Shakespeare
“We are consum’d with that which we were nourish’d by.”
Whit Stillman
No wonder Alice yearns for the order and restraint of traditional social forms. This is a lonely new world. “I’m beginning to think,” she says poignantly in the next scene, “that maybe the old system, of people getting married based on mutual respect and shared aspirations, and slowly, over time, earning each other’s love and admiration, worked the best.” “Well,” quips Charlotte crisply, “we’ll never know.” Alice’s yearning is Stillman’s social vision—his movies are a plea for measured, romantic restraint.
Lucian of Samosata
“The earnestness with which the people of Christianity help one another in their need is incredible. They spare themselves nothing to this end. Apparently their first lawmaker has put it into their heads that all are somehow out to be regarded as brethren.”
(Source: magicalnaturetour, via molliefrances)
Proslogion
Come now, little man,
turn aside for a while from your daily employment,
escape for a moment from the tumult of your thoughts.
Put aside your weighty cares,
let your burdensome distractions wait,
free yourself awhile for God
and rest awhile in him.
Life on the Spectrum: Seven Stanzas at Easter
Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
…
Life on the Spectrum: “In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that...
“In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.”
~C.S. Lewis
I often forget that Christ’s suffering did not begin among the crowds on Friday. That the floggings, and mockings, and the cross were not his first afflictions. I…
Euthanasia, Maundy Thursday, Struggles with Books
“Indeed, the challenge is that the sadness which one appropriately feels should not become depression, despair, or apathy. This task falls to patience, and is marked by an unwillingness to relinquish hope. Christian hope unravels the knot that ties us to needing and wanting more for ourselves.”
Today, in Christian Ethics, we discussed Euthanasia. The conversation was somewhat slow and restrained. It was 8 AM, and it was the day before break, and the topic was death and suffering. So the tone made sense.
On a deeper level, too, it was fitting. Learning to die well, what we decided was the significant point of the Christian conversation, is a slow, restrained, somewhat somber business. It means endurance and menial tasks. It’s not grandiose heroics as we normally understand it. It’s not the courage to face our death, but rather face our life - even when it would be convenient, pleasant, acceptable not to do otherwise. It also means depending on others. Letting yourself be dependent and fighting the surge of resentment you feel as you survey your own neediness. Dying well declares that autonomy is not a good, and saying emphatically that it is not a virtue to be independent.
In this context, the above quote from our collection of essays is insightful. Specifically, the last line asks us not to want “the best case scenario” in attempting to control our death.
And somehow, I could not stop thinking about reading list this morning. On a basic level, I am stressed, so everything reminds me of Thomas a Kempis and Emile. But I think in another way, I am really bothered by my reading list because I feel I cannot do it alone. I have to ask my friends questions about the content of the books, the style of the interview, and for their encouragement. This whole endeavor has made me insanely needy.
I just want it all to be easy. Like a montage. Of Anna, with stacks of books around her, making lists and notecards. But instead it’s moments of stress-induced rudeness to my roommates and emotional phone calls to Boston. I am weak and undisciplined and tired, and as a result, I become something less than. Less than what I am called to be and less than what I want to be.
And this is how I see it connecting back to euthanasia. While calling the reading list “suffering” is a little much for even late Thursday nights, my experience reminds me of my own obsession with control and image. I do not like being reminded of my own limitations as a creature and fallen creature at that.
(I am not referring to my inability to remember the names of any Shakespearean characters.)
I want to fight it. I want to see myself as independent and perfect, and I want others to buy into the facade as well. On top of that, I want to believe that I am NOT a person who sees herself as independent and perfect. As you can tell, it is very complicated.
But Christianity invites me not to want more for myself. I can loosen the knot of needing and wanting more for myself. That is, Christianity invites me to see myself rightly, as fallen and imperfect. Only from this honest viewpoint can I move and grow and transform.
It’s not a perfect analogy, that’s sure, but it is a way of seeing how the desire for - idolatry of control is disastrous. Just as suffering is increased by our desire to control it, personal failings are increased by our desire to hide it - to manage our image and to lie to ourself, about ourself.
And Maundy Thursday? The image of Christian patience. Of honestly naming suffering as suffering. Of honestly asking for the release of suffering. And ultimately, of accepting suffering in faithful obedience.
"And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget these matters that with myself I too much discuss"
T.S. Eliot “Ash Wednesday” (via chairohs)
