Place a chair in a quiet, otherwise empty room. Arrange it so there will be no distractions, diversions, or interruptions. Sit there in silence and be still for an hour a day (2 x 30 minutes works best).Commit to doing this for the entire season of Advent.
Since in Advent we are moving into the darkest days and waiting for the light, consider this a form of resistance to The Kingdom of Infinite Distraction. And if you can’t fully join in, you can still do whatever you are able (2 x 10 min?). And if simply can’t do anything at all, then maybe someone can offer one of their sessions for you. It never hurts to ask!
Who’s in?
P.S. Whatever amount you can honestly do, is the right amount.
I started this morning. I commit to 20 minutes 2x a day during the entire season of Advent to sit in silence and prayer.
I have to laugh; in early America, prison reformers suggested that inmates spend time in their empty cell contemplating their sins. Some of the men went mad!
I might suggest that people sit and pray (or meditate) where they are most comfortable. Most monks either pray in the chapel or their stall, and they may continue to pray in their room with a cross and some books. I pray in my outdoor library (or cell) with icons. I don't read or listen to music. I have no electronics in the room (I wear an analog watch to keep time). Part of choosing a place with religious items or precious mementos is remind yourself of your past, your commitment to the beliefs of your faith and its traditions, and to facilitate worship of God's continual presence and love for you.
With friendship and thanks for your leadership here! --Diana
These are all helpful reminders. The setting itself can matter greatly in helping our silence to be fruitful. I am pretty bad at it myself. Yet when I have experienced prayer spaces/rooms that illustrate what you are saying, I know how powerful it can be.
I can see how unprepared prisoners forced into isolation to contemplate the sins might very well go mad. In the Cloud of Unknowing the author emphasizes more than once the need for confession before beginning contemplative prayer. Of course, not everyone is part of a tradition that has confession, but the principle remains. We meet ourselves in silence and stillness, and what bubbles up can be overwhelming if one isn't prepared.
Thank you for being the first one to take up The Pascal Challenge. You got the ball rolling.
I hope you have a blessed Advent and fruitful silence! -Jack
I'm on the old calendar and so the fast just began for me yesterday. I made the commitment to eliminate my usual avenues of distraction as over the past year it has become more and more apparent to me that it is impeding my way along the path. Even one day in and immediately what bubbled up were my doubts about God, faith, religion, myself. One single day of no distraction and so many dragons reared their heads. Thankfully I was able to express much of this to a loved one, but it amazed me. Even as someone who thinks he's made good headway into being mindful and present I realize I'm absolutely mired in the murk of distraction, maybe not drowning like most of our culture seems to be at present, but not much better off. I pray God reveals to me what needs revealing, to reveal what I have the strength to endure, to look with the eyes of compassion and loving-kindness towards my own feeble soul and for the courage to do the necessary work of bearing my cross and following the via dolorosa.
Eduardo- This is a beautiful reflection on the theme of silence and distraction. It gets to the core of it, I think. Thank you.
I have also found the same difficulties, struggles and stumbling blocks on the contemplative path. My guess is that for most of us this *is* the contemplative path. It is as you say well, the path of the cross. But because of this also a path of hope, because no matter how dark it gets it is also the path of resurrection.
Even though all of us are spread out around the planet., we can be in this together. Prayer is more intimate than geographical proximity.
I hope you have a blessed Advent and fruitful silence. -Jack
"Christ the Eternal Tao" has been on my radar for a while. I really need to check it out. On the distraction front, I feel you. I can be very nearly a physical thing that drives me to escape the moment in some frivolous entertainment. And with the advent of the smart phone, that escape is readily available at a moments notice. Of course, the phone isn't the problem but something in me. Lord have mercy.
F_S- If you are in the States, Christ the Eternal Tao is currently out of print and going for ridiculous prices on Amazon etc. I contacted St. Herman Press and was told there should be a new printing either this month or early next year. It is well worth getting. It is one of most valued books and my copy is getting a little beaten up after so many years. I will probably get a spare copy myself on the next run.
I think it is fairly clear that the arrival of the smartphone in 2008 or thereabouts changed us in ways we never could have predicted. I don't have one because the technology I already have is hard enough to keep proportionate. Also, I don't like the idea of being tracked, but then if "they" want to track me, I don't think a lack of a phone will matter. For the same reason I refuse to even try out VR goggles. I don't want to like them and have to fight another addiction.
