Month: April 2015

Ordinary Perfection

~ Brian ~ Leave a comment
My reflection on Life and Holiness by Thomas Merton

Ordinary perfection and holy humanism aren’t terms that mean much to the modern ears that may hear them. So why, when they sparkle between the lines of Thomas Merton’s Life and Holiness, do they nonetheless have the power to captivate? Perhaps we have a sense that our lives mean more than completing tasks, making money, providing for family and friends, creating art, and speculating about the future. These goals may mean a great deal to us, as they should. Yet, so much of what gives meaning in life also comes from the ordinary, chance encounters with people we know and people we don’t. We have the opportunity to be charitable or not to be, to witness to what we stand for or not to. We can be faithful to what we know to be true or not be. These ordinary choices matter.

Life Holiness Thomas Merton
Life and Holiness by Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton could be referred to as a saint of the unsaintly. He espouses the saintliness of the everyman. And he does it in a way that doesn’t cheapen sainthood. He doesn’t say you’re okay as you are. What he does is simply put sainthood within your grasp as an ordinary person. He says no matter how difficult it is to live a life of honest and pure faith, no one is exempt from the invitation to love. We all have the capacity and the responsibility to love as deeply as we can. Each must serve God and one another in the unique, irreplaceable manner only he or she can. Our lives – all our lives – are pedestals that honor the values we hold dearest or we have ignored the Christian vocation that has stared us in the face since baptism. He makes no bones about the sacrifice involved and the self-discipline required; it’s the ducking out of discipleship he flatly refutes.

Merton makes it clear there isn’t one way to be holy, just as there can’t possibly be only one way to do God’s will. No, God’s will for each of us is as particular to us as it is inescapably ordinary – meaning that it is ordained to apply to everyone. No matter how important society or the organizations we work for may consider us, there is an inner call to holiness that is absolutely direct in relation to us. Religious experiences mediated by the Church and others provide a surely very helpful road; however, the map to spiritual fulfillment is written in some ways more completely on the heart than anywhere else. And so, there are times we must question and challenge established conceptions – soul searching, some call it. Indeed, we hear Merton echo, searching the will of God for us in our souls is precisely the place we ought to look for it.

The type of perfection Merton describes is the ordinary kind, all the more impressive for its achievability. Perfection that exists only as a rarefied aspiration seldom does anyone any real good. Merton’s call to holiness is on the human level. His work of perfection is the everyday diligence that shines through our work life as readily as our spiritual life. we are caretakers of one another, just as we are caretakers of our souls. And it will often be in the ordinary caretaking we do that we get closest to the extraordinary perfection that we seek.

Frontier People

~ Brian ~ 3 Comments
The Martian by Andy Weir
The Martian by Andy Weir
The Martian by Andy Weir

Something in the American spirit drives us to the frontiers. Even for the generation who came of age during the recent recession, frontiers draw them. For my generation that came of age during the Clinton era and landed in a jobless pit upon graduation, we still claim as our birthright the discovery of something new under the sun. But the sun is only the closest in a universe of stars, and discovery may happen under the sun or many moons away.

The Martian starts out as a journey of discovery into the heart of the unknown and turns into one man’s fight for survival on another planet with his own ingenuity, limited supplies, and no communication to his colleagues at NASA. His sense of humor keeps the reader entertained, but there’s a sense in which you know it’s also partly what’s keeping him alive. Beyond the survival instinct innate to all creatures, Mark Watney loves living, solving problems, and pulling off the impossible. He’s incredibly funny and likeable. He kind of makes you want to launch a startup and hire like 10 of this guy! A cool dude all around and a great hero for the kind of story where you need to be rooting for the man stranded on Mars for it to work.

