Ah projects! I seem to have been caught in an enthusiasm for ordering books from the library. I need to read myself clear in order to get to less spontaneous projects. It has been a more than usually profitable bout of ordering from the library however, including Epstein, Scruton and still awaiting the chance to read Steinhardt. Reading Steinhardt is a minor project though; that ought to go quickly.
***
While in Duluth last week, with the aid of Green Mill’s coffee, I finished Scruton and Greene both. Greene’s Monsignor Quixote ended with a wan, melancholy bitterness which I knew not how to interpret. Was it directed at the priest? Was Greene’s intention to convey the sensation alone? Being curious I will have to read more Greene more carefully. I will write of Scruton; the question remains whether I will do him for the retreat or have another thing. This writing remains a minor project, mostly complete. It could turn into a greater one.
***
At Stillwater, not long ago, I purchased a well bound selection of Coleridge along with Barfield’s volume: What Coleridge Thought. Now there is a project of high interest. It is so exquisite that I think I will save it for one of my all-too-meager holidays, perhaps thanksgiving, if I can avoid being invited anywhere. It is, however, the sort of project I am likely to exchange for some fiction at the last minute. But it is the sort of project whose time will come eventually.
***
I have received rejection for everything I have sent out so far. If I have anything out still, I am not aware of it. I have not only received rejections for each thing, I have received multiple rejections for most of them. So I have been thinking a great deal about the work of re-writing. Being rejected is not always an indication of the quality. It has a lot to do with the markets and with taste. However, I think in my case the thing to do is to learn re-writing better. When I think of the sort of education I have had, the tastes I have cultivated, in short all the reasons why my prose should be inferior, then it stands to reason that re-writing is something I need to master. If Flannery O’Connor had to do it, then how much more must I. My thinking about the quality of my work has been indulgent, not sufficiently rigorous. I have an idea for a new approach I need to implement. It consists in the literal interpretation of the task: re-writing. Re-writing everything is going to constitute a very large project.
***
I have small projects I would like to implement as well. I wish I could spend more time at the MIA, especially on Thursdays. I wish I could spend more time at the Arboretum also on Thursdays. I wish I had more Thursdays. I cannot imagine what chaos my life would be if I had children to look after. When I think of it I am grateful that I have been spared these eight years, and I cannot help hoping I will be spared a few more. I am the sort of person whose need for the society of others is quickly satisfied. We had colleagues over from Ireland recently, and I took them around to see some of the sights. I did not enjoy myself quite as much I would have had I been all alone. I was glad to do it, but I noticed I was not free to let my mind follow the thoughts it would have liked to pursue. These are different enjoyments: the social ones and the better ones. For some people, all joys must be social.
***
Which reminds me I am about to enter into some social joys very soon. I am looking forward to it. The large group is very well; especially if we have been having a conversation for several years and understand each other. Through much pain we have achieved the society we call Gravitas. It has much to commend it, and I think all of us still with it are grateful for it. I am not an easy maker of friends—make of that statement what you would like. I would rather have a few good friends than an indiscriminate many. It is one of the reasons I doubt, the urging of certain women in my life notwithstanding, that I have the vocation of an elder. Modern prevailing shallow notions being what they are, my attitude is frowned upon by glib people. It is needless to say I have no confidence in their opinions. But I am looking forward to some greater friendship with the little chap from Iowa. Perhaps some social joys await us around the table.
***
This being alone is something worth considering more. Being alone is little prized, but mystics wanted to be alone. And there is the thought of alienation, of loneliness, and of being in the presence of a being completely other. This last is similar to the first two; it must be.
***
I have been listening to Tozer again on men who meet God. Remember Abraham? When God comes to cut the covenant with him a horror of great darkness comes upon him. The yawning and endless abyss of strange mystery which is God opened in some way before Abraham. He became consciously aware of God’s presence and felt a horror of great darkness. Alter has, ‘a great dark dread came falling upon him.’ Remember Jacob? Jacob met with God when he was all alone, with a stone for his pillow. When he knew that he was all alone with God he said: How dreadful is this place! Unsatisfied Jacob: the supplanter, the cheater, the swindler, the man driven to grasp what was not his and to strive and struggle all his life was reduced and frightened, sated and overwhelmed.
Jacob is a character of endless interest for me. He seems to have wanted without knowing what he wanted. All night long he wrestles with God . . . alone. When Laban met him, Jacob spoke of God as the Terror of Isaac. All three patriarchs experienced something aweful in the presence of God. And God explains who he is by saying to Moses: I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When we are alone we are less likely to avoid the Mysterium Tremendum. In that place our unexamined lives are open to scrutiny.
***
Which is why, of all my projects, I must persist in this one. The habit of writing is the way to flee from the unexamined life. Christians have to learn to scrutinize all events if they are to confess their sins. The habit of scrutiny is a discipline of the spiritual life. If language is the technology of thought, then writing must be the means to scrutinize thought.
