Conservatism reborn in twisted sisterhood

 
A FOOTNOTE on Spinoza and The New Jerusalem. And Unequally Yoked has one post on it so far. (In the latter case, linking is not endorsing! I would not frame most of these issues the way UY does.)

Labels: a shandeh for the goyim, Sophia is a woman

posted by Eve at 11:02 PM

 
THREE MYTHS ABOUT THE CHURCH TO GIVE UP FOR LENT. From the unimportance of monsignors to the crucial witness of martyrs. I'd say 95% of public discussion of Catholicism in this country assumes the truth of all of these myths.

(Also, if PG Wodehouse shuffled back onto this mortal coil, I'd like to think his next book would be called The Unimportance of Monsignors.)

Labels: Five-Star Final, mackerel-snapping, the pope makes me feel minty

posted by Eve at 10:42 PM

 
PRAYING THE ROSARY THROUGH ART: Crisis has posted the entire series. Really, really nice choices. The joyful mysteries; sorrowful; glorious.

Labels: Dali, El Greco, Our Lady, Spain vs. God

posted by Eve at 9:29 PM

 
IN WHICH JOSEPH CONRAD AND ORSON WELLES GIVE RALPH EMERSON A RICHLY-DESERVED BACKHAND.

Labels: it's the luck of the draw it's the natural law it's a joke it's a crime, Joseph Conrad, Orson Welles

posted by Eve at 9:28 PM

 
It was getting late
with the warm fuzz
of the wine
well worked into our minds
when the first sign
of the Kingdom of Heaven
occurred
in a back room
with only the paid help
as witnesses
and the quality
of the gift
passing unnoticed
because of our
intoxication.
--"The Jesus Poems: Cana," by this guy

Labels: if whiskey were a woman I'd be married for sure, it is very dark. you are likely to be wrestled by an angel., sublimity now

posted by Eve at 12:26 AM

 
"THE SECRET OF NIMH": A Kindertrauma tribute!

Labels: children under 12 drink free, children will listen, Kindertrauma, oh what a ratly feast

posted by Eve at 9:33 PM

 
"THE DEATH-HAUNTED ART OF FRIENDSHIP": Catholic Lane has been generous enough to let me do a whole series on this topic! The introductory installment is here. Please do let me know if there's something I should be sure to look at or something you'd especially like me to touch on.

Labels: friendship, I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians, totentanz

posted by Eve at 2:44 PM

 
OCCAM'S RAZOR IS THE WORST RAZOR! Some thoughts on revisiting The New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza, which has been revived at the DCJCC's Theater J and will play through April 1. My review of the original production is here, so these are just some scattered additional notes. (Oh, and here's a post about a Philadelphia production, over at The Groom's Family!)

First, the play is still fantastic, Alexander Strain is still ridiculously compelling despite playing a guy who is kind of a jackass (albeit a jackass under unbearable pressure), and they've toned down the cartoonishness of Rebecca a bit, which I doubt will pacify the people who didn't like her character the first time around.

I still don't understand why Spinoza is so in love with simplicity. Why is a belief, a God, a proposition, or an argument better because it is simpler than other possibilities? Why force a cube-shaped faith on a mountain-shaped world?

The focus on simplicity or unity, along with the strange, unsettling paeans to philosophy as a love with no beloved (or in which the beloved is totally unable to love you back), made me feel like this was all just backsliding into Platonism. Didn't we try this already?

Last time I'm not sure I noticed that both Spinoza and his Gentile Juliet, Clara, do the adolescent thing where they think they're in love with you because you deserve it so much. Everything about Spinoza's pedestal love of Clara is done so well--it's painfully endearing, it's totally wrongheaded, it's relatable, and it captures at least half of the problems with his philosophy. Plus Strain uses his voice really well, shifting perfectly from the ringing tones of the confident genius to a rougher, lower, more intimate register with Clara.

