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May 19, 2006
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 May 19, 2006 8:04 PM
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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?
You're kidding, right? Of course we have.
Posted by: Brandon Field at May 20, 2006 11:54 PM
Dear Brandon,
Yes, I'm kidding. It was the mildest way I could think to phrase what I was trying to get at. And it doesn't apply to things merely religious. Often it seems that there are a great many people who think that their own ways have received the "Holy Spirit Stamp of Approval." Whenever I edge toward that feeling, I know that I'm way off-track.
Thanks for writing.
shalom,
Steven
Posted by: Steven Riddle at May 21, 2006 9:45 AM
As you can see by the timestamp on my comment (minus 1 hour, since I'm west of you), at certain hours I am not capable of processing irony and prose simultaneously.
Posted by: Brandon Field at May 22, 2006 2:53 PM