Dear Flannery,
I am writing. Stories. It's tortuous and discouraging and fun. I started them years ago and they have sat and waited most of that time. I have revised them periodically, hoping to improve them, and am now determined to finish them off, as far as I can do it.
I have also been reading a great deal, 75 books this past year and 80-something the year before. My reading and rereading of excellent writing (including yours) I hope will help improve mine. I don't think I have a gift in that way; I have to work very hard, but then maybe that dogged willingness is a gift itself, my gift. I do have a lot I want to say that is of the greatest interest to me and, from what I've read, to you, and to many thoughtful people.
My stories are not at all what I would have thought they'd be in my younger days when I dreamed of writing. The "sugary slice of inspirational pie," as you put it, was burned out of me some years back, thank goodness. No, they are not sweet. They are not Do Unto Others stories. They are not massage therapy. They are, or are meant to be, heart surgery. They are dark stories. Darkness through which I hope Light will become intelligible. Bad things happen in them. Badness against which real goodness can be seen in contrast. At least I hope they are those things. Your stories, written with such skill that people think they are great even if they don't get them, are my teachers, my ideals. While I can't seem to think up such "large and startling figures" as you did, and I don't know if I am "shouting" as loud as you did, literarily speaking, I do know your audience hasn't changed, except to get blinder and deafer.
I wish you were here to read my stories and tell me what you think of them, like you did with your friends while you were here. But alas, you are gone. How can I know if they work? I did get some interest in one of them a while back. But after two or three back-and-forths, the editor quite suddenly backed out. I suppose it just wasn't good enough.
What I want to do is get out of my box. The only way to do that is to write better, in a bigger way. I don't want to write stories for or about members of my particular church. I want to write stories for and about human beings.
I am in the process of doing just that. I have 12 stories to work with. They need tweaking. I've tweaked two so far and I think it's working, although it's like wrenching my brain out of my head. I am getting to like these new versions a little. May I send you a story? Or pretend to?
Wishing you were here,
J.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Lettter #16
Dear Flannery,
I made a mistake in buying a book written by a couple of "interleckshuls." You spelled it something like that. Ha-ha.
It's really not so funny. The book seemed to hold such noble promise, especially with such a resplendent title as All Things Shining, and such an intriguing subtitle as Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. With our modern technology providing access to every book in existence, old and new, new and used, my money was winging through cyber-space with the touch of a few buttons on my computer and the book arrived in my mailbox in a few days.
Halfway through I have ground to a disappointed halt. I begin to see what university professors Dreyfus and Kelly are about. And it's too bad. Oh they begin very well by pointing out how our modern secular culture has become based on nothing, nihilistic, empty of purpose and meaning. They show how destructive this is for everyone and everything. They make a good case for how ridding the world of all things sacred has caused us to feel lost and sad. But here's the rub (meaning impediment--I've come to Shakespeare in my Lifetime Reading Plan and just finished Hamlet. It's rubbing off on me.) They totally misrepresent Christianity, saying it's all about Jesus' love being a "mood" which is something you can magically catch by "hanging out with him" (like the chicken pox?) that will make you want to, say, give your life for others supposedly like he did. What they mean by this is that Christianity is all about just being a nice person, which of course need not be a religious undertaking at all and in that case most of us don't need any Divine Redeemer. Strange, they don't seem to wonder why he gave his life. But it doesn't matter anyway because these guys later point out that Christianity won't do because it's all about "embodiment" and they want something abstract, outside us, something that transcends. Too bad they didn't do their homework.
Belittling and misunderstanding Christ in the midst of all their learnedness, these authors decide we should all go further back, B.C., to Homer's representation of the lofty ancient Greek polytheism. (Funny, in my recent studies I found that world clouded over with multiple gods and demi-gods who often thought and acted like flawed capricious humans with some superhuman powers dispersed among them, more like super-dangerous humans than gods.) I suppose the last half of the book is going to tell me why a new age polytheism is such a good idea. Ho-hum. Trumping up any old meaning to try and make sense of this meaningless secular world is not good enough for me. I wonder why it should be good enough for anybody.
