jumbled is the right word. I know that taking words out of their context, paraphrasing here and there - having scribbled down the snippets that most appealed to my attention at the time - to now jumble them all together does not do much justice to Richard Holloway's autobiography Leaving Alexandria, but I wanted to share these snippets anyway, to give a flavour, and a reading recommendation.
Holloway writes eloquently, honestly, with clarity and ease, with intellect and insight yet without guile. He writes really well. Holloway may be of interest to those of a religious persuasion because he comes from their camp yet recognises the importance of doubting. He may be of interest to non religious types in that, alongside his scepticism and doubts, he looks at religion tenderly. He carefully considers the question and concludes, ''I cannot say whether God exists'' but this does not make him dismissive of the church. He values the consolation that religion may offer the faithful, or the poor in spirit. He recognises the role of religion as a comforting psychological blanket ''that protects us against the chilly winds of an empty universe'' Holloway's heartstrings chime along with Jesus': he reviews our human scene - our worries, our struggles, our stumbling misapprehensions - with tenderness, and compassion.
For Holloway, the good Samaritan is one of Jesus' flagship stories, showing that laws and religious conventions are not there to be slavishly followed, but should be overridden when a compassionate heart dictates otherwise.
A subtle shade of melancholia combined with unsentimental intellectual objectivity, pervaded by a Glaswegian sense of irony, compounded by his love of poetry, topped off with a yearning for transcendence all come together in Holloway to strike a rich and unique tone. I like the modesty of his self-presentation. He guides the reader guilelessly into his world of open-minded religious contemplation, peppering the retelling of everyday scenes with some carefully nuanced psychological commentary. The whole thing is written with his poetic ear for a dapper turn of phrase.
The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty. Where you have certainty, you don't need faith. . . What do you do if you can no longer live with the doubt that is co-active with faith? You try to cure yourself. And the best cure for doubt is over-conviction.
Terry Eagleton puts it like this: ''God, if he does turn out to exist has absolutely no reason for doing so. He is his own reason for being.''
. . . a sense of presence at once given and denied . . .
[the drinkers in Edinburgh. . .] there was something almost holy in their dereliction, their lives stripped away to nothing
[in the soup kitchen Holloway's church opened, which turned into a homeless social hub . . .] out would come the grubby photographs, reminders of the now of then that they were powerless to bring back again.
It is as if America suffers form an auto-immune deficiency disorder that attacks the antibodies of scepticism and irony, which are there to protect us from the toxins of social hysteria and group rage.
this last quote refers to a traditional christian reading of the bible which says: God has spoken. God has now stopped speaking. i.e. there are no new annunciations. The bible contains the entirety of God's message for humanity. For years Holloway stood up for the ordination of woman priests and the right for gay couples to get married. He realised that calling upon developments in our moral consciousness since the bible was written will get nowhere with people who believe that all our moral directives are to be found exclusively in the bible.
Holloway writes eloquently, honestly, with clarity and ease, with intellect and insight yet without guile. He writes really well. Holloway may be of interest to those of a religious persuasion because he comes from their camp yet recognises the importance of doubting. He may be of interest to non religious types in that, alongside his scepticism and doubts, he looks at religion tenderly. He carefully considers the question and concludes, ''I cannot say whether God exists'' but this does not make him dismissive of the church. He values the consolation that religion may offer the faithful, or the poor in spirit. He recognises the role of religion as a comforting psychological blanket ''that protects us against the chilly winds of an empty universe'' Holloway's heartstrings chime along with Jesus': he reviews our human scene - our worries, our struggles, our stumbling misapprehensions - with tenderness, and compassion.
For Holloway, the good Samaritan is one of Jesus' flagship stories, showing that laws and religious conventions are not there to be slavishly followed, but should be overridden when a compassionate heart dictates otherwise.
For some reason, Holloway begins his book by quoting from Paul's second letter to Timothy:
My first thought was: good for Demas, at least he loved something. But I suppose that, in Paul's theology, this present world is a byword for material things, perhaps pleasures of the senses (as opposed to aiming for the treasures of heaven). I say 'for some reason', but Holloway obviously identifies with Demas. Throughout his book he writes about feeling disappointed with himself, a feeling that he has let God down.
''Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world''
A subtle shade of melancholia combined with unsentimental intellectual objectivity, pervaded by a Glaswegian sense of irony, compounded by his love of poetry, topped off with a yearning for transcendence all come together in Holloway to strike a rich and unique tone. I like the modesty of his self-presentation. He guides the reader guilelessly into his world of open-minded religious contemplation, peppering the retelling of everyday scenes with some carefully nuanced psychological commentary. The whole thing is written with his poetic ear for a dapper turn of phrase.
The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty. Where you have certainty, you don't need faith. . . What do you do if you can no longer live with the doubt that is co-active with faith? You try to cure yourself. And the best cure for doubt is over-conviction.
Terry Eagleton puts it like this: ''God, if he does turn out to exist has absolutely no reason for doing so. He is his own reason for being.''
. . . a sense of presence at once given and denied . . .
It is not that the presence is sometimes experienced and sometimes withdrawn: it is both at the same time, like a piece of music that consoles and makes us grieve in equal measure.
In the hills i was experiencing latency, the sense of something hidden behind what is seen. . .
I was in a place that suggested elsewhere. I had not realised what a lovely word that was, elsewhere.
Yet there is also the mystery of latency, the sense of something just out of reach, something unseen that listens! From that invisible listener a colossal demand has exerted itself upon some men and women, who gave themselves utterly away to it. Jesus called it Father and offered himself to it without condition. Since his death on his behalf countless others have followed his example. Always a minority, they provoke discomfort, even among believers, because most people acquire only a mild version of faith and are made anxious by those who catch it badly.
Constancy is an endowment of the self that marks the good off from the rest of fitful, flitting humanity. I wanted to be good, but knew I wasn't. [. . .] Since heroically good people are rare, it is hardly surprising that they provoke envy in the rest of us. Envy has been described as 'sorry at another's good', which is why it is the saddest sin in the book. Because it is such a mean affair, we rarely admit to it. We may confess other, more positive sins with relish, but we are rarely prepared to admit that another's grace has made us sad. We find corrosive envy expressed in other spheres, such as the critic, perhaps an unsuccessful writer, who is caustic of a better writer who has won acclaim. But the saddest manifestation of this human fault has to be envy of the good for being good. It is really a sorrow for ourselves that life has dealt us a less attractive hand to play. Moral goodness is not unlike those other accidents of the genetic and social lottery, good looks. Rather than rejoicing that the good and the beautiful exist at all, it is all too human to fall into sadness because we ourselves have not been so endowed - understandable, but unattractive. Indeed, envy at the endowments of others has ugly physical manifestations: a tightening of the features, as the face constricts into a sneer; behind the eyes a lurking sorrow and from the mouth an ugly contempt. I remember a friend responding to another's justified reputation for goodness, 'And I suppose he shits custard'.
Tragic as it may appear, even unfair, there are good people, not so good people, and bad people. And the big discovery we make in life is the person we have been revealed to be. We don't have that knowledge when we start out. We imagine there's a list of characteristics we can acquire if we fancy them, whereas the main lines of our personality were cast before we knew it. This does not mean that we have no control over our decisions and choices. It does mean that we will have little control over them till we acknowledge who we are and accept the reality of the hand we have been dealt to play.
My wrestling with my own compulsions, as well as my experience of the tragedies of others did not demonstrate any discernible improvement in the human condition as a result of the death of Jesus - allegedly decreed by God for our salvation.
