My idea to start a new page seems to be working since the weblog opens to the current place immediately. I have been reading Neil de Grasse Tyson's interesting book entitled Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Then, in a hurry, I fell down walking down the hall very early in the morning, for me, because I heard Schuster bark and thought he was outside wanting in. The drugs for this and that make me a bit dizzy sometimes in the first hour of arising, especially when I get up in a hurry and try to walk. In this case I have no idea what happened. It was like the car accident. One moment I'm up and fine; the next moment I'm flat on the ground or floor. Gravity! If I haven't hurt myself and can stumble to my feet, the consequence, sometimes, if anyone is nearby, is Levity.
Gravity keeps everything in its place but it's a demon to mess with. I enjoy Tyson's book though I do not understand certain aspects very well. Neutrons, electrons, protons etc., that whole subatomic world is incomprehensible to me. I've watched TV shows dealing with these items, seen the charts and diagrams, and these elements, so to speak, are a fascinating mystery. I know about quarks, up and down, strange and charmed, top and bottom, but I don't really get it. I even know about the Large Hadron Collider, find it fascinating, but understand virtually nothing. Tyson, in the first chapter, describes the creation of the universe from the perspective of the astrophysicist wherein we read at one point, "a millionth of a second has passed since the beginning." How on earth do you understand a millionth of a second? I get it that things were happening very rapidly then, but still. A millionth of a second has undoubtedly passed a million times in the writing of this sentence. It is good to know that the astrophysicists know, understand, and can describe these aspects of our material origins, but it only increases my sense of mystery and wonder. It seems the world of matter is finally as intangible as the world of spirit, though in each understanding of reality, there is the delightful tangible. Our bodies in the world of matter are obviously tangible. The real intangible there involves how and what we really mean as persons. Our faces and gestures, etc., reveal that inner world of ourselves, but still, our minds are grounded in our flesh and blood, depend upon it, but at least the mind feels intangible from where I am sitting.
On the other hand, I also just finished a very exciting book by Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, called, "In the Beginning: a Catholic Understanding of the Creation and Fall," a theological counterpart to Tyson's "account of creation." I have a number of Ratzinger's books and find them all illuminating. Unlike Pope Francis, I think, Ratzinger is a real theologian, and his book of four homilies on the creation and fall is no exception. After quoting Genesis 1:1-19, Ratzinger begins, "These words, with which Holy Scripture begins, always have the effect on me of the solemn tolling of a great old bell, which stirs the heart from afar with its beauty and dignity and gives it an inkling of the mystery of eternity." His intellect and imagination are, I find, exciting to experience in his books, as that first sentence may indicate.
Ratzinger is, however, also aware of the scientist's understanding of "creation" and immediately addresses that perspective in the second paragraph, "Yet these words [from Genesis] give rise to a certain conflict. They are beautiful and familiar, but are they also true?" The way the theologian goes about dealing with the truth of the Genesis account is exciting and brilliant, for he is quite aware that the usual explanations are not satisfactory in light of the "truth" science seems to present. My frustration is that I can't remember all that he says. My mind simply will not hold onto explanations and ideas the way it used to and that is frustrating. It does, however, lead me to reread texts like this that have "felt truth" about them. In other words what we lost from the Renaissance to the modern world is the fragmented sensibility. It is the world of Gulliver's Houyhnhnms and Yahoos. Our reason and our emotional responses are sundered, as with Prufrock's "you and I." We want the beauty of romantic love to be true as we experience it, the longing, the fulfillment, the delight of the touch, but reason tells us it cannot be, reality is not like that. The poets lied. The universe is empty and meaningless. Read "Dover Beach," eh? Or Philip Larkin, perhaps.
But the real theologian knows it isn't empty and meaningless or a trick played by Christian commentators to make the faith meaningful when the world knows it isn't true. Early on we get a hint of the perspective at work here: "Rather, all of this (the world as we experience it) comes from one power, from God's eternal Reason, which became--in the Word--the power of creation. " With Benedict XVI, I have been jumping around in my reading. I finished the book on creation, the homilies, and immediately started rereading. It is even better the second time. But I also have a book on my kindle by him called God Is Near Us. Oh my. The book is primarily about the Eucharist, and while I affirm the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Amen, I say at each Saturday evening Mass, the incomprehensiblity of it is or was always there too. In God Is Near Us, the title phrase comes from an OT passage in Deuteronomy (4:7; the bad thing about having all one's books on kindle is that you can't check a reference without leaving your text; well I can't; I have lost things! But I will check later.). If we touch the intangible spirit within us through our bodies, so I believe, in the world of what Benedict calls the sphere of Resurrection, we touch the intangible in the Eucharist, of course. The delight is, however, Benedict has a chapter in the book dealing with the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The chapter is good, clear and understandable. For the first time in my life I believe, not only in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist but I begin to understand the mystery. I will always depend on my Faith to make my Eucharistic affirmation, "Amen," but now my Reason has also been given a firmer role to play, so to speak. With the Psalmist, I could dance and sing!
Faith brought me to the Catholic Church, which I love in spite of its human imperfections; through the lens of Faith I understand that the members of the Church constitute the Body of Christ; regardless of our social and cultural position, in the Church we are all one. Much of my understanding there is grounded in St. Augustine's City of God, where people are really defined by their loves: love of God, love of self. One may be a formal member of the Church but love self rather than God, as history reveals all too clearly: evil priests, evil popes, evil kings, evil teachers. Only God knows the human heart. Our oneness though is defined by the Eucharist: one bread, one body.
In any case, Emeritus Pope (goodness) Benedict provides a brilliant explanation of the meaning of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Unlike Tyson's book, good as it is in its discipline, aiming at the heart of our secular culture, "for people in a hurry," but leaving me like Eliot's Hollow Men afterwards, hollow and stuffed, "headpiece filled with straw," Benedict's book leaves me full and desiring more, in effect, desiring the taste of the Eucharist where real meaning resides. One significant difference between perspectives here is that in the Eucharist we experience meaning, love, that is given to us by God: Christ, the Incarnation, the Cross, the Resurrection, the gift of the Eucharist. We hold out our hands or open our mouths to receive the gift. Then we can respond to Christ in love, but there should be nothing hurried about the experience for the recipient.
I love the stars and have watched the planets move all my life. But knowing everything there is to know about them would still lead to a terrifying emptiness. "Here we go round the prickly pear/at 5 o'clock in the morning." In Eliot's poem it becomes clear to me that the "This" in "this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper," points back to the speakers' attempt to say the Lord's Prayer. I think the hollow men are in a church; thus they hear the prayer and try to respond. The reason they can't finish the prayer is the absence of the Holy Spirit or the absence of the gift of Faith, which they haven't accepted. Thus they are stuck on the wrong side of the river, in the poem, having gotten themselves as far as they can go on their own regarding their terrifying emptiness. Down the line for Eliot, Ash Wednesday, a wonderful poem, is coming. The conversion will takeplace.
One of the interesting things about these entries is that I never quite know where they are going to go. There is a "social entity" at work here too because when I hit the button, the writing becomes available whether it should or not. Thus this writer is always aware that sooner or later there may be an audience. Scary. Having reread this entry for about the fifth time, and made changes, I have decided to start something new. I haven't quite finished Tyson but I am on the third homily for the second time in Benedict's book. One satisfies the desire for God; one doesn't really. And I am also halfway through the chapter on the presence of Christ in the Eucharist in God Is Near Us.