The most illuminating example of human nature is found in the New Testament when Peter and Jesus Christ talk together and Peter urges his master to believe his devotion to be completely sincere. Thus, Jesus announces to him that the rooster will not have crowed that he will have denied him three times. The first place every man talks about is this: his weakness. Taking into account the limits of each, not always to resolve them, but also to overcome them, obliges to reason from what one is and not from what one believes to be. Any man who does not know his weaknesses, who forgets them, who does not take them into account is above ground, as we are used to saying nowadays. Above-ground meaning that we are nourished by a pasture that is not ours, that we renounce our pasture to find any other pasture than our own, better because it is different. Above ground also means that the comments received could be obtained anywhere else in the world without this posing a problem, these comments being rootless, translatable into any language and exportable as a computer “framework”. The formula "above ground" forbids answering the question "where are you talking about?" » and the first formula likes to taunt the second as identity or « far-right ». By dint of having wanted to dodge this question, we destroyed it. In the future it will no longer be possible to ask where we are talking about, because we will have reached such a level of abstraction and uprooting that this question will no longer even have any meaning.
Tag: intimacy
Antigone, rebellious and intimate (6/7. The vocation)
So many stories about identity! The word does not appear in Greek epic or tragedy. Identity at the time of Antigone is based on lineage and belonging to a city. Identity was impregnated with rootedness. The family and the city brought together under a virtual banner all of what the other was to know about himself during a first meeting. During antiquity, no one proclaimed his identity or promulgated it, and no one decided on his identity. It wasn't about putting on a costume. Men depended on their identity. Identity was like a charge, we had to be worthy of it. It established being and becoming. The modern era has made it an issue, because it has transformed identity into having, a sort of asset which one can dress up or discard. In its modern fantasy of believing that we can choose everything all the time, the modern era has relentlessly replaced being with having. Yet this logic, this ideology has its limits: some things cannot be acquired, among them: otherness. Living one's identity, being what one is, inhabiting one's name , allowing intimacy and therefore knowledge and deepening of one's being, these are the sine qua non conditions for an encounter with the other. The first difference between Creon and Antigone is located in this precise place, the ground on which the fight is built, Antigone preserves anchored in her this gift of the elders, of the gods, this rootedness which defines the authority to which she leans for stand up to this man, his relative, the king, who espouses the will to power and finds himself blinded by it to the point of hearing only his own voice, its echo. Continue reading “Antigone, rebellious and intimate (6/7. The vocation)”
Antigone, rebellious and intimate (3/7. Destiny)
3rd part: destiny
The man comes down from the tree. Man, like the tree, is defined both by its roots and by its fruits. Man, like the tree, depends on external and internal elements to reach maturity. Man resembles this trunk sculpted by hardship, leaning on its roots and bearing more or less beautiful, more or less good fruit… The resemblances between the plant world and man are endless. From the water that nourishes the roots, to the sun watering the fruits, to the oxygen exuded by the leaves, all this life that rushes in and circulates reminds us in an irremissible way of the human condition. The tree is a metaphor for the family. From the seedling to the fruits and leaves, a metaphor for the history of man and the family develops. Which evil fairies presided over the birth of the Labdacides family from which Antigone descends? Any fine conscience these days would see it as a calamity and a pathological explanation for Antigone's decisions. How does this little Antigone become this heroic fruit by being born on a trunk so full of stigmata and bruises? Destiny blows and guides this family in an uninterrupted and obtuse way and, suddenly, Antigone frees herself from this straitjacket, frees her whole family from this straitjacket, she undoes the straitjacket, and completes the dismissal of destiny. What a miracle! From a distance, clinging to their branch, two leaves always seem identical, yet you just have to approach to see how much they differ. Continue reading “Antigone, rebellious and intimate (3/7. Destiny)”
News from Ernest Hello about fear and its perfections
Fear in general therefore has perfections which evil does not have.
Perhaps the crucifixion was felt in a more terrible way in the Garden of Olives than on the cross. For on the cross he was actually felt. In the Garden of Olives, he was felt in spirit.
