Unfathomed Sorrow and Music Great and Terrible

"He governs the flowing of all waters, and the ebbing, the courses of all rivers and the replenishment of springs, the distilling of all dews and rain in every land beneath the sky. In the deep places, He gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo of that music runs through all the veins of the world in sorrow and in joy; for if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomed at the foundations of the Earth" - J.R.R. Tolkien in The Silmarillion, describing the god/demi-god of the sea: Ulmo.

"Melkor hated the Sea, for he could not subdue it." - Silmarillion (Melkor was a god who rebelled against the One God ie, the Satan figure).

I like this description of the ocean and the insights Tolkien creates about the divine, that from the same springs joy and unfathomed sorrow arise. A biographer of Tolkien once said that after his mother and father's deaths, for John (Tolkien) the crucifix remained the prime symbol of human existence, and reminded him that no life could occur without suffering, for God to become man it meant suffering, and so even at the moment of greatest victory - Christ's victory on the cross - there always remains sorrow.

It reminds me of a story of a man whose son had died long before him as a young man. The Author wrote that perhaps the scriptures say that no one can look into the face of God and live because he is so full of sorrow. We would see the infinite sadness and die.

For some reason I love that image. It's terrible - I really don't know why - but it reminds me of Jurgen Moltmann's comment that "A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human being".

Theologically it's untenable, and I don't really believe it, but in my heart I tend to enjoy the anthropormism of such thoughts, they reflect the OT well when it says that "God regretted that he made man" etc. I think that emotion and suffering give us meaning in everyday life.

But I like Tolkien's writing because it gives you a sense of the greatness, the glory, the majesty, the Mysterium Tremendum of the entire Universe and the incomprehensibility of the Almighty, and the pettiness of humanity. About how man always wants to conquer, to fight for significance, but how much bigger the forces are around him.

Tolkien gets me through alot, he's one of my favourite authors, and Roman Catholics.

I love his phrases like "music great and terrible" - it reminds me of listening to classical music on a piano in a thunderstorm, or sitting in a small room in my house late at night listening to CBC radio and an opera or a symphony or a Nocturne.

You can get through life when it is great and terrible, it's monotony that kills us.

I love the term mysterium tremendum it comes from Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy (which I really want to read) but I found a quote from his book that reminds me of all that I've been trying to say, he defines the great mystery as:

"The wholly other, that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible and the familiar, which . . . fills the mind with blank wonder and astonishment."

He says when people think about God, grace, salvation, etc the person,

"feels a something which captivates and transports him with a strange ravishment, rising often to the pitch of dizzying intoxication"

That's my spirituality I think, that's why I love the stars, that's why I love reading the Pantheists and Deists and Enlightenment philosophers, that's why I love Tolkien.

"Down below the broad, roaring waves of the sea break against the deep foundation of the rock. But high above the mountain, the sea, and the peaks of rock the eternal ornamentation blooms silently from the dark depths of the universe." - Rudolf Otto

Today and the Serenity Prayer

I've had quite a few weeks of essays and seminar leading, and other school crap, etc. Today I finished my Essay on Obama and Hillary with less than 40 minutes to spare. It was cutting it close, but now I can rest a little.

This morning I woke up and my first thought was 'today is going to suck'. I then sat there thinking for a while. Why would I choose to live if today is going to suck. I decided that I wasn't going to let today suck, sure it was stressful, but I'm just trying to be happy about doing things. I try to remember that life isn't that bad, and that I will have fun again, but most importantly that even if things do go badly, that's ok, life isn't always fun, it isn't always overly joyous, but at the same time, I can be content, I can be optimistic even if things aren't great.

I've been thinking about school and work tonight and possibly buying the WoW expansion tomorrow to start it up again, but I've been trying to think honestly that if nothing else goes right in life, I'm still going to have to find a way to be happy about today, and maybe I should try to be happy without 'quick fixes' like material possessions, video games, food, etc. Maybe I could just be grateful to be alive and enjoy myself as I am right now. All of this sounds extremely trite and simple, but I'm still trying to just live this way, so for me this was all revolutionary.

I'm not an alcoholic but I still love the serenity prayer:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as He did, this sinful world

as it is, not as I would have it;

Trusting that He will make all things right

if I surrender to His Will;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life

and supremely happy with Him

Forever in the next.

Amen." -Reinhold Niebuhr

I was going to analyze the lines I like, but I realize that every line is awesome. Today I'm thinking about the line "That I may be reasonably happy in this life". Still finding my daily Eudaimonea...

I'm going to have to memorize this, and read some of Niebuhr's stuff.

Jones-in' it for some WoW again...