One benefit to the philosopher of having a definite, obligatory community is that he has to deal with everyone's questions, even the ones he doesn't like or see the point of. The Jewish community, because it includes so many people who are totally unlike Spinoza, can provoke and challenge him in a way that a community made up solely of his friends or equally-intelligent philosophers could not. (This, by the way, was one major failing of the "talk back" panel afterward, in which Leah Libresco very ably moderated two academic philosophy-types. We didn't get to talk back! It was insufficiently Jewish--specifically Jewish questions weren't raised at all, actually--and since the audience, full of feisty old Jews, didn't get to ask questions, the panelists were able to stick to their own preferred topics and approaches.)

Spinoza at one point comes very close to echoing this gnomic utterance of the squid!

I was weirdly reminded of this article about David Foster Wallace's use of popular self-help books and his fight against what in AA circles is called "terminal uniqueness" and which I think is called by Catholics spiritual pride. Spinoza by the end of this play has been through many shattering experiences: his father's death, his realization that he will die young of tuberculosis, and then the awful events of the play itself. But the thing is, none of the suffering or humiliation he undergoes happens because he's wrong, or in the wrong. That at least he's spared. And so in the end, when he thanks the congregation (aka us the audience) for what he's gained from what he's been put through, even this is not a gesture of full humility.

So. That's what the play made me think about. What about you?

Labels: a shandeh for the goyim, district of chaos, Plato, reason cannot withstand the fall of God, Sophia is a woman, the chaste goddess, Theater J

posted by Eve at 2:18 PM

 
BODY AND SOUL: What makes the difference between a tradition and a cliche?

Sucker Punch, at the Studio Theater through April 8, is your basic boxing movie translated to 1980s race-riot Britain. This is definitely not a criticism! The play is full of life and although its situations are all ones we've seen before, they feel completely fresh and new.

This is a story about the temptations of success, the pull of communal loyalty, the inevitable destruction of youthful hopes, and the waste and pity of violent, thwarted masculinity. So... it's a boxing movie, is what I'm saying. A terrific one. Predictable (the broken-down white coach has a drinking problem) yet still able to take the audience on an emotional journey. I heard actual sniffles by the end. The climactic fight scene, staged in slow-motion, is incredibly intense and physical. The actors are all fantastic--I'm pretty sure the only one I'd seen before was Dana Levanovsky, one of the stars of That Face. This is a raw, real play, and if it works familiar territory... isn't that where most of our lives are led?

Labels: district of chaos, England your England, in the flesh, race, Studio Theater

posted by Eve at 2:08 PM

 
"HOW I GOT GOOD CATHOLIC BOOKS INTO MY LOCAL LIBRARY SYSTEM (AND HOW YOU CAN TOO!)" Via... maybe Simcha Fisher?

I immediately thought of Wesley Hill's book (not Catholic but we will overlook that for the moment) and less-immediately thought of two kids' books I loved, The Satanic Mill and The Wicked Enchantment. I wrote about them in an old piece which is very flawed but with whose basic thesis I still agree, here. (The 2009 date is when it was reprinted--I'm pretty sure it was originally written in 2002.) Other books I'd push: Kathy Shaidle's Lobotomy Magnificat, Tim Powers's Declare, and Alan Bray's The Friend. You guys doubtless have your own candidates!

Labels: children will listen, children's books, mackerel-snapping

posted by Eve at 1:58 PM

 
BATTLE OF BRITAIN IN LACE.

Labels: awesome, England your England, the dark continent: europe in the twentieth century

posted by Eve at 1:58 PM

 
[T]here is no progress in love. It will always be a surprise.
--from Pascal Bruckner's new book, The Paradox of Love, reviewed here; want to pay me to review this?

Labels: and new things to hide, enemies of eros, la nouvelle Heloise, no handlebars, playing Jenga with culture, progress is perverse

posted by Eve at 1:55 PM

 
HONEY, IT'S LATE, TIME TO PUT THE CLOUD OUTSIDE. Via Jesse Walker. I think actually the windows are my favorite part, but the indoor cloud is great too.

Labels: awesome, sublimity now

posted by Eve at 10:52 PM

 
In no well-regulated community, under a proper system of police, could the Virgin feel at home, and the same thing may be said of most other saints as well as sinners.
--Henry Adams, according to this guy

Labels: doctors and policemen, Our Lady, weird saints

posted by Eve at 3:31 AM

 
INSEPARABLE: I review A Separation for First Things. Please take their headline lightly (otherwise it's pushier than I intended), and I should have proofread this piece better! But the main thing is that this is a terrific movie which you all should see if you get a chance... if you like depressing familial naturalism, I guess. Yours 'til the kitchen sinks etc etc.