It may be that they have been convinced that Christianity has to be false or lacking, so they don't bother to study into it in any depth. That's a popular view. And yet they admit it changed the world radically, like nothing else. Methinks these interleckshuls doth protest too much. It seems they must arch and twist and contort their cluttered brains for a way to avoid Christ, like a couple of bookish Hazel Moteses. Again, from Hamlet,
Their words fly up, their thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.
J.
I made a mistake in buying a book written by a couple of "interleckshuls." You spelled it something like that. Ha-ha.
It's really not so funny. The book seemed to hold such noble promise, especially with such a resplendent title as All Things Shining, and such an intriguing subtitle as Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. With our modern technology providing access to every book in existence, old and new, new and used, my money was winging through cyber-space with the touch of a few buttons on my computer and the book arrived in my mailbox in a few days.
Halfway through I have ground to a disappointed halt. I begin to see what university professors Dreyfus and Kelly are about. And it's too bad. Oh they begin very well by pointing out how our modern secular culture has become based on nothing, nihilistic, empty of purpose and meaning. They show how destructive this is for everyone and everything. They make a good case for how ridding the world of all things sacred has caused us to feel lost and sad. But here's the rub (meaning impediment--I've come to Shakespeare in my Lifetime Reading Plan and just finished Hamlet. It's rubbing off on me.) They totally misrepresent Christianity, saying it's all about Jesus' love being a "mood" which is something you can magically catch by "hanging out with him" (like the chicken pox?) that will make you want to, say, give your life for others supposedly like he did. What they mean by this is that Christianity is all about just being a nice person, which of course need not be a religious undertaking at all and in that case most of us don't need any Divine Redeemer. Strange, they don't seem to wonder why he gave his life. But it doesn't matter anyway because these guys later point out that Christianity won't do because it's all about "embodiment" and they want something abstract, outside us, something that transcends. Too bad they didn't do their homework.
Belittling and misunderstanding Christ in the midst of all their learnedness, these authors decide we should all go further back, B.C., to Homer's representation of the lofty ancient Greek polytheism. (Funny, in my recent studies I found that world clouded over with multiple gods and demi-gods who often thought and acted like flawed capricious humans with some superhuman powers dispersed among them, more like super-dangerous humans than gods.) I suppose the last half of the book is going to tell me why a new age polytheism is such a good idea. Ho-hum. Trumping up any old meaning to try and make sense of this meaningless secular world is not good enough for me. I wonder why it should be good enough for anybody.
It may be that they have been convinced that Christianity has to be false or lacking, so they don't bother to study into it in any depth. That's a popular view. And yet they admit it changed the world radically, like nothing else. Methinks these interleckshuls doth protest too much. It seems they must arch and twist and contort their cluttered brains for a way to avoid Christ, like a couple of bookish Hazel Moteses. Again, from Hamlet,
Their words fly up, their thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go.
J.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Letter #15
Dear Flannery,
The other day I was helping sell books at an annual convention for therapists and psychologists who gather together to discuss the discipline under the canopy of religion, as members of our Church, when my husband and I were invited to join some intelligent and highly educated professionals at their luncheon table. Bear in mind that among these were people I have appreciated and admired greatly for some years. To my disappointment, the conversation went very wrong.
As I sat there listening to the conversation I realized with a start that it was just as you said: they were totally mistaking the devil for this or that psychological tendency! In our mainstream society today almost limitless sexual immorality is embraced in large part because of political pressure, fear, intimidation, and misinformation. Even some of the churches with the most strict rules for sexual conduct are softening on an institutional/doctrinal level toward what used to be considered unspeakable and sinful temptations and practices. (To give you an idea, there are churches that now ordain proudly and openly homosexual clergy who are "married" to their same sex partner.)
According to our luncheon companions, patients who experience and entertain (by whatever means) totally out-of-bounds sexual feelings must be encouraged to totally free themselves of all shame and guilt; otherwise they will be overwhelmed and make no progress in understanding, controlling, or redirecting said feelings. To this I asked what was so wrong with shame and guilt if it's justified? I said that I myself appreciated those feelings as warnings that I needed some correction. Eyebrows went up. I said none of us are very wise or brave or pure or good (a fact that is popularly overlooked) so why should we coddle and flatter the sexually wayward/troubled/addicted? Forks went down. I said why not try the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as in teaching that God loves us immeasurably, that we are fallen creatures, and that we need to continually repent through the merits of Christ? Someone might have choked slightly on their chicken manicotti.
