Christ is Risen!
In the opening chapter of Surprised by Joy C.S. Lewis reminisces about the formative days of his childhood. Elatedly he shares the immense joy he felt while delving into the inexhaustible collection of books that filled the shelves of his home. He was not just a mere bibliophile, he also had the desire to create, specifically to write. Most children have the desire to conjure up imaginative worlds, to act and play within them. They design these worlds influenced by what they read or watch. Now that I’m in my thirties, I sometimes wax nostalgic about the things I read and watched as a child. I’ve realized that these books, shows and movies played a formational role in my life.
My mother instilled in me the importance of reading. I was no Lewis though. And in my late teenage years I barely read anything that wasn’t required for school. However, she planted the seed in my childhood that would burgeon into the reader that I am today.
It is important that we instill this into children now more than ever. Our age is an age of pernicious distraction and suffocating noise. Digital technology is a useful tool. It is just that though, a tool. The tool is overused to the point that we have lost something–for the explanation of how technology simultaneously augments and amputates, read Marshall McLuhan’s work. This immersion in the digital is forming people–adults are not immune to this–but children now are growing up in a socio-cultural context that is digital. They are swimming in the binary sea.
Reading is a way to slow down and disconnect. It can aid in spiritual formation.
Now I can already hear the detractors:
“But as Orthodox Christians we should only concern ourselves with spiritual reading…like the Fathers or hagiography. Wouldn’t we all be better off if we just read The Ladder of Divine Ascent?
I’m tempted to insert a meme of Dwight Schrute saying “False.” But in order to keep things at least quasi-professional, I refrain from using memes.
This excerpt is taken from Fr. Seraphim Rose’s biography, and it is pertinent to the idea of story aiding in spiritual formation:
Many years ago,” I read, “a young monastic aspirant went to Mount Athos. In talking with the venerable abbot of the monastery where he wished to stay, he told him, `Holy Father! My heart burns for the spiritual life, for asceticism, for unceasing communion with God, for obedience to an elder. Instruct me, please, Holy Father, that I may attain spiritual advancement.’ Going to a bookshelf, the abbot pulled down a copy of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. `Read this, son,’ he said. `But, Father!’ objected the disturbed aspirant. `This is heterodox Victorian sentimentality, a product of the Western captivity! This isn’t spiritual, it’s not even Orthodox! I need writings which will teach me spirituality!’ The abbot smiled, saying, “unless you first develop normal, human, Christian feelings and learn to view life as little Davey did–with simplicity, kindness, warmth, and forgiveness–then all the Orthodox spirituality and Patristic writings will not only be of no help to you–they will turn you into a spiritual monster and destroy your soul.
From this venerable father, we’re taught the importance of developing “normal, human, Christian” emotions. This is the cultivation of the inner person. All the erudition and all the ascetic reading we do can have monstrous outcomes–we will become another Edward Casaubon. We must first learn to cultivate what it means to be truly human in light of Orthodox doctrine. Then one can work up to reading the great spiritual works under the tutelage of one’s spiritual father. And your spiritual father may suggest you read some fiction for a period. My own spiritual father has done this on more than one occasion. It will be spiritually beneficial.
The previous part of this series focused mainly on language and mythic literature. For this part we will turn our attention to what is often called “literature” or “realist” fiction–these terms are problematic for reasons I don’t intend to get into, but for now we will use the term “literature” for the sake of being able to continue–and we will briefly discuss poetry.
Literature: Prose
American author Wallace Stegner wrote that “fiction is a ‘lens on life’.” As we discussed in the previous installments of this series, stories provide patterns to live by, they shape our imagination, and connect our personal narratives to the grand narrative. The mythic tends to be cosmic in scope, employing archetypes that speak deeply to our human condition and often stir in us a sense of adventure. They are old stories regardless of the iteration of their telling. Stegner is commenting on how fiction provides a way to bring clarity and, even in some cases, amplification for the nuances of life. Mythic literature can and will do this as well. However, “realist” fiction shares similarities with our own time and place. The mythic is known for symbolic and allegorical language that points you to higher ideals. Realist literature tends to weave stories of people living their lives in contexts congruent with our own. Now this doesn’t mean that “realist” stories exclude the symbolic and allegorical, as I said in the previous post, I don’t like to demarcate absolutely these genres. I find this to be a fruitless endeavor. For the purpose of spiritual formation, I am expounding on the benefits of both categories of fiction, whether one is developing curriculum for church education or seeking to cultivate one’s own spiritual life.
Reading good books nurtures the soul. A tale well told will convey truth, goodness and beauty. To engage with the transcendentals will aim one’s entire being to the Source of these very things. It is an act of the soul, and this action or movement of our being finds its origin and completion in God Himself. Echoing Aristotle, happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue. The human person will find happiness (or joy) in God. Truth, goodness and beauty are achieved by the virtuous. Good stories contain within them (even the ones who seem to be lacking will often contain a kernal of truth and goodness) the transcendentals and the virtues. Reworking this idea in expressly Christian terminology: every story that is told well will contain within it the Gospel.
Dickens and Dostoevsky are two authors that are worth reading. Dickens has already briefly been mentioned, so I don’t intend to spend too much time with him (at least for now). Dickens was a master at depicting the poor in spirit facing the corruption of a bone-chillingly cold and impersonal society. Characters like Davey and Pip, young and impressionable, or the selfless heroines Ester Summerson and Amy Dorrit as they overcome the less-than-desirable situations in which they were born. Dickens has the ability to capture the imagination of readers and convey truth and goodness in a way unmatched by most modern writers. His fiction is not overtly Christian, yet his moral framework is constructed with Christian ethics in mind. His most frequented story, A Christmas Carol, is a tale of radical repentance that all Christians can be inspired by.
