The Existentialists Have Said

There comes a point in one's life when he realizes that his life is and has been chosen by him and that he is responsible for it.

These are hard words, but I think true. How might this fit into a theology of a greater sovereignty outside of ourselves?

Look at your hand.

You chose to do (or not to do) that. You choose to continue reading these words. You choose what you're going to do next and how you use the knowledge of your life to inform that decision. A sovereignty outside of ourselves, though I truly believe it, is inconsequential regarding your next decision to love or not love somebody, to move or not move closer to another, to heed or not to heed someone's advice.

Grace allows us to make good decisions. The presence of a Holy Spirit gives us the ability (also known as power) to do so.

But in the end, you are responsible for your life.

Matthew 25:31-46

Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker

How oft it happens when one's smoking:
The stopper's missing from its shelf,
And one goes with one's finger poking
Into the bowl and burns oneself.
If in the pipe such pain doth dwell,
How hot must be the pains of Hell.

Thus o'er my pipe, in contemplation
Of such things, I can constantly
Indulge in fruitful meditation,
And so, puffing contentedly,
On land, on sea, at home, abroad,
I smoke my pipe and worship God.



/J.S. Bach

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

/Gandalf

Seeking Definition

I have been recently entranced by several works of late (I'm so thankful for the summer which allows me to pursue independent, interdisciplinary studies without the academic pressure of passing and failing), one of which is Leonard Bernstein's "The Unanswered Question," a series of 6 lectures he gave at Harvard in 1973. Firstly, these are amazing, and I'm thankful somebody at Harvard thought it a good idea to record these lectures with fine audio and video, and that somebody else had the good idea to make these recordings freely available.

Secondly, Mr. Bernstein has been helping me to sharpen my definition of "music," a seemingly elusive definition that burns a quiet hole into all of my music lessons (and I am a part of plenty). Bernstein takes a musico-linguistic approach to help answer the question, "Whither music?" for musicians and non-musicians alike (or, rather studied musicians and non-studied musicians possibly--semantics has for me become a wonderfully slippery river to try and map by only feeling its bed with my feet).

My first question regarded his decision to relate music and linguistics. Is it fair to place them on opposite sides of the equation? But that's where my thoughts end, for I haven't finished the lectures yet, and he makes many other remarkable statements using that method. So for now I am content with the benefit of the doubt and I can later turn trivial late-night musings to that question.

However, in this relationship he relates music to poetry in the sense that poetry is language that has gone through a series of transformations into meaningful ambiguity that turn it into art. Here is Bernstein's exquisite illustration.

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry.
 

Here is Shakespeare's first line from his sixty-sixth sonnet. This is a beautiful line, and I won't bore you with a discussion on just how his use of iambic pentameter is genius in itself, but we must know that language has four levels: chosen elements (letters, symbols, sounds, phonemes), underlying strings (a deep structure that forms meaning--one of the strings here might be "I am tired"), then prose (the surface structure as Bernstein calls it), then poetry (the super-surface structure). For language to make it from one level to the next it must go through a process of transformation. Essentially, Bernstein proposes this prose-level version of the line:

I am tired of life, so many aspects of life, that I would like to die--in fact, I cry for death--because death is restful, and would bring me release from all of life's woes and injustices, which I shall now enumerate.
 

All of these thoughts are constrained within Shakespeare's singular line "Tired with all these, for restful death I cry" and have been thereby transformed from prose into poetry, from simple communication into aesthetic [communication?].

Music is the same, but with sound. This is the rub that brings me to my first question, since language is also sound--Bernstein declares that language can have two purposes, communicative and/or aesthetic, but music only has one, aesthetic. But anyway, you get the point.

A musician I highly respect once defined music as organized sound. Based on Bernstein's conclusions, I might extend that; music is highly purposeful (and thereby organized) sound? A better definition would include the audience, wouldn't it? Is music defined by the listener, or by the performer, or by both simultaneously? Maybe I'll find better answers (and less questions, though that is hardly ever the course of academic inquiry) as I continue with Bernstein's lectures.

