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May 18, 2006
Muriel Spark on Faith
or is it?
from The Girls of Slender Means
Muriel SparkJane was suddenly overcome by a deep envy of Joanna, the source of which she could not locate exactly at that hour of her youth. The feeling was connected with an inner knowledge of Joanna's disinterestedness, her ability, a gift, to forget herself and her personality. Jane felt suddenly miserable, as one who has been cast out of Eden before realising that it had in fact been Eden. She recalled two ideas about Joanna that she had gathered from various observations made by Nicholas: that Joanna's enthusiasm for poetry was limited to one kind, and that Joanna was the slightest bit melancholy on the religious side; these thoughts failed to comfort Jane.
The Girls of Slender Means really does play to an ensemble class. While Jane and Nicholas do occupy a large portion of our attention, there are interludes of Joanna, Selina, Greggie, and others, so that no one voice seems to dominate the novel. And what Ms. Spark has to say about the life of faith comes through crystal clear in the persons of Joanna and Collie and in the excerpts of poetry included.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
On the Immigration Issue
I have little useful to say, and am reluctant for fear of the controversy it will engender to say it. Nevertheless: consider the people as people, individuals, first. What best demonstrates love and charity in our present situation and what will best demonstrate it as we move forward. Let charity be our standard for anything that might be written into law, in material fact or in our hearts.
There. Perhaps I've avoided controversy. It's the most I can say and the least. Let God's will be done in how I demonstrate love to my neighbor.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hymn from Evening Prayer
Coupled with the thoughts that provoked the piece below, this really spoke to me this evening:
from a hymn by Fred Pratt Green
In the just reward of labor
God's will is done;
In the help we give our neighbor,
God's will is done;
In our world-wide task of caring
For the hungry and despairing,
In the harvests men are sharing,
God's will is done.
I don't know the proper attribution. If anyone does and will leave it for me, I'll correct this post. Thanks.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
May 19, 2006
The Girls of Slender Means
Kensington between VE and VJ day. Days of rationing and loose living, days of saints and sinners. Meet Nicholas, who when one first encounters him is dead in a foreign land, to all eyes apparently a martyr. Meet Jane who works for a publisher and makes much of her money through forging hard-luck letters to get the signatures of famous people which she sells to a local book-dealer. Her great disappointment in life, a typed note card from GBS who says that because she asks for no money, he will not sign the note, his signature being sometimes worth a few shillings. Meet Selina, a woman of not terribly proper conduct who chants the great chant of self esteem even when everything around her is going up in flames. Meet Joanna who gives elocution lessons, much of her initial work centered around The Wreck of the Deutschland. This is only a small circle of the cast of characters that populates this wonderful, insightful, and incisive novel. If Miss Jean Brodie represents perfection and if perfection must be granted only to one novel, then this one so closely approaches it as it makes for a hard time to distinguish the two in quality. Here is the same large cast and the same message of faith and salvation couched in a new way.
The reader cannot fail to be amazed at the many, many different faces of Ms. Spark as she marches relentlessly toward one goal--a life of meaning, meaning found only in the proper worship of God and the proper service of God--meaning that is without substance outside of the eternal verities.
Highly recommended. If you must read only two Muriel Spark novels, this must be one of them. (Of course Miss Jean Brodie is the other.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 7:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
New Commenting Policy
Because of the enormous flood of spam comments of recent date, I am chaning my commenting policy. There will now be a short (or perhaps lengthy) delay (all depends on when I can get to it) before any comment will be published. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I am spending more time editing out spam than I would do approving the few comments I get.
If you make a comment and it doesn't show up here, simply fire off an e-mail and I'll get to it.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:05 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Apologies
I did something stupid to my settings this morning or yesterday evening and made everything vanish from my site. Sorry. Hopefully by the time I publish this it will all be restored.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nietzsche Quotation
I am no big fan of Nietzsche, but I stumbled across this as I was checking out the FLICKR site (believe it or not for work purposes--aggregated hierarchal schema). And I thought it insightful.
The mother of excess is not joy but joylessness.
Possibly why moderation and temperance are Christian virtues. Or are they values? Either way, moderation and temperance tend to be important in Christian circles.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 9:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Current Reading List
Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl (Yes, still)
The Abbess of Crewe Muriel Spark
Descent into Hell Charles Williams
On the horizon
Symposium, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, The Hothouse by the East River, and about six others by Murial Spark. Really a favorite among the non-mystery non-SF set.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 2:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
An Abbey in Its Time
from The Abbess of Crewe
Muriel Spark"In these days," the Abbess had said to her closest nuns, "we must form new monastic combines. The ages of the Father and of the Son are past. We have entered the age of the Holy Ghost. The wind bloweth where it listeth and it listeth most certainly on the Abbey of Crewe. I am a Benedictine with the Benedictines, a Jesuit with the Jesuits. I was elected Abbess and I stay the Abbess and I move as the Spirit moves me."
One wonders about what she might be talking. Surely we haven't ever encountered anyone who might declare to know more than revealed truth, one who insists that one's own way has been marked out specially by the Spirit so that what one wishes to do is exactly what the Spirit would have one do?
This is Muriel Spark at her most oblique and most perfect. And I will have to absorb the rest of the context to remark upon it with any acumen. But given this early off-the-blocks passage, I have high hopes for a most interesting novel.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:04 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
A View of Suffering and Joy
from Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. FranklThe attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.
It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys. Take as an example something that happened on our journey from Auschwitz to the camp affiliated with Dachau. We had all been afraid that our transport was heading for the Mauthausen camp. We became more and more tense as we approached a certain bridge over the Danube which the train would have to cross to reach Mauthausen, according to the statement of experience traveling companions. Those who have never seen anything similar cannot possibly imagine the dance of joy performed in the carriage by the prisoners when they saw that our transport was not crossing the bridge and was instead heading "only" for Dachau.
Suffering fills the available space. Nearly everyone has had that experience. Whatever cold we have now is the worst cold we have ever had. Whatever sorrow we are experiencing now is the worst sorrow we have ever or can ever endure.
What had never occurred to be is that joy is similar. The joy I feel at this moment is the greatest joy possible and so it is with all possible joy.
God lavishes His gifts in the extreme, not in the middle ground. God does not care for the lukewarm (witness His statement to Laodicea). So rejoice or suffer, but do it all in the fullness of what it is to God, for each is His will and gift for the moment.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 8:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 20, 2006
Dante
Dante Online | Indice delle Opere
An elegant site present a range of Dante's works in the original Italian or Latin and with English translations for many. Much to explore here.
Posted by Steven Riddle at 11:31 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack