Born Again by Charles W. Colson

Posted on April 7, 2016 by cleopatra

My WEM Biographies Project has been thrown out of order by my library who doesn’t carry most of the other titles, so I’ve been forced to wait for them on inter-library loans. Which means that I have no idea when they are going to arrive or which is going to arrive first. After two months, the first book has arrived, Born Again by Charles W. Colson.

Colson occupied a position high-up in the United States government, serving as Special Counsel to Richard Nixon during Nixon’s years in the presidency. Named as one of the Watergate Seven, he was tried and sentenced to one to three years in prison. His autobiography is a story of his rise and fall, and finally his rise again to a higher calling.

Colson briefly covers his early life as a U.S. Marine, his education, and the opening of his law practice in Massachusetts, then quickly moves to his initiation into politics and his service to President Nixon. Called Nixon’s “Hatchet Man”, he was quoted as saying that he’d walk over his own grandmother to get the job done. Yet at the time, Colson saw these qualities as necessary in the political world. Using an “ends justifies the means” mentality, he felt that he was helping the president build a world of peace and safety. Ironically, with those altruistic sentiments, came an anger and intolerance against anyone with different opinions:

“….. a Holy War was declared against the enemy — those who opposed the noble goals we sought of peace and stability in the world. They who differed with us, whatever their motives, must be vanquished. The seeds of destruction were by now already sown — not in them but in us.”

Colson shows how good intentions, however noble, can be corrupted without the values of a higher authority than man himself.

Watergate Complex
source Wikipedia

With Colson assisting in Nixon’s re-election yet not planning to stay on into the second administration, on June 17, 1972, a security guard discovered five men inside the National Democratic Commitee offices in the Watergate Complex. As the story leaked, a bugging system had been installed in the offices by Nixon’s men. Although Colson had nothing to do with this “scandal”, being Nixon’s henchman, he immediately began to take the heat.

Yet even before Watergate broke, Colson was having a crisis of conscience over his behaviour and the accepted unscrupulous behaviour of others in this political machine. His mind became opened to the immorality rampant in Washington and he strove to reconcile it with his moral principles. When Watergate hit, his turmoil increased:

“In the whole sordid Watergate struggle, the Weicker episode (a senator who told him he wanted to break his nose) for me was the most unpleasant; being falsely accused before millions on national TV, then coming almost to blows with a United States senator. I was used to playing as rough as the next guy, but Watergate was creating a madness I had never witnessed in twenty years in Washington, reducing political morality to the level of bayonet warfare ……… The feeling of empitness was back as well, the questions about myself, my purpose, what my life was all about …. ” (p.118)

Curiously at this time, he began to meet Christians, including Doe Coe, Harold Hughes, Graham B. Purcell, Jr. and Al Quie, congressmen and senators who were part of the political machine, understood the mess but managed to live with integrity and morality within the turmoil. These “brothers” were both Republican and Democrat, and yet party polarity meant nothing to them, as their bond was formed based on the common love of Christ.

In a nationally syndicated column, reporter Nick Thimmesch wrote of the growing prayer meetings:

” ….. spurred by Watergate ….. They meet in each other’s homes ….. they meet at Pryer Breakfasts, they converse on the phone ….. a Brotherhood in belief …. there are many here and more are forming ….. I am not about to say that virtue and nobility are about to envelop the nation’s Capital — this is a tough, hard town. But Watergate has created a great introspection, especially about personal values and this underground prayer movement can provide some peace, and a better sense of direction to many afflicted with spiritual malaise… ” (p. 204)

Nixon announces release of edited transcripts of
the Watergate tapes
source Wikipedia

While Colson stuck by the president, professing both of their innocence, with the release of Watergate transcripts, it became apparent that the president knew more than Colson suspected. While Colson had been urging exposure for those involved, behind closed doors Nixon was stonewalling the investigators. Among other regrets, Colson felt that the transcripts showed Nixon at his worst, instead of the complex man he was, a man who was passionate about his country, altruistic, and industrious, yet with faults that were all too common within political culture. The transcripts, however, appeared to vindicate Colson. Even the prosecutor finally acknowledged to the press:

“Colson’s alleged roles in the cover-up and burglary would have been more difficult to prove than those of the other alleged conspirators …… because this man was outside the main stream of the overt acts.” (p. 260)

