I hate to post on top of my own post, but I have an urgent question. I can't explain why it is urgent, but it is. If anyone has any information relevant to this question, please turn it over, honestly, without any hedging. The question: Have there been any well-known Christians, especially Catholics (like saints or popes or theologians or Doctors of the Church) who eventually went insane, á la Nietzsche at the end of his life? (I couldn't find an answer on Google.)

Do you wash your clothes so religiously, week after week, because they are truly dirty, or only because you wish to smell sweet and fragrant and appear bright and clean to your neighbor?

JMK

"Arriving in Paris always causes me pain, even when I have been away for only a short while.  It is a city which I never fail to approach with expectation and leave with disappointment.  There is a question which only I can ask and which only Paris can answer; but this question is something which I have never yet been able to formulate.  Certain things indeed I have learnt here: for instance, that my happiness has a sad face, so sad that for years I took it for my unhappiness and drove it away.  But Paris remains for me still an unresolved harmony.  It is the only city which I can personify.  London I know too well, and the others I do not love enough.  Paris I encounter, but as one encounters a loved one, in the end and dumbly, and can scarcely speak a word.  Alors, Paris, qu'est-ce que tu dis, toi?  Paris, dis-moi ce que j'aime.  But there is no reply, only the sad echo from crumbling walls, Paris."
- Under the Net

Dans le Bureau
I teeter on the edge of an abyss
My worlds, my words, are telling and are true
Quick-painted, light, and tinged with bitter bliss
Wrapped coils circle round my self and you -

You strangely stir, and file for disaster
Beyond the brink of bright bespattered blue
Beyond the known, approach the throne, my Master
Creating ken from what we thought was through.

Within my box I write, in sudden snatches -
They'll catch me not; excelling as I hide
The buried flame, I'll tame,
And tame it faster,
For all the hurts that chink away my pride.
(What's that, inside?)

Bestride the subtle edge, I barely balance
Slight shift could send me swift into the brink

This tight, taut line is all that's mine -
But I was made to dance, and not to sink.

(What then, you think?)

- LC

I am currently reading a book called Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by the religion correspondent for NPR, Barbara Bradley Hagerty. It's pretty interesting, almost like a modern update to William James now that a hundred years of science have passed. (And, in fact, the author explicitly acknowledges James as her forerunner.) She looks at all sorts of studies that have been done on the border of science and spirituality: for instance, what do brain scanners tell us about the meditation of Buddhist monks and Carmelite nuns, what do psychedelic drugs really do to your brain and how is it similar to mystical experience, can people be healed from sickness simply by praying, etc.

I am not yet finished with the book, but it seems that in the last analysis time and time again, just like with William James, science can give no real answer as to whether mystical experience or prayer or God are real or just a delusion. For instance, when someone takes LSD and says they had a mystical experience of God, who is to say whether or not it was a "real" mystical experience? Yes, it was caused by certain chemicals in the brain, but the same seems to be true about mystical experiences brought on by prayer, and indeed about all mental phenomena. As we know from Kant, we can't say definitively that a mystical experience was "real," because that implies that we somehow know the true nature of supernatural reality, the noumena of the divine, so that we can compare it to the LSD experience and say "That's not it."

Anyway, the problem with reading a book like this is it can make it very easy to view everything reductionistically. If you can point to chemicals in the brain that accompany certain spiritual experience, you can show that it all proceeds according to physical laws, and thus one might conclude that there is no such thing as spirit, only matter. This is the real question of this post: is it possible for spirituality to coexist with psychology and neuroscience, or do the latter rule out the reality of the former?

This idea came to me while I was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament today at the National Basilica (yeah, I'm so holy): The Eucharist may provide the key to understanding how psychology can coexist with spirituality. We tend to think that something is either matter or spirit—but why not both? The Eucharist is said to be something that is both divine and material—the union of physical and spiritual. "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us." Why might our minds/bodies not be the same way? I.e., both soul and body at the same time. (This can apply to all else in the world, too—all matter can be conceived as the stuff of God, in a way.) The only difference here is that with God, the Word is becoming flesh—it is an incarnation—a reaching down—whereas for us and our souls, it is a groping upward—a divinization—the flesh becoming Word, if you will. This makes me think of Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments, on "the teacher" and "the learner." In us, especially within our brains, the matter of the universe is striving to become spirit. As Carl Sagan once said, "We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." This also reminds me of the part in Paradise Lost when one of the angels is telling Adam how spiritual things grow out of the baser matter of the earth, like a plant rising from the dirt into a stalk and leaves and then flowering and bearing fruit, and how mankind might one day grow into a more clarified, etherized existence, like that of the angels.