To top it off, they argued that erasing the sinful stigma attached to sexual abominations (they didn't use the Biblical word abominations; nobody does anymore) is what we must do to facilitate discourse and heal relations with the opposition (whom they apparently forgot is the devil). When I said, what business is that of ours? I saw some rather shocked and serious faces.
Of course the opposition won't be appeased until God and His goodness have been gotten rid of completely. In fact, any kind of opposition to sexual freedom is increasingly being punished, fined, disallowed, and demonized, religious conscience notwithstanding. There's even a movement to not just discredit but outlaw the very type of therapy these people practice, even if it aims to merely diminish homosexual desires. It's as if these church friends believe they are operating in some special bubble.
Finally, when I asked them which way, Christ's (truth) or theirs (flattery), could teach the patient more about humility, patience and other Christ-like traits, and which would teach them more about pride, selfishness, and other devilish traits, they were speechess. Their final rejoinder was, "I think we're really agreed, just using different words." But of course in reality we were talking about completely opposite things.
You saw all of this coming. So, you want to know what my worst fear is?
My worst fear is that I, me, myself, will be caught up in the flow of it all, that I'll slowly, incrementally, step by tiny step, inside my head, without realizing it, give way, bit by bit, and be swept along in the lukewarm river of spineless public sentiment, of Godlessness, ease, popularity, obliviousness, complacency, humanism, pride, lies, vanity, and mediocrity. No more transcendent ideals. No more absolute truths. No more spiritual certainties. Only the subjective ego and the brainwashed, secularist public blindly trusting that whoever happens to be in charge will somehow turn out to behave benevolently towards them. The only sins commitable will have to do with now stodgy-sounding traditional, Godly virtues.Tyranny and disorder and arbitrary edicts will arise, so slowly we won't see the big picture until we're drowning in meaninglessness, oppression, despair, filth, and decay.
I can feel that I am not immune to losing my way, at first just a little, until I've lost it completely. The strength and ingeniousness of the pressure is unprecedented, so how can a little hobbit like me withstand it?
Yes, I'm trying to be vigilant. I'm praying and studying and exercising my faith. Of course this only makes the distortions, the softening, the pervasiveness, and the omissions more incredible and troubling. It's true that when I give in to feeling sentimental and overwhelmed and fretful and discouraged and bitter (these are some of my sins) I often end up feeling that generous divine grace humbling me, throwing me back on God, teaching me to trust in Him, rather than in any human being or institution. But, just as I enjoy witnessing the morning sun peek over the mountain (I follow Thoreau's advice to watch the sunrise each day in order to keep my sanity, or as my sister-in-law called it, my "sunity") and must soon look away for its brilliance, I don't seem to be able to continuously entertain that bright grace and I find myself time and again trying to see through some degree of darkness. Will I never learn? I suppose that doesn't matter. What matters is if I keep wanting to.
I wonder if fifty years ago you imagined that you would be a help to someone like me.
J.
The other day I was helping sell books at an annual convention for therapists and psychologists who gather together to discuss the discipline under the canopy of religion, as members of our Church, when my husband and I were invited to join some intelligent and highly educated professionals at their luncheon table. Bear in mind that among these were people I have appreciated and admired greatly for some years. To my disappointment, the conversation went very wrong.
As I sat there listening to the conversation I realized with a start that it was just as you said: they were totally mistaking the devil for this or that psychological tendency! In our mainstream society today almost limitless sexual immorality is embraced in large part because of political pressure, fear, intimidation, and misinformation. Even some of the churches with the most strict rules for sexual conduct are softening on an institutional/doctrinal level toward what used to be considered unspeakable and sinful temptations and practices. (To give you an idea, there are churches that now ordain proudly and openly homosexual clergy who are "married" to their same sex partner.)
According to our luncheon companions, patients who experience and entertain (by whatever means) totally out-of-bounds sexual feelings must be encouraged to totally free themselves of all shame and guilt; otherwise they will be overwhelmed and make no progress in understanding, controlling, or redirecting said feelings. To this I asked what was so wrong with shame and guilt if it's justified? I said that I myself appreciated those feelings as warnings that I needed some correction. Eyebrows went up. I said none of us are very wise or brave or pure or good (a fact that is popularly overlooked) so why should we coddle and flatter the sexually wayward/troubled/addicted? Forks went down. I said why not try the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as in teaching that God loves us immeasurably, that we are fallen creatures, and that we need to continually repent through the merits of Christ? Someone might have choked slightly on their chicken manicotti.
