At age 16 I won a scholarship to study with the Boston Ballet and later became an apprentice with the company. I was not a competitive person however at the cost of my desire for love, community and friendship, so the path proved a destructive one for me.
But I continued on...
Eventually in order to cope with living a life of complete contraction in values I became addicted to drugs and alcohol and all but destroyed myself in the years that followed. It wasn’t until I completely surrendered my life to God that my healing and real self emerged from the ashes, and I moved to a remote area in Maine.
The irony is the house we bought happened to be next door to a dancer with a healthy mind and a beautiful soul and we started a dance company based on love, sharing and community values and so I picked up from there...later I converted to orthodox and today I pray and practice visual art, also an interest of mine, in my rural home “away from the fray” as much as is possible.
Joanna- I decided not to go into all the uglier things I have seen in the music world, but it is exactly parallel to your experience in the dance world. The arts are, or should be, a spiritual path and not one of ego and worldly ambition. If Girard is correct mimetic rivalry is part of the human condition. But the spiritual path can, I think, transform us away from that however slowly. In this there is hope that there can be a shift to something deeper and truly healing and beautiful in the arts. Which sounds exactly like what you are doing. We can forget about New York, etc. and "the scene" and faithfully do our work out on the fringes of the empire. We can plant seeds. Thank you for your comment, it is appreciated. Be well. -Jack
Hi Joanna, Thanks for sharing this story of yours. I have a daughter who loves dance and was at Walnut Hill (related to Boston Ballet) last summer. She described the competitive, anxious state of the people there. She came home sad and certain that she could never live in that kind of place even though she loves dance and loved some of the teachers.
We are also considering moving our family to Maine, ironically. So I had to read your post to my daughter and we are longing to know what the name of the dance company you founded is and what area of Maine you are in! We are looking at the Unity/Troy area. I also have a son who plays guitar and piano and is quite the charming performer, so this whole post was eerily relevant for our family.
Clara- One of the problems is that there isn't as much in the way of an intermediate path in the arts. At least in the U.S. In Ireland years ago what was so appealing was that music, dance, storytelling etc was something nearly everyone could and did participate in. The music in the pubs is a good example, or folk dancing. In the pubs I saw that there was a wide range of participants, from those who had achieved a certain measure of national renown to beginners. It seemed everyone--even this yank--was welcome to participate. A stark contrast to playing music in the States.
I find myself discouraging people from going into arts as a career. At the very least one should know full well what one is getting into. I think most of us would be happier playing music with friends in the backyard. Or I think about the families in Troy, ME having barn dances. The sheer number of people wanting to make a career of it relative to the number of actual slots allowing one to do so makes the rivalries all that much more visible and intense. Of course, it is there in most things humans do.
The other option, I suppose, is just to give oneself over to the pursuit of artistic excellence and beauty and not worry about the morrow and let provision come. That's a hard path, but it is probably the saner one. An amatuer--the word itself--means to do so for love. It took me a long time even to realize that much.
There is a place, I think, in the coming simplification for local artists who can sing and dance because it is an expression of the joy and suffering of being alive, rather than "making it". In the meantime it can be a recovery and a way to hold on to our humanity when much else is pressuring us to be and do otherwise. And it can be, most importantly, for the Glory of God. However much our efforts may fall far short.
Actually when I first moved here, my friend and I started a company called Stella Dance Theater which has since disbanded ...my friend then went on her own and started a new company called Women’s Works Contemporary Dance. I have performed with them for ten years (up until the pandemic, which had an impact on our ability to work). I have also designed their graphics and ads. I am now 67 and am slowing down considerably but my friend (who is quite a bit younger than I am) is still performing snd teaching . She also works as a physical therapists assistant . She teaches dance at The Belfast Dance Studio. She is the artistic director of this performing company
But I am not sure when it’ll be in full swing again?
Anyway I wish you the best as you and your family make this enormous transition ! I do not regret coming here. It’s a much different life than I would have had had I opted to stay in “ the game” and its not easy, but i have been much happier here. It’s beautiful here. There are some really good folks here and there is beauty and nature and a sense of integrity still exists, if that’s what you seek ...thank you for reaching out ! Joanna
Wow, we stayed in Freedom in October for a night. In the morning we went down to the edge of Freedom Pond and the stillness, silence, and beauty was dazzling! We were in awe, it doesn't seem that such quiet and solitude even still exists in this busy world sometimes.
Yes, integrity is exactly what we are hoping for. We live in MA and the community is just more and more a retirement/resort each year. We are homesteading Do-it-yourself types who just don't belong in a place like this even though we grew up here. It's changing fast. I have heard that people are people no matter where you go, but I want to believe that there are places where the culture is more wholesome, more rooted in natural cycles than this carnival atmosphere that has permeated the Cape. It sounds like you have found that up there.
I have it to a degree, for sure. But it’s partly due to the fact that I am older now, too , that I have been able to withdraw from the need to prove myself to the world!
There are a lot more people moving to this area from more congested areas. I was born in CT and lived in MA for a while as well. New England (the entire world for that matter) has changed so much in the last thirty years! That said you can still find quiet corners in central Maine , probably more so than Midcoast Maine, where the tourist traffic is heavy (especially in the summers).
I resonate with your point about the lack of elders. I wonder if it is not tied up with the increasingly horizontal associations our generation were corralled into. Gen this that and the other, rather than intergenerationally, tied up in no small regard I am sure with the loss of real work which required human wisdom to learn, i.e. from our elders. Whilst I am appreciative of GIrard's insights, mimetic desire perhaps has a richer, perhaps more spiritually formative aspect within generational heierarchies. To emulate one had to grow 'up'. But now, what do 'elders' have which is thought desirable?
Eric- Honestly, I think this is one of the great losses of our time. We have replaced the wise elder with the "expert". And apparently according to at least one study the "experts" do worse in predicting things than simply flipping a coin. The past 3 years have shown us what the "experts" will do if we let them. Nothing much good. "Expertise" will be the death of us all.
The irony of this is that we have lost our elders and the perennial wisdom that they can give us just as we need them the most. How to cultivate a recovery and return? I would love to hear your thoughts.
Hello Jack - I trust you are well, I am thank you.
Thoughts on Eldership . . . Eldership suggests a commonality to humanity - that 'from generation to generation' thread of life. In our world, as I discovered recently, to be 'old' is simply one of many possible categories, unrelated to one another. That 'you are old and I am young' merely reduces us to competitors, the loss of the recognitiion of 'one day you shall be as I am', or indeed, 'one day I was as you are', which underlies Life Knowledge is absent.
Recently I found myself in a church gathering, where one might hope we Knew one another at some level deeper than surface, and then someone started to put us into boxes - it was dehumanising, profoundly so. This of course is what 'Modernity' does to us, and we just go with the flow . . .
So the loss of eldership is to do with the lack of humanity, of parenthood. In many regards the collapse of Home and Family as the heart of where we come from, and thus the central mediators of Life is at the Heart of the problem. The loss of Community and growing up in plaes we knew and were known, the loss of generation to generation work, on land and in basic crafts, all have led to the fragmentation of life and the loss of the necessary intergenrational context ofr our living which would understand the place of the eleder. But that is simply diagnosis, and a broad brush one at that.
Recovery? I am with Wendell Berry in regarding 'public education' as a fundamentally disintegrative practise. We learn 'things' which are unrelated to who and just as importantly where we are - where is of course part of who, I 'find myself' in the generational flow from ancestors to those who even now surround me and I pray will outlive me. All this disappears in the public school curriculum. (I speak as a former physics teacher. Teaching Boyle's Law at 2.30pm on a Friday afternoon to a bunch of 14 year olds in a North of England inner city even now questions my connection to reality, a disconnect which I was regrettably inclucating in any willing ears . . .)
Of course, that will not happen . . . or at least not if we don't start closer to home . . .
Henri Nouwen, whose writing I don't always find helpful it must be said -he has a tendency to valourise pathologies now and then - did suggest in 'The Return of te Prodigal', that perhaps the great challenge of the parable was 'to become the Father'.
For many reasons this resonates with my current thinking but for now, simply to become an elder is the point, or rather allow it to be the case.
