Winter Reading

Haddon  Turner

You Are Limited

If there is an overarching theme to nearly everything I’ve thought and written about in the past ten years, it is this: I’ve received a clear, unavoidable message that I Am Not In Control (and that’s a good thing)* How do I then understand reality and live a good life in this paradigm? Haddon Turner is also thinking about these questions. His essay feels especially relevant in the first cold snap of winter: the first time the snow and ice has stayed on the ground. Winter driving alone makes me very aware of my limitations and those of the people around me. (I approve of AI tools to make driving safer. For me at least, driving a car is a unnatural activity and it makes complete sense that I need to supplement my attention and cognition to do it safely.)

Quote:

“…..The irrevocable limitations of the created order will always be something we come up against — things which cause us to stop and will confound the best of our limitless plans. As long as there is daytime in which we can work, the limitations of the darkness of night will not be far behind. The seasons will always influence (for good or for ill) our labour and health, and the uncontrollable weather will waylay our best plans. And most profoundly, the earth’s spatial, energetic and resource limitations will constrain the heights our economic growth is able to reach. We live on a limited earth. Only a fool forgets this.”

Alex Kaschuta

Cope Springs Eternal

Every time I read a perceptive essay about the illusions and delusions of the internet, I think, This is ironic. Would I be better off not spending time on the internet instead of reading criticisms of it? To some degree, the answer is Yes. But if you are going to use any part of the internet for information or entertainment or connection or commerce, and I assume most people are, including myself, this sort of critique is helpful.

Quote:

“Cope is not about the content, but about the psychological function of consuming it. Both the content that offers options for what you might do, such as interior design, fitness, health, and financial planning, and the content that provides reasons for why you are not doing these things, such as conspiracies, social critique, and, let’s be honest, politics, can serve the function of cope. You might do one of the 176 useful things you’ve scrolled through today, or, even better, you might collect a few more for use in an indeterminate future. You could start looking around for little ways to improve your existence, but when the world is on fire and “improvement” itself is a heteropatriarchal concept or a plot by our gynocentric hypergamous overlords, it seems best to sit tight.”

Heather Heying

Interconnection

An anecdote that is a sort of bookend to my previous blog about politicizing every experience, every relationship, every communication and why that might be not a good idea.

Quote:

“…..My friend feels free to share her anguish with me, because, like so many of our friends and family members, she cannot conceive that I might feel the exact opposite. And that’s a large part of how we got here: Hubris.

We’re so right, many of them have been saying for years now, and we have God on our side. How could any sane person see anything differently than how we see it? And if you do think differently, well, you're just plain wrong, and you’re probably an “ist,” - a racist, a sexist, a misogynist, and especially, our favorite word, a fascist.”

Haddon Turner (again!)

Where You Are Is Where You Are

The quote above mentioned hubris, and Haddon Turner tackles hubris head on here, discussing what should be the main focus of our attention: the local, national, or global? When I look back at my life, I think I have always wanted, consciously or sub consciously, to live my life immersed in local community. But it took a lot of exploring, including time living in places far from my birthplace, to be able to begin to understand how to do that. It wasn’t something I was taught. I would venture this is true of many people born in the last 40-50 years. We learned, directly or indirectly, that we create our identities through consumption, not through participation in local community. 

I also continue to come to terms with the fact that my forebears were fleeing fractured communities (many layers of dislocation) and they did not, most likely could not, (not having experienced it themselves) pass on to me the kind of continuous tradition and coherent identity I have always wanted at some level. I agree with Turner that the local is the correct place to  aim one’s focus most of the time: but myself personally, and undoubtedly many other millions of people, are in their current home because of global forces beyond their control. So understanding who you are now may require also learning a bit about the global. 

Quote:

“You are not responsible for the whole world — far from it. But you are responsible for the local places in front of you: the local people who you relate to, the unique buildings, art, and beauty that you enjoy every day, and the local environments and habitats that surround the place you dwell. Where you are is where you are — and what you are responsible for. This is a burden heavy enough for us. This is a burden that matches our limitations. This is a burden that we can faithfully discharge. And this is a burden that will present us with a lifetime of opportunities for doing good.”

And the last word goes to Paul Kingsnorth: 

The Moses Option

Quote:

I used to believe in Big Movements and Big Ideas. I wrote whole books about them. Not any more. For a long time, I have believed something else instead: that if there is any world-saving to be done - if this notion is not in fact just hubristic and stupid in itself - then it is only going to come from the small, the local and, above all, the spiritual. And if there is no world-saving to be done - well, then our work remains exactly the same.

….And I might as well get on with it.

Quotations from Vacation

"What if we saw attention in the same way we see air or water: As a valuable resource that we hold in common?"

