On My Bookshelf: Martian Summer

I just finished Andrew Kessler’s Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission.

This book gives a peppy, irreverent, and informative inside view of the 2008 mission to the polar region of Mars. There are many books out there on space missions. Like those others, Mr Kessler’s book gives a wealth of science information as well as interpersonal exchanges between Phoenix scientists, engineers, journalists, and bureaucrats.

I found his narrative style a bit choppy. The book tends to get bogged down in small details–interesting details certainly, but not always connected to the big picture. The book reads like a series of blog posts. That’s not to say they’re not well-written; they certainly are. It’s just a different style of writing than what I’m accustomed to.

Recommended for Mars fanatics. Otherwise an interesting read, but not absolutely top-shelf.

 

On My Bookshelf: Mirror Earth

For the past twenty years scientists have been finding planets outside the solar system. Michael Lemonick’s book is an excellent introduction to the science, as well as the story behind it: real people conducting extra-solar exploration.

It’s logical that astronomers find larger planets easier to detect. However, Jupiter-sized planets are not thought to be prime abodes for potential life in the universe. As detection methods improve, smaller and smaller worlds are found. The big hope is to find a place like Earth out there. Oxygen in the atmosphere. Water on the surface. Life getting by.

This book captures the effort to refine detection methods, to uncover new ones, and to move the search for life in the universe from the page of science fiction to telescopes and other tools and the application of human ingenuity to the challenges.

Finding that Earth-sized planet just the right distance from a star is the prize. (Not too close so as to be molten or have a steam atmosphere, and not too far away for a freeze-out.)

Mr Lemonick takes the reader through the excitement, planning, and expectations of the past two decades. The science is presented in such a way so as to be easily understandable to the casual reader. The human stories give added interest.

Spoiler: we haven’t found life off-planet yet. The effort continues. But this really good read gets you up-to-date as of early 2012.

 

Indulgent 2312

I’m going to begin with what’s good about Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel 2312. Ideas. Not all are original to the author, but that makes them no less awe-inspiring.

On Mercury, close to a half million people live in a mobile city that stays just in the shadow of the sun. How? It rolls on tracks around the planet.

On Venus, a shield in space blocks the sun’s energy, freezes out the atmosphere and enables China’s colony there to shovel frozen carbon dioxide around into piles so new continents can be built up by depositing rock on top of the dry ice.

On Earth, the globe has warmed, the ice caps have melted, and Manhattan is the new Venice.

On Mars, maybe there are artificial intelligences walking around in human bodies. But nobody seems to like the Martians much anyway. Decades ago they raided Saturn’s moon Titan for half its nitrogen.

You get the ideas. It’s only three-hundred years in the future and Earth’s thirty-seven space elevators have made interplanetary travel fun and accessible and full of wonders for everybody. Except the 47%. Or maybe the 99%. People book flights between Mercury and Saturn and places in between without a hint of a charge card or a satchel of gold-pressed latinum. And I wonder why the lower class in half-swamped New Jersey can’t do the same–order up a ticket to Jupiter. This is a futuristic culture seemingly without money. But there’s money afoot–make no mistake. Some people have it. Others don’t–including a young Jersey hood who makes it into space as a favor for saving the main character’s butt when she wanders off into dangerous territory for an evening stroll.

I thought Robinson did a fantastic job with Red Mars and its two sequels. An ensemble cast of complicated characters struggle to colonize Mars, then turn it into a paradise. The key there was the characterization of a handful of interesting people and how they interacted over decades. The Mars trilogy had great ideas, too. Most of the ideas have been tried elsewhere in science fiction. What made these books exceptional was that they were fine novels. The future science was just part of the background scenery.

2312 suffers from too many ideas and not enough people. Robinson has enough material and imagination to distill a dozen novels from this one book. I would have preferred a story about the people colonizing Mercury, And the people who hollow out an asteroid and turn it into a park. Or how the Chinese developed the chutzpah and technology to steal one of Saturn’s moons. Then let the characters fly out of one of those tales.

Instead, we get a somewhat pedestrian murder mystery set in the early 24th century. The mystery itself could have been rendered in a book one-fourth the size of these 550-some pages.

Robinson gets a lot of credit for great ideas. But not all of them are original to this book. He himself has done the sun shield/magnifier in the Mars trilogy. Space elevators–that too. Hollowed-out asteroids? I read about those in Roger MacBride Allen in the 80′s. The narrative is interrupted a few dozen times so the author can trot out a list or a piece of “future” history. A better writer could have woven that into the narrative and left the rest on the cutting room floor. Or, if you want to imitate Tolkien, put it into an appendix with some family trees.

Here and there Robinson’s science is a bit of a clunker. A high-speed interplanetary voyage using Mars for a gravity assist? With people traversing the inner solar system in a few weeks, that’s just bad physics. The faster a spacecraft travels, the less relevant a gravity assist can be. Later in the novel, Robinson describes a ship that just powers its way from planet to planet in just days. Just go with that.

I suspect most of what the author describes in this novel will happen. But three centuries is way too soon.

The other moment of disconnect was in the writing of one-hundred thirtysomething Swan Er Hong as a spoiled and arrogant little princess. Her 200-year-old grandfather comes off as a wisdom figure. One would think that thirteen decades of life would inspire an end to adolescence at some point. And Swan does develop as the pages turn. Otherwise, she is not a very likeable character. I enjoyed the romance that changes her in good ways. There’s no point in writing Swan as an indulgent and immature soul in a rejuvenated, but old body. Another good novel would be what humanlife and relationships are like when one lives for two centuries.

So, should you read this book? I would read the interludes that describe asteroid development. Skip the lists. The rest? If you like KSR, you will possibly like this book. For me, it felt a bit off. If you’ve never read him, tackle the Mars books instead: red, green, and blue.