Polyphony
Dostoevsky is one of the greatest novelists of the modern age. The tension between nihilism and traditional belief is the pith of his major novels. From the contradictory Raskolnikov–who is both moralist and nihilist–to his near polar opposite, the idiotic Myshkin–and to the saintly figure of Alyosha Karamazov, his characters are complex, each with their own unique voice. Mikhail Bakhtin referred to this complexity of many voices as polyphony. Dostoevsky’s narratives were structured around this idea of polyphony of voice, with each single voice given the “space” to speak. It isn’t always easy to discern which (or if any) of them were Dostoevsky’s own voice. One would have to know of Dostoevsky’s beliefs concerning religion, politics and language to decipher the subtext, which, I believe, is the author’s way of communicating unobtrusively to safeguard the reader’s freedom. If Dostoevsky was didactic in his prose then he would be in danger of the ideological coercion that he subtlety cautions against, and he has no desire of authorial demagoguery. Even the characters are not simple allegorical stand-ins of a single idea, they’re often too complex for such a simple reduction. As an Orthodox Christian, he believes in the free will of human beings, and by preserving this freedom, he also safeguards language from misuse and depersonalization; and since all words have their origin in the Logos, and all language is deeply interpersonal, when misuse of language happens it is dis-incarnational, even demonic. In Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction, Rowan Williams tells us that Dostoevsky accomplishes this textual freedom by polyphonic tensions, and these tensions create a “narrative space,” not for the characters, but for the reader to engage. The multiple voices contained within the text “represent” or “give voice” to different ideas, and when one engages with these ideas–and I would add to Williams’ idea here that one must engage under the tutelage of the Church–then one will grow and mature.
Cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham in his book Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom, explains that students are more likely to remember what they’ve learned when they engage with it, especially if the teacher can use story to convey the knowledge. The simple memorization of facts rarely suffices. Dostoevsky’s books are memorable for this reason. In order to read his books, one must wrestle with these tensions and engage within the narrative space.
For the purposes of spiritual formation, reading literature that creates the narrative space that Williams writes about is incalculably effective. Besides Dostoevsky, one will also find this in books by Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy, both of whom are Catholic. Reading literature comprised of interwoven subplots will give insight to the reader, revealing that everyone we encounter has their own story, and at times their story intersects with our own. All of these narratives are contained within the grand narrative. Developing a narratival comprehension of the world should be central for all church education and spiritual development.
Literature: Poetry
Stories keep us connected to the grand narrative and God’s work in the cosmos, whereas poetry keeps us in-step with the rhythms of creation. There is a certain musicality to existence. Nietzsche once penned, “Without music life, would be a mistake.” Although his terse statement reveals his nihilistic streak, the German philologist and philosopher was on the right path. There is a reason why both Tolkien and Lewis portrayed creation in terms of music. Stravinsky’s elaborate, primal and percussive opus The Rite of Spring resonates one’s imagination with the reawakening and renewal of nature. The cosmos is rhythmic. Musical. There are repeating cycles and patterns that structure our very reality. Daily, weekly, seasonal, and annual cycles repeat. The Church calendar overlays our secular calendar. In reality it fulfills the “secular” calendar. And eschaton has connotations of climatic finality, a movement towards telos, a fulfillment of all things in and toward Christ the Logos. A Chardinian omega point without the evolution.
Poetry will cultivate these rhythms. Great poetry will give us a sense of the intricacies and cadenced beauty in creation. It will expand our gaze to see the “world charged with the grandeur of God,” to borrow from the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins.
The poetic is unmatched in linguistic verve mainly for its via media. In terms of language it sits nicely between realist and fantastical stories because it speaks in imagery that is other than how one normally speaks, yet the content of which is about this world. It’s efficacy is experienced in its revelatory power to open up unknown vistas within the objective world–the disclosing, or bringing into the open the nature (or even possibly the logoi) of created things. The poems ability to disclose is just a glimmer or reflection, or a piercing through the totality of corporeality. One learns of the logoi, as we learn from St. Maximus, purely by grace, poetry will not accomplish this, only by asceticism and grace will one encounter this knowledge. Nevertheless, good poetry can aim one in the right direction, especially theological poetry.
Sts. Gregory the Theologian and Eprhem the Syrian are two giants in Orthodox theology. Besides writing treatises, letters and orations, both also composed theological poetry. Their poetry has the ability to reveal the otherness of the unseen world while simultaneously concealing. Poetic imagery is often ambiguous enough to reveal the mystery of the thinly veiled invisible world. One must apprehend these things with our mind, yet also they will elude full comprehension, after all we are finite creatures, and grace is the prerequisite for piercing the veil of mystery. This grace is given to those on the ascetic and apophatic journey.
Poetry in its non-theological form can also assist one who needs to become aware of the beauty of language and creation. This beauty will lead one to God.
Finale
Where does one begin on this figurative journey? There is so much to read that one will go insane attempting to read everything. Take C.S. Lewis’ suggestion, for every new book, read an old book. I would also recommend starting with the few authors that I named in this series. And talk with your priest, he may have a wonderful recommendation.
For poetry Lewis says this, but I also think it can apply to literature as a whole:
Plainly it does not matter at what point you first break into the system of European poetry. Only keep your ears open and your mouth shut and everything will lead you to everything else in the end.
For the teacher, whether you’re teaching children or adults, I would recommend assessing the needs of your parish and developing a curriculum from there. It goes without saying that Scripture and spiritual books should be our primary read. I always read one fiction and non-fiction book at a time. For ideas about incorporating this into teachings, I will be providing examples over the upcoming weeks.