Constancy is an endowment of the self that marks the good off from the rest of fitful, flitting humanity. I wanted to be good, but knew I wasn't. [. . .] Since heroically good people are rare, it is hardly surprising that they provoke envy in the rest of us. Envy has been described as 'sorry at another's good', which is why it is the saddest sin in the book. Because it is such a mean affair, we rarely admit to it. We may confess other, more positive sins with relish, but we are rarely prepared to admit that another's grace has made us sad. We find corrosive envy expressed in other spheres, such as the critic, perhaps an unsuccessful writer, who is caustic of a better writer who has won acclaim. But the saddest manifestation of this human fault has to be envy of the good for being good. It is really a sorrow for ourselves that life has dealt us a less attractive hand to play. Moral goodness is not unlike those other accidents of the genetic and social lottery, good looks. Rather than rejoicing that the good and the beautiful exist at all, it is all too human to fall into sadness because we ourselves have not been so endowed - understandable, but unattractive. Indeed, envy at the endowments of others has ugly physical manifestations: a tightening of the features, as the face constricts into a sneer; behind the eyes a lurking sorrow and from the mouth an ugly contempt. I remember a friend responding to another's justified reputation for goodness, 'And I suppose he shits custard'.
Tragic as it may appear, even unfair, there are good people, not so good people, and bad people. And the big discovery we make in life is the person we have been revealed to be. We don't have that knowledge when we start out. We imagine there's a list of characteristics we can acquire if we fancy them, whereas the main lines of our personality were cast before we knew it. This does not mean that we have no control over our decisions and choices. It does mean that we will have little control over them till we acknowledge who we are and accept the reality of the hand we have been dealt to play.
My wrestling with my own compulsions, as well as my experience of the tragedies of others did not demonstrate any discernible improvement in the human condition as a result of the death of Jesus - allegedly decreed by God for our salvation.
I feared and longed for [in the words of T.S. Eliot] 'the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted.'
Paul Tillich understood inner duality and the anguish of longing for a state of being he was incapable of achieving.
On my last evening I made my confession to him in the convent chapel. As I expected, he was gentle. He knew whereof I was made, remembered I was but dust. And as Father Stanton used to say to the poor of 19th century London, 'You can't always expect dust to be up to the mark.'
[the drinkers in Edinburgh. . .] there was something almost holy in their dereliction, their lives stripped away to nothing
[in the soup kitchen Holloway's church opened, which turned into a homeless social hub . . .] out would come the grubby photographs, reminders of the now of then that they were powerless to bring back again.
''sink without another care to that dread level of life itself'' . . . MacDiarmid went on to describe it as the capacity for 'mere being', and he thought it was more common in women than in men. It is the ability to wait behind someone when the waiting is all that can be done.
the power of the church in Boston lay in withholding nothing, whereas the power of St Paul's in Edinburgh lay in withholding so much. [my paraphrase, my emboldening]
Churches that stay open enclose themselves to the sorrows of humanity.
Churches do not speak; they listen. They understand helplessness and the weariness of failure, and have for centuries absorbed them into the mercy of their silence.
Apart from lurking round cathedrals, what do bishops do? [ . . . ] even the ability to act the fool can be useful. I learned that from Desmond Tutu, who can't leave a church after the service without dancing down the aisle, especially if there's a good lively hymn to do it to. It wasn't everywhere I got away with that, but there were one or two places in the diocese that liked the service to rock a bit, and I was always game for a bit of jiving down the nave.
They argued and challenged with that assertive democratic ease that is the cultural hallmark of America
It is as if America suffers form an auto-immune deficiency disorder that attacks the antibodies of scepticism and irony, which are there to protect us from the toxins of social hysteria and group rage.
[in Ireland] I found that [ . . . ] chaos and helplessness are never far away from anyone, that they just take you as a strong wind takes a tree, and that their victims are to be commiserated with rather than scorned [as in the U.S.]
. . . not much of that relaxed Hibernian tolerance in the US, where you either swim or sink.
I was already clear that there was no point in negotiating with fundamentalists. By definition, they do not negotiate. You had to accept them as an inevitable part of the dramatis personae of the human comedy.
Anger at new annunciations is the mark of the invincibly conservative mind; it is futile because we can no more stop history than we can hold back the sea.
this last quote refers to a traditional christian reading of the bible which says: God has spoken. God has now stopped speaking. i.e. there are no new annunciations. The bible contains the entirety of God's message for humanity. For years Holloway stood up for the ordination of woman priests and the right for gay couples to get married. He realised that calling upon developments in our moral consciousness since the bible was written will get nowhere with people who believe that all our moral directives are to be found exclusively in the bible.
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