Scars by Paul Murray, O. P.

Scars is one of the few books I've written about that I actually bought new. I heard Fr. Murray speak at a local church, and I was so impressed by his talk, that I wanted to read something he had written. I don't remember why I bought this particular book because the name puts me off. I'm not sure why, but I think it reminds me of something else, or maybe it is just a personal idiosyncrasy. He must have mentioned the book during the talk.

 The first question that Fr. Murray asks in the book is how we can talk to someone who is undergoing great affliction, or whether we can really have anything to say to them at all. We are all familiar with this situation. Some person whom we care about is going through some terrible thing, and they seem to be in another place that we can't reach. Anything we think of to say sounds inadequate. I'm not sure how much of an answer this book gives. For one thing, every person and every situation is so different. The exact thing one person needs could be the very thing that upsets someone else.

Part One of the book, Impossible Words is subtitled Essays on affliction. The first essay is The fourth friend: Poetry in a time of affliction. Fr. Murray talks about how after 9/11 poems began to appear all over New York City. He quotes the New York Times:

In the weeks since the terrorist attacks, people have been consoling themselves--and one another--in an almost unprecedented manner. Almost immediately after the event, improvised memorials often conceived around poems sprang up all over the city, in store windows, at bus stops, in Washington Square Park, Brooklyn Heights and elsewhere. And poems flew through cyberspace across the country in e-mails from friend to friend.

He calls poetry the fourth friend after Elihu, who after Job's three friends have spoken, appears to defend God to Job and his comforters. Fr. Murray references Fr. Victor White, O. P., who calls Elihu, "something of an intuitive, a poet." But then asks, "But should the poet, in a time affliction presume to speak at all? .  . . how, confronted by the enormous affliction of an individual or of a people, can the words of a poet be said to bring consolation?"

In the rest of this section, Fr. Murray gives examples of poetry written both by and to people who are in great affliction. The most beautiful example, though, is about the poetry of music. He quotes a letter that Mendelssohn wrote to Handel:

She [Dorothea] told me that, when she lost her last child, Beethoven was at first unable to come to her house any more. Finally, he invited her to come to him, and when she came he sat at the piano and merely said: 'We will now converse in music,' and played for over an hour and, as she expressed it, 'He said everything to me, and also finally gave me consolation.'

The remainder of Part One contains reflections on affliction in sickness and in prison, and on the martyrs of the last 100 years. He then writes about his friend Sister Joan and the conversations they had after she was diagnosed with an incurable blood disorder that took her life two months later.

Part Two, The dark hours; Songs for the afflicted is a collection of poems written by Fr. Murray. There is a great deal of poetry that I really love, and still more that I like quite a bit, and I recognize it as good poetry. However, I don't consider myself a really good judge of poetry, and I might not always be able to see that a poem is good. That said, I do not think that much of this is really poetry. I'm not saying there is no merit to what Fr. Murray writes, but that it is more like prose formatted like poetry. But, maybe I am wrong. Here a couple of the ones that I like.

               The Cry

When I awoke, the room was dark
and the rain was beating
against the window pane,
it was the room that faces out to sea,
the room in which I was born.

And from my bed I thought I saw
the dark curtains lifting
and moving, and thought I heard
far out at sea
a lone seabird crying in the storm.

But, as I listened, there leaned
against my heart
- and it made me tremble - the memory
of that other dream,
the same dream, that other night.

And I thought to myself: Is it
possible, then, I am
not awake at all, and the rain
is not now beating
against the window pane,

and there is no seabird crying
in the storm
but that instead, once
more, this stark, isolated cry
is, perhaps, my own? 

               A Reading

The text opens like a river
in full spate. Or it's like a window
opening with a sudden gust of wind.
And it's as if an archangel
had entered the room. And everybody
has to stop what they're doing.
And the air is a river of divine words.
And all of a sudden you see
 - and with a start -
that an archangel has entered,
and your heart is in your mouth,
And you feel you are drowning
in a river of divine words, and hear
yourself saying, over and over,
'How can this be?'

 Part Three, The scars of God: Meditations on the seven last words is, as it says meditations on the seven last "words" of Jesus from the cross. If you are not familiar with this terminology, these are not just seven solitary words, but sentences that Jesus said, or prayed, as He was dying.

I did not read through these all at once, but prayed with one each day for seven days. Some of them were helpful, and some were not, and maybe I don't really know which was which. That's a very personal thing, and you might benefit from some that I didn't and vice versa.

