You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Weakness’ category.
Ekklesia (Greek word meaning church) … signified the assembly of citizens of the polis (a city or small state in ancient Greece), who meet to make decisions.
Dairmaid MacCulloch, in Christianity: The First Three Thosuand Years
+ + +
The history of Western Civilization aligns faith or church with governing – ekklesia with polis. But we live in a time (a treacherous time) in which that nexus is lost … and that loss makes for a far more errant society and culture – a government more prone to chaos than tranquility, distain and division than gratitude and unity.
This is where we are now in the West and in America.
If you want a source of our problems in government, in law and in public affairs – look no further than the disconnection between church and state and the hostility and sickness that arises when this nexus is ignored, or worse yet – attacked, disparaged and forbidden.
Really, there is not much more to say except – when you listen to public discourse ask yourself one simple question: Does this man or woman speaking convey any sense that he or she knows anything at all about who we are and who we have been for centuries, or for the tenets which have provided our foundation, survival, peace and prosperity?
If you answer in the negative – stop listening – for that speaker deserves none of your time or attention.
Shalom.
Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”
John 13:21
+ + +
Betrayal. It is hard to imagine anything more disillusioning than violating a relationship.
Think about it, one has a trusted relationship and violates that trust. You can see it in a man who fathers a child but deserts his child and the woman with whom he fathered the child.
Imagine Judas who was mentored by Jesus. Think of what he did. He sat at the table with Jesus and his disciples and took his morsel given at the table and walked away … from Light to Darkness – that is betrayal. Judas choose alienation over sacred loyalty, over friendship, over duty and obligation, over faith, over honesty, over trust, evil over good, his own desires over God.
And then there is Peter. Pledging his loyalty to Jesus, he denied knowing Our Lord three times before the cock would crow. Yes, cowardice got the best of Peter. Yes, for Peter fear dominated faith. Yes, Peter, too, choose alienation. Yes, for Peter trust was abandoned, friendship was dishonored – God denied.
Look about you today. Are we a culture of trust? Or is betrayal more common?
Are we a culture of heroes or betrayers? One in which citizen is alienated from citizen? A culture of unity or division? Is division commonplace? Is it the way of a political party? Do women create division from men? Do father’s desert their children? Men and women divorce one another with ease?
Alienation. Betrayal. Distrust. Hero or coward? Loyal or not? Divisive or unifying? Neighbor or not? Friend or enemy? One alone or many together? God-full or Godless?
Shalom.
Missed posting yesterday. Stood with a friend in a long anticipated hearing on a complicated and contested legal matter. Matter “concluded” at long last.
# # #
The theological virtues are above the nature of man, whereas intellectual and moral virtues belong to the nature of man … Therefore the theological virtues should be distinguished … The intellectual and moral virtues perfect the human intellect and appetite in proportion to human nature, but the theological virtues do so supernaturally.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in Theologiae
+ + +
If this be so, how can you neglect faith? If your perfection requires your spiritual development, who would be foolish enough to listen to the endless number of people like Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, A.O.C., et al when they speak about anything whatsoever.
Yes, in the present time, there are not many people in politics, news, the celebrity class, academia, the “professions” or what have you who warrant our time or attention.
Let’s face it, we are NOT discreet listeners. Indeed, we should be.
I often hear others say (in response to some injustice) “how can X or Y let this (the injustice) happen?” It is, in all honesty, a childish reaction to the world around them and injustice in particular. It is a question asked by one who does not know what Aquinas and others have talked about for ages … the primacy of faith and perceptions derived from faith are central to all inquiries and understanding of the world we inhabit and those people and events in it.
Mathematicians know this, scientists too. Those few among us who still muster belief itself and match belief with their intellect and life experience know this as well. They, as a consequence, do not need to ask of injustices done to innocents and others.
Indeed, the proof of the fundamental role of faith in one’s existence is this: even atheists ask the fundamental question like: “Why this injustice?”
Their question confirms the place of, and need for, faith. Their question is a faith question. Their question reflects the insight of Aquinas and many others we ignore and in this make fools of ourselves and anyone of the many who daily listen to the nonsensical “public figures” who do not possess the modest intellect or common sense sufficient to wonder much at all about what they see and what they say.
Alas, following Aquinas and other giants of intellectual, moral and spiritual maturity allows us to be who we are designed to be.
Smarten up, people. What is eternal is above all that is not. We consume what is not eternal and this is the central fault you see.
I know except that things perishing and transitory should be spurned and things certain and eternal should be sought. (Emphasis added.)
St. Augustine, in Soliquia
Just can’t make this any plainer to you, Friends.
Shalom.
Postscript – The contested hearing yesterday was frankly pathetic. The judge and lawyers were childish in their narrow range of thought and lack of depth of examination or understanding as to the events before them. It was much like watching people playing “judge” and “lawyer.” It would have been silly if not so pathetic. We are sadly ill-bred and in this lies decline and injury to all. First faith – insight and wisdom follows.