-JMK

Last week, after rejecting another one of my articles (it ain't easy to get published around here, folks, even if you're already on staff), my editor gave me a helpful article with tips on writing. Most of it was fairly standard journalistic fare - "periods always do the job better than semicolons," "you lose half your readers every time they have to turn the page," etc. - but one piece of advice caught my attention and I  haven't been able to stop thinking about it ever since.

"Waiting for le mot juste is silly," the piece read. "Journalists aren't Flaubert. He wrote for the ages. Journalists write for today, this week, or this month. The stuff is perishable."

This might be silly, but that paragraph, in a small way, broke my heart. I know I'm not the next Flaubert, or even the next Nicholas Sparks (God forbid). But somewhere deep down in my literary heart, I like the idea that people will read what I've written long after I wrote it. I can't help thinking that what I write will last. If it won't, then excuse me for asking, but why bother writing it? And in a small way, that paragraph even made me wonder, am I really meant to be a journalist? Writing for the moment seems pointless, while laboring over the Great American Novel strikes me as a fine use of my time. I guess what I'm really asking is, can you be a journalist and still wait for le mot juste? Still write for the ages? Still, in even the smallest of ways, write things that will last?

- Tess

This weekend, I visited our erstwhile home for the first time since graduation.  I'd been to South Bend over the summer, but this weekend I stepped on campus for the first time since May.

What can I say?  I ate a KofC steak sandwich, I watched a satisfying football win in the stadium, I closed the Backer at 3.  I re-united with a few friends (here's looking at you, Katie S.), I visited the grotto, I drank and ate delicious Greek food at Ari's - no longer Alexander's - Grill (there is a picture of us on the wall).  I read the Viewpoint in the Observer (hey, I had a few hours to kill).  I stayed in Irish Crossings and walked past Adam's house, aka "the PLS Clubhouse".  I strolled by Stonehenge and lay in the grass on South Quad.  I looked up at the Main Building and remembered that last silly night when we finally walked up its steps.  I basked under a flawless blue sky.  I was home, almost.

What made Notre Dame, Notre Dame?  You.  If you are reading this, it was you.  Campus felt half-empty, though full of people, as I wandered its pathways knowing that you were no longer there.  Quomodo sedet solo civitas.  Our long talks, late-night studying and laughter -- these glad ghosts came lilting back to me.  A phrase returned to me: "Quick now, here, now, always--"

We had our now; and henceforth, like so many alumni before us, we are always.  So long as any one of us is there, to re-capture for a moment those inter-woven remembrances, we all are.  You were with me this weekend, as I lay on South Quad in the sun. 

Do you share this sense?  No?  Find your PLS yearbook on the shelf, or under your bed.  Dust it off.  Read briefly.  Dwell on that last page, those last lines; "The world was all before them."  Then close your eyes.  Whisper with me, "Quick now, here, now, always—".  You will know.

-LC

"Our notion of truth is the first sacrifice we make in life." -Anonymous

Thoughts?

-Joey

Granted I'm not a PLS major, but I am in fact a good friend of a PLS major that is a part of this group,  Cornelius Rogers.  We've talked now and then about life stuff, and since it so happens that PLS majors are huge fans of life stuff, I thought maybe I'd share a piece of my noggin with y'all.  In order to get my point across, I first must paint a picture of what my life is like on a normal work day.  I was a Biological Sciences major at ND, and I am now working in a research laboratory at IUPUI near downtown Indianapolis.  I am my boss's only employee, and unless I leave the lab, I am the only person I see for 8 hours.  If I am lucky, I will happen to be eating lunch at the same time as another worker on my floor.  Perhaps there are only two other workers on my floor that actually both a) bring their lunch, and b) decide they would like to eat said lunch in the break room on any given day.  So, one could posit that my work life is lonely.  I would comment that my work life is focused.

 Anyway, when I do venture out into the outside world on a normal work day, using IUPUI's shuttle buses to get to and from the main part of campus, I find that my fellow passengers, young and old, are absorbed in their connections to the rest of the world.  These connections in general include talking on the phone, surfing the web, texting, emailing, or simply listening to music.    I am not starving to talk to people, but it would be nice to have a natural person-to-person conversation, something which I rarely find on those shuttle rides.  These trips are only one example of what is increasingly common in our "connected" culture:  a complete lack of connection to others in the physical sense of the word.  I may not feel lonely on these rides, but I am most definitely alone.  

