Recent Reading - God is Near Us by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI

A wonderful collection, containing much deep insight. The final chapter, My Joy is to Be in Thy Presence, is especially marvellous as it most fully develops the author’s fascinating understanding of time and the eternal.

The things in the book that I particularly want to remember:

From God With Us and God Among Us:

“God looks out from eternity into time”

“God is a God with us and not just a God in himself and for himself.”

From God’s Yes and his Love are Maintained Even in Death:

“In the washing of the disciples’ feet is represented for us what Jesus does and what he is. He, who is Lord, comes down to us; he lays aside the garments of glory and becomes a slave, one who stands at the door and who does for us the slave’s service of washing our feet. This is the meaning of his whole life and Passion: that he bends down to our dirty feet, to the dirt of humanity and that in his greater love he washes us clean...We, who repeatedly find we cannot stand one another...are welcomed and accepted by him...We are washed through our willingness to yield to his love...John’s account shows us that even where God sets no limits, man can sometimes do so. Two such instances appear here (in the 13th Chapter of John’s Gospel). The first becomes apparent in the figure of Judas...This is the No given because we want to make the world for ourselves and are not ready to accept it as a gift from God...I think we all ought to ask ourselves, right now, whether we are not just like those people whose pride and vainglory will not let them be cleansed, let them accept the gift of Jesus Christ’s healing love...there is, however, also the danger of piety, represented by Peter: the false humility that does not want anything so great as God bending down to us; the false humility in which pride is concealed, which dislikes forgiveness and would rather achieve its own purity...that refuses God’s kindness.”

“Jesus’s words at the Last Supper...tear the world free from its unbearable boredom, indifference, sadness and evil.”

“God does not desire human sacrifice...he desires love, which transforms man and through which he becomes capable of relating to God, giving himself up to God...all this vain and eternal striving to bring ourselves up to God can be seen as unnecessary and yet, at the same time, as being like windows that allow us, so to speak, a glimpse of the real thing.”

“Being jealous of salvation is not Christian.”

From The Wellspring of Life:

“Death is the ultimate question.”

From The Presence of the Lord in the Sacrament:

“We live in the sphere of death; we can reach out in thought in the sphere of the Resurrection, try to make approximations. But it remains something different that we never quite comprehend. This is because of the the boundary of death, which closes us in and within which we live.”

“The fundamental error of regarding only what is material, tangible, visible as reality...’Reality’ is not just what we can measure...quantifiable entities...are always only manifestations of the hidden mystery of true being...here, where Christ meets us, we have to do with this true being...substance refers to the profound and fundamental basis of being. Jesus is not there like a piece of meat, not in the realm of what can be measured and quantified.”

“Christ is greater than the bread, other, not of the same order. The transformation happens, which affects the gifts we bring by taking them up into a higher order and changes them, even if we cannot measure what happens...The Lord takes possession of the bread and the wine; he lifts them up, out of the setting of their normal existence into a new order; even if, from a purely physical point of view, they remain the same, they have become profoundly different...This points us back again to the fact that being a Christian...is to be transformed, that it must involve repentance and not just some embellishment added onto the rest of one’s life. It reaches down into our depths and renews us from those very depths.”

“The Eucharist transcends the realm of functionality...The significance of the Eucharist as a sacrament of faith consists precisely in that it takes us out of functionality and reaches the basis of reality...The Eucharist is more real than the things we have to do with every day. Here is the genuine reality. This is the yardstick, the heart of things; here we encounter that reality against which we need to learn to measure every other reality.”

“To receive Christ means: to move toward him, to adore him.”

“Whenever we pray in the eucharistic presence, we are never alone...we are praying within the sphere of God’s gracious hearing, because we are praying with the sphere of death and resurrection.”

From The Immediacy of the Presence of the Lord:

“Only within the breathing space of adoration can the eucharistic celebration indeed be alive; only if the church and thus the whole congregation is constantly imbued with the waiting presence of the Lord, and with our silent readiness to respond, can the invitation to come together bring us into the hospitality of Jesus Christ and of the Church, which is the precondition of the invitation.”

