Thursday, December 16, 2010

Reading Hopkins "the Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air we Breathe"




((I had several comments to make on this poem, but feel it best to let Hopkins words stand up on their own. If you are particularly struck by words or phrases I invite your reflections.))

The Blessed Virgin Compared To The Air We Breathe – Gerard Manley Hopkins

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race—
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess’s
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do—
Let all God’s glory through,
God’s glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms’ self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.

If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man’s beating heart,
Laying, like air’s fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvellous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn—
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God’s and Mary’s Son.

Again, look overhead
How air is azurèd;
O how! nay do but stand
Where you can lift your hand
Skywards: rich, rich it laps
Round the four fingergaps.
Yet such a sapphire-shot,
Charged, steepèd sky will not
Stain light. Yea, mark you this:
It does no prejudice.
The glass-blue days are those
When every colour glows,
Each shape and shadow shows.
Blue be it: this blue heaven
The seven or seven times seven
Hued sunbeam will transmit
Perfect, not alter it.
Or if there does some soft,
On things aloof, aloft,
Bloom breathe, that one breath more
Earth is the fairer for.
Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal,
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault.

So God was god of old:
A mother came to mould
Those limbs like ours which are
What must make our daystar
Much dearer to mankind;
Whose glory bare would blind
Or less would win man’s mind.
Through her we may see him
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.

Be thou then, O thou dear
Mother, my atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
Fronting my froward eye
With sweet and scarless sky;
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God’s love, O live air,
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Bill McKibben on Democracy Now



"It’s as if they’re saying—I mean, literally as if they’re saying, "We’re going to stick our fingers in our ears, and the problem will go away. We’ll never have another hearing on it, so therefore it won’t be happening." I’m afraid that’s about as unlikely a proposition—I mean, more power to them if you could make global warming disappear by simply not talking about it. It would be a hell of a good strategy. But my guess is that physics and chemistry will be remarkably unimpressed by this position, you know? I mean, Congress—the sort of delusions of grandeur within the Beltway are enormous. They think because they can change the tax code, they can change the laws of nature. But that’s not possible." Bill McKibben



Some fascinating news out these days from Wikileaks concerning the role of the US government in intimidating, stalling, and buying votes from opposition nations in the recent Copenhagen climate talks. Bill McKibben is a longstanding author and activist who has attended decades of these talks and offers some great insight into the contentious nature of international agreements and into the urgency of action on these issues. His critique of American power politics and global climate change is telling. For all Washington is able to do in getting their agenda on the table, says McKibben, "Physics and Chemistry will be remarkably unimpressed." That Washington continues the program of intimidation towards other nations (even the poorest ones who are already most affected by climate change) is no surprise, says McKibben. What is a surprise is the audacity to assume we can continue to avoid this problem forever, or simply vote it off of our agenda.

The real question, to my mind, is how can we advocate for a politics that takes physics and chemistry as a baseline for action? How do we seek some form of common good in the face of power and manipulation by those claiming to represent us in government? And how might we embody in practice ways of life that take physics and chemistry seriously as well? I feel a real tension between thinking of small local forms of action and the challenge of global governance and climate talks. McKibben is bold in promoting both forms of action and calling governments to act. My more cynical side wonders where even to begin. Perhaps physics and chemistry aren't bad places to start.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

New book from N.T. Wright




The hard-working Bishop of Durham is at it again.

This third (and likely last) book in the latest trilogy extends the Bishops insightful argument into ethics.

In a recent interview, he laid out a few of the basic ideas (ideals?) behind the book:

The book’s main target is not the other major moral theories of deontology and consequentialism, but the ideas of “spontaneity” and “authenticity” which have a grain of truth (Christians really should act “from the heart”), but which screen out the reality of moral formation, of chosen and worked-at habit-forming prayer and moral reflection and action, which gradually over time form the Christian character in which “authentic” behavior is also truly Christian behavior, not simply “me living out my prejudices and random desires”.

The point about “virtue”, then, is that it flags up something which is central in the New Testament but marginal in much western Christian reflection, namely the fact that

1. Behaviour is habit-forming,
2. Christian behavior is supposed to be habit-forming and hence character-forming,
3. There is a long and wise tradition of reflection on all this which most modern Protestants in particular simply don’t know,
4. It isn’t, as has often been thought, a danger to the gospel of God’s free grace and love,
5. It is therefore time for the whole notion of virtue, as the habit-forming strength of character, to be “reborn”,
6. and that all this is what you need to grasp “after you believe”, to answer the big question of “what now”?


Over the last couple years I've found myself deeply shaped by the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and others (all through the help of a certain Jonathan R. Wilson) who revive the language of virtue and character to help lead us back to faithful Christian witness. I've had my suspicions that Wright makes similar use of the Aristotelian scheme (especially since Surprised By Hope, but now the jury has returned.

As I read through this list I find myself nodding in excited agreement. The one big problem, it seems, is #4, which the sort of hyper-Protestant mind always seems to fear. "Virtue... Character... Works?... This smells of works-righteousness." But does it, for crying out loud?

This instant knee-jerk response has come up so many times now in my conversations that it is exasperating. The idea that the Gospel might require anything of us is continually granted with one hand and ripped away with the other. The distance between cheap grace and painful legalism is often more determined by our mood of the day than by any sustained theological reflection. It is into this conundrum that the language and practice of virtue gives real purchase.

Rather than viewing our sin as isolated incidents or actions, virtue ethics hones in on the character or heart of the sinner and the accompanying patterns of action. Rather than hit the believe over the head with guilt and a waving finger "Now that you know Jesus died, don't go on doing this little Johnny!", the virtue approach asks the deeper and more vital questions about which habits or practices promote certain actions and deter others. Sensitivity to the Spirit can also render grace continually as the believer finds the strength to walk a new walk and talk a new talk comes not from pulling up one's spiritual bootstraps but rather from leaning ever more on the God of grace - and, I dare say, accepting some forms of discipline as a part of spiritual growth. Rather than viewing accountability partners with shame and suspicion, an ethic of character welcomes the openness, honesty, and transparency which is an essential part to the training of our faculties.

This point strikes very deeply to the laissez faire morality of our day, which Christians have largely adopted with some half-hearted biblical gloss about 'love' and 'grace'. But the formation of character requires something, and it requires something of US. The Bishop makes this point beautifully,

"First, the point about “vice”, the opposite of “virtue”, is that, whereas virtue requires moral effort, all that has to happen for vice to take hold is for people to coast along in neutral: moral laziness leads directly to moral deformation (hence the insidious power of TV which constantly encourages effortless going-with-the-flow). The thing about virtue is that it requires Thought and Effort . . ."

That might strike those of us raised on cheap grace as outrageous, but it is more our laziness (undoubtedly bred by the insidious TV which Wright mentions) that betrays us than our half-hearted desires to seek after Christ. But the point about Virtue, says Wright is that "to become part of God’s people is to become a genuinely human being." Being formed in the likeness of Christ renews the image of God in us. Our efforts to shape our behaviors and dispositions after His is an essential part to our transformation, even when it is difficult and costly.

Methinks we have much to learn from Bonhoeffer on this point as well, but that must wait for a future post.

The full interview with Bishop Wright can be found here.