To top it off, they argued that erasing the sinful stigma attached to sexual abominations (they didn't use the Biblical word abominations; nobody does anymore) is what we must do to facilitate discourse and heal relations with the opposition (whom they apparently forgot is the devil). When I said, what business is that of ours? I saw some rather shocked and serious faces.
Of course the opposition won't be appeased until God and His goodness have been gotten rid of completely. In fact, any kind of opposition to sexual freedom is increasingly being punished, fined, disallowed, and demonized, religious conscience notwithstanding. There's even a movement to not just discredit but outlaw the very type of therapy these people practice, even if it aims to merely diminish homosexual desires. It's as if these church friends believe they are operating in some special bubble.
Finally, when I asked them which way, Christ's (truth) or theirs (flattery), could teach the patient more about humility, patience and other Christ-like traits, and which would teach them more about pride, selfishness, and other devilish traits, they were speechess. Their final rejoinder was, "I think we're really agreed, just using different words." But of course in reality we were talking about completely opposite things.
You saw all of this coming. So, you want to know what my worst fear is?
My worst fear is that I, me, myself, will be caught up in the flow of it all, that I'll slowly, incrementally, step by tiny step, inside my head, without realizing it, give way, bit by bit, and be swept along in the lukewarm river of spineless public sentiment, of Godlessness, ease, popularity, obliviousness, complacency, humanism, pride, lies, vanity, and mediocrity. No more transcendent ideals. No more absolute truths. No more spiritual certainties. Only the subjective ego and the brainwashed, secularist public blindly trusting that whoever happens to be in charge will somehow turn out to behave benevolently towards them. The only sins commitable will have to do with now stodgy-sounding traditional, Godly virtues.Tyranny and disorder and arbitrary edicts will arise, so slowly we won't see the big picture until we're drowning in meaninglessness, oppression, despair, filth, and decay.
I can feel that I am not immune to losing my way, at first just a little, until I've lost it completely. The strength and ingeniousness of the pressure is unprecedented, so how can a little hobbit like me withstand it?
Yes, I'm trying to be vigilant. I'm praying and studying and exercising my faith. Of course this only makes the distortions, the softening, the pervasiveness, and the omissions more incredible and troubling. It's true that when I give in to feeling sentimental and overwhelmed and fretful and discouraged and bitter (these are some of my sins) I often end up feeling that generous divine grace humbling me, throwing me back on God, teaching me to trust in Him, rather than in any human being or institution. But, just as I enjoy witnessing the morning sun peek over the mountain (I follow Thoreau's advice to watch the sunrise each day in order to keep my sanity, or as my sister-in-law called it, my "sunity") and must soon look away for its brilliance, I don't seem to be able to continuously entertain that bright grace and I find myself time and again trying to see through some degree of darkness. Will I never learn? I suppose that doesn't matter. What matters is if I keep wanting to.
I wonder if fifty years ago you imagined that you would be a help to someone like me.
J.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Letter #14
Dear Flannery,
"All the best people are dead," said Monsignor Gilbey. But it may not be true! I have found someone like you---alive. He was born at the end of World War II and is now in his 60s. He is Britain's best-known intellectual and political conservative, and because of that, known in academia as Public Enemy Number One.
His name is Roger Scruton and I got a copy of one of his books, Gentle Regrets, and am reading it again right after finishing it. This time I am going more slowly, hoping for an increase in grasping and remembering. Of course there is some that is above my head and I have to keep my French-English dictionary handy, but I get enough to love it. He often says the same things you did, in different words.
You would like him very much I think. He's a Christian with a great respect for rituals and rites, traditions and sacraments, for true beauty in art and music and architecture and literature. He is a professor of aesthetics, the definition of which I had to again look up: the study of fine art. And he explains why we must seek out and treasure and conserve truth and order and goodness.
I mean, doesn't this sound like you?
"A religion without orthodoxy is destined to be swept away by the first breath of doubt."
". . . faith transfigures everything it touches and raises the world to God."
(writing about "a letter from Catholic Bishops in England and Wales to the Pope in Rome, lamenting the decline in their congregations, and calling for a teaching and a practice that would be more relevant to the needs of today): What an absurd demand - to be relevant! Was Christ relevant? To be relevant means to accept the standard of the world in which you are, and therefore to cease to aspire beyond it. Relevance is not merely an un-Christian but an anti-Christian ambition."
"Christian charity is now entirely misunderstood, as a kind of collective effort to improve the world."
Quoting Gilbey, "We are not asked to undo the work of creation or to rectify the Fall. The duty of a Christian is not to leave this world a better place. His duty is to leave this world a better man."
"Those brought up in our post-religious society do not seek forgiveness, since they are by and large free from the belief that they need it." And "The triumph of sin comes with our failure to perceive it."
"However much we study the evolution of the human species, however much we meddle with nature's secrets, we will not discover the way of freedom, since this is not the way of the flesh.
Freedom, love and duty come to us as a vision of eternity, and to know them is to know God."
"Whatever its defects, my life has enabled me to find comfort in uncomfortable truths."
And there is so much more.
He liked dogs and horses rather than chickens and peacocks, but wouldn't you like him nevertheless?
J.
"All the best people are dead," said Monsignor Gilbey. But it may not be true! I have found someone like you---alive. He was born at the end of World War II and is now in his 60s. He is Britain's best-known intellectual and political conservative, and because of that, known in academia as Public Enemy Number One.
His name is Roger Scruton and I got a copy of one of his books, Gentle Regrets, and am reading it again right after finishing it. This time I am going more slowly, hoping for an increase in grasping and remembering. Of course there is some that is above my head and I have to keep my French-English dictionary handy, but I get enough to love it. He often says the same things you did, in different words.
You would like him very much I think. He's a Christian with a great respect for rituals and rites, traditions and sacraments, for true beauty in art and music and architecture and literature. He is a professor of aesthetics, the definition of which I had to again look up: the study of fine art. And he explains why we must seek out and treasure and conserve truth and order and goodness.
I mean, doesn't this sound like you?
"A religion without orthodoxy is destined to be swept away by the first breath of doubt."
". . . faith transfigures everything it touches and raises the world to God."
(writing about "a letter from Catholic Bishops in England and Wales to the Pope in Rome, lamenting the decline in their congregations, and calling for a teaching and a practice that would be more relevant to the needs of today): What an absurd demand - to be relevant! Was Christ relevant? To be relevant means to accept the standard of the world in which you are, and therefore to cease to aspire beyond it. Relevance is not merely an un-Christian but an anti-Christian ambition."
"Christian charity is now entirely misunderstood, as a kind of collective effort to improve the world."
Quoting Gilbey, "We are not asked to undo the work of creation or to rectify the Fall. The duty of a Christian is not to leave this world a better place. His duty is to leave this world a better man."
"Those brought up in our post-religious society do not seek forgiveness, since they are by and large free from the belief that they need it." And "The triumph of sin comes with our failure to perceive it."
"However much we study the evolution of the human species, however much we meddle with nature's secrets, we will not discover the way of freedom, since this is not the way of the flesh.
Freedom, love and duty come to us as a vision of eternity, and to know them is to know God."
"Whatever its defects, my life has enabled me to find comfort in uncomfortable truths."
And there is so much more.
He liked dogs and horses rather than chickens and peacocks, but wouldn't you like him nevertheless?
J.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Letter #13
Dear Flannery,
You would be delighted to hear that a situation so like what happens in your story "The Enduring Chill" came to my attention, that I thought of it and had to read the story out loud to my husband and we enjoyed it greatly. So sad and so funny. How we ought to learn to laugh at ourselves!
I fear I am becoming like one of your literary freaks. There is dead silence when I say things in the company of others outside my family, and this is understandable; the things I say are so very foreign from what one commonly hears. And the conversations I have with those who ought to know, turn out to be disappointing at the very least.
Since my last letter I have been thinking about my sentimentality that I feel could so easily turn to bitterness. What if it isn't sentimentality or bitterness at all, but a yearning for sincerity and truth? Okay, I get it, nobody's perfect. There is always some hypocrisy and pride and self-interest and vainglory in all of us. But what if it is evil I'm confronted with? What then?
I'm talking real evil here. Not just human foibles, but a thumbing of the nose at God, a winking at reality and truth, a turning one's back on elemental goodness and allowing its direct opposite to take root.
In former times all such peddlers of foolishness and debauchery would have been run out of town. Not anymore. Our good people now shudder to make judgments, even on principles. They squirm with discomfort at the idea of contending. In refusing to fight, they endure, then pity, then embrace, as Alexander Pope put it.
Yes, there are some who just follow along unthinkingly, floating down a lazy river like children on inner tubes in summer. God only knows who is truly accountable, but I think if we don't stand agin' the devil, we might as well be for 'im.
Things are so crazy lately, I fear I'll go crazy myself from the backlash. That would be just what the devil wants, wouldn't it? Your books and others help me stay sane. Still, I find myself wishing it would all hurry up and totally and incontrovertibly fall apart so we could begin again. It's hard to live amidst one new devilry after another (Tolkien).
Sitting tight,
J.
You would be delighted to hear that a situation so like what happens in your story "The Enduring Chill" came to my attention, that I thought of it and had to read the story out loud to my husband and we enjoyed it greatly. So sad and so funny. How we ought to learn to laugh at ourselves!
I fear I am becoming like one of your literary freaks. There is dead silence when I say things in the company of others outside my family, and this is understandable; the things I say are so very foreign from what one commonly hears. And the conversations I have with those who ought to know, turn out to be disappointing at the very least.
Since my last letter I have been thinking about my sentimentality that I feel could so easily turn to bitterness. What if it isn't sentimentality or bitterness at all, but a yearning for sincerity and truth? Okay, I get it, nobody's perfect. There is always some hypocrisy and pride and self-interest and vainglory in all of us. But what if it is evil I'm confronted with? What then?
I'm talking real evil here. Not just human foibles, but a thumbing of the nose at God, a winking at reality and truth, a turning one's back on elemental goodness and allowing its direct opposite to take root.
In former times all such peddlers of foolishness and debauchery would have been run out of town. Not anymore. Our good people now shudder to make judgments, even on principles. They squirm with discomfort at the idea of contending. In refusing to fight, they endure, then pity, then embrace, as Alexander Pope put it.
Yes, there are some who just follow along unthinkingly, floating down a lazy river like children on inner tubes in summer. God only knows who is truly accountable, but I think if we don't stand agin' the devil, we might as well be for 'im.
Things are so crazy lately, I fear I'll go crazy myself from the backlash. That would be just what the devil wants, wouldn't it? Your books and others help me stay sane. Still, I find myself wishing it would all hurry up and totally and incontrovertibly fall apart so we could begin again. It's hard to live amidst one new devilry after another (Tolkien).
Sitting tight,
J.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Letter #12
Dear Flannery,
It is difficult to describe a person’s wholehearted love and loyalty to her church. It encompasses one, like a radiant impenetrable shield. I believe you and I share that same distinct feeling for our respective churches. Like you I was raised in my church, its precepts and practices have been primary constants in my everyday life. In my family our faith goes back generations. Prayer, scripture, church meetings and programs, service, baptism, the Holy Ghost, sacraments, priesthood, temples, are all part of the steadfast and immovable whole. Being a member of my Church has been an identity as much as being a human being, a female, a daughter, a wife, a mother.
You said, "The cultural climate should make no difference in what the Church teaches" (59). You talked about how all human beings are fallible, priests certainly being no exception, but that the Church generally must not teach error. "The Church stands for and preserves always what is larger than human understanding" (90). But I wonder how you would have reacted if your Church actually did "fail to hold her own?"
I am glad you are not here to see what is happening to religion today. I’ve mentioned before that, sad to say, under political, financial, and social pressures, many churches are actually watering down their doctrines, winking at their principles, and widening their policies to go along with the radically secular and sexually permissive cultural climate. You might say everlasting truths are being conveniently ignored. It seems that many churches want to keep their institutions going and at the same time keep up with the "enlightened"world. It is what you called "the vaporization of religion"( 74). I find myself praying for my church, praying for yours, praying for all churches, that they will stand firm for truth and goodness in the heat of this dreadful culture war.
