∞
Professors of Trout
In the course of writing Downstream (my book on brook trout) I did a lot of research about trout and fly-fishing. Thankfully, it turns out I'm not the only academic interested in brook trout and fly rods. Far from it!
Really, this shouldn't be too surprising. Fly-fishing requires us to look attentively, seeing past the surface of the water in order to discern what is happening deeper down. Far more than simply catching fish, fly-fishing is a practice of reading water as though it were a natural text.
Several authors, professors, and fellow-thinkers have been helping me to deepen my literacy in these streams of thought lately. Among them are Kurt Fausch, Douglas Thompson, and David Suchoff.
Fausch is one of the world's authorities on trout biology and ecology. I had the privilege of reading a draft of Fausch's forthcoming book, For The Love Of Rivers, (see the book trailer here) and I highly recommend it. It is a lovely marriage of science and lyrical writing. You'll learn a lot about the life of rivers, written by a remarkable writer who loves them deeply.
Thompson's book, The Quest For The Golden Trout is next on my to-read list, but I've already snuck some glimpses at it and I am eager to get to it. I'll post more about it when I'm done. Meanwhile, check out his webpage.
I discovered Suchoff recently when I saw one of his students fly-fishing for bonefish in Belize. I teach a January-term field ecology course for Augustana College in Guatemala and Belize. One morning I looked out over the intertidal flat and saw a young woman casting a heavy fly in turtle grass on South Water Caye. I ran into her later on shore and she told me about a terrific class Suchoff teaches at Colby College in Maine. He teaches them the literature of fly-fishing, arranges professional instruction, then takes his students fishing in California, and teaches them to write about it. You can find him on Twitter, too.
One of the joys of research is that it gives me the excuse to write to strangers who share my interests and ask them to teach me what they know. My acquaintance with two of these professors is quite new, but already I've learned from them. The third, Fausch, I've known for long enough that he reviewed a draft of my book and kindly pointed out a few errors before I made them permanent in print.
These are, as I've said, just a few of the university professors who study trout. Are you another? I'd love to hear from you if so.
Really, this shouldn't be too surprising. Fly-fishing requires us to look attentively, seeing past the surface of the water in order to discern what is happening deeper down. Far more than simply catching fish, fly-fishing is a practice of reading water as though it were a natural text.
Several authors, professors, and fellow-thinkers have been helping me to deepen my literacy in these streams of thought lately. Among them are Kurt Fausch, Douglas Thompson, and David Suchoff.
Fausch is one of the world's authorities on trout biology and ecology. I had the privilege of reading a draft of Fausch's forthcoming book, For The Love Of Rivers, (see the book trailer here) and I highly recommend it. It is a lovely marriage of science and lyrical writing. You'll learn a lot about the life of rivers, written by a remarkable writer who loves them deeply.
Thompson's book, The Quest For The Golden Trout is next on my to-read list, but I've already snuck some glimpses at it and I am eager to get to it. I'll post more about it when I'm done. Meanwhile, check out his webpage.
I discovered Suchoff recently when I saw one of his students fly-fishing for bonefish in Belize. I teach a January-term field ecology course for Augustana College in Guatemala and Belize. One morning I looked out over the intertidal flat and saw a young woman casting a heavy fly in turtle grass on South Water Caye. I ran into her later on shore and she told me about a terrific class Suchoff teaches at Colby College in Maine. He teaches them the literature of fly-fishing, arranges professional instruction, then takes his students fishing in California, and teaches them to write about it. You can find him on Twitter, too.
One of the joys of research is that it gives me the excuse to write to strangers who share my interests and ask them to teach me what they know. My acquaintance with two of these professors is quite new, but already I've learned from them. The third, Fausch, I've known for long enough that he reviewed a draft of my book and kindly pointed out a few errors before I made them permanent in print.
These are, as I've said, just a few of the university professors who study trout. Are you another? I'd love to hear from you if so.
∞
For the last two weeks my students and I have been in Petén, Guatemala, studying the ecology of the region. For half that time we stayed with local families. Our homestays were arranged by the Asociación Bio-Itzá, an indigenous Maya conservation organization that runs a Spanish school to support their work in preserving a section of the Maya Biosphere Reserve. The other half of the time we spent on the reserve and hiking the Ruta Chiclera, a forty-mile trek through the Zotz and Tikal reserves, vast areas of largely unbroken subtropical forest.
These are not always easy conditions. Many hard-working Guatemalans live in poverty that is hard to conceive in our country; it is hot and wet except for when it is cold and wet; biting insects are everywhere; disease and snakes and thorny vines like bayal are constant threats.
But it is also a beautiful place with astonishing biodiversity and remarkable people whose resilience and generosity always make me want to improve my own character. They welcome us into their homes and into their lives, and they are glad to see us come to appreciate the place they live.
I expect that my students will forget much of what I say in my lectures and much of what they read in books. But I doubt very much that they will forget the people they have met here. Guatemala has gone from being an abstraction to a concrete reality. When they meet kind people of good character who have walked across Mexico and made it into the USA only to be caught and deported, "illegal immigrants" now have a face, a home, a family at whose table my students have received a nourishing and welcoming meal.
Likewise, they will not likely forget the sound of howler monkeys at night or the experience of scrambling up Maya temples still covered in a thousand years of trees and soil. They won't forget the long walk in a deep green forest and the smells of tortillas and beans cooked over a wood fire.
It is expensive to bring students so far. One could object that the money could be better spent on viewing the forest online or donating it to rainforest conservation. I disagree. I'm not in the business of dispensing information; I'm in the business of transforming lives, and not much transforms like full-bodied experience. Before we leave for Guatemala my students read papers written by wildlife conservation researchers. In Guatemala they meet those researchers in person and get to hear their stories. They hear in their tone and see in their eyes what brought them to Guatemala and what keeps them here. In such times my students go from taking in data to rethinking their lives.
It is my hope - my exuberant, perhaps not wholly rational hope - that out of such lived experience of nature my students will become people who comfort orphans and widows in their distress, who receive the foreigner into their own homes, who marvel and the world's diversity and who, for the rest of their lives, work to preserve it.
Nature As A Classroom
These are not always easy conditions. Many hard-working Guatemalans live in poverty that is hard to conceive in our country; it is hot and wet except for when it is cold and wet; biting insects are everywhere; disease and snakes and thorny vines like bayal are constant threats.
But it is also a beautiful place with astonishing biodiversity and remarkable people whose resilience and generosity always make me want to improve my own character. They welcome us into their homes and into their lives, and they are glad to see us come to appreciate the place they live.
I expect that my students will forget much of what I say in my lectures and much of what they read in books. But I doubt very much that they will forget the people they have met here. Guatemala has gone from being an abstraction to a concrete reality. When they meet kind people of good character who have walked across Mexico and made it into the USA only to be caught and deported, "illegal immigrants" now have a face, a home, a family at whose table my students have received a nourishing and welcoming meal.
Likewise, they will not likely forget the sound of howler monkeys at night or the experience of scrambling up Maya temples still covered in a thousand years of trees and soil. They won't forget the long walk in a deep green forest and the smells of tortillas and beans cooked over a wood fire.
It is expensive to bring students so far. One could object that the money could be better spent on viewing the forest online or donating it to rainforest conservation. I disagree. I'm not in the business of dispensing information; I'm in the business of transforming lives, and not much transforms like full-bodied experience. Before we leave for Guatemala my students read papers written by wildlife conservation researchers. In Guatemala they meet those researchers in person and get to hear their stories. They hear in their tone and see in their eyes what brought them to Guatemala and what keeps them here. In such times my students go from taking in data to rethinking their lives.
It is my hope - my exuberant, perhaps not wholly rational hope - that out of such lived experience of nature my students will become people who comfort orphans and widows in their distress, who receive the foreigner into their own homes, who marvel and the world's diversity and who, for the rest of their lives, work to preserve it.
∞
I'm preparing to teach a course on ecology and nature writing this summer in Alaska. One of the keys to becoming a good writer is to read good writing, so I've been asking for book recommendations that might help me prepare for my course.
The focus of the course will be the char species of Alaska. These species, all members of the genus salvelinus, are commonly thought of as trout. Brook trout and lake trout are both char, as are Dolly Vardens and arctic char.
These are beautiful fish. I think many anglers love them simply because they are so beautiful to look at. When I pull one from the water I am immediately torn between wanting to hold this precious thing closely and the urge to release it immediately, before my coarse hands pollute its loveliness. The name "char" might come from Celtic roots, like the Gaelic cear, meaning "blood." They are more multi-hued than rainbow trout. The red on their sides and fins catches the eye and holds the gaze.
Over the years I spent researching and writing my own book on brook trout, I did a lot of reading. Some books call me back again and again, like Henry Bugbee's The Inward Morning and Steinbeck's Log From The Sea of Cortez. Neither one is chiefly about fly-fishing or about trout, but they're both written in a way that makes me re-think how I view the world. And they do both talk a good deal about fish, and fishing.
Of course there are the classics of fly-fishing, too. Still, as I've asked for suggestions, I've been surprised by how many books there are that I haven't read or haven't even heard of. Just how many books about fish and fishing do we need? Are there really so many stories to tell?
If the point of writing books about fish is to give techniques, or data, then we don't need many at all. But stories about fish and fishing are rarely about the taking of fish. More often they are about the states of mind that open up as we prepare to enter the water, or as we stand there in the river. Fishing is to such states of consciousness what kneeling is to prayer; the posture is perhaps not essential, but it is a bodily gesture that does something to prepare us to be open to a certain kind of experience. I won't belabor this point. Read my book if you really want me to go on about fishing and philosophy. For now, let me present some of my recommendations, plus the recommendations I've received:
On Nature
I teach environmental philosophy and ecology, so I begin with some orienting books.