Just came across this post today. I'm in. I sit in silence in the woods, everyday, for 2 hours, but I am happy to add this 1 hour a day sitting in silence, in an empty, silent space without distraction. Appreciate the 'invitation'.
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Words of Jesus, Matthew 6:6
Jeff- Yes, I think this is a central verse. Not only the inner room of, say, one's house. But the inner room of our own heart and awareness. The Father who is in secret, the treasure hidden in the field, which we must sell everything--give up our clinging and attachments to worldly advantage-- to purchase. Thank you. -Jack
I'm in, Jack, and very much looking forward to this practice. I don't know the amount of time yet, but I shall know it soon. God bless you. Love, Michelle
Michelle- Beautiful. I would love to know your times once you've decided. Good to hear from you. I meant what I said. May your silence be fruitful. Love, Jack
Nov 30, 2022·edited Nov 30, 2022Liked by Jack Leahy
Dear Jack, thanks for this challenge. I am intrigued by it and I will commit to it.
I hope I'm not getting lost in the details, but would something like this be different from a lectio divina ? In that the latter involves meditating and thinking on scripture, while the former involves simply being present with yourself and God with no external stimulus.
During this practice, thoughts come about - what am I to do with them ?
When Nietzsche talks about gazing into the abyss and not turning away from the monsters we find there, is he referring to these thoughts ? Or is it that by time, one is able to go beyond such thoughts and deeper into the reality of the self ?
Peun- These are all good questions. I am proposing something other than Lectio Divina. Which is just be still and silent for a period of time. When thoughts come up--and they will--just let them be. You neither push them away or engage them. If you get too caught up in thoughts just take an easy breath. No need to worry about them.
As for your second question, that is a much deeper one. My take on it is that there are things within us that we might not want to see or even know about. When we are still these can start to surface in our awareness. This is why we seek to distract ourselves. We don't want to know who we really are, because at least at first it might not be pleasant. It can be a dark passage, but there is light on the other side of it. Which is also a reason to go easy at first.
We're in (Mark and Lisa)! We can't promise we'll be somewhere with no external distractions, diversions or interruptions, but we're still in. To each according to their conditions....
Quakeress- Beautiful. I went to a few Quaker meetings long ago and find the silence there compelling. I hope you silence is even more so. Be well. -Jack
Clara- You got me thinking with this comment. I grew up completely immersed in popular culture--which is neither of the people or a culture. It is the commercial mimesis of consumerism. It trains us in a kind of desire that enhances profit and not in anyway an orientation towards the good. I've said this before, but it bears repeating: the trick they play is to instill a mimetic desire that pretends to be a radical individualism. They tells us what to do by convincing us that we are rebels who can't be told what to do. It would be hilarious if it weren't so insidious.
I recall you saying you grew up differently--no tv for example. But there was surely mimesis going on, though a different one than the pop cult/corporate version I had.
So all this is preamble to wondering whether there can be a counter-mimesis that is awake and deliberate and communally developed and guided. Rather than being completely at the mercy of forces we don't fully understand other than the ominous sense that they do not have our good in mind...at all.
If there is such a counter-mimesis than I think it will have to be small and local and under the radar. Anything that "trends" becomes subject to hijacking and cooption by the machine. Which puts everything back to square one.
Just thinking this through. Maybe it is worth a post. We shall see.
Yes, in the church community I grew up with there was "peer pressure" of another sort. There were people who were competitive about how holy, righteous, committed, faithful, spiritual, they appeared to be. That is not a good thing though it may seem lots better than drug addiction or consumer culture. It's not a good thing for the church because unacknowledged ego is operating with the guise of God's service.
I don't think this rivalry has a place in spiritual growth of the best, highest sort. I'm pretty sure that lots has been written by those who have gone before about this danger. Maybe I am missing what you mean?
Anything done for the eyes of man rather than the approval of God "has its reward". There is legitimate encouraging of each other and helping or advising but you can't get far without being willing take some steps that no one else sees/understands/appreciates but are between you and God..... right? I think the mystics say this again and again. And in my experience the people who strove the least for the outwardly impressive church status were the most Christ like.