Last week in American history seminar a girl next to me started talking about how she was going to play World of Warcraft as soon as she got home and how she was having a LAN with her girlfriends. I felt like I had landed in some gamer's fantasy (girls actually playing WoW - "dry land is not a myth!"). Anyway I proceeded to tell her how long I'd been clean (From world of warcraft) and then my TA joined in saying he quit too, and everyone around the room started to go off about how they had all played WoW and either were still addicted or had cleaned up and moved on. But there's still the faint glimmer in my eye when it's mentioned lol.

I found these screenshots on my computer and I've started to get the old craving again, it's comin' back. I'm also done school in a few weeks and so my grades won't be an issue (my average went from 72 last year when I played WoW to 82). I still have the game Everquest sitting in it's package upstairs - I never even bothered installing it. But these screenshots reminded me of amazing times I had in Azeroth. It's actually kind of strange, because some WoW moments I would almost classify as some of the funnest times of my life. The other day I was thinking about Heaven and then I saw a girl playing WoW infront of me in lecture on her laptop and I thought - it's strange that my view of heaven is that it will be less fun than that game. It's as if I have the Blizzard creators higher than their Creator. So maybe I need to just imagine all the fun and good times I've had and make that sum a glimpse of Heaven.

This picture is from a guild raid that we did on Redrock Ridge where we camped on the roof of this building and I chain lightninged people and NPC's it was absolutely hillarious. Of course, apparently this is now bannable, which is ridiculous, but w/e, just another way blizzard ruins the game.

Aristotle talked about Eudaimonea - fullfillment/happiness, I distinctly remember last summer having put in a hard days work for 8 hours, worked with a friend and had a fun time for most of the day, and then coming home and sitting at the computer desk to play WoW while listening to some classical music. Months later when I read Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics I thought those kind of happy fullfilling moments where nothing is wrong with the world. I also think about sitting looking at the stars, etc. Good ol' Aristotle, I think he'd be a gnome mage. I wonder if I'll start playing again.... Blessed Virgin Mary pray for me!

Integrity and St. Thomas More - A Man For All Seasons

After finishing an essay last night, I picked up a book my mom gave me to read. It was a play by Robert Bolt called "A Man For All Seasons" and tells the story of Sir/St. Thomas More, Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor who remained a devout Catholic and refused to take the Act of Supremacy (http://www.britainexpress.com/History/tudor/supremacy-henry-text.htm). The oath means admitting that Henry's marriage to Anne Bolynne is valid and that Henry is the Supreme Head of the Church in England. More refuses because the Pope and Christian law state the contrary ('what God has brought together let no man separate', etc).

~

The whole theme of the play was "everyone has a price" and you gradually see every character get bought off into either submitting to the king and saying the oath, while not really believing it, or betraying their friends for money. In the end the story revolves around Thomas who refuses to say anything at all about the marriage or the Church of England and uses his silence as his legal defence.

It's interesting that the play mentions how even though More is silent, his morality and firm conviction and refusal to sell out, actually bring pain to King Henry VIII and he orders him to be dragged to the tower until he officially committs treason. But More is a master of English law and gets out of it every time until finally with no evidence, they have a trial and sentence him to execution anyway. His own friends who he was helping out in the beginning of the play end up being those who witness against him and sentence him to death. It's interesting in the end because Thomas was so committed to following his conscience that everyone thought he was a fool and should just give in. At one point, his friend the Duke of Norfolk, shows up and displays a list of all his friends and everyone in England who've all signed the Act of Supremacy and Norfolk urges him to sign it, and I love how More responds:

Norfolk: I don't know whether the marriage was lawful or not. But damn it, Thomas look at those names... You know those men! Can't you do what I did, and come with us, for fellowship?

More (moved): And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Paradise for doing according to your conscience, and I am damned for not doing according to mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?

Cranmer: So those of us whose names are there are damned, Sir Thomas?

More: I don't know, Your Grace. I have no window to look into another man's conscience. I condemn no one

~~

I like that More doesn't even play the saintly moral high ground card here, he just says that he refuses to go against his conscience. He says later when his daughter asks why he stays in the Tower of London (jail) instead of just mindlessly signing the Act of Supremacy and coming home. She doesn't understand why he must suffer to be a hero. More responds:

~~~

"If we lived in a State where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us good, and greed would make us saintly, And we'd live like animals or angels in the happy land that needs no heroes. But since in fact we see that avarice, anger, envy, pride, sloth, lust and stupidity commonly profit far beyond humility, chastity, fortitude, justice and thought, and have to choose, to be human at all...why then perhaps we must stand fast a little - even at the risk of being heroes" (p 84)

~~~~

In the end of his trial, once he knows it's been rigged, Sir Thomas says:

"What you have hunted me for is not my actions, but the thoughts of my heart. It is a long road you have opened. For first men will disclaim their hearts and presently they will have no hearts. God help the people whose Statesmen walk your road" (p 95)

The movie V for Vendetta describes Integrity as that last inch which no one can take from you. Even though the play isn't literally true, the events are and I hope that I might one day have the conscience and integrity that St. Thomas More had.

