(this probably won't make sense if you haven't read the previous two entries.)
Aristotle:
"Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit.
Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by often seeing or often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and did not come to have them by using them); but the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.b. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts."
--Nicomachean Ethics
Aristotle believes we become good by acting good, over and over again, until we become habituated. I hated this idea in CC, but it makes more and more sense to me. I know that's how I become brave, is by braving things. And how I become more friendly, by befriending.
I'm convinced, in general, that the human brain is fantastic at precisely two things: learning behaviors (that is, connecting a behavioral pattern to a future reward) and abstracting behaviors (open box, get cookie -> buy a box of cookies, get cookie -> earn money, afford a box of cookies -> get a job, feel accomplished, etc. etc. etc.). That is, both behaviors and pay-offs get steadily more abstract as we build on the incredibly complicated patterns of behavior we've learned. And of course, at any sufficiently complicated degree of abstraction, the levels start crossing: eating a cookie makes us satisfied because it's sweet, but also because it reminds us of our childhood, and maybe because it makes us feel successful (if it's a particularly luxurious cookie). sometimes the pay-off reverses; i hug my parents because it makes me happy, i hug my parents because it makes them happy, their happiness makes me happy. all of this is way too simple. but at the very basic, it's Aristotle. if we can train ourselves in the simple things, in the basic strictures of our morality, we can exist as moral beings.
more: being good grows out of doing good. that's what i hear in the second part of the prayer of St. Francis. In his call to seek to console rather than to be consoled and to understand rather than to be understood, i hear a call to do good out of one's own brokenness.
right now, i hear in that prayer a call to dig out ruts of morality in one's life, so that at the very least, in the face of sadness, one can travel the same path one always does, by rote and blindly, until sight returns. Kaddish is at heart a book struggling with the idea of ritual in the face of skeptical about the ritual cosmology, and ultimately it seems to come to rest at least in part in the idea that ritual is a staging ground, a home for the mourner, an opportunity for understanding to grow out of repetition.
wieseltier at one point says that sadness is singlemindedness and that it is opposed to multiplicity and to engagement. st. francis's prayer calls us precisely to engagement with multiplicity. dumb chiasmus. what i mean is that in demanding that i be kind to others, it forces me out of my self-absorption for long enough to let me take a look back at my sadness as another piece of self-absorption.
and it works very deliberately right now. i pray it now, when i'm overcome with that egoistic sadness, and it prompts me to pull myself back into the world. i sink back out, into my sadness, and sometimes i pray it again. i startle, i get distracted. i get sad. i get angry, i get upset, i punch things. i may pray again.
but i hope with long commitment to make the prayer a practice, to see if i can live by a commitment to that wisdom. i'll still be angry and hurt, but maybe my first response will be to understand rather than demand understanding and to sow love rather than ruin my fields digging for it.
i don't feel the same way about repeated prayer in general. i've prayed too many times as an unbeliever to put much stock in it. what it does do, though, is keep your spiritual tools sharp, so that when you next have an opportunity to use them, you only have to remember how.
where the Divine comes into all of this, for me, is in letting me acknowledge what i perceive as my own worthlessness in order to celebrate myself and delight in others, and to bring forth solace or understanding or forgiveness or love from this celebration. i acknowledge that i am powerless, but i believe in a Higher Power. i cannot ben-franklin my way out of sin. in striving to be better, i get caught despairing over my failures. i am loved. let me spread that love in the world.
a scary passage, growing up, was the discussion of the unforgivable sin in Matthew (12:32): "And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come."
Lots of bullshit about this, but I've always learned that the unforgivable sin was despair: believing you were beyond saving. I had trouble with that, too. But what if, the unforgivable sin is despair, precisely because while despairing there is nothing one can do. Despair is precisely the state of being beyond salvation, because it is precisely a belief that one can do nothing. And if goodness lies in doing something--not, incidentally, in "works"; i'm not that Catholic--then the paralysis of despair is its opposite. there is nothing that can be forgiven in one's despair; it is entirely internal and passive.
what can be done, then, is to acknowledge that one is powerless. and set off in the ruts one has carved for oneself. despair cracks under the weight of ritual and tradition.
i want all my books in one place.