Some Favorites
Classics
These have been recommended time and again. I'm not sure many people ever actually read the first two, though they become prized volumes in the libraries of anglers around the world.
Most Recommended
Fly-Tying
Places
One reason why there is so much writing about fishing is that fishers tend to be students of particular places. Yes, some people fish by indiscriminately approaching water and drowning hooked worms therein, but experience tends to cure most young anglers of that method. Fishing puts us into contact with what we cannot see (or cannot see well) under the water; experienced anglers learn to read the signs above the water and the place itself. We return to the same place as we return to beloved passages in books or to favorite songs, to know them better through repetition.
Other Frequent Recommendations
If I talk to a group of anglers about books for long enough, one or more of these will eventually be mentioned. Stylistically and in terms of content, they're quite different, but they all seem to speak to important moods and thoughts of anglers.
Other Recommendations
Most of these I don't know at all, so I'm not recommending them, just mentioning them. Of course, if you have more recommendations (or corrections), please feel free to add them to the comments section, below.
I'll conclude with a few other recommendations. First, when I've asked for recommendations about texts, a handful of people tell me "Tenkara." This isn't a text, but a kind of rod, and a method of fly-fishing. And yet people continue to say that word to me when I ask for texts. Why is that? I have a few guesses: there isn't a lot written about tenkara, but people who practice it have come to love its simplicity and grace. I'm not a tenkara fisher (yet) but I'm eager to learn. I have a feeling that tenkara, like so many spiritual practices or like some martial arts, is something that makes people feel they way great writing makes us feel: in it we transcend the immediacy of our environment.
Along those lines, one commenter on Facebook said this to me about my students: "Give them [a] fly rod and a stream and let them write [their] own story." There is wisdom here. It is one thing to read about waters, and quite another to enter the waters on one's own feet. Even so, I think it's important and wise to learn from those who've gone before us, too.
If you're interested in seeing some of my other book recommendations, have a look at this, this, and this.
Recommended Reading: Fly-Fishing and Trout
 |
The focus of the course will be the char species of Alaska. These species, all members of the genus salvelinus, are commonly thought of as trout. Brook trout and lake trout are both char, as are Dolly Vardens and arctic char.
These are beautiful fish. I think many anglers love them simply because they are so beautiful to look at. When I pull one from the water I am immediately torn between wanting to hold this precious thing closely and the urge to release it immediately, before my coarse hands pollute its loveliness. The name "char" might come from Celtic roots, like the Gaelic cear, meaning "blood." They are more multi-hued than rainbow trout. The red on their sides and fins catches the eye and holds the gaze.
Over the years I spent researching and writing my own book on brook trout, I did a lot of reading. Some books call me back again and again, like Henry Bugbee's The Inward Morning and Steinbeck's Log From The Sea of Cortez. Neither one is chiefly about fly-fishing or about trout, but they're both written in a way that makes me re-think how I view the world. And they do both talk a good deal about fish, and fishing.
 |
| Mayfly on my reel. Summer 2014, Maine. |
If the point of writing books about fish is to give techniques, or data, then we don't need many at all. But stories about fish and fishing are rarely about the taking of fish. More often they are about the states of mind that open up as we prepare to enter the water, or as we stand there in the river. Fishing is to such states of consciousness what kneeling is to prayer; the posture is perhaps not essential, but it is a bodily gesture that does something to prepare us to be open to a certain kind of experience. I won't belabor this point. Read my book if you really want me to go on about fishing and philosophy. For now, let me present some of my recommendations, plus the recommendations I've received:
On Nature
I teach environmental philosophy and ecology, so I begin with some orienting books.
- Henry Bugbee, The Inward Morning. Don't try to read this book quickly, and if you're not prepared to do the hard work of thinking, move on and read something else. But if you're willing to read slowly and thoughtfully, this book can change your life. Bugbee was a philosophy professor and an angler.
- Henry David Thoreau, A Week On The Concord and Merrimack Rivers; The Maine Woods. Thoreau was an occasional angler, and an observer of anglers.
- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and the title essay in The River Of The Mother Of God, about unknown places. Leopold only writes a little about fish and fishing, but those occasional sentences about angling tend to be shot through with insight.
- John Muir, Nature Writings.
- John Steinbeck, Log From The Sea of Cortez. An apology for curiosity, in narrative form. One of my favorite books.
- Paul Errington, The Red Gods Call. Not brilliant writing, but a fascinating set of memoirs from a professor of biology who put himself through college as a trapper, and about how the Big Sioux River in South Dakota was his first real schoolroom. He talks a good deal about hunting and fishing and what he learned through encounters with animals.
- Kathleen Dean Moore, The Pine Island Paradox. Moore is an environmental philosopher who writes winsomely ans insightfully about what nature has meant to her family.
Some Favorites
- Nick Lyons. Nick very kindly wrote the foreword to my book, and when I first got in touch with him about this I discovered he and I had lived only a few miles from each other in the Catskill Mountains for years. Sadly, by the time I discovered this I'd already moved away, and he was packing up to move to a new home, too. We both love the miles of small trout streams of those mountains, though. Nick has been a prolific writer and he has promoted a lot of great writing through his lifelong work as a publisher as well. Nick has a new book, Fishing Stories, just published in 2014.
- Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
- Ernest Hemingway, especially "Big Two-Hearted River" and the other Nick Adams stories
- James Prosek. Several books, including Trout: An Illustrated History; Early Love And Brook Trout; and Joe And Me: An Education In Fishing And Friendship
- Ted Leeson, The Habit Of Rivers
- Kurt Fausch’s new book, For The Love Of Rivers: A Scientist’s Journey. Brilliant writing by one of the world's leading trout biologists.
- Craig Nova, Brook Trout and the Writing Life. I also like his novels, and will recommend The Constant Heart.
- Christopher Camuto, who writes frequently for Trout Unlimited's journal, Trout.
- Ian Frazier, The Fish's Eye.
- Douglas Thompson, The Quest For The Golden Trout
Classics
These have been recommended time and again. I'm not sure many people ever actually read the first two, though they become prized volumes in the libraries of anglers around the world.
- Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
- Dame Juliana Berners, The Boke Of St Albans, later editions of which contain A Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle, possibly authored by someone else.
- Nick Karas, Brook Trout (a nice collection of short works about brook trout, including some of my favorite stories)
- Lee Wulff
- Lefty Kreh
Most Recommended
- John Gierach. Gierach has written a lot about angling, so it's not surprising that so many people mention him to me. Many of those mentions are positive, but some anglers mention his name with disgust. I haven't read much of his work, so I can't yet say why.
- David James Duncan, The River Why. This is a fun novel set in the Northwest, but it reminds me of the New Haven River in Vermont: there are some long dry stretches one has to plod through, but repeatedly one comes to depths that make the flatter, shallower parts worthwhile.
- Thomas McGuane, The Longest Silence.
- Bill McMillan
- Roderick Haig-Brown
Fly-Tying
- Mike Valla, The Founding Flies
- Michael Patrick O’Farrell, A Passion For Trout: The Flies And The Methods
Places
One reason why there is so much writing about fishing is that fishers tend to be students of particular places. Yes, some people fish by indiscriminately approaching water and drowning hooked worms therein, but experience tends to cure most young anglers of that method. Fishing puts us into contact with what we cannot see (or cannot see well) under the water; experienced anglers learn to read the signs above the water and the place itself. We return to the same place as we return to beloved passages in books or to favorite songs, to know them better through repetition.
- Peter Reilly, Lakes and Rivers of Ireland
- Derek Grzelewski, The Trout Diaries: A Year of Fly-fishing In New Zealand and The Trout Bohemia: Fly-Fishing Travels In New Zealand
- Eeva-Kaarina Aronen, Die Lachsfischerin. A novel set in Finland, about fly-fishing and fly-tying in the 18th century. The title translates as “The Salmon Fisherwoman”
- Ian Colin James, Fumbling With A Fly Rod (Scotland)
- Zane Grey, Tales of the Angler’s Eldorado: New Zealand
- Leslie Leyland Fields, Surviving the Island of Grace; and Hooked! Fields and her family are commercial fishers in Alaska, and her writing comes recommended to me from a number of sources.
Other Frequent Recommendations
If I talk to a group of anglers about books for long enough, one or more of these will eventually be mentioned. Stylistically and in terms of content, they're quite different, but they all seem to speak to important moods and thoughts of anglers.
- Sheridan Anderson, The Curtis Creek Manifesto
- Harry Middleton, The Earth Is Enough: Growing Up In A World Of Fly-fishing, Trout, And Old Men (Memoir)
- Paul Schullery, Royal Coachman: The Lore And Legends of Fly-fishing
- Gordon MacQuarrie
- Patrick McManus
Other Recommendations
Most of these I don't know at all, so I'm not recommending them, just mentioning them. Of course, if you have more recommendations (or corrections), please feel free to add them to the comments section, below.