Why would a church presume to exist when it says and does things that contradict its own foundational, transcendent truths? If to the world it doesn't stand for anything truly religious and eternal, it cannot with integrity say or teach anything truly religious or eternal. More and more, America's bastions of faith founded on man's eternal relationship to God now present themselves as, in your words, more Elks Clubs or community centers (39, 74).
You said to “A,” “your pain at the Church's [faults] is "a sign of your nearness to God" 83. I think many people today are experiencing the same pain as their churches soften, make compromising statements, and finally effect changes to accommodate the wickedness of the world. It is nice to know this pain could be a sign of nearness to God rather than what others may perceive, which is disloyalty, fault-finding, apostasy, or plain old sour grapes.
It has been said that you approached your Church "with a warm heart and a clear, cold eye" (37). Yes, "You have to suffer as much from the church as for it. You have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it" (75).
Your words: "To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. Charity is hard and endures" (83). To some degree I must have a sentimental view of life because over the years I have sometimes felt the bitterness creeping up on me and have thought a lot about the difference and choice between knowledge and charity. Without charity, realities we must deal with can indeed cause bitterness. So, when we see things we'd rather not see, and know things we'd rather not know, it is only charity, the pure love of Christ (all those impossible-seeming godly qualities like patience, long-suffering, humility, selflessness) that will save us from drowning in an ocean of bitterness.
Yours, "thrown back on the living God" (141),
J.
Flannery O'Connor, Spiritual Writings, edited by Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books, 2003.
It is difficult to describe a person’s wholehearted love and loyalty to her church. It encompasses one, like a radiant impenetrable shield. I believe you and I share that same distinct feeling for our respective churches. Like you I was raised in my church, its precepts and practices have been primary constants in my everyday life. In my family our faith goes back generations. Prayer, scripture, church meetings and programs, service, baptism, the Holy Ghost, sacraments, priesthood, temples, are all part of the steadfast and immovable whole. Being a member of my Church has been an identity as much as being a human being, a female, a daughter, a wife, a mother.
You said, "The cultural climate should make no difference in what the Church teaches" (59). You talked about how all human beings are fallible, priests certainly being no exception, but that the Church generally must not teach error. "The Church stands for and preserves always what is larger than human understanding" (90). But I wonder how you would have reacted if your Church actually did "fail to hold her own?"
I am glad you are not here to see what is happening to religion today. I’ve mentioned before that, sad to say, under political, financial, and social pressures, many churches are actually watering down their doctrines, winking at their principles, and widening their policies to go along with the radically secular and sexually permissive cultural climate. You might say everlasting truths are being conveniently ignored. It seems that many churches want to keep their institutions going and at the same time keep up with the "enlightened"world. It is what you called "the vaporization of religion"( 74). I find myself praying for my church, praying for yours, praying for all churches, that they will stand firm for truth and goodness in the heat of this dreadful culture war.
Why would a church presume to exist when it says and does things that contradict its own foundational, transcendent truths? If to the world it doesn't stand for anything truly religious and eternal, it cannot with integrity say or teach anything truly religious or eternal. More and more, America's bastions of faith founded on man's eternal relationship to God now present themselves as, in your words, more Elks Clubs or community centers (39, 74).
You said to “A,” “your pain at the Church's [faults] is "a sign of your nearness to God" 83. I think many people today are experiencing the same pain as their churches soften, make compromising statements, and finally effect changes to accommodate the wickedness of the world. It is nice to know this pain could be a sign of nearness to God rather than what others may perceive, which is disloyalty, fault-finding, apostasy, or plain old sour grapes.
It has been said that you approached your Church "with a warm heart and a clear, cold eye" (37). Yes, "You have to suffer as much from the church as for it. You have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it" (75).
Your words: "To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. Charity is hard and endures" (83). To some degree I must have a sentimental view of life because over the years I have sometimes felt the bitterness creeping up on me and have thought a lot about the difference and choice between knowledge and charity. Without charity, realities we must deal with can indeed cause bitterness. So, when we see things we'd rather not see, and know things we'd rather not know, it is only charity, the pure love of Christ (all those impossible-seeming godly qualities like patience, long-suffering, humility, selflessness) that will save us from drowning in an ocean of bitterness.
Yours, "thrown back on the living God" (141),
J.
Flannery O'Connor, Spiritual Writings, edited by Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books, 2003.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Letter #11
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
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
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