Labels: children will listen, marriage

posted by Eve at 1:13 AM

 
MY AMCONMAG ARTICLE ABOUT THE CULTURE OF FEAR OF DIVORCE is online! Like I said, I'm basically happy with how this turned out.

If America has endured a “divorce revolution” since California passed no-fault divorce in 1969, we’ve now entered the counterrevolutionary phase. Divorce rates have fallen from their peak in the early ’80s, the deep pain often felt by children of divorce is openly acknowledged, and young Americans typically express both fear and a moral horror at divorce. They are determined not to repeat the mistakes of previous generations; avoiding divorce is a constant anxiety, even obsession.

But as with most purely reactionary cultural movements, the revolt against divorce has been much better at targeting what it rejects than figuring out what it’s for. In a strange, sad twist, the divorce counterrevolution has only weakened our marriage culture more.

Here are three things we’ve ignored as we make divorce (and divorced people) the scapegoat for broader problems of family breakdown.

more

Labels: and new things to hide, children will listen, enemies of eros, I don't believe in modern love, I thank God that my sins are not as the sins of this Republican, marriage

posted by Eve at 1:08 AM

 
THE COMMENT SECTION FOR EVERY ARTICLE EVER WRITTEN ABOUT PETA. Yes, it goes 0 to Israel in 60 seconds; and there's much, much more. Via Rod Dreher.

Labels: hell is other people (but not you: you're different), lol, progress is perverse

posted by Eve at 1:05 AM

 
SCOTS WITH STICKS COME. Scots with stocks come. Scots with sticks and stocks and glocks come.

Via Unequally Yoked.

Labels: cheer up Hamlet, lol, what you will

posted by Eve at 1:04 AM

 
IT'S A LONG ROAD FOR A BOX OF CHOCOLATES: Words from a champion... skier? Possibly a skier. I don't sport.

...All of this means it’s the ideal occasion for the “Long Road” speech. As in, it’s a long road we’re traveling, people. As parents cheering from the sidelines we can’t help but want our kids to succeed at everything they do, on every outing. We understand that real progress is often a barely perceptible crawl, and that what we really want for our kids is long term success in life, not in a silly sporting event. But still, we secretly hope for success every time. Wouldn’t it be easier to just have the good days and put off the agony of defeat indefinitely, or at least until adulthood?

I can say from experience that the fantasy of child stardom is not all its cracked up to be. The pros are, of course, an early sniff of glory and an instant endorphin hit of success. Up into my early teens I won every ski race I entered. I fell and got up, and won. My boots got stolen from the car so I borrowed a friend’s mother’s boots, and won. A big kid in ski boots stepped on my bare toes and broke them the day before a race, and the next day I won. You get the picture. Yay me.

But then one day, I didn’t win. And I kept not winning, like it was my new job, until it felt my world had crumbled. I had three close friends who resided solidly in my rear view mirror during my young days of untrammeled fabulousness. All three of them scooted past me and made their ways on to the US Ski Team while I ground my gears. They were teaching me the lesson I had taught them long ago—that sooner or later you’ll get your butt kicked, so you’d better know how to deal with it. I did not appreciate the lesson. ...

Not that true success has anything to do with “making it” in a sport or not. There is no “it”, no achievement that confers success on you. It really is all about finding what matters to you and going after it with all you’ve got. How often do we get to do that?

The long-term view is a very tough perspective for a young person to have. One kid going through an exceptionally frustrating bout of character building summed it to his parents as follows: “I know that this is making me a better person. But right now it sort of sucks.”

He’s right. And there’s no way around it. Dwelling on disappointment is neither healthy nor productive, but disappointment in itself isn’t such a bad thing. It means you have some skin in the game. Coaches and parents may seem to be discrediting the right to be disappointed, and diluting the value of a competitive spirit with default comments like “just have fun,” and “keep smiling.” I still cringe a bit when I interpret those words as admonishments. But as a quasi grown up, I get the broader intent, the reminder to keep your eye on the bigger prize, on enjoying the process. Enjoy the things you get from having the dream, making the effort and going out each day with a goal to get just a little better.

more

Labels: children will listen, humiliation, unskilled at childhood

posted by Eve at 1:01 AM

 
The House of Life,
insinuate,
incarnadine.