- Vince Marinaro, The Game of Nods
- Rich Tosches, Zipping My Fly
- Robert Lee, Guiding Elliott
- Peter Heller, The Dog Stars (novel)
- Paul Quinnett, Pavlov’s Trout
- Dana S. Lamb Where The Pools Are Bright And Deep; Bright Salmon and Brown Trout
- John Shewey, Mastering The Spring Creeks
- Ernest Schweibert, Death of a Riverkeeper; A River For Christmas
- Richard Louv, Fly-fishing for Sharks: An Angler’s Journey Across America
- John Voelker’s short story “Murder”
- Dave Ames, A Good Life Wasted, Or 20 Years As A Fishing Guide
- Craig Childs, The Animal Dialogues, especially the chapter “Rainbow Trout”
- Randy Nelson, Poachers, Polluters, and Politics: A Fishery Officer’s Career
- Anders Halverson, An Entirely Synthetic Fish: How Rainbow Trout Beguiled America And Overran The World
- Thomas McGuane, A Life In Fishing
- Bob White
- Robert Ruark
- Tom Meade
- Hank Patterson
I'll conclude with a few other recommendations. First, when I've asked for recommendations about texts, a handful of people tell me "Tenkara." This isn't a text, but a kind of rod, and a method of fly-fishing. And yet people continue to say that word to me when I ask for texts. Why is that? I have a few guesses: there isn't a lot written about tenkara, but people who practice it have come to love its simplicity and grace. I'm not a tenkara fisher (yet) but I'm eager to learn. I have a feeling that tenkara, like so many spiritual practices or like some martial arts, is something that makes people feel they way great writing makes us feel: in it we transcend the immediacy of our environment.
Along those lines, one commenter on Facebook said this to me about my students: "Give them [a] fly rod and a stream and let them write [their] own story." There is wisdom here. It is one thing to read about waters, and quite another to enter the waters on one's own feet. Even so, I think it's important and wise to learn from those who've gone before us, too.
*****
If you're interested in seeing some of my other book recommendations, have a look at this, this, and this.
∞
A Visible Sign
This morning my wife, my kids, and I sat around the Christmas tree and opened the gifts we gave one another. Just as we were finishing, my wife's phone rang.
One of her parishioners was coming down from a bad high in a bad way. The police were on the scene, and the whole family was understandably distressed.
I don't know many details, because as a priest she has to keep confidences. All I know is that her parishioners were asking for her to come and help before things got out of hand.
Which raises the question, "How can a minister possibly help?" She hasn't got a badge or a gun, so she can't arrest people and lock them up; she doesn't have a medical license, so she can't prescribe medications; she isn't a judge who can order someone to be placed in protective custody.
All she can do is be present with those who are suffering. She can listen to those to whom no one else will listen. She can pray with them, helping to connect those who are suffering with words to express that suffering. She can deliver the sacrament, a visible and outward sign of indelible connection to a bigger community, reminding the lonely that they are not alone.
She quickly got out of her pajamas, put on a black shirt and her clerical collar, and picked up her Book of Common Prayer. I kissed her before she went out the door, aware that she was going to a home where there was a troubled family, a belligerent drug user, and eight armed men charged with upholding the law. Oh, boy. "Do you want some company?" I asked, knowing there wasn't much I could offer besides that. She said she'd be fine.
As she left, and the kids continued to examine their gifts, I sat and silently prayed (reluctantly, as always), joining her in her work in that small way.
I admit that I do not like church. I can think of far pleasanter ways to spend my Sunday morning than leaving my house to stand, and sit, and kneel with a hundred relative strangers.
But this is one thing I love about churches: this deeply democratic commitment to including everyone in the community. No one is to be left out. No one gets more bread or more wine at the altar. Everyone who needs solace, or penance, or forgiveness, or company, may have it.
The Book Of The Acts Of The Apostles, the fifth book of the Greek testament, tells the story of the early church as a place where people who needed food or money or other kinds of sustenance could come and find them. Early on in that book we even see the story of how the church made a special office for people whose job it would be to oversee the equitable distribution of food to the poor.
I think highly of my own profession of teaching, because I think it serves a high social good. But I teach in a small, selective liberal arts college. Most of the people I serve have their lives pretty much together. In general, they can pay their bills, they don't have huge drug or legal issues, they have supportive communities, they can think and write well. Yes, most of them struggle with money and other things, but they keep their heads above water, and their futures are bright.
My wife, on the other hand, has a much broader "clientele." She serves the congregations at our cathedral and several other parishes. Her congregants range from the powerful and wealthy to the poorest of the poor. Here in South Dakota more than half our diocese are Native Americans, and many more are refugees from conflicts in east Africa. Ethnically, racially, economically, liturgically, and politically, this is a diverse group.
And again, it is a group where everyone is - or at least ought to be - welcome.
The church has always failed to live up to its ideals. I don't dispute that. Show me an institution that has good ideals and that always lives up to them, and I'll readily tip my hat to it. What I love in the church is that it has these ideals and it has daily, weekly, and annual rituals by which we remind ourselves what those ideals are. We screw them up, we distort and bastardize them, we even sell them to high bidders from time to time when we lose our heads and our hearts. But then we remind ourselves that we should not. And we have institutions and rituals of returning to the path we've departed from.
We will probably always get it wrong. I'm okay with that, as long as we keep turning back towards what is right, as long as we maintain these traditions and rituals of self-examination and self-correction. And as long as we cherish this ideal of welcoming everyone, absolutely everyone. I don't mean just saying we welcome everyone, but I mean doing it.
Again, I work at a small college. Colleges are places where we all talk a good game about being welcoming, and for the most part, we manage to practice what we preach, given the communities we work in. But there's something really remarkable about seeing that ideal at work in a community where there are no grades and no graduation, where the congregation is not just 18-22 year-olds with high entrance exam scores, and where no one gets kicked out for failure to live up to the ideals of the place.
Last night we celebrated Christmas with hymns in two languages.
My wife came home a hour or so after she left this morning. I don't worry so much about her sudden comings and goings as I once did. She gets calls late at night from broken-hearted families watching their beloved die in our hospitals. Will she come and pray with them? Will she come hold their hands for a little while, and be the vicarious presence of the whole church as they suffer? Will she anoint the sick as a reminder of our shared hope for well-being for all people? Will she come to the jail to talk with the kid who has just been arrested, or to sit with his frightened parents? Will she come to the nursing home where they're wondering if this is the last holiday a grandparent will see?
Yes, she will. This is her calling, the work she has been ordained to do. It is the work of love, and I love her for it.
As she walked in the door, I was going to greet her when her phone rang again. I recognized from her conversation that it is a parishioner with memory problems who calls her almost every day to ask the same questions. Sometimes it seems he has been drinking; most of the time it seems he is lonely and afraid. I knew my greeting could wait, and as she patiently listened to her parishioner, I joined her in silent prayer, thanking God for the kindness she shows and represents, a visible sign of the ideal of our community. She cheerfully wished him a Merry Christmas. I think she was glad he knew what day it was.
I don't know how she does it, but she makes me want to keep trying.
One of her parishioners was coming down from a bad high in a bad way. The police were on the scene, and the whole family was understandably distressed.
I don't know many details, because as a priest she has to keep confidences. All I know is that her parishioners were asking for her to come and help before things got out of hand.Which raises the question, "How can a minister possibly help?" She hasn't got a badge or a gun, so she can't arrest people and lock them up; she doesn't have a medical license, so she can't prescribe medications; she isn't a judge who can order someone to be placed in protective custody.
All she can do is be present with those who are suffering. She can listen to those to whom no one else will listen. She can pray with them, helping to connect those who are suffering with words to express that suffering. She can deliver the sacrament, a visible and outward sign of indelible connection to a bigger community, reminding the lonely that they are not alone.
She quickly got out of her pajamas, put on a black shirt and her clerical collar, and picked up her Book of Common Prayer. I kissed her before she went out the door, aware that she was going to a home where there was a troubled family, a belligerent drug user, and eight armed men charged with upholding the law. Oh, boy. "Do you want some company?" I asked, knowing there wasn't much I could offer besides that. She said she'd be fine.
As she left, and the kids continued to examine their gifts, I sat and silently prayed (reluctantly, as always), joining her in her work in that small way.
I admit that I do not like church. I can think of far pleasanter ways to spend my Sunday morning than leaving my house to stand, and sit, and kneel with a hundred relative strangers.
But this is one thing I love about churches: this deeply democratic commitment to including everyone in the community. No one is to be left out. No one gets more bread or more wine at the altar. Everyone who needs solace, or penance, or forgiveness, or company, may have it.
The Book Of The Acts Of The Apostles, the fifth book of the Greek testament, tells the story of the early church as a place where people who needed food or money or other kinds of sustenance could come and find them. Early on in that book we even see the story of how the church made a special office for people whose job it would be to oversee the equitable distribution of food to the poor.
I think highly of my own profession of teaching, because I think it serves a high social good. But I teach in a small, selective liberal arts college. Most of the people I serve have their lives pretty much together. In general, they can pay their bills, they don't have huge drug or legal issues, they have supportive communities, they can think and write well. Yes, most of them struggle with money and other things, but they keep their heads above water, and their futures are bright.
My wife, on the other hand, has a much broader "clientele." She serves the congregations at our cathedral and several other parishes. Her congregants range from the powerful and wealthy to the poorest of the poor. Here in South Dakota more than half our diocese are Native Americans, and many more are refugees from conflicts in east Africa. Ethnically, racially, economically, liturgically, and politically, this is a diverse group.
And again, it is a group where everyone is - or at least ought to be - welcome.
The church has always failed to live up to its ideals. I don't dispute that. Show me an institution that has good ideals and that always lives up to them, and I'll readily tip my hat to it. What I love in the church is that it has these ideals and it has daily, weekly, and annual rituals by which we remind ourselves what those ideals are. We screw them up, we distort and bastardize them, we even sell them to high bidders from time to time when we lose our heads and our hearts. But then we remind ourselves that we should not. And we have institutions and rituals of returning to the path we've departed from.
We will probably always get it wrong. I'm okay with that, as long as we keep turning back towards what is right, as long as we maintain these traditions and rituals of self-examination and self-correction. And as long as we cherish this ideal of welcoming everyone, absolutely everyone. I don't mean just saying we welcome everyone, but I mean doing it.
