Poetry and Life

Simone Weil contra Marx:

"Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. They need some light from eternity. Religion alone is able to be the source of such poetry. It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people."

Elder Porphyrios:

“Whoever wants to become a Christian must first become a poet. That's what it is! You must suffer. You must love and suffer--suffer for the one you love. Love makes effort for the loved one. She runs all through the night; she stays awake; she stains her feet with blood in order to meet her beloved. She makes sacrifices and disregards all impediments, threats, and difficulties for the sake of the loved one. Love towards Christ is something even higher, infinitely higher. 

And when we say 'love', we don't mean the virtues that we will acquire, but the heart that is pervaded by love towards Christ and others. We need to turn everything in this direction. Do we see a mother with her child in her arms and bending to give the child a kiss, her heart overflowing with emotion? Do we notice how her face lights up as she holds her little angel? These things do not escape a person with love of God. He sees them and is impressed by them and he says, 'If only I had those emotions towards my God, towards my Holy Lady and our saints!' Look, that's how we must love Christ our God. You desire it, you want it, and with the grace of God you acquire it.”

Children are Born Persons - Charlotte Mason Principle #1

To understand the significance of this one must understand the distinction between these two categories, so confused by modern sociologists and philosophers, of the person and the individual. Here the first thing to note is that, unlike the individual, the person is not a quantitative category, in the sense that he or she can be numbered on an arithmetical basis and so form part of an impersonal total. The person is a qualitative category, one that derives from the possession of certain inner qualities. Thus the person has nothing to do with numbers and transcends and even abolishes arithmetical categories. The arithmetical law, for instance, according to which two individuals are twice one individual, does not apply to persons. The individual can form a part of a collectivity when added together with other individuals: he can be part of a group bound together in order to achieve some purpose. The person, on the other hand, is the ‘image of God’, a spiritual value, and so cannot be conscripted into a group or collectivity bound in this way to fulfill a common purpose. He cannot be a means to any end. He is his own purpose, his own end, and is unique. Every use of the person as a means to achieve some collective goal – even the most lofty collective goal – reduces him to an individual, an ego, and debases him from his status as the image of God. A relationship between persons consequently cannot be established through any outward bond or constitution. It can be established only through mutual recognition that each possesses and embodies the same inner qualities, an identical inner reality. It is this possession of inner qualities and of an identical inner reality which constitutes the basis of the relationship and the principle of unity between one person and another. – Philip Sherrard in Church, Papacy, and Schism

Current Events

“Current events” designates the sum total of what is insignificant. - Nicolás Gómez Dávila

The Joy of Learning

The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is lacking there are no real students but only poor caricatures of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will not even have a trade. - Simone Weil

The Beauty of Classical Christian Education

A short article I wrote for the school where I work:

The Beauty of Classical Christian Education

Getting Easier Every Day

“Each day it becomes easier to know what we ought to despise: what modern man admires and journalism praises.”

- Nicolás Gómez Dávila

Laughter and Bad Literature

When things got a little boring at meetings of the Inklings they occasionally played a game to liven things up. They took turns reading aloud from the novels of Amanda McKittrick Ros to see how long each could read without bursting into a fit of laughter. I've been reading her novel Irene Iddesleigh out loud to the family for the last couple of days and I don't remember laughing so hard. And I can confirm that this novel is the worst I've ever read, but yet there is something compelling about Mrs. Ros's attempt at art.

I was introduced to the author through one of my favorite prose stylists, David Bentley Hart, in his article Brilliantly Bad Books. Read the article and then try a little of Irene Iddesleigh, especially if you have some literature lovers to share it with. Laughter is good medicine.