 

The Unconsoled

I wasn’t sure what I was getting into once I began turning pages of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1995 novel. Soon it became clear that I was reading very fine prose soaked in a surreal melancholy. But I was also caught in a dream sequence lasting over five-hundred pages. I couldn’t wake up. I couldn’t get out. But I found amazing and unbelievable shortcuts in time and space.

The characters were worse off–the dreaminess was natural to them–no wonder at which to gape. It was a curious experience to watch them lament their mistakes, especially in relationships, but then plunge headlong into further alienation with the people they love. And they can’t stop.

Marriages run into trouble here. Just as in real life, and in television sit-coms, people don’t talk. Therefore, small alienations grow and fester for decades. Small and insignificant vulnerabilities are protected at the cost of honesty. All it would take, I was thinking, was for this husband to confess one important thing to this wife, and healing would take root. But that would violate the unwritten rules of this strange universe. And so people there remain unconsoled.

I suspect that the author operates from a worldview of people trapped in their tragedies. Hence the title, which seems to reflect everybody in this nameless European city. My wife asks me why I read depressing books like this. In the final pages, the wife and son of Ryder, the main character, are within his grasp. Say something, my wife would urge. (She didn’t read it, but she would shout it out in the middle of the night.) Adopt the path of healing and reconciliation. The woman and boy move on. And Ryder does too, to the next recital in the next city. His sad little boat weathered its wave. Now it’s righted and it’s time to move on.

I read these books with the lens of my faith. I like this author, and I respond to his well-traveled sojourn into melancholy. But personally, I don’t believe I’m a captive of my personality, my life’s mistakes, and my fears of self-disclosure. I will choose to blunder headlong into admissions, confessions, and such. While I might not be able to work out my redemption any more than Mr Ishiguro’s sad and surreal characters, it is not required I remain adrift in life, fluttering back and forth between the occasional angry or frustrated outburst and long periods of steady state lamentations.

Read this book; it’s quite good. It’s not the best he’s written. The long monologues might have deeper meaning, but I’m not sure. Sometimes they’re just boring interludes. I was looking more into the motivations and the failed interactions between the characters. Depression and narcissism make worse bedfellows than estranged spouses.

 

Old Ground and New, Ignatian Style

James Martin’s book The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything has been on my bookshelf for the past week. It’s a popular seclection in our parish library, and I find much to recommend it. Four-hundred pages is a daunting length if your object is to read a book cover to cover. Fortunately Fr Martin is a superb writer, easily able to share and communicate enthusiasm for the subject matter. Which, quite simply, is applying Jesuit principles to (almost) everything in life.

I can see this book on the shelf of a person willing to take it a chapter or so at a time. I’m reading through it cover to cover, however, for a few reasons. First, I like Jim Martin as a writer. And I get ideas from good writers. Second, since it is a much-read tome, I want to be conversant in it generally. Third, I wasn’t expecting to find it spiritually helpful, since it seems to be aimed at people from seekers to believers on the threshhold of a deeper spiritual life. So it’s also been a cure for personal arrogance, and something of a corrective on a previous correction I made about forty-five years ago.

Up to about fourth grade, I did not challenge myself as a reader. I spent most of my allowance on books. And I usually bought books on subjects I already knew about and usually at my own grade level. For science, it was a few grade levels below my working knowledge. But I found a certain comfort in going with what I knew. I used books to confirm my working knowledge, not necessarily to expand it.

But in fourth grade, something changed. When I and some of my peers finished our classwork, the teacher gave us a pass to go to the school library. And at first, I borrowed books that confirmed my knowledge. But that got old quick. So I turned to the shelves where the middle schoolers read–the books without pictures. The books with text for two-hundred or more pages.

So it was new ground, and it was the start of reading way past my horizons. Which I still like to do today.

So I found Jim Martin’s book old ground in many ways: his discussion on discernment, contemplative prayer, retreats were interesting for his own experiences. In some aspects, it was like going back to old ground–just like I did before the fourth grade. But how he brings the Jesuit lens into (almost) everything: this was new to me. The extent of my exposure to the Jesuits has been limited to two eight-day Ignatian retreats, from which I don’t think I absorbed anything particularly Jesuitical.

The one thing that I found most helpful was Fr Martin’s approach to the daily examen. Back in the 90′s my spiritual director suggested I practice it, and I don’t ever think I got a good handle on it. But after reading Fr Martin’s approach, this will be the one aspect of the spiritual life I think I can delve into. More on that in another post, I think.

I told my wife it’s a good thing the Jesuits didn’t have a Jim Martin in the 80′s, because the book almost inspires me to go off and join them. The one kernel of Jesuit spirituality that I’ve been mulling over this past week: finding God in all things. The principle isn’t likely original to the Jesuits. But from how Fr Martin takes it and runs with it, they probably refined the notion to a degree up-to-now unheard-of.

Did I mention the tome runs four-hundred pages? For a guide to (almost) everything, that seems short. Some critics have said the book is too long and needed a tighter edit. Maybe they’re right, if they’re looking for a guidebook. The subtitle of the volume is “A Spirituality for Real Life,” and I think one could easily drop into any chapter, and gain significant food-for-thought for one’s life. Fr Martin weaves in personal experience, Jesuit saints, and Ignatian spiritual principles with great ease.

Consider this a strong recommendation–and I haven’t even finished it yet.

 

More Foundation Novels

When the “second” Foundation trilogy came out in the late 1990′s, I was looking forward to the reads with great enthusiasm. I enjoyed the original novels, certainly. And while the original author was now dead, the Asimov estate had engaged three fine writers to pick up the task.

