John Ruskin: The Most Remarkable Englishman of All Time:
A Mind as Bright and Eccentric as Fireflies!
I spent a happy couple of hours in the Ashmolean’s exhibtion of the Pre-Raphaelites in Italy http://wanderingbetweentwoworlds.blogspot.com/2010/11/pre-raphaelites-in-italy-ashmolean.html and realized again what a seminal and remarkable figure John Ruskin was in the history of England, the history of art, the history of economics, the history of literature, and any number of disciplines.
Ruskin, an only child of doting parents, inherited money. Not a major fortune–his father was a wine-dealer–but enough so that he could afford to buy art (an absolute necessity and addiction for him) and beautiful objects, books, furniture, fossils, marble, houses such as Brantwood–and never need to work.
But work, he did. With furious passion! The Complete Works of Ruskin stretches to 38 volumes–books on flowers and rocks and Florence; on economics and Venice and Amiens, on art and architecture and painting. He knew everything, was interested in everything. He was a man of passion, who lived intensely with intense pleasure. His autobiography, Praeterita, written behind the back of his controlling young cousin and caretaker, who opposed his writing, is a treasure–for what it reveals of Ruskin’s life, mind and thinking, his tumultous life–ten lives in one!!–and Victorian thought.
Though in his last years, he fell into the power of foolish people, Joan and Arthur Severn, who took over his house and abused him while ostensibly caring for him, let us not mourn overmuch, for his intense power of intellectual enjoyment added much joy to his life.
Let me close as Ruskin closes his autobiography, written with a herculean effort even as his last and final breakdown closed in on him, written in despair, summoning up his last efforts of concentration,
“Fonte Branda I last saw with Charles Norton, under the same arches where Dante saw it. We drank of it together, and walked together that evening in the hills above, where the fireflies among the scented thickets shone fitfully in the still undarkened air. How they shone! moving like fine-broken starlight through the purple leaves. How they shone! through the sunset that faded into thunderous night as I entered Siena three days before, the white edges of the thunderous clouds still lighted from the west, and the openly golden sky calm behind the Gate of Siena’s heart, with its still golden words, ‘Cor magis tibi Sena pandit,’ and the fireflies everywhere in sky and cloud rising and falling, mixed with the lightning, and more intense than the stars.”
And how Ruskin’s writing still shines, mixed with fireflies and lightning, and more intense than the stars!
See also http://theoxfordchristian.blogspot.com/2011/02/quest-for-joy-3-fireflies.html
A Wonderful, Vivid Passage from Dicken’s Christmas Carol
Irene, “Dad you MUST take me to school earlier. I am always skinning the flint.” “Skinning the flint?” Arriving just before her name is called out in register. Well, Roy, as a mathematician, is a master of precise calculations.
I am reading The Christmas Carol, Irene said before I could correct. And with great enjoyment and gusto, she read out this passage.
Look at this vivid maximilist style, his sheer joy in writing!!
The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
For the Fallen–Laurence Binyon
For The Fallen
Laurence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Laurence Binyon, 1869-1943, is mainly known for the fourth stanza of this poem, engraved in graveyards throughout England.
Why? Comparing this stanza with the rest can teach us much about good writing–look at its simplicity, its repetition (they shall not grow old, as we that are left are old) the parallelism, (age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn/at the going down of the son and in the morning) and the simplicity of the vocabulary.
The rest does not read so easily, it does not so easily cross the word/understanding/emotion barrier.
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For the Fallen–Laurence Binyon
For The Fallen
Laurence Binyon
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
Laurence Binyon, 1869-1943, is mainly known for the fourth stanza of this poem, engraved in graveyards throughout England.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Why? Comparing this stanza with the rest can teach us much about good writing–look at its simplicity, its repetition, the parallelism, (age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn/at the going down of the son and in the morning) and the simplicity of the vocabulary.
The rest does not read so easily, it does not so easily cross the word/understanding/emotion barrier.
Why Should I Doubt the Justice of God?