“Love or friendship always carries within it an impulse of reverence, of adoration.”

“When the conscience becomes dulled, this lets in the violence that lays waste the world.”

“The reform of human relationships rests in the first place on a reinforcement of moral strength. Only morality can set limits to violence and selfishness, and wherever it becomes insignificant it is man who is the loser every time, and the weak first of all.”

“We can only understand love by sharing it.”

“People are not shaped merely from within outward; another line of influence runs from without inward, and to overlook this or to deny its existence is a kind of spiritualism that soon takes its toll. Holiness, the Holy One, is there in this world, and whenever the educative effect of his visible expression disappears this leads both people and the world to become more superficial and more barbarous.”

From Standing Before the Lord

“The word progress has acquired an almost magical ring. Yet we know, at the same time, that progress can be a meaningful term only if we know where we want to go.”

From The Church Subsists as Liturgy and in the Liturgy

“The Church is adoration.”

“The world needs more than just itself.”

“People do not need a distraction that will in the end become dreary...; they are asking for mystery even if they do not realise this themselves. They need the sign of the wholly other, the living word of God, entering into this our age in unadulterated trustworthiness and dynamism. That is the great task you (new priests) are taking on ...rooted in the apostolic structure of the Church, to remain steadfast in its word and thus to bring it to fruition: to bring into the world the great and transforming Other, the element without which the world can only sink into grey boredom.”

“When death comes onstage, the game is at an end. Man is set before the truth.”

Haredi Israelis

If this claim from the former research director of Vienna's Boltzmann Institute is accurate, I wonder why Islamists bother attacking Israel, when they could just sit tight and wait a few years. Once the Haredi are the majority, who will defend Israel when the Islamists move in? 

“In Israel, the extreme orthodox Haredi segment of the Jewish population holds a vision of the proper and desirable social order that is at odds with the country’s modern, progressive, mainstream society. They believe in gender segregation, reject secular and scientific learning, and consider the study of Torah to be the only worthwhile activity. Most of their men eschew wage-earning professions and live instead on government subsidies and on money earned by their wives. The wives believe that financially supporting the husband’s lifelong full-time Torah study by working, birthing, and raising as many children as possible is the fulfillment of a woman’s role in the divine order. The Haredim disapprove of the state of Israel as an entity and vigorously oppose the recent attempts to include them in the military draft. Though disengaged from their nation, for tactical reasons, they maintain high voter turnout, voting as a bloc and as instructed by their rabbinical leadership. This makes them a critical factor in coalition building and lends them considerable weight. It’s a clever strategy. No need to fight, no need for the men to slog away at boring jobs. They need only industriously impregnate their women. 

Currently, the Haredi population accounts for about 21 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. At their rate of 6.7 children per woman, projections place them near or over 50 percent of the Jewish Israeli population by the end of the century. They make no secret of their wish to impose strict religious rules of behavior on the rest of the population, and by their numbers, they will be able to do that. Their triumph will, alas, be short-lived. Israel will have a population half of which is pacifist, its males economically unproductive and, with their sedentary scholarly lifestyle, not physically fit, its females pregnant, lactating, and overworked; it won’t make them very competitive in a neighborhood dominated by hyperactive, aggressive Arab males and their equally procreation-inclined wives. The Haredim seem on course to win control of Israel, briefly, until they lose it all to the Arabs. And the secular Israeli state is hastening this outcome by paying bonuses for each additional child. This program failed to incentivize its modern citizens and ended up benefiting only the minority that is poised to bring the house down.”

What Do You Think of This?

Following the almost complete alteration of meaning of ‘disinterested’, (it now means ‘uninterested’ almost universally), I have noticed that ‘definately’ is becoming almost interchangeable with ‘definitely’.