An avarice
of sleep. Of bright
regard.

Had tender eyes,
the demoiselle
of dusk.

Rehearsing love,
the beads of avenir.
--here
posted by Eve at 1:00 AM

 
"DEAR EVE TUSHNIK...." I feel like I shouldn't enjoy this as much as I do. Via Mark Shea.

Labels: lol, self-obsessed

posted by Eve at 6:49 PM

 
"THE GUILTY CAN FORGIVE--THE INNOCENT TAKE REVENGE!" Before the first movie in the National Gallery of Art's Robert Bresson series started, we were warned that it was uncharacteristically melodramatic. Maybe that's why I liked it so much! I find Bresson's "mature" style emotionally battened-down to the point of catatonia, and it's really hard for me to get on board with his work, whereas in the early movie Les Anges du Péché (The Angels of Sin--!!!) I was totally engaged and found the characters and their dilemmas really compelling.

The movie takes place in a convent of nuns whose special charism is ministry to women in prison. Many of the nuns are ex-cons themselves. There's fierce Mother St. John, a hard-bitten but deeply humble lady who reserves her tenderness for her cat; well-meaning Anne-Marie, a daughter of privilege with all the self-involved stupidity privilege can breed, but also with a sort of springtime sunniness of nature which evokes empathy even as you want to shake her; Therese, a convict to whom Anne-Marie feels a special and intense pull; and the Mother Superior, working to exercise leadership in a hothouse world of gossip and point-scoring disguised as spiritual direction.

Therese, wrongfully convicted of a crime committed by her lover, speaks the line I used as the post title (which is a better way of describing my problem with Silent Hill, as well!), and the treatment of forgiveness in the movie is rich and insightful. The nuns' humility, pride, complicity, sincerity all come through clearly. The movie has a few noir touches or sequences but is mostly straightforward drama. If you like Dostoevsky and also nuns, you should give this a spin.

Labels: brass monkery that funky monkery, complicity, forgiveness, mask of command, reading and repentance, Robert Bresson

posted by Eve at 3:36 PM

 
THE BOOKS OF "AMONG OTHERS." I've read maybe 28 of these, but my real interest is in the changing--often sublimely weird--conventions for sci-fi pulp paperback covers. Via Jesse Walker.

Labels: science fiction double feature, the retro-future is ours comrade

posted by Eve at 3:23 PM

 
"INTO THE DESERT: LENT AND FILM":

Lent is a penitential season, but also an invitation to a closer intimacy with God. The Pentateuch presents the forty years of wilderness wandering as a punishment for unbelief, but the prophets offer a startling complementary vision of the desert as a privileged time of intimacy between God and Israel, a romantic season in which God wooed Israel as his bride (Jeremiah 2:2, Hosea 2:16).

The two aspects are inseparable; the time of privileged closeness to God must also be a penitential experience of wilderness wandering.

more

Labels: His banner over me was love, Lent, Steven Greydanus

posted by Eve at 3:20 PM

 
"FORGET YOUR PAST." Via Ratty.

Labels: moral memories of the past, the dark continent: europe in the twentieth century, the retro-future is ours comrade

posted by Eve at 3:18 PM

 
One night in his study with brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, [my father] asked quietly, "Do you honestly think, my daughter, that dancing has progressed since the time of the Greeks?"

"No," I replied snappily. "Do you think you write any better than Euripides?" That ought to hold him, I figured.

He looked at me long and slow. "No, my dear," he said, "but we have Euripides' plays. They have lasted. A dancer ceases to exist the minute she sits down."

As Father spoke I understood death for the first time. I was a child of fourteen but I realized with melancholy that oblivion would be my collaborator no matter how fine my work.
--Agnes de Mille, "The Swan," in Dance to the Piper

Labels: how to stop time, in the flesh, memories are films about ghosts, totentanz, turn your watch back about a hundred thousand years

posted by Eve at 3:15 PM

 
PASTORS, CONGREGATION FIND A WAY TO RECONCILE AT GERMANTOWN BAPTIST:

...On Sunday evening, Jan. 29, in Germantown, Fowler called his flock together to confess, forgive and repent corporately in a special service he called "Grace Applied."