Again, I work at a small college. Colleges are places where we all talk a good game about being welcoming, and for the most part, we manage to practice what we preach, given the communities we work in. But there's something really remarkable about seeing that ideal at work in a community where there are no grades and no graduation, where the congregation is not just 18-22 year-olds with high entrance exam scores, and where no one gets kicked out for failure to live up to the ideals of the place.
Last night we celebrated Christmas with hymns in two languages.
Hanhepi wakan kin!That's the second verse of "Silent Night, Holy Night," from the Dakota Episcopal hymnal. We sing the doxology in Dakota, and I'm happy to say that most of the white folks at several congregations in the area have it memorized in Dakota. These are small things, but they might also be big things. If the baby Christ was the Word incarnate, surely little words can make a big difference.
Wonahon wotanin
Mahpiyata wowitan,
On Wakantanka yatanpi.
Christ Wanikiya hi!
My wife came home a hour or so after she left this morning. I don't worry so much about her sudden comings and goings as I once did. She gets calls late at night from broken-hearted families watching their beloved die in our hospitals. Will she come and pray with them? Will she come hold their hands for a little while, and be the vicarious presence of the whole church as they suffer? Will she anoint the sick as a reminder of our shared hope for well-being for all people? Will she come to the jail to talk with the kid who has just been arrested, or to sit with his frightened parents? Will she come to the nursing home where they're wondering if this is the last holiday a grandparent will see?
Yes, she will. This is her calling, the work she has been ordained to do. It is the work of love, and I love her for it.
As she walked in the door, I was going to greet her when her phone rang again. I recognized from her conversation that it is a parishioner with memory problems who calls her almost every day to ask the same questions. Sometimes it seems he has been drinking; most of the time it seems he is lonely and afraid. I knew my greeting could wait, and as she patiently listened to her parishioner, I joined her in silent prayer, thanking God for the kindness she shows and represents, a visible sign of the ideal of our community. She cheerfully wished him a Merry Christmas. I think she was glad he knew what day it was.
I don't know how she does it, but she makes me want to keep trying.
∞
The Best Break-Up Ever
Last week my oncologist broke up with me. It was the best break-up ever.
Fifteen years ago I got a call from my doctor. He asked me, "Are you sitting down?" Then he added, "I have some bad news from your tests." Two days later I was in surgery having a tumor removed.
Our kids were small, we were young, and I was in my second year of grad school at St. John's College. I earned an hourly wage as a substitute teacher at a local prep school, which I supplemented by teaching Spanish to a group of kindergarteners, giving Greek lessons to a high school student, and occasionally working as a fly-fishing guide in northern New Mexico. Like many graduate students, we lived far below the poverty level. We were fortunate to have basic health insurance, supportive families, WIC, and a great local church. Even so, we knew we had an uncertain road ahead.
Since then we've moved twice, I finished grad school at Penn State, and have been awarded tenure at a fine liberal arts college in South Dakota, Augustana College.
And over the years I've lost track of how many times I've been stuck with needles or made to swallow barium sulfate contrast. Each time I drink that stuff it's worse than the last time. It makes me feel like it's stripping my intestines of their very lining. At first I could go to work afterwards, but the last few times I've had it it has left me too weak to walk for much of the day.
Who knows how much iodine radiocontrast I've had injected into my veins? You feel it enter your vein, and the mild burn pulses, lub-dub, with each heartbeat, up your arm and then crashes into your heart. A moment after it hits your heart, it explodes outward across your whole body. It shoots up your neck, setting your throat abuzz, and then you taste metal. At the same time it rushes downward and you feel like you've just wet your pants. (I'm told many people do in fact become incontinent at this point.)
I've taken it all more or less in stride, because, as they say, fighting cancer beats the alternative. In some ways, it was probably easier for me than for my family, since there wasn't much I could do about it other than submit to the treatment, and when I did, it left me too weak for worry. My wife was nothing short of amazing when I was first diagnosed, taking care of three small kids and one sick husband. She has a long and deep habit of prayer, and I think that was her sea anchor in a rough storm.
Each time we've moved I've had to find a new oncologist, and again, I've been fortunate to find good ones, serious physicians who really showed concern for me. (Michael McHale in Sioux Falls always took the time to ask me about my life before he asked me about my body, and I am grateful for him like I am grateful for friends and ministers and counselors. Our insurance wouldn't let me keep seeing him, unfortunately, so I've had a few other oncologists over the last three years.)
Last week, my current oncologist and I looked over my medical history together. It's an annual ritual: we look at my tumor markers and my other bloodwork, my most recent X-rays or CT scan. The doctor nods and says that nothing has changed, and he'll see me again in six months or a year.
This time, it was different. "It has been fifteen years, and we haven't seen any new tumors," he said. "It's possible that it will recur, of course. You're in a higher risk group, and there could be some cells in some other part of your body that are slowly growing." I'm used to hearing this, so I nodded, and looked in his eyes as I always do, to see if there's news I should brace myself for.
Having cancer at a young age was like an early midlife crisis. It sharpened my focus and made me see that there was no point wasting whatever time I have left. If there is something I should be doing, now is the time to do it, not later. I'm trying to live fully now, not postponing life until I feel more rested, or more financially sound, or more ready for it. I don't think I'm being reckless, but I'm trying to live well, and without regrets. The days of my life are numbered, but I am unable to count any of them but the ones in the past, plus today.
It's not like I spend a lot of time thinking about my own mortality, mind you. But every visit to the oncologist is a reminder that I am still alive. My first oncologist told me, "you drew the historical long straw," explaining that only twenty years earlier my cancer was one of the least curable forms, but thanks to recent research it was now one of the most curable.
(As an aside, thanks for giving to that research, and please keep giving to organizations like the American Cancer Society. I advise the Augustana College Chapter of Colleges Against Cancer, so I'd be remiss if I didn't put that in here!)
"But everything looks good. I don't think you need to come back, as long as you and your regular doctor keep checking for lumps."
I think I must have looked like a cow staring at a new gate*, or a deer caught in the headlights. He smiled at me. "If you're okay with that, I mean."
"Yes, I'm okay with that," I stammered.
"Then we're graduating you. No need to come back," he said. He extended his hand to shake mine, and then he and his resident, congratulating me, left me to consider a life without coming back to his office.
I've lost a lot of friends and family to cancer, including my beautiful, wonderful mother. A number of my friends and colleagues or their spouses are afflicted by rogue cells in their bodies right now. It's a frightening, ugly thing to hear your body is growing itself out of its own orderly bounds, that some part of you is growing towards death, that your body has become entangled with a worse form of itself that threatens to overshadow all that is good in you.
So for now, I am still basking in the warmth of this best break-up ever. I'm glad to hear my oncologist has dumped me. I'm delighted to hear that those misfiring cell divisions have been banished from my body.
And I'm hoping that more and more people who long for such news will come to hear it soon, mindful that many who deserve to hear it never will.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have a fresh today to attend to.
* This is from Martin Luther. He writes, wie ein kue ein neues thor ansihet.
Fifteen years ago I got a call from my doctor. He asked me, "Are you sitting down?" Then he added, "I have some bad news from your tests." Two days later I was in surgery having a tumor removed.
Our kids were small, we were young, and I was in my second year of grad school at St. John's College. I earned an hourly wage as a substitute teacher at a local prep school, which I supplemented by teaching Spanish to a group of kindergarteners, giving Greek lessons to a high school student, and occasionally working as a fly-fishing guide in northern New Mexico. Like many graduate students, we lived far below the poverty level. We were fortunate to have basic health insurance, supportive families, WIC, and a great local church. Even so, we knew we had an uncertain road ahead.
Since then we've moved twice, I finished grad school at Penn State, and have been awarded tenure at a fine liberal arts college in South Dakota, Augustana College.
And over the years I've lost track of how many times I've been stuck with needles or made to swallow barium sulfate contrast. Each time I drink that stuff it's worse than the last time. It makes me feel like it's stripping my intestines of their very lining. At first I could go to work afterwards, but the last few times I've had it it has left me too weak to walk for much of the day.
Who knows how much iodine radiocontrast I've had injected into my veins? You feel it enter your vein, and the mild burn pulses, lub-dub, with each heartbeat, up your arm and then crashes into your heart. A moment after it hits your heart, it explodes outward across your whole body. It shoots up your neck, setting your throat abuzz, and then you taste metal. At the same time it rushes downward and you feel like you've just wet your pants. (I'm told many people do in fact become incontinent at this point.)
I've taken it all more or less in stride, because, as they say, fighting cancer beats the alternative. In some ways, it was probably easier for me than for my family, since there wasn't much I could do about it other than submit to the treatment, and when I did, it left me too weak for worry. My wife was nothing short of amazing when I was first diagnosed, taking care of three small kids and one sick husband. She has a long and deep habit of prayer, and I think that was her sea anchor in a rough storm.
Each time we've moved I've had to find a new oncologist, and again, I've been fortunate to find good ones, serious physicians who really showed concern for me. (Michael McHale in Sioux Falls always took the time to ask me about my life before he asked me about my body, and I am grateful for him like I am grateful for friends and ministers and counselors. Our insurance wouldn't let me keep seeing him, unfortunately, so I've had a few other oncologists over the last three years.)
Last week, my current oncologist and I looked over my medical history together. It's an annual ritual: we look at my tumor markers and my other bloodwork, my most recent X-rays or CT scan. The doctor nods and says that nothing has changed, and he'll see me again in six months or a year.
This time, it was different. "It has been fifteen years, and we haven't seen any new tumors," he said. "It's possible that it will recur, of course. You're in a higher risk group, and there could be some cells in some other part of your body that are slowly growing." I'm used to hearing this, so I nodded, and looked in his eyes as I always do, to see if there's news I should brace myself for.