Matthew B. Crawford, quoted by Ruth Gaskovski in You Are Who You Meet: A Geography of Common Ground (July 16th)

"Walking now amidst silence and spaciousness, I became absorbed in the landscape and was consciously grateful that I lived in a country where undisturbed engagement with the natural world is possible. It is something I have never taken for granted."

Dougie Strang, The Bone Cave, page 75.

"How would it be to live a balanced life, filled with meaning and ceremony, in a place where you were from and where your culture's stories told you that you had always been from - and then to be severed from that?"

Dougie Strang, The Bone Cave, page 39

"If, in response to whatever image the world throws at us, we look at our hearts, we can see instantly if peace dwells there, or something else: anger, rage, righteousness, distraction, even joy. If it is not peace, then something, or someone, is leading us astray."

Paul Kingsnorth, All the World is Myth (July 15th 2024)

"A'Mhoine is deemed ideal for a spaceport because of its "emptiness" and lack of light pollution. Lying in my tent in the dark, I thought about the difference between "empty" and "absent," about the loss of settlements and homes that the Moine Path once linked, and about how loss is carried forward, is inter-generational, like a weight on the cultural consciousness, pressing down whether acknowledged or not." 

Dougie Strang, The Bone Cave, page 108

"In space, a black hole has an "event horizon," which is the point at which nothing, not even light, can escape the pull of gravity. There are similar horizons in ordinary life, edgelands of new experience that can pull us out of our habitual orbits with irresistible gravity, and plunge us into areas that we never knew existed."

Peco Gaskovski, The Event Horizon: Lessons from Anatomy and Hiking Shoes (July 20th 2024)

"There's a notion that stories are eternally present in the landscape, that Diarmid is always hunting the boar on the hill, that a roe deer fawn is always slipping into the birch wood and finding Hamish Henderson asleep there."

Dougie Strang, The Bone Cave, page 118

"We go to the woods because we must. No cathedrals without towering trunks, no books without trees, no crops without clouds, which are the outbreath of forests. We go to the green to remember what community really is, how interdependence underpins all life, to see through the myth of the lone protagonist once and for all."

Caroline Ross, A Walk that Never Ends (July 22nd 2024)

"My heart is like a paved street, covered by asphalt-shaped wounds and such. But the potholes that appear allow the earth of my soul to breathe and flowers to spring forth, ever-renewing."

Fr. Stephen, What to Do When God is Everywhere (July 29th 2024)

Flashback to 2016

I was scrolling through some unpublished posts on my other blog, and I came across this one from October 15, 2016.  I titled it: "The things I have to say that don't fit anywhere."

At the time, torthúil journey had a small but established and homogenous readership. Just how homogenous, I started to realize after the 2016 American election, when I saw my small community all express essentially identical political and cultural views. It wasn't long before this started to bother me, not so much the views themselves, but the fact there were no dissenting or different voices. Furthermore, I didn't even see difference or dissent valued in the abstract. Naturally, I didn't share these raw thoughts on that blog. They seemed almost scandalous then. This was before I discovered Jordan Peterson and the movement some call the "meaning crisis," before I started learning about Christianity, including Jonathan Pageau and Fr. Stephen Freeman and others, before Covid, before I (mostly) quit social media. Since I wrote these words I have accepted these observations about myself, have thought about them and addressed them, have in some ways moved past them. But I thought they would be interesting to record and share, especially in the context of the post about books. I think my thoughts here go some way toward explaining why I am reading and learning about the things that I am.

They also mark a moment in time, and one that I am no longer self-conscious or embarrassed about. These things I had to say do fit: they are an important part of my journey.

The things I have to say that don't fit anywhere (October 16th, 2016)

Surrounded by propaganda. People taking "sides." Most of those sides don't fit with my questions, my concerns, my beliefs. It all leaves me with a feeling of unreality.  What is most obvious to me is that I've lost interest in culture. This might sound like an esoteric problem. Reading novels and going to concerts and comedy clubs and plays is hardly essential to survival, right? I'm reasonably healthy; I have a job, a family, a house, some (rather neglected) friends. But my avoidance of culture is a huge break from how I lived most of my adult life. Concert halls were a home to me as much in a way as my physical home. I identified with certain artists and felt they spoke for me, gave my inner life voice and connected me to a larger community. No more. I feel like when I go to an event, the artist (and the audience) is going to start signalling, openly or covertly, about which side of the culture wars they are on. I respect people's freedom of opinion. But the constant signalling/side taking leaves me with the feeling that the event I'm going to is meaningless in and of itself. The artist and their work is irrelevant, or at least secondary, an (possibly) amusing distraction. What truly matters, what people truly care about, is which side the artist is on and which side their audience is on. That is where the solidarity comes from, not from the fact we have all come to this place because we value the cultural artifact on display. So I end up not going. For a couple of days I make up my mind to go to an event; I might even tell Mr. Turtle that we should make plans. A few weeks later, I realize I never bought tickets, the event is passed and I don't really care. It has happened again and again. It's not just that I have a toddler and an intense job and I'm busy. I know I won't find the belonging and catharsis I'm looking for, but I will find more pressure and more propaganda. There is no appeal.