"We have prayed so long for this service," Fowler began as hundreds of past, present and future church members and leaders filled the seats of the worship center. "Your Holy Spirit has prepared the hearts of many, many people who have a desire to be here tonight."

Fowler had prepared for the service by writing a declaration of confession and forgiveness for the congregation to read aloud together. He also set the stage with three chairs, three basins of water and three white towels.

Fowler introduced three special guests and asked them to join him on stage.

more, via GetReligion (I have no idea what the backstory is here!)

Labels: forgiveness, in the flesh, mask of command, reading and repentance

posted by Eve at 11:45 PM

 
"MARK TWAIN'S RAPTUROUS LIST OF HIS FAVORITE AMERICAN FOODS."

Labels: America, awesome, kitchen adventures

posted by Eve at 11:34 PM

 
WHAT IF WE ARE IN DISSENT?

A reader writes in response to Thursday’s post, “Why Are They Here?”:

I feel that I am a faithful Catholic- attend Mass, pray regularly, try to follow the Church in all things. But I fall short on this with one issue- I do disagree about the Church’s stance on homosexuality and gay marriage. My beloved sister is a lesbian, is married (in her state and in the Episcopalian church) to her partner of 15 years. They have 2 beautiful children. I have prayed over this issue, talked to my priest, talked to my husband, read extensively. I know intellectually that what I feel goes against Church teaching. But I cannot/ do not look at what my sister is doing as wrong. I’m happy she found someone she loves to spend her life with. I love her children, and I’m so happy that they exist. My sister and her partner are raising them wonderfully.

[snip]

So, in a way, I could understand where some of those posters on Jezebel are coming from. Sometimes conservative Catholic bloggers will talk about how they struggled with a Church teaching, but the post always ends with how they changed, and saw the light, and saw the truth and beauty in the Church’s teachings. But what are you supposed to do when that doesn’t happen?

more; comments are a mixed bag but there's some stuff I think my readers would appreciate there too

Labels: Gay Catholic Whatnot, mackerel-snapping, Simcha Fisher

posted by Eve at 11:34 PM

 
The memory of the martyrs has historically played an important role in the Christian imagination. It is extremely important that the martyrs not be sentimentalized. They are not always especially good, virtuous, or innocent folk. Ironically, to idealize the martyrs, or victims generally, is to rob them of their common humanity. What makes murder so terrible is not that the victims are virtuous, but that it is murder, the taking of human life in contravention of the law of God. By analogy, we might also say that what constitutes a martyr is not necessarily possession of the Christian virtues, although many martyrs have possessed these in abundance, but rather his or her witness to Jesus Christ. Indeed, William Cavanaugh argues that it is not so much a person’s subjective intention that makes him or her a martyr — motives may well be ambiguous — as simply the church’s recognition of a life that shows forth the reality of Jesus. Paradoxically, the death of the martyr serves as a confirmatory sign that the world belongs not the principalities of the present age, but to God.
--Joseph Mangina, but I found it here

Labels: a hard man is good to find, it is very dark. you are likely to be wrestled by an angel., weird saints

posted by Eve at 11:30 PM

 
TALLIS SCHOLARS, "MISERERE."

Labels: Lent, sublimity now

posted by Eve at 5:38 PM

 
THE FINE MISMATING OF A HIM AND HER...: Something I've been thinking about without much coherence or resolution. I have a couple footnotes which I may post later, but for now I figured I'd let my readers whack at this pinata for a while!

As you know, Bob, I got a lot out of Christopher C. Roberts's Creation and Covenant. Nestled among its more central claims and arguments, it makes a very strong theological case for something I’ve already thought about, w/o much resolution, when considering the "theology of the body": Women and men are made for one another, and yet celibacy is in some way a witness to that fact just as much as marriage is. So how does that actually work?