My father in law is an example. He used to go to the local homeless shelter before every church service (3 times per week) and announce that he would bring anyone to church. Many took him up on it. Sometimes they smelled badly, were drunk, or talked to themselves loudly during the sermons, but certainly not all of them. He would inevitably become involved in the lives of a few of the people he met this way. He would leave prayer meeting early to go do this and would sometimes leave services if the people were too disturbing. So after years the pastor approached him and offered him a "ministry" position which, he was told, would require him to stop the driving of homeless people to church. He said no thanks. Now to be offered "ministry" was the goal of many and was always preached about as synonymous with God's will for us. I think he has more of the heart of the gospels than many who were striving for status within the church system.
I guess mimesis in the church would be great if the church were pure and holy without taint, but...... never gonna happen so we have to be ultimately accountable to something more. Not sure if all that makes any coherent conclusion.
How are you, Jack? Have you been sleeping well? I heard Ian McGilchrist say something like, "The really important things in life cannot be made into ends. For example sleep: you cannot make a goal of sleeping well. Good sleep is a product of life well lived." Maybe spirit life is too.
Clara- Right now I am, not surprisingly, grappling with Girard. I think what he is saying is deep, brilliant and disturbing. But it is also kind of locked away in the world and language of academia. I have been thinking about the need to render his insights into both more deeply poetic but also immediate language. I am in the middle of "Reading the Bible with Rene Girard" which is an excellent introduction to the topic. But it seems that Girard thought so, too. In an answer about whether people understand what he is saying, he responded (in 2005):
"Very, very few people understand. More people now do understand, but not too many. **However, it must be said that there are better ways to formulate it than the way I have done so far; it could still be done better. I mean more clearly, more explicitly, more forcefully, more dramatically** while at the same time showing that the scapegoat, the lie of scapegoating, this unconsciousness of scapegoating (to have a scapegoat is not to be aware that one has a scapegoat), therefore means that a text that openly mentions a scapegoat cannot be a scapegoat text. I have confidence that this will be done and is already being done by interpreters of the Bible who use mimetic theory."
In my own small way this is something I would like to contribute to doing. So your story of your Father-in-law is spot on in this sense. A church is just as susceptible to unconscious mimetic desire as anybody else. As always, there are real benefits to going along, but to remain unconscious to the whole process is to continue to feed into it. The so-called culture war may be little more than one memetic matrix in battle with another counter-memetics. Your Father-in-law seemed able to step outside that somewhat, to what I will call a eumemetic--or good memetics. There is only one person worth imitating.
Girard felt the only solution to memetic escalation was to be better Christians. Christian institutions may be less helpful than we would like in that regard. There is no system that can guarantee the correct way. Once it becomes systematized and institutionalized the rewards become too great and the whole thing is at risk of been hijacked for very different purposes. This is at the heart of The Grand Inquisitor by Dostoevsky. Which I try to read on a regular basis as a reminder.
And once again I am using the comment section to think through my next post. Your indulgence is appreciated!
----
And I am sleeping better, thank you for checking in. Once again I think Iain Mcgilchrist is spot on. My sleep is better because there is something far more deeply satisfying about my life right now. Better sleep is a byproduct of that.
I hope you and the entire family are having a joyful day! -Jack
I'm very interested in this from Girard. Looking forward to hearing more on it when you are so inspired. Maybe people do understand it when they are good christians but not enough to put it into words. They simply don't long to be above others or to be recognized, but love to serve and to see others grow.
You are right, on some intuitive level people definitely do get it. And thankfully there have always been people who silently go about serving others without fanfare. That is a eumimesis I can do better to imitate.
And the past few years have given us all a lesson in the possibly less tangible aspects mimetic desire and scapegoating. The whole ugly business surfaced from the depths of its hiding place and now there is this pretence as if it all never really happened like that. But we did see it, and it is good to fathom what that means.
By the way, I got my beautiful copy of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association newsletter in the mail yesterday and saw a classified "help wanted" for this residency at the former Nearing homestead:
Could be good for someone looking for a place to be outside of the worst of the machine for a time. I have driven through the area,and read about it... must be beautiful.
And I am still praying for the Farm in Maine for you all. Not all of us are meant to find a way out of the machine, but it is still a good thing to do so. Or it could be...
