause aberrations that people from a more superstitious era would call "gifts"?  

The great movie, "A Beautiful Mind", with Russel Crowe (if I recall correctly) chronicles the life of a real-life mathematical genius who, we find out, is also profoundly schizophrenic.  We learn that his paranoid fantasies are just that - and they soon come to take over his life.  Still, it was this mind that produced his works of genius, works which might never have been without the mental disease.  Here we understand that the mind can operate at separate levels - that the diseased or imperfect portion might reflect the brilliance of another portion.  How this works is still controversial, but clear enough, and nearly universal - most of our geniuses were people with feet of clay.  Martin Luther King's dalliances with prostitutes did not affect his courage and moral strength in fighting racism; and, from another angle, Thomas Jefferson's ownership of slaves did not affect his own courage and genius in helping to craft a government of and for the people in an era of despots and kings. The list goes on and on.  Why, then, should certain physical and mental problems (and moral problems) affect the reality of the visions perceived by spiritual geniuses?  

Of course, they can - The "genius" down the hall who has coated his apartment with aluminum foil to keep out extraterrestrial thoughts might simply be nuts.  But those such as Hildegard have been "vetted" by the best, and her psychological health should not obscure her works.  Not that she showed any sign whatsoever of mental illness for people of her time, but still - the clarity of her visions and the beauty of her compositions are enough.  She was truly gifted.  More pages await.

Speaking of the prophets of old, as well as of herself, I leave this quote from her which reminds me of the quest for 'quality in writing' discussed in the previous blog: "They also had a certain hardness like the solidity of marble, because having been filled with the Holy Spirit, they did not cringe before anyone but always stood firm with the integrity of truth.  They did not cut their words, since they accepted what they said from no one other than the one who is complete integrity, namely, God.  They were as inflexible as stones and did not give ground to anyone else.  They acted in the whiteness of simplicity, in the simplicity of an infant that does not speak other than what it sees and knows."  FK  

A few years ago when I had started this blog, an acquaintance was critical of the books I chose to review.  "Why don't you ever go to fiction?," he said.  Said I, "There's too much bad stuff. Unless you stick to the old classics, chances are you're going to be wasting your time.  At least with non-fiction, you get some information and a genuine point of view." 

Welp, I've just wasted several days of my time and will waste another night to finish a fiction mediocrity, The Eye of God by James Rollins.  I should have read all the "praises" for it on the dust cover, for one compares it to the "grand tradition" of adventure books that includes Clive Cussler, another (in my humble opinion) waste of time.  

I know these authors because they write of strange things - I mean, why wouldn't someone interested in spiritual issues be drawn to a title such as "The Eye..." ?  The bigger question, one I'm sure asked by English graduate students every year, is: how can one judge quality?  

Certainly, there is familiarity and ease of fluency with the language, but Rollins is technically a good writer, and his editor is almost flawless in his corrections.  There is rhythm as well, something that I discovered myself from writing; good prose writing has a rhythm much like poetry or music.  It is impossible for me to define it exactly, for it is not like 4/4 time or iambic pentameter, but it is real.  I first discovered it as I wrote Dream Weaver and found myself tapping my foot to its beat.  It's something, I suppose, like a free - jazz musician feels; it's in the bones.  But, while Rollins's work does not have a classic rhythm, there is most certainly an adequate rhythm.  

What, then, defines quality?  Yes, it must come from the soul - but talk about the undefinable.  And even that is not enough. There are a million personal essays written from the soul, but most are often overwrought, self focused, and/or trite.  Tear jerkers, they are called, and many are truly from the heart.  But corny. 

I have had issues with this, too, and found that I cannot be too emotionally involved in such writing.  To create a good work, it must be objective, even if dealing with an emotional subject.  It must be dry-eyed, to leave the reader to his own feelings.  If it is focused on self, it brings that trite, boring quality.  It must be as if witnessed by an impartial judge.  It must be as if witnessed by nature, the nature that has no mother (or father) in it; the nature that both gives life and takes it away, without partiality.  Human emotions can be injected into it, but not as the driving force behind the entire piece.  

On further thought, good writing must be one in the same with spiritual insight.  This does not demand belief in a god - Buddhists do not have a god as we understand it, and there have been atheist authors of classical pieces.  Yet the former DO recognize the spiritual presence, and the latter a depth to life that often brings forth books based on the author's frustration with his lack of understanding (Kurt Vonnegut is the most familiar to me of this sort of author.  There are several more in the "existentialist" ranks).  Again, they are all dry-eyed, even as they might make you weep.  And they tap a vein that runs through everything, just like the spiritual force.  Whether these authors like it or not, this vein that is essential to quality IS the spiritual force.  

But I run too deep here - there are good thrillers that do not share this spiritual quality (I like Tom Clancy, I must admit).  They are simply good stories.  But they usually run only culture-deep. They usually will not be seen as classics a generation later, and certainly not one hundred or two hundred years later.  Moby Dick is a fiction classic because of its spiritual connection; The Hunt for Red October is simply a good story for males raised in the era of the Cold War.  

There is quality in writing, in music, as well as quality in life.  Of the latter, all lives eventually wind up being classics, because the individuals who live them are inseparable from the deep vein of spirituality.  But for most of us, this quality eludes us except at exceptional times.  To live a quality life overall would be to feel the spiritual undercurrent in all things at all times; to view impartiality events that are up-close and personal; and to feel compassion for those both close and far, but without personal distraction.  It would be like living the way an author of classics writes, which happens to mirror the essential quality of the wisest of gurus, shamans and priests.  FK