It’s Got a Wonderful
Defence Mechanism —
You Don’t Dare Kill it.
"....and Beauty is just absolutely
Terrifying to People -- because
Beauty highlights What's Ugly."
“The Universe is quite a shockingly selective, undemocratic place out of apparently infinite space, a relatively tiny proportion occupied by matter of any kind.
Of the stars perhaps only one has planets : of the planets only one is at all likely to sustain organic life.
Of the animals only one species is rational.
Selection as seen in Nature, and the appalling waste which it involves, appears a horrible and an unjust thing by Human Standards.
But the selectiveness in The Christian Story is not quite like that. The People who are selected are, in a sense, unfairly selected for a Supreme Honour; but it is also a Supreme Burden.
The People of Israel come to realise that it is their woes which are Saving The World.
Even in Human Society, though, one sees how this inequality furnishes an opportunity for every kind of Tyranny and Servility. Yet, on the other hand, one also sees that it furnishes an opportunity for some of the very best things we can think of - Humility, and Kindness, and the immense pleasures of Admiration.
(I cannot conceive how one would get through the boredom of a world in which you never met anyone more Clever, or more Beautiful, or Stronger than yourself. The very crowds who go after the football celebrities and film-stars know better than to desire that kind of Equality!)
What The Story of The Incarnation seems to be doing is to flash a new light on A Principle in Nature, and to show for the first time that this Principle of Inequality in Nature is neither Good nor Bad.
It is a common theme running through both The Goodness and Badness of The Natural World, and I begin to see how it can Survive as A Supreme Beauty in a redeemed universe.
And with that I have unconsciously passed over to The Third Point. I have said that the selectiveness was not unfair in the way in which we first suspect, because those selected for The Great Honour are also selected for The Great Suffering, and Their Suffering heals Others.
In the Incarnation we get, of course, this idea of Vicariousness of one person profiting by the earning of another person. In its highest form that is the very centre of Christianity.
And we also find this same Vicariousness to be a characteristic, or, as the musician would put it, a leit-motif of Nature.
It is a Law of The Natural Universe that No Being can Exist on its Own Resources.
Everyone, everything, is hopelessly indebted to Everyone and Everything Else.
In The Universe, as we now see it, this is the source of many of the greatest horrors: all the horrors of carnivorousness, and the worse horrors of the parasites, those horrible animals that live under the skin of other animals, and so on.
And yet, suddenly seeing it in the light of The Christian Story, one realizes that vicariousness is not in itself bad; that all these animals, and insects, and horrors are merely that principle of vicariousness twisted in one way.
For when you think it out, nearly Everything GOOD in Nature also comes from Vicariousness. After all, The Child, both before and after birth, Lives on its Mother, just as The Parasite lives on its Host, the one being A Horror, the other being The Source of almost every natural Goodness in The World. It all depends upon what you do with this principle.
So that I find in that Third Way also, that what is implied by The Incarnation just fits in exactly with what I have seen in Nature, and (this is the important point) each time it gives it a new twist.
If I accept this supposed missing chapter, The Incarnation, I find it begins to illuminate the whole of the rest of the manuscript. It lights up Nature's pattern of Death and Rebirth; and, secondly, Her Selectiveness; and, thirdly, Her vicariousness.
Now I notice a very odd point.
All other religions in The World, as far as I know them, are either Nature Religions, or anti-Nature Religions.
The Nature Religions are those of the old, simple pagan sort that you know about. You actually got drunk in The Temple of Bacchus. You actually committed fornication in The Temple of Aphrodite.
The more modern form of nature religion would be the religion started, in a sense, by Bergson' (but he repented, and died Christian), and carried on in a more popular form by Mr Bernard Shaw.
The AntiNature Religions are those like Hinduism and Stoicism, where Men say,
`I will starve my flesh. I care not whether I live or die.'
All Natural Things are to be set aside: The aim is Nirvana, apathy, negative spirituality. The nature religions simply affirm my natural desires. The anti-natural religions simply contradict them.
The Nature Religions simply give a new sanction to what I already always thought about The Universe in my moments of rude health and cheerful brutality.
The antinature religions merely repeat what I always thought about it in my moods of lassitude, or delicacy, or compassion.
But here is something quite different.
Here is something telling me - well, what?
Telling me that I must never, like The Stoics,
say that 'Death Does not Matter.
Nothing is Less Christian than that.
Death which made Life Himself shed tears at The Grave of Lazarus, and shed Tears of Blood in Gethsemane.", This is an appalling horror; a stinking indignity.
(You remember Thomas Browne's splendid remark: `I am not so much afraid of Death, as ashamed of it.')
And yet, somehow or other, infinitely Good. Christianity does not simply affirm or simply deny The Horror of Death; it tells me something quite new about it.
Again, it does not, like Nietzsche, simply confirm My Desire to Be Stronger, or Cleverer than Other People.
On The Other Hand, it does not allow me to say,
`Oh, Lord, won't there be A Day when Everyone will be as Good as Everyone Else?'
In the same way, about vicariousness.
It will not, in any way, allow me to be An Exploiter,
to Act as A Parasite on Other People;
Yet it Will Not allow Me
any Dream of
Living on My Own.
It will Teach Me to Accept with Glad Humility
the enormous Sacrifice that
Others Make for Me,
as well as to Make Sacrifices for others.