I certainly still have great hope for it. I feel confident that we are being guided. Just two years ago my husband and I firmly believed that we would always live here... so now that we are getting ready to depart it feels like anything is possible. Thanks for your prayers and concern.
This does look good. Though I don't have any real gardening experience. I would like to learn. I did water plants in office buildings in Manhattan long ago. But I don't think that counts for much.
Ha Ha! You could read a couple books on the Nearings and claim to be a great fan, then say you are longing to get some gardening experience but due to oppressive colonial structures have been excluded from access to land. They'll love you.
Which, given the gist of the discussion here lately, this would be a beautifully ironic way to be interrupted. Proving, as if we need further proof, that God has a sense of humor.
The dance between silence and tending to kiddos and their needs is one of the main features of our daily prayer times. Both parts are about self-surrender, just in different forms. :)
Anna- If you have a method of meditation/prayer no need to change things up, I reckon. But my inclination is to keep it as simple as possible, i.e., normal breathing, sitting comfortably (with a naturally straight back), neither fighting nor trying to engage thoughts, letting what comes up to just come up without resistance. All with a curiosity to see happens. Relax into it, as it were. I hope it goes well for you. -Jack
I started this morning. I commit to 20 minutes 2x a day during the entire season of Advent to sit in silence and prayer.
I have to laugh; in early America, prison reformers suggested that inmates spend time in their empty cell contemplating their sins. Some of the men went mad!
I might suggest that people sit and pray (or meditate) where they are most comfortable. Most monks either pray in the chapel or their stall, and they may continue to pray in their room with a cross and some books. I pray in my outdoor library (or cell) with icons. I don't read or listen to music. I have no electronics in the room (I wear an analog watch to keep time). Part of choosing a place with religious items or precious mementos is remind yourself of your past, your commitment to the beliefs of your faith and its traditions, and to facilitate worship of God's continual presence and love for you.
With friendship and thanks for your leadership here! --Diana
Diana-
These are all helpful reminders. The setting itself can matter greatly in helping our silence to be fruitful. I am pretty bad at it myself. Yet when I have experienced prayer spaces/rooms that illustrate what you are saying, I know how powerful it can be.
I can see how unprepared prisoners forced into isolation to contemplate the sins might very well go mad. In the Cloud of Unknowing the author emphasizes more than once the need for confession before beginning contemplative prayer. Of course, not everyone is part of a tradition that has confession, but the principle remains. We meet ourselves in silence and stillness, and what bubbles up can be overwhelming if one isn't prepared.
Thank you for being the first one to take up The Pascal Challenge. You got the ball rolling.
I hope you have a blessed Advent and fruitful silence! -Jack
I’m really deep in distraction but I will start with 10mins x 1 and work up.
Alex- Beautiful. The perfect amount. Feel free to check back in to let us know how it is going. -Jack
I'm on the old calendar and so the fast just began for me yesterday. I made the commitment to eliminate my usual avenues of distraction as over the past year it has become more and more apparent to me that it is impeding my way along the path. Even one day in and immediately what bubbled up were my doubts about God, faith, religion, myself. One single day of no distraction and so many dragons reared their heads. Thankfully I was able to express much of this to a loved one, but it amazed me. Even as someone who thinks he's made good headway into being mindful and present I realize I'm absolutely mired in the murk of distraction, maybe not drowning like most of our culture seems to be at present, but not much better off. I pray God reveals to me what needs revealing, to reveal what I have the strength to endure, to look with the eyes of compassion and loving-kindness towards my own feeble soul and for the courage to do the necessary work of bearing my cross and following the via dolorosa.
Eduardo- This is a beautiful reflection on the theme of silence and distraction. It gets to the core of it, I think. Thank you.
I have also found the same difficulties, struggles and stumbling blocks on the contemplative path. My guess is that for most of us this *is* the contemplative path. It is as you say well, the path of the cross. But because of this also a path of hope, because no matter how dark it gets it is also the path of resurrection.
Even though all of us are spread out around the planet., we can be in this together. Prayer is more intimate than geographical proximity.
I hope you have a blessed Advent and fruitful silence. -Jack
My post about a morning quiet time reminds me of this! Absolutely LOVE it. So necessary.