Total Forgiveness
Here’s one of my favourite stories. The novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter Una is sick and is expected to die that night. He paces near her bed as her fever climbs, and she grows weaker and weaker. She is the brightest, his dearest child, who most resembles him. She CANNOT die.
In the middle of the night, he says to himself, “Why should I doubt the goodness of God?” He relaxes. He breathes deeply. He leaves Una and her fate in the hands of a good God.
And goes to sleep.
His wife Sophia related that at that moment Una’s fever began to subside. She recovered.
Why should I doubt the goodness of God? Hawthorne asked
And why should I doubt the justice of God? I ask.
* * *
I’ve waged a spiritual battle this year, with an opponent who like Antaeus no sooner hit the ground than he rose again, invigorated!
It was the battle of forgiveness. Against someone who destroyed an important friendship to me by misrepresentation, slander and lies. Who with similar lies damaged– and then took over!!– a ministry I was involved in, and was gifted in. (I don’t mean to dramatize things; I have been a Christian for 21 years, and these petty intrigues and scrabbles for small prizes are par for the course. Because Christians are in the already/ not yet stages of becoming a New Creation).
And I need to let it go. And I have done so. Many times. And then the sense of injured pride comes back. And outrage–because, again as happens among Christians, the person involved greets everyone with an outsized smile, and is considered a good Christian. I know this person lied about me, as they do–but no one else really does. And it would take too much emotional energy, and would be beneath me to tell.
So that’s the hardest part of letting things go. That no one will know about these behind-the-scenes manoeuvring and slander and lies. Except me and the individual involved.
And God.
And God.
* * *
Jesus tells us that one day, everything hidden will be revealed, and what we have whispered in secret will be shouted from the rooftops.
With today’s internet culture, more and more people are “outed” in this life-time.
But of course, we all bank on it being much later. If not, who would lie to or slander another?
So that is what I need to do: Just leave things to the justice of God. And leave it to him when what is hidden shall be revealed. In this act, or the last act.
(That it might be in this act would not surprise me. Jung, in Memories, Dreams and Reflections, talks about the weight of hidden guilt, that eventually drives people–and even animals–from the one who has a guilty conscience and lives in fear of discovery or “outing”.)
That everyone sows what they reap is a law of life. It is an inexorable law of life. That is why one need never doubt the justice of God. Some people, like the pastors caught out in sexual or financial wrong-doing reap what they have sown in mortifying ways right here.
But others do bear the burden of not being what they seem, of being afraid of being caught out, of the slow and secret corruption of the character which sin brings, of being cut off from the joy and peace of God, and the overflow of the Holy Spirit because of their sin.
As Hawthorne shows in his brilliant The Scarlet Letter, secret sin is also a burden. You know you are not what people think you are. So you are condemned to act a role, pretending, pretending, always in fear, “honouring God with your lips, while your heart is far from Him.” WHAT a waste of a life!
* * *
The Alpha and the Omega. The word which was from the beginning and will be in the end. Will alone endure in the end. The words of Jesus. When I let Jesus have the last word in any of the mental essays I write, or the mental debates I have with myself, I feel more convinced that I might be on the right track.
However, early this year, I became convinced that cutting the chains of “You Owe Me,” and “I want to see Justice Done” that bound me to these people, (and there were 3 involved because of course seeds of bitterness defile many.(Heb 12:15)) was of crucial importance to my own creativity.
What Jesus says wrings the soul. It gets you. It is “living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Heb 4:12) Not a very comfortable sword, that one.
* * *
Look at the extreme words he speaks on dealing with enemies.
Love your enemies
, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you,
pray for those who mistreat you. (Luke 6:28)
It’s almost the only way out of the maze, isn’t it? And it hurts like hell. Doing good to the undeserving. Blessing those you wish you ill. Praying for blessing for those who have injured you.
It just smacks of the nature of God, doesn’t it? Who cannot help but do good. Cannot help but bless. Cannot help but pour goodness because He IS goodness. As Jesus says, If we do these things, our reward will be great, and we will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. True sons, in the Father’s house, partaking of the abundance of his household, drinking from his streams of rejoicing, not prodigal sons, who sons though they may be, are eating the food of pigs and are hungry and thirsty through their own bad choices.
