Introspection

I had good intentions, at the beginning of this year, to focus more on this blog. To write more. To create pages for poetry, and for the Christmas posts. And here we are, well into August, and not a word have I put to this endeavour. Not a single alteration has occurred. Indeed, I see that I have again left the Christmas playlist up, far after I could reasonably argue for it being there.

What can I say? This year has been something unlike I have ever lived through before. Something my parents, and sundry aunts and uncles aver, is unlike anything they have ever seen, in spite of living through the upheaval of the 60s and 70s. I do not want to write about any of the extraordinary things that have come upon us in this most singular of years. I have nothing to say that has not been said before-- more eloquently by some, and done to death by others. I do not understand the fear that oppresses and drives so many into behaviours that I find unfathomable, nor why we are discounting so many societal red-flags in the interest of a safety, which, in this case, has nothing whatsoever to do with actually being safe, but has everything to do with not getting sick. Nor I do not understand how the reasonable anger at a cruel and needless death, translates into months of rioting, burning and looting, much less into a wholesale iconoclasm, without even a thread of connection to the original grievance. Nor how we-- an ostensibly civilised society-- can look upon this great upheaval and do nothing at all to stop it. I am a creature of habit, a lover of order and the natural rhythms of ordinary life, where one attends Mass on Sundays, visits with one's friends and family in the evenings, or the weekends. Where the holy days and the holidays are marked with the same, tradition-worn pleasure and comfort with which they are always marked. I cannot comprehend a willingness to allow such an upending of these cycles. It seems that we are in the midst of a great unravelling, and I do not know how to make sense of it. I know that it is not right, nor healthy, nor wholesome, and I have on me a great desire to fight for the return and preservation of these ordinary good and human things.

And yet, for all of the grievances this year has given me, and the anger, outrage, anxiety and panic that have accompanied it, I cannot honestly see it as a bad year. The big and incomprehensible things going on about me... I cannot do anything about them, but live as a good Catholic (or as good as I am able), to pray, to fast when I can, to offer up the daily sufferings (which are manifold and idiotic) for this poor, Godless world. And while the Wide World around me falls apart under the weight of its own hubris, my own, small world has enjoyed much blessing. A particularly troublesome quandary that was plaguing me last autumn, was largely assuaged by a Providential (and completely unexpected) educational opportunity, and even the burdensome lockdowns have given me a breathing space in which I do not have to make any great decisions for my future. A two week precautionary isolation period allowed me the luxury of participating, via livestreams, in all the Holy Week and Easter Week services-- a holy and wholesome experience indeed. The good priest was able to keep our local Catholic church open for visits to the Blessed Sacraments during all of this time (even when he could not celebrate the Mass), so I have gotten into the habit of making daily visits. There is much calm and courage to be gained from this, even if I am a dry and brittle creature, often insensible of its grace.

And the world is still a very beautiful place, full of hopeful new mornings, flaming sunsets, the balm of summer rains coming in unexpected and thunderous downpours in the midst of summer heat. A friend and I have made frequent pilgrimages to that little strip of meadowy land between the Marsh and the sandy edge of the Lake, where chickadees, juncos, wrens and sparrows make noisy communion from the willow breaks. We have walked in the twilight, beneath a sky alive with swallows, when the world is darkening, but the lake holds fast to the silver light. We have seen ravenous young coots, calling pitifully from the shelter of the reeds and cattails, while their harried parents hunt in pools for little silver fish. Have stood on the opposite bank of the river, where it widens into the Lake, and seen a mama black bear, swimming lugubriously in midstream, tossing her head and chuffing at her three timorous cubs, who sat on their furry haunches and refused to follow her into deep water. We have watched the terns and osprey, wheeling for fish, their hover-hunting, and subsequent straight-down plunge, a thing of heart-stopping joy and exhilaration. Have seen the great blue heron make its long, slow flight up from the half-hidden marsh water, its elegance marred by a most ridiculous calling-- as though God, in designing so lovely a creature, gave to it harsh and hilarious voice to keep it humble. We were privileged to see unusual things: the uncommon nighthawks, with their raptors' bodies, and sparrows’ flight, the windows on their wings making for easy identification. A river otter... a river otter, here! I never knew we had them in the mountains.... bounding along the far bank of the river, like a sleek, playful dog before slipping  back into the current with that liquid grace that all water creatures display when they are in their element, however clumsy they might be upon land. The arching leap of small fishes as they went after the mayflies, swarming just above the evening lake, the curve of their straining bodies describing some perfect joy. The pair of summer-bright tanagers-- normally a canopy bird, seen in quick, yellow glimpses as they streak from tree to tree-- feeding among the bitter brush and meadow grasses. Strangely unafraid they were, concerned only with the hunting of seeds, and patient with us for watching.

