hair form #5

“precious fleece”

(Milton, Samson Agonistes, l. 538)

hair form #4

“fatal harvest.”

(Milton, Samson Agonistes, l. 1024).

hair form #3

“faithful soldiery.”

(Milton, Samson Agonistes, l. 1498.)

hair form #2

Radical tuft.

hair forms #1

“Subtle wreath.”

(Donne, The Funeral, l. 3).

Augustine on the peace of decomposition

“He, then, who prefers what is right to what is wrong, and what is well-ordered to what is perverted, sees that the peace of unjust men is not worthy to be called peace in comparison with the peace of the just. And yet even what is perverted must of necessity be in harmony with, and in dependence on, and in some part of the order of things, for otherwise it would have no existence at all. Suppose a man hangs with his head downwards, this is certainly a perverted attitude of body and arrangement of its members; for that which nature requires to be above is beneath, and vice versa. This perversity disturbs the peace of the body, and is therefore painful. Nevertheless the spirit is at peace with its body, and labors for its preservation, and hence the suffering; but if it is banished from the body by its pains, then, so long as the bodily framework holds together, there is in the remains a kind of peace among the members, and hence the body remains suspended. And inasmuch as the earthly body tends towards the earth, and rests on the bond by which it is suspended, it tends thus to its natural peace, and the voice of its own weight demands a place for it to rest; and though now lifeless and without feeling, it does not fall from the peace that is natural to its place in creation, whether it already has it, or is tending towards it. For if you apply embalming preparations to prevent the bodily frame from mouldering and dissolving, a kind of peace still unites part to part, and keeps the whole body in a suitable place on the earth—in other words, in a place that is at peace with the body.

If, on the other hand, the body receive no such care, but be left to the natural course, it is disturbed by exhalations that do not harmonize with one another, and that offend our senses; for it is this which is perceived in putrefaction until it is assimilated to the elements of the world, and particle by particle enters into peace with them. Yet throughout this process the laws of the most high Creator and Governor are strictly observed, for it is by Him the peace of the universe is administered. For although minute animals are produced from the carcass of a larger animal, all these little atoms, by the law of the same Creator, serve the animals they belong to in peace. And although the flesh of dead animals be eaten by others, no matter where it be carried, nor what it be brought into contact with, nor what it be converted and changed into, it still is ruled by the same laws which pervade all things for the conservation of every mortal race, and which bring things that fit one another into harmony.”

(Augustine, City of God 19.12)

J. de Gruchy on the mutuality of the transcendental predicates

“Truth without goodness and beauty degenerates into dogmatism, and lacks the power to attract and convince; goodness without truth is superficial, and without beauty – that is, without graced form – it degenerates into moralism. Alternatively we could say that truth and goodness without beauty lack power to convince and therefore to save.”

(J. de Gruchy, Christianity, Art and Transformation 107)

Christopher Alexander’s mystical ordinary

“The wall runs east to west; the peach tree grows flat against its southern side. The sun shines on the tree and as it warms the bricks behind the tree, the warm bricks themselves warm the peaches on the tree. It has a slightly dozy quality. The tree, carefully tied to grow flat against the wall; warming the bricks; the peaches growing in the sun; the wild grass growing around the roots of the tree, in the angle where the earth and roots and wall all meet. This quality is the most fundamental quality there is in anything.

[...] We have a habit of thinking that the deepest insights, the most mystical, and spiritual insights, are somehow less ordinary than most things – that they are extraordinary. This is only the shallow refuge of the person who does not yet know what he is doing. In fact, the opposite is true: the most mystical, most religious, most wonderful – these are not less ordinary than most things – they are more ordinary than most things. It is because they are so ordinary, indeed, that they strike to the core.”

(Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building 26, 219).

Latour on the impossibility of reduction

“We may now see what the two collectors, nature and society, have in common: they are both premature attempts to collect in two opposite assemblies the one common world….So the redefinition of politics as the progressive composition of the common world has to be applied [255] to the former assemblages of society as well as to the former assemblages of nature…While recalcitrant objects from the former natural realm remain in full view no matter what natural scientists say about them, recalcitrant subjects from the former society might be easily subdued because they rarely complain when ‘explained away’, or at the very least, their complaints are rarely recorded with as much care.

[...] To grasp this point, we have to remember that being a matter of fact is not a ‘natural’ mode of existence but, strangely enough, an anthropomorphism. Things, chairs, cats, mats, and black holes never behave like matters of fact; humans sometimes do, for political reasons, to resist enquiries….To be ‘treated like things’, as we understand it now, is not to be ‘reduced’ to mere matters of fact, but allowed to live a life as multifarious as that of matters of concern. Reductionism is not a sin one should abstain from or a virtue one should firmly stick to: it is a practical impossibility since the elements to which one ‘higher level’ is being reduced will be as complex as the ‘lower level’.

[262] In a time of so many crises in what it means to belong, the task of cohabitation should no longer be simplified too much. So many other entities are now knocking on the door of our collectives. Is it absurd to want to retool our disciplines to become sensitive again to the noise they make and to try to find a place for them?”

(Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social 254-55, 262)

psyche and prayer

The inner life of Christian tradition has far more depth than is often treated in modern psychology [...] The inner life of the Tradition is not inimical to modern psychology. In their own time, the early fathers adopted the popular language of the inner life, found in Platonic (neo-Platonic and Stoic as well) philosophy. However, they refined its terminology, conforming it to Christian understandings of grace as well as the Christian understanding the human.

Modern psychological language is equally useful (should a writer or thinker so choose). Words would need refinement just as the language of Hellenic culture itself once required.

“How do you feel about that?” remains a good question. Responsible spiritual growth requires that Christians slow down and look within. It is not enough to hold opinions. In the teaching of the fathers, opinions are generally worthless: they are manifestations of an unruly will and disordered passions. “Why do I value my opinions so strongly?” is a good question. “Why do the opinions of others make me angry?” is at least as good. Both questions require that we look at our “feelings,” for both of them have to do with the energy we invest in certain forms of thought. To leave such things unattended is to hand ourselves over to spiritual slavery.

O Lord and Master of my life,
Take from me the spirit of sloth, desire, lust of power and idle talk.
Give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to Thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions,
And not to judge my brother.
For Thou art blessed, always now and forever. Amen.

The Prayer of St. Ephrem

from here.