Dear Flannery,
You wrote that your audience were “the kind of people who think God is dead.” Well, I am deciding that it’s different now. Public sentiment has shifted yet more. I think now you would have had to write for people who think God never existed, and perhaps that’s quite a different thing, or at least a brash and bold escalation.
Of course in a world where God never existed, there is no source or standard for goodness. The world we have today is one that not only denies the presence of God and goodness, but is so angry that the idea of God and goodness persists (if only in the conscience) that it flips good into evil and evil into good as easily as flipping a pancake. It’s Christianity, morality, God, family, freedom, hard work, and country that are the great evils now. And it’s atheism, social justice, "entitlements" (handouts), conformity, lawlessness, force, and humanism that are the great good. Most of those who still personally hold to the former are intimidated into a life of contradiction, silence, and smiling acquiescence. And I’m talking mainstream here, in our homes, schools, churches, administrations, and government. Rarely does anyone speak in any uncertain terms against the evils turned good.
You also wrote, “ I want to make sure that the Devil gets identified as the Devil and not simply taken for this or that psychological tendency.” In our culture today there is no devil as well as no God. And beyond that, evil is past being mistaken for this or that abnormal psychological tendency. Like I said, it is now mistaken for goodness. It doesn’t lurk anymore, it parades. And so we are treated to countless justifications for any evil. There are no mysteries, no miracles, no sins, no punishments, no redemption, just human explanations and human solutions that don't hold water and don't work well or permanently.
Some good people are doing their utmost. But I guess I am a realist. I don’t see things getting any better.
These thoughts seem to be the result of rereading, or rather poring over and over with a furrowed brow, a book that is a collection of your words called Flannery O’Connor, Spiritual Writings. It has a long introduction by a man named Richard Giannone which is helpful for the most part. But one thing I take strong exception to is his take on your story “Revelation.” I think he got it wrong with a capital W. He says “We haven’t lived until we’ve joined the parade,” which is true in the sense that we cannot begin to progress spiritually until we confess our sinful human nature and rely on Christ, but this is not what he meant. He says the story makes the political point that “no group is passed over, no life style excluded” when it comes to “converging on God” and being “held in the church’s arms.” I say, huh? That’s not what you meant. It was Ruby’s personal vision made possible purely through divine grace, not the author of the story on a temporal, multi-culti, sexual-diversity soapbox. What Mrs. Turpin saw with such shock and pain and surprise as she gazed beyond the pig pen on that parade to heaven, and what had the potential to change her into someone new and humble and full of joy, was that she and her ilk were not at the front but bringing up the rear, marching way behind those she considered much lower than herself. Yes, I have just read the last two pages of the story again, and I believe I have it right. “Powerful political point?” Hogwash. Those who believe themselves first shall be last, and those who believe themselves last shall be first.
Shouting hallelujah,
Janice
Spiritual Writings 49, 29, 42, 123-4
Friday, June 17, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Letter #10
Dear Flannery,
People around me are dropping like flies. Not so much bodily, although my elderly across-the-street neighbors of 27 years have died a year apart, the husband and now the wife, and just this week their stately red brick house set on its hill, emptied, and got a For Sale sign stuck in its lawn. No, it's souls that are dying, deep down, which I think is much more sad. Physically we’ll all die one day, no exceptions. But we don’t have to be dead to anything right and good, ever.
The last few weeks I have been in a state of marveling over this phenomenon, which of course is a big waste of time. Marvel not, said the Lord, this is the way things are. I should know this by now, by my own experience with my own flawed self, aided by all this reading of wisdom I’ve been doing coming from the greatest thinkers the world has ever known, including you, plus all the practice I get by living in these times. Why can't I get it into my head that it’s always been this way, there’s nothing new under the sun, a good man is hard to . . . Yes, but these unprecedented incidents are now creeping up on me right where I live, surprising me, and leaving me in a foggy heap as if I hadn't learned a thing about any of it.
