Milan Kundera’s “Ignorance”

By Susan | Published: June 28, 2011

 

I took Milan Kundera’s slim novel “Ignorance” down from the library shelves. His books are not easy to penetrate (you do not read them for entertainment) and within a few moments I knew that by reading this book I would be provoked to examine my own life more closely.

 I was intrigued by the title which Kundera connects to the word “nostalgia.” We leave a place and go far away and don’t know what has become of us.  We are also ignorant of that place we have left so long ago.  Can we rely on our memories of our earlier life be true and in sync with the memories of someone else who was an actor in the same events? Kundera examines all of these themes in his novel.

Irena left Prague in 1968 after the Russians invaded. She and Josef have ended their affair over a petty misunderstanding and she storms away promising: “You won’t forget it! “(ominous words)  She decides that such a beautiful relationship deserves “eternity” and attempts suicide.  She survives –minus an ear (a long story!) and then, twenty years later, meets Josef again in an airport. She immediately recognizes him and flings herself body and soul at him. Imagine her horror when she discovers the next morning that he has no memory of their brief earlier relationship and he doesn’t even remember her name!

In the most organic way Kundera weaves the story of Odysseus around his characters and their movements. Odysseus, the greatest adventurer of all times, forsakes his life of new and ever more daring experiences and pines wistfully for the great return to his homeland. How surprising!

I wonder what Kundera would have thought of my own experience with nostalgia.  Is it possible to anticipate future nostalgia? I thought so, but I was wrong.

Every year for thirty five summers I visited my parents’ home on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Towards the end of this time I realized that things would change. My parents were getting older and the house would probably sell when they died as neither me nor my brothers could see ourselves locating there.

 In the last five summers that I was there I took many photographs inside  the house thinking that the photos  could feed my nostalgia for the place once it moved on to its new owners.

 After my parents died I made a special trip to visit the house and the new owners.  I took a lot of pictures of  the house as it is now and posted them on my Facebook page.

 The truth , to my surprise,  is that I am not interested anymore in how the house was when my parents were alive. I hardly look at these old photos. I look more at the new photos on Facebook.

Milan Kundera is right about nostalgia. You are ignorant if you think that you can predict its movements.

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No God but Allah

By Susan | Published: June 24, 2011

              “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet”—prayed daily by Muslims

 

Mohammed on his prayer rug (late medieval)

                                                

In December 2010 I was in Egypt.  I was met at the Cairo airport by a driver who was to take me to Sekem – a thriving, sustainable community created out of the desert in 1977. The man’s name was Allaedin.  My plane was late and he had waited an hour for me.  After spending nearly 24 hours in the air or in airports I was glad to see his smiling face. He did not give the least air of impatience as he stood waving a big sign that said “Sekem.”

In his car and on the road we tried to converse. His English was rudimentary and my Arabic non-existent. I liked him but I was tired and wondered how I would manage to make small talk for the final 100 km of my journey.

He asked if I would like some tea. I said, “Yes” and the car suddenly swooped toward the curb and stopped. He bounded out into a convenience store and brought me back some black tea in a Styrofoam cup .

We talked a little more and I realized that he was a devout Muslim.  As I sipped the tea which was very sweet I felt my energy return.  I had never had an extended conversation with a practising Muslim and here was my chance.

Allaedin told me about his wife and his sons who were both doing well in school.  He made just barely enough money as a driver to support them all yet he appeared happy and grateful for the life that God had given him. I asked him more about his relationship with God.  He told me that he prays five times a day; this is one of the five pillars of Islam.  He is never afraid of any events that may come toward him because God will provide and will always sustain. God appoints a place and station to everyone and people can feel secure in this trust.

Sitting and listening to Allaedin talk about his life I settled more into my seat and could actually feel the peace that he seemed to experience every moment of his life. All troubles will work themselves out.

 I asked about Christ and he explained that Christ was an important prophet. The Christian belief in a partnership between God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit is a distortion of the truth according to Islam.  Allaedin was so sure about this belief and it was a waste of my time to try to convince him otherwise. Besides I didn’t care to argue.

He told me that I could become a Muslim very easily. He wanted me to repeat these words in Arabic: “I bear witness that there is no deity worthy to be worshipped but Allah, and I bear witness that Mohammed is His servant and messenger.”  It seemed like the right thing to do at the time so I did it and we both laughed and laughed.