To me, these are the real things, the important things in life-- the glimpses of a greater beauty, those odd moments when the veil between heaven and earth wears thin, and those little creatures of God somehow manifest a faint, and almost incomprehensible aspect of His own great beauty and perfection. Please understand me here. I do not mean to suggest anything pagan in this, no environmental, New Agey nonsense of God being in and composed of the things of this material realm. I mean that God the Artist (as all great artists do) left behind something of Himself in His works. That His distinctive touch, His fingerprints, are pressed all over His creation, and that in studying it, as one studies a masterpiece in a museum, we are startled to see something of the Artist Himself looking back at us in a way we cannot wholly comprehend. And so we-- in these fleeting moments that somehow have the mark of eternity upon them-- are able to glimpse, ever so dimly, something of God's great glory in the indescribable fire of a cloud-streaked sunset. Something of His gentle care, in that single-minded attention the coots and the bear show to their poor, crying, silly offspring. Something of the sheer exhilarating fineness of Him, in that arrow straight stooping of the tern and osprey. Magnificent as these things are, they are poor images of God Himself, and yet, for that bare instant in which we are able to glimpse it, we have the immense privilege of looking through the veil, through the tangle of the temporal, and seeing (imperfectly) the Face of God. And we are better for that barest of glimpses.

And so,  I cannot see how any year that is blessed with the mysterious hand of Providence (however it chooses to bless, with comfort, or with a much needed wakeup call), with beautiful holy-tides, magnificently shot through with the most unlooked-for moments of grace and growth, and so filled with the immutable beauty with which God, for sheer joy and goodness, chose to shape His world, could ever be a bad year. Perhaps there is foolishness in this-- I have known years of great sorrow and they have seemed very bad indeed to me. But perhaps this year has taught me to see with a wisdom I was not able to bear during those other years. Perhaps God has used this mad and chaotic time to bring me another step further along that steep, and treacherous path to the Light. I cannot be the judge of it, for I have failed more often than not in holding on to those moments of grace. I have prayed by route, more often than from the heart. Have complained bitterly that I know we are to accept the crosses that He sends us, but crippling panic attacks at work are a stupid cross-- and strained mightily against all of the senseless and unreasonable dictates that have upended so much of my orderly little world... 

And yet, all of this madness will pass away, as all things must eventually. And I suspect that the things that will be remembered most, are not the troubles themselves, but the lives lived in spite of them. I suspect that I shall look back on this year, and shall remember Holy Week and Easter Week, and homemade pasta, and sourdough bread. Will remember the otter, and the heron, and hunting terns, and the way my days had shaped themselves around the Blessed Sacrament, even while I was unable to receive the same. Will remember that my sisters and I learned to sing Sicut Cervus in 4 part harmony, and sang it on the last day of Easter Week, at Communion time, during a tiny, private Mass, in an abandoned, decaying old church out in the Nevada desert (the only place that was available to us) when our family friend was received with great joy into the Church. (And remember too, that being us, and incapable of not making things nice, we were able to make that desolate spot a clean and blessed place for our dear Lord to come.) Will remember that there was joy and grace, blessing and courage, freely given, and with them, a great and deep down peace, that remained steady, however tempestuous the surface might be. 

And perhaps.... just perhaps... it will not be myself alone, but all of us, who look back in this time, and call it blessed. 

The World I Have Known Is Lost In Shadow...

So, I finally saw Les Miserables a couple days ago. I shall be honest and admit right off that I have never been crazy about that musical, so I was not particularly interested in the film, despite a stellar cast, and the truly exciting trailers I saw for it. My reaction to the movie was much as I expected it to be. I admired it exceedingly. It was well shot and well cast. The music was fantastic, the sets lovingly detailed, evocative, and often beautiful. It more than earns the praise that has been heaped on it, and I am glad that I saw it.