And novels. Why is it I enjoy novels? I can take another person's perspective. I can choose to believe in the alternate reality they create. Really, reading novels is like allowing another human to rent space in my brain. They can live there for a while, interact with my feelings and ideas, and when it's time for them to leave, I have a sense of what I learned from the visit and if I want them back. I've always been very generous with renting out my mental space and I enjoy the "visits" a lot. There isn't a type of book I regularly read; if it has words on the page I'll read it. In university I didn't specialize in any kind of literature, though I developed an interest in medieval literature in the later years. I studied with professors who had a variety of critical and ideological perspectives, and I got along well with all of them.

Lately, I have no desire to read novels. At first I thought that this was just because I am more interested in current events and non fiction. That is true. But there is something else going on. I don't want to rent out my mental space anymore. I am less willing (unwilling) to let someone else come into my mind to play. Again, I think it has to do with being surrounded by propaganda. I fundamentally mistrust the stories and messages I get from the media, and from my peers, and from the supposed arbiters of culture in our society, because I see the dishonesty and manipulation. Logically, then, why would I assume that a writer is any different? Why would I assume their morals and motivations are superior to those I see every day? Because they are published? Because somebody wrote a good review? Because a friend told me they were good? Because they are popular? I trust none of those things. But I should still be able to give a book a try and make up my own mind, right? In theory yes. But in in practice, I feel it is not worth the time or effort. What are the odds I will learn something of value, versus the odds that I will be bombarded with more of the same? I don't recall consciously making this decision, but somewhere along the way I decided the odds were against novels being enjoyable or useful. What about escape? I don't want to escape. Or, I feel there is no escape. I might long for it, but I know that escape amounts to surrender and denial. I am surrounded by corruption on a fundamental level, and I have no time for anyone who is not actively engaging with and challenging it.

The book post

I have been reading more lately, but when I tried to think of what books I actually got through last year, I had difficulty remembering. So I thought it might help to list the books I have been or will be encountering in one place. Here goes:

Currently reading:

The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien (simultaneously listening to related episodes on the Amun Sul podcast)

The Language of Creation by Jonathan and Matthieu Pageau

Want to buy and read:

Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond our Shame by Fr. Stephen Freeman (READ)

Feminism Against Progress by Mary Harrington (you can read about some of Mary’s ideas here.) (READ)

This is Your Brain on Birth Control

 by Sarah Hill

The Sagas of the Icelanders  by Jane Smiley et al

On Fairy Stories by JRR Tolkien 

New Think 1 by Gregg Hurwitz

Competing with this wish list to some degree are blogs and Substacks, some of which I’m considering getting a paid subscription to. Then there are books I already own but haven’t fully read or benefitted from, mostly because they are challenging for some reason or other. I’m also on my second course from The Great Courses. So far I’ve been only buying the courses on sale, but they still cost as much as a hardcover book, at least.

Books I started and should finish some day, but don’t hold your breath: 

The Bible (no link needed, lol) I think I got to about Exodus? Update: I am now listening to the podcast 

The Whole Counsel of God where Fr. Stephen DeYoung reads through the Bible verse by verse and discusses, offering interpretation and background based on the Orthodox tradition and his own historical education.  I am finding this more engaging and meaningful than trying to slog through the Bible on my own. Plus I can listen while doing crochet or other repetitive work.

The Gulag Archepelago by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I read a grand total of four chapters of this book in 2018, and blogged about it here: http://torthuilreads.blogspot.com/  Maybe one day I'll be back. But it's such an awful book to read and right now, I don't even want to try again.

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth. I was reading this one last summer, and while I did appreciate it, it just wasn’t the right book to get me through some of the difficult stuff that was going on then.

Books I already own and want to read, but haven’t started:

The Unfinished Tales by JRR Tolkien (which was a birthday present along with The Silmarillion)

The Parasitic Mind by Gaad Saad (READ)

Prayers on the Lake by St. Nicholi Velimirovich

History and Presence by Robert Orsi (READ)

The last two were recommendations to me, for reasons that may become clearer when I actually start reading them. I have dipped into Prayers on the Lake and enjoyed the bits I read.

Some books don’t really lend themselves to a “feet up by the fire” reading approach. Something I’m challenging myself to do with The Language of Creation, and maybe with others, is to respond in a way that specifically isn’t writing. I’ve been doing a sort of visual journal for The Language of Creation, basically drawing or attempting to draw the images that come into my mind as I read it, or the particular passages that stand out. So far it's been a rewarding approach.

There you go, I may be back to add to this list or to say that I've actually finished a book!