* * *
When forgiveness seems like the other side of a bank, and between you and total forgiveness rushes the river of anger and the craving for justice here, there are bridges.
One is just this. Force yourself to do good to the enemy. Pray for blessing for those who hate you. If your heart cannot just stretch to asking for full abundant blessing for your enemies (and to be honest, I haven’t reached there) then ask, as I do, that they may be spiritually blessed and do great things for Christ’s Kingdom, that most dear, invisible place.
And maybe as one’s heart changes, one can pray more generously.
* * *
What I need to forgive is GRACE. Grace to provide a bridge between my wounded heart and the other side of the river which is the land of full, generous forgiveness, which is how God forgives us, because that is his nature. He cannot help but do it.
Grace, honey to heal the wounded heart. Grace to get us across the river of the things we cannot do in our own strength.
The Cross provided a bridge between God and man. And we need the power of the Cross, the Holy Spirit, and massive grace to provide a bridge from where we stand shivering in our limitedness and the land of joy and abundance where one forgives one’s enemies, and is forgiven by an immense God.
You forgive me fully and easily, God. Give me that magnanimous spirit to forgive those who have injured me. For my own sake. And yours.
* * *
Parenting: Rowing in the middle of a stormy sea
Parenting: Rowing in the Middle of a Stormy Sea
A bit dramatic? Nah, I didn’t say: Cast adrift without oars or Mars Bars in the middle of a dark, stormy sea. Which is what parenting teenagers feels like.
I grew up in a boarding school where I did not see my parents from March 1 to November 30th. So, I managed my own time, made my own decisions, my own mistakes, and took the consequences. As I have done ever since school.
So I don’t really have much precedent for parenting someone through a year of important exams, which is also the year in which they decide to have fun. And more fun. Actually, truth be told, I don’t particularly care about the examination results, which my daughter divines. I am more concerned with the impact on her self-esteem, and of course, on university admissions, because I take the view that if you have to go to university, you might as well go to a good one.
So now, I am truly middle-aged, truly a parent. I remember refusing to study hard for my first public exams, saying that the results were a lottery. I feel so old when I advise my kids to study for anything other than the joy of it. And there are A level choices. Should they do made for the joy the subject gives you, or for uni/career? Again, I only chose subjects for the joy they gave me–but now I am a parent. Sigh.
So, in fact all I can do is pray for wisdom. Which is a very good thing to pray for.
Oh, and massive aerial support.
And slowing down. Listening. Looking. Basic relational skills, and not easy ones!
Sign on Irene’s Door Tonight
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Sign on Irene’s Door Tonight
Astonishing bursts of creativity: The Blood Flow is Poetry, there’s no Stopping it
The Blood Flow is Poetry: There’s No Stopping It
I think of the wonderful poet Rainer Maria Rilke who gathered up strength and sweetness all his life as he struggled with a writers’ block which lasted for decades, indeed intermittently all his life. And then, in his phraseology, the angel came. And he wrote the beautiful Duino Elegies in an astonishing burst of creative power. Like Handel who wrote the Messiah in three weeks.
Faulker wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks working six hours a night from midnight to six a.m. Annie Dillard comments on this, “Some people cross the Niagara Falls on a bike. Some eat cars. Who would offend the spirit who hands out such gifts?”
Samuel Johnson wrote his classic Rasselas in a week to pay for his mother’s funeral, creativity blossoming under time pressure. Sylvia Plath wrote her astonishing Ariel poems in her life blood over a period of weeks, “The blood flow is poetry/There’s no stopping it.”
I suppose Van Gogh experienced a similar burst of creativity before his incarceration.
The trick I suppose is to accept God’s gifts of creativity with open hands, flowing with his rhythms so that one can be creative for a long time, and not burn out like Plath or Van Gogh after their bursts of genius.
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