Waiting for Godot to Leave

Tolkien's amazing letter to his son Michael deserves a closer look.  Here it is again, with some commentary by me in boldface .   *** A man's dealings with women can be purely physical (they cannot really, of course: but I mean he can refuse to take other things into account, to the great damage of his soul (and body) and theirs); or 'friendly'; or he can be a 'lover' (engaging and blending all his affections and powers of mind and body in a complex emotion powerfully coloured and energized by 'sex').  Tolkien is setting up here three possibilities in relations between men and women:  1. A man can relate to a woman merely for the sake of physical pleasure (though really this can never happen, for we can never separate our bodies and our souls, and great harm of some sort comes to those men who try to do this; great harm also comes to the women involved) 2. A man can be "friends" with a woman (before old age, this is...

Another re-post.  This one is from this time last year.  Regular readers will note that there are themes I've been sounding and threads I've been following for a while now. _______________________________________________________________________________ If you read nothing else on this blog, read my piece Boredom and the Barbarian , especially the part where I quote Erich Fromm. Fromm's vision is of two sorts of modern man. The Bored - homo consumens - those who are eternally infantile, always wanting to be passively fed, to suck forever on the Great Teat; they are never satisfied; they are depressed and self-indulgent.  They neither understand nor appreciate culture or beauty, or even other people beyond the use they can put other people to.   The Interested - those who are inter-esse , whose being is within  and among people and things outside of themselves and their own egos. You might say that the first, the Slackers, are simply selfish,...

In a seminar once, someone asked C. G. Jung about the meaning of life.  "Isn't love the meaning of life?" he was asked. "No!" he replied emphatically.  "The meaning of life is life!" In other words, vitality, exuberance, existence, power.  Success!  (i.e., Moloch , Priapus ) Not sacrifice, compassion, caring, surrender.  Failure!  (i.e. the Cross) C. G. Jung Before my conversion, I read everything Carl Jung ever wrote.  Twenty or more volumes.  This one answer sums up the gigantic mistake that was behind his philosophy and that is behind everything that is ultimately anti-Christian.  There was much good in Jung - a rejection of Freud's atheistic materialism, a regard for the whole person, an appreciation for the spiritual realm, the courage to take religion seriously - but there was a poison, a poison that was particularly bad for me, and for anyone who was using Jung's false faith as a substitute for true Faith, as I was. And...

It has long been a teaching in the Catholic Faith, as well as something recognizable in natural philosophy, that there is only one Truth. There is not a truth for you and a truth for me; a truth for science and a truth for religion, a truth for Monday and a truth for Tuesday. But the Church now teaches, with the authority of the Magisterium , according to D. C. Schindler in a brilliant essay on Pope Benedict's papal encyclical Deus Caritas Est , that there is only one love - that eros (passionate and affective love) and agape (disinterested love of neighbor) are really two aspects of the same thing - or really, two faces of the same God. This cuts right to the heart of our troubled world today. Schindler notes: Allan Bloom describes the boredom, the self-protectiveness, the banality, the absence of a sense of mystery and adventure, and the general disenchantment, that characterize a “de-eroticized” world such as that of contemporary America. Now hold on a minute, I can hear y...