That is why I think this Grand Miracle is The Missing Chapter in this novel, the chapter on which the whole plot turns; that is why I believe that God really has dived down into The Bottom of Creation, and has come up bringing the whole Redeemed Nature on His Shoulder. The Miracles that have already happened are, of course, as Scripture so often says, the first fruits of that cosmic summer which is presently coming on.
Christ Has Risen, and so We Shall Rise.
St Peter for a few seconds Walked on The Waters and the day will come
when there will be
a re-made universe, infinitely obedient to
The Will of Glorified and Obedient Men,
when we can do All Things,
when we shall be Those Gods that
We are Described as Being in Scripture.
To Be Sure, it feels Wintry enough still :
but often in the very early Spring it feels like that.
Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale.
A man really ought to say, `The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago' in the same spirit in which he says, `I saw a crocus yesterday.'
Be cause we know What is Coming behind The Crocus.
The Spring cames slowly down this way; but the great thing is that The Corner has been turned.
There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural Spring, The Crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can.
We have The Power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those `high mid-summer pomps' in which Our Leader, The Son of Man, already dwells, and to which He is calling Us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer.
MOSET:
What do we know so far?
EMH:
The lifeform has taken control of her body
at the autonomic level,
drawing proteins from her tissues,
white blood cells from her arteries.
MOSET:
Which can be interpreted in several ways.
EMH:
A form of attack?
MOSET:
I find it odd that a species would evolve an attack mechanism that would leave it so vulnerable.
Why not do it's damage and retreat?
EMH:
A parasite, perhaps?
MOSET:
Yes, I think so, but not any ordinary variety.
It's unlikely it could sustain itself like this over the long term.
EMH:
Its own systems are damaged.
It's doing this as a stopgap measure, to keep itself alive.
MOSET:
So the patient's heart, lungs, kidneys,
they're all augmenting the alien's damaged system.
EMH:
It's using B'Elanna
as a life preserver.
MOSET:
But if it needs her to Survive,
it's not about to let go without a fight.
EMH:
I'd like to think that's a fight
you and I can win.
MOYERS: Why “A Gathering of Men?” I mean, that’s really rare, isn’t it, to have a workshop for men only?
BLY: Maybe 20 years ago it would have been rare, but lately the men in various parts of the country have begun to gather. I think that it isn’t a reaction to the women’s movement, really. I think the grief that leads to the men’s movement began maybe 140 years ago, when the Industrial Revolution began, which sends the father out of the house to work.
MOYERS: What impact did that have?
BLY: Well, we receive something from our father by standing close to him.
MOYERS: Physically.
BLY: When we stand physically close to our father, something moves over that can’t be described in material terms, that gives the son a certain confidence, an awareness, a knowledge of what it is to be male, what a man is. And in the ancient times you were always with your father; he taught you how to do things, he taught you how to farm, he taught you whatever it is that he did. You learned from him. But you had this sense of being of receiving a food from him.
MOYERS: Food.
BLY: A Food. From Your Father’s body. Now, when the father went out of the house in the Industrial Revolution, that food ended, and I think the average American father now spends ten minutes a day with a son — I think that’s what The Minneapolis Tribune had — and half of that time is spent in, “Clean up your room!” You know, that’s a favorite phrase of mine, I know it well.
So the Industrial Revolution did not harm the mother and daughter relationship as much as it did the father and son, because the mother and daughter still stand close to each other and have stood close to each other. Maybe that’ll change now when the mother is being sent out to work also, but the daughters then receive some knowledge of what it is to be a woman, or if you prefer to call it the women’s the female mode of feeling. They receive knowledge of the female mode of feeling. And the mother gets that from her grandmother, who got it from her great grandmother, who gets it from her great grandmother, it goes all the way down.
After the Industrial Revolution, the male does not receive any knowledge from His Father of what the male mode of feeling is, and the old male initiators that used to work are not working anymore.
MOYERS: What do you mean, male initiators?
BLY: Well, the you know, in the traditional times, you were not initiated by your father, because there’s too much tension between you and your father. You are initiated by older, unrelated males, is the word that’s used, older unrelated men. They may be friends of your father. They could even be uncles or grandfathers. But they are the ones who used to do it. Then they disappear. Then it falls on the father to do. Then the father is off at the office. You see the picture?
MOYERS: Yeah. In fact, in some of the traditional cultures, a night arrives, and a group of men show up at a boy’s house, and they take him away from the home and they don’t bring him back, then, for several days. And then when he comes back, he has ashes on his face.
BLY: Yeah. In New Guinea, where they still do it today, the men come in with spears to get the boys. The boys know nothing about the men’s world. They live with their mother completely. They say, you know, “Mama, Mama, save us from these men that are coming here.” Now, all over New Guinea, the women accept and the men accept one thing. A boy cannot be made into a man without the active intervention of the older men.
Now, when they all accept that, then the women’s job is to be participants in this drama. So the men come and take the boys away, and the boys are saying, “Save me, Mommy,” you know. Then they go across, and the men have built a tent on this island they have a built a house for the boys’ initiation hut. Then they take them across the bridge, and three or four of the women, whose boys these are, get their spears and meet them on the bridge. And the old men have their spears. And the boys are saying, “Save me, Mama, save me, these are horrible men, they’re taking me away,” you know, and they fight and everything. And then the women are driven back. Then the women all go back and have coffee and say, “How’d I do? How’d I look?”
So that wonderful participation in it, the women are not doing the initiating, they’re participating, and then, as you said, then he’ll stay with the men for a year, maybe. Then they will explain to him something has to die to be born, and what will have to die is the boy. This is what isn’t happening to the men in this culture.
