There is a nostalgia for a lost paradise. We all feel it, more or less; it connects us to original sin and to the fall. This disease torments pure souls. She heels and waves. Illness of youth if ever there was one, romantic madness, this nostalgia is at the heart of Sébastien de Courtois' novel, L'ami des beaux jours .
Tag: vulgarity
Identify
The identity is divided on the one hand into a base which is in us without us being able to draw a particular merit, our nature and the education (culture) that we have received, and a constitutive movement of life which discovers elements which are not listed by our nature or our education, but which must be read at the height of our nature and our education.
A good part of this process takes place without us even having to think about it. It is however essential, essential and obliges us to the permanent revision of this nature and this education, as well as the permanent revision of these new elements through the prism of our nature and our culture.
The balance is essential: to be at the crossroads of our nature and our culture. Which involves knowing them both. No question of forgetting or worse of not being aware of our nature, of forgetting or worse of losing the benefits of our education, to approach the shores of novelty or we will be nothing than a flag eliminated in the wind. We will have no criteria to judge the novelty and we would risk seeing this novelty only a novelty, and to enter it for this. There is no knowledge out of oneself that can escape the sieve of our nature and our culture.
What is it to be above ground?
The most enlightening example concerning human nature is in the New Testament when Peter and Jesus Christ speak together and that Pierre insists with his master so that he believes his completely sincere devotion. Thus, Jesus announces to him that the rooster will not have sung that he will have denied it three times. The first place where every man speaks is this one: his weakness. Taking into account everyone's limits, not always to resolve it, but also to overcome them, forces to reason from what you are and not from what you think you are. Any man who does not know his weaknesses, who forgets them, who does not take them into account is above ground as we used to say today. Affairs meaning that you are nourished by a pasture that is not ours, that you deny your pasture to find any other pasture than your best, because other. Affairs also means that the words received could be obtained everywhere else in the world without this posing a problem, these words being without roots, translatable in all language and exportable like a "framework" in computer science. The objective is characterized by the desire to reach such a level of abstraction and uprooting that the question will no longer even make sense.
Antigone, rebellious and intimate (3/7. Destiny)
3rd part: destiny
The man descends from the tree. Man, like the tree, is defined as well by his roots or his fruits. Man, like the tree, depends on external and interior elements to reach maturity. Man looks like this trunk sculpted by the tests based on his roots and bearing more or less beautiful, more or less good fruit ... The similarities between the plant world and man are endless. Water that nourishes the roots with the sun sprinkling the fruits, with oxygen exuded by the leaves, all this life that rushes and circulates in an irremingly human condition. The tree is a family metaphor. From the fruits to fruits and leaves, a metaphor for the history of man and the family is developing. What evil fairies presided over the birth of the labdacid family from which Antigone descends? Any beautiful consciousness these days would see a calamity and a pathological explanation of antigone decisions. How does this little antigone become this heroic fruit by being born on a trunk so full of stigma and bruising? Destiny blows and guides this family in an uninterrupted and obtuse way and, suddenly, Antigone frees itself from this shackles, releases all her family from this shackles, she defeated the camisole, and completes to dismiss fate. What a prodigy! By far, hung on their branch, two leaves always seem identical, it is enough to approach to see how differ. Read the rest of "Antigone, rebellious and intimate (3/7. Fate)"
News from Hyppolite Taine
He is a pedant, the pedant is the hollow and inflated mind which, because it is full of words, believes itself to be full of ideas, enjoys its sentences and deceives itself in order to dictate to others. He is a hypocrite who thinks he is sincere, a Cain who takes himself for Abel.
In this shrunken brain, given over to abstraction, and accustomed to herding men into two categories under opposite labels, whoever is not with him in the right compartment is against him in the wrong one, and in the wrong compartment between the rebels of all flags and rogues of all will, intelligence is natural. […] Every aristocrat is corrupt and every corrupt man is an aristocrat.
The left which is born with the Revolution displays a totalitarianism which, if it is sometimes hidden, is not less always present; it rests on the hatred of what does not think like it.
Hyppolite Taine in his Origins of Contemporary France described Robespierre in this way. But if instead of Robespierre, we put Hollande, Valls, or even worse Taubira, this portrait would fit them like a glove. Especially since pedant is masculine and feminine, he thus places everyone on an equal footing, this notion so dear to these… pedantic.
Which saints to turn ?