They are stacking up, but here's one case in point. I was recently asked to give a presentation at a luncheon to a small group of older women in my church. But when I let the powers that be know what I would feel capable of presenting (the information in my newest, gentle, reader-friendly book about certain basic truths and certainties being grossly misrepresented and denied in our culture today), I was turned down. Not only turned down, but told in writing that my subject was "not applicable," that the “rejection” I was “feeling” was not “intentional," and that I should improve my personality and better fulfill my duties. And here I thought that the topic was indisputably applicable, that it was intentionally rejected, and that me improving my personality and fulfilling my duties would have been some of the benefits of the little exercise!(There I go fogging up again.)
Bear in mind that much-promoted recent presenters at said luncheons have included a lady who displayed and discussed her plethora of puffy homemade quilts and a lady who treated everyone to an exuberant travelogue of her trip to Jerusalem. (I luxuriated in the quilts, but didn’t make it to the Holy Land.)
Are these your "good country people?" But I think it's worse than that. Like you said, "Ignorance is excusable when it is borne like a cross, but when it is wielded like an ax, it becomes something else indeed" (Mystery and Manners, 189-90).
This is the world, our culture, as it is now, just more of what you saw. There is still plenty to enjoy on its surface, like fancy luncheons, pretty quilts, and trips although second-hand to interesting places. But its heart has stopped beating. It has become an empty shell.
I don't know whether to give up or go back to the drawing board.
Your foiled friend,
J.
People around me are dropping like flies. Not so much bodily, although my elderly across-the-street neighbors of 27 years have died a year apart, the husband and now the wife, and just this week their stately red brick house set on its hill, emptied, and got a For Sale sign stuck in its lawn. No, it's souls that are dying, deep down, which I think is much more sad. Physically we’ll all die one day, no exceptions. But we don’t have to be dead to anything right and good, ever.
The last few weeks I have been in a state of marveling over this phenomenon, which of course is a big waste of time. Marvel not, said the Lord, this is the way things are. I should know this by now, by my own experience with my own flawed self, aided by all this reading of wisdom I’ve been doing coming from the greatest thinkers the world has ever known, including you, plus all the practice I get by living in these times. Why can't I get it into my head that it’s always been this way, there’s nothing new under the sun, a good man is hard to . . . Yes, but these unprecedented incidents are now creeping up on me right where I live, surprising me, and leaving me in a foggy heap as if I hadn't learned a thing about any of it.
They are stacking up, but here's one case in point. I was recently asked to give a presentation at a luncheon to a small group of older women in my church. But when I let the powers that be know what I would feel capable of presenting (the information in my newest, gentle, reader-friendly book about certain basic truths and certainties being grossly misrepresented and denied in our culture today), I was turned down. Not only turned down, but told in writing that my subject was "not applicable," that the “rejection” I was “feeling” was not “intentional," and that I should improve my personality and better fulfill my duties. And here I thought that the topic was indisputably applicable, that it was intentionally rejected, and that me improving my personality and fulfilling my duties would have been some of the benefits of the little exercise!(There I go fogging up again.)
Bear in mind that much-promoted recent presenters at said luncheons have included a lady who displayed and discussed her plethora of puffy homemade quilts and a lady who treated everyone to an exuberant travelogue of her trip to Jerusalem. (I luxuriated in the quilts, but didn’t make it to the Holy Land.)
Are these your "good country people?" But I think it's worse than that. Like you said, "Ignorance is excusable when it is borne like a cross, but when it is wielded like an ax, it becomes something else indeed" (Mystery and Manners, 189-90).
This is the world, our culture, as it is now, just more of what you saw. There is still plenty to enjoy on its surface, like fancy luncheons, pretty quilts, and trips although second-hand to interesting places. But its heart has stopped beating. It has become an empty shell.
I don't know whether to give up or go back to the drawing board.
Your foiled friend,
J.
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