My current experience is that when one has an attitude of open receptivity towards younger folk, that encourages them to begin to seek. I can think of about 15 young men of my acquaintance to whom I am in some sense now an elder, but only because I was not too tied up in myself to fail to notice them. There is still a latent hunger born in the heart of who we are which seeks for the Father. I have long known it in myself, and have never found such a person for myself, which perhaps is why I notice when other find it in me. But eldership requires some degree of vulnerablity - for we share Life not Facts. Perhaps of old it was the physical frailty of the elderly which helped in this regard. Certainly its in some respects why grandchildren often find a willing ear in grandparents :-)
A brief addendum: being an elder requires a stillness of Spirit that is not anxiously seeking ‘followers’. A receptivity to whoever comes along, a willingness to be alongside. I’m reminded of watching birds up close which I do a lot of. You have to allow them to come to you. The Modern Spirit which denies the World it’s own Agency and sees the human as [the] only agent, cannot allow such ‘active receptivity’.
I know it’s a heresy, but the quietists were on to something. (If you want to find the Truth it’s often helpful to pay attention to what people are trying to stamp out :) )
Eric- I think your addendum is key. Anyone seeking followers has probably disqualified himself from having any. As I see it the goal is to engage in a conversation. One that exists over longer periods of time and weaves in many themes, i.e., personal, philosophical, theological, contemplative, cultural etc. It means taking everyone's contribution seriously no matter how much at the beginning they may be. We all contribute to the attempt to deepen that rather than dominate and direct. It is a difficult art in many ways. The role of the elder perhaps is to be invisibly visible in facilitating this. Only the spirit leads.
I took a 2 year class in comedy improv years ago. The foundation of the practice is "Yes, and..." You don't deny other people's contribution, but you also always add to it, amplify it, give counterpoint. Even though I never made it past being a beginner, when we did our final project performance it was amazing what happened with no one directing or dominating anything. What emerged was both completely unplanned and strangely and satisfyingly coherent.
Which, as an relevant aside, is what gives me hope in a kind of Christian Anarchism. But it must be a practice, otherwise our hidden will to dominate usually brings things toppling down.
Thank you for your thoughts. I hope you had a beautiful Christmas. -Jack
Again it is the Implicit which is the fabric, the place where relationship is all, and this necessarily participational. The Truth is close. We all have access. The elder has known this longer.
Ah! Christian Anarchism! Yes :)
The explicit - the mechanical rule - kills life. Our churches ossify as the institution takes over. The bureaucratic - bound by fear, after all the word ‘anarchy’ terrifies - is Kingship by another route.
I’ve always pondered Samuels words to Saul. “Wait for the Spirit and then do whatever comes to hand” Life before structure. Our problem - Denizens of the Left Hemisphere world we’ve created - is that we prioritise structure over Life. So we build things and then try and breathe life into them . . . :)
I can relate to your experience a lot Jack, having been a musician throughout my twenties. My realisation about music life was that the ugliness of it originated in the business side of it; competing to get the record deal, the gig or secure a fan base. I've never been able to stop myself from writing a song, whether others like it or not. I suppose it's been a type of therapy and sometimes the divine can be heard in its melodies. My parents really wanted me to be 'successful' in music, but I don't really understand what that concept means anymore.
I think the arsenios option provides space for us to listen to the divine and weed out our own desires to identify the gifts we've been given to bestow upon the Earth. We must however continue to listen in stillness to ensure that we use our gifts as the divine intended.
Naomi- I couldn't agree more. Our consumer society churns out music, etc by the yard. It is overwhelming. We all need to slow down and be still and let something hopefully deeper emerge from that. Artistic skill and craft can help us form what emerges, but it is in the art of stillness that the real work is done. As I am sure you have experienced, when that happens it isn't really anything that one does oneself, but is instead received.
When I visited Ireland a few times back in the late nineties I was struck how much more communal and enlivening the music in the pubs were, at least as compared to what I knew back in America. I am sure there is some striving there like anywhere else. But there is also a deep musical tradition that one can be part of and not think one has to continually reinvent the musical wheel, so to speak. I wish there was far more of the Irish way here.
Thank you for that. That kind of honesty is hard to come by. But I believe there is so much light in music, it cannot be reduced to the dog eat dog world of rock&roll.
And although I am but an amateur songwriter pushing sixty, with zero experience actually making any, I feel music might actually be one of the portals that take us out of the dark age. A clairvoyant woman I met camping a few years back told me, amongst other things, that music was going to heal us.
Only time will tell if she was, at least, partially right. But my faith in the power of music is unshakable for It has kept me afloat, soothed my soul and filled me with joy innumerable times. It is the expression of the eternal, of God, that is the most universal and accessible. Hold on tight through the coming turbulence, it will not last forever.
Al- My intuition tells me you are right. Music (and the arts) can and will lead us out of the darkness. I see great potential for art that both arises from contemplation and is itself a form of contemplation. The darkness many of us experience can often be terrifying, but it is my hope that it also may be the space where contemplative art can be born. An art that isn't utilitarian but reveals to us the great mystery of being. That is my hope. It is worth exploring more deeply. And all of us, in our own small ways can contribute to this.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
Hi Jack, this was a really helpful post. Honest and unsparing in your telling of your story to help us look clearly at ourselves. Thanks for putting it out there. I have had a busy household and haven't been on the computer much, but ever since I read your post I've been pondering it.
Loved the quote about "deep down I'm a very shallow person".
Clara- I figured with Christmas upon us that people would be rightly focused elsewhere. I hope you and your family had a beautiful Christmas. With much joyous mayhem!
I am glad you found the post useful. I had been struggling for weeks on a post, and trying to absorb what I was getting from reading Girard and about Girard. Honestly, when I finally was ready I had no idea this is what I would write about. I hadn't thought about the time in the 7th grade in years. And now I saw it differently. It put my whole musical life in a different light.
Girard is theory heavy and can be very scholarly. I know I can geek out on all that. But I think what is most useful is that it can encourage a different kind of story of our lives. One that is difficult to see and to look at, but is more fruitful than the human tendency to narrate our lives as some kind of "hero's journey" where everyone is Luke Skywalker.
The few people I have attempted to share the idea of mimetic desire with have all had difficulty with the seeming leap from readily acknowledging that he's right about the romantic lie, and about the origin of desire, to the realization that this is the cause of violence and hatred. It seems a big leap from the one concept to the next. We want to believe that we can admire others, imitate them to some degree, but not hate them or want to supplant them. This is the part that is harder to see in ourselves or admit. And then when that leads on to the scapegoat concept it gets a little fuzzy and far-fetched. I admit that I have not given as much time to understanding Girard as you have, but I wondered if you also find this part more difficult to connect?
I also wonder if there is the possibility that we could acknowledge the mimetic nature of desire and not take it that far, but be content to admire and not supplant the other? When reading your post with my family we could all laugh at the story of your 13yo self and the Beethoven quote, but then when you said, " I wanted to defeat him for his effrontery of having more skill than me." I think that was the leap that is hard to follow.
Does this make sense? Perhaps it is just because it is always difficult for us to see the depth of our own sin and brokenness. I wonder if there is a way to clarify this or elaborate on it, though.
Clara- I was first introduced to Girard's ideas about 15 years ago. This was through the reading of Violence Unveiled by Gil Bailie--which is a very good introduction. But my response at the time was, "huh, that's interesting" and I left it at that. Maybe 3-4 years ago I tried again more comprehensively. I think I understood what he was saying, but like you express here, it seemed a bit much and while insightful felt exaggerated.
So what changed for me?
1. Silence and solitude. I haven't ever had this much time for silence. In silence what is has been unacceptable in myself, and which I have mostly or entirely avoided, starts bubbling up. In solitude, there is no one to blame for what comes up but myself, e.g., if in silence I get irritated, there isn't anybody external to pin that on, i.e., a scapegoat. This has been a revelation.
2. Every night at Compline we recite the Confiteor, which basically says, "I confess...that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed. Through my fault, through my own fault, through my own most grievous fault." This might seem excessive to some, but it also reinforces the need to take full responsibility for myself in ways that I haven't.