The Marcial Maciel affair forces us to ask the question of Evil. Our time avoids rubbing shoulders with it. What do we know about the work of the devil and what can we do to protect ourselves from it? After trying to hide the good in life, is it any wonder that evil comes to light? The works of the devil are innumerable, but the Holy Spirit can do everything, especially transform them.
It was necessary to have the faconde of Léon Bloy to assert: "There is only one sadness, that of not being holy". This heady question of holiness always returns like a season that does not pass. There are many things we can get rid of, but never the question of holiness is part of it. She is consubstantial to us. As soon as we see or witness something just or unfair, something related to good or evil, we are on the way to holiness. Whether towards her or against her. It takes a long time to realize how consubstantial the question of holiness is. We are holy, we are a temple, we started from the Church which is holy, we are in the image of God who is holy, and yet we are eating up, we fall, we pain, we are embedded ... so little results for so many promises. The condition of saint requires quantity of effort and gives few visible results.
Read the rest of "What saints do you have?" »
Christian testimony – 2
When I started this blog, very quickly the idea of writing on the liturgy came to me. Not to claim specialist status, but to share my experience of what is at the heart of a Christian's life. There were therefore two paths that had to merge: It was necessary to tell the mass (and its benefits), and then entrust the journey that had revealed it.
Part 2: Christianity, king of communities – At the foot of the altar
When I lived in London, the thought of spirituality never ceased to inhabit me. My quest boiled down to the permanent search for the inner life. This beating, throbbing heart could only be flesh and blood. That was my intuition. Twenty-five years later, it's a certainty that lives in me: not to let this heart beat and throb without giving it enough time, attention and affection. Unceasingly, seek to deepen this mystery which surrounds it. Anything that prevents this dialogue, anything that interferes with this connection, provokes my deepest contempt. This burning intimacy has perfect enemies hatched by the modern world, enemies like communitarianism and syncretism.
A short history of Envy, from hero to scapegoat
The modern world keeps presenting us with scapegoats. Lance Armstrong, Richard Millet, Jérôme Kerviel, John Galliano, to name but a few, each in a field, with completely different causes and reasons, have recently embodied the scapegoat, the justly punished culprit, the impediment in a circle put back in its place. The scapegoat is linked to egalitarianism, itself linked to envy. From hero to scapegoat, only the desire does not change. The modern world has the spectacle in its blood, the scapegoat has a cathartic function there.
In the era of modern democracy, everything goes through Twitter or Facebook. The real information is there. Not being there is tantamount to disappearing, to maintaining a life in the shadows, a shadowy life. On social networks, the height of modern democracy is allowed: rub shoulders with the idol, live with the idol, to the rhythm of the idol, knowing everything about her, seeing her when she gets out of bed, embracing good evening; only tactile contact is missing. This proximity transforms the role of the idol that has always been known, it changes it forever. If the idol were a simple statuette, it would not speak, it would not respond, it would only occupy the place left to it, it would gather on its effigy all the mental images that the brain can produce. The modern world does not know the mental image, it is beyond fantasy. He hates what is hidden, let alone what is secret. Hence the often-used phrase: fantasy come true. The fantasy - phantasmata , the mental image for the ancient Greek - cannot be, must not be, a reality. Otherwise horror awaits. Otherwise we can only pray while waiting for everything to return to its place. There is a possible wildness in rubbing shoulders with the idol too closely. Through this proximity, the modern world has undertaken to create a cathartic lever to control consciences. The idol can be a hero or a scapegoat, it can serve the society of the spectacle and its soft dictatorship. It also allows you to fill in boxes: hero, scapegoat, fallen, condemned, victim... A sheet of cigarette paper separates these qualifiers. Against a background of moralism, society shows its cards and distributes the good or bad points. All areas are affected, but some are more “popular” than others. The scapegoat allows you to get a makeover, to deceive, or to affirm your responsibility and your incorruptibility. But no one should be fooled by such schemes. The society of the spectacle is a simulacrum of society based on intrusion, indecency and denunciation.
Read the rest of "A little story of envy, from hero to scapegoat"
What death for the West?
It is more and more pleasant for me to hear these speeches of Westerners gargling about the death of Catholicism, the death of this old skin of religion, when it is not the death of God, quite simply.
Emmanuel Todd or intellectual vulgarity
Emmanuel Todd was on France Culture the other morning to give us his good word. Emmanuel Todd is a prophet. He's got it. Above all, he claims it. He doesn't have the honesty. Indeed, one cannot be a prophet and an ideologue.