"Christ the Eternal Tao" has been on my radar for a while. I really need to check it out. On the distraction front, I feel you. I can be very nearly a physical thing that drives me to escape the moment in some frivolous entertainment. And with the advent of the smart phone, that escape is readily available at a moments notice. Of course, the phone isn't the problem but something in me. Lord have mercy.
F_S- If you are in the States, Christ the Eternal Tao is currently out of print and going for ridiculous prices on Amazon etc. I contacted St. Herman Press and was told there should be a new printing either this month or early next year. It is well worth getting. It is one of most valued books and my copy is getting a little beaten up after so many years. I will probably get a spare copy myself on the next run.
I think it is fairly clear that the arrival of the smartphone in 2008 or thereabouts changed us in ways we never could have predicted. I don't have one because the technology I already have is hard enough to keep proportionate. Also, I don't like the idea of being tracked, but then if "they" want to track me, I don't think a lack of a phone will matter. For the same reason I refuse to even try out VR goggles. I don't want to like them and have to fight another addiction.
Lord have mercy, indeed. -Jack
Just came across this post today. I'm in. I sit in silence in the woods, everyday, for 2 hours, but I am happy to add this 1 hour a day sitting in silence, in an empty, silent space without distraction. Appreciate the 'invitation'.
Altra- Beautiful. May the additional silence be fruitful. Thank you. -Jack
“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Words of Jesus, Matthew 6:6
Jeff- Yes, I think this is a central verse. Not only the inner room of, say, one's house. But the inner room of our own heart and awareness. The Father who is in secret, the treasure hidden in the field, which we must sell everything--give up our clinging and attachments to worldly advantage-- to purchase. Thank you. -Jack
I'm in, Jack, and very much looking forward to this practice. I don't know the amount of time yet, but I shall know it soon. God bless you. Love, Michelle
Michelle- Beautiful. I would love to know your times once you've decided. Good to hear from you. I meant what I said. May your silence be fruitful. Love, Jack
I'm for 2 x 15 min this time. If I am successful, perhaps I can push it to 2 x 20 min during Lent.
Herman- Sounds like a wise plan, I think. I hope the silence is fruitful. It usually is!
Be well. -Jack
Dear Jack, thanks for this challenge. I am intrigued by it and I will commit to it.
I hope I'm not getting lost in the details, but would something like this be different from a lectio divina ? In that the latter involves meditating and thinking on scripture, while the former involves simply being present with yourself and God with no external stimulus.
During this practice, thoughts come about - what am I to do with them ?
When Nietzsche talks about gazing into the abyss and not turning away from the monsters we find there, is he referring to these thoughts ? Or is it that by time, one is able to go beyond such thoughts and deeper into the reality of the self ?
Apologies for so many questions.
Thanks again, and God Bless all
Peun- These are all good questions. I am proposing something other than Lectio Divina. Which is just be still and silent for a period of time. When thoughts come up--and they will--just let them be. You neither push them away or engage them. If you get too caught up in thoughts just take an easy breath. No need to worry about them.
As for your second question, that is a much deeper one. My take on it is that there are things within us that we might not want to see or even know about. When we are still these can start to surface in our awareness. This is why we seek to distract ourselves. We don't want to know who we really are, because at least at first it might not be pleasant. It can be a dark passage, but there is light on the other side of it. Which is also a reason to go easy at first.
I hope that helps.
-Jack
Many Thanks Jack, this has made clearer some questions which arose, making your answer very helpful.
Thanks again, Godspeed
I'm in, with a recommitment to my daily meditative mindfulness practice. I'm away from home and typically forget it outside my own space.
Mike- Excellent! There is a certain irony to forgetting one's mindfulness practice. But I know exactly what you mean, because I have done this myself.
Enjoy the silence! -Jack
We're in (Mark and Lisa)! We can't promise we'll be somewhere with no external distractions, diversions or interruptions, but we're still in. To each according to their conditions....
Mark and Lisa- Beautiful. Yes, I think it is important to emphasize what you are saying. The amount anyone can honestly do is the right amount.
I hope you both have a blessed Advent and fruitful silence. -Jack
Thank you Jack!
A blessed Advent to you, too!
P.S. I read this thinking it was 'the Paschal challenge', not 'the Pascal challenge' - but it kinda works either way.
If all goes well the one should lead one into the other.