3. Confession. I purposefully have gone over my life and all that has weighed on my conscience and confessed it. Having someone gently nudge me to look at this more closely has been very powerful. This is where I have begun to see more clearly some of the motivations behind my own destructive actions throughout my life. It wasn't about what I thought it was about. This has been shown to me repeatedly. It was almost always about prestige and gaining social esteem.
So when I came across Girard's ideas again a few weeks ago it was like a bolt of lightning this time. If I have understood it at all it is because it had become inescapable in my own life. Which is not at all to say that it has been easy. It is always uncomfortable to go through. Currently I am feeling greater resistance to silent prayer, so it may be another layer of the onion is getting peeled off. We shall see.
My binge reading of Dostoevsky about 10 years ago may also have prepared the ground. In many ways Girard is a Dostoevskian (as well as a Shakespearean, etc). Reading Dostoevsky was really a profound shift in how I see the world. Not that I fully grasped his novels at the time, or even since, but it has been slowly percolating in my understanding.
Notes from the Underground goes into mimetic desire in a darkly comic way. And The Brothers Karamazov goes into this in a much deeper and comprehensive way. A big commitment, I admit, but well worth it on many levels.
I intend to reread Dostoevsky again very soon and see how my appreciation of his novels has changed.
One way mimetic desire and rivalry is both unmasked and hidden from us is our consumer society. Which both inflames our mimetic desire and offers its temporary "cure". It is the productive overabundance of our economic system that (mostly) prevents desire from spilling over into violence.
Basically, thus far, most anyone who wants a big screen tv, for example, can get one. You don't even need to have the money for it if you have a credit card. And you don't even need to ever intend to pay off your credit card. This is not true of everyone here in America, but is true of more people than ever before.
Though think about the videos of the mayhem of certain Black Friday sales. Which seem absurd to us, but there is mimetic desire and violent rivalry in all its ugliness. For those of us who might wish to think that we would never do that, I offer a kind of thought experiment.
Imagine a half-empty supermarket on which we depend on the bulk of our food. Imagine it is known that it might not ever be restocked. Imagine it filled with people. How do you think they would act? How would I act? Especially if it seemed there would not be any more food...
The music scene is a microcosm of this. I believe that music is something deeply human. But wanting to make a go of a career puts mimetic rivalry into overdrive. There are *far more* people wanting to be a full-time musician than the market could ever bear up, so rivalry and scheming gets ramped up considerably. It isn't that somehow musicians are more prone to it than others, but what is at stake is all the clearer. Even still, we try to hide that from ourselves. I certainly did.
It is then not a matter of kind, but of degree, when it comes to the rest of life. In many ways we seek to avoid conflict and defer when we can, but according to Girard that wouldn't mean it has gone away. We have found ways to minimize it but it all too frequently comes out into the open. It is a very human thing to either ignore it when it does, or to explain it away. Or even to find a scapegoat for why we scapegoat.
Thanks for this Jack, its not easy to shine the light into our darkness, but it is only in recognising the darkness within each and everyone of us that light can be received and aid us to turn and begin to inhabit a better self, but saying that it a daily atunement to inhabit this better self, and more often than not it a case of 1 step forward and 2 steps back, and the only way to move away from the romantic lie of automous desire is to RECEIVE, rather than take, grasp, appropriate are sense of being, our sense of self.
You started your meditation, by looking at the stars, the universe, asking why there is something rather than now, why we are even conscious of it at all, and I think starting at this place opens us up to the sense that all we have is received rather than appropriated, because considering the mystery of Being put the issue of OWNERSHIP Into question, and to me ownership is at the heart of issue of the romantic lie, because we want own our desire, are own sense of self, to be the original, better than are competitors, rather than seeing that our desires are cues from others, that my sense of self is a product of others, that there is nothing new under sun, that we are just interdividual rather than individual, but because we live in a world which is all about human rights, that promotes the individual, and taking ownership of ourselves, why should we expect anything different. But the question of Being reveals the lie of individuality, simply because we are a nothing and our sense of Being is impoverished and something borrowed not owned, something that is given and received, rather appropriated and grasped as are own property, and our self, our personhood is something that is not original but rather a task to be performed, to be received, from the divine, his creation and each other, and our sense of our borrowed, gifted Being should open us to an attitude of wonder and gratitude and thankfulness, and as a gift should be something to be shared with all, which reveals our common humanity, in other words an act of GRACE.
But Jack thank you for your thoughts and for your honesty, because I know there is a lot of darkness in me thats needs to be put under the light.
Garreth- Thank you for your beautiful comment. The interesting thing was that when I first read it last night I had just come from confession and some of the themes you bring up came up. What you are saying is almost exactly what I have been struggling with as of late. So thank you for the clarification. You are right, this is the work.
The romantic lie is deeply embedded in the current iteration of Western Civilization. We all carry it around without thinking much about it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Advertising took it up decades ago and it is the fuel of our consumer economy. We are manipulated by being sold the romantic lie that we are autonomous individuals who follow their own paths and could never be manipulated. The irony of it all.
What interests me about Girard is that there he offers a different narrative of the human condition. He exposes the romantic lie. Yes, there is a lot of theory in Girard to absorb and even obsess over. But the deep narrative that arises from the theory is, for me, the real revolution his thought brings. This narrative is slowly, glacially, clarified over the millenia. In the Bible, in Greek Tragedy, in Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, etc. I wonder how this narrative tradition of demystifying myth can be further clarified and deepened to decenter, at the very least, the romantic lie and all the rest. It may not divert us from the Apocalypse that Girard saw coming (is it already here?), but I do think it can clarify our own lives and how we live right now. What else is there?
A further reflection on silence (esp for those who cannot easily find it). My elderly (80+ years) mother-in-law lives alone, and spends most of her days alone or working in her garden, content with her vegetables and bushes. She once told me that, as a mother, she used to get stressed by all the noise and ruckus her kids made, until they were grown up and had moved out. Now she says she misses that “noise”. Ever since this remark, it has placed the stress of my own (often noisy) family life in a new perspective. At times, very strangely, I find myself actually grateful for the noise; and that, in turn—despite the superficial irritation it might cause—can bring on a sense of deeper peace.
My point is not that this contradicts anything you have said, but that silence and stillness can be plumbed in unexpected ways.
Peter- I think sports or the martial arts can be good examples of finding stillness in the midst of stress and even a kind of controlled chaos. Which is probably why we find these practices so compelling. This is something I have been meditating on lately via some different lines from Eliot's Four Quartets. So I appreciate your thoughts here.
I wonder if the annoyance at noise generally comes when we are on the surface of ourselves, so to speak. We find outer noise intolerable when it our inner noise is most pronounced.
Thank you Jack 😊 I agree about music in Ireland, there's still some magic left in the trad sessions that seem to happen organically. My experience happened in the UK, I lived in Liverpool for a good few years, it was very cut throat but looking back I think I managed to listen to the inner voice more often than not...perhaps that's why I wasn't very 'marketable'! I found an old video still floating around on the Internet - https://www.reverbnation.com/artist/video/7499703
It feels like a lifetime ago but the first song still holds true for me!
Thanks Jack 😊 I was brought up on the blues, my Dad having lots of delta blues records. I suppose it was fairly unusual for northern England, but I always connected with it...something about its capacity to communicate the feelings of a repressed soul!
I pray Compline every night. From time to time, I pray Vespers and Prime using the BrevMeum HD app, (1955 version). The app shows Latin side by side English and I strive to pray in Latin. It’s the offices language of the Church. I discovered that Latin makes you pay attention. It’s harder to zone out when praying in Latin, which I do with English prayers. I studied Latin by myself during the Covid lockdowns.
When are you going to become a monk officially? Tonsure and all that.
Evie- There is something beautiful in praying the Office to whatever degree we can. I used to pray the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Latin while in the world. There is something about praying/chanting in Latin. What I lost in understanding was more than gained back by something, well, inexplicable.
I don't think the monastic path is what I am being called to, but being here has been a life saver. To be honest, it isn't clear yet what I am being called to exactly, but I think it is slowly emerging day be day. I trust that one the time is right I will know. Just in case. please say a prayer for me!
