Digesting this (for me) introduction to your thinking-writing-life, Nicholas. A cousin of mine has been living-working-loving in Vietnam since the mid-2000s; thinking he would/will appreciate what you've written (and perhaps is aware already). I delight in the many "lessonless images" he shares of his life there. I would steal that phrase from you (with attribution when used, of course) if you would approve. Those two little paragraphs grip me most, at the moment, as an amator photographer (primarily of "pure still scenes of the Earth’s life"). "The past is not lost or unreal" and "Meaning isn’t found at the end of a story that unfolds over time." What I notice (whether recorded or not) is always real, true, and there. And that's all I ever mean it to be, and want it to mean, when I share. Thanks for articulating and sharing!
Substack in its wisdom threw me back to this post today, plopping a notification in my current notifications that you'd tagged me back in March. Reading it for a second time, I wondered if I ever pointed you towards Rowan Williams' essay on Tolkien? Almost as an aside, he drops in a statement that I found deeply helpful: "Tolkien is seeking to model the way in which the creator works not by intervening but by interweaving." (The next time someone brings him together with Nick Cave, I hope the pair of them talk about this...)
It's interesting to me that you experience Christianity as characterised by a certainty about the future and 'God's plan'. I'll grant that those tendencies are there in the mix – yet part of what draws me back into some kind of relationship with this tradition is precisely that taking God seriously seems to imply letting go of any possibility that I might know 'the plan'. I remember, too, Illich's definition of hope as remaining open to surprise, rather than thinking that you know how the story ends. When I read the Bible, it's full of stories of people having their certainties up-ended and their meanings turned inside out. I'm tempted to say that a faith which goes by way of the crucifixion has the capacity to hold the Great Oxygenation event – but at that point I know that I'd be demonstrating Illich's point when he says that faith is absurd and foolish, that we may experience it, but it is nothing that we can reasonably expect of anyone. In that sense – and knowing you've travelled some way since you wrote this piece in any case, and that what I find it possible to say about faith varies a lot from day to day – I can't see that it could help you to reason your way out of the trap you describe so vividly.
It is good that you write without knowing. Without Improvisation, no Jazz. This was a great essay.
2 and 3 are facets of the same thing. 6 is 'having a centre line', principles to adhere to, if you like. They make things much clearer, and don't even have to be 'objectively true', as we can adjust as we go by assessing real world effects of our beliefs / actions. Adjustment and provisionality is important, otherwise: dogma.
I agree, Tao must include the Great Oxygenation Event, all maths, but importantly also all mysteries.
Needing to know is the trap. It is the single most pervasive paralyser and drain of life energy amongst thoughtful, intelligent people, and I have even seen huge martial artists reduced to tears, sobbing 'what's going on?' on encountering something mysterious, or even just not immediately classifiable.
My current practice: imagine the worst that can happen, imagine the best that can happen, imagine an impossible thing. Make tea and pack my bag. Not sure it would work for anyone else, but I swear by it.
Digesting this (for me) introduction to your thinking-writing-life, Nicholas. A cousin of mine has been living-working-loving in Vietnam since the mid-2000s; thinking he would/will appreciate what you've written (and perhaps is aware already). I delight in the many "lessonless images" he shares of his life there. I would steal that phrase from you (with attribution when used, of course) if you would approve. Those two little paragraphs grip me most, at the moment, as an amator photographer (primarily of "pure still scenes of the Earth’s life"). "The past is not lost or unreal" and "Meaning isn’t found at the end of a story that unfolds over time." What I notice (whether recorded or not) is always real, true, and there. And that's all I ever mean it to be, and want it to mean, when I share. Thanks for articulating and sharing!
Substack in its wisdom threw me back to this post today, plopping a notification in my current notifications that you'd tagged me back in March. Reading it for a second time, I wondered if I ever pointed you towards Rowan Williams' essay on Tolkien? Almost as an aside, he drops in a statement that I found deeply helpful: "Tolkien is seeking to model the way in which the creator works not by intervening but by interweaving." (The next time someone brings him together with Nick Cave, I hope the pair of them talk about this...)
https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2018/08/master-his-universe-warnings-jrr-tolkien-s-novels
It's interesting to me that you experience Christianity as characterised by a certainty about the future and 'God's plan'. I'll grant that those tendencies are there in the mix – yet part of what draws me back into some kind of relationship with this tradition is precisely that taking God seriously seems to imply letting go of any possibility that I might know 'the plan'. I remember, too, Illich's definition of hope as remaining open to surprise, rather than thinking that you know how the story ends. When I read the Bible, it's full of stories of people having their certainties up-ended and their meanings turned inside out. I'm tempted to say that a faith which goes by way of the crucifixion has the capacity to hold the Great Oxygenation event – but at that point I know that I'd be demonstrating Illich's point when he says that faith is absurd and foolish, that we may experience it, but it is nothing that we can reasonably expect of anyone. In that sense – and knowing you've travelled some way since you wrote this piece in any case, and that what I find it possible to say about faith varies a lot from day to day – I can't see that it could help you to reason your way out of the trap you describe so vividly.
It is good that you write without knowing. Without Improvisation, no Jazz. This was a great essay.
2 and 3 are facets of the same thing. 6 is 'having a centre line', principles to adhere to, if you like. They make things much clearer, and don't even have to be 'objectively true', as we can adjust as we go by assessing real world effects of our beliefs / actions. Adjustment and provisionality is important, otherwise: dogma.
I agree, Tao must include the Great Oxygenation Event, all maths, but importantly also all mysteries.
Needing to know is the trap. It is the single most pervasive paralyser and drain of life energy amongst thoughtful, intelligent people, and I have even seen huge martial artists reduced to tears, sobbing 'what's going on?' on encountering something mysterious, or even just not immediately classifiable.
My current practice: imagine the worst that can happen, imagine the best that can happen, imagine an impossible thing. Make tea and pack my bag. Not sure it would work for anyone else, but I swear by it.
Speak soon. Cx.