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St. Paul and New Life

By Susan | Published: June 19, 2011

I have always been interested in St. Paul and I have wanted to understand what he experienced in Damascus.

Beforehand, Paul had lived the life of a Jewish Pharisee believing that the common life had to be regulated as laid down in the books of the Old Testament. Male babies were circumcised.  There were laws to control what foods were to be eaten and how they were to be prepared. One could not associate with “unclean” people. Other laws regulated other aspects of daily life. Paul was a zealous proponent of these Judaic laws and he was known for his persecution of the Christians who, he believed, were following a false Messiah and headed in the  wrong direction.

But then came Paul’s experience of the risen Christ. This was an event which compelled him to reassess everything that he thought he had previously understood. Damascus did not leave him with a set of questions in his head with which he wrestled philosophically and then came up with a solution. The meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection was revealed to him as the solution to the human condition.  The laws of the Old Testament had lived past their prime and now there was a new covenant. Christ had died for the possibility that we could all live in a new way and this new way would rise out of a death experience of some kind.

 As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:36: ‘what you sow does not come to life unless it dies.  And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed…but God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.”

Paul’s teaching was to take an entirely new direction. No longer was it necessary to follow a set of rules and laws from without but one could “sow” seeds in one’s own life according to one’s individual conscience. But it was important to let go of expectations. This is what we have to let “die” in our inner life. A higher power will take what we have sown and work with it.

 I find Paul’s theology so modern and so useful, too.

 Almost hourly, as I go about my day, I have to remind myself to let go of expectations of this person or that event.  My job is to keep moving, or keep “ploughing” so that fixed beliefs or rules do not begin to harden the terrain of my life.  This way all initiatives that I cultivate, even small ones, have a chance to flourish.

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Being Close to the End

By Susan | Published: June 13, 2011

"Still Life with a Skull" Paul Cezanne

In olden times monks and scholars kept skulls on their desks as a constant reminder of the immanence of death.  Sometimes the skull was “hidden” in a painting as is the case in this Cezanne.

Death and dying have been on my mind of late.

Last week I started volunteering in the palliative care ward of a local hospital. Within half an hour of my first shift I found myself in the room of a man who had died only minutes earlier. His yellow bony head was lying at an odd angle to his neck and his mouth was wide open. Around him were standing three men of different ages who were telling each other cheerful stories about the dead man’s last days.

Apparently he had been playing tennis just a week before. It had been common knowledge that he was terminally ill but he had spoken little of his fears to his friends.  While standing there listening to their stories, I felt I was privy to a mini funeral-event,  celebrating the life of a happy man who had lived a long active life and who died with his buddies present. What could be better?

 Since there were no family members close by, one man took it upon himself to make arrangements for the removal of the body and the planning of the memorial service.

Today I went in for another shift and spent time with a young woman on methadone. We watched the grey clouds and the light rain as it fell on the tops of the buildings. She wanted to talk of her pain so I listened as she explained that it never goes away completely. It is hardest to bear in the middle of night when she wakes with its dull ache heavy in one shoulder and arm.

People have asked me why I want to spend time with the dying. One reason is that after I finish my shift I come out of the hospital thinking that I have used my time there very well.  Is it my imagination —or does my life now seem to have more “ballest” and less skimming of the surface?

Perhaps this work will serve the same purpose as keeping a skull on my desk.

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Philip Roth

By Susan | Published: June 3, 2011

"Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends"

When I heard that Philip Roth has just won the 2011 Man Booker International, I went right over to the library to check out one of his books. I had no idea that he had written so many (about 30) and that he had won just about every literary award possible and some of them more than once.

At the library I found the Zuckerman series with the first book being, The Ghost Writer.  This novel introduces Nathan Zuckerman as a budding young Jewish writer. The era is the mid ‘50s and Nathan has arrived to spend time in the secluded New England farmhouse of his literary idol, E.I. Lonoff.  Nathan turns out to be Roth’s alter ego; there are many comments about the writing life in the midst of a comic plot with many twists.

Nathan throws himself at the feet of his new idol who advises him to think twice about adopting the writer’s life:

“I turn sentences around. That’s my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning. And if I knock off from this routine for as long as a day, I am frantic with boredom and a sense of waste.”