Gregory Benford I respected for his fine novel Timescape as well as his six-novel series of a future humanity harassed to near-extinction by machine intelligence. Greg Bear‘s impressive first novel Eon had some enjoyable follow-ups. He also penned a great novel Moving Mars, which I thought held its own against the many Mars books published in the past twenty years. David Brin‘s uplift series was hugely enjoyable for me.

I’ve been reducing the contents of my basement bookshelves the past few weeks. A lot of books are bagged for donation, and I paused as I fingered these volumes of Foundation:

It’s off to the donation pile for the last hardcover science fiction books I ever purchased.

I started to reread them earlier this week, and I think my disappointment today is deeper than when I read them for the first time. Mr Benford introduces a lot of fluff to produce a story that lodges in between Asimov’s first (in sequence)/ last (to be written). Introducing simulated electronic intelligences, robots, and human immersion in the consciousness of chimpanzees (pans, as they are known) doesn’t do a lot to forward the story as an addition to the Foundation universe. It’s weird, and just not up to par for him.

Mr Bear’s efforts center on the robots working behind the scenes. Granted, Asimov himself brought robots into his Foundation novels with the last three books he wrote in the 80′s. But these “new” ideas don’t get handled very well by him or by Mr Brin.

Mr Brin is my favorite of these three authors, and as for the last book in the series, I wanted to like it. I tried hard. But no go.

If one is presumptuous enough to tread on what sf readers consider sacred ground, one should strive for the discipline to tell a story within the confines of the “universe.” Asimov treats well the idea of free will, a galaxy-wide civilization, and the overarching concept of the Foundation, a force to ameliorate the decline of an empire that, while corrupt and in deep decay, still is better than the barbarian alternative. American foreign policy in southwest Asia might take note.

Mr Benford throws in some interesting ideas that, one, he doesn’t handle with much interest to a reader, and two, seemed so foreign to the Foundation universe that his co-authors chose to mostly ignore it.

As for the other two authors, too many robots and robot intrigue. And too much Earth at the end.

David Brin is well able to handle the space opera subgenre. It would have been far more interesting to see him write a Foundation novel set in the era of the independent traders, before the Mule. Foundation explorers rediscovering the galaxy: that would be interesting. Until 1987, Asimov himself only wrote two short stories about Hari Seldon, the scholar who develops the science to predict human behavior via mathematics. Amazingly intriguing idea. But the idea might be better handled by seeing how it affects everyday people in the Foundation. Does predictability imprison people, taking away their free will? More importantly, if it’s all going to be decided by equations, where’s the human motivation to do one’s best, to strive for a dream, or even to search for a better future than the Foundation?

I don’t know about you, but I would want that in my life: a certain freedom to pursue a goal that might not, but just might, be a possibility long after I’m dead.

If you are a Foundation freak and have never read these books, go to mu local Goodwill to pick them up next week. There are interesting things in them. But if you have a lot of other good books, good science fiction to read, I have to suggest you look elsewhere for inspiring fiction.

 

On My Bookshelf: Phases of Gravity

I thought I was picking up a new book. On the cover, one of astronaut Alan Bean’s striking paintings was catchy for a volume that didn’t have the SF tag at my local library. Sure enough, it was SF mega-author Dan Simmons‘ second or so novel, in which he relates the midlife crisis of fictional astronaut Richard Baedecker. I was glad I picked it up, I really enjoyed it.

There are no elements of science fiction in this novel, which leads off its first few dozen pages switching back and forth between Baedecker’s two days on the moon and his life, adrift, fifteen years later. That later life finds the protagonist divorced, alienated from his son, and doing meaningless PR scut work. After being one of a dozen human beings to explore the moon in person, what’s left in life? As a man, I could relate to the theoreticals. (Even if I personally feel my best accomplishments may be ahead.)

The details of the novel are well-researched, but there are a few inconsequential stumbles here and there. The fictional Apollo mission Baedecker flew isn’t numbered, but it’s probably Apollo 16, as it references the previous mission led by real-life astronaut Dave Scott, and it doesn’t seem to be the last.

The action is thoughtful as it centers on Baedecker, and the author drops in perspectives from the man’s boyhood, his relationships with his father and his son, and a good number of astronaut stories. The changing perspectives are what one finds in a serious novel, and once in awhile, when my attention drifted I found I had to reorient myself. My bad. The author does a good job keeping all this straight, unless you read without focus.

For a book which deals with the heroic (lunar exploration) as well as the psychological (a man struggling to find himself, post-peak) this is a very quiet and measured volume. Well worth reading.

 

Helping Or Not

Just this week I encountered two significant books from the parish library. They’ve been hovering around the new book shelf for some time. They impact things I’ve done and things in ministry I plan to do. If you read either or both of them, they will likely make an impression on you, too.

Tattoos on the Heart, Father Gregory Boyle’s “storehouse of stories and parables” was, for me, a shattering read. After absorbing some of the more powerful experiences of this Los Angeles Jesuit pastor, I was very quickly taken back five years in time to the young people I met and tried to serve at a children’s psychiatric center in Kansas City. Fr Boyle’s efforts to lead the reader into a new way of “seeing the world and others” was convincing enough for me before I even finished chapter one. My memories of my young troubled friends of 2007-08 seemed to align with the even more brutal experiences in Southern California gang life and redemption.

Only a stony heart would emerge unmoved from reading this book. I’m not even going to bother to attempt to relate any of the content. The author is a passionate and born storyteller. And the message is clear, whether we’re dealing with young people crushed by poverty and despair, or the casual obstacles of modern first world life. You just have to read this book.

One of my staff colleagues has been promoting When Helping Hurts, and it has been reading material for the parish’s Just Faith series. Let the authors describe their aim:

First, North American Christians are simply not doing enough. We are the richest people ever to walk  the face of the earth. Period. Yet, most of us live as though there is nothing terribly wrong in the world. … We do not necessarily need to feel guilty about our wealth. But we do need to get up every morning with a deep sense that something is terribly wrong with the world and yearn and strive to do something  about it. There is simply not enough yearning and striving going on.

