Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-10 The Inferno

Hypocrisy continued - with reference to Arnold Toynbee and mimesis.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-9 The Inferno

Hypocrites in Hell, continued.

Valentine's Day - Thoughts on love

I do not claim to know what love is, nor would I know how to love. But, like pornography, I know it when I see it. In my attempts at love all I see are hypocritical ineptitude and clumsiness, often swathed in a cloying and selfish romantic sentimentality. This has been my lot since adolescence.

In college I was introduced to the works of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. In the preface to his book Works of Love I read this:

These are Christian reflections; therefore they are not about love but about the works of love.

These are reflections on the works of love - not as if hereby all love's works were mentioned and described - far from it, nor even as if a single one described were described once and for all - God be praised, far from it! That which in its vast abundance is essentially inexhaustible is also essentially indescribable in its smallest act, simply because essentially it is everywhere wholly present and essentially cannot be described.

In this book Kierkegaard reflects on the strangeness, yet appropriateness, of being commanded to love - on the Christian duty to love - to love God, to love our neighbor, and to love ourselves. While this is certainly not romantic, he believes it is what saves the Christian from despair. It saved me. (Aspects of this despair can be seen in the current movie 'Birdman' which involves the Raymond Carver short story "What we talk about when we talk about love".)

Then, last year I came across the following quote from St. Augustine:

Don't you go drawing back from your God; love your God. You're always saying to him, "Give me this and give me that"; say to him sometimes, "Give me yourself." If you love him, love him for nothing, don't be a shameless soul. You wouldn't be pleased with your wife, if she loved your gold, if the reason she loved you was that you had given her gold, given her a fine dress, given her a splendid villa, given her a special slave, given her a handsome eunuch; because if these were the things she loved about you, she wouldn't be loving you. Don't rejoice in such love as that; an adulterer, very often, can give more. You want your wife to love you for nothing, and you in tum want to sell your faith to God? "Because I believe in you"; you say to your God, "give me gold." Aren't you ashamed?

You've put your faith up for auction; notice its price. That's not what it’s worth, it isn't to be valued in gold or silver, that's not what your faith is worth. It has a huge price tag; God himself is its price. Love him, and love him freely, for nothing. You see, if you love him on account of something else, you aren't loving him at all. You mustn't want him for the sake of anything else, but whatever else you want you must love for his sake, so that everything else may be referred to love of him, not so that he may be referred to other loves, but that he may be preferred to other loves. Love him, love him freely, for nothing.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-8 The Inferno

Canto 23 - a change of tone and the hypocrites.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-7 The Inferno

the grafters try to game the system - 'how much can I get away with?'

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-6 The Inferno

The gargoyle cantos 21 & 22: Where the grafters are punished.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-5 The Inferno

End of Canto 20 - final thoughts on the Annunciation. Cantos 21 & 22 - called the gargoyle cantos - bring a change of mood.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-4 The Inferno

The Annunciation and knowing the future - continued

Winter 2015 Newsletter

....married to a mystery

Gil’s Manuscript update…

Since Gil finished adding material to the manuscript last year he has worked on weaving its themes into a coherent whole. One of the best investments he made was a computer with sufficient resources to open the entire text in one file so that searches could be made of the entire corpus of the manuscript. Mindful of the length (in pages) of the project it became clear that some trimming would be necessary to bring the text into a manageable size. Multiple complete reads of the text, with ‘scalpel’ in hand, over the past few months have resulted in significant progress on this front. Pieces retrieved from the cutting room floor may prove useful in possible future presentations.

There remains the final touches and edits and then, as I believe W H Auden said about finishing a poem,…the author abandons it. Casting the text on the waters of possible publishers will bring relief of one kind and anxiety of another…the wait. Fortunately, there are plenty of things to keep us busy. In April Gil will be on the road again giving presentations in San Antonio Texas and in Lafayette Indiana. We envision other venues as well but for now this is all we have on the calendar (details will follow in a later newsletter). In July the Colloquium on Violence and Religion conference is being held in St. Louis and Gil is toying with the idea of making a presentation at that venue. If a publisher finds the manuscript of interest no doubt there will be some discussion regarding edits, title, etc that will take thought and attention.

One of the matters a prospective publisher takes into consideration these days is the availability of the text under consideration via other formats whether digital or audio. Because of this we will be taking down our member’s only Scriptorium web site soon. This will actually be part of a larger overhaul of our web presence discussed below.