Nathan has already sent him some of his short stories and wants advice:

 “What I’d like to know is what you think is wrong with them, what you think I might do – to be better? How benign was his smile! …. Wrong? … Yes…. Look, I told Hope [his wife] this morning:  Zuckerman has the most compelling voice I’ve encountered in years….. I mean voice: something that begins at around the back of the knees and reaches well above the head.  Don’t worry too much about ‘wrong.’ Just keep going. You’ll get there.”

In the 16 or so hours that Nathan spends with Lonoff there are flashbacks to events in his own life.

We hear that Nathan has already written a short story inspired by some sordid events from the life of his great aunt. He has shown the manuscript to his father who is dismayed that his son has made everybody seem “awfully greedy” and hasn’t included some of the kinder deeds enacted by family members.  The exchange between father and son is hilarious as the father tries uses guilt to persuade Nathan that the story if published will have dire implications for Jewish people everywhere. The plot becomes even more amusing as his father enlists the help of a certain respected Judge Wapter to make Nathan change his mind about publishing the story. Judge Wapter send 10 questions that he wants Nathan to answer.  This episode is so entertaining and show Roth’s skill as a comic writer.

To whom is the writer responsible? Philip Roth makes it clear that he is responsible to his art and himself. In a U Tube interview clip I looked at, Roth says that “every reader needs to take care of himself.”

Yet there is another twist to this book in the character of E. I. Lonoff who, because of his age and maturity, sees another dimension in the life of a writer.

 Roth is deadly serious when he goes to great lengths to show how Lonoff takes care and practices radical kindness with those who are close to him and depend on him, particularly his wife. One’s art (and pleasure taken in it) is important — yes, but not at the expense of everything else.

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A Jealous God?

By Susan | Published: May 31, 2011

         

“You shall not make for yourself an idol…….for I the LORD your God am a jealous God”  (Deut  5:8)

Yikes! When I read this I can relate to the distaste that many people feel about the God of the Old Testament .  Can there actually be a God who is “jealous?”

 My marriage broke up several years ago when I found out that my husband had feelings for another woman.  He told me that he wanted and needed to explore this new relationship. I guess I could have let myself get caught up in feelings of jealousy and bitterness, but it hardly seemed worth the energy, especially since he had already clearly made up his own mind.  And, besides,  I did not want to be stay married to someone who wanted the steady company of someone else.

Now –from this passage from Deuteronomy I read that God, himself, entertains sentiments of jealously!  Was I too quick to dismiss the benefits of allowing myself to wallow in this emotion? Is jealousy a passion that I can share with the likes of God and therefore walk on higher ground?

When I dug a little deeper I found that the passages in the Bible which speak of a jealous God use the same Hebrew adjective of “qanna.” The interesting thing about this word is that it is only used in reference to God. In no instance is “qanna” used to describe human jealousy. There is a difference between in divine jealousy and human jealousy.

It would seem that worshipping false idols will incur the wrath of a jealous God and perhaps this is built into the fabric of the universe. All I have to do, if I want to find out what happens to those who worship money, drugs, alcohol, power (to name just a few false idols), is read the daily newspaper.

 In many places in the Bible (especially the New Testament) humans are called to refrain from acts of jealously. There is a famous story of St. Augustine who lived a life of carousing and debauchery before his conversion to Christianity.  One day he found himself hearing listening to the words of a child at play who was chanting, “Take up and read; take up and read.” Augustine reached for a Bible which he opened to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (13:13) which says, “Let us live honourably as in the day, not in revelling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy.” Apparently, after this reading, he mended his ways —on the spot!

Boy, am I relieved! I kind of did already know that human jealousy is not an emotion to invite into one’s head; one’s energy is best saved for better things.

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A Sacred Place

By Susan | Published: May 23, 2011

“Everyone needs a place where it is just you. It can be creative, it can be a computer – it can be anything. It is your sacred place and you own it.”   Toni Morrison

When I read this I immediately could identify my own sacred place which is my desk (also serves as my eating place when I have company).  This is an area piled high with books set at odd angles to each other, a notebook with a selection of pens, post-its and a highlighter nearby.

I walk by it many times a day and sigh when I pass because it appears unorganized but when I sit down and enter the space I am lost in a good way into its possibilities. There are poems to complete, my journal which always needs attention and various books with their passages marked for me to contemplate further.