Having cancer at a young age was like an early midlife crisis. It sharpened my focus and made me see that there was no point wasting whatever time I have left. If there is something I should be doing, now is the time to do it, not later. I'm trying to live fully now, not postponing life until I feel more rested, or more financially sound, or more ready for it. I don't think I'm being reckless, but I'm trying to live well, and without regrets. The days of my life are numbered, but I am unable to count any of them but the ones in the past, plus today.
It's not like I spend a lot of time thinking about my own mortality, mind you. But every visit to the oncologist is a reminder that I am still alive. My first oncologist told me, "you drew the historical long straw," explaining that only twenty years earlier my cancer was one of the least curable forms, but thanks to recent research it was now one of the most curable.
(As an aside, thanks for giving to that research, and please keep giving to organizations like the American Cancer Society. I advise the Augustana College Chapter of Colleges Against Cancer, so I'd be remiss if I didn't put that in here!)
"But everything looks good. I don't think you need to come back, as long as you and your regular doctor keep checking for lumps."
I think I must have looked like a cow staring at a new gate*, or a deer caught in the headlights. He smiled at me. "If you're okay with that, I mean."
"Yes, I'm okay with that," I stammered.
"Then we're graduating you. No need to come back," he said. He extended his hand to shake mine, and then he and his resident, congratulating me, left me to consider a life without coming back to his office.
I've lost a lot of friends and family to cancer, including my beautiful, wonderful mother. A number of my friends and colleagues or their spouses are afflicted by rogue cells in their bodies right now. It's a frightening, ugly thing to hear your body is growing itself out of its own orderly bounds, that some part of you is growing towards death, that your body has become entangled with a worse form of itself that threatens to overshadow all that is good in you.
So for now, I am still basking in the warmth of this best break-up ever. I'm glad to hear my oncologist has dumped me. I'm delighted to hear that those misfiring cell divisions have been banished from my body.
And I'm hoping that more and more people who long for such news will come to hear it soon, mindful that many who deserve to hear it never will.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have a fresh today to attend to.
**********
* This is from Martin Luther. He writes, wie ein kue ein neues thor ansihet.
∞
When The Court Will Not Give Justice
“They suppressed their consciences and turned away their eyes from looking to Heaven or remembering their duty to administer justice.”
“Just as she was being led off to execution, God stirred up the holy spirit of a young lad named Daniel, and he shouted with a loud voice, ‘I want no part in shedding this woman’s blood!’ All the people turned to him and asked, ‘What is this you are saying?’ Taking his stand among hem he said, ‘Are you such fools, O Israelites, as to condemn a daughter of Israel without examination and without learning the facts? Return to court, for these men have given false evidence against her.’”
-- The Book of Susanna, v. 9. (New Revised Standard Version)
“Just as she was being led off to execution, God stirred up the holy spirit of a young lad named Daniel, and he shouted with a loud voice, ‘I want no part in shedding this woman’s blood!’ All the people turned to him and asked, ‘What is this you are saying?’ Taking his stand among hem he said, ‘Are you such fools, O Israelites, as to condemn a daughter of Israel without examination and without learning the facts? Return to court, for these men have given false evidence against her.’”
-- The Book of Susanna, vv. 45-49. (New Revised Standard Version)
∞
Of Men and of Angels
"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but I have not love, then I have become a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."
That's from one of St. Paul's letters to the church in Corinth. It's a passage often read at weddings, probably because it speaks eloquently about agapic love.
I like it for another reason: it has a nice onomatopoeic pun in the Greek text. Paul's "If I speak..." is lalo; his "clanging" is alaladzon, which sounds like the noise a gong makes and sounds like it could mean "un-speaking." (In Greek, words that begin with "a-" are often like English words beginning with "un-".)
This week, as we approach the third Sunday in Advent, I was looking again at a poem I wrote during this week a few years ago, after the school shooting in Newtown. In it I compared first responders and teachers and others who give up so much for the sake of the common good to angels. That is my second-most read post ever.
The most-read post is one I wrote after Ferguson, about the militarization of our first responders, and the way the tools we equip ourselves with change the way we interact with the world - and with other people.
Both of these posts are about public servants. Taken together they remind me that what is done in love can be heroic and life-giving, and what is done in fear can become tyrannical. They remind me that we have a tendency to revere the outward signs of badges and uniforms, when we should judge characters by the habits they embody and by the actions that show the habits.
And they remind me that we have a long, long way to go before we can say we have learned to love one another.
*****
I should add that even the title to this post is misleading. The word Paul uses is not "men" but "humans." I like the cadence of the old translation "men" but the word is anthropon, not andron. Normally I prefer the more inclusive (and more accurate) "humans" but I first learned this verse in an older, poetic translation and the rhythm of it has stuck with me.
That's from one of St. Paul's letters to the church in Corinth. It's a passage often read at weddings, probably because it speaks eloquently about agapic love.
I like it for another reason: it has a nice onomatopoeic pun in the Greek text. Paul's "If I speak..." is lalo; his "clanging" is alaladzon, which sounds like the noise a gong makes and sounds like it could mean "un-speaking." (In Greek, words that begin with "a-" are often like English words beginning with "un-".)
This week, as we approach the third Sunday in Advent, I was looking again at a poem I wrote during this week a few years ago, after the school shooting in Newtown. In it I compared first responders and teachers and others who give up so much for the sake of the common good to angels. That is my second-most read post ever.
The most-read post is one I wrote after Ferguson, about the militarization of our first responders, and the way the tools we equip ourselves with change the way we interact with the world - and with other people.
Both of these posts are about public servants. Taken together they remind me that what is done in love can be heroic and life-giving, and what is done in fear can become tyrannical. They remind me that we have a tendency to revere the outward signs of badges and uniforms, when we should judge characters by the habits they embody and by the actions that show the habits.
And they remind me that we have a long, long way to go before we can say we have learned to love one another.
*****
I should add that even the title to this post is misleading. The word Paul uses is not "men" but "humans." I like the cadence of the old translation "men" but the word is anthropon, not andron. Normally I prefer the more inclusive (and more accurate) "humans" but I first learned this verse in an older, poetic translation and the rhythm of it has stuck with me.
∞
Desmond Tutu On Descartes' Radical Individualism
"Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human....[If you have Ubuntu] then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, inextricably bound up, in yours.' We belong in a bundle of life. We say 'A person is a person through other persons.' It is not, 'I think, therefore I am.' It says rather: 'I am human because I belong. I participate, I share.'"
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, 31. (New York: Random House, 2000)
∞
The Trivium And The Quadrivium
The Seven Liberal Arts (and their aims)
At some point in the Middle Ages, through a slow process of growth and refinement, educators came to identify seven arts that were considered liberal. The seven liberal arts were the arts practiced by people who were, or who would be, free. (The Latin word liber can mean "a free man.")
The liberal arts were divided into two groups: the trivium and the quadrivium. As the names suggest, the trivium included three arts, and the quadrivium included four.
The trivial arts sought to teach eloquentia, or eloquence, the proper use of words. The quadrivial arts aimed at sapientia, or sapience, the proper use of numbers.
In each case there is a natural progression, beginning with the rudiments and building on those foundations to help the student master eloquence and sapience.
The Trivium and the Quadrivium (and how they are built)
The trivium proceeds like this:
The quadrivium proceeds like this:
But Is Any Of This Relevant?
It's not hard to see that a lot of this is outdated, especially in the quadrivium, which was like the STEM of the Middle Ages, focusing on mathematics, engineering, and natural sciences. We no longer believe in the "music of the spheres" or that the motion of astronomical bodies is governed by harmony akin to music. And our sciences and humanities have grown to include many other disciplines that (at least at first) don't seem to be included here.
It's also not hard to see that some of the way we educate today still has echoes of this structure. For instance, until recently, we called children's schools "grammar schools," and this is why.We still consider it important to begin important enterprises with teaching the relevant vocabulary, grammar and logic: we often begin classes by introducing new vocabulary, and we begin contracts by defining terms.
And while we don't think of outer space as being a set of nested, harmonious spheres governed by intelligences who receive their direction from the Empyrean, we do think number is extremely important as a tool for discovering how nature works. This may seem like the most obvious of points, but that is because the idea has pervaded our thinking. It's a good idea, and it stuck. Similarly, we have the hunch that inquiry into the nature of things will in fact be met with answers. Again, this seems obvious, but not every culture has thought so. The idea has stuck, and it has paid off.
Yes, But Only If You Care About Science And Freedom.
In my view, the trivial arts and their organization remain as relevant as they once were, for three reasons.
First, every free person needs to know how words are used. If you don't learn to use them, and then practice with them, you will be easily misled. If you don't study persuasion, you are far less likely to know that you are being persuaded.
Second, and related to the first point, the sciences depend upon the trivial arts. Students who cannot read and write cannot learn effectively.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, long study in the humanities leads one to consider both the way words are used for persuasion and the ethics of persuasion. People who are trained in the conclusions of the sciences are not scientists, they are databanks. People who are trained in some of the methods of the sciences are technicians. Databanks and technicians are useful to other people. But what we need are people trained in the scientific method, which, by the way, is not something we get from the sciences. It is tested and approved by the sciences, but the natural sciences do not give it to us. Which of the natural sciences could discover a scientific method, after all? Scientific method is about the proper handling of data, the examination of claims and propositions, and the distribution of relevant conclusions. Look back at the description of the trivium and the quadrivium and you'll see that this is the work of the former, not of the latter.
The Real Crisis In The Humanities
There is a lot of talk these days about the crisis in the humanities. The money is all in the sciences, and smart students should go there to study, we are told. College administrations look to humanities departments as service departments to bolster the offerings of the science departments, who do the real work of the university.