The scope of matters brought forth in the course of the manuscript is vast, as those who have availed themselves of the Scriptorium website’s draft installments over the past five years have seen. Gil mentioned recently that he ends the text with a kind of hymn to the Eucharist in which all is bound together. As I listened to him express this I was reminded of a response Leonard Cohen made last year in an interview when asked about his songwriting. He said, “If I knew where the good songs come from I’d go there more often. [Songwriting] is much like the life of a Catholic nun. You’re married to a mystery.” I’m pretty sure Gil’s manuscript will not be set to music. But for those whose experience of life encompasses a sacramental understanding of life’s every aspect this comes very close to saying it all.

One of the quotes being considering for the preface to the text is, naturally, from Hans Urs von Balthasar:

Jesus Christ is called Alpha and Omega: he has not only bound us back to our lost beginning, the Father, but has also set us in motion toward his absolute future. He alone is the force that binds together the beginning and the end, the force that can reconcile in itself, as the higher third, the two divergent world views: past and future

Upcoming changes to the website…

In the coming weeks we will be taking down our member’s only Scriptorium website (www.cfmembers.net) and then moving our main Cornerstone Forum website to a new hosting company. In the process the site will be offline for a short time. It is being redesigned with the intention of making it more user friendly. Our weblog will also be integrated into the site so there will only be one website address for all of our ongoing content (except for any social media outlets we might use). Our current website has served us well for over ten years. It will take us all some time to get used to the new regime once it is in place. And there will, of course, be glitches that will need to be worked out. We ask for your patience with this process.

Because over the past years we proposed giving access to our Scriptorium site to anyone making a minimum donation of $5/month or $60/year, and we continue to be helped in our work by many who took advantage of this; we are now making this minimum level of support include as a benefit the downloadable MP3 audio files we make available each month to our donors.


And as ever, thank you!

We are very grateful for all who find our work of value and assist us with their material support, encouragement and prayers. We could not do our work without your help.

Gil Bailie and
Randy Coleman-Riese

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-3 The Inferno

The Annunciation and knowing the future -

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-2 The Inferno

Fate and Amphiareus (one of the seven against Thebes). The only god you can meet in a predictable universe is a false one.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 10-1 The Inferno

Canto 20 - reflections on Moses and the burning bush. He learns God's name, or does he? Moses encounters one who will not be determined.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-10 The Inferno

While the universe may be viewed as evolving or progressing it is better understood as fundamentally an Incarnating cosmos. Also, while there are may be legitimate and practical concerns for the future, when our focus is on determining or knowing the future we miss our proper orientation to the intersection of time with the timeless.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-9 The Inferno

The intersection of time and timelessness will happen only in the presence of the human mind.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-8 The Inferno

Continuing with TS Eliot's Dry Salvages from The Four Quartets...viewed at a close commentary on Canto XX of The Inferno. Preoccupation with the past and/or future is a sign of small 'h' hope. Whereas in the mystery of timelessness in the midst of each individual person's history is found the virtue of Hope, and the purview of the saint.

The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-7 The Inferno

...the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret, Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened. And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.

TS Eliot, Dry Salvages

Reprise of a Girard Christmas Card

Four years ago René Girard was interviewed by Peter Robinson, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, for their Uncommon Knowledge weblog. We have every Christmas since then excerpted a short piece from the end of that interview where Mr. Robinson asks René to reflect on the Christmas narratives from the gospels.

René Girard was born on December 25, 1923. Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas!

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-6 The Inferno

As long as we can conjure up little facile reasons for hanging on to the small 'h' hope we would never come into the larger dimension HOPE.

"There is no end but addition, the trailing
Consequence of further days and hours:
While emotion takes to itself the emotionless
Years of living among the breakage
Of what was believed in as the most reliable—
And therefore the fittest for renunciation."

          TS Eliot - The Dry Salvages

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-5 The Inferno

TS Eliot's Dry Salvages (one of the Four Quartets) is a running commentary on Canto 20 of the Inferno. Demolishing hope (with a small h) so that the theological virtue of Hope could come into its proper place.

Reflections on Dante's Divine Comedy - Pt 9-4 The Inferno

The 'eleventh hour' is the temporal dimension that is appropriate to religious life, not the present, the past or the future. It is the 'eleventh hour' that is worthy of our religious longing and hope.