THE LOWDOWN

 

I’ve often said that the worst thing, emotionally speaking, humans can do to one another is humiliation. The Nazis knew this, when they set elderly Jewish gentlemen to cleaning sidewalks on their knees with a toothbrush. Schoolchildren often have a diabolically fine sense of it, when they find just the right insult for the victim of their bullying. And at the other end of the scale governments upon occasion do it to whole countries. 

            Humiliation is almost never forgiven, and never forgotten. A woman in her mid-eighties remembers with crystal clarity the day when a grade-school teacher made an example of her for some transgression, in front of the whole class. And thousands of Russians now support their murderous and vengeful Führer because a generation ago, when Berlin’s vile wall came down, they felt their country had been humiliated beyond bearing. 

            The French language has two words for “pride”: orgeuil and fierté. The former is the chief of deadly sins; the latter is the healthy pride one may feel in an achievement of one’s own, of one’s daughter’s, of one’s football team’s or of one’s country’s. English has an additional word of great value, “self-esteem”: the form of psychologically healthy, indeed essential, pride that allows one to hold up one’s head, to walk tall. In humiliation, all these are battered, as one is made to feel worthless and of no account. The word, after all, comes from humilis, low, close to the humus, the earth, the soil, the mud.

            What, if anything, defends us against humiliation? One may take refuge in overweening pride, orgeuil, but that is a bitter draught that corrodes: not for nothing is it the chiefest of all sins. No: there is one defence, and I suspect one only, against this terrible condition. T.S. Eliot expressed it memorably and with perfect accuracy in “Four Quartets”:

 

                                    the only wisdom we can hope to acquire

                                    is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless. 

 

In what is nearly a form of homeopathic medicine, we find a word with the same root, the root of eartth, of soil: humility. He that is down need fear no fall: he that is low, no pride. Humility does not mean hating or feeling contempt for oneself: humility means the openness and the generosity of looking at most other people with admiration for their unique talents or achievements, and not thinking of oneself as better than they. And it protects one against humiliation, because if that’s the way you feel and someone snide snarls “you’re not much” you quite naturally feel that he has a point, unpleassant though he is about it. It is hard, if not impossible, to humiliate a genuinely humble person. 

            What message is there here at the level of nations? A major reason for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party was the Treaty of Versailles, which in sealing the Allied victory after the Great War humiliated the German nation as well as bankrupting it. And it has been said that one reason for the present war in Ukraine is the humiliation Putin and many Russians feel was infliucted upon their country at the fall of the Soviet Union. “In victory, magnanimity” prescribed Churchill:  a phrase sometimes remembered but rarely acted upon. 

            It would be a Good Thing if every government’s foreign policy included a constant, recognized, and expressed, contemplation of every other nation’s especial talents and achievements. Thus we, as citizens, might be taught to look upon, say, the Turkish nation with admiration for its long history of Ottoman civilization and governance; to admire the Moroccans for their medieval philosophers; to be grateful to Spain for teaching us a certain kind of pride and courage, and to Portugal for introducing us to the exquisite melancholy of saudade. We might then tell our Russian neighbours on this planet how we admire the depth and intensity of feeling that their particular culture has made known to us, and compliment the Dutch for having almost invented the precious quality of religious tolerance. We might send a memorandum to the Chinese, gravely thanking them for having presented the world with the wisdom of Confucius. And who knows? the climate of international relations might possibly improve to the point where the other kind of climate would actually benefit.

 

A CONDITION OF COMPLETE SIMPLICITY

. . . costing not less than everything, wrote T.S. Eliot. And here is a moving illustration, by Francesco at his best. Seventeen minutes very much worth listening to. (I tried to embed it properly, but Blogger wouldn't let me. Do follow the link: you won't, I think, regret it.)

           

EYE-OPENER

I found the following passage in a weekly e-mail I get from the Church of St Matthias in Somerset, N.J., and found it inspiring enough to reproduce here. I hope people agree.

"Prayer is one of those words that needs revisioning. We tend to think of it as something we do, but it is much more something we are. When we live in union we are a prayer, and everything we do becomes conscious, willing, and free....To pray is to live consciously inside of God. That's all. Sanctity does not mean being pious or perfect, but doing for God's sake what you used to do for your own sake. That makes all the difference. It is the still point of the turning world and creates a different kind of human being whose centre is outside of himself or herself. These are the only people who are really free because they are free from themselves.
When we stop confusing holiness with morality and recognize that it has to do with transformed identity and a new centre point, we will have gone a long way toward understanding what is happening in prayer and what the true goal of spirituality actually is. Morality -- and transformed and mature responses -- will then follow as certainly as night from day."