My thoughts and feelings about this book are very mixed. When I first read part of the book (I'm not sure I even finished Part One.) I really liked it. Then, it got put aside somehow, and when I came back to it a couple of weeks ago, I didn't like it much at all. Only parts seemed good to me. This probably says more about me than about the book, but maybe it also had something to do with having just heard Father speak, and being more in tune with the way he thinks and expresses himself. If you would like to see for yourself, I'd be glad to give you the book.

AMDG

The White Fathers by Glenn D. Kittler

For eight years, I worked at a protestant seminary, and there were frequently piles of books being given away: sometimes by the spouse of someone who had died, sometimes the library was giving away discards, and sometimes they were donated by someone who was just cleaning off their shelves.  Being one of the very few Catholics around, I was able to pick up a lot of Catholic books that no one else was interested in. The White Fathers had belonged to one of the professors at the seminary professors. The date 72-73 is written on the title page, so I assume that is when he read it. It is full of underlining and notes (frequently illegible), which made reading the book even more interesting.

This book was not on the shelf of books that I am reading, although it would have ended up there eventually. It was on a shelf that is next to the chair where I sit when I pray in the morning. I usually do a bit of spiritual reading, or reading about the saints every morning, so when I finished the last book I was reading, I pulled this one off the shelf, and had been reading about ten pages a day--until it got so interesting that I just kept reading.

When Bishop Charles Martial Allemand-Lavigerie was appointed Bishop of Algiers in 1867, he already had a heart for the missions. He had previously been the chairman of L'Oeuvre d'Orient  which was organized to erect Christian schools in the Middle East. Although Bishop Lavigerie was almost always opposed by the French government, who wanted him only to minister to the French in Algiers, he had a vision for Africa, and he worked tirelessly for the vision all his life.

The fact that Lavigerie was not allowed to evangelize the Arabs did not slow him down at all. He knew that the Arabs would not be open to evangelization until they lost their deep suspicion of Christians. He decided to organize an order of missionary priests who would live as Arabs--would be Arabs as much as possible without violating their Catholic faith. They would dress, and eat like Arabs, and of course, be proficient in Arabic, and eventually many African languages. Most important to Lavigerie was that they be men of prayer. Their first work would be to provide medical assistance to the Arabs, and then education for children, and agricultural help.

The White Fathers in their habit which consists of a white, traditional Arab gondoura
or robe, and a red fez.

It took a long time for the bishop to find men for the Missionaries of Africa, or White Fathers as they came to be known because of their white habits. Many men did not persevere through the noviate, and even this first three recruits, one of whom had become superior of the order, never made it into active ministry. Time and again, Lavigerie thought that the end had come, but something always came through, and in time they established many missions in Northern Africa.

The next goal of the missionaries was to send caravans to set up a series of missions through the Sahara, and eventually to reach Central Africa. The three priests in the first caravan were murdered, but more caravans followed. Eventually, they reached Uganda, and their work there and the tragedies that followed make up a large part of the book. If you are not familiar with Charles Lwanga and the Martyrs of Uganda, you can read a bit more about them on my other blog, in a post written by my friend Paul.

Kittler also writes about the life of one former student of the White Fathers' schools, and two of the priests of the order. The first gives an idea of the quality of education the students in the schools received; and the second shows the kind of work the priests were doing, and also the very different types of men who belong to the order.

Bishop, eventually Cardinal Archbishop Lavigerie's vision can be seen in this passage:

It was . . . Lavigerie's idea that his missionaries should always remember that they were in Africa for the sake of the African. He was stern in his instructions not to Europeanize the African, believing that in time the African could decide for himself what there might be in Europe he wished to make his own. 

This practice of not trying to change the culture of the Africans was very contrary to what most governments, and in truth most missionaries of the time considered appropriate. Lavigerie was also very constant in asserting the missionaries they were working toward the day when Africans could assume leadership of their own countries.

Glenn D. Kittler's obituary in the New York Times says that he had at one time studied for the priesthood, and that he was a contributing editor of Guideposts (an inspirational Christian magazine founded by Norman Vincent Peale). One gathers from this that he isn't exactly impartial toward his subject (which is true), and that the book is not written in an academic manner (which is also true). The professor who formerly owned the book complained more than once about a lack of documentation. There was a real problem with dates in the book--years, not months and days--that might have been as much attributable to bad copyreading as to any error on Kittler's part. Given that, it is still a very readable narrative of the beginning of an order which is still at work in Africa today. In fact Kittler's obituary stated "Mr. Kittler wrote ''The White Fathers'' in 1957. The New York Times called it ''a magnificently comprehensive historical introduction to the last hundred years of Christian Africa.''