 Yet often, while I occupy my place, my thoughts run in circles and at the end of the day I can easily be left with feelings of numbness. Ideas have raced for hours but there is no finish line. No sense of completeness. I decided I needed to take my reading and writing up a notch and create a steady outcome.

One way to do this was get into blogging. “But who will even bother to read your blog,” my alter ego asked. I had to admit this voice created tension as I am a social person who has always received enjoyment and satisfaction in the company of others.  But the truth was I did receive satisfaction when I posted a blog on my website and it had nothing to do whether my post was going to be read by anyone.

Where did this satisfaction come from?

Process theology speaks of two aspects of divine activity in the world:  the “creative love of God” and the “responsive love of God.”  Theologian Catherine Keller calls the first the divine passion.*  God sends a “lure” into me; it is an invitation which says something like, “Do something with all that you are reading. Make it come to actualization outside your immediate experience.” I take up this challenge and write a blog posting. God then takes into himself what I have done. Keller says that he feels my feelings with compassion.  John 10:10 invites us to “have life, and have it abundantly.”The desire of God, then, is for life and more life; he urges me on to work more towards actualizing or putting into print my ideas.  

When I bring my thoughts to fruition on the written page, is God is enjoying himself through me? Does this result in feelings of personal satisfaction in my soul?

If so, this is ample recompense for my efforts. I don’t need the approval of future readers of my blog to keep posting.

Now, with all this in mind, I look with affection at my messy desk. There is no need to straighten or put away anything.

  * Catherine Keller, On the Mystery: Discerning God in Process (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008), 98

Posted in Theology, Vancouver | Comments closed

A Certain Age

By Susan | Published: May 21, 2011

being a certain age
means knowing
that many paths were started
then abandoned

names can be good or bad
though one’s own name
seems solid enough

on my street
large maple leaves
bury the asphalt
every October

though
wearing blue reminds me
of another home where
no streets are needed

I buy yellow roses,
watch them
burst outward, sun-like,
then fall apart

my life is in my name,
my age, places, my things
I am watchful in all my stages,
and the next moment
will hold what
has always been
and from where
the future
steers a course

where am I not?

only 
where kindness
is absent
and love refuses its mission
to be everything
and walks
are not taken

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God in the Possibilities

By Susan | Published: May 15, 2011

Alfred North Whitehead

At the Vancouver School of Theology I have just completed a course on Process Theology. I love that word “process” because it reminds me that that is how I like to live my own life. One event leads me to another; my circle of living expands to ever greater complexity and richness and enjoyment like the journeying in a spiral.

Process Theology is influenced by the writings of the British mathematician and philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). Whitehead believed that time was not a single smooth flow, but that it comes into being in little droplets. Each droplet or event is influenced by the past and will influence the future, yet every moment is new and none can be repeated.

Where is God in all of this? It is best to start with what God is not. God is not an unchanging Absolute, a divine lawgiver who keeps records of offences in order to punish transgressors. For Whitehead, God is intimately related and responsive to the world though he does not control world events. In every event of our lives there is a space into which God pours possibilities which we can experience as restlessness, a barrage of uncomfortable feelings. God also provides an “initial aim,” an impulse to actualize the best possibility. From the vast array of possibilities we are free to choose our own motives for any action.

As I write this I am fidgety. I want to take a break and go make myself some coffee. I could also turn on the TV to relax for a bit or I could go for a walk to look at the sun setting over the water. These are some of my possibilities. I also experience another possibility. I could instead press on and write a little more and I determine that this is the best action to take.  When I think about it I have had enough coffee for the day and, as I’ve not had a stressful day, I do not need to relax.   

As I continue to write, I experience enjoyment and satisfaction. I wonder if this is God’s gift to me for following his best possibility which I have determined is also my best possibility?

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Waiting

By Susan | Published: March 1, 2011

 Ecclesiastes  by Gustav Dore

we watch and wait
cars follow their leaders;
the people walk
their journeys and talk;
the snow falls
from its beginnings
turns to rain;
now rain falls
as the sun descends
behind the clouds;
shadows fall
into streams;
all the streams
run into the sea
but the sea is never full

Qoholeth says, ‘All is vanity”
so we watch and wait
as what goes up comes down;
there seems nothing new
under the sun.

we watch and wait

what else is there to do
but send our bread
out upon the waters?

Posted in Poems | Comments closed

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