Weir writes with incredible detail about the issues Watney encounters just trying to keep himself alive on Mars with what remains of the mission’s supplies, and deal with the boredom and daily mishaps – either one of which could kill him at any time. Tension builds throughout as the story shifts from Watney to NASA and back to Watney again. It builds in a way that isn’t forced and there’s enough movement to the plot that the “daily journal” format doesn’t get tiresome. In addition to the likeability of the characters and the author’s command of scientific detail, there’s something so authentic about the frontier spirit of this book. It harkens back to the days of Apollo when America did genuine space exploration that mattered and the American public felt captivated by it. As it continued, I couldn’t help but wish we could recover some of that spirit today. Instead of discretionary wars that accomplish little, as a country we could be expanding the horizons of our species by searching the wonders of the galaxy. Instead of bickering over budgetary minutia or hijacking antiquated parliamentary rules to grind politics to a halt, we could find purpose and pride in putting the best minds available to tasks that may one day lead to the first space colonies and a future for mankind among the stars.

Frontiers aren’t always boundaries we cross because there’s personal or political benefit. Sometimes we blaze trails into new territory because we have hope it will lead to a better world for our grandchildren, or simply because there was a mountain there that we felt in our bones needed climbing. It isn’t that we’ve set our sights too high in the 21st century that is the cause of our failure to thrive. It’s that we haven’t set them high enough. We’ve looked too long and too low at the quickest ways to make a quick buck and the fastest ways to make fast money. What we’ve left unattended is the worthwhile. We have neglected the old American staple – the impossible, irresistible dream of tomorrow. Watney’s genius – apart from mere intellect – is to be a pioneer every day with the confidence a new tomorrow will be there to greet him. That is his reward and the only prize he seeks. Like he and his fellow explorers, we are a frontier people. We can be one again.

Bearish Outlook

~ Brian ~ 1 Comment
The Beaufort Diaries by T Cooper
Beaufort Diaries
The Beaufort Diaries by T Cooper

Horatio Alger this bear is not. It isn’t your great grandfather’s rags to riches story when a polar bear becomes a climate refugee and works his way through dead-end jobs as a cub laborer on fishing trawlers, eventually earning enough dough to go wing it in sunny Los Angeles. Having been an actor myself pursuing fame, fortune, and mostly just a way to make a living doing what I loved, the tale of Beaufort the polar bear doing the Hollywood hustle endeared itself to me at the outset. Despite the bad influences of Leonardo DiCaprio and Beaufort’s cokehead Icelandic girlfriend Svava, Beaufort maintains a down home sensibility forged deep in the Artic heartland.

Unfortunately, this sensitive soul of a bear gets ostensibly crushed under the mirage of Hollywood dreams. A familiar story of the downward spiral of celebrity plays out in an often engrossing and sometimes achingly uncomfortable way. Beaufort’s self-absorbed self-destruction has you sympathizing and disgusted with him in turn. Cooper goes to some less than cuddly places with our bear hero’s story. Sexual avarice, addiction, and the aching loss of hope pile higher atop Beaufort than the towering glaciers of his youth stretched up to the sky. He takes professional risks, that while seemingly admirable, are filled with artistic compromises and egoistic obsession.

A move to New York and a genuine submission to the discipline of recovery offer some relief from his anguish. Beaufort begins to approach his art from a place of humility and self-abnegation. He decides to tell the story that is in him to tell. And such is the lesson buried within Cooper’s funny and strange piece about a polar bear who lost his way in more ways than one. We come into our own when we look within ourselves to see the self as God sees it, and look outside ourselves to see the world as God sees it. In doing that, we see what is best in us is what the world needs most from us. What is lacking in us is what the world cannot give. And we need not find it there. Rather, when brokenness and wholeness don’t quite fit together on any given day is when we have to hold still in patience waiting for the pain to pass. Pass it will. For we can’t avoid being wounded, but we can live through our wounds and the living is the balm that heals us.

Beaufort has his sour and petulant moments. He isn’t the most endearing of characters as the story winds on, but he has an outlook that makes the reader want to comprehend the way he experiences the world. Understanding it to be a moderately naïve and charmingly chivalrous optimism that often turns icy before melting afresh into cheerfulness, I – and I dare say the world – could certainly do with a more bearish outlook on life.