There feels like a lot wisdom here Jack. Being conscious of rivalry through your ascetic practice, and your relationship with the Abbot, these sound like the sort of practices and relationships we could all do with. They both sound like a society structured around agape, where your fellowship exist to help you flourish and you cultivate your own agape in silence and then pass the agape forwards. It's recycled throughout the community: to your brethren, to us lot reading. Forgiving fellowships are hard to come by though. Certainly not in the place I work. And, sadly, not in most of the churches I've ever visited. I love Jesus and I want to follow his example, but I can usually only keep up the selfless love for about a week before I get pissed off and seek out a Girardian scapegoat (usually one of my bosses) because the world (and me) are unforgiving of my own transgressions. Besides my family and fiends, this post has helped me realise I don't live within a forgiving fellowship. Can it be cultivated within my secular workplace? Your experiences seem to suggest it can't. I've tried to suggest ways to bring a bit of humanity to the job, but it's usually shot down by the first technocrat the idea reaches in the hierarchy. Do you think I'm wasting my time? Thanks, as always, for providing this space.
Liam- I found it difficult to find this forgiving fellowship in the world. But I have seen it so I know it can exist, however rare. Despite all the talk that many companies have about being "a family" is just that...talk. And you are right, sad to say, many churches aren't good examples of it either.
There is something deeper and harder to get at going on. Or so it seems to me. If/when I ever return to the world, I would like to experiment with how to cultivate small groups of people coming together to help one another. Certainly through companionship and conversation, but also through being silent together. And ideally through making art and music together. This used to be far more common, I think. We have lost something essential.
Without that fellowship we become less than we are meant to be. Despite all our supposed sophistication and worldly opportunities.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
Thought provoking. I have always been drawn to the arts: dance, poetry, music. But I shied away from a professional life in them. This was partly my parent’s’ influence, I’m sure. They were very practical, and I grew up to be as well, at least to some extent. Being a starving artist, or one beset by other existential difficulties, never appealed to me. But my dad in particular had a deep spiritual connection to the arts too, although he was never a performer. That mattered too: it gave me a sense of what it meant to be truly moved, to participate with humility.
So I’ve always been an amateur dancer, writer and musician. And I have developed a deep respect for amateur performance. A virtuoso is wonderful to watch, as is an innovative genius. But most of us will never be that, and it shouldn’t stop us from doing and enjoying what we can. Besides, if there is a virtuoso somewhere, they will have a community to appreciate and encourage them. Surely that matters just as much as exceptional talent.
Siochana- The arts are powerful. Music is particularly strange in that sense, despite my years of involvement. Maybe *because* of those years. Why does the patterning of audible frequencies move us so intensely? What is the relation of music to language? Why does music seem to go much deeper than language? Why does it seem to point to something beyond itself, perhaps to the Divine? These are questions I have asked myself for a long time. I don't think I have yet found adequate answers.
Yet with all that it is curious how petty the art world can be. I know music and musicians the best so that is where I could examine this kind of behavior--in myself first and foremost. The rivalries were intense and it was disconcerting how a human being who could create such beauty could in the next moment act in such vindictive and even cruel ways. Not everyone, of course, but it was far from rare.
With that I take what you say about being an amateur as a useful difference. The word amatuer itself means someone who does it for love. Not that professionals don't do it for love as well--I hope I did--but that there is this often unspoken undercurrent that turns this expression of beauty, even when in the hands of a true virtuoso and genius, into something ugly. The arts are filled with these kinds of stories. Of course, this is type of behavior is not limited to the arts. I am trying to take seriously what Rene Girard is saying and it does illuminate much of what had previously been obscure to me. For what it is worth.
Thank you for sharing your story and for you comment. I hope you are well. Merry Christmas!
“Flee Ambition, Sit Silently in Silence, and Dwell in Stillness.”
Sometimes I think seeking smallness is helpful as well, not in the self-abnegating sense, but in the sense of being faithful to the littlest tasks that bring no obvious reward.
I have not been able to find much silence this month (which is, for me, the most socially active month of the year). But perhaps another way to find that stillness and smallness is to try and listen more carefully to others, and to understand them (I am speaking of face-to-face relationships here, not internet relationships).
Peter- These are both helpful examples. There is a guest house here at the monastery that regularly brings in groups for retreats. When this happens there is plenty of opportunities to simply listen to people. Your are right there is a kind of stillness that comes from giving oneself over to completely listening to another.
As for giving oneself to a task no matter how small I think of those who develop a craft or skill like woodworking. There seems to be a peace in the simplicity of the task itself and trying to do it beautifully. Even their shop can be a place of peace in its organization and layout. But it doesn't even need to be that highly skilled. Even vacuuming--a noisy activity, if there ever was one--can be peaceful if fully engaged in.
I hope you are well and the Petrine family are having a blessed Advent. -Jack
Different ways of searching out stillness (woodworking, martial arts, vacuuming, etc) are important, as there are so many mundane things in most people’s lives that we typically seek to escape rather than embrace. Civilization, especially the new system, powerfully encourages this escape, which is hard to resist unless we can both see it for what it is (a manipulation and deception) and to trust, with a profound trust, that we lose nothing by staying as small as possible, and gain all we need in that smallness.
Regarding the novel, I was in contact with the publisher recently, who noted the release date is slated for the fall of 2023. So, the wheels are rolling on that, slowly.
Regarding the Petrine household, you might find some of the conversation that goes on here interesting (in small doses!). It is like a continuous substack at the kitchen table at times (that’s why I said small doses). However, we are imposing increasingly strict rules on our news consumption, which is already low, but I think it needs to go lower. In other news, the chickens stopped laying a month ago. We did not cull them, as we made the mistake of naming them; you cannot easily cull a hen with a cute name. They are managing the sub-zero temperatures remarkably well.
"to trust, with a profound trust, that we lose nothing by staying as small as possible, and gain all we need in that smallness."
This is really at the heart of it, I think. If anything, our system encourages--both subtly and not so--our own delusions of grandeur. The implication, or the downright obvious message being that one is "too important" for the mundane things. The result however is not happiness but anxiety, depression, contention, etc. A small, hidden life of attention, care and love would surely make us far happier. But it's like kicking an addiction to see that, let alone do it. The monastery is my rehab.
I am glad all is well. Also, that the novel is moving along. All good. -Jack
As a Protestant convert to Orthodoxy a little over 9 years ago, I understand (and remember!) the silliness and inappropriateness confession to another can seem to have when you're on the outside looking in. However, being on the other side of that fence and having received such Grace and help from it, I've come to see it as a indispensable gift.
Confession is really a surprising and altogether inexplicable thing. That is, other than it being exactly what it promises. Indispensable is the perfect word.
R.G.- Music is deep. As far as I can tell no scientific explanation gets at those depths. The roots of music extend outside the physical world and into the Divine. So I fully agree with you. It is telling that we take music and turn it into something shallow and self-serving. As I said in response to another comment here, music (and the arts) are a spiritual path. Art is contemplation and is deepened by contemplation. The two go together. This is something I think needs a deeper exploration for our time. I don't follow music the way I used to, but I see examples of this happening. The music of Arvo Part, for one. I would guess there are many others doing something similar, though unknown to us. That is my hope. May it grow.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
I loved your post this morning, thank you.
I can also relate to it.
At age 16 I won a scholarship to study with the Boston Ballet and later became an apprentice with the company. I was not a competitive person however at the cost of my desire for love, community and friendship, so the path proved a destructive one for me.
But I continued on...
Eventually in order to cope with living a life of complete contraction in values I became addicted to drugs and alcohol and all but destroyed myself in the years that followed. It wasn’t until I completely surrendered my life to God that my healing and real self emerged from the ashes, and I moved to a remote area in Maine.
The irony is the house we bought happened to be next door to a dancer with a healthy mind and a beautiful soul and we started a dance company based on love, sharing and community values and so I picked up from there...later I converted to orthodox and today I pray and practice visual art, also an interest of mine, in my rural home “away from the fray” as much as is possible.