Finally, with Colson’s indictment, on his lawyer’s advice he pleaded not-guilty, but took the fifth amendment, yet this plea did not assuage Colson’s conscience nor align with his new-found Christian belief. While he was not party to the Watergate affair, he was complicit in a break-in 10 months earlier, a break-in of a psychiatrist’s office to search for information on Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst, planning to use the data as a smear tactic against him; Ellsberg was suspected of leaking Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. Burdened with his part in this particular campaign, Colson, with the support and prayer of his new friends, decided to tell the truth. It was a shocking decision from a man who, if he’d kept silent, would likely have been acquitted and could have gone on to live a very comfortable existence. However, Colson had been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship and was convicted by these words:

“The first step which follows Christ’s call cuts the disciple off from his previous existence. The call to follow at once produces a new situation. To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible.” (p. 242)

Colson’s resolution, not only sent his lawyers into fits but came with a cost. However, the new life he discovered held infinity more success and contentment and freedom than his old life had supplied.

On June 21, 1974, Colson was sentenced to one to three years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

White House Special Counsel Chuck Colson
source Wikipedia

Sent originally to Fort Holabird prison, where he was needed as a witness, Colson spent most of his sentence at Maxwell Correctional Facility in Alabama. Initially, while the experience was foreign and unsettling, while reading his Bible, Colson noticed a beauty and wonder in the words, understanding the Trinity in a deeper sense and with a personal message woven within it:

“Just as God felt necessary to become man to help His children, could it be that I had to become a prisoner the better to understand suffering and deprivations? If God chose to come to earth to know us better as brothers, then maybe God’s plan for me was to be in prison as a sinner, and to know men there as one of them. Could I ever understand the horrors of prison life by visiting a prison? The voice inside of me answered: Of course not. No one could understand this life without being a part of it, feeling the anxieties, knowing the helplessness, living in desolation. On a tiny scale, it was the lesson of Jesus coming to us.”

Colson began to see his incarceration as an opportunity to reach out and help people. He began immediately to connect with the inmates, meeting with some to pray, helping others with their letters to gain parole, and even helping smuggle dye into the facility to dye some coats prison-brown so the prisoners would not have to freeze during the winter (Later, he regretted this breaking of the rules, an evidence of his old habit of manipulating situations). Colson had true empathy for these men, many some of who were imprisoned due to mischance, or harsh sentencing. Through his love and caring for the prisoners around him, he began to change some of their outlooks and behaviour, and when he was released from prison seven months later, there were many whom he’d call “friend”.

Colson on one of his prison visits
photo courtesy of martyangelo.com

While the book ends with Colson’s release, his interactions with inmates didn’t end there. Having an enormous heart for their plight and the struggles they faced, he began Prison Fellowship, an organization that grew to become the nation’s largest, helping both prisoners and their families. In the epilogue of the book based on a study done at the University of Pennsylvannia, Colson reveals that when comparing the inmates who have gone through his program with the general prison populous, only 8% of the his prisoners reoffended within 2 years, compared with 20% of prisoners from the control group and 50% nationwide. With these very impressive statistics, I found some online controversy about them, complaints that of the 177 people in Colson’s study group, that only the 75 people who graduated were used for the study, skewing the figures to his advantage. These complaints appear inconsistent with the purpose of the study. The intent of the study was to show the re-offending figures of Prison Fellowship graduates compared to the standard prisoner. To use prisoners who didn’t fully complete the program would be senseless and not within the study’s parameters. The report as is, does show that if a prisoner stays in the Prison Fellowship program and completes it, he has much better chance of returning to society, becoming a useful member of it, and living a fulfilling life.

Some reviews (and even the introduction to Colson’s book) claim that the main focus of the book is Colson’s conversion and not the Watergate scandal, which isn’t quite accurate. While I won’t argue with the verb “focus,” practically most of the book relates Colson’s political career, and with perhaps ¼ covering the period of his incarceration, the book ending right after his release. However, I do think that the back-story is imperative to build and explain his journey from a cut-throat politician to a committed Christian with not only a love for his fellow man, but a desire to put that love in action to better the lives of others.

The Rule of Saint Benedict

Posted on December 17, 2015 by cleopatra

“Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.”