The more the powerful and independent consciousness becomes, and with it conscious will, the more is the unconscious forced into the background. When this happens, it becomes easily possible for the conscious structure to be detached from the unconscious images.
Richard Wilhelm, in The Secret of the Golden Flower
+ + +
To be whole and have psychic health, full development and contentment, our conscious life must be attached to our unconscious life. Without an unconscious life, life and our experience of it is distorted, limited and chaotic.
Indeed, it seems that this is precisely where we are in our country today.
Look at the celebrity and political class and those in control of higher education (the “teaching” intellectuals) and you see not mature and insightful individuals but narrow people full of self-assertion, anger and extreme and destructive notions.
Yes, being stuck in conscious alone is a superficial state of being, a fragmented and unhealthy state of being.
Carl Jung in a 1931 essay noted that the disconnection of consciousness from the unconscious makes for the modern man who Jung identifies as “unhistorical” – that is void of any of the broader lessons of human history.
Jung’s observation might explain the measure of ideas offered and advanced by the American Left today as well as the limited use that can be made of public discourse among those engaged in news reporting and commentary.
I find nothing so much as the separation of conscious and unconsciousness to explain what I see among public personalities, see in the conduct and discourse of the elites. Sadly, this reminds me of the tragic decline in the German culture in the inter-War years.
Disordered development creates great risk for cultures – and a failed education system and rejection of faith makes for increasing the risk of serious error and destruction. And make no mistake religious narratives all over the world instruct us in symbols and metaphors that open us to our unconscious. Ban or undermine religion and we increase our collective and individual danger.
Our individual full psychological and spiritual development is critical, indispensable to our flourishing and survival … and a sign of how far we are from health is evidenced by our reaction to the horrible shooting of people in New Zealand last night. Immediately our public commentators see it as a product of political opinion when it is rather an indication of psychological sickness – disorder all too common to its counterparts around the world.
Shalom.
I took a relatively rare break form posting a Blog entry yesterday in order to spend some time with a dense and somewhat vexing article written by Carl Jung, M.D. entitled “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man.” I shall visit this article in several up-coming posts over the next few weeks. The article appears as a chapter in Jung’s book entitled Modern Man in Search of a Soul.
# # #
The modern man (is) the man of the immediate present … fully conscious of one’s (immediate) existence … with a minimum of unconsciousness … He is … of necessity and at all times, for every step towards a fuller consciousness of the present (which) removes him from his original “participation mystique” with the mass of men – from submersion in the common consciousness (thus) … tearing himself loose from that all-embracing, pristine unconsciousness which claims the bulk of mankind almost entirely.
Carl G. Jung, M.D. in Modern Man in Search of a Soul.
+ + +
Jung is discussing “the loaner,” the vacuous celebrity of the contemporary highly secularized mass communication culture that is densely visual and digital in present day America.
He is describing as he says an “unhistorical” man and woman – those without any past – any wisdom, any sense of the long story of the human person, any contact with their unconscious and the essential spiritual essence of the human person and human existence.
He is describing what I call the Nada Man … nada being the Spanish word for “nothing.”
Modern man is Barack Obama – a man who accomplished absolutely nothing before winning the Presidency, a man with no work history. A man much like Joe Biden who never earned a private paycheck but sucked on the government tit all his life and who aspires to close out his life of nothingness by occupying the Oval Office into his near dotage.
Lest you think there are few of these nada men – there is Social/Communist Bernie Sanders who never earned a week’s pay until at 40 he was elected to public office in Vermont. And there is any number of Members of Congress who secure law degrees from Harvard and do absolutely nothing with them …
The Democrat assembly of presidential candidates is full of members of the nada class including a woman who “slept” her way into government jobs, a faux Indian Princess, a childish former city major with no evidence of having assumed an adult life with family, children and a private work history.
Frankly, political figures today resemble most the theatrical crowd – the fodder of tabloids lining the shelves of supermarket check-out counters. And the TV news shows resemble collections of boorish numskulls assembled for bargain rate group therapy.
We have in Jung’s “modern man” – George Costanza in multiple forms and iterations but George all the way – a faux “marine biologist,” “Penske material,” a man in the front office of the New York Yankees who hides under his desk to avoid any and all responsibility.
Yes, modern man – the nada generation …
You know you have a real problem when public figures from politics to media, from to entertainment to TV news and “the Press” look like characters in the Seinfeld Show – a show its creators tell us is about absolutely “nothing.”
If this ain’t rock bottom is sure is close.
Shalom.
Postscript – The dear little Leftist children at Sara Lawrence College have posted demands that include – free laundry detergent and fabric softener. How frigging ridiculous is this! Maybe we ought to consider expanding this infanticide thing to college students? The news is becoming a Woody Allen comedy routine. No wonder the Democrats want free college – they run their scam on the backs of people who riot for fabric softener. I-N-S-A-N-I-T-Y.
Spirlaw 