Second, … when North American Christians do attempt  to alleviate poverty, the methods used often do considerable harm to both the  materially poor and the materially non-poor. Our concern is not just that these methods are wasting human, spiritual, financial, and organizational resources but that these methods are actually exacerbating the very problems they are  trying to solve.

I don’t work as a third-world missioner. But evangelization is a core part of my ministry in a parish and at a campus ministry. I came away from this book asking myself if I was doing enough yearning and striving–not only for the Third World poor, but for the unchurched young people who live in my community. Do the methods of liturgy actually bring harm? The problem seems to be less one of proper worship (orthodoxy, or right-praise) but of addressing the root problems of young people in American culture: a disinterest in religion, a distrust of authority, a lack of connectedness to their communities and traditions, and probably more I can’t think of at this moment.

It’s a small thing that I’m confronted with a reconsideration of my aims and goals of traveling to Honduras some day. I’m glad my friend John has steered me to consider a visit more for the exchange of music and the building of relationships. Not so much for teaching music and liturgy. But after reading this book, I find myself challenged to re-engineer the whole way I conduct parish ministry.

Blowing everything up and starting over is going to have to wait another day. I have a talk to prepare for the new peer ministers and student coordinators, “Parish Mission and Structure” for the retreat next week. I have a feeling there’s going to be nothing about “doing for” others and a lot more “doing with” in that presentation.

Good books, both of these. Either one would have churned my insides and caused me to reexamine much of what I do. Coming on the heels of a very difficult and emotional week on the home front, these reads have left me exhausted. Literally. If you tackle either book, expect something of the same.

 

Further: Beyond The Threshold

About three-quarters of the way through Chris Roberson’s Further: Beyond The Threshold I got the distinct impression I was reading a pilot episode for a Star Trek copycat: a starship with a crew of very unlike people thrown together to see what happens in the mix. Mind you, the Trek formula is excellent, and Mr Roberson did a fine job setting this up, giving us the captain’s backstory in bits and pieces, and assembling a diverse and interesting crew.

The only problem is that this novel starts out with a totally different science fiction formula, also well-trod: a man from the past lands in a distant future. So we get to explore the worlds of wonder through the eyes of a more relatable protagonist. Isaac Asimov did it in Pebble in the Sky. And Mr Roberson does it well here. Just about as talky as Mr Asimov, but with more wonder and physics. How a twenty-second century explorer gets to helm a 15th millennium ship is the biggest suspension of disbelief in the book. But it works because Mr Roberson does such an excellent job with characterization, the reader wants it to work.

The good news: this is an enjoyable read. Especially if you want a nice dish of sorbetto after a heavy plate of pasta.

The bad news: Amazon’s venture into science fiction publishing (47North) has done Chris Roberson wrong. The editing is poor. The cover is unimaginative compared to the future described on the pages. But they sure want you to know the author is a “New York Times bestselling author” and is praised by another “New York Times bestselling author.” Really?

There’s a howler of an error on the back cover which proclaims:

“Welcome to the Thirty-Fourth Century.”

Nope. Sorry. Asleep at the wheel on this one. Protagonist RJ Stone experienced deep space hibernation for twelve-thousand years. That’s 120 centuries. Add that to his Earth departure in the late 2100′s, and we’re talking the 142nd century, give or take.

Call me a nitpicker if you wish, but if you’re going to appeal to sf fiction fans, you’re going to have to fix those errors. There are other mistakes in the book, small ones I concede, that a good editor would have spotted. Seriously, if I didn’t have a day job, I’d email 47North and tell them to hire me as an editor. Heaven knows they need one if they’re serious about publishing original fiction. Real editors read real books. They don’t rely on spell-check. And they don’t mistake 12,000 for 1,200.

Chris Roberson is a very talented writer with lots of ideas. My own sense from this book, and from his short fiction I’ve read is that he’s a bit undisciplined and loose with his craft. He could be much better. The final third of the book, essentially an adventure for Captain Stone and his crew, is a pedestrian encounter with religious fanatics who, in their last war, killed about a billion people. The horror of that isn’t well developed enough, and as bad guys, the Iron Mass comes off more like cartoons. There is no real menace from these creeps. Captain Stone and his crew triumph with some difficulty, but overall, it’s a pretty easy victory. The dead are restored to life by putting their memories into new bodies. That’s a problem when loss isn’t permanent and real.

Maybe that’s why the fish-out-of-water portion works so much better. RJ Stone sleeps for 12,000 years and you know he’s irrevocably lost friends, family, culture, crew, and his ill-fated mission. That’s poignant and thoughtful. Space-and-shooting adventures, not so much.

 

Paladin of Souls

Lois McMaster Bujold is an award-winning author of both science fiction and fantasy. For some reason, her books have dodged my attention. On a recent trip to the library, I decided to pick out one of her best-regarded volumes, Paladin of Souls, which won best novel from the Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus. It’s solidly in the fantasy genre, but I’d rather read a great book than just an ordinary science fiction work.

The main character, Ista, experiences something of a midlife crisis. Her husband and son have died. Her daughter was married off in the prevoius book in this series. It’s time to get out of town, so Ista concocts the guise of a spiritual pilgrimage, gathers a few trusted companions she’s just met, and rides off to adventure. Ista and her party are waylaid by raiders, rescued by a local nobleman, and are invited to enjoy his hospitality behind the walls of what seems to be a rather safe castle. But appearances are deceiving. Her hosts have their own serious issues with murder, political intrigue, and deeply injured persons.