Benedict of Nursia lived in Italy during the collapse of the Roman Empire and during his life, the empire was in constant battle with barbarian tribes. Leaving his home in Nursia, in the region of Umbria during the reign of the barbarian king, Theodoric, Benedict arrived in Rome to attend school but, disgusted with the paganism and dissolution that he witnessed, he eschewed worldly cares, taking residence in a cave at Subiaco, thirty miles east of Rome.

Saint Benedict (circa 1437-1446)
Fra Angelico
source Wikipedia

During three years in his cave, Benedict became admired for his spiritual devotion, and when an abbot in a nearby monastery passed away, Benedict was convinced, against his inclination, to take his place. But twice, monks envious of Benedict attempted to poison him, from which he was saved by miracles. He eventually took some disciples and founded a monastery on the mountain above Cassino, located eighty miles south of Rome. As his fame spread, even the great king of the Goths, Totila, sought out an audience with him.

Benedict called his Rule, “a little book for beginners,” and he covers such disciplines as obedience, humility, contemplation and living in community. Yet he first introduces us to four types of monks, the cenobites (belonging to a monastery and serving under an abbot), the anchorites or hermits (having lived in a monastery for a long time and their zeal for the monastic life has cooled), the sarabites (detestable monks who have “a character as soft as lead”, and are captured by worldly delights, a law unto themselves), and gyrovagues (drifters who are captives to their own selfish desires). His rule is to assist the first class of monks.

Some specific areas Benedict covers are church songs and readings, excommunication and re-entry, working hours and manual labour, personal gifts, community rank, etc. The importance of humility was highly emphasized:

The Rules of Humility

Keep the fear of God always before your eyes
Love not your own will but the Lord’s
Submit to your superior in obedience
In obedience, submit to unjustice and difficulties with endurance
Do not conceal (from the abbott) any sinful thought or wrongdoing
Be content with low or menial treatment
Admit with not only your tongue, but with your heart, of your inferiority
Do only what is endorsed by common rule in the monatery
Control your tongue and be silent unless asked a question
Be not given to ready laughter
Speak gently, seriously and with modesty
Manifest humility in bearing, as well as in heart

There were a number of interesting revelations in the rule, which I found rather interesting. Benedict states that the Lord usually reveals what is best to the younger monks, yet still the abbot has the final decision. This is a fascinating merging of both older and younger wisdom in a hierarchical framework which is designed to work best for all parties.

Totila and St. Benedict (1400-10)
Spinello Aretino
source Wikipedia

While Benedict’s rule is, in many ways, strict, I was actually surprised at the flexibility within it. There is grace for those who stumble and understanding of human weaknesses, as is evidenced by the description of abbots and their moral duties:

“……. He must hate faults but love the brothers. When he must punish them, he should use prudence and avoid extremes; otherwise, by rubbing too hard to remove the rust, he may break the vessel. He is to distrust his own frailty and remember not to crush the bruised reed. By this we do not mean that he should allow faults to flourish, but rather, as we have already said, he should prune them away with prudence and love as he sees best for each individual. Let him strive to be loved rather than feared.”

Apparently prior to Benedict’s rule, the theological view was that each person was struggling towards God, and spiritual direction had a very personal aspect to it. Benedict’s rule signified a turning point in perception, eventually making the process more regimented than personal. The Rule has further reaching implications as well, being the forerunner to the rule of law and written constitutions, assisting in the shaping of medieval ideas.

Benedict’s abbey at Monte Cassino was severely damaged by Allied bombing during World War II, having to be rebuilt afterwards. A bit of trivia: author Walter J. Miller was part of the bombing raids on Monte Cassino and was severely affected by them. His dystopian book A Canticle for Leibowitz has echoes of both the monastery and his struggles to come to terms with his part in its destruction. It’s a great book, if anyone is looking for a recommendation.

Rebuilt abbey of Monte Cassino
source Wikimedia Commons

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Posted on August 29, 2014 by cleopatra

“This book is an account of the virtuous asceticism and admirable way of life and also of the words of the holy and blessed fathers.”

The Desert Fathers were a group of faithful monks and nuns who chose to settle mainly in Lower Egypt, mostly around the desert of Scetes. While some of them lived in groups and had at least some contact with the outside world, some were hermits who preferred to live in seclusion. Asceticism was also practiced by many to purify their souls. While Paul of Thebes was the first monk to retire to the desert, Saint Anthony the Great was the one to begin the exodus. These Desert Fathers served as the early model for Christian monasticism.

