Don Juan and Hell

This week for one of my classes I read Man and Superman written by Bernard Shaw. Most of Act 3 is of Don Juan in hell and is Shaw's depiction of what heaven, hell, and earth is.
He describes hell in this way: "Written over the gate here are the words 'Leave every hope behind, ye who enter.' Only think what a relief that is! For what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell in short, is a place where you have nothing to do but to amuse yourself."
"Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from Heaven"
"Heaven is the home of the masters of reality." ". . . In Heaven...you live and work instead of playing and pretending. You face things as they really are; you escape nothing, but glamour; and your steadfastness and your peril and your glory. If the play still goes on here on earth, and all the world is a stage, Heaven is at least behind the scenes."
"Earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool's paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer. 'Make me a healthy animal.'

This is a very different way of looking at heaven , hell, and life on earth than Dante. Dante believes that the sin committed on earth will be judged accordingly in hell and that there is a hierarchy of sin. Shaw shows hell being a beautiful place maybe like Dante's Limbo. In shacks hell the hell bound have any pleasantry and do as they please. Heaven may be dull, but is reality. There is no play acting like on earth or in hell.

Slough of Despond

I was reading some material for another class today when I happened upon Pilgrim's Progress once again and it got me to thinking. I wrote about Pilgrim's progress in another blog, but I thought a little more about it and wanted to add some things.

I talked about the Slough of Despond and how Christian was not looking and fell into it. "Now I saw in my dream that, just as they had ended this talk, they drew near to a very miry slough that was in the midst of the plain; and they being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was "Despond." Here, therefore, they wallowed for a time, being grievously bedaubed with the dirt; and CHRISTIAN, because of the burden that was on his back, began to sink in the mire."

I thought about Augustine and he spent parts of his life in a slough of despond. He strove to gain what would not bring him life. "I panted for honors, for money, for marriage, and you were laughing at me. I found bitterness and difficulty in following these desires, and your and your graciousness to me was shown in the way you would not allow me to find anything sweet which was not you" (Book VI CH 6).

I believe I could make a case Dante too was in a slough of despond. He says, "Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in the dark wood. How shall I say what wood that was! I never saw so drear, so rank, so arduous a wilderness! It's very memory gives a shape to fear" (Canto I).

I too fell into the slough. I believed I could go to heaven on my own merit so I would try to act good enough to please God. I was a leagalist and a pharasee of sorts (a hypocrite). God pulled me out just as He did in all of the three cases above. Praise Him!

General to Specific

In class today we did an in class freewrite and this one I would like to put on my blog.
We started with:
Everyone says, ___________, but in my experience I have found __________.

Here is my freewrite.
Everyone in my circle of influence says, wives are to submit to their husbands, but I have found it is extremely difficult understanding exactly what "submitting" means. Am I to do everything my husband tells me? Can I ever make my own decisions?
Wives have a mind also and are still people even when they get married. Just because a women marries does not mean she no longer has an opinion or she can no longer make decisions.
My husband and I are trying to find the right balance in our relationship, which is no easy fete. I do believe and I want to submit to my husband, but I am still a person with thoughts and opinions. Just because I married does not make me a nonentity. My husband has the authority to make the final decisions, but should not have the right to make decisions for us without considering my thoughts and opinions about the subject.

What does this have to do with Montaigne?
In Montaigne's essays he goes form the general to the specific using a quotable quote more times often than not. Such things as: "It is not enough to toughen his soul; we must also toughen his muscles." From soul to muscles.
Another way this freewrite relates to Montaigne is that as I have said in my blog "of Repentance" Montaigne writes about himself, which is constantly changing. He says, "For likewise these are my humors and opinions; I offer them as what I believe, not what is to believed. I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me."
This is exactly what I did in my freewrite. I wrote myself, which may change at any moment so I ask no one else to believe what I wrote, but just to listen and understand me.

Repentance

In class we talked about Montaigne's essay "OF Repentance." In that Essay he says, "I do not teach, I tell," and "I rarely repent." We also descibed the trust of Montaigne's argument in "Apology For Raymon Sebond" in a sentence by a contemporary author. He said, "One must obtain forgiveness for every essay in theology." He was saying it is hypocritical to write about God because He is outside of all philosophy. Again as Professor Anderson put it "All language transgresses by talking asbout God because language can be misunderstood."