A sense of unease builds up, and about halfway through the novel a shocking revelation confronts Ista, who has figured it out before the reader. For the rest of the book, the forces of sorcery and military might array against Ista, her companions, and her hosts. The plot resolves with logic, well set-up by small clues planted along the way. Good triumphs over evil with a combination of pluck, sacrifice, the eventual emergence of godly assistance, and most of all, through a middle-aged woman who gradually realizes the powers with which she’s been gifted. It’s a good heroic tale, and a satisfying read.

Paladin of Soulsis not a fast read. Ms Bujold spends a lot of time talking Ista and her companions through characterization. When people start getting lost and hurt fairly early in the reading, it’s easy to care about them. For fantasy, there’s a good deal of talking through the ideas–more than average, I would say. It almost seemed Asimovian. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll miss the thread. If you like fantasy with swordplay and tussles, there’s some of that. But the deepest ideas are developed through an interesting “theology” of five gods. There’s the human struggle, primarily Ista’s, for self-determination, and how she and others seek or resist divine will/interference (or lack thereof).

The essentially pagan family of gods seems to be rather petty and arbitrary, though not quite as badly behaved as in Greek and Roman mythology. They are satisfied to let people find their own way. But they are not above nudging or even taunting mortals to induce desired behavior. Ista is deeply angry with these gods for her troubled life, but they still seek her out and are willing to work with, or in spite of her bitterness. You will note I use small-case “g” to describe these beings. They don’t strike me as objects of faith. Gods who appear to human beings are not a matter of faith, but just more powerful beings.

This book is a very enjoyable read. Nearly excellent, I would say. Its strength is in characterization, a rare skill for a fantasy author. Though slow to unfold, the plotting is sure. The reader travels at the speed of a horse-drawn wagon, but the ride is smooth, the scenery pleasant, and the companions agreeable. If you like fantasy intelligently presented, this book is strongly recommended.

 

Planted In Two Worlds

I’ve been reading Brian Clegg’s book, Gravity: How the Weakest Force in the Universe Shaped Our Lives. This isn’t a review of the book, which I’m not quite halfway through. I’d like to look at his treatment of aristotelianism as viewed by our more rational age. I’d like to expand on a few things that struck me, and apply them to how the Catholic Church approaches theology.

My thesis here is that Catholic theology struggles mightily with one foot in the rational world and one in the medieval recovery of Aristotle. It’s a sort of philosophical schizophrenia. For those serious about the realm of the mind it produces moments of grave disconnect, where time-honored traditions do not fare well under modern analysis. And in the pastoral realm, we are left with seemingly heartless decisions rendered in ways that foster alienation rather than union with God. And for those who control the intellectual output of the Church, it provides a convenient cover. We can be rational when it suits us. Or we can appeal to “tradition” as it has surfaced in the intellectual tradition.

For the ancient Greeks, what we accept today as science was a matter of the mind. Thinkers reflected upon the world around them. They sought understanding and meaning from reflection and acted, taught, and lived according to those principles. They did not always trust the senses. What one saw, heard, or felt could deceive. In other words, the human thinker came first, and the world was ordered in ways in which the human brain understood it.

According to Clegg, the whole notion of experimentation was alien to Aristotle and to those of his intellectual heritage. Men and women had different numbers of teeth in their mouths–this is one of the more interesting of the bits of knowledge attributed to Aristotle. It went largely unchallenged, and if you think it would be easy enough to just count the teeth in people’s mouths to contradict it, well, then you are a modernist as seen from the aristotelian camp. The concept that observation and analysis could be done to verify a thesis was totally foreign to them. Of course, if one’s eyes or ears could deceive, it would seem the human mind could do likewise. But that didn’t seem to place in the aristotelian tradition.

Galileo, of course, comes into the book as a person who disputes some of the basic scientific principles of the day. Heavy things fall faster than light things–this was a fact of aristotelian insistence. And our experience might bear this out, for there is a difference between a boulder being dropped on our foot and a pebble. The former might cause broken bones. The latter is brushed off, barely felt. More force is applied by a more massive object, but the modern view is that is caused not by greater speed on impact, but by more mass applied to our tender foot.

Astronaut David Scott demonstrated the principle on the moon in 1971. A falcon feather and a geological hammer fell to the lunar dust at the same speed. Of course, science had long reconciled the floating feather on Earth as being more due to air resistance than its relative lightness. The experiment attributed to Galileo is that two balls of different weights

Aristotle was recovered for the West by medieval theologians, rehabilitated, as it were by Thomas Aquinas and utilized to sharpen the Church’s expression of theology. Unfortunately, the angelic doctor also brought some of the philosophical fuzziness into theology. Even the great hymn Adoro Te Devote suggests:

Visus, tactus, gustus in te fallitur,
Sed auditu solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid dixit Dei Filius;
Nil hoc verbo veritátis verius.

In plain English:

Sight, touch, taste are all deceived
In their judgment of you,
But hearing suffices firmly to believe.
I believe all that the Son of God has spoken;
There is nothing truer than this word of truth.

I don’t know why one sense suffices, and others do not. Or why one might think that a powerful intellect could not be self-deceived. But I have the modern perspective and experience of the biggest mind game: addiction. The compulsion to indulge in substances and behaviors can overcome our most sincere intention or expression of intelligence. Saint Paul knew it well:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (Romans 7:15)

Modern rationalism has its own traps, but the idea of testing is not foreign to the Bible:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God (1 John 4:1a)

I’m not suggesting that any single approach is optimal. But there are some principles the Church misses, especially in the upper reaches of the hierarchy. I think the intellect can be deceived as easily as the senses. Our brains and everything that connects to them are fallible organs. So what hope do we have? The reality that we belong to a Body. A community is the best check on individuals who may be in danger of going astray. The widest possible input helps–something more easily possible today–if only we dare to leave out ideological ghettoes.