As expected, there are many sayings that deal with religion:

Abba Epiphanius:

He also said, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is a precipice and a deep abyss.”
Someone else asked him, “Is one righteous man enough to appease God?” He replied, “Yes, for he himself has written: ‘Find a man who lives according to righteousness, and I will pardon the whole people.’ (Jer. 5:11)

We also find sayings from fathers instructing their disciples:

Abba Agathon:

The same Abba Agathon was walking with his disciples. One of them, finding a small green pea on the road, said to the old man, “Father, may I take it?” The old man, looking at him with astonishment, said, “Was it you who put it there?” “No,” replied the brother. “How then,” continued the old man, “can you take up something which you did not put down?”

And fathers who seek harmony:

Abba Paul the Barber:

Abba Paul the Barber and his brother Timothy lived in Scetis. They often used to argue. So Abba Paul said, “How long shall we go on like this?” Abba Timothy said to him, “I suggest you take my side of the argument and in my turn I will take your side when you oppose me.” They spent the rest of their days in this practice.

Coptic icon of
St. Anthony the Great
source Wikipedia

Philosophical fathers:

Abba Anthony the Great:

He also said, “God does not allow the same warfare and temptations to this generation as he did formerly, for men are weaker now and cannot bear so much.”

Abba Poeman:

He also said, “Men speak to perfection but they do precious little about it.”

And somewhat grumpy fathers:

Abba Arsenius:

Blessed Archbishop Theophilus, accompanied by a magistrate, came one day to find Abba Arsenius. He questioned the old man to hear a word from him. After a short silence the old man answered him, “Will you put into practice what I say to you?” They promised him this. “If you hear Arsenius is anywhere, do not go there.”
Another time the archbishop, intending to come to see him, sent someone to see if the old man would receive him. Arsenius told him, “If you come, I shall receive you; but if I receive you, I receive everyone and therefore I shall no longer live here.” Hearing that, the archbishop said, “If I drive him away by going to him, I shall not go anymore.”

Saint Arsenius
fresco at Mt. Athos, 14th century
source Wikipedia

And lastly, not only sayings from the Desert Fathers, but saying from the “Desert Sisters,” as well:

Amma Syncletica:

She also said, “It is good not to get angry, but if this should happen, the Apostle does not allow you a whole day for this passion, for he says: “Let no the sun go down.” (Eph. 4:25) Will you wait till all your time is ended? Why hate the man who has grieved you? It is not he who has done the wrong, but the devil. Hate sickness but not the sick person.”
She also said, “Just as it is impossible to be at the same moment both a plant and a seed, so it is impossible for us to be surrounded by worldly honour and at the same time to bear heavenly fruit.”

I was expecting to have to slog through this book, but what a delightful surprise. While these Fathers obviously knew their Scriptures and spent time with God, their focus was on themselves: refining their souls and being a good example to those around them. The personalities of each of them shone through in their sayings and, in spite of many of the sayings being quite short and compact, they brought a window into their lives of asceticism, their values and struggles that was very compelling. An enlightening read that gives not only a fascinating window into this era of history, but also imparts values that are as relevant today as they were in the 3rd and 4th century.

The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

Posted on June 17, 2014 by cleopatra

“I seemed to be standing in a busy queue by the side of a long, mean street.”

If you found yourself in Hell and then were offered a chance to leave and spend an eternity in Heaven, you’d jump at it, wouldn’t you? …….. Or would you …….??

The Great Divorce tells of a journey of souls from the grey town, which we soon see represents Hell, to a wide open space of meadows, rivers and mountains. Yet when the people disembark they are dismayed. They now appears as Ghosts and all the vegetation is dense and tough in a way that makes movement difficult and, at times, dangerous. And who are these shining Solid People coming towards them, and what do they want? Full of joy and laughter, it appears that they only wish for the “Ghosts” to shed their prejudices and grudges and self-absorption and “rights”, to accept help and rescue from their troubles. ‘Come to the mountain’, they say, yet most are unable to, so firmly have these detrimental traits taken root within them, to the exclusion of anything good.

The Assumption of the Virgin by Francesco Botticini
shows three hierarchies and nine orders of angels
source Wikipedia

The Great Divorce is Lewis’ The Divine Comedy. As Dante is the narrator of The Divine Comedy, so too, the narrator in The Great Divorce is Lewis himself. George MacDonald, the well-known author of The Princess and the Goblin, Phantastes, and At The Back of the North Wind, a man whose writings had a profound affect on Lewis, serves as his Virgil, a guide to bring him understanding of Heaven and similarly, the grey town of Hell.