Source: Richard Rohr, O.F.M., Radical Grace, July - September, 2002

A THOUSAND YEARS AT THE CUTTING EDGE

Girolamo Marchesi, St Bruno

Today is the Feast of St Bruno (ca. 1030 - 1101), the founder of the Carthusian Order, the most complete of the contemplative communities. The Carthusians are hermits living in community; the order has never been reformed because it has never needed reformation. Books they publish are signed not with an author's name or even a monastic pseudonym but "A Carthusian". Bruno may be the only saint never officially canonised because a Carthusian would never accept such an individualising honour. The original monastery, which in an expanded form still exists, is in one of the world's more beautiful places, the valley of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps:

The Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the Order

When a German film director Peter Gröning, asked if he could make a documentary of their life, he was told, "No, we're not quite ready. Come back in 15 years." Fifteen years later, he asked again, and was given permission as long as he came by himself with only a handheld camera. The result was the stunning Into Great Silence, of which the New York Times film critic said, "I would not call it the best film of the year: rather, the antidote to all the others." It is a film of surpassing beauty, in both the aesthetic and the spiritual sense. 

Carthusians live completely apart from the world and do not admit visitors, which is sometimes frustrating for those in the world who are attracted by them. But one can read their writings, some of which are published by Gracewing, including the superb The Wound of Love; and there are international virtual communities of Carthusian-inspired lay people, such as the International Fellowship of St Bruno (IFSB) and, more recently and most interestingly, Quies.

There are male and female Carthusian communities; they are divided into full religious (in the male communities Fathers, usually priests), who spend their entire life in contemplation, prayer and study, and Brothers (or Sisters), who perform the community's practical maintenance but share in the liturgical and prayer life. And one of the few activities which touch the world is the making of Chartreuse liqueur, flavoured with herbs, a drink of extraordinary depth and subtlety. 

The Carthusians are those who have gone all the way. They have given up everything to live close to God. One Carthusian wrote, "How does a Carthusian die? Very simply. You go to sleep, as on any night; you wake up somewhere else." It is, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "A condition of complete simplicity / Costing not less than everything." They are well worth getting to know.

A Carthusian praying in cell - from Into Great Silence

AND AFTER THIS OUR EXILE

-> (sung version here) <-

Salve Regina, Mater misericordiæ,

vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.

Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevæ,

Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes

in hac lacrimarum valle.

Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos

misericordes oculos ad nos converte;

Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,

nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.

O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.

Hail, O Queen, Mother of mercy,

our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

To thee we cry, Eve’s exiled children;

to thee we sigh, mourning and weeping 

in this valley of tears.

Turn, then, thou who plead'st for us, 

thine eyes of mercy upon us;

and after this our exile show us 

Jesus, the blessed fruit of thy womb.

O grave and merciful, 

Gentle Virgin Mary.

I have come to love this old (twelfth century) Marian hymn, sung in the clip above by the Benedictines of Santo Domingo de Silos. It was often sung at evening Hours, and at funerals, especially those of priests. And, of course, T. S. Eliot refers to it in 'Ash Wednesday' part III with the last line 'and after this our exile'  . My translation is perhaps a little free: I wanted to avoid too much syrupy sentimentality. Some purists might object to 'grave' for 'pia'; but 'pious' has been degraded almost beyond recovery, and in the memory of 'pius AEneas' there is a kind of gravity respectful of the Divine. Likewise, 'gentle' seemed reasonable for 'dulcis': rather than the Sulpician 'sweet' it was Horace's 'dulce loquentem, dulce ridentem' that came to mind. 

The image is a detail of Michelangelo's last Pietà, the Rondanini Pietà in Milan's Castello Sforzesco, which I have always found profoundly moving.

GLINTING RIPPLE, SLOW TIDE

Half-awake at 5 a.m. after a transatlantic flight is a good time and condition to reflect, meditate and pray. I had been reading Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God, which always enchants me by its simplicity and by the flavour it gives of the man -- Nicolas Hermann, a 17th-century Lorrain of little education, who became first a footman -- but, being large and clumsy, he broke things --, then a soldier, was lamed and then joined a religious order as a lay brother, working in the monastery kitchen for 40 years. A grander and more educated clergyman interviewed him on a number of occasions and wrote down Brother Lawrence's replies, as well as some things he'd heard about him.

The Practice, as the little volume of the interviews is called, radiates a perfectly simple faith. He knows that, left to himself, he is a wretched piece of humanity, and he keeps wondering why God has done him so many favours. and goes on doing so. But he refuses to worry about it, because that's up to God. So he goes about his daily business, constantly placing himself in God's presence, because that is all that really matters for our souls: even in a clattering busy monastery kitchen with everyone shouting for stuff at the same time, he does his work with admirable serenity. And if he fails at something, he says, he is never surprised, because if he didn't get constant help from God he'd be like that, perfectly useless, all the time.

So, pondering that at 5 a.m., I was taken back (and yes, slightly taken aback, too) to my experiences on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, with a sort of tide of immense peace creeping up the beach of my consciousness. And it occurred to me that in fact all one needs to do is to be completely open and receptive; because God is everywhere and always around us and asks nothing better than to be in us as well. Hardly a new thought; but for whom it happens to, a new experience.