It’s an especially weird or fraught question for me because so much of my conscious development of a spirituality which supports my celibacy has been devoted to finding chaste, Catholic ways to honor and express my love of women. So I'm very aware of ways in which my prayer life, my volunteer work, my friendships, and my writing are ways in which I can serve and love women. And I stand by that as a necessary and fruitful lens through which to focus my spiritual life. But I'm a lot more vague on how I relate, in my spirituality, to men or Man or Adam (?) or whatever I should be picturing here!

However, when I was thinking about this question, I realized that the one prayer I return to most insistently (I don't count the rosary as one prayer) is the Anima Christi. And this is such an enfleshed, almost lurid prayer, very visceral--you become inebriated by Christ’s blood and hide in His wounds. I wonder if perhaps this prayer is so powerful for me, or calls to me so much when I'm in need, in part because it does offer such a strong spiritual connection to Christ-as-Man?

I am really not able to express myself very well on this subject or form any interesting conclusions, so I suppose I'll just throw this out there and ask whether people have any reactions. And for a) the celibate, especially those celibate by vocation rather than circumstance, and b) the gay/same-sex-attracted/your-term-here among us, do you all perceive, in your own lives, a need for some kind of spiritual practice which "brings together the two halves of humanity"? Have you found ways of living as woman for man, or man for woman, outside of marriage?

Labels: "'kiss'? what is 'kiss'?", as Antony said to Cleopatra, Gay Catholic Whatnot, His banner over me was love, in the flesh, vocation

posted by Eve at 5:30 PM

 
CHILDREN'S LONGING FOR GENDER: I basically agree with this email from a friend. I'd add that, as she says, parents can and should meet kids' longing for gender in some ways... while resisting kids' tendency toward really rigid and sometimes destructive ideas about gender (for example, the tendency to mark out some activities which are generally fruitful for both sexes, like crying or art, as the territory of only one sex). As I indicated here, a unisex world would lack some necessary beauty--but so would a rigidly-gendered, stereotype-affirming world. Parents can teach flexibility while modeling adult life as man and woman. At least, I think they can...!

Hi Eve, this is a bit late but I have been thinking about your post about whether we can have gender roles without reducing them to functions. It's been a quandary to me for a long time, so I don't have the answer, but your opener about young kids' clothes reminded me of taking developmental psych as an undergrad. A common refrain I heard, in my feminist-leaning college, was, "I thought gender roles were something society imposed on kids, until I actually had kids." One person who had a revelation along those lines was the psychologist Vivian Paley, not so much from having kids as teaching kindergarten, which inspired her to write an entire book about how her kindergarteners tried to define themselves as male and female. Since they were years away from the business end of gender, they tended to latch on to secondary and sometimes arbitrary things. I don't remember many details after 20 years, but sometimes the kids would make up rules like "Boys skip, girls hop." So when you're looking at little kids' clothes -- at least if they aren't too little to talk -- keep in mind that a lot of these choices may have been insisted upon by the kids themselves. (It helps, of course, that there's a whole industry of children's products happy to pander to this.)

Many people outgrow that sort of thing, but still, 'the child is the father of the man,' especially when you're talking about a physical discipline like figure skating that people have to start in childhood to get really good at. But that's also all the more reason for kids to have strong adult figures of both sexes in their lives -- like, say, parents -- because otherwise the random rules their peers make up can end up defining gender for them. At five, a child isn't going to understand abstract concepts like 'icon' and 'genre', but they can look at an adult and say, 'I want to be like that,' and grow into understanding by imitation. If I do end up going to grad school in psych, it will be very interesting to find out what's happened in the last 20 years on this front. Once you've realized 'OMG gender differences are probably innate!' the next issue is, 'Now what do we do about it?'

Labels: as Antony said to Cleopatra, children will listen, in the flesh, suspicion of tradition's so new wave

posted by Eve at 5:21 PM

 
"Two abysses, gentlemen of the jury, remember that Karamazov can contemplate two abysses, and both at the same time. We searched the house and found nothing."
--I really like this sardonic juxtaposition, from the prosecutor's final speech in TBK

Labels: costumed vigilantes, Dostoevsky Drinking Game, use each man after his desert and who shall 'scape whipping?

posted by Eve at 5:20 PM