That being the case, however, I cannot say that I really liked it. Now, before you pick up stones to cast at me, I will freely own that this is a fault that lies in myself, rather than in the movie. It just doesn’t work for me. I cannot connect with it. I don't really care about most of the characters. I pity Fantine. I have sympathy for Eponine. I understand the students and their desire to fight for the poor, angry men. But I really do not care what happens to any of them... with two great exceptions.

The first is obviously Jean Valjean. I have a particular fondness for conversion stories. I think conversions are the truest form of character development, because no matter how good a person is, there always comes a time in which on must confront oneself – the sins and the weaknesses – and the response then will determine what sort of a person will emerge from that confrontation. Jean Valjean is introduced as a defiant, but broken man. He is bitter and makes it very clear that he considers his incarceration unjust, for though he stole a loaf of bread, it was in desperation, and for someone in more need than himself. It is clear that he does not consider himself a thief. He clings to his name, which is all he has of his old life. He is Jean Valjean, not No. 24601. Yet, when he has been granted parole, he falls into the very crime he has served time for, and this time, he steals for himself. An unexpected show of mercy saves him, and he is forced to face himself; alone and falling. He flees from that particular version of Jean Valjean, leaving behind the name he had fought to keep, and is able to re-create his life again, in time, putting the past behind him, and becoming an honourable and respected man. Les Miserables tells his story truly – for very few men are ever allowed to face themselves only once. Jean Valjean must repeatedly come to terms with his past, his sins, and himself, and each time, the life he has created for himself is at stake. But he has bargained with God, and given Him his soul, and the decisions he makes are based on his understanding of what God wants of the soul in His keeping. By the end of the story, he is not merely good and honourable. He is a Man of God, who has made peace with himself – both as Jean Valjean, and as No. 24601 – and with a world that has been unkind to him. His story is a very beautiful, very Christian story, and, in my opinion, is the reason to watch Les Miserables.

The second is... Javert. I went into the movie expecting to like him. I always liked him in the musical, and he was being played by Russell Crowe, who happens to be one of my favourite actors. What I was not expecting, was for Javert to become my runaway favourite character. I was not expecting to love him, to care desperately about what became of him. I was not expecting for the death scene, which I knew full well to be coming, to shatter me as it did, nor that I would end up crying over him almost as hard as I cried over Boromir the first time I saw The Lord of the Rings.

It is very easy to make Javert the villain of the piece, as he is at odds with every single protagonist in the story. He is Jean Valjean’s nemesis. He is another nail in the coffin of poor Fontaine, who is dying of grief and despair. To the students, he is an example of What is Wrong with France, and he is the enemy of the poor, angry men, for whom they are sworn to fight. Even amongst those who do not consider him a bad man, he is generally seen as heartless; an absolutist, blindly obedient to his duty, and to the letter of the law, with no compassion or understanding of the plight of his fellow man. He is too stern and too unyielding – too hard a man to properly be considered a good man... But while all of this is true, I do not think it tells the whole truth about his character, and Truth has this odd attribute about it: that unless the whole truth is known, Truth itself can be misleading.

Unlike Jean Valjean, whom we see rise, and fall and rise again, Javert is seldom allowed to reveal anything of himself, save for the lawman's face. It is worth pointing out, that even at his hardest, Javert is scrupulously just. He will execute the law to its full extent, but not one step further than that. He is exacting, but he is neither malicious nor cruel. When Jean Valjean protests his nineteen years as a slave of the law, Javert corrects him: “Five years because of what you did, the rest, because you tried to run.” Not so much to rub it in, but to be very clear. The sentence was five years only, and he would have been free at that time, had he accepted those terms. It is also well to remember that Javert is as hard on himself as he is on other people, and when he believes himself to be in the wrong, he voluntarily submits himself to the law, without a single word of defense. Both points speak in his favour. But though he seldom lets down his guard enough for us to see beyond Javert the Man of the Law, there are little glimpses throughout the film that show him to be more than that. He is a man who delights in the view from high places, who loves beauty and order, who prays to God in the calm and beauty of the night, and who sings to the stars. He is a man who is so moved at the sight of the small, dead body of youngest of the revolutionaries that he pins his own medal to the boy’s chest; a man who could take a beating, and face violent death without fear. For all his faults - and they are many - there is a beautiful soul hiding deep within Javert. So how could a man like that be so hard that the only thing that could break him is mercy?

