The canon is the norm of theology, but it need not follow that theological understanding be confined to the past…. The historicist (and biblicist) temptation is to transpose oneself into the position of the original reader, as if two thousand years of intervening history counted for nothing. It is a mistake to think that one gains a “purer” understanding by forgetting one’s own culture and immersing oneself in a past culture.
Finished reading: For the Time Being by W. H. Auden 📚
This was my first time reading For the Time Being. I was hoping to finish by Christmas but that didn’t happen. That said, the final bit of the poem actually fit really nicely with our day at home packing up decorations. I’ll be pondering this one for some time.
SIMEON:
And because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.
(from Auden’s For the Time Being)
Oliver Burkeman, giving readers permission to forget what we read instead of trying to feverishly retain it all:
It’s easy to operate on the assumption that the main point of picking up a book – a non-fiction or work-related book, at any rate – is to add to your storehouse of data, hoarding information and insights like a squirrel hoarding nuts, ready for some future moment when you’ll finally take advantage of it all.
But that’s a recipe for living permanently in the future, never quite reaping the value of life in the present moment. Better, I’d say, to think of reading not as preparation for living later on, but as one way of engaging with the world, one way of living, right here in the present.
By all means let your reading shape your thinking over the long haul, and generate or improve your ideas for future projects. But consider also the possibility that spending half an hour reading something interesting or moving or awe-inspiring or just amusing might be worth doing, not only for some other, future reason, but for the sake of that very half hour of being alive.
Imprisoned in his self-awareness, modern man longs for the lost innocence of spontaneous feeling. Unable to express emotion without calculating its effects on others, he doubts the authenticity of its expression in others and therefore derives little comfort from audience reactions to his own performance, even when the audience claims to be deeply moved.
One of our favorite holiday traditions: eating at Chuy’s on Boxing Day
MARY:
O shut your bright eyes that mine must endanger
With their watchfulness; protected by its shade
Escape from my care: what can you discover
From my tender look but how to be afraid?
Love can but confirm the more it would deny.
Close your bright eye.
Sleep. What have you learned from the womb that bore you
But an anxiety your Father cannot feel?
Sleep. What will the flesh that I gave do for you,
Or my mother love, but tempt you from His will?
Why was I chosen to teach His Son to weep?
Little One, sleep.
Dream. In human dreams earth ascends to Heaven
Where no one need pray nor ever feel alone.
In your first few hours of life here, O have you
Chosen already what death must be your own?
How soon will you start on the Sorrowful Way?
Dream while you may.
(from Auden’s For the Time Being)
Late Christmas lunch at Arpeggio!
Success! Mom’s gift is finished (see here and here for previous stages in the process).
I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.