I wrote to a friend the other day "I would pray that God lets you know what's right, in my case my conscience has always been clear, I've never had to pray to know right from wrong, I've only had to pray for the grace to do what is right, and rarely have I chosen it". I think the conscience is an immense gift from God and I need to rule myself more by it than I do currently.

For the scene from the Tudors see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gP-DYiJfw6g&feature=related

Gratitude and Worry

Today was supposed to be a day of work, I'd spent Monday as a day of work, but Tuesday is normally my day of rest, my sabbath if you will. But tomorrow (starting in 40min/Wednesday) I have 2 mid-terms which I've studied for an incomplete manner. I've not read all I had to read, and am relying on my memory from lectures alot. I should've studied more, but I didn't and it's almost midnight. I have an essay due friday morning that I was supposed to write most of today...I didn't. I read the sources and wrote 1 of 7 pages. My mid-terms are worth about 20% a piece so they are quite serious, and my essay is a quarter of my mark, and is likewise serious. So academically, in the traditional sense of the word, today was a faillure, and I could suffer greatly tomorrow for today's laxity.

But if I'm honest with myself, I'm not actually worried. Rather, I'm a little worried, but my worry is overwhelmed by gratitude. I'm so grateful today to be alive, indeed now it seems that excepting my occasional overwhelming moments of hatred and despair, the grand theme of my life is gratitude. I got to sleep in today, I went for a run, I got to eat, and read cartoons and watch a bit of a movie I love and rest. Sure my back hurts tremendously as I lay here (I pulled something running), and I'm a bit nervous about tomorrow, but other than those fleeting pains, I am still feeling good. I read today about life in Mississippi in 1964, and about how when blacks went to register to vote they were usually beaten and then charged with disturbing the peace for screaming (I wish I was joking or exaggerating). One black man holding a peaceful protest got shot dead on the lawn infront of the city courthouse by a member of the State Legislature, and no charges were brought against him (and even though no charges were brought against him, the State declared he was acting in clear self-defence). .... my life will never approach that horrible (God willing), and this is today's lesson from history. The lesson that justice and rights are not a given, but that I've been blessed to be in the top 5% of humanity. So I think of the love of God and get on my knees before I go to bed, I cross myself, and thank God for all of his graces. Because above the worries that will bother me day in and day out until I finally breathe my last, I think I should be grateful, rather than troubled.

Dreams

There's a line in a movie I love that's "let them rest, for in dreams we enter a world entirely our own, let them climb the highest mountain and swim in the deepest ocean" (HP:POA). An apologist once said to me the in the post-modern era man is not content to survive in or conquer the world, but wishes to create a world of his own. I think dreams are a perfect anti-thesis to that statement. From the beginning men have dwelt in the world of their own dreams, and I'm assuming some people have more meaningful dreams than I do (they usually either don't make sense, or terrible things happen in them). I love the story of Joseph and how he interprets dreams to see God's will. In our modern world it would be like reading Tarot cards for Jesus. Absolutely ridiculous and offensive to the standards of today.

Sharks sleep one half of their brain at a time and so they never stop going . .. . I wish I could rest both of my brains, but it's interesting that when we sleep we are sub-conscious, we are actually not there. Though I've insulted people in my sleep and responded to the question "Andrew are you asleep?" with "Yes and I'm arguing with you in a sub-conscious state!(sarcasm)" Am I morally culpable for that? I hope not, but people still blamed me. It's like when I made anti-semetic remarks in my sleep and Lance slept outside our room... craziness. Maybe everyone else is dreaming of wondrous fantasy lands while my dreams are anti-semetic, insane, and horrifying visions. It reminds me of Hamlets Act 3 soliloquay "To die, to sleep, aye theres the rub, for in that sleep, what dreams may come?" (I did that from memory at 2am - hurray). I have the terrible Hamlet dreams.

Maybe thats because I have awesome day dreams. Today I had a great one that was set in Australia...but thats another story. Pleasanter dreams than my normal fare I wish you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9AE8QQfx_E

Guernica: Picasso and the Spanish Civil War

So I watched something on the history channel a while back about famous bombings where many civilians were killed, and alot of it horrified me. There was one bombing in the Spanish civil war that was terrible. Thousands were killed and even in the rubble they were bombed. I just found out Pablo Picasso painted a work called "Guernica" (which I think was the city's name) about this event and I think it's interesting how for the first time in my life, I've actually understood a painting from the modern period. I think it's a landmark event, and that I only understood it because of that history channel program that was about it which I saw first. I'm an auditory learner.