Antigone, rebellious and intimate (2/7. The funeral)
Part 2: The funeral
“ My dear Ismene. I come this morning to tell you that I took care of everything. I took the same undertakers for our two brothers. I couldn't choose and since our brothers didn't leave any last wishes, I took matters into my own hands to get it sorted out as soon as possible. I still ordered embalming so that they are presentable. If you want to go see them, they'll be ready around 3 p.m. You do not have to. Well, if you can take ten minutes, that might be fine. It may be better to keep an image of them happy, children for example. I took the same urn model for both. A priest will come to the funeral home and give a short speech before the cremation. I ordered him to come to the funeral home. You see, I took care of everything. Eteocles will be buried in the cemetery which is located about thirty minutes from Thebes by taking the national. For Polynice, it is more complicated with the law of our uncle, Creon. I decided to scatter his ashes on the battlefield as the king does not want him buried. Makes sense, right? Tell me what you think, I'm not stopped on this point. This portrait of Antigone living in the 21st century delivering the remains of her brothers to the funeral director summarizes the rite of funerals today. The family has since the Industrial Revolution been rendered unproductive. Funerals are no longer part of the family tradition. The modern world is reassured by using the formula make sense , as the translation of the Anglo-Saxon expression is heard today, and as it is so comforting to repeat it to oneself without it really having any… sense, because what what are these mini-senses found on the ground almost by chance, what are these skin-deep that invite themselves in almost without our being there for nothing, if not the residues of a past sense, a common sense, a good sense sculpted by the centuries? Through the destruction of the family, transmission between generations is lacking, the meaning of our actions is lost, so we have to invent meaning, create meaning, we have to give ourselves the illusion of still living, of not not have totally given up. Deceit is backed up by ignorance, and on this point too, trickery is not new. The meaning given by death within the family, this meaning almost completely forgotten nowadays, is recalled by Antigone in Sophocles' play where she stands as a guardian of the values that liberate, because they protect man from death. 'animal. Antigone reaffirms what man can and cannot; it takes hold of a force destined to protect us from our will to power and to teach us the time of responsibility; a time nowadays entrusted to specialists replacing the family, the people who compose it and the tenuous links woven between them over time.
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Antigone, rebellious and intimate (1/7. The family)
1st part: the family
From the first reading of Antigone, an ambiguity settles in the mind of the reader. Does Antigone embody action or reaction? What moves Antigone? The reaction never exists by itself whereas the action needs no one, it legitimizes itself in the act. Action always inaugurates something. Contrary to what is often said or believed, Antigone does not wait for Creon to be Antigone. Like Electra for revenge, Nausicaa for hospitality, Penelope for fidelity, Antigone embodies duty. It is action, because it serves: it is accomplished in duty. It is accomplished in servitude (are we pretending to forget that servitude means “to be a slave”?). Contrary to what is often said or believed, Antigone is never an individual. She never stands alone. If the law of Creon pushes it to action, and if this one can seem a reaction, it is only on the surface, by simple chronology.
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The Humanity of Cheyenne Carron — Reflections on the Film The Apostle
What amazement came over me one recent morning while listening to the voice of a young woman auscultated by Louis Daufresne in his program, The Great Witness , on Radio Notre-Dame. I was going to learn that this young woman's name is Cheyenne Carron. Christian, she directed a film, The Apostle 1 , the story of a Muslim touched by grace who decides to convert to Catholicism and has to suffer the outrages of his relatives.
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Humility News
The human vision of humility is like the human vision of love, reduced. Humility must exercise its magisterium at all times and in all places. Humility does not allow us to choose whether it should be exercised. Humility thus requires infinite availability and infinite vigilance. It requires a term which has almost disappeared from our modern language, docility. Docility has long been the cornerstone of education. Docility enclosed and guided the will by forcing it to apply itself with discernment and for the cause of a life. The docility of character requires assiduous training, like humility. Docility is the lieutenant of humility. She is also his stewardship, which is not incompatible with the rank of junior officer.
Docility is often the first step leading to availability and vigilance. Being docile requires being alert. Being docile makes life so much easier. Being docile these days is the first reaction to dictatorship in the modern world. Because docility prevents assertion and condemns narcissism. We do not imagine how docility allows us to accomplish great things.
To access humility, one must deny the ego.
What resonance can such a phrase have in our time? Denying the ego? Or, take into consideration the ego to better humiliate it? What madness ? How can we say in our time that being humbled is the surest road to humility? I remember Françoise Dolto's studies on this subject. Far from the image conveyed on Dolto by its thurifers. Dolto praising certain forms of humiliation to reach a “superior” state, a state where being detaches itself from its image; where being dominates and subjugates its image. And of course, Françoise Dolto praised this form of education in children. What was the dunce cap? What was the corner? These practices of another age as we would say today, were they not above all the possibility for the child to repent, and, to repent in front of others? There is no humiliation experienced in solitude. The ego calms down when it confronts intimacy. "I give thanks to God for never having had, because of my science, from the height of my master's chair, at any moment of my teaching activity, a movement of vain pride which raised my soul from the seat of the humility.