I actually don't dispute this view, even though I'm in the humanities. It's quite obvious that much of the money is in the sciences, and I think that smart students should study the sciences. That's because I think every student should study the sciences.
But I also think that smart students should engage in long study of the humanities. The sciences depend upon the humanities, just as the quadrivium was legless without the trivium. More importantly, people who want to be free -- that is, people who do not wish to be persuaded without their consent, people who wish to think for themselves, people who wish to wield tools and not just to be the tools of others -- these people need to study the humanities.
The crisis in the humanities is that even in the humanities we've allowed ourselves to forget how interrelated all the disciplines are. It's time to brush up our eloquence, for the sake of our students, and take this message to our schools.
*****
Addendum: A friend wrote to me and pointed out that I called the second part of the Trivium "logic" when I should have named it "dialectic," which includes both logic and disputation. I don't dispute his correction.
I've also since discovered Dorothy Sayers' "The Lost Tools of Learning," an illuminating essay on the medieval liberal arts. I wrote this post hastily, after a meeting at my college where the question of what an education ought to do was under consideration. I wanted to make a thumbnail sketch of the Trivium and Quadrivium for my colleagues, and this was the result of some quick typing in the last few minutes of the workday. A fuller picture would have included C.S. Lewis' essay "Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages," and at least some mention of Martianus Capella. Maybe another time I'll return to this topic and write that fuller essay. For now, these references will have to suffice.
At some point in the Middle Ages, through a slow process of growth and refinement, educators came to identify seven arts that were considered liberal. The seven liberal arts were the arts practiced by people who were, or who would be, free. (The Latin word liber can mean "a free man.")
The liberal arts were divided into two groups: the trivium and the quadrivium. As the names suggest, the trivium included three arts, and the quadrivium included four.
The trivial arts sought to teach eloquentia, or eloquence, the proper use of words. The quadrivial arts aimed at sapientia, or sapience, the proper use of numbers.
In each case there is a natural progression, beginning with the rudiments and building on those foundations to help the student master eloquence and sapience.
The Trivium and the Quadrivium (and how they are built)
The trivium proceeds like this:
- Grammar. This is the study of words, and especially:
- how definitions work, so that we can "come to terms" with one another; and
- how words are assembled into meaningful sentences or propositions.
- Logic. This is the study of the structure of arguments:
- how to assemble propositions into arguments; and
- how to draw proper conclusions from those propositions without error.
- Rhetoric. This is the study of the proper use of arguments:
- how to use arguments to persuade others; and
- how and when to persuade without misleading people.
The quadrivium proceeds like this:
- Arithmetic. This is the study of number.
- Geometry. This is the study of number in space.
- Music. This is the study of number in time.
- Astronomy. This is the study of number in space and time.
But Is Any Of This Relevant?
It's not hard to see that a lot of this is outdated, especially in the quadrivium, which was like the STEM of the Middle Ages, focusing on mathematics, engineering, and natural sciences. We no longer believe in the "music of the spheres" or that the motion of astronomical bodies is governed by harmony akin to music. And our sciences and humanities have grown to include many other disciplines that (at least at first) don't seem to be included here.
It's also not hard to see that some of the way we educate today still has echoes of this structure. For instance, until recently, we called children's schools "grammar schools," and this is why.We still consider it important to begin important enterprises with teaching the relevant vocabulary, grammar and logic: we often begin classes by introducing new vocabulary, and we begin contracts by defining terms.
And while we don't think of outer space as being a set of nested, harmonious spheres governed by intelligences who receive their direction from the Empyrean, we do think number is extremely important as a tool for discovering how nature works. This may seem like the most obvious of points, but that is because the idea has pervaded our thinking. It's a good idea, and it stuck. Similarly, we have the hunch that inquiry into the nature of things will in fact be met with answers. Again, this seems obvious, but not every culture has thought so. The idea has stuck, and it has paid off.
Yes, But Only If You Care About Science And Freedom.
In my view, the trivial arts and their organization remain as relevant as they once were, for three reasons.
First, every free person needs to know how words are used. If you don't learn to use them, and then practice with them, you will be easily misled. If you don't study persuasion, you are far less likely to know that you are being persuaded.
Second, and related to the first point, the sciences depend upon the trivial arts. Students who cannot read and write cannot learn effectively.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, long study in the humanities leads one to consider both the way words are used for persuasion and the ethics of persuasion. People who are trained in the conclusions of the sciences are not scientists, they are databanks. People who are trained in some of the methods of the sciences are technicians. Databanks and technicians are useful to other people. But what we need are people trained in the scientific method, which, by the way, is not something we get from the sciences. It is tested and approved by the sciences, but the natural sciences do not give it to us. Which of the natural sciences could discover a scientific method, after all? Scientific method is about the proper handling of data, the examination of claims and propositions, and the distribution of relevant conclusions. Look back at the description of the trivium and the quadrivium and you'll see that this is the work of the former, not of the latter.
The Real Crisis In The Humanities
There is a lot of talk these days about the crisis in the humanities. The money is all in the sciences, and smart students should go there to study, we are told. College administrations look to humanities departments as service departments to bolster the offerings of the science departments, who do the real work of the university.
I actually don't dispute this view, even though I'm in the humanities. It's quite obvious that much of the money is in the sciences, and I think that smart students should study the sciences. That's because I think every student should study the sciences.
But I also think that smart students should engage in long study of the humanities. The sciences depend upon the humanities, just as the quadrivium was legless without the trivium. More importantly, people who want to be free -- that is, people who do not wish to be persuaded without their consent, people who wish to think for themselves, people who wish to wield tools and not just to be the tools of others -- these people need to study the humanities.
The crisis in the humanities is that even in the humanities we've allowed ourselves to forget how interrelated all the disciplines are. It's time to brush up our eloquence, for the sake of our students, and take this message to our schools.
*****
Addendum: A friend wrote to me and pointed out that I called the second part of the Trivium "logic" when I should have named it "dialectic," which includes both logic and disputation. I don't dispute his correction.
I've also since discovered Dorothy Sayers' "The Lost Tools of Learning," an illuminating essay on the medieval liberal arts. I wrote this post hastily, after a meeting at my college where the question of what an education ought to do was under consideration. I wanted to make a thumbnail sketch of the Trivium and Quadrivium for my colleagues, and this was the result of some quick typing in the last few minutes of the workday. A fuller picture would have included C.S. Lewis' essay "Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages," and at least some mention of Martianus Capella. Maybe another time I'll return to this topic and write that fuller essay. For now, these references will have to suffice.
∞
Downstream: Reflections on Brook Trout, Fly Fishing, and the Waters of Appalachia.
(On brook trout, ecology, and love. Wipf and Stock, (Cascade Press) 2014)
Foreword by Nick Lyons
Afterword by Bill McKibben.
Narnia And The Fields Of Arbol
(On the environmental vision of C.S. Lewis. University Press of Kentucky, 2008)
From Homer To Harry Potter
(On myth, fantasy, and religion. Brazos Press, 2006)
Books
Downstream: Reflections on Brook Trout, Fly Fishing, and the Waters of Appalachia. (On brook trout, ecology, and love. Wipf and Stock, (Cascade Press) 2014)
Foreword by Nick Lyons
Afterword by Bill McKibben.
Narnia And The Fields Of Arbol
(On the environmental vision of C.S. Lewis. University Press of Kentucky, 2008)
From Homer To Harry Potter
(On myth, fantasy, and religion. Brazos Press, 2006)
∞
Entertaining Angels
Here's my latest contribution to the Sojourners blog, a reflection on a beggar I met in Paris 25 years ago, and on what that might mean for me today.
Here's an excerpt:
Here's an excerpt:
You just never know. There’s no way to know, just from looking at the sign. Maybe he was a con man, or maybe he was just my brother, genuinely in need of human contact to maintain his dignity. Or maybe he was even more than that. How does that passage go? “Some of you have entertained angels unawares.”You can read the rest of it here.
∞
Camping With My Students: Stargazing in the Badlands
Around two in the morning I awoke to the song of coyotes. I opened my eyes and looked up just in time to see a green meteor arc across the sky. I was camping outdoors, with my students, in a remote corner of South Dakota. Welcome to one of my favorite classrooms.
Each fall I look for an ideal weekend to take my Ancient and Medieval Philosophy students stargazing. An ideal weekend counts as one where we will have clear skies, a new moon, and reasonably warm weather so we can spend a lot of time outside.
Several times over the last ten years, the weather's been so good that we've been able to go out to a primitive campground (i.e. one where there is no electricity and almost no urban glow) in the Badlands National Park.
On such nights, in such places, the sky glistens with stars. The Milky Way is a bright band across the night, and meteors punctuate our views each hour.
I tell my students that this is an optional trip. They don't get credit for coming, and they don't lose any credit for staying home. It's a four-hour drive from our campus, so it's a real commitment of time on their part. Their only rewards are these: an experience of what the Norwegians call friluftsliv, a beautiful night under the stars in a remote and lovely place, and free pancakes at sunrise, cooked by me.
And yet every time I offer this trip, half a dozen or more students - and sometimes other professors - tag along.
I've written before about the importance of teaching outdoors and of doing labs in philosophy. Experientia docet, experience teaches us. What we learn through lived, full-bodied experience tends to stick with us far better than what we simply hear spoken from a lectern or see on a PowerPoint slide.
We go out there, ostensibly, to see the stars. This is because I want my students to watch the skies and to imagine what it would have been like for ancient and medieval philosophers like Thales, Plutarch, Ptolemy, Eratosthenes and, even Galileo (on the cusp of the Middle Ages) to gaze at the skies and learn from their movements.
