What Was Her Name?

 

Had a bad night awake brooding last night. Probably mostly just Monday blahs. Another week begins, and no sense of progress; just treading water. Just the same damned thing over and over. I began thinking, “What’s the point of a world in which the Holocaust happened?” And I truly believe it could happen again, is happening again. There are several holocausts ongoing: abortion, “mental illness.” We see the growing scapegoating and persecution of “whites,” males, Christians, Catholics, Asians, Jews.

I look at the present Canadian government: to my mind, obviously corrupt, incompetent, and plain evil, and yet voted in three times as if everything is fine…

When we were young, or at least when I was, we imagined we could make the world better. We haven’t. Or if we have, here and there, the incremental change does not seem to justify a life. 

So what’s it all about? Having kids, doing your best for them, and passing on the flame of life? Cockroaches do as much.

Feeling somewhat cheerier by this afternoon. Two conclusions. 

First, this word is not supposed to be a nice place. This is the valley of tears. Our principal job is to just forge on, trying to do what is right. Anybody who is cheerful in this world has no heart.

Second, for some reason I thought of a girl I went to high school with. I probably haven’t thought of her for forty years. Not my girlfriend; the girlfriend of a friend of mine. But he went off to sea for a year, joined the merchant marine, and she started to make a play for me. Then my family moved to Gananoque, and that ended that.

I never loved her then. As I said, I have barely thought of her since. I backed off, not wanting to betray my friend. And yet now she comes to mind, and thinking of her is oddly consoling.

She was not good looking. Her politics were nuts; she thought the ideal form of government would be a benevolent dictatorship. It would be, too, if there were any way to get a benevolent dictator into power, but there isn’t. Her politics were dangerously unrealistic. But she was a brilliant artist.

And thinking of her consoled me. Why? I was not sure at first. But I conclude that she was an example of a worthwhile life and a worthwhile attitude. Regardless of anything else, relentlessly, we can, do, should, and must find our meaning in the creation of beauty. In any way we can. 

Moreover, these two thoughts twine together. Beauty comes from sorrow. Beauty justifies sorrow.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Grinning Mary

My parish priest said something shocking in his sermon today: “If you do not have joy, you do not have Jesus in you.”

There is of course cause for joy in the Christian life. Things turn out well in the end. But this statement is directly against the gospel. Jesus says, instead, “blessed are those who mourn.”

The priest cited Mary as our model here: how she greeted joyfully the news of her pregnancy.

There is no trace of this in the actual gospel; only submission: “behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word.”

The obvious likelihood is that the news was shocking and terrifying. Being pregnant without a husband was punishable by being stoned to death. This is important for understanding Mary as a moral model. Being moral is not supposed to be the easy, carefree option.

Yeats captured the enormity of it:

The terror of all terrors that I bore
The Heavens in my womb.

Mary is revered as Mater Dolorosa—Our Lady of Sorrows.

Then the priest cited St. Paul as his authority. But Saint Paul was not so big on joy either. He said we must all, like him, “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.”

It was striking to me, on a trip to Bulgaria and Greece, to walk through museums and compare the pagan Greek art to the early Christian icons. The pagan figures generally grinned with vacant eyes; familiar to art historians as “the archaic smile.” the Christian saints always looked deeply sorrowful.

The archaic smile, shown on a sphinx

The archaic smile, shown on a dying soldier.

The core message is the need for repentance.

I fear this priest has been infected by the same “I’m OK, you’re OK” theology as the Christmas song “At This Table.”