The surest way to holiness, that is to say the surest way to the state that is asked of us by God, is humility. Whoever utters these words showed in his life a natural humility. One day in the year 1257, when his fame could swell him with pride, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Brother Thomas therefore, is passing through a convent in Bologna. He does some service. He does not hesitate to do all kinds of tasks. He is available ; there is a liberation of the soul to be available, to bathe in docility. A monk passing through the monastery sees him and gives him the order to follow him. “The prior asks you to follow me”. Brother Thomas complies. He harnesses himself with the monk's belongings, some in the cart which he begins to drag, the rest on his back. Brother Thomas is of good constitution, but the load proves to be very heavy all the same. He works. The prior said: "Take the first brother you find". Brother Thomas appeared to the religious as the right person to help him. The monk is in a hurry, he rebuffs Brother Thomas who is struggling to carry everything and move forward at a reasonable speed. Brother Thomas shows docility in the effort, but he also shows great docility in the face of the reproaches of the religious. In town, the scene of the monk snubbing the brother is comical. People laugh at this caravan as it passes. But suddenly, a murmur runs through the crowd. It spreads like wildfire. Whisper is a name. A bourgeois insists on educating the religious. The brother you are mistreating is… The monk stiffened a little more, if that were possible. He dares not turn around. He dares not face his victim. The shadow of brother Thomas overhangs him, but this shadow has no meaning, brother Thomas does not overhang anyone with his shadow. Brother Thomas is in the back smiling, almost placid, he has had time to catch his breath. The monk approaches him and asks him to forgive him, he continues to wave the air with his arms, but this time to create intimacy with Brother Thomas, when before he had never ceased to show ostensibly the gap existing between him and this brother of small condition. He approaches him, touches his shoulder, everyone can see that there is no animosity between them, that on the contrary he breathes a form of complicity between them. Brother Thomas, dupe of nothing, actor of everything, replies to the monk who had just slipped in to him that he should have declared his identity, and instructed him of his quality, that there was no question of disobeying the prior. As the crowd kept murmuring against the monk, Brother Thomas affirmed that he was there of his own free will, that he accepted this charge without grumbling, that there was no reason to get angry with anyone. either, that obedience was the sine qua non of faith. To obey one's prior, to obey out of love for God. It costs nothing to get out of this way; the way of God's love. God's love takes on its full meaning in man's obedience. If man comes to derogate from this gentle law, nothing exists but the modern world. Without docility, without humility. Without love.
Letter to my friend Alvaro Mutis
One day in the 1990s, we were walking down the street, we were leaving the Hôtel des Saints-Pères, and Alvaro Mutis 1 stopped short. We were almost at the corner of the rue de Grenelle, and he said to me: “Emmanuel, I have the impression that we walked like this together a long time ago in a street in Cadiz. And we were having the same discussion. I confess that I no longer remember our remarks. I am certain that if Alvaro Mutis were still alive, he would remember it.
Alvaro Mutis had a special relationship with life. He lived by handling memory and immediate reality. He always put one foot in one and one foot in the other. With him, these two worlds never left each other, they were close, went hand in hand, like conjoined twins, like a one-way life, for the better. Alvaro Mutis was living his life and other lives, lives he had lived before, or would live later. Above all, Alvaro Mutis lived, at all times, accompanied by a young boy, this still child was called Alvarito, he was always with us. Carmen, Alvaro's wife, accepted his presence even though it was not her son. I have never met someone like Alvaro Mutis. I mean there was something terrifying and intriguing about his presence, his presence as a child next to the same middle-aged adult. I told him that often. I told him that Bernanos, whom he loved, also had to live like this with the incarnated afterglow of a young self by his side.
I come here to tell what I know of Alvaro Mutis, Maqroll el Gaviero and a few others… These last years have been slow and long. We corresponded much less. He no longer wrote. He hadn't written for so long. The tremors had taken over. A certain emptiness too. Everything was doomed to disappear like the stump of a dead tree that disappeared in a week in the damp furnace of the Amsud. Everything had to pass, and this spectacle of life in action never ceased to amaze Alvaro Mutis throughout the ninety years he spent on this earth.
The abandonment of Benedict XVI
“Eli, Eli lama sabachtani?” 1 When Benedict XVI signifies, in a few simple words, that he renounces the office of pope, it is an earthquake that shakes the world and strikes Catholics. The wildest rumors are circulating and everyone wonders about the causes of this decision which, even if it is not unique, causes amazement. Personally two feelings inhabit me: abandonment and sadness, its pilot fish, not to say desolation. The abandonment resembles an echo that keeps reproducing and growing, like a haunting complaint.