Joanna- I decided not to go into all the uglier things I have seen in the music world, but it is exactly parallel to your experience in the dance world. The arts are, or should be, a spiritual path and not one of ego and worldly ambition. If Girard is correct mimetic rivalry is part of the human condition. But the spiritual path can, I think, transform us away from that however slowly. In this there is hope that there can be a shift to something deeper and truly healing and beautiful in the arts. Which sounds exactly like what you are doing. We can forget about New York, etc. and "the scene" and faithfully do our work out on the fringes of the empire. We can plant seeds. Thank you for your comment, it is appreciated. Be well. -Jack
Thank you ! So much . It’s comforting to know we are not alone ❤️
Hi Joanna, Thanks for sharing this story of yours. I have a daughter who loves dance and was at Walnut Hill (related to Boston Ballet) last summer. She described the competitive, anxious state of the people there. She came home sad and certain that she could never live in that kind of place even though she loves dance and loved some of the teachers.
We are also considering moving our family to Maine, ironically. So I had to read your post to my daughter and we are longing to know what the name of the dance company you founded is and what area of Maine you are in! We are looking at the Unity/Troy area. I also have a son who plays guitar and piano and is quite the charming performer, so this whole post was eerily relevant for our family.
--Clara
Clara- One of the problems is that there isn't as much in the way of an intermediate path in the arts. At least in the U.S. In Ireland years ago what was so appealing was that music, dance, storytelling etc was something nearly everyone could and did participate in. The music in the pubs is a good example, or folk dancing. In the pubs I saw that there was a wide range of participants, from those who had achieved a certain measure of national renown to beginners. It seemed everyone--even this yank--was welcome to participate. A stark contrast to playing music in the States.
I find myself discouraging people from going into arts as a career. At the very least one should know full well what one is getting into. I think most of us would be happier playing music with friends in the backyard. Or I think about the families in Troy, ME having barn dances. The sheer number of people wanting to make a career of it relative to the number of actual slots allowing one to do so makes the rivalries all that much more visible and intense. Of course, it is there in most things humans do.
The other option, I suppose, is just to give oneself over to the pursuit of artistic excellence and beauty and not worry about the morrow and let provision come. That's a hard path, but it is probably the saner one. An amatuer--the word itself--means to do so for love. It took me a long time even to realize that much.
There is a place, I think, in the coming simplification for local artists who can sing and dance because it is an expression of the joy and suffering of being alive, rather than "making it". In the meantime it can be a recovery and a way to hold on to our humanity when much else is pressuring us to be and do otherwise. And it can be, most importantly, for the Glory of God. However much our efforts may fall far short.
For what it is worth. -Jack
Wow, what a coincidence! I live in Freedom !
Actually when I first moved here, my friend and I started a company called Stella Dance Theater which has since disbanded ...my friend then went on her own and started a new company called Women’s Works Contemporary Dance. I have performed with them for ten years (up until the pandemic, which had an impact on our ability to work). I have also designed their graphics and ads. I am now 67 and am slowing down considerably but my friend (who is quite a bit younger than I am) is still performing snd teaching . She also works as a physical therapists assistant . She teaches dance at The Belfast Dance Studio. She is the artistic director of this performing company
http://www.womensworksdance.com/
But I am not sure when it’ll be in full swing again?
Anyway I wish you the best as you and your family make this enormous transition ! I do not regret coming here. It’s a much different life than I would have had had I opted to stay in “ the game” and its not easy, but i have been much happier here. It’s beautiful here. There are some really good folks here and there is beauty and nature and a sense of integrity still exists, if that’s what you seek ...thank you for reaching out ! Joanna
Wow, we stayed in Freedom in October for a night. In the morning we went down to the edge of Freedom Pond and the stillness, silence, and beauty was dazzling! We were in awe, it doesn't seem that such quiet and solitude even still exists in this busy world sometimes.
Yes, integrity is exactly what we are hoping for. We live in MA and the community is just more and more a retirement/resort each year. We are homesteading Do-it-yourself types who just don't belong in a place like this even though we grew up here. It's changing fast. I have heard that people are people no matter where you go, but I want to believe that there are places where the culture is more wholesome, more rooted in natural cycles than this carnival atmosphere that has permeated the Cape. It sounds like you have found that up there.
I have it to a degree, for sure. But it’s partly due to the fact that I am older now, too , that I have been able to withdraw from the need to prove myself to the world!
There are a lot more people moving to this area from more congested areas. I was born in CT and lived in MA for a while as well. New England (the entire world for that matter) has changed so much in the last thirty years! That said you can still find quiet corners in central Maine , probably more so than Midcoast Maine, where the tourist traffic is heavy (especially in the summers).
Thank you for this post, Jack. Appreciated
I resonate with your point about the lack of elders. I wonder if it is not tied up with the increasingly horizontal associations our generation were corralled into. Gen this that and the other, rather than intergenerationally, tied up in no small regard I am sure with the loss of real work which required human wisdom to learn, i.e. from our elders. Whilst I am appreciative of GIrard's insights, mimetic desire perhaps has a richer, perhaps more spiritually formative aspect within generational heierarchies. To emulate one had to grow 'up'. But now, what do 'elders' have which is thought desirable?
Eric- Honestly, I think this is one of the great losses of our time. We have replaced the wise elder with the "expert". And apparently according to at least one study the "experts" do worse in predicting things than simply flipping a coin. The past 3 years have shown us what the "experts" will do if we let them. Nothing much good. "Expertise" will be the death of us all.
The irony of this is that we have lost our elders and the perennial wisdom that they can give us just as we need them the most. How to cultivate a recovery and return? I would love to hear your thoughts.
I hope you are well. -Jack
Hello Jack - I trust you are well, I am thank you.
Thoughts on Eldership . . . Eldership suggests a commonality to humanity - that 'from generation to generation' thread of life. In our world, as I discovered recently, to be 'old' is simply one of many possible categories, unrelated to one another. That 'you are old and I am young' merely reduces us to competitors, the loss of the recognitiion of 'one day you shall be as I am', or indeed, 'one day I was as you are', which underlies Life Knowledge is absent.
Recently I found myself in a church gathering, where one might hope we Knew one another at some level deeper than surface, and then someone started to put us into boxes - it was dehumanising, profoundly so. This of course is what 'Modernity' does to us, and we just go with the flow . . .
So the loss of eldership is to do with the lack of humanity, of parenthood. In many regards the collapse of Home and Family as the heart of where we come from, and thus the central mediators of Life is at the Heart of the problem. The loss of Community and growing up in plaes we knew and were known, the loss of generation to generation work, on land and in basic crafts, all have led to the fragmentation of life and the loss of the necessary intergenrational context ofr our living which would understand the place of the eleder. But that is simply diagnosis, and a broad brush one at that.
Recovery? I am with Wendell Berry in regarding 'public education' as a fundamentally disintegrative practise. We learn 'things' which are unrelated to who and just as importantly where we are - where is of course part of who, I 'find myself' in the generational flow from ancestors to those who even now surround me and I pray will outlive me. All this disappears in the public school curriculum. (I speak as a former physics teacher. Teaching Boyle's Law at 2.30pm on a Friday afternoon to a bunch of 14 year olds in a North of England inner city even now questions my connection to reality, a disconnect which I was regrettably inclucating in any willing ears . . .)
Of course, that will not happen . . . or at least not if we don't start closer to home . . .
Henri Nouwen, whose writing I don't always find helpful it must be said -he has a tendency to valourise pathologies now and then - did suggest in 'The Return of te Prodigal', that perhaps the great challenge of the parable was 'to become the Father'.
For many reasons this resonates with my current thinking but for now, simply to become an elder is the point, or rather allow it to be the case.
