Stewed quinces

This morning I was delighted to have some of those stewed quinces on my breakfast. I went for brunch with my Connect Group to Burnt Orange, over where the beautiful people live.

Shakespeare, 19th May

In faith, he is a worthy gentleman,
Exceedingly well read.

King Henry IV., Pt 1., Act iii., Sc. I.

He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.

As You Like It, Act iii., Sc. 2.

Shakespeare, 18th May

His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident,
Or Jove for 's power to thunder. His heart's his mouth;
What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent.
                Coriolanus, Act iii., Sc. I.

He hath a daily beauty in his life.
                     Othello, Act v., Sc. I.

In the eyes of Piero's resurrected Christ

I thought I would post one last vignette from Crossing to Safety, by Wallace Stegner.

During the year that Larry and Sally Morgan and Sid and Charity Lang spend in Florence, they take one day a jaunt to Sanselpolero, to visit the chapel in which you find Piero’s painting of Christ’s Resurrection. What follows gave me cause to look for this painting, for reasons which might also become necessary to you should you read on.

Until then there had been a good deal of frivolity in us, a spring-time response to the blossoms and the mild, clear air. But Piero’s Christ knocked it out of us like an elbow in the solar plexus. That gloomy, stricken face permitted no forgetful high spirits. It was not the face of a god reclaiming his suspended immortality, but the face of a man who until a moment ago had been thoroughly and horribly dead, and still had the smell of death in his clothes and the terror of death in his mind. If resurrection had taken place, it had not yet been comprehended.

Three of us were moved to respect, perhaps awe, by that painting, but Charity thought, or pretended to think, that it was another instance of an artist resorting to shock for his effects. Instead of trying to paint the joy, the beatification, the wonder that would naturally accompany the triumph over death—and uplifting idea if there ever was one—Piero had chosen to do it backwards, upside down. She thought he was anti-human in his scornful portraits of the drunken soldiers, and anti-God in his portrait of Christ. It seemed to her an arrogant painting. Instead of showing pity for human suffering it insisted on grinding down on the shocking details. Instead of trying to paint the joyfulness of Christ’s sacrifice Piero almost seemed to call it hopeless. Why hadn’t he, if only by a gleam in the sky or the glimpsed feather of an angel’s wing, put in anything that suggested the immediacy of heaven and release? And what terrible eyes this Christ had!

We did not argue with her. She was still developing her sundial theory of art, which would count no hours but the sunny ones. But I noticed that Sally stood a long while on her crutches in front of that painting propped temporarily against a frame of raw two-by-fours. She studied it soberly, with something like recognition or acknowledgment in her eyes, as if those who have been dead understand things that will never be understood by those who have only lived.  

I do so like that. Granted it is not so theologically sound (though it gave me reason to lie in bed and ponder whether Christ rose from the dead himself, or did he need God to raise him, and to recall bible verses that spoke to such things, and to wonder what it might have been like to come back from a God-less death, if that could be said of Christ ... until I had to stop and go to sleep). Yet it does reverberate towards the fellowship of sharing in Christ’s sufferings, and towards what we know of having a high priest who is able to sympathise with us in our sufferings.

The eyes of Piero’s Christ (look at a large close up of these if you can) become a kind of symbol in the book, that comes back twice more, of the community of those who know suffering, of what it means to suffer. I've not been able to forget them since.

Shakespeare, 16th May

He is the half part of a blessed man,
Left to be finished by such as she;
And she a fair divided excellence,
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him.

King John, Act ii., Sc. I.

Two blinks: on loneliness and communication

Here is an article Georgina linked on Facebook, called The Lethality of Loneliness, about the science and the biological effects of loneliness. It’s long, but interesting if you are so inclined. Here is the conclusion:

At a deeper level, though, loneliness research forces us to acknowledge our own extraordinary malleability in the face of social forces. This susceptibility is both terrifying and exhilarating. On the terrifying side is the unhappy fact that isolation, especially when it stems from the disenfranchisement of the underprivileged, creates a bodily limitation all too easily reproduced in each successive generation ... But there’s something awe-inspiring about our resilience, too. Put an orphan in foster care, and his brain will repair its missing connections. Teach a lonely person to respond to others without fear and paranoia, and over time, her body will make fewer stress hormones and get less sick from them. Care for a pet or start believing in a supernatural being and your score on the UCLA Loneliness Scale will go down. Even an act as simple as joining an athletic team or a church can lead to what Cole calls “molecular remodeling”. “One message I take away from this is, ‘Hey, it’s not just early life that counts,’ ” he says. “We have to choose our life well.”

And here is an article from The Art of Manliness, that Elsie linked on facebook, about How to Communicate Your Needs in a Relationship, but it doesn't need to be a "romantic" relationship. This merges with what I have posted previously from Growing Yourself Up, by Jenny Brown, and also called to mind a recent tweet from Alain de Botton :):

Paradox of the sulk: 'if I have to spell this one out, you're not someone I want to be understood by.'

Living in a Pornified World

Last night I went to another seminar at church called Living in a Pornified World, presented by Melinda Tankard Reist. I have heard Melinda speak on several occasions previously, and followed her Facebook page and blog for a few years, so I thought I was primed for this presentation. But still, it was disturbing and confronting as she showed us images of this pornification, all taken from mainstream media, to raise awareness of what exactly is happening out there (in case you hadn’t noticed). We were then presented with a lot of research showing the results of this pornification on the development and mental health of girls, in particular, and alarming information on what young people now perceive as “normal” and expected behaviour. One shudders.

The upside of the evening was when Melinda shared what her organisation Collective Shout has been doing, and the victories they have had against advertising, corporations and other media channels (eg music videos). You can also follow Collective Shout on Facebook (I thought I was already but discovered I wasn’t, and was just seeing the posts through Melinda Tankard Reist’s page, so just rectified that problem).

One of the helpful things to take away from the evening was the simple steps that we can take whenever we see material that we deem inappropriate, so I thought I’d share those.

1. Firstly, raise the problem in store if you can. Take the offending item to the service counter and ask to speak to the department manager.

2. Lodge a complaint through the stores/corporations online complaint process.

3. Take it to social media. You can get very fast response times through this, as companies do not want complaints going viral.

4. Also let Collective Shout know, so you are not acting on your own.

At the higher level we can be supporting Collective Shout, which could do much more with more funds and resources. Also, you can badger you local MP about local problems.

As Melinda reminded us, “the standard you walk past is the standard you set”, which was the challenge to act instead of just frowning as we pass.

(One other thing Melinda shared during her presentation is that she has young men (or women) contact her in response to her talks, who are struggling with pornography, and she doesn't know what to do with them, and that many churches don't seem to know what to do either, so I made sure a few key people afterwards knew about the work of Overcomers Outreach, which is an umbrella addiction recovery program, through which you can get many other contacts also. If you've read this blog for any length of time you would know that I used to help out with some of their work (I have a label in my sidebar), and it's a valuable resource.)