Yet while analogous in structure, the Hell of The Great Divorce is very different than that of Dante’s Hell. It is not a world of men trapped in flaming tombs, immersed in rivers of blood and fire, whipped by demons or eaten by foul creatures. In The Great Divorce, Hell looks surprisingly like Earth, but a corruption of earth, holding only the negative components of greed, envy, self-worship, revenge, jealously, grudges, etc. The setting mirrors the emotions, being bleak, desolate and lacking any human goodness. Rain and dingy twilight permeate the town, and a perpetual feeling of hopelessness is ever-present. Yet while the souls of this dreary place, recognize intellectually what they live in, and practically understand their actions, they have become drowned in them through excuses, trends, weakness of character, reliance on intellect only, and have become blind to their effects. In life, they allowed their choices and actions to carry them in the wrong direction and now have little desire to escape. They have chosen Hell and are unable to conceive of anything outside of it. Similar to the dwarves in the The Last Battle, ignorance has overcome them and they cannot escape it.

A vision of Hell
from Dante’s Divine Comedy
source Wikipedia

Lewis’ presentation of Hell is not only easily understandable, it is quite fascinating. Lewis’ Hell is not a Hell for people. Each “person” there, is there of their own choice, and their descent into it has been a gradual process, and not because of one big sin. Each of their choices has progressively dehumanized them; it is not that they are beyond salvation, rather that there is no shred of humanness left to save. Lewis also emphasizes the smallness of Hell by having the bus, not actually travel but grow, sprouting from a small crack in the soil to emerge in Heaven. Hell, to Lewis is a tiny place and anything that lives there is already withered away.

On the other hand, the Bright or Solid People of Heaven did not get there through moral perfection. One had been a murderer and confessed to doing worse than that, while another was hardly known on Earth but the people and animals that came into her presence were enriched by her love and charity. And again, we have another echo from The Last Battle, that Heaven is much more real than earth, exemplified by the tough grass, the hard rivers and terrain that the Ghosts experience and would only have a change of perception if they chose to accept the invitation to become more real.

While Lewis states in his preface that this book is an answer to William Blakes’ The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, he makes if very clear that it is not a story that is meant to be taken in a literal sense; like his Narnia Chronicles, it is a supposition. More, it is a work that explores human biases, perceptions and attitudes that either allow us to or prevent us from getting closer to God.

C.S. Lewis Project 2014

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton (Classic Club Spin #5)

Posted on April 3, 2014 by cleopatra

“On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world.”

I had heard many stories about Thomas Merton, the “Buddhist Trappist monk” and I was interested in finding out the commonalities he discovered between Buddhism and Catholicism. However, as it turns out, The Seven Storey Mountain is an autobiography of Merton’s early life, before he converted to Catholicism, and covering a few of the years after he entered the Trappist monastery, so I’ll have to search further to read about the Buddhist-Catholic component. Nevertheless, this book, which was featured in the National Review’s 100 Best Books of the Century, was charming, funny, heart-warming, spiritual, serious, emotional and intellectual.

Born in Prades, southern France on January 31, 1915, and during the First World War, Merton had a somewhat nomadic life as a child. Perhaps gaining perspective and creativity from his artistic French father and a certain practicality from his American mother, he draws the reader into the book in the first chapter:

“On the last day of January 1915, under the sign of the Water Bearer, in a year of a great war, and down in the shadow of some French mountains on the borders of Spain, I came into the world. Free by nature, in the image of God, I was nevertheless the prisoner of my own violence and my own selfishness, in the image of the world into which I was born. That world was the picture of Hell, full of men like myself, loving God and yet hating Him; born to love Him, living instead in fear and hopeless self-contradictory hungers …… My father and mother were captives in that world, knowing they did not belong with it or in it, and yet unable to get away from it. They were in the world and not of it —— not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it ……… I inherited from my father his way of looking at things and some of his integrity and from my mother some of her dissatisfaction with the mess the world is in, and some of her versatility. From both I got capacities for work and vision and enjoyment and expression that ought to have made me some kind of King, if the standards the world lives by were the real ones. Not that we ever had any money; but any fool knows that you don’t need money to get enjoyment out of life.”