Later, over EMT (Early Morning Tea), I read the passage about the "Journey to the Purity of Heart" in the admirable  Carthusian publication The Wound of Love, in the light of those considerations. The Carthusian points out that it will be a long and difficult journey, but that eventually Grace will complete the task for us. Well, I thought: did Brother Lawrence not find a shortcut? But the Carthusian did agree that we receive rather than achieve; only, he said (and this was the most useful point he made), it cannot be had cheaply -- I thought of T.S.Eliot: "a condition of complete simplicity/ costing not less than everything".

Brother Lawrence, a soul of great and childlike simplicity to start with, paid the price in length of years. Some of the Carthusian Fathers paid and pay it, one assumes, in spiritual exercises. And for those of us in the world it may be paid in all kinds of experience, disappointment, suffering -- or, if the Lord keeps showering one with undeserved and unexpected favours, perhaps in years and (intermittent) constancy also. The low, gentle ripple creeping up my beach, after all, had taken more than five years to get there since, on my 70th birthday, I decided that rock-climbing, hiking the Pyrenees and crossing Europe on a motorcycle were not going to happen, I needed a new adventure proper to my age, and chose faith as the most suitable. Mmmmmm -- was it I who did the choosing?

ELIOT ANYWAY

It is so great, and so moving, and so true, that one cannot NOT post it on this day.

Ash Wednesday

by T.S. Eliot

I

Because I do not hope to turn again


Because I do not hope


Because I do not hope to turn


Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope


I no longer strive to strive towards such things


(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)


Why should I mourn


The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again


The infirm glory of the positive hour


Because I do not think


Because I know I shall not know


The one veritable transitory power


Because I cannot drink


There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time


And place is always and only place


And what is actual is actual only for one time


And only for one place


I rejoice that things are as they are and


I renounce the blessed face


And renounce the voice


Because I cannot hope to turn again


Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something


Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us


And pray that I may forget


These matters that with myself I too much discuss


Too much explain


Because I do not hope to turn again


Let these words answer


For what is done, not to be done again


May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly


But merely vans to beat the air


The air which is now thoroughly small and dry


Smaller and dryer than the will


Teach us to care and not to care


Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death


Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree


In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety


On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained


In the hollow round of my skull. And God said


Shall these bones live? shall these


Bones live? And that which had been contained


In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:


Because of the goodness of this Lady


And because of her loveliness, and because


She honours the Virgin in meditation,


We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled

Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love


To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.


It is this which recovers


My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions


Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn


In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.


Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.


There is no life in them. As I am forgotten


And would be forgotten, so I would forget


Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said


Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only


The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping


With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences


Calm and distressed


Torn and most whole


Rose of memory


Rose of forgetfulness


Exhausted and life-giving


Worried reposeful


The single Rose


Is now the Garden


Where all loves end


Terminate torment


Of love unsatisfied


The greater torment


Of love satisfied


End of the endless


Journey to no end


Conclusion of all that


Is inconclusible


Speech without word and


Word of no speech


Grace to the Mother


For the Garden


Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining


We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,


Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,


Forgetting themselves and each other, united


In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye


Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity


Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair


I turned and saw below


The same shape twisted on the banister


Under the vapour in the fetid air

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears


The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair


I left them twisting, turning below;


There were no more faces and the stair was dark,


Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,


Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.

At the first turning of the third stair


Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit


And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene


The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green


Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.


Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,


Lilac and brown hair;


Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,


Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair


Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy


Lord, I am not worthy


                        but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet


Who walked between


The various ranks of varied green


Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,


Talking of trivial things


In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour


Who moved among the others as they walked,


Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand


In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,


Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing


Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring


One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.


The new years walk, restoring


Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring


With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem


The time. Redeem


The unread vision in the higher dream


While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue


Between the yews, behind the garden god,


Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down


Redeem the time, redeem the dream


The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent


If the unheard, unspoken


Word is unspoken, unheard;


Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,


The Word without a word, the Word within


The world and for the world;


And the light shone in darkness and


Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled


About the centre of the silent Word.

         O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word


Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence


Not on the sea or on the islands, not


On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,


For those who walk in darkness


Both in the day time and in the night time


The right time and the right place are not here


No place of grace for those who avoid the face


No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for


Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,


Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between


Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait


In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray


For children at the gate


Who will not go away and cannot pray:


Pray for those who chose and oppose

        O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender


Yew trees pray for those who offend her


And are terrified and cannot surrender


And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks


In the last desert before the last blue rocks


The desert in the garden the garden in the desert


Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

        O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again


Although I do not hope


Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss


In this brief transit where the dreams cross


The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying


(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things


From the wide window towards the granite shore


The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying


Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices


In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices


And the weak spirit quickens to rebel


For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell


Quickens to recover


The cry of quail and the whirling plover


And the blind eye creates


The empty forms between the ivory gates


And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth

The place of solitude where three dreams cross

Between blue rocks

But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away

Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,


Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood


Teach us to care and not to care


Teach us to sit still


Even among these rocks,


Our peace in His will


And even among these rocks


Sister, mother


And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,


Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.