David Whyte, on Patrick Kavanagh’s wonderful poem “The Self-Slaved”:

It’s one of the truisms of postmodern therapeutic language that you’re supposed to be constantly exposing yourself, but Kavanagh says there’s a kind of false self you can expose. You can be saying how you had that trauma, this trauma, how you need that, and all the time you’re speaking from a kind of contingent identity. And there’s another more radical identity that’s more often more silent, which is inimicable to therapy, in a way, and is more radical, wilder, lives according to a more “outlaw” view of the universe, of creation. And Kavanagh says, to be constantly describing yourself and to think you know who you are and to be constantly explaining to others who you are, is a gospel of despair. That to BE yourself and to put that self into conversation with others, and to overhear yourself saying things you didn’t know you knew — this is more like the truth, this is more like an identity, this is more like the poetic imagination.

Very much enjoying this one, which as far as I can tell is exclusively an audiobook. I “borrowed” it from our local library on Hoopla, but it’s also available on Libby.

The Hmong language is, uh, more blunt, and arguably more accurate:

The Hmong have a phase, yuav paim quav, which means that the truth will come to light. Literally, it means “feces will be excreted.”

Christian Wiman:

The casual way that American Christians have of talking about God is not simply dispiriting, but is, for some sensibilities, actively destructive. There are times when silence is not only the highest, but the only possible, piety.

See also Naomi Shihab Nye.

Coworker 1: “I haven’t been watching the olympics much, but I just think Snoop Dogg such an American treasure.”

Coworker 2: “Totally! 100 percent.”

Coworker 1: [Sharing phone screen] “Look at him! He’s so cute. And so genuine, I feel.”

Me:

Stanley Hauerwas, still fighting the good fight:

The disavowal of violence is to create a world in which alternatives exist that I couldn’t have imagined if I thought that reaching for the gun takes precedence over the possibility of sharing a meal with an enemy.

Not solutions to a problem, but responses to a predicament

Mary Catherine Bateson:

Learning is perhaps the only pleasure that might replace increasing consumption as our chosen mode of enriching experience. Someday, the joy of recognizing a pattern in a leaf or the geological strata in a cliff face might replace the satisfactions of new carpeting or more horsepower in an engine, and the chance to learn in the workplace might seem more valuable than increased purchasing power or a move up the organizational chart. Increasing knowledge of the ethology of wolves might someday replace the power savored in destroying them.

We reach for knowledge as an instrument of power, not as an instrument of delight, yet the preoccupation with power ultimately serves ignorance.… Ironically, in our society both the strongest, those who have already succeeded, and the weakest, those who feel destined for failure, defend themselves against new learning.

Laura M. Fabrycky:

While they may never properly iron linen table napkins, children and adults alike gain much from cultivating the skills required to bring livable order to ordinary chaos. It is a balm to have that skill in one’s pocket, not because it exercises proto-dominance on an indifferent universe, but because it can also bring clarity and calm to one’s cluttered interior. It mirrors exactly what thinking effects. Yet why is it bestselling brilliance for psychologist Jordan Peterson to say “make your bed,' but not when your mother teaches you to do it?

This essay, and its references, reminded me a lot of Mary Catherine Bateson’s Peripheral Visions, which I’m also freshly reminded was one of the best books I’ve ever read.

To be resigned or hopeful, calculated or surprised — Jürgen Moltmann

Pure Joy