My current experience is that when one has an attitude of open receptivity towards younger folk, that encourages them to begin to seek. I can think of about 15 young men of my acquaintance to whom I am in some sense now an elder, but only because I was not too tied up in myself to fail to notice them. There is still a latent hunger born in the heart of who we are which seeks for the Father. I have long known it in myself, and have never found such a person for myself, which perhaps is why I notice when other find it in me. But eldership requires some degree of vulnerablity - for we share Life not Facts. Perhaps of old it was the physical frailty of the elderly which helped in this regard. Certainly its in some respects why grandchildren often find a willing ear in grandparents :-)
Just some thoughts
Blessings - Eric
A brief addendum: being an elder requires a stillness of Spirit that is not anxiously seeking ‘followers’. A receptivity to whoever comes along, a willingness to be alongside. I’m reminded of watching birds up close which I do a lot of. You have to allow them to come to you. The Modern Spirit which denies the World it’s own Agency and sees the human as [the] only agent, cannot allow such ‘active receptivity’.
I know it’s a heresy, but the quietists were on to something. (If you want to find the Truth it’s often helpful to pay attention to what people are trying to stamp out :) )
Eric- I think your addendum is key. Anyone seeking followers has probably disqualified himself from having any. As I see it the goal is to engage in a conversation. One that exists over longer periods of time and weaves in many themes, i.e., personal, philosophical, theological, contemplative, cultural etc. It means taking everyone's contribution seriously no matter how much at the beginning they may be. We all contribute to the attempt to deepen that rather than dominate and direct. It is a difficult art in many ways. The role of the elder perhaps is to be invisibly visible in facilitating this. Only the spirit leads.
I took a 2 year class in comedy improv years ago. The foundation of the practice is "Yes, and..." You don't deny other people's contribution, but you also always add to it, amplify it, give counterpoint. Even though I never made it past being a beginner, when we did our final project performance it was amazing what happened with no one directing or dominating anything. What emerged was both completely unplanned and strangely and satisfyingly coherent.
Which, as an relevant aside, is what gives me hope in a kind of Christian Anarchism. But it must be a practice, otherwise our hidden will to dominate usually brings things toppling down.
Thank you for your thoughts. I hope you had a beautiful Christmas. -Jack
A peaceful Christmas, thank you :)
Yes, I agree with you here
Again it is the Implicit which is the fabric, the place where relationship is all, and this necessarily participational. The Truth is close. We all have access. The elder has known this longer.
Ah! Christian Anarchism! Yes :)
The explicit - the mechanical rule - kills life. Our churches ossify as the institution takes over. The bureaucratic - bound by fear, after all the word ‘anarchy’ terrifies - is Kingship by another route.
I’ve always pondered Samuels words to Saul. “Wait for the Spirit and then do whatever comes to hand” Life before structure. Our problem - Denizens of the Left Hemisphere world we’ve created - is that we prioritise structure over Life. So we build things and then try and breathe life into them . . . :)
Blessings
Eric
I can relate to your experience a lot Jack, having been a musician throughout my twenties. My realisation about music life was that the ugliness of it originated in the business side of it; competing to get the record deal, the gig or secure a fan base. I've never been able to stop myself from writing a song, whether others like it or not. I suppose it's been a type of therapy and sometimes the divine can be heard in its melodies. My parents really wanted me to be 'successful' in music, but I don't really understand what that concept means anymore.
I think the arsenios option provides space for us to listen to the divine and weed out our own desires to identify the gifts we've been given to bestow upon the Earth. We must however continue to listen in stillness to ensure that we use our gifts as the divine intended.
Naomi- I couldn't agree more. Our consumer society churns out music, etc by the yard. It is overwhelming. We all need to slow down and be still and let something hopefully deeper emerge from that. Artistic skill and craft can help us form what emerges, but it is in the art of stillness that the real work is done. As I am sure you have experienced, when that happens it isn't really anything that one does oneself, but is instead received.
When I visited Ireland a few times back in the late nineties I was struck how much more communal and enlivening the music in the pubs were, at least as compared to what I knew back in America. I am sure there is some striving there like anywhere else. But there is also a deep musical tradition that one can be part of and not think one has to continually reinvent the musical wheel, so to speak. I wish there was far more of the Irish way here.
I hope you and your family are well. -Jack
Thank you for that. That kind of honesty is hard to come by. But I believe there is so much light in music, it cannot be reduced to the dog eat dog world of rock&roll.
And although I am but an amateur songwriter pushing sixty, with zero experience actually making any, I feel music might actually be one of the portals that take us out of the dark age. A clairvoyant woman I met camping a few years back told me, amongst other things, that music was going to heal us.
Only time will tell if she was, at least, partially right. But my faith in the power of music is unshakable for It has kept me afloat, soothed my soul and filled me with joy innumerable times. It is the expression of the eternal, of God, that is the most universal and accessible. Hold on tight through the coming turbulence, it will not last forever.
Al- My intuition tells me you are right. Music (and the arts) can and will lead us out of the darkness. I see great potential for art that both arises from contemplation and is itself a form of contemplation. The darkness many of us experience can often be terrifying, but it is my hope that it also may be the space where contemplative art can be born. An art that isn't utilitarian but reveals to us the great mystery of being. That is my hope. It is worth exploring more deeply. And all of us, in our own small ways can contribute to this.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
Hi Jack, this was a really helpful post. Honest and unsparing in your telling of your story to help us look clearly at ourselves. Thanks for putting it out there. I have had a busy household and haven't been on the computer much, but ever since I read your post I've been pondering it.
Loved the quote about "deep down I'm a very shallow person".
--Clara
Clara- I figured with Christmas upon us that people would be rightly focused elsewhere. I hope you and your family had a beautiful Christmas. With much joyous mayhem!
I am glad you found the post useful. I had been struggling for weeks on a post, and trying to absorb what I was getting from reading Girard and about Girard. Honestly, when I finally was ready I had no idea this is what I would write about. I hadn't thought about the time in the 7th grade in years. And now I saw it differently. It put my whole musical life in a different light.
Girard is theory heavy and can be very scholarly. I know I can geek out on all that. But I think what is most useful is that it can encourage a different kind of story of our lives. One that is difficult to see and to look at, but is more fruitful than the human tendency to narrate our lives as some kind of "hero's journey" where everyone is Luke Skywalker.
I hope all is well. -Jack
The few people I have attempted to share the idea of mimetic desire with have all had difficulty with the seeming leap from readily acknowledging that he's right about the romantic lie, and about the origin of desire, to the realization that this is the cause of violence and hatred. It seems a big leap from the one concept to the next. We want to believe that we can admire others, imitate them to some degree, but not hate them or want to supplant them. This is the part that is harder to see in ourselves or admit. And then when that leads on to the scapegoat concept it gets a little fuzzy and far-fetched. I admit that I have not given as much time to understanding Girard as you have, but I wondered if you also find this part more difficult to connect?
I also wonder if there is the possibility that we could acknowledge the mimetic nature of desire and not take it that far, but be content to admire and not supplant the other? When reading your post with my family we could all laugh at the story of your 13yo self and the Beethoven quote, but then when you said, " I wanted to defeat him for his effrontery of having more skill than me." I think that was the leap that is hard to follow.
Does this make sense? Perhaps it is just because it is always difficult for us to see the depth of our own sin and brokenness. I wonder if there is a way to clarify this or elaborate on it, though.
Clara
Clara- I was first introduced to Girard's ideas about 15 years ago. This was through the reading of Violence Unveiled by Gil Bailie--which is a very good introduction. But my response at the time was, "huh, that's interesting" and I left it at that. Maybe 3-4 years ago I tried again more comprehensively. I think I understood what he was saying, but like you express here, it seemed a bit much and while insightful felt exaggerated.
So what changed for me?
1. Silence and solitude. I haven't ever had this much time for silence. In silence what is has been unacceptable in myself, and which I have mostly or entirely avoided, starts bubbling up. In solitude, there is no one to blame for what comes up but myself, e.g., if in silence I get irritated, there isn't anybody external to pin that on, i.e., a scapegoat. This has been a revelation.
2. Every night at Compline we recite the Confiteor, which basically says, "I confess...that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed. Through my fault, through my own fault, through my own most grievous fault." This might seem excessive to some, but it also reinforces the need to take full responsibility for myself in ways that I haven't.
3. Confession. I purposefully have gone over my life and all that has weighed on my conscience and confessed it. Having someone gently nudge me to look at this more closely has been very powerful. This is where I have begun to see more clearly some of the motivations behind my own destructive actions throughout my life. It wasn't about what I thought it was about. This has been shown to me repeatedly. It was almost always about prestige and gaining social esteem.