There is a strong argument that English is successful precisely because it is flexible. There is also historical evidence that demonstrates spelling has only recently been standardised. However, some might say ‘definately’ is the thin end of the wedge.

For me, the spelling of a word isn’t that much of a worry, provided it is still understandable. But the loss of nuance that has occurred with the repurposing of the earlier ‘disinterested’ makes me sad.

What Do You Think of This?

I was surprised to see a clip on the BBC news the other evening purporting to show Iranian armed men hunting for an American serviceman whose plane had apparently been shot down in their country. I found it unsettling that the BBC chose to air this footage. I wondered if they would have done the same if the technology in World War Two had allowed them to get hold of some footage of Wehrmacht or SS officers setting out to hunt down Allied airmen shot down in enemy territory.

In Children of Men, PD James points out that “you don't need to manipulate unwelcome news; just don't show it.” Most evenings, the BBC follows this advice very closely. Huge events it doesn’t care for are ignored or get the briefest of coverage, while tabloid nonsense pads out the half hour. To me that makes the decsion to show viewers footage that I suspect comes direct from the Iranian regime’s propaganda machine particularly mystifying.

What do others think?

Recent Reading - A Misalliance by Anita Brookner

A Misalliance tells the story of Blanche Vernon, a well-off London woman who is getting used to being on her own, following her husband Bertie's decision, taken a year ago when the book starts, after twenty years of marriage, to leave her for a younger woman. Bertie sounds amusingly inadequate as a respository of devotion:

"disappointingly vague about colours and tastes...[When asked what he'd had for lunch] he would appear to search painfully in the recesses of his memory. 'Meat', he would say finally. Or, 'Some sort of fish.'"

However, Blanche had believed "marriage [was] a form of higher education, the kind that other women gained at universities". With the loss of her marriage, she is left not only alone but unqualified. Consequently, as Brookner explains when introducing her:

"Blanche Vernon occupied her time most usefully in keeping feelings at bay."

To this end, Blanche drinks quite a lot of white wine in the evenings and spends a great part of her days at London's National Gallery, where: 

"she did not expect art to console her - (why should it? It may be that there is no consolation) - but, like most people, she did expect it to take her out of herself, and was constantly surprised when it returned her to herself without comment". 

When not at the gallery, Blanche volunteers in a hospital cafe.

It is at the hospital, after contemplating Bacchus and Ariadne at the gallery, that Blanche meets Sally who "had the smile of a true pagan" and her small step-daughter, who has been brought to be treated for her sudden refusal to speak. Blanche forms an unlikely alliance with the duo - or rather she attaches herself to them 

The book's central theme seems to be that there are two kinds of people. On the one hand are the pagans like Sally Beamish and Bertie's new woman, Mousie, characterised as an "emotional thug". This group are amoral and grab what they want and live in the moment and entirely for their animal selves. On the other hand, there are those like Blanche, who don't, (which doesn't necessarily make them terribly nice: "Blanche was not a foolish woman, although she eagerly contemplated foolishness in others.")

Anita Brookner's writing is full of precision and observation - dotted with occasional sly wit. However, while reading, there were moments when the sensation of being trapped by an extremely intelligent, very intense obsessive produced a kind of claustrophobic panic in me.

Which is unfair as the book is exquisitely written and emotionally perceptive - and regularly quietly funny. Additionally, as a document of social history, A Misalliance is fascinating. Almost no one lives like the women in this book any more - Blanche has little or no concern about money and leads an orderly autonomous life, untouched by any pressure to earn a living or make a career. At the time Brookner was writing I am sure such a person was typical of the English urban upper middle classes. Indeed, my childhood was crowded with such people, including my mother and her friends - and even cousins little older than me expected such an existence. Now the areas of London that Blanche and her like once took for granted as the ones they could live in are unaffordable for anyone but the recently created breed known as the super-rich. Also, leaving aside where such people might be able to afford to live, these days the Blanches of this world can rarely manage financially at all without working - nor would they necessarily be allowed to feel comfortable about having no career - a decision to "stay at home" has begun to need justification. 

