I just finished reading a book. I recommend it to you, especially, to read during these forty days (not too many of which are left…) The nice fellow who wrote an introduction to the book said: “The thinkers examined in this book have all grown unbearably uncomfortable with the current metaphysical arrangements. Each reimagines the Judeo-Christian epic in global, transcultural, and macrohistorical terms and in the process refigures our relationship to God and our place in the cosmos.” (Goodness! One of the ways to know you are quoting from a brainy tome these days is to look at what your spell-checker doesn’t know.)
Father O’Sullivan, may he rest in peace, used to recommend me to the care and protection of Our Lady of Divine Discontent when as a young man I would sometimes sit with him and grumble about structures and strictures, position and privilege…and stupidity. He liked a letter I wrote which was published in my college newspaper; and smiled at me.
In that letter I had grumbled about buildings and busyness, rules and rites, walls and wished for no walls at all before finishing by writing: “I would have no church at all.”
Along with one of my teachers the long suffering priest said, “You are young, Peter.”
Now I know that without walls there is no way to have windows to open. Or, to have windows to break. Without walls what use is a portico?
Towards the very end of his book (proof that I read that far) the author writes about something he calls “ontological dissent”, and quotes some fellow who goes on a bit about “rules” of one kind or another which he he uses to argue that we should finally consent to only one rule: “the rule of the way of the world.”
Fine, I supposed. “What is that?”
The author doesn’t say. What he does say is this: “The thinkers here would undoubtedly agree, but they would point out that there is another rule: the Rule of St. Benedict. And that in the monastic life, we see a synthesis of distributist economics combined with a metahistorical critique.” He could have saved the jawbreaker words and simply said “it’s common sense.)
My spellchecker needs a check-up.
Let me know if you would be interested in reading the book, and I will tell you its name. There are no pictures.
From The Ghetto 