'The Tranquilizing Drug of Gradualism'

Revised and redacted from MLK's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

I must make two honest confessions to you, my sisters and brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the pro-life moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the pro-life movement's great stumbling block in this stride toward the protection of life is not the NARAL activist or the Planned Parenthood lobbyist, but the pro-life moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another person's very right to life itself; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who would seem to be constantly telling the endangered unborn child -- as he goes to the execution chamber -- to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber. 

I had also hoped that the pro-life moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for the lives of the unborn. I have just received a letter from a pro-life brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the unborn will receive equal rights eventually, but is it possible that you are in too great a religious hurry? It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.

Where is the Horse and the Rider

or 'Why you see few art-related posts on my page'

"Where is the horse and the rider?

Where is the horn that was blowing?

They have passed like rain on the mountains,

Like wind in the meadow

The days have come down in the West

Behind the hills into shadow..."

Where is the love of beauty? Where is breathtaking art and poignant song, and where are those who will seek them, praise them, cherish them, and show us how to see?

Like the brief, ephemeral art of our generation, they have been abruptly hidden from sight. Rinsed as from the slate -- no tablet of wax bearing the imprint of centuries' wisdom. Rather, the clean slate of a frontier school that started clean one day and started clean again the next.

Just as we are minimalists in ownership, we are minimalists in understanding or in seeking, in knowing and in wishing to know. And so we receive what we desire, we reap what we sow, which is so close now to nothingness. Where is the love of beauty, the devout appraisal of art? It is as it is in our hearts. Do we expect the tiny race of the people of culture to shower us with the Gospel while we wonder whether we are Princess Belle in her green dress or blue, or which Buzzfeed quiz will show us our best virtues?

Can you hear the overwhelming silence of the artists? I can hear the sea ceasing to sing, ceasing to whelm us over with the peace that she has given the imagination and the further peace that the imagination has given her. Did we think the artists would not starve? But they have all starved -- starved from a destruction of beauty in the world, a destruction of real living, of the seemingly invincible subject. The world has died, and art imitates life as life imitates art. Have you seen the imitation of death? I know that I have.

"The everlasting violence of that double passion with which God hates and loves the world" has come upon the artists in their silence. And as much as they have loved her, adorned and graced her with their innumerable lavishments, they wish nothing now but for her destruction, her punishment, her fall from pride into desolation and suffering and noisome darkness and fear. Repentance.

The fuel of the artist is life -- life that breeds more life -- life teeming and bursting at the seams -- life burgeoning unstoppably and never ceasing to unfold into new and eternal glories. Is it any wonder that the artists are silent, or that the lesser imitate death until it takes them.

Here is the demand of beauty: life. What prodigies have we killed, or allowed to die? No more.

The death of society is at hand. Were we more bitter towards the slaughter of our friends, we would have burned the fortresses of darkness and salted the earth, leaving the festering fields of evil forever barren.

We wish to intervene against the Islamic State in the Middle East. This is a just impulse. But, in our haste to tender retribution, do we forget the thousands slaughtered daily at home. Are the lives of countless children less worthy than the preservation of political potency in names: in "Yezidi", in "Christian", in "Shi'ite". Do we wish to save lives? Is that our intent? Or do we wish to save particular lives for particular reasons? Are the unborn not our brothers and sisters, and do they not live next door. Do they not die next door.

Can you justify your willingness to stop the IS against your unwillingness to stop the Abortionist State? Is it easier to fight a tyrant thousands of miles away?

The lauds of the poet fall silent. The artist in anger and desperation hurls his brush. Is there beauty in the world.

Can you justify not -- at the very least -- standing in prayer before the clinic, adjuring those who would be murderers to abandon their course? Rationalize, I beg you. Rationalize. Rationalize a way to avoid preventing murder when power is in your hands. I have dispensed with the arguments. I have had them all. I have heard them all. There is not one left with integrity. The truth cries out like a stone. It will not move.

The poet falls silent. The artist's heart roils and burns, and a black anger rises.

If you would have the soldiers stopped who terrorize in the name of Islam, but you will not place yourself in danger for your brother who perishes at the hands of the mercenary next door, the only judgement left to you is that of coward and liar.

Go out into the world. Go out. You have been sent out to bring the good news. The good news begins with the gospel of life. You must protect life, from conception to natural death. If you have not done this basic duty, this basic act for the ongoing creation of society, if you watch society crumble -- you too will fall with it.

Go out into the streets and pray, and beg God for mercy. I too will go with you. Come alive, and reject the systematic destruction of the human person. Overthrow the deathly edifice. This is our duty. It is undeniable. It is irrefutable. It is the supreme test of faith in our time -- the supreme evil, that which requires the most devout action in opposition.