During the sword-fight with Jean Valjean in the Confrontation scene, Javert lets slip a single, extremely telling fact about himself: that he born in jail, and that he is from the gutter too. He knows the gutter folk, perhaps better than they know themselves, and perhaps that is part of the problem. The sight of suffering is hard to bear, especially if it recalls one’s own sufferings and compassion can be a very painful virtue. Impatience is easier, because it distances the suffering, and contempt is easier still. Somehow, like Jean Valjean, Javert has managed to bring himself up from the gutter, to become a good and respectable man. Yet, who knows what it cost him to do so. One cannot make so complete a break as that, without there being a price to it. One of the unchangeable truths about life, is that at some point, each and every person will endure the experience of watching his world fall to pieces around him - in a big way, or a small, it doesn’t matter. The result is always that same: one looks around at a world in chaos (or so it seems) and tries to bring back order and control. And that is Javert – the man who is striving with obsessive single-mindedness, to restore order to a mad, chaotic world that continually falls to pieces around his head. Perhaps the trouble with him is not that he is too hard, but that he cannot be hard enough; that he is afraid of that softness in himself, and cannot see it as strength. Perhaps it was not Mercy, pure and simple, that was too much for him to bear, but the strength that lay behind it – a strength which made him feel less strong. Perhaps it was Love when he expected hatred, and when he was hating himself. It can be extraordinarily difficult to accept love when one knows oneself to be unloveable. Whatever it was, when Javert finally fell in flame, too far to rise again on his own, I wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be able to put my hand out to him and save him – and at that moment, I did not care at all what it would cost me.

Truer Words...

There are many benefits to working in a library, and in general, I rather enjoy my work than otherwise. But like all jobs, even the very best, there are down sides as well. For me, one of the down sides is seeing the sort of book that tends to make it to the bestsellers lists. It is discouraging, for the most popular books with the longest library waiting lists, usually are not very good books - and I use the word "good" in this instance, in both sense. For in general, the writing in bestsellers is not of the best, but settles for mediocre. There is little of style or substance about them, nor, after an author starts churning them out at a rate of one per year, imagination and originality. Furthermore, the majority of fiction being published these days - bestsellers or not - are usually not very good. The world-view is skewed; if not outright immoral. Even the good guys - generally flawed but redeemable - are not particularly moral, and strong Christian virtues seldom make an appearance, being eclipsed by a vaguer, less demanding set of values. Yes, it is possible still to find quite good stories, ones that are well-written and morally sound, but it is not so common as it once was.

Therefore, it is supremely satisfying to come across someone who appreciates the finer things. Take, for example, the fine old gentleman who frequents my place of employment. He has just discovered Louis L'amour for the first time, and is raving about him. Now, mind, Louis L'amour is not a high-water mark of literature. I read a few of his books back in high school and remember them being ripping good yarns, full of galloping horses and gunfights - classic Westerns, but not, necessarily memorable. However, this old gentleman is enjoying them for all the right reasons. According to him, the books are just plain good. They tell a good story, with plenty of excitement. The Good Guy is always good. He never shoots anyone if tying him up will work just as well. The Good Guy always wins, and the Bad Guy always loses. The Good Guy gets the girl. And that is how it is supposed to be.

And, by golly! He has a point there - especially in regards to Westerns, with their knight-errant cowboys, and their stern code of honour and decency. The Good Guy is supposed to be good, or if his he not exactly good, he should be trying to be. The Good Guy should win, and if he does not, if his story ends in sorrow and sacrifice, he should still have a moral victory over the Bad Guy. And while the Good Guy cannot always get the girl, he should be the sort of man a worthwhile girl would want to be got by. It is not fashionable to write old-fashioned stories like that anymore, but I believe there is a crying need for them, that deep down, people crave them. Perhaps if there were more of such stories about - if people read about how things are supposed to be - they might just discover that there is nothing old-fashioned about it at all. They might discover that goodness, far from being boring, is a powerful and dangerous thing, and that a man is more truly himself when he chooses to walk that narrow path. That adventures are only worthwhile if there is something at stake, and that death and sacrifice are not things to be afraid of. And, just perhaps, it might have a beneficial effect upon the reader.