The book ends enigmatically. As Blanche has already speculated "it may be that there is no consolation".

But there is always, thank heavens, reading. And Anita Brookner is, whatever the mild irritations of her manner, worth a read.

The Great Leap Forward (well, mostly upward actually)

Thank you to the New York Times for informing me that The Jump Book exists. A book of photographs of the most unlikely people jumping. Rather great. Take a look. The Duke of Windsor or Richard Nixon - which is the most surprising?

Recent Reading - March of the Long Shadows by Norman Lewis

Moderately entertaining, well-written, faintly surreal novel set in post-war Sicily. Certain characters seemed to have appeared direct from a Wes Anderson movie, but since the book predates Wes Anderson, perhaps he has read it and drawn inspiration from it - or possibly he could make a movie based on it. 

Lewis has a strong sense of the absurd and there are a lot of laughs in this novel, if you like fairly dark humour. Examples chosen at random:

a) one character announcing "To really enjoy a war...you have to be as far from the action as possible and of course on the winning side. Given those two essentials the experience is incomparable"

b) this description: "Marinella, a small manic seaside town of a kind only to be found in Sicily, with a wild mixture of crenellations, Moorish arches, stained glass, crazy pavement and broken statuary. People went there to fornicate surreptitiously in the vicinity of a ruined temple of Venus, to gape at an angel's footprint in the rock, to cuddle the polished shaft of a prehistoric phallus and sometimes to commit suicide by sliding down an increasingly steep grassy slope which finally precipitated them into a deep sea saturated with the benign magic of coral."

c) a character described thus: "He was a tactless man who had ruined his career by criticising people it would have been safer to leave alone, including Mussolini for seducing every woman who ever came to see him, Marshall Badoglio for losing battles and the Pope for his alleged possession of a gold telephone. As a result, having once been a consultant in urinology [stet], he now presided over a unique collection of fossilized toads and several cases of pickled exhibits demonstrating the growth of the foetus in the horse."

The book, via this passage, also led me to finally understand why I could never live among high mountains:

"I had been offered a remarkable house on a cliff's edge near Ragusa. 'Buy it', the locals said, 'It's going for nothing.' I took a friend along to ask his advice. The view everyone raved about was of a rock pinnacle known as U Vicchione (the Old Man) rising a thousand feet sheer from the sea. I handed my friend a pair of 12-power binoculars at the precise moment when one of Europe's last sea eagles perched on its summit drew the wedge of its tail-feathers tight and unfolded its enormous wings, about to take off. He passed the glasses back and shook his head. 'Overpowering', he said, 'it is far too beautiful.' 'Is that possible?' 'You want to settle permanently in a place like this?' 'That was my intention.' 'After three months this view would overpower you. You'd sit with your back to it, and then you'd move into a room facing the other direction. To live in a house you don't need eagles. You need swallows under the eaves. Forget about it. This isn't for you. What's wrong with a moment of calm in one's life?'

I also liked this description of the sensation of knowing you are soon to leave a place in which you have been living - and to which you will probably never return:

"I was attacked by a feeling of impending loss. It was describable as a kind of anxiety to fill in every minute of what was left of time in Palma [the town where the novel is set], to imprint its scenes on the mind, to gather up as a matter of urgency the last of the Sicilian experiences and sensations that would soon be beyond reach. 'When the tree is gone', says their proverb, with its memory of Arabian sands, 'we appreciate its shade.' This was a preposterous island, but enslaving as well, and I had developed an addiction to its hard flavours, its theatricalities and its restlessness. Everything had to be salvaged, nothing squandered of these last hours. Running a bath I listened to the throaty outpourings of water brought from some ancient conduit, feeling its coolness flood into every corner of the room, and sniffing its odours of ferns and earth. I pushed open the window and a blade of sunlight sliced through into the room's twilight. The pigeons were clapping their wings in the courtyard, and a girl on a rooftop sang an African song ..."