From Merton’s early life in France, we move with him to America and then, after the death of his mother, his return to France with his father, while his brother, John Paul, is left behind with his grandparents. When Merton is 13 years old, they move to England, but when his father dies of a brain tumour, he eventually moves to the U.S. again, and finds himself enrolled in Columbia University, on his way to a possible promising professorship. Yet life intervenes and through various circumstances, Merton finds the church and from there, a personal relationship with God.

Merton was not a man who was searching for an escape from life. Fascinatingly, he did not find the monastery; the monastery found him. Initially, as a young man, his life consisted of university, friends, bars, girls and fun. Calling himself a true child of the modern world, he was a mirror of its afflictions: selfishness, ambition, irreligion, materialism, etc. His expectations were to graduate and find employment, as other young men in his situation. Yet within the social activity and superficial amusements that he experienced as a typical American youth, he nevertheless felt an emptiness that came with an increasingly strong desire to be filled. Perhaps Merton had tried it all and the only thing left was God.

Merton’s prose is delightful, both beautifully description and harmonious, yet he is also adept at injecting light humour into situations:

“‘France!’ I said, in astonishment. Why should anybody want to go to France? I thought: which shows that I was a very stupid and ignorant child.”

And an excerpt from a trip to Switzerland with his family when he was about 11 years old:

“The rest of the time was one long fight. We fought on pleasure steamers, we fought on funicular railways, we fought on the tops of mountains and at the foot of mountains and by the shores of lakes and under the heavy branches of evergreens ……………. By the time we got to the Jungfrau koch, everybody was ready to fall down from nervous exhaustion, and the height made Bonnemaman faint, and Pop began to feel sick, and I had a big crisis of tears in the dining room, and then when Father and I and John Paul walked out into the blinding white-snow field without dark glasses we all got headaches; and so the day, as a whole, was completely horrible …………… John Paul humiliated the whole family by falling fully dressed into a pond full of gold-fish and running through the hotel dripping with water and green-weeds.”

Merton’s deep understanding of human nature is punctuated by intelligent comments throughout the book.

On school: “But when a couple of hundred of these southern French boys were thrown together in the prison of that Lycée, a subtle change was operated in their spirit and mentality. In fact, I noticed that when you were with them separately, outside of school, they were mild and peaceable and humane enough. But when they were all together there seemed to be some diabolical spirit of cruelty and viciousness and obscenity and blasphemy and envy and hatred that banded them together against all goodness and against one another in mockery and fierce cruelty and in vociferous, uninhibited filthiness.”

On literature: “A course in literature should never be a course in economics or philosophy or sociology or psychology …….. the material of literature and especially drama is chiefly human acts — that is, free acts, moral acts. And, as a matter of fact, literature, drama, poetry, make certain statements about these acts that can be made in no other way. That is precisely why you will miss all the deepest meaning of Shakespeare, Dante, and the rest if you reduce their vital and creative statements about life and men to the dry matter-of-fact terms of history, or ethics, or some other science. They belong to a different order.”

On capitalism: “It is true that the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism, has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of this worldliness. And nowhere, except perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money. We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.”

courtesy of The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

Through his writing, Merton’s connection with the outside world was only enlivened and strengthened after he entered the Trappist monastery. Most of his most vibrant and inspirational work was produced while he was cloistered, as if being in the world made him understand it less, but by being removed from it, he gained a greater understanding. While his post-monastery accomplishments were vast, he initially felt the vocation of a writer in conflict with his vows, but under the urging of his abbey superior, he became a prolific author, producing more than 70 books on spirituality, social justice and pacifism, and The Seven Storey Mountain gained him a world-wide reputation. He became more interested in inter-faith dialogue and amassed a huge correspondence with a great number of influential people. In 1968 he attended an inter-faith conference for Catholic and non-Christian monks in Thailand, and, after stepping out of the bathtub in his hotel room, Merton was accidentally electrocuted by touching an electrical fan. He was 53 years old.

Upon its publication, The Seven Storey Mountain won critical acclaim, appealing to a post World War II society looking for meaning and stability. Grahame Greene had high praise for it, saying: “Is is a rare pleasure to read an autobiography with a pattern and meaning valid for us all. The Seven Storey Mountain is a book one reads with a pencil so as to make it one’s own.” By 1984 it had sold 3 million copies, and to-date is in continuous printing and is published in 15 different languages.