Awe

With respect to the kingship, every Christian is by faith so exalted above all things that, by virtue of a spiritual power, he is lord of all things without exception, so that nothing can do him any harm....Not only are we the freest of kings, we are also priests forever, which is far more excellent than being kings, for as priests we are worthy to appear before God to pray for others and to teach one another divine things."

/Luther, On Christian Liberty

Of course, this is but an elaboration of 1 Peter 2:9, illustrated by Paul's revelation in Ephesians 5:22-33. If we are indeed married to Christ--and by "we" I refer to the entire Church, not just "you" or "me" or even "you and me"--then what is ours (sin, unrighteousness, doubt, fickleness, etc.--death) becomes His, and what is His (righteousness, sonship, purity, perfection--kingship and priesthood) becomes ours.

Of course, what Christ gives us kingship over is not a physical matter, but rather a spiritual matter. We become (have become and are becoming) divine kings, lords over all matters of the spirit (John 18:36). This does not mean we will not come to physical harm (for we most certainly will), but it does mean we will not come to spiritual harm, for all things work together for the [spiritual] good of those who love God (Romans 8:28).

And of the same course, we are also given priesthood, an incredible, unimaginable gift of the most holy, intimate, divine nature. Like Paul says in Ephesians, we are given life from death, and in that life, we are given community with the most high Creator of the universe. I hope those words carry as much weight on your screen as they do in my heart. We, because of our union with Christ, are made spiritual beings, interceding for each other on behalf of the Creator of the universe and teaching each other divine things.

This is awesome. Awe-ful. Awe-inspiring. Awe: a word that is only expressed through a simple jaw drop and a guttural vocal intonation for something that moves us so deeply we can do nothing but gape in wonder.

Always Within Never

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?

Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.

Will the war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?

It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its inanity irreparable. 

If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.

Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. THis mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing the most incredible sensation. Leafing through a book on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler's concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with the memories of a lost period in my life, a period that would never return?

This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.

/Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This is going to be a great book. And right after I just finished reading this great book (from which I titled this post)! The next chapter is devoted to this chapter's contrast--weight as an essence of being? I say that as a question because the question of lightness and weightiness as an essence of being seems to be the question that drives the book, which is really a love story if I understand the back synopsis correctly, that is, a love story set in the Prague Spring of 1968. There's definitely going to be a focused listening of Husa in my near future.

 

 

On Hedonism

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

/C.S. Lewis

Serendipity

I find it by strange, divine appointment that yesterday I listened to Maslanka's 4th Symphony jubilantly ring out the Doxology through the hundreds of hearts gathered in the Meyerson, today my beloved grandfather passed away, and in two days I present/conduct the project Believe It Anyway, discussing the nature of trial, faith, and death and what it means to wrestle with God.

I don't know what this means. I don't know how to fit it all in my brain. I know less how to fit it all in my heart.

I will just continue to sing, "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow..." and mean it with every fiber of my being. And mean it so hard that tears might squeeze out of my eyes.

Musing with Gödel

Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand./The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock,/the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.

~Proverbs 30:18-19

What is the destination of a sovereign hand we cannot understand? It's a paradigm that frames our journey in beauty I think.

Faith is where it begins. And faith is where it will end, whether we like it or not.




*here's where this train started*

Character

Christians are Christlike: none deserve the name of Christians that are not so, in their prevailing character....The branch is of the same nature with the stock and root, has the same sap, and bears the same sort of fruit. The members have the same kind of life with the head. It would be strange if Christians should not be of the same temper and spirit that Christ is of; when they are his flesh and his bone, yea are one spirit (1 Cor. 6:17), and live so, that it is not they that live, but Christ that lives in them.

/Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections

Wedding Day

"Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the Church.   /Ephesians 5:31-32

What is this mystery? What is the wonder of what will happen today?

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel....that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.   /Ephesians 3:6, 10

When two incompatible people (made so by sin) are brought together in marriage, and by God made compatible through Christ Jesus, God's infinite wisdom is put on display. And today, God's wisdom will be made famous in mine and H's life, and then, when the real trouble comes in our life together, God's fame will truly resound as sweetly and clearly as the bells that ring today.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Salut!