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Note: these excerpt threads are subject to continual revision and updating as opportunity and priority permits Richard McCambly: "One major advantage of a classical education in the monastic context is that its intimate connection between ancient texts and Christian authors hearkens all the way back to the rise of monasticism after the fall of Rome. The Church had rescued the classical tradition just in time or before the barbarians took over. Quite a few of these ancient texts deal with rhetoric or the ability to express oneself before an audience, an application available for theological dispute as well as for preaching. Even this aspect of the classical tradition has bearing upon modern Christianity in that they can train us to better defend the faith through disciplined reasoning. Just this side of the tradition is worth preserving if anything else is lost... In monasteries this deficiency assumes special poignancy because the liturgy had been celebrated in Latin, the language of Virgil and Cicero... Within the monastic context, Latin can be synonymous with the rigorous performance of the Divine Office, so its abandonment in favor of the vernacular had signaled a more balanced way of performing traditional monastic choral obligations. Apart from all the emotions and the like we associate with the Church’s Latin past, the change-over can be viewed as part of that break with the classical past... here I’m more interested in a persistent undercurrent that flows through the Office’s celebration on a daily basis. Obviously Scripture is the liturgy’s foundation stone. Monks are professionals when it comes to such things. After you’ve been exposed to the Office on a daily basis for several years, you become familiar with its layout. Actually, it doesn’t take long to know the basic plan, and you can soon be caught in a here-we-go-again mentality each time the liturgical year rolls round... Hearing the same texts over and over does have an effect on the participants, but as noted above, it is rarely if ever explored..." On Faking It "Now take this exposure to Scripture back to the days when Latin reigned supreme... Monks were in choir approximately eight hours each day. Those monks who had been exposed to the Latin liturgy agree that it was richer in expression than the vernacular. A brother with some training in this language could appreciate the finer points of what was being conveyed, much more than the English. After all, Latin had been in existence for many centuries. A monk could disregard certain features of the Office and let his mind run with a particular verse or even word - all this without being out of sync with his fellow monks in choir. Although some monks didn’t realize it, running parallel to this tradition was the older classical one. Furthermore, a monk might grasp certain allusions to philosophical or literary texts upon which the Church Fathers may have commented upon. This, in turn, spilled over into the monk’s lectio divina which again fed back into the Divine Office... Despite its riches, the modern mind ... is ill-suited to take up the Latin liturgy as it had been practiced for so long. Obviously some people sorely missed the abrupt way with which it had been dismissed in the mind 1960s, and efforts to restore it continue today..." OFI "Earlier I used the word hug as applied to a desire to re-capture the Latin liturgy and all that entails. Sometimes such an embrace can be done thoughtlessly, without reflection, and is picked up without considering the heavy emphasis upon asceticism, attitudes towards sexuality and so forth. These younger folks may love the majestic tones of Gregorian chant without the slightest ideas as to the rigors many old timers are glad to seen as dead and buried. Thus there can be an almost mindless gap between appreciation for the beauty of Latin liturgy and what the texts signify. By this I mean the principles of Latin’s classical heritage which had such a profound impact on the Western Church. While not obvious to the casual eye, they were latent within the liturgy... As far as the old Latin liturgy goes, I clearly recall some of my Catholic professors when they attended Mass or the Office. They got into it in a way that almost seemed transparent in their bodies, a kind of luminosity that couldn’t help but break through compared with the incomprehension of many others present at the same liturgical celebrations." On Faking It "Some of this inability to make a bridge between the ancient texts and the languages in which they had been written can lead to all sorts of errors - in brief, faking it. More often than not the verb fake suggests falsehood, of not being true to oneself. This isn’t exactly the point here. I apply the word not so much with its sarcastic overtones but in a subtler sense, that is, imitating surface attributes of a given tradition while being ignorant of its roots... This gets quite interesting when we’re dealing with religion, for much of its language is imitative. Closely allied to religion’s language is the abundance of exhortations or commands to improve our sinful condition... Of course, things get more interesting when God is thrown into the mix. That’s where it’s helpful to be mindful of Scripture’s exhortatory words such as should, must, let us, for it usually God who is uttering these words. While valuable in themselves, they can set up a sense of falsehood, of disconnection with our real-life situation, which is generally a mixed bag of motives and contains more failures than successes. When someone exhorts you to follow such-and-such a precept or live in accord with divine truths, invariably a heightened consciousness of self arises, one tinged with awareness of sin. That’s fine, indeed, necessary. However, the process stops there or isn’t explored further. It’s usually left to stew over many years. This becomes intensified when we take into consideration the extended life span we enjoy today... It remains relatively unexplored, especially when it comes to institutionalized forms of religious life." OFI "The idea of imitation can imply repetition, unquestioned adoption of ideas and principles which motivate you only so long before exhausting itself, simply by lack of new input. Keep in mind that the Church has a structure, the hierarchy, which took this imitative approach for granted; those members of the hierarchy are part of a system which, like us all, unconsciously subscribed to the fact that people weren’t expected to live long. We could say that for the population in general the time span lying beyond forty was terra incognita. Sure, there were always people who lived to a ripe old age, but they were the exception, not the rule; however, nowadays large segments of the population in developed countries are expected to live considerably longer. The implications for this longevity concerning religion haven’t even begun to be fathomed. If you lived until forty and were expected to die quite soon, there was little time to question the imitative approach that formed an integral part of your being raised a Christian. It was the only path available... Somewhere in his Rule St. Benedict says that after spending many years of training in the monastery a monk is ready for solitary spiritual combat, i.e., in what is traditionally known as the desert. Such training was primarily ascetical which would bring us back to that magic cut-off point of forty years of age. The same insight applies, I believe, to the Hindu tradition. After having raised a family and having earned a livelihood, a person is ready to become a forest dweller, their way of speaking about monks. This approach seems to take into account a more wholesome view of the human life span and could be adopted in the Church..." OFI "Of course, such an insight implies that a person had been living a disciplined spiritual life over an extended period of time, not just setting out cold on his or her own. However, we are dealing with modern folk whom some astute commentators agree are generally at the level of children when it comes to things spiritual. Despite their rebellion against the Church’s hierarchical structure as we see it today, they really need guidance in their personal lives but one understood in the right way. Thus hierarchy may be re-interpreted or viewed in its fundamental sense as a ladder of ascent: holy (hieros) beginning (arche). You start at the beginning and advance upwards with guidance from experienced persons. Added to this mix is the fact that despite modern people being mature in many ways, they are wanting when it comes to the moral (let alone spiritual) realm. What they really need is a hier-archy, yet they thrust aside with some justification the popular way of viewing it... In a sense we are all Romans, inheritors of that imitative approach which was combined with the Roman genus for law and organization. This contribution is inestimable. However, it is restricted when compared with the ever so brief flowering of Greek democracy which has always remained Western Civilization’s ideal. We all know that the Church inherited much of the Roman way of government and on a more subtle level the Roman imitative approach which in many ways still abides with us. The imitative way is very natural and in many ways is proper to earlier stages of human development..." OFI "If the notion of anamnesis is to have any validity, we must learn to gaze into our selves and see a commonality between us and every person on the planet. You could call this a backward approach – not acquiring knowledge which implies going forward – but realizing that somehow we’ve always had it imprinted in our souls. Even here the term knowledge is inaccurate; it is more akin to a type of wisdom. To actualize such recollection we don’t have recourse to a model existing somewhere out there. This would follow a popular misinterpretation of Plato’s forms from which we have somehow fallen or strayed... The right approach seems to lie in looking at ourselves minus our opinions and pre-conceived ideas. Not only that but realizing they are simply opinions or uninformed beliefs usually tinged with an element of prejudice. Of course, this is where Socrates excelled, at pointing out the follies of his interlocutors who never lacked pre-conceived notions as to knowledge, most of which fall under the imitative category. If we were honest with ourselves, we wouldn’t find it hard to associate with them while plowing through Plato’s Dialogues. Since we’re so imbibed with the ways of imitation, a person can be at a loss when it comes to practicing anamnesis. It was common from ancient times onwards and became lost with the passing of interest in the classical tradition as already noted. More than anything, we requires a solid theoretical foundation because we’ve lost such a tried and proven technique... More to