So when I came across Girard's ideas again a few weeks ago it was like a bolt of lightning this time. If I have understood it at all it is because it had become inescapable in my own life. Which is not at all to say that it has been easy. It is always uncomfortable to go through. Currently I am feeling greater resistance to silent prayer, so it may be another layer of the onion is getting peeled off. We shall see.
My binge reading of Dostoevsky about 10 years ago may also have prepared the ground. In many ways Girard is a Dostoevskian (as well as a Shakespearean, etc). Reading Dostoevsky was really a profound shift in how I see the world. Not that I fully grasped his novels at the time, or even since, but it has been slowly percolating in my understanding.
Notes from the Underground goes into mimetic desire in a darkly comic way. And The Brothers Karamazov goes into this in a much deeper and comprehensive way. A big commitment, I admit, but well worth it on many levels.
I intend to reread Dostoevsky again very soon and see how my appreciation of his novels has changed.
One way mimetic desire and rivalry is both unmasked and hidden from us is our consumer society. Which both inflames our mimetic desire and offers its temporary "cure". It is the productive overabundance of our economic system that (mostly) prevents desire from spilling over into violence.
Basically, thus far, most anyone who wants a big screen tv, for example, can get one. You don't even need to have the money for it if you have a credit card. And you don't even need to ever intend to pay off your credit card. This is not true of everyone here in America, but is true of more people than ever before.
Though think about the videos of the mayhem of certain Black Friday sales. Which seem absurd to us, but there is mimetic desire and violent rivalry in all its ugliness. For those of us who might wish to think that we would never do that, I offer a kind of thought experiment.
Imagine a half-empty supermarket on which we depend on the bulk of our food. Imagine it is known that it might not ever be restocked. Imagine it filled with people. How do you think they would act? How would I act? Especially if it seemed there would not be any more food...
The music scene is a microcosm of this. I believe that music is something deeply human. But wanting to make a go of a career puts mimetic rivalry into overdrive. There are *far more* people wanting to be a full-time musician than the market could ever bear up, so rivalry and scheming gets ramped up considerably. It isn't that somehow musicians are more prone to it than others, but what is at stake is all the clearer. Even still, we try to hide that from ourselves. I certainly did.
It is then not a matter of kind, but of degree, when it comes to the rest of life. In many ways we seek to avoid conflict and defer when we can, but according to Girard that wouldn't mean it has gone away. We have found ways to minimize it but it all too frequently comes out into the open. It is a very human thing to either ignore it when it does, or to explain it away. Or even to find a scapegoat for why we scapegoat.
Thanks for this Jack, its not easy to shine the light into our darkness, but it is only in recognising the darkness within each and everyone of us that light can be received and aid us to turn and begin to inhabit a better self, but saying that it a daily atunement to inhabit this better self, and more often than not it a case of 1 step forward and 2 steps back, and the only way to move away from the romantic lie of automous desire is to RECEIVE, rather than take, grasp, appropriate are sense of being, our sense of self.
You started your meditation, by looking at the stars, the universe, asking why there is something rather than now, why we are even conscious of it at all, and I think starting at this place opens us up to the sense that all we have is received rather than appropriated, because considering the mystery of Being put the issue of OWNERSHIP Into question, and to me ownership is at the heart of issue of the romantic lie, because we want own our desire, are own sense of self, to be the original, better than are competitors, rather than seeing that our desires are cues from others, that my sense of self is a product of others, that there is nothing new under sun, that we are just interdividual rather than individual, but because we live in a world which is all about human rights, that promotes the individual, and taking ownership of ourselves, why should we expect anything different. But the question of Being reveals the lie of individuality, simply because we are a nothing and our sense of Being is impoverished and something borrowed not owned, something that is given and received, rather appropriated and grasped as are own property, and our self, our personhood is something that is not original but rather a task to be performed, to be received, from the divine, his creation and each other, and our sense of our borrowed, gifted Being should open us to an attitude of wonder and gratitude and thankfulness, and as a gift should be something to be shared with all, which reveals our common humanity, in other words an act of GRACE.
But Jack thank you for your thoughts and for your honesty, because I know there is a lot of darkness in me thats needs to be put under the light.
Your friend
Garreth
Garreth- Thank you for your beautiful comment. The interesting thing was that when I first read it last night I had just come from confession and some of the themes you bring up came up. What you are saying is almost exactly what I have been struggling with as of late. So thank you for the clarification. You are right, this is the work.
The romantic lie is deeply embedded in the current iteration of Western Civilization. We all carry it around without thinking much about it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Advertising took it up decades ago and it is the fuel of our consumer economy. We are manipulated by being sold the romantic lie that we are autonomous individuals who follow their own paths and could never be manipulated. The irony of it all.
What interests me about Girard is that there he offers a different narrative of the human condition. He exposes the romantic lie. Yes, there is a lot of theory in Girard to absorb and even obsess over. But the deep narrative that arises from the theory is, for me, the real revolution his thought brings. This narrative is slowly, glacially, clarified over the millenia. In the Bible, in Greek Tragedy, in Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, etc. I wonder how this narrative tradition of demystifying myth can be further clarified and deepened to decenter, at the very least, the romantic lie and all the rest. It may not divert us from the Apocalypse that Girard saw coming (is it already here?), but I do think it can clarify our own lives and how we live right now. What else is there?
Thank you again for your comment.
Your friend,
Jack
p.s. I hope you had a fruitful Advent. Merry Christmas!
Have a very merry Christmas Jack as well, and lets see what the new years had in store
GOD BLESS
Garreth
A further reflection on silence (esp for those who cannot easily find it). My elderly (80+ years) mother-in-law lives alone, and spends most of her days alone or working in her garden, content with her vegetables and bushes. She once told me that, as a mother, she used to get stressed by all the noise and ruckus her kids made, until they were grown up and had moved out. Now she says she misses that “noise”. Ever since this remark, it has placed the stress of my own (often noisy) family life in a new perspective. At times, very strangely, I find myself actually grateful for the noise; and that, in turn—despite the superficial irritation it might cause—can bring on a sense of deeper peace.
My point is not that this contradicts anything you have said, but that silence and stillness can be plumbed in unexpected ways.
Peter- I think sports or the martial arts can be good examples of finding stillness in the midst of stress and even a kind of controlled chaos. Which is probably why we find these practices so compelling. This is something I have been meditating on lately via some different lines from Eliot's Four Quartets. So I appreciate your thoughts here.
I wonder if the annoyance at noise generally comes when we are on the surface of ourselves, so to speak. We find outer noise intolerable when it our inner noise is most pronounced.
-Jack
Thank you Jack 😊 I agree about music in Ireland, there's still some magic left in the trad sessions that seem to happen organically. My experience happened in the UK, I lived in Liverpool for a good few years, it was very cut throat but looking back I think I managed to listen to the inner voice more often than not...perhaps that's why I wasn't very 'marketable'! I found an old video still floating around on the Internet - https://www.reverbnation.com/artist/video/7499703
It feels like a lifetime ago but the first song still holds true for me!
Hope you are well Jack 🙏
Naomi- That is really good. Some very nice guitar playing. Little did I know you are a blues singer! Thank you for sharing that.
I think as all this unfolds more and more of us will be thinking we were born at the wrong time.
-Jack
Thanks Jack 😊 I was brought up on the blues, my Dad having lots of delta blues records. I suppose it was fairly unusual for northern England, but I always connected with it...something about its capacity to communicate the feelings of a repressed soul!
I pray Compline every night. From time to time, I pray Vespers and Prime using the BrevMeum HD app, (1955 version). The app shows Latin side by side English and I strive to pray in Latin. It’s the offices language of the Church. I discovered that Latin makes you pay attention. It’s harder to zone out when praying in Latin, which I do with English prayers. I studied Latin by myself during the Covid lockdowns.
When are you going to become a monk officially? Tonsure and all that.
Evie- There is something beautiful in praying the Office to whatever degree we can. I used to pray the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Latin while in the world. There is something about praying/chanting in Latin. What I lost in understanding was more than gained back by something, well, inexplicable.