But we are really there for other reasons that are easier to show than to tell. I want them to see that ideas do not grow up in a vacuum, and that the artificial divisions between academic disciplines are really artificial and convenient. Educated people should care about all the disciplines. We should not allow them to be compartmentalized, as though philosophy and sociology had nothing to do with accounting, or physics, or poetry.
Aristotle tells us that the love of wisdom begins in wonder. I will add that experience of new things can be the beginning of wonder.
Many of my students have never heard coyotes sing. In the Badlands, they trot past our cots and tents and sing to us all night long. When we wake in the morning, we are often surrounded by small groups of bison, slowly grazing their way along the hillsides. After breakfast we climb the steep slopes and find ancient fossils.
I don't know if any of this is a desirable or assessable outcome for a philosophy class. Also, I don't care. Because all of these things are, I think, desirable outcomes for life.
Because I believe that "it is beautiful to do so" is reason enough to sleep under the stars.
 |
| We set up tents, but we rarely use them. Much nicer to sleep under the stars. |
Each fall I look for an ideal weekend to take my Ancient and Medieval Philosophy students stargazing. An ideal weekend counts as one where we will have clear skies, a new moon, and reasonably warm weather so we can spend a lot of time outside.
Several times over the last ten years, the weather's been so good that we've been able to go out to a primitive campground (i.e. one where there is no electricity and almost no urban glow) in the Badlands National Park.
On such nights, in such places, the sky glistens with stars. The Milky Way is a bright band across the night, and meteors punctuate our views each hour.
I tell my students that this is an optional trip. They don't get credit for coming, and they don't lose any credit for staying home. It's a four-hour drive from our campus, so it's a real commitment of time on their part. Their only rewards are these: an experience of what the Norwegians call friluftsliv, a beautiful night under the stars in a remote and lovely place, and free pancakes at sunrise, cooked by me.
And yet every time I offer this trip, half a dozen or more students - and sometimes other professors - tag along.
 |
| The stop sign is just a scratching post to this bison. |
I've written before about the importance of teaching outdoors and of doing labs in philosophy. Experientia docet, experience teaches us. What we learn through lived, full-bodied experience tends to stick with us far better than what we simply hear spoken from a lectern or see on a PowerPoint slide.
We go out there, ostensibly, to see the stars. This is because I want my students to watch the skies and to imagine what it would have been like for ancient and medieval philosophers like Thales, Plutarch, Ptolemy, Eratosthenes and, even Galileo (on the cusp of the Middle Ages) to gaze at the skies and learn from their movements.
But we are really there for other reasons that are easier to show than to tell. I want them to see that ideas do not grow up in a vacuum, and that the artificial divisions between academic disciplines are really artificial and convenient. Educated people should care about all the disciplines. We should not allow them to be compartmentalized, as though philosophy and sociology had nothing to do with accounting, or physics, or poetry.
Aristotle tells us that the love of wisdom begins in wonder. I will add that experience of new things can be the beginning of wonder.
Many of my students have never heard coyotes sing. In the Badlands, they trot past our cots and tents and sing to us all night long. When we wake in the morning, we are often surrounded by small groups of bison, slowly grazing their way along the hillsides. After breakfast we climb the steep slopes and find ancient fossils.
I don't know if any of this is a desirable or assessable outcome for a philosophy class. Also, I don't care. Because all of these things are, I think, desirable outcomes for life.
Because I believe that "it is beautiful to do so" is reason enough to sleep under the stars.
∞
How To Write Term Papers
Some thoughts while grading essays:
1) Write simply.
2) Deleteany unnecessary words that you don't need.
3) Use short words. This isn't the SAT or ACT vocabulary quiz, it's an essay. Make it readable. Don't try to wow anyone with big words. Big words are a distraction in ordinary writing. Save them for when you need them.
4) Write short sentences. As your sentences increase in length, the number of things that can go wrong in the sentences increases.
5) Bad writing is like a food stain on your shirt. No matter how good your ideas, the stain and the errors will make the strongest impression.
6) Know your point, and make your case. If you don't have a point, you're not writing a paper; you're just writing words. When you've got a point to make, state it plainly. Then help others see why they might agree with you.
7) Avoid sweeping generalizations. Go ahead and be bold in your essays, by all means. Try out strong ideas. But be clear about exactly which ideas you are presenting, and why. Avoid saying things like "since the beginning of time, this has been the case." Rather, say "this has been the case at least since 1641 when Descartes published his Meditations."
8) Edit. Then edit again. Don't think of proofreading as giving your writing a once-over before handing it in. Read what you've written, then read it again and again. Does each sentence lead into the next? Does each paragraph follow smoothly from what came before it? Is your opening line clear and compelling?
9) Love your reader. Try to put yourself in your readers' shoes. One helpful way to do this is to ask a friend to read your writing aloud to you. Listen for where they stumble or hesitate. Those are probably times where your writing is not clear.
10) Make writing a habit, not something you only do when you must. Like any other skill, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
*****
P.S. I've edited this post. Even after you write something, go back and read it again and keep editing. It's good exercise.
1) Write simply.
2) Delete
3) Use short words. This isn't the SAT or ACT vocabulary quiz, it's an essay. Make it readable. Don't try to wow anyone with big words. Big words are a distraction in ordinary writing. Save them for when you need them.
4) Write short sentences. As your sentences increase in length, the number of things that can go wrong in the sentences increases.
5) Bad writing is like a food stain on your shirt. No matter how good your ideas, the stain and the errors will make the strongest impression.
6) Know your point, and make your case. If you don't have a point, you're not writing a paper; you're just writing words. When you've got a point to make, state it plainly. Then help others see why they might agree with you.
7) Avoid sweeping generalizations. Go ahead and be bold in your essays, by all means. Try out strong ideas. But be clear about exactly which ideas you are presenting, and why. Avoid saying things like "since the beginning of time, this has been the case." Rather, say "this has been the case at least since 1641 when Descartes published his Meditations."
8) Edit. Then edit again. Don't think of proofreading as giving your writing a once-over before handing it in. Read what you've written, then read it again and again. Does each sentence lead into the next? Does each paragraph follow smoothly from what came before it? Is your opening line clear and compelling?
9) Love your reader. Try to put yourself in your readers' shoes. One helpful way to do this is to ask a friend to read your writing aloud to you. Listen for where they stumble or hesitate. Those are probably times where your writing is not clear.
10) Make writing a habit, not something you only do when you must. Like any other skill, the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
*****
P.S. I've edited this post. Even after you write something, go back and read it again and keep editing. It's good exercise.
∞
An Early Christian Philosopher on Civil Disobedience
"There is never an obligation to be obedient to orders which it would be pernicious to obey."
-- St. Augustine, _Confessions_, I.vii. (Henry Chadwick trans.)
∞
Socratic Pragmatism: On Our Attitude Towards Inquiry
"I do not insist that my argument is right in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs in both word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it."
Socrates, in Plato’s Meno, 86b-. G.M.A. Grube, trans.
∞
Wendell Berry: Past A Certain Scale, There Is No Dissent From Technological Choice
“But past a certain scale, as C.S. Lewis wrote, the person who makes a technological choice does not choose for himself alone, but for others; past a certain scale he chooses for all others. If the effects are lasting enough, he chooses for the future. He makes, then, a choice that can neither be chosen against nor unchosen. Past a certain scale, there is no dissent from technological choice.”
-- Wendell Berry, “A Promise Made In Love, Awe, And Fear,” in Moral Ground: Ethical Action For A Planet In Peril. Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson, eds. (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 2010) p. 388.
∞
Interview on SD Public Radio
Karl Gehrke interviewed me on SD Public Radio today about my new book. We talk about the book, brook trout, fly-fishing, hunting, raising children, and a handful of other topics with occasional nods to Heidegger and Bugbee, Kathleen Dean Moore, Scott Russell Sanders, and, of course, Thoreau.
Click here to listen to the whole interview.
Click here to listen to the whole interview.
∞
Giving Our Prayers Feet
The American scientist and philosopher Charles Peirce described belief as an idea you are prepared to act on. If you say you believe something but you are not prepared to act on it, you probably don't really believe it in any meaningful sense of that word.
Of course, there might be a number of ways in which we might act on our beliefs.
What about prayer? Could praying be a kind of action?
It depends.
Philosopher and atheist Daniel Dennett once described prayer as a waste of time. I mean literally a waste of time. If you're praying, he said, you're not engaged in useful activity. When he was ill, someone offered to pray for him. His reply:
On the other hand, as I've argued before, prayer might be essential to other kinds of action.
Giving our money and time is generally a good thing, I think, but I think the giving becomes deeper still when we do as Thoreau urged in Walden: don't just give your money, but give yourself. In other words, if you've begun by dumping water on your head for an ALS icebucket challenge, great. Now deepen that giving by making it part of who you are.
If you decide to do that, prayer - or something like it, I don't care what you call it - can make a big difference. Here's what I mean: giving to charities can be automated, so you can do it without thinking about it. Set up an automatic bank transfer each month and you can give to as many charities as you can afford, without putting much of yourself in it. But if you make those philanthropies and missions the intentional object of your thought for part of each day, you might find that you begin to care a lot more about the cause and the people involved.
If praying is the act of giving some of your time to bring together the world's greatest needs and your greatest hopes, then prayer might be the most important thing we can do. Too often we allow ourselves to divorce others' needs from our hopes, and then the needs of others become allied with our fears.
This is one reason why I respond to the news each day with prayer. Sometimes my prayers are simply Kyrie eleison, "Lord, have mercy." Because sometimes that's all I've got when my heart and mind are overwhelmed. But if that's all I've got, then it will be my widow's mite, and I'll give it. By the way, this has the added effect of making me worry less without taking away my desire to act for goodness and justice.