You can hear a bit about the current ministry of the Missionaries of Africa here:

AMDG

The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O'Connor

When I woke up this morning, I had read about 50 pages of The Violent Bear It Away. About halfway through the book, if you had asked me what it was about, I would have told you that I wasn't really sure what I was reading, but I couldn't stop reading it. By 3:30 this afternoon, I had finished the book.

This book is about the God of grace and mercy, but it's not easy grace, and it's not the mercy that droppeth as a gentle rain from heaven. It's about the God who is a consuming fire. The title of the book comes from Matthew 11:12, "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away."

Mason Tarwater is one of those who bear it away. He is a prophet (and bootlegger) who lives on a secluded farm, and who is raising his great-nephew, Francis Marion Tarwater (called Tarwater), whom he kidnapped from his legal guardian, his uncle George Rayber. Old Tarwater is preparing his great-nephew to be his successor. He already tried this once with his nephew George, whom he kidnapped for four days when George was seven, but this attempt backfired.

If you have read much about prophets, you know that they are not particularly comfortable to be around and that some of them might even be regarded as out of their minds, and the Tarwaters certainly fit the bill. I wondered what tarwater or tar water was, and looking around the internet I find that it is made from a cold infusion of pine resin in water, and is used for healing and to get rid of spirits, the latter being more appropriate to our story.

Old Tarwarter has charged Tarwater with two tasks to accomplish after his death. One is to bury him with a cross at his head, so he can be found at the last day. The other is to baptize George's son, Bishop. This book is about Baptism, and water, and Baptism by water, but maybe even more about Baptism by fire.

I am not going to say any more about the story because if you read it in a summary, you will completely lose the power that is behind O'Connors masterpiece, and it is a masterpiece--maybe I should say tour de force.

In a letter to a friend written on November 14, 1959, shortly before publication of her novel in January, 1960, O'Connor said;

I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial. I'm afraid it will just be dammed and dropped, genteelly sneered at, a few superior kicks from one or two and that  will be that. . . . Well, we will have to wait and see. I expect the worst. At least this is an individual book. I can't think of anybody else's that it might remind you of. Nobody would have been found dead writing it but me . . .

The Violent Bear It Away did get a lot of bad reviews, but it has stood the test of time. O'Connor spoke to at least a couple of friends about a sequel to the novel, but I guess she ran out of time. It took her a long time to write a novel, she was talking about this one as early as 1954, and she died about four and a half years after it was published.

I recommend this book very highly, but I would strongly suggest you not read it unless you are already fairly familiar with O'Connor, because it takes most people a while to see what she is doing in her work. In this case, I would suggest that you begin with a few short stories: Revelation, A Temple of the Holy Ghost, and A Good Man is Hard to Find. (It was while reading Revelation that I first got O'Connor. Then you might read The Habit of Being, a collection of her letters, and maybe Mystery and Manners, a collection of talks and essays.

UPDATE: There have been a lot of new visitors here in the past 24 hours, and I would like to welcome you all. I would love to hear any thoughts you have about the post, or even how you got here.

If you are curious about what I'm trying to do on this blog, you can find that information here.

Please come again.

AMDG

The Autobiograhy of Charles Darwin: 1809 to 1882 edited by Nora Barlow

For some time now I have wanted to find out more about Charles Darwin, both about the man, and also about his work. Before I read this autobiography, I knew that Darwin had taken a voyage on a ship called the Beagle, and that while on that voyage he collected many specimens, and then proposed a theory of evolution and natural selection. I wanted some more specific information about his collections, and his science, and also about his thought process. I don't remember when I bought the book, but I'm sure that this is why I bought it.

I have to say that I am disappointed. At the point in the narrative where he tells about the Beagle, he relates how the position of naturalist on the ship was offered, how his father was against the voyage, and how he was convinced to give his son permission to accept the position. Darwin says very little about the voyage itself, the chief impression one takes away from this section is that the captain of the ship was very difficult to get along with. The reason for his reticence in speaking of the scientific aspects of the voyage is that he had already written about them in The Voyage of the Beagle.

The autobiography begins with Recollections of the Development of my mind and character. I will include the first paragraph because it says a great deal about the state of Darwin's mind when he wrote it.

A German Editor having written to me to ask for an account of the development of my mind and character with some sketch of my autobiography, I have thought that the attempt would amuse me, and might possibly interest my children or their children. I know that it would have interested me greatly to have read even so short and dull a sketch of the mind of my grandfather written by himself, and what he thought and did and how he worked. I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life. Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pain about my style of writing.