I don't think the monastic path is what I am being called to, but being here has been a life saver. To be honest, it isn't clear yet what I am being called to exactly, but I think it is slowly emerging day be day. I trust that one the time is right I will know. Just in case. please say a prayer for me!
Thank you for your comment. Be well. -jack
There feels like a lot wisdom here Jack. Being conscious of rivalry through your ascetic practice, and your relationship with the Abbot, these sound like the sort of practices and relationships we could all do with. They both sound like a society structured around agape, where your fellowship exist to help you flourish and you cultivate your own agape in silence and then pass the agape forwards. It's recycled throughout the community: to your brethren, to us lot reading. Forgiving fellowships are hard to come by though. Certainly not in the place I work. And, sadly, not in most of the churches I've ever visited. I love Jesus and I want to follow his example, but I can usually only keep up the selfless love for about a week before I get pissed off and seek out a Girardian scapegoat (usually one of my bosses) because the world (and me) are unforgiving of my own transgressions. Besides my family and fiends, this post has helped me realise I don't live within a forgiving fellowship. Can it be cultivated within my secular workplace? Your experiences seem to suggest it can't. I've tried to suggest ways to bring a bit of humanity to the job, but it's usually shot down by the first technocrat the idea reaches in the hierarchy. Do you think I'm wasting my time? Thanks, as always, for providing this space.
Liam- I found it difficult to find this forgiving fellowship in the world. But I have seen it so I know it can exist, however rare. Despite all the talk that many companies have about being "a family" is just that...talk. And you are right, sad to say, many churches aren't good examples of it either.
There is something deeper and harder to get at going on. Or so it seems to me. If/when I ever return to the world, I would like to experiment with how to cultivate small groups of people coming together to help one another. Certainly through companionship and conversation, but also through being silent together. And ideally through making art and music together. This used to be far more common, I think. We have lost something essential.
Without that fellowship we become less than we are meant to be. Despite all our supposed sophistication and worldly opportunities.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack
Thought provoking. I have always been drawn to the arts: dance, poetry, music. But I shied away from a professional life in them. This was partly my parent’s’ influence, I’m sure. They were very practical, and I grew up to be as well, at least to some extent. Being a starving artist, or one beset by other existential difficulties, never appealed to me. But my dad in particular had a deep spiritual connection to the arts too, although he was never a performer. That mattered too: it gave me a sense of what it meant to be truly moved, to participate with humility.
So I’ve always been an amateur dancer, writer and musician. And I have developed a deep respect for amateur performance. A virtuoso is wonderful to watch, as is an innovative genius. But most of us will never be that, and it shouldn’t stop us from doing and enjoying what we can. Besides, if there is a virtuoso somewhere, they will have a community to appreciate and encourage them. Surely that matters just as much as exceptional talent.
Siochana- The arts are powerful. Music is particularly strange in that sense, despite my years of involvement. Maybe *because* of those years. Why does the patterning of audible frequencies move us so intensely? What is the relation of music to language? Why does music seem to go much deeper than language? Why does it seem to point to something beyond itself, perhaps to the Divine? These are questions I have asked myself for a long time. I don't think I have yet found adequate answers.
Yet with all that it is curious how petty the art world can be. I know music and musicians the best so that is where I could examine this kind of behavior--in myself first and foremost. The rivalries were intense and it was disconcerting how a human being who could create such beauty could in the next moment act in such vindictive and even cruel ways. Not everyone, of course, but it was far from rare.
With that I take what you say about being an amateur as a useful difference. The word amatuer itself means someone who does it for love. Not that professionals don't do it for love as well--I hope I did--but that there is this often unspoken undercurrent that turns this expression of beauty, even when in the hands of a true virtuoso and genius, into something ugly. The arts are filled with these kinds of stories. Of course, this is type of behavior is not limited to the arts. I am trying to take seriously what Rene Girard is saying and it does illuminate much of what had previously been obscure to me. For what it is worth.
Thank you for sharing your story and for you comment. I hope you are well. Merry Christmas!
-Jack
Excellent post, Jack.
“Flee Ambition, Sit Silently in Silence, and Dwell in Stillness.”
Sometimes I think seeking smallness is helpful as well, not in the self-abnegating sense, but in the sense of being faithful to the littlest tasks that bring no obvious reward.
I have not been able to find much silence this month (which is, for me, the most socially active month of the year). But perhaps another way to find that stillness and smallness is to try and listen more carefully to others, and to understand them (I am speaking of face-to-face relationships here, not internet relationships).
Peter- These are both helpful examples. There is a guest house here at the monastery that regularly brings in groups for retreats. When this happens there is plenty of opportunities to simply listen to people. Your are right there is a kind of stillness that comes from giving oneself over to completely listening to another.
As for giving oneself to a task no matter how small I think of those who develop a craft or skill like woodworking. There seems to be a peace in the simplicity of the task itself and trying to do it beautifully. Even their shop can be a place of peace in its organization and layout. But it doesn't even need to be that highly skilled. Even vacuuming--a noisy activity, if there ever was one--can be peaceful if fully engaged in.
I hope you are well and the Petrine family are having a blessed Advent. -Jack
P.S. Any news on the novel?
Different ways of searching out stillness (woodworking, martial arts, vacuuming, etc) are important, as there are so many mundane things in most people’s lives that we typically seek to escape rather than embrace. Civilization, especially the new system, powerfully encourages this escape, which is hard to resist unless we can both see it for what it is (a manipulation and deception) and to trust, with a profound trust, that we lose nothing by staying as small as possible, and gain all we need in that smallness.
Regarding the novel, I was in contact with the publisher recently, who noted the release date is slated for the fall of 2023. So, the wheels are rolling on that, slowly.
Regarding the Petrine household, you might find some of the conversation that goes on here interesting (in small doses!). It is like a continuous substack at the kitchen table at times (that’s why I said small doses). However, we are imposing increasingly strict rules on our news consumption, which is already low, but I think it needs to go lower. In other news, the chickens stopped laying a month ago. We did not cull them, as we made the mistake of naming them; you cannot easily cull a hen with a cute name. They are managing the sub-zero temperatures remarkably well.
"to trust, with a profound trust, that we lose nothing by staying as small as possible, and gain all we need in that smallness."
This is really at the heart of it, I think. If anything, our system encourages--both subtly and not so--our own delusions of grandeur. The implication, or the downright obvious message being that one is "too important" for the mundane things. The result however is not happiness but anxiety, depression, contention, etc. A small, hidden life of attention, care and love would surely make us far happier. But it's like kicking an addiction to see that, let alone do it. The monastery is my rehab.
I am glad all is well. Also, that the novel is moving along. All good. -Jack
From one civilization-addict to another, Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas! I hope you and your family have a beautiful day...
-Jack
As a Protestant convert to Orthodoxy a little over 9 years ago, I understand (and remember!) the silliness and inappropriateness confession to another can seem to have when you're on the outside looking in. However, being on the other side of that fence and having received such Grace and help from it, I've come to see it as a indispensable gift.
Confession is really a surprising and altogether inexplicable thing. That is, other than it being exactly what it promises. Indispensable is the perfect word.
Hello Jack
There's so much someone starting out on the path could take from this lovely piece.
I've just re read it and this, for wont of a better musical metaphor, was my 'mike drop' moment:
"I have pursued many things because what I really sought was the esteem of others. This hasn't been easy to admit to myself."
Sounds so simple and obvious now, but I wish I'd read this 30 or more years ago!
Thanks so much for your writings, they are a joy.
R.G.- Music is deep. As far as I can tell no scientific explanation gets at those depths. The roots of music extend outside the physical world and into the Divine. So I fully agree with you. It is telling that we take music and turn it into something shallow and self-serving. As I said in response to another comment here, music (and the arts) are a spiritual path. Art is contemplation and is deepened by contemplation. The two go together. This is something I think needs a deeper exploration for our time. I don't follow music the way I used to, but I see examples of this happening. The music of Arvo Part, for one. I would guess there are many others doing something similar, though unknown to us. That is my hope. May it grow.
Thank you for your comment. I hope you are well. -Jack