(My friend Anna Madsen has a short, funny, and helpful piece about just that, by the way. Check it out here.)
All of this was inspired by a moving Facebook post by an alumnus of my college, Caleb Rupert. Caleb is a thoughtful and creative man, and though I don't know him well, he strikes me as a good egg and as someone who wants to do the best he can in this life. Here's what he shared on his page:
I asked Caleb if I could share his words here. His reply is just as good as his original post. He said I could post his words, provided I include some links to local food shelves, soup kitchens, and homeless shelters. I love that.
So I will ask that if you share this post, you do the same thing by posting a link to at least one organization in *your* community that helps the homeless. In that way, let us make our prayers effective to the best of our ability, and may they rise to whatever heaven may be.
Here are my links for Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Please consider volunteering your time, giving your money, and remembering them and the people they serve in your prayers. And as you do so, may your prayers grow feet, and begin to change the world.
The Banquet
Union Gospel Mission
St Francis House
Of course, there might be a number of ways in which we might act on our beliefs.
What about prayer? Could praying be a kind of action?
It depends.
Philosopher and atheist Daniel Dennett once described prayer as a waste of time. I mean literally a waste of time. If you're praying, he said, you're not engaged in useful activity. When he was ill, someone offered to pray for him. His reply:
Surely it does the world no harm if those who can honestly do so pray for me! No, I'm not at all sure about that. For one thing, if they really wanted to do something useful, they could devote their prayer time and energy to some pressing project that they can do something about. (emphasis added)I agree with him that if prayer keeps us from doing what we can to alleviate the suffering of the world, we're probably using our time poorly.
On the other hand, as I've argued before, prayer might be essential to other kinds of action.
Giving our money and time is generally a good thing, I think, but I think the giving becomes deeper still when we do as Thoreau urged in Walden: don't just give your money, but give yourself. In other words, if you've begun by dumping water on your head for an ALS icebucket challenge, great. Now deepen that giving by making it part of who you are.
If you decide to do that, prayer - or something like it, I don't care what you call it - can make a big difference. Here's what I mean: giving to charities can be automated, so you can do it without thinking about it. Set up an automatic bank transfer each month and you can give to as many charities as you can afford, without putting much of yourself in it. But if you make those philanthropies and missions the intentional object of your thought for part of each day, you might find that you begin to care a lot more about the cause and the people involved.
If praying is the act of giving some of your time to bring together the world's greatest needs and your greatest hopes, then prayer might be the most important thing we can do. Too often we allow ourselves to divorce others' needs from our hopes, and then the needs of others become allied with our fears.
This is one reason why I respond to the news each day with prayer. Sometimes my prayers are simply Kyrie eleison, "Lord, have mercy." Because sometimes that's all I've got when my heart and mind are overwhelmed. But if that's all I've got, then it will be my widow's mite, and I'll give it. By the way, this has the added effect of making me worry less without taking away my desire to act for goodness and justice.
(My friend Anna Madsen has a short, funny, and helpful piece about just that, by the way. Check it out here.)
All of this was inspired by a moving Facebook post by an alumnus of my college, Caleb Rupert. Caleb is a thoughtful and creative man, and though I don't know him well, he strikes me as a good egg and as someone who wants to do the best he can in this life. Here's what he shared on his page:
I'm standing at the bus stop and on the corner is a homeless woman. A kind looking black gentleman is walking by and nearly walks past her to beak the red-hand count down, 5, 4, 3....The gentleman stops, and turns to the homeless woman. He then falls to his knees and says a short prayer; I cannot hear the words, I'm too far away. As he finishes, she looks up and smiles at him. He smiles back and crosses the street. This gentleman gave up an entire two signals to acknowledge this woman through prayer. Though I do not believe that prayer will be heard by any entity other than the person praying and those around them, this does not discount the power, and importance, of acknowledgement of something as wicked as homelessness. A challenge in which so many of us like to ignore or pretend is non-existence, or worse, pretend this challenge is not as harsh and hard as it is. Regardless of my views of the validity of religion, I cannot ignore the importance of it being an entity which can cause those that follow, truly follow, not just "Sunday believers," but those that acknowledge the importance that every prophet and god-son has preached, which is to care for those that suffer and those that struggle. This gentleman, through his beliefs, gave this woman a smile, and the knowledge that when she goes to bed at night, someone is thinking about her and cares about her well being enough to stop and give his God, which he truly devotes himself to, a mention of her. In the end, regardless of a beliefs validity, what I believe is most important is relieving the pain of those that suffer and always remember that there is always someone who hurts more than you and your acknowledgement is the thing that can save them, even for a brief second, relief from that pain. (Emphasis added)Caleb's words remind me of Thoreau's, and of Dennett's, and of Jesus's. Yeah, you read that right. Because all four of them are concerned with making sure that whatever we do, we act on what we believe, and that we act in a way that tries to make others' lives better.
I asked Caleb if I could share his words here. His reply is just as good as his original post. He said I could post his words, provided I include some links to local food shelves, soup kitchens, and homeless shelters. I love that.
So I will ask that if you share this post, you do the same thing by posting a link to at least one organization in *your* community that helps the homeless. In that way, let us make our prayers effective to the best of our ability, and may they rise to whatever heaven may be.
Here are my links for Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Please consider volunteering your time, giving your money, and remembering them and the people they serve in your prayers. And as you do so, may your prayers grow feet, and begin to change the world.
The Banquet
Union Gospel Mission
St Francis House
∞
Dave Tabler has posted an excerpt from my new book (co-authored with Matthew Dickerson), Downstream, on his site, AppalachianHistory.net.
The passage is about the history of the Tellico River in eastern Tennessee. The Tellico was devastated a century ago by commercial logging. Attempts to restore the habitat and the indigenous wildlife have met with mixed results. The river still holds trout, but they are mostly western rainbow trout, not native brook trout. The rainbows, which are not native to the east coast or the Appalachians are simply easier to breed, which is what the state wants. Fish that are easy to breed are easy to stock, and stocked fish generate income.
You can read the passage here, and you can find the book here.
*****
I'm particularly happy with the photo here, because it's a photo of a free brook trout, one that is not attached to anyone's line, swimming away from me. It's hard to get such shots, but free-swimming brook trout really make me happy.
From My New Book: Brook Trout In The Tellico River
 |
| Brook trout |
The passage is about the history of the Tellico River in eastern Tennessee. The Tellico was devastated a century ago by commercial logging. Attempts to restore the habitat and the indigenous wildlife have met with mixed results. The river still holds trout, but they are mostly western rainbow trout, not native brook trout. The rainbows, which are not native to the east coast or the Appalachians are simply easier to breed, which is what the state wants. Fish that are easy to breed are easy to stock, and stocked fish generate income.
You can read the passage here, and you can find the book here.
*****
I'm particularly happy with the photo here, because it's a photo of a free brook trout, one that is not attached to anyone's line, swimming away from me. It's hard to get such shots, but free-swimming brook trout really make me happy.
∞
Why Does A Philosophy Professor Write About Trout?
My most recent book, Downstream, is about brook trout. People sometimes wonder: why on earth would a professor of philosophy and classics write about such things? Surely I should be writing about metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, right?
To this question I have three brief replies, which I'll say more about later.
The first is that this book really is about those things, even if it won't appear to be so at first blush.
The second is that in fact, I think more philosophers should turn our attention to the matter of lived experience, to our technology, to our tools, and to our ways of knowing the world. It's not enough to know things about the world; we ought to ask just how we know the things we know, and how our tools and our very modes of life and habits affect that knowledge. And everything that hangs on that knowledge.
And for my third brief reply, I turn to Edward Mooney, who, in his introduction to Henry Bugbee's beautiful book, The Inward Morning, recalls a question Martin Heidegger asked Bugbee in August of 1955: “What occasion prompts philosophical reflection?”
Mooney writes that no doubt Heidegger “anticipated a flat American response. Yet he found his question returned in a Socratic reversal. Bugbee simply asked, echoing a Basho haiku, 'Could the sound of a fish leaping at a fly at dawn suffice?'”
To this question I have three brief replies, which I'll say more about later.
The first is that this book really is about those things, even if it won't appear to be so at first blush.
The second is that in fact, I think more philosophers should turn our attention to the matter of lived experience, to our technology, to our tools, and to our ways of knowing the world. It's not enough to know things about the world; we ought to ask just how we know the things we know, and how our tools and our very modes of life and habits affect that knowledge. And everything that hangs on that knowledge.
And for my third brief reply, I turn to Edward Mooney, who, in his introduction to Henry Bugbee's beautiful book, The Inward Morning, recalls a question Martin Heidegger asked Bugbee in August of 1955: “What occasion prompts philosophical reflection?”
Mooney writes that no doubt Heidegger “anticipated a flat American response. Yet he found his question returned in a Socratic reversal. Bugbee simply asked, echoing a Basho haiku, 'Could the sound of a fish leaping at a fly at dawn suffice?'”
 |
| A rainbow trout in the tail of a pool in Wyoming's Shell Creek, July 2014. The resolution is not great because I took this shot from about a hundred feet up, on a cliff looking down into the pool below. This was one of three rainbows swimming in the slack water at the tail of a pool below a waterfall, hunting for food. If you're curious: shot with a Nikon D3100 and a Tamron AF 18-270mm lens. It was an evening shot, so ISO 2500, lens at its full 270mm reach, f/6.3, 1/125. |
*****
(Quotations taken from Mooney’s introduction to
Bugbee’s The Inward Morning, (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1999)
pp. xi-xii.