The class discussed how all of these were true of Montainge. He never repented because he is not specifically writing a thoelogical treatise, but an essay about humanity. He writes about himself so there is no need to repent.

I wanted to add to the discussion that Montaigne himself writes on page 9, "For likewise these are my humors and opinions; I offer them as what I believe, not what is to be believed. I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me." This is a pivotal point of the arguement. He is not writing about theology, but of who he is, which may change at any moment.

I believ ethis is the point Professor Anderson is making on page 23 of his book Teaching Is Believing. He says, I remeber the intellectual joy I felt when I realized that this is the faith of my tradition and that it makes sense, it answers to my experience. It's about my experience, and all experience - its says experience is more important than dogma, more important than systems. The whole point of theology, Louth says is to affirm their own inadequacy, to give way to experience..."
The conclusion on page 198 gives a practical example of this. "I identify myself believing, I don't urge others to believe. But simply by being who she is a teacher influences students, simply by standing in front of them for ten weeks being who she is, and since who I am is Catholic, it's certainly possible that students may be influenced by Catholicism."

We do not need to write a doctrinal treatise or even write to have others read our lives. People read us by the actions we commit and the words we say everyday. They are in essence reading us. We are not telling them be like me. Believe like me. We are simply being who we are. We do not need to repent for that.

Immutability of God

"Wherefore we must conclude that God alone is-not at all according to any measure of time, but according to an eternity immutable and immobile, not measured by time or subject to any decline; before whom there is nothing, nor will there be after, not is there anything more new or more recent; but one who really is-who by one single now fills the ; and there is nothing that really is but he alone-nor can we say 'He has been,' or 'He will be' - without beginning and without end.
Montaigne "Apology For Raymond Sebond" lines 788-799

Montaigne in this essay is talking about the mutabilty of man. Man can't understand things that change because they are changing and he is changing. He says in his essay "Of the Education of Children":
"For likewise these are my humors and opinions; I offer tham as what I believe, not what is to be believed. I aim here only revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me."
We as humans are contually changing. He says, "...Everything is either coming into being and not yet fully existent, or beinning to die before it is born...And yesturday dies into today, and today will die into tomorrow; and there is nothing that abides and is always the same."

Except for God. Because man is finnite and changing, has a beginning and an end, man can't understand God. The content is somewhat in my last blog. Montaigne believes God is uncomprehendable to man.

If God had no beginning and no end it would seem that he knows and understands everything because he is outside of time.

Black and White Truth

I am now reading selected essays by Montaigne. In his essay "It is Folly to Measure the Truth and False by Our Own Capacity" he says"
"...but reason has taught me that to condemn a thing thus, dogmatically, as false and impossible, is to assume the advantage of knowing the bounds and limits of God's will and of the power of our mother Nature; and that there is no more notable folly in the world than to reduce these things to the measure of our capacity and competence."

He is basically saying that no one can know for a fact what is true and what is false and to say so is ignorance.

In Chris Anderson's book Teaching is Believing Chris says:
"James Fowler approaches this paradox through a discussion of the stages of religious faith. People in the earlier stages tend to see faith in terms of black and white: I am right and you are wrong, I am in possession of truth and you are going to hell. But in the fifth stage, what Fowler calls "conjunctive faith," we are open to the possibilty of other interpretations and other religious traditions, realizing that we don't have all the answers and that there may be validity of other taditions. And yet 'this position implies no lack of commitment to one's own truth tradition. Nor does it mean a wishy washy neutrality.' Rather, 'conjunctive faith's radical openneess to the truth stems precisely from its confidence in the reality mediated by its own tradition and in the awareness that thatreality overspills its mediation,' The person at this stage trusts her own experience of truth, she believes in it, but she also assumes that other perspectives can 'augment and correct aspects of each other, in a mutual movement toward the real and the true.'"

To sum it all up as Montaigne has said, "Only fools are certain and assured."