The value of a book such as this is that it takes you out of life as you see it from your own perspective. Like it nor not, society influences our thoughts, our choices, our perceptions and our actions. We often see situations from one vantage point and must struggle to get a different view. Merton starts with the familiar, living the status quo, but then takes you out of the normal, the complacent, the mundane, and allows you to see life from a completely different aspect. The door is open and you are free explore.

I’m looking forward to reading more of Merton’s work. He examines so many fascinating ideas in so many different areas, and really gets me thinking. And I actually finished my Classic Club Spin #5 so I’m going to celebrate! Yay!

Paradise Lost by John Milton

Posted on March 13, 2014 by cleopatra

“Of Man’s first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire
That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos; or, if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the Oracle of God, I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.”

Paradise Lost: Books I – II / Books III – IV / Books V – VI / Books VII – VIII / Books IX – X / Books XI – XII

Samuel Johnson declared that Paradise Lost is “a poem …… which respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind …..” It is a poem about the rebellion in Heaven and the ejection of the fallen Angels; it is about the Garden of Eden, the deception of the snake, and the fall of Man. But it is much more than all these points, separately and as a whole. Just as Satan falls into the depths of the burning pit of Hell, Milton delves into the depths of the human Soul and conversely soars to the heights of the God of Heaven, weaving a tapestry of images and profundity that will leave the reader amazed and speechless. Initially, the reader believes he is following Milton’s lead, not realizing until later that he is part of the tapestry itself and Milton’s words have become part of his soul.

John Milton’s Cottage
courtesy of Old Skool Paul (sourced Flickr)
Creative Commons License

In this poem, Satan’s actions are especially shockingly compelling as we follow his fall from Heaven, his brash, swaggering leadership of the fallen angels, and then his quest to best God to get his spiteful, yet senseless, vengeance. We think of Hell as a place, full of fire and brimstone, burning and torment, and while Milton gives Hell a location in this poem, it is much more than that. Satan carries Hell inside him. It torments him, not only with thoughts of rage and hate and revenge, but almost more effectively with thoughts of despair, regret and impossible hope. Conflicting emotions scrape and tear at him incessantly. For him, Hell is not external; it is an internal condition from which he cannot escape.

Milton’s superlative crafting of the character of Satan has led many people to believe he was perhaps too successful, making Satan the most exciting and heroic character of the poem. William Blake stated that “the reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the devil’s party without knowing it”. It is certainly true that Milton intimately understood “the devil’s party”. Like us all, he experienced sin within himself and within others: rage, treachery, deceit, the desire for power, etc. And with his astonishing talent, he was able to craft a character that is perhaps the most Satan of all the Satans in the history of literature. Milton’s Satan is capable of tricking not only Adam and Eve and angels, he is able to trick the reader of Paradise Lost as well, in such a subtle manner that certain readers admire his bravado, respect his machinations, and feel sorry for his plight. While Milton’s brilliance in this area of the poem is breath-taking, it is also unsettling. C.S. Lewis in his lectures on Paradise Lost, approaches this issue in a dexterous manner, saying that if the reader chooses to admire Satan, he must only realize what he is admiring:

“No one had in fact done anything to Satan; he was not hungry, nor over-tasked, nor removed from this place, nor shunned, nor hated —- he only thought himself impaired. In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, he could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige …..

……… Satan lies about every subject he mentions in Paradise Lost. But I do not know whether we can distinguish his conscious lies from the blindness which he had almost willingly imposed on himself ……

……. What we see in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything. This doom he has brought upon himself; in order to avoid seeing one thing he has, almost voluntarily, incapacitated himself from seeing at all. And thus, throughout the poem, all his torments come, in a sense, at this own bidding …..

……. the design of ruining two creatures (Adam & Eve) who had never done him any harm, no longer in the serious hope of victory, but only to annoy the Enemy (God) whom he cannot directly attack ……

……. From hero to general, from general to politician, from politician to secret service agent, and thence to a thing that peers in at bedroom or bathroom windows, and thence to a toad, and finally to a snake ——- such is the progress of Satan. This progress, misunderstood, has given rise to the belief that Milton began by making Satan more glorious than he intended and then, too late, attempted to rectify the error. But such an unerring picture of the ‘sense of injured merit’ in its actual operations upon character cannot have come about by blundering and accident. We need not doubt that it was the poet’s intention to be fair to evil, to give it a run for its money —- to show it first at the height, with all its rants and melodrama and ‘Godlike imitated state’ about it, and then to trace what actually becomes of such self-intoxication when it encounters reality.”