I started reading Mountain of Silence this week. Ill add this to the advent season as well.
JP- I know that Mountain of Silence is already well recommended, but I loved it. I found it inspiring.
I hope your time in silence is fruitful. -Jack
I'm in, Jack. Thanks for the idea. I'm not attending quaker meetings now but I've always loved the silence there.
Quakeress- Beautiful. I went to a few Quaker meetings long ago and find the silence there compelling. I hope you silence is even more so. Be well. -Jack
Thank you, and the same wish from my heart and soul to yours.
Let's see where this meeting for worship through Advent takes us all.
Is this mimetic rivalry on the spiritual path? ;)
Why, yes...yes, I do think that's exactly what this is.
Clara- You got me thinking with this comment. I grew up completely immersed in popular culture--which is neither of the people or a culture. It is the commercial mimesis of consumerism. It trains us in a kind of desire that enhances profit and not in anyway an orientation towards the good. I've said this before, but it bears repeating: the trick they play is to instill a mimetic desire that pretends to be a radical individualism. They tells us what to do by convincing us that we are rebels who can't be told what to do. It would be hilarious if it weren't so insidious.
I recall you saying you grew up differently--no tv for example. But there was surely mimesis going on, though a different one than the pop cult/corporate version I had.
So all this is preamble to wondering whether there can be a counter-mimesis that is awake and deliberate and communally developed and guided. Rather than being completely at the mercy of forces we don't fully understand other than the ominous sense that they do not have our good in mind...at all.
If there is such a counter-mimesis than I think it will have to be small and local and under the radar. Anything that "trends" becomes subject to hijacking and cooption by the machine. Which puts everything back to square one.
Just thinking this through. Maybe it is worth a post. We shall see.
I hope you are having a fine day. -Jack
Yes, in the church community I grew up with there was "peer pressure" of another sort. There were people who were competitive about how holy, righteous, committed, faithful, spiritual, they appeared to be. That is not a good thing though it may seem lots better than drug addiction or consumer culture. It's not a good thing for the church because unacknowledged ego is operating with the guise of God's service.
I don't think this rivalry has a place in spiritual growth of the best, highest sort. I'm pretty sure that lots has been written by those who have gone before about this danger. Maybe I am missing what you mean?
Anything done for the eyes of man rather than the approval of God "has its reward". There is legitimate encouraging of each other and helping or advising but you can't get far without being willing take some steps that no one else sees/understands/appreciates but are between you and God..... right? I think the mystics say this again and again. And in my experience the people who strove the least for the outwardly impressive church status were the most Christ like.
My father in law is an example. He used to go to the local homeless shelter before every church service (3 times per week) and announce that he would bring anyone to church. Many took him up on it. Sometimes they smelled badly, were drunk, or talked to themselves loudly during the sermons, but certainly not all of them. He would inevitably become involved in the lives of a few of the people he met this way. He would leave prayer meeting early to go do this and would sometimes leave services if the people were too disturbing. So after years the pastor approached him and offered him a "ministry" position which, he was told, would require him to stop the driving of homeless people to church. He said no thanks. Now to be offered "ministry" was the goal of many and was always preached about as synonymous with God's will for us. I think he has more of the heart of the gospels than many who were striving for status within the church system.
I guess mimesis in the church would be great if the church were pure and holy without taint, but...... never gonna happen so we have to be ultimately accountable to something more. Not sure if all that makes any coherent conclusion.
How are you, Jack? Have you been sleeping well? I heard Ian McGilchrist say something like, "The really important things in life cannot be made into ends. For example sleep: you cannot make a goal of sleeping well. Good sleep is a product of life well lived." Maybe spirit life is too.
Clara
Clara- Right now I am, not surprisingly, grappling with Girard. I think what he is saying is deep, brilliant and disturbing. But it is also kind of locked away in the world and language of academia. I have been thinking about the need to render his insights into both more deeply poetic but also immediate language. I am in the middle of "Reading the Bible with Rene Girard" which is an excellent introduction to the topic. But it seems that Girard thought so, too. In an answer about whether people understand what he is saying, he responded (in 2005):
"Very, very few people understand. More people now do understand, but not too many. **However, it must be said that there are better ways to formulate it than the way I have done so far; it could still be done better. I mean more clearly, more explicitly, more forcefully, more dramatically** while at the same time showing that the scapegoat, the lie of scapegoating, this unconsciousness of scapegoating (to have a scapegoat is not to be aware that one has a scapegoat), therefore means that a text that openly mentions a scapegoat cannot be a scapegoat text. I have confidence that this will be done and is already being done by interpreters of the Bible who use mimetic theory."