Evil Will Not Conquer

One of the best truths that I find in Dante is that evil cannot harm Dante.
Virgil says to Dante:
"Do not be startled, for no power of his,
however he may lord it over the damned,
may hinder your descent through the abyss,"

Virgil is taking Dante through hell per request from God. It is God's will that Dante see hell. Whatever God wills will happen and nothing can stop His will. Satan cannot stop God's will or evil.
This reminds me of Job in the Bible. It is a story about a man who has everything in his life. He has wealth and power and reputation. He has many sons and daughters. Many servants and livestock. He is deemed righteous in God's eyes and he reverences God. Satan sees this and tells God that Job will deny God if he did not have so much. He asks God if he can take these things away from Job and see if still praises God and is righteous. God says yes as long as he does not die. Job loses everything he has except for his wife. He even loses his health and his children. The end of the story is that Job suffered because God willed Satan to act, but only because it was God's will. Satan has no power over man. Job never denied God and God came him abundantly more than he had before his suffering. In the end Satan loses.
Suffering on earth is a hard thing to face especially when it is starring you right in the face, like the tsunami that just happened. In the midst of this great suffering what will we do? Blame God, curse God, deny God . . . or will we believe that God has a plan even though it is hard to see?

Committing Sin on Earth

A thought on Dante's Inferno:

I was thinking about Dante's thought about the sins committed on earth having the reciprical punishment to fit the sin such as the shades in the seventh circle. They commited suicide on earth and in hell they are encased in trees and harpies eat their bark which makes them bleed and it is the only times they can speak. Their punishment fit their crime.

In Dante, man chooses to go to hell by the actions of sin committed on earth. My thought is what if all mankind knew what sin deserved what punishment in hell while they are on earth. Man could therefore choose where he wanted to go for all of eternity. He could choose to be frozen or to be in flames. He could choose to be eaten or to endlessly carry heavy weights.

On the other hand if mankind knew the sins they commited on earth would take them to hell would they choose to sin? Or choose to go to hell? Or would they choose to go to heaven? Or purgatory where they can learn the way to heaven?

Pilgrim's Progress

My mom used to read to me and my brother and sister when we were young. My favorite book she read was The Children's Pilgrim Progress taken from John Bunyan. It is written for children to understand. It is about a boy who hears the Gospel of Jesus and travels the path of life finally arriving in heaven. The path was hard at times, fileed with suffering, but there are also times of great joy and learning. At one point Christian falls into the Slough of Depond, runs into other travelers along the way that are sincere and others who want to take the easy route to heaven, they never make it.
Pilgrim's Progress is the autobiography of sorts of John Bunyan, but is actually the adventure of every Christian on the road to eternal life. This is much like Dante's Inferno, but different also. Dante's Inferno tells the stroy of hell whereas Pilgrim's progress tells of the story of the path to heaven. Dante shows that what we do on earth matters in the after life. Bunyan shows the specific spiritual of life as it pertains to heaven. But, in both books, these authors write allegorical autobiographies about their life.
I think that I can relate better to John Bunyan's allegory becuase it is in the here and now, whereas Dante is after death. I relate better at this moment with sloughs, and slight victories, and failures, but in the end I know that I will complete the course and pass over the river and into God's heavenly kingdom.

Autobiographical Themes

I am in a lower division fiction writing class and was reading my textbook, which I had been putting off and groaning about. I was reading and something hit me in correlation with autobiography or any writing in fact.

“An author no less than a reader or a critic can see an emerging pattern, and the author has both the possibility and the obligation of manipulating it. When you have to put something on the page, you have two possibilities, and only two: You may cut it or you are committed to it. Gail Godwin asks:

But what about the other truths you lost by telling it that way?
Ah, my friend, this is my question too. The choice is always a killing one. One option must die so that the other may live. I do little murders in my work room everyday.”

This quote reminds me of what we talked about in class last week. We were talking about Augustine and other autobiographies. Sometimes the authors change what really happened to tie one little thing to the big picture of the book. One example of this is Augustine’s gardens. He had many powerful moments in gardens throughout his life. Were they real or did he add the gardens to bring out the themes of his heart? Does it even really matter? No.