The Catholic hierarchy seems to inhabit neither worldview with any gusto. The approach to many moral issues seems to be based on the intellect, rather than on testing, analysis, and discernment. The approach to war, just or not, comes to mind. Wars may or may not be considered just, but many of the same evils emerge from all of them. Is there any urge to use one’s eyes, ears, and other senses to assess and test a theory which has stood for centuries, and does not appear to be contributing much, if anything, to alleviate human suffering or repairing the church’s moral leadership in the world. A more favored issue these days would involve gays and lesbians. If people are born and made homosexual, then perhaps there is something to be said for setting aside the possibly untrustworthy realm of the mind and balance discernment with what one can hear from the testimony of LGBT people and see in the value of their lives.

I do have hope that someday the Church will finish the procession over the bridge from pagan and medieval philosophy and use the full range of tools at its disposal. If sight can deceive, so can aristotelianism, or any other philosophy. We’re Catholics. We need it all. And we can use it.

 

Communion In Exile

I’ve been taking some time with Sister Meg Funk’s 1998 book Thoughts Matter. In it she channels the great desert monk John Cassian and applies his fourth century principles for stabilizing the thoughts of the believer. I’m barely one-third of the way into the book, and I’m taking it very, very slowly. This is very, very good material. In Chapter Three, “About Sex” I found a few items of interest. More on that in a bit.

In researching my monthly liturgy column for a print publication, I was tuning into stories from German-speaking Europe on welcoming (or not) the divorced and remarried Catholic to Communion. When chided that the divorced-and-remarried and intermittent churchgoers should not receive Communion, the adults remained sitting at this First Communion Mass in Austria. I’m not quite sure what to make of that. Is Father Z happy because all those sinners stayed put? Is NCR happy because this was some kind of a sullen solidarity with the forty percent (of German Catholics who are divorced)? Are we lurching toward a Council of Trent proposition that Catholics don’t (and maybe shouldn’t) have to show up for Sunday Mass?

Archbishop Zollitsch and Cardinal Meisner have their dust-up about sacraments for the divorced-and-remarried. The German Bishops’ Conference Prez isn’t backing down, saying it is a “question of mercy.” I think it’s good this issue stays in the discussion basket. Maybe the saints of history can assist us. Sister Meg isn’t connecting these dots explicitly, but she does mention when John Cassian believed it was important for a monk to take a spiritual “time out,” as it were:

(He) wrote a section suggesting that it would be beneficial sometimes to require a monk to take a day’s journey from the monastery in order to reduce stress and allow him to return after such a journey to better relationships within the community. Cassian states that this is a permission to be absent—not an expelling, a punishment, or an isolation technique. This monk is not to be denied the Eucharist, or coming to the table. This leaving is for the sake of returning. It provides time for the monk to work the passions down to a less compulsory intensity. Evagrius, the teacher of Cassian, gives the following advice: Withdrawal in love purifies the heart. Withdrawal with hate agitates it. (Thoughts, p. 42)

The first thing I thought of when I read this was the non-violent method of child behavior modification, the time out. My wife and I used it very effectively when the young miss was young. There were times she was upset. And at times, the time out was as much for me or my wife to get our own upset managed. There was always a hug upon the return from the corner, even if grudgingly given. And a point was made about returning to normal as soon as time out was done.

The situation with a divorced-and-remarried person is more grave than scrawling “The Chamber of Secrets has been opened” on the bedroom wall. But I think that Cardinal Meisner, and others concerned about scandal and the sacramental life must realize that the Orthodox, whom Catholics recognize as having entirely valid sacraments, will permit a divorced person to return to Communion.

Any serious Catholic, including zealous cardinals, must concede that the matter of receiving Communion is not one of scandal, but of discipline. Where it is a matter of sinfulness, that is worked out between the believer and her or his confessor. It is not dictated from higher levels. Where there are legal marital irregularities, that is worked out by secular agencies. Once those matters are satisfied, a second marriage may be blessed, and the estranged believers returned to a full sacramental life.

Later in this chapter on thoughts “About Sex,” Sister Meg reports that in the desert tradition, the sacraments were seen also as part of the remedy needed for the believer beset by troubles, sins, and such, even “when undergoing the fires of sexual passions.” (Thoughts, p. 43, citing John Cassian Institute VI.3)

To be sure, I’m not advocating any sort of blanket amnesty for all Catholics married “irregularly.” What I do suggest is that the situation for serious believers would optimally be resolved by a pastor and/or spiritual director. I suggest that the exploration of reconciliation focus not only on the “sin” of divorce and a broken relationship, but also on a reception of love (not hate) and the exploration of the role of the sacraments in lay life. What I hope would result from this is a renewed appreciation for the Eucharist, not a free pass to do as one wishes. I think this is where we Roman Catholics can rid ourselves of this whiff of pelagianism in the suggestion that good conduct will reward a believer with sacramental participation. And I think we do need to maintain a seriousness about the matter of broken marriages. We always attempt reconciliation whenever possible. We prepare couples before they enter into marriage. Hopefully we do that in exceptional ways, probably with greater care than we do even for the sacraments of Eucharist, Penance, and Confirmation.

Let me offer a few possibilities for Roman Catholic pastoral ministry in an era that has moved beyond marriage tribunals.

A “casual” Catholic was sacramentally married for a brief time, just a few years, experiences a divorce, and then remarried several years ago. The second marriage is “irregular” but has demonstrated clear stability, children, and a reasonably evident witness of respect, love, and commitment. Said Catholic approaches the Church to return to a more active faith life. More active, say, than sending kids to Catholic school. An exploration of reconciliation, or marital commitment, of inviting Christ into the marriage, and a non-sacramental blessing of the second union: what more would be needed? And how long? Several weeks, possibly a few months, and possibly joined with guidance from an experienced married couple and a spiritual director.