If you wish to have good things, you must give, and you must first give life.

Where is the horse and the rider?

The beauty of the warrior lies in that which he defends.

II. Trois Couleurs: Rouge

Valentine, played by Irene Jacob, is beautiful, vivacious, passionate, assertive. We want to sympathize with her. Her personality is sweetened by a certain scent of innocence that causes us to desire identification with her, to simultaneously fall in love with her.

Indeed, her supreme beauty is central to this part of Kieslowski's trilogy.

A very important moment arrives, however, in the studio where she is photographed as a model. We see her sitting there, artificial wind blowing her wet hair about her face. And at the word from the photographer -- "triste" -- her beauty is transformed by an unutterable sorrow.

Although Valentine has suffered -- her brother a heroin addict, her mother an unforgiven adulteress -- we are given the sense that she has called forth this emotion from outside -- it is borrowed, learned, used for theatrics, but perhaps without completely genuine content.

And in rushes forcefully another theme of the film: external, supernatural movements that intimately interact with the willed movements of the film's characters. An overarching wellspring of meaning and purpose -- a silent smiling whisper in which Valentine, Auguste, and the old judge participate without creating.

We humans can name sorrow, joy, fear, but we cannot know them in their full intensity at any given moment. We can, however, experience little hints of that memory of humanity, what some call the historical memory or collective memory. In my mind, this refers to God, who after all is one of us in a way none of us can be. He is more human than we are, and he is the origin of every sense. Because of this, I think, we have access to feelings that are not our own, access to at least an awareness of the depth of human feeling, desire -- due to our necessary and constant connection with him: complete dependence, our drawing of life from him. We draw everything from him.

Such a beauty illustrated in this film. The old judge reflects upon his life, his decline in sourness and cynicism grown from an experience of betrayal. And who grants him knowledge of this?

As a voyeur, he seeks knowledge to which he has no right. But none of it grants him any insight into his own condition. It is precisely through knowledge gratis that he is able to understand himself, and to love once more.

The beauty and love of the hint. God is a life-hack. I beseech you to give yourself to these films. God love you.

Irene Jacob on Rouge and Kieslowski:

The Lack of Knowledge in an Information Saturated World

How far we have come since Plato worried that the art of writing would compromise knowledge and men would grow forgetful of what they recorded outside of their own mind. Plato’s Socrates warns, in Phaedrus, through the legend of the Egyptian god/king Theuth,

If men learn this [writing], it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written. . . . And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance; for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing; and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.

The ancient Greeks attributed a sacred status to memory; it is an ability unique to man that burns alongside the flame of reason. Even more than a companion to reason, memory provides the essential building blocks of reason, the ability to not only differentiate me from you, cat from dog, idea from idea, but also to relate each of those things in seemingly unrelated ways.

Fast-forward a couple thousand years since Plato worried and find that his concern only scratches the surface of our situation. Today, we have millions of books that sit neatly on shelves containing facts and fragments of information readily accessible whenever one needs. One rarely ever decides that he needs a book, however, since he has the all mighty Google* readily available in just about any location, allowing him access to the vast networks of recorded information that is the Internet. The laboring of the mind is a demand of times past. The saddening fact that follows is that no life comes forth from man without labor.

In our effort to make education a basic human right, we have debased knowledge by confusing it with facts and information. We commonly approach knowledge as just one of many things to be consumed, purchased, traded, sold. We are men who “seem to know much, while for the most part [knowing nothing].” We blindly believe that we have “conquered” knowledge; that we control it; that it sits still at our command and must respond to our beck and call. We are filled “with the conceit of wisdom.” As such, we exist in a prison far worse than any physical malady or abuse.

Knowledge does not exist in a book, in a file, on a computer, or, worse yet, in a database. One does not capture it, copy it, print it, save it for later. Knowledge arises through the interplay of the human and the divine. It is a gift in which we partake. One Thomas has said that truth is the mind conformed to reality. Knowledge, then, is not “out there” somewhere, waiting to be discovered and put to work; rather, it is an active participation in reality. Memory provides the foundation for that participation in reality, allowing us the pleasure of laboring to see the whole.

*What can my mind do that Google can’t? You type the word “rose” into Google and you’ll probably get some search results telling you all about roses, much more, in fact, than I could ever tell you. The moment I typed the word “rose” above, I saw one, I could almost smell it, I remembered times I have given roses and the joy in doing so. I saw them in a hospital, on a bedside table where someone I loved was sick and I felt the pain and sorrow of loss. I remembered my grandmother, her rose garden and the time I spent weeding and pruning. I thought of Poison and their ballad “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” which led me to think of the crown of thorns placed on Jesus’ head. As you can see, the human mind is far more expansive than any reference system.