Depiction of Satan
Gustave Doré (1866)
source Wikipedia

Yet in spite of the beautiful images painted amid the stark reality, Milton seems to rush the end of the poem, packing the whole Old Testament into the last two books and surprisingly uses a more direct narrative instead of showing the reader with his usual subtle yet beautiful verse. Lewis remarks on the lack of genius in the last books in comparison to the earlier wonderful artistry of the poem:

“It (Paradise Lost) suffers from a grave structural flaw. Milton, like Virgil, though telling a short story about the remote past, wishes our minds to be carried to the later results of that story. But he does this less skillfully than Virgil. Not content with following his master in the use of occasional prophecies, allusions, and reflections, he makes his two last books into a brief outline of sacred history from the Fall to the Last Day. Such an untransmuted lump of futurity, coming in a position so momentous for the structural effect of the whole work, is inartistic. And what makes it worse is that the actual writing in this passage is curiously bad. There are fine moments, and a great recovery at the very end. But again and again, as we read his account of Abraham or of the Exodus or of the Passion, we find ourselves saying, as Johnson said of the ballad, ‘the story cannot possibly be told in a manner that shall make less impression on the mind’. ………. If we stick to what we know we must be content to say that Milton’s talent temporarily failed him …….”

Yet even with its flaws, Paradise Lost is an epic that is at once majestic, beautiful, poignant, tragic and instructive. It opens a window into the Biblical story of the fall, allowing the reader to live the experiences and emotions first-hand. What a task Milton took on and how well he succeeded! I predict this read be my favourite of the year. My feeble summary only covers the surface of its significance; you will only have to read it yourself to discover its grandeur!

Further reading:
A Preface to Paradise Lost – C.S. Lewis
Charles Williams Selected Writings (contains an essay on Milton)

The Pilgrim’s Regress by C.S. Lewis

Posted on December 3, 2013 by cleopatra

“I dreamed of a boy who was born in the land of Puritania and his name was John.”

In The Pilgrim’s Regress, John is a boy who lives in Puritania and is given a rather legalistic view of the Landlord of his country by the overseer or Steward. When he sees a shimmering Island in a vision through a crack in a wall, he experiences such an intense longing that he leaves Puritania, setting out on a journey to discover its location. With this incredible longing (Sehensucht) throbbing inside him, he tries to assuage it by a number of worldly means. The basic gist of the story is that John starts out, running from something he doesn’t truly understand and running to something he doesn’t truly understand. Through his numerous adventures, many with his friend Vertue, he discovers that he has run right back to where he had begun, Puritania, but thanks to the enlightenment he has received on his travels from Mr. Halfway & son, the Clevers, Mr. Mammon, the Giant, Reason, Mother Kirk, Three Pale Men, Mr. Savage, Mr. Broad, Wisdom, Contemplation, the Hermit, and Silkisteinsauga, he finds the answers to his questions and is able to pass over the brook and into the light.

One of the many strengths of this book lies in the fact that John didn’t simply learn from the “good” people he met along his journey. Each of his encounters taught him something about life and his beliefs, which helped him to grow into the person he became at the end of the story.

This was one of the hardest reviews I have written so far. You begin with what appears to be a simple allegory of C.S. Lewis’ own journey to faith, yet the reader is soon made aware that embedded in this simple story is a plethora of incredibly complex material and ideas. Lewis incorporated numerous ideologies such as Romanticism, Neo-Romanticism, Communism, Freudianism, Facism, etc. along with imagery, metaphors, and a host of allusions and quotes that is mind-boggling. The fact that he wrote this book while on vacation at his friend Arthur Greeves’ house in a mere two weeks, and was able to incorporate the wide-ranging scope of material that he did, is astounding!

In talking about his book years later, Lewis appeared almost embarrassed by it: “On re-reading this book ten years after I wrote it, I find its chief faults to be those two which I myself least easily forgive in the books of other men: needless obscurity, and an uncharitable temper.” He blames his youthful idealism on failing to give the reader the guidance to understand his personal journey. I, for one, can forgive him this minor fault. To mine The Pilgrim’s Regress of its treasures is a difficult task, but one that is well worth the effort.