A “committed” Catholic was sacramentally married for several years, active in the Church, parish-involved, parented children, but was largely at fault in a marital break-up, perhaps because of grave sin. The person has remarried recently and wishes to return to a life like it used to be. I think this situation should be viewed with more circumspection. Hopefully not from a sense of “hate,” but with the awareness that such a person is very likely aware of Church teaching on marriage, and perhaps has allowed her or his passions to disrupt the lives of many loved ones and friends. I’d hesitate about saying “never” to a return to the Eucharist. But I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest that a full reconciliation in the Church be handled much more carefully.

Obviously, most situations fall in between these extremes. It is here that a sound local judgment will usually be better than institutional policy. Even in the situation of an unrepentant sinner, we should hold out hope that a baptized believer may yet be welcomed by the Lord. More joy in heaven, right? And who are we to circumvent joy among the Communion of Saints?

I suspect God gives situations in which the sacraments are an occasion of the grace needed to tip a believer back from exile. That’s a discussion that’s needed today.

 

On My Bookshelf: Becoming Who You Are

The past few days I’ve been enjoying an “old” book of James Martin, SJ. I showed it to my wife, and she said, “Ah, that was excellent. I read that last year.”

She also chided me a number of months ago for “never” accepting her suggestions for reading material. I guess that’s why she never told me about this book. I’m gong to have to work on that never, I suppose.

The author describes this book as “a meditation based on Thomas Merton’s idea of the true self. It grew out of a lecture given at Corpus Christi Church in New York City in 2005.”

I’ve read other things by James Martin and I’ve heard him speak in audio format online. I’m always impressed. This must have been some presentation to have heard, folding in Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, and Jesus of Nazareth to guide the reader/listener to aim for a “true self.” The reading was so hospitable, in retrospect I can see how the words were made for listening, and how they translate so smoothly to the printed page.

Friday night, I went back to the office to edit the Sunday prayers, assemble Mass announcements, field some liturgy volunteers. Busy work for a night I usually spend at home with my family. But necessary work, so I could escape early Saturday for the weekend in Kansas City.

Anyway, I was wrapping up things quickly, and noting that a summer Friday in a college town leaves the student center abandoned and, importantly, quiet. I ducked into a room with my journal, a Bible, and this book. My passage for lectio was Mark 13:9-20. Apocalyptic and cryptic. There’s not always an insight in the Scriptures, and I’ve learned not to force that. I looked up at the wall, and I was startled to see my name in a framed pencil drawing. The first line of calligraphy read, “Todd, I call you.”

No.

Not no to God, but, no I don’t see my name in a picture frame on the wall. This is the Francis and Clare Room. I looked again. Still there. Took off my glasses and squinted. Closed my eyes again. I’m going to get up, I thought, and I’m going to see what it really says. But I stayed put. Predictions of persecution didn’t poke at me that night. But I had been thinking about James Martin’s book. And the call to sainthood. Not just for the mighty figures of Tom Merton and Henri Nouwen, but for all believers. I preach universal sainthood to students. Do I listen to it–really listen–myself?

I did get up–my curiosity needed satisfaction. And sure enough, the pencil strokes of the calligraphy, and the smudge of a drawing changed “At … (something) I call you” to “Todd, I call you.” I sat down and looked up at it. God was still calling.

The central theme of Fr Martin’s book is Merton’s quote from New Seeds of Contemplation:

For me to be a saint means to be myself.

And in order for me to be myself, is to move toward choices that help me to be more loving in the ways I can love.

And that was it. I sat in the sofa, and glanced again at the wall. I wrote a few lines in my journal. And I realized that it was late on a Friday evening, and it was time to close the books and go home to my family. And so I did. I did not indulge a “false self” and set up overnight shop in Francis and Clare or in front of the tabernacle.

I had a very difficult encounter yesterday. My wife warned me about it, and unlike her book suggestions, I followed her instructions and it helped. While I was sitting with two strangers, I was listening a lot and praying and asking what was going to move me closer to love and to my real self. And I felt a weight lifted as one person grew more agitated and the other became more upset.  Conferring with my wife later, she helped crystallize that some aspects we my responsibility. Other aspects belonged to the people I met yesterday. And that was that.

I recommend James Martin’s book very highly. In his last chapter, “All Saints,” he reflects on the diversity of God’s call in the saints. Noting that the saintly life is not without conflict, he suggests:

But there is a problem with this diversity, that is, the challenge in appreciating another person’s path that is different from our own. While the saints grasped this, it can present more of an obstacle for the rest of us.

…

It can be especially difficult to accept another’s unique way of discipleship if we are unsure of our own. Such misunderstanding can lead to disagreement and even strife within the Christian community.

Fr Martin goes on to detail the 1957 dust-up between two saints, Dorothy Day and Flannery O’Connor. His conclusion:

The unity in the lives of the Christian saints rests on their commitment to Jesus Christ.

…

Not so much his settling of disagreements, but their fundamental trust in him. They may have said to themselves, “Okay, Lord, I don’t like that other fellow very much, and I don’t really understand him, but if you say he’s part of our group, that’s good enough for me.”

And in reflecting on my own experiences in an adversarial blogosphere, I see I have room to be more honest, and move toward more loving choices. I also see a bit more clearly a few antigospel themes: the small church, getting smaller, and the ease and glee with which some believers treat the erosion of the Body.

That’s enough for now. Maybe I’ll be back tomorrow for a word or two. Meanwhile, look for the young miss and I on tv today.

 

Sonata at Night

I enjoyed reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s well-regarded Never Let Me Go a number of years ago. I wasn’t up for a novel the other week, but this collection of his, Nocturnes, struck me for two reasons. First, the subtitle of “Five Stories of Music and Nightfall,” a no-brainer for a musican, don’t you think?  And shorter stories–not a novel. I read one a night over a series of late evenings. These were satisfying reads, so skillfully constructed and presented by a fine author.