In my own small way this is something I would like to contribute to doing. So your story of your Father-in-law is spot on in this sense. A church is just as susceptible to unconscious mimetic desire as anybody else. As always, there are real benefits to going along, but to remain unconscious to the whole process is to continue to feed into it. The so-called culture war may be little more than one memetic matrix in battle with another counter-memetics. Your Father-in-law seemed able to step outside that somewhat, to what I will call a eumemetic--or good memetics. There is only one person worth imitating.
Girard felt the only solution to memetic escalation was to be better Christians. Christian institutions may be less helpful than we would like in that regard. There is no system that can guarantee the correct way. Once it becomes systematized and institutionalized the rewards become too great and the whole thing is at risk of been hijacked for very different purposes. This is at the heart of The Grand Inquisitor by Dostoevsky. Which I try to read on a regular basis as a reminder.
And once again I am using the comment section to think through my next post. Your indulgence is appreciated!
----
And I am sleeping better, thank you for checking in. Once again I think Iain Mcgilchrist is spot on. My sleep is better because there is something far more deeply satisfying about my life right now. Better sleep is a byproduct of that.
I hope you and the entire family are having a joyful day! -Jack
I'm very interested in this from Girard. Looking forward to hearing more on it when you are so inspired. Maybe people do understand it when they are good christians but not enough to put it into words. They simply don't long to be above others or to be recognized, but love to serve and to see others grow.
You are right, on some intuitive level people definitely do get it. And thankfully there have always been people who silently go about serving others without fanfare. That is a eumimesis I can do better to imitate.
And the past few years have given us all a lesson in the possibly less tangible aspects mimetic desire and scapegoating. The whole ugly business surfaced from the depths of its hiding place and now there is this pretence as if it all never really happened like that. But we did see it, and it is good to fathom what that means.
By the way, I got my beautiful copy of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association newsletter in the mail yesterday and saw a classified "help wanted" for this residency at the former Nearing homestead:
http://goodlife.org/residency/
Could be good for someone looking for a place to be outside of the worst of the machine for a time. I have driven through the area,and read about it... must be beautiful.
Clara
And I am still praying for the Farm in Maine for you all. Not all of us are meant to find a way out of the machine, but it is still a good thing to do so. Or it could be...
I certainly still have great hope for it. I feel confident that we are being guided. Just two years ago my husband and I firmly believed that we would always live here... so now that we are getting ready to depart it feels like anything is possible. Thanks for your prayers and concern.
Clara
This does look good. Though I don't have any real gardening experience. I would like to learn. I did water plants in office buildings in Manhattan long ago. But I don't think that counts for much.
Ha Ha! You could read a couple books on the Nearings and claim to be a great fan, then say you are longing to get some gardening experience but due to oppressive colonial structures have been excluded from access to land. They'll love you.
I'm going to try to do it but I anticipate being interrupted by my daughter's loud complaint, "Mom, she won't stop copying me!"
Which, given the gist of the discussion here lately, this would be a beautifully ironic way to be interrupted. Proving, as if we need further proof, that God has a sense of humor.
The dance between silence and tending to kiddos and their needs is one of the main features of our daily prayer times. Both parts are about self-surrender, just in different forms. :)
Mark- This is useful to remember. There are some interruptions that are essential and good. -Jack
Yes, good idea. Are you suggesting breath meditation?
Anna- If you have a method of meditation/prayer no need to change things up, I reckon. But my inclination is to keep it as simple as possible, i.e., normal breathing, sitting comfortably (with a naturally straight back), neither fighting nor trying to engage thoughts, letting what comes up to just come up without resistance. All with a curiosity to see happens. Relax into it, as it were. I hope it goes well for you. -Jack
I am in!
Nishaan- Excellent! Feel free to let us know how it goes. I hope it all goes well for you. -Jack
I think I can do this.
Evie- I am sure you can. I do believe it is worth trying. I hope it goes well. -Jack