I will attest to the truth of this last sentence. I exaggerate, and most of the time Darwin writes well enough, although sometimes I cannot follow the thread of an argument because his sentences are confusing. You might think that it is I who am at fault here, and you may be right, but I don't think so. You might also thing that I am frequently guilty of the same fault. I'm pretty sure you are correct.

This chapter proceeds with eight pages about Darwin's early life and then fourteen pages about his father. This is rather telling. Dr. Robert Waring Darwin was a large man with a personality to match, and he loomed large over at great deal of his son's life. He was very successful in his practice, and had a great gift for winning the confidence of his patients, especially the ladies. This is one of the most engaging sections of the book, and you would think after reading it that Darwin had a wonderful relationship with his father, but one later learns that there is a great deal of tension between father and son.

Dr. Darwin was frequently disappointed with his son, and his disappointment is somewhat understandable as Charles was not a very good student. It seems that this was partly due to a lack of both ability and interest in his studies. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps as a doctor, but Charles had no interest in this. Dr. Darwin's second wish was that Charles would be a clergyman. Charles thought this might do, but it may be best that this never came about. While he was shirking the responsibilities of his studies, however, he stumbled upon the passion that informed the rest of his life.

But no pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles. It was the mere passion for collecting, for I did not dissect them and rarely compared their external characters with published descriptions, but got them named anyhow. I will give a proof of my zeal: one day, on tearing off some old bark, I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth. Alas it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as well as the third one.

This is the zeal that I was looking for in the book, and it is the only instance of it. A great deal of the remaining book discusses other famous scientists whom he knew, and their personalities and disagreements. The most important disagreement of all is known as The Darwin-Butler Controversy, and involves a series of misunderstandings between Darwin and novelist Samuel Butler, which were blown out of all proportion. The Butlers and Darwins had a relationship of several generations, and sadly this disagreement continued and was not resolved until after the deaths of both men when Darwin's son, Francis, and Butler's friend, Henry Festing Jones, communicated with one another and brought the whole sorry mess to a peaceful conclusion.

Darwin seems to have been very fortunate in his choice of wife, his cousin, Emma Wedgwood. They raised nine of their ten children, one having died in infancy, and the family was very close. When Darwin was 33, they moved to Surrey where they lived a very secluded life due partially to Darwin's frequent long bouts with some undiagnosed ailment, and partially with a disinclination for society. In later life, their main visitors were their grown children, who came often. When Darwin was trying to figure out how to respond to Butler's attack, he did nothing until he had consulted all his children. Their practice seemed to be not to make any important decision without the agreement of the whole family.

This edition, "The Only Complete Edition" of the autobiography, is 133 pages long. Originally, the family removed many passages that they thought would reflect badly on Darwin, and these have been replaced in this edition. After Darwin's text, there is an Appendix of 97 pages, two-thirds of which deal with The Darwin-Butler Controversy. Also found in the appendix are: an index of where all the formerly-omitted passages can be found, a list of Darwin's pros and cons with regards to getting married, and the correspondence that took place between Dr. Darwin and Emma's father over whether or not Charles should be allowed to undertake the voyage on the Beagle.

It was during the two years following his explorations on the Beagle that Darwin found himself questioning his faith. He had been a firm Christian previous to this, but began asking the familiar questions that people do ask, and decided against the Christian faith.  I'm not going to go into this, but I'm sure you can imagine the sort of things he briefly discusses in the book. Darwin says at one point in the book that he would not have made a good metaphysician, and this is likely true. At this time he considered himself a Theist, but later this conviction also began to fade, and he added an addendum so stating. His wife asked her son Francis that this addendum be removed from the book because it was painful to her.

In the appendix, there are two letters which Emma Darwin wrote to her husband expressing her sadness over his rejection of his faith. In the first she says:

May not the habit in scientific pursuits of believing nothing till it is proved, influence your mind too much in other things which cannot be proved in the same way, and which if true are likely to be above our comprehension. I should say also there is a danger in giving up revelation which does not exist on the other side, that is the fear of ingratitude in casting off what has been done for your benefit as well as for that of all the world and which ought to make you still more careful, perhaps even fearful lest you should not have taken all the pains you could to judge truly.

Darwin saved these letters all his life. At the bottom of this one he wrote, "When I am dead. know that many times, I have kissed and cryed over this. C. D." On the other, "God Bless you C. D. 1861"

I am currently reading The Voyage of the Beagle, which I find much more to my purpose.

AMDG