the point is that anyone interested in getting insight into anamnesis should pay close attention to the flesh and blood person of Socrates, of how he interacts with people. This occurs when Socrates effects aporia or perplexity as to the opinions and beliefs they cherish. From there it’s not a large jump to ourselves, given the fact that human nature hasn’t changed since that time..." On Faking It "One person is told to go in two directions at once: backwards through recollection and forward towards imitation. The person subjected to this backward/forward method is confused at a level he or she is barely conscious of. Nevertheless, there’s a vague uneasy or disquiet, so the subject can bridge the gulf by pretending it does not exist. Anyone living a religious form of life tends to do this in one way or another; just being aware of it is a step in the right direction, the direction of anamnesis as opposed to imitation. On a subtle level we can pretend to be religious by imitating Christ or his saints. The intent is noble, but it exists out there, not in one’s recollective faculty or memory in the classical sense of the term. If for a moment we were to abandon efforts at imitation, we’d find that already mentioned irreducible element within us which seems to outlast death. Then if we keep our attention on it for a while and come back to it on a regular basis, it’s outline becomes clearer, mostly by persistence or the fact that we can’t get rid of it no matter how much we try. One of the biggest problems we have with this recollective faculty – actually more than a faculty, it’s our very center – is that we refuse to acknowledge its existence even when we have evidence of it... Our normal recollective faculty is fuzzy and becomes even fuzzier as time goes by yet at the same time forms the basis of our personal history and identity... it is far from the image of a circle whose center is equidistant to all points on the circumference... an ellipse takes into account our innate desire to fake it and is not a rigid geometrical shape, for we all alternate between faking it and conforming with the truth." On Faking It "As for the term anamnesis, note the preposition ana which is a prefix. It means on, upon, upwards as well as back; it also suggests a sense of increase or completion. Most likely the sense in which Socrates used this noun was back although notion of upward/upon is present with respect to the acquisition of knowledge as opposed to opinion and beliefs... If we’re honest with ourselves, our opinions and beliefs are centric in that they like to be at the center of our lives around which everyone and everything is compelled to revolve. Anamnesis is always proceeding upwards as well as backwards and is in a constant process of renewal... The sure-fire way to see if the anamnesis approach has validity is through friendship. Why so? Because a friend - not a casual acquaintance - can verify our own experience. Of course there are friends and then there are Friends. By the latter I mean a rare group – you’d be lucky if it exceeded a handful – which mirrors your own experience of anamnesis... By necessity such groups of friends will be small. They can’t be organized (the kiss of death) but can be in contact with other like-minded small groups. Again, this is an experience I have witnessed a number of occasions which at first glance seems miraculous but is really our common anamnesis allowed to play itself out freely. When such friends meet they invariably have the common experience that they have known each other all their lives. This is what they exclaim most often which seems proof that their anamnesis nature is larger than their own individual selves... These folks don’t imitate anyone or anything because they have everything within their hearts. It is already recollected, stored up..." On Faking It "The very first word of this book is apolakupsis as associated with the person of Jesus Christ (genitive), that is, as both belonging to him and originating from him. It is followed by the dative (to him) signifying that God the Father was initiator of this revelation. The same verse continues with another dative (to his servants), intimating that the to-ness proper to Christ is shared by his servants. As the Introduction noted, apokalupsis points to an already existing (divine) reality which this Book seeks to delineate... Here Jesus Christ speaks for the first time as Alpha and Omega as in Is 44.6: I am the first (ri'shon) and I am the last ('acharon); besides me there is no god. Vs. 8 fleshes this out by use of three tenses, present, past and future; the present tense being in between Alpha and Omega, as it were, as well as seminally containing these two points. Christ speaks as Logos or Word and implies himself as being the alphabet in its fulness. Proper to Alpha and Omega as well as the three tenses of verbs... A continuation from vs. 17; by claiming to be the living one (zon) Christ is a living alphabet. Note use of present participle as opposed to the past and future tenses. The son of man spells out this zon by saying that he has died (clearly the past tense). His death sets the stage, as it were, for being alive (zon used again). The present participle implies continuation into the unending nature of Christ-as-alphabet. Forevermore: eis tous aionas ton aionon. The preposition eis (into) suggests continuous movement into the future..." Notes on the Book of Revelation - Part 1 |