Other things link these stories besides the musician-narrator of each, and the presence of nightfall. Mr Ishiguro’s stories are steeped in lament. These characters draw in the reader/listener. But the music is not at all a satisfactory resolution. There is the potential of love, but the characters often get in their own way. Is this something of a cliché–good musicians and poor in love? Maybe. But there’s enough of a grasp in these characters’ lives of something they can see and express in the music. But it just eludes them as they try earnestly to move that next step beyond the present.

Many musicians reach the point where they realize they are not the best at what they do. They possess enough experience and skill to know they stand fairly high up on the ascent. But others, stars and teachers and geniuses inhabit the summit. For some, the competitive types, that is a source of great sadness. For the characters of Nocturnes, it means tales of melancholy.

I have to admit I have played laments late, late at night in a church. But I also have to concede I find more joy in music playing with others in ensembles. And while Mr Ishiguro writes convincingly of characters who play well with others, each of these tales is a sonata for solo instrument. There are only vanishingly frustrating glances at ensemble play. These characters work with other musicians. There is no play.

These stories are masterfully drawn, but the characters fail in their best exploits because they insist on gong it alone. That’s a portrait of a loner, buzzed from a not-quite-finished third drink, under a single hotel room lamp, staring at the ceiling with the night’s music just a faint hum in the ears. These are sad stories. But unfortunately, they are all too true.

 

A Spiritual Reflex

One of my spiritual companions this Lent has been the Australian Trappist Michael Casey. His book Toward God has many insightful offerings, and the one that has been in my room of reflection this past week is the chapter entitled, “Sometimes …”

I found myself nodding in appreciation at many things in these twelve pages, but one important observation, helped by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, is the human tendency to waver in our practice of a determined faith.

We wobble along the journey, stumble off the path, find ourselves attracted in other directions, stand still, even regress. This is almost universal experience. What is significant is the strength of the reflex that keeps us bouncing back. There is something we keep returning to: a vision, a dream, a hope. Something gives us the courage to get up after each fall and resume the journey. This is concrete evidence of the Spirit’s work, far more potent than any spiritual euphoria.

I will confess to you readers that my biggest difficulty with the Sacrament of Penance has been the frustration that it seems to lack a preventive quality. At least for me. When I was a kid, I would confess the kid things: disobey my parents, stick it to my siblings, harbor envy about my peers–the usual stuff. As I progressed into adulthood, I found new sins that would repeat themselves. Confession and absolution would give me a certain spiritual euphoria. But I remember one particularly profound experience of the sacrament, and only three weeks later I had fallen back into my pattern of self-destruction. I went to confession again, only to fail a few days after that.

Perhaps I see today that my patience with grace and with myself was a little lacking. The sin seems almost irrelevant. Was I prepared, I might ask myself, to bounce back daily from committing the same silly sins over and over again? Maybe seven times isn’t enough. Maybe, for me, seventy times seven is about right.

Casey also writes of the “dual nature” of the spiritual experience being “both attraction to God and detachment from sin.” More:

It is not always recognized that the positive element, being drawn toward God, has to come first. No matter how disgusting our sins, we show little interest in giving them up unless something better offers. Then we gradually lose interest in what has satisfied us previously.

I took some time this past week to process these insights. I’m disinclined to share the disgusting side of my life, but suffice it to say, I found Fr Casey’s insights helpful. In the very mundane experience of growing up, I can relate that the sins of my first confession are likely behind me. My life doesn’t revolve around dropping a figurative banana peel in front of my sister, brother, or the dude who’s dating the girl I like. I’d like to think my relationship with my mother involves matters deeper than her saying, “Frog!” and me figuring out how not to jump.

As I often do, these reflections led me to ministry. Especially my “thing” these days, evangelization.

Every human being experiences the wavering commitment, from the doubtful agnostic to the saint. Likewise the people who some judge are in deep sin and outside the Church, are also in a situation in which the attraction to God must come first. Or next. If we are on the fence concerning the choice of running to God or divesting ourselves of sin, we likely should go to God. God is certainly aware that a sinner needs some glimpse of something better.

Our approach to those we might consider sinners is to offer God first. In reflecting on the recent episode of a lesbian daughter being denied Communion at her mother’s funeral, I think the reverent course of action would be to offer Christ. Instead the irreverent course was chosen: the denial. While canonically correct, my sense is that the instinct to follow the letter of the law shows a lack of spiritual depth, and ultimately a lack of hope and faith. If God is so fragile that the edifice comes tumbling down for one breach of rule or law, for one sin, then we really have precious little hope in Christ and what transpired during his Passion.

For the ancients gods were gods and lived apart. For the Israelites, God made himself known in their midst. But in Jesus Christ, God was to be found outside the Temple, outside the holy places of gold, and even beyond the sanctuaries of mountain and desert. And Christ deemed these places apart, these temples of gold and cedar, these mountains and deserts and wild places something not to be grasped at.

(Christ) emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:7-8)

I never quite understood stations 3, 7, and 9 of the traditional Way of the Cross. Why did Jesus have to fall? Okay, falling once–I get the point. But he falls after a bystander is pressed into service. And he falls three times. Is that some reflection back at Peter? Peter, who wasn’t even present, who ran away? Are these falls, in some way, meant to inspire believers? To urge us to bounce back when we have hit bottom?

Simon of Cyrene carries the cross. Veronica wipes his face. I used to see myself in these two people. Isn’t the point of being a Christian to help others in need? Wouldn’t we help Jesus, stand in his place, if need be?

These days, I find myself confronted more with station nine, Jesus falling the third time. I have no excuses for my falls. But thanks to Christ, and because of his grace, I have a way up. I hope, readers and friends, you have a way up, too.