It is a given that a 3G connection will be what we can use in the coming years to stay connected to friends from college, high school, or even earlier, but try as one might, only a small fragment of what friends in fact are shines through in their communications with you.  Nothing can replace the veritable presence of someone else in your physical location, interacting with you, smiling with you, laughing with you.  An "LOL" from a close friend across the country is great, but the laughter of a true friend in person is freakin' awesome.  As social beings, we are bound to enjoy almost any type of communication we have with others, be it person-to-person or person-to-device-to-telephone-tower-to-device-to-person.  Perhaps there is a relationship between the amount of enjoyment one can derive from a conversation and the amount of reality involved in that conversation.  I would argue that there is.  It's kind of like the missing you still feel after a phone conversation with a distant friend.  Because they are there, and you are here, a key component of human interaction is lost.  It's the reason why even the strongest romantic relationships are tested when the two partners are at a distance.  Each member of the relationship really isn't receiving all that the other member can offer, and something is again missing.  

So, my message is this.  If you enjoy fulfilling, genuine interaction with other human beings, you will not find it on the internet.  It may in fact be difficult to find friends in graduate life as genuine and awesome as the ones you found at Our Lady's University, but this should not stop you from seeking out new friends to confide in.  The connections you have from the past should only help you to branch out and find others for your future.

Nathan Hammes

*Regardless of its depth, I must comment that this communication is entirely superficial.

             Songbird of our generation, Rebecca Black once coined our generation’s excitement in two words, “It’s Friday!” Alright maybe three or four if you repeat the Fridays. As much as I despise that song, it does capture something vital about our generation – excitement at the weekend. After a five day work week, you are finally ready to celebrate. Now comes the important question, how will you choose to celebrate?

            Odds are that if you are like most twenty-somethings in America, your weekend will look something like this. The two main ingredients required are alcohol and a drinking establishment (either club or bar will suffice). So when do you go out to said drinking establishment? Shortly after dinner perhaps? If you have worked so hard, wouldn’t you want to celebrate as early as possible? No, my friend. The unwritten ten commandments of social conduct clearly state “Thou shalt not go out to a club or bar before midnight on the weekends.” Ironically, the Friday that was so great is not technically a night for going out because you must wait for it to be Saturday morning.

            So if you cannot head out to the clubs how do you spend your time before then? Why the ever-illustrious “pre-gaming” of course! Time is typically spent consuming alcohol and listening to the same top 40 hits that one will hear at a club/bar and maybe even dancing. One might ask if you are drinking and listening to the same music what makes the club/bar so much better? Ay there’s the rub of this pensees. Why go out? What is so great about it? What can be gained from such an experience?

            Is it the company of stout-hearted fellows? Nope. If you go out, you stick with your group and interact with no one else, especially if you are a woman. If any guy attempts to initiate conversation with said women, he is immediately labeled as a “creeper,” a status somewhere between the untouchable caste in India and the uncool table in the high school cafeteria. No one goes out to meet new people or make new friends.

            Is it something about the establishment itself? What do they provide that so many young Americans treat it like a Mecca, travelling their en masse every weekend? Long lines to filthy bathrooms? No. Music? Mayhaps. Odds are it is the same music you can hear on any top 40 radio station. You might get lucky with a live band, but most girls I know who go out care not for a group of talented musicians and would prefer to hear Lady Gaga for the 18th time that week than watch a display of musical virtuoso. (My apologies to the fair sex in PLS for that potshot, but I find it a very hard thesis to refute)

            So if it is not the friends or the music, that leaves the alcohol. Ah, yes. Take a look at that beer bottle, my friend. What does it say on the side? 4.5% ABV, or rather 4.5% life duller. Our generation’s soma from Brave New World, alcohol temporarily distracts you from the inescapable horror that is everyday life. That five day workweek is hell and now is your chance to escape from it before it begins again on Monday morning. Drink up, me hearties. Dull the pain and laugh heartily at the same anecdotes you’ve already told. It does not matter if the music is so loud that you cannot have a conversation. It would not be a real conversation anyway because you are wearing your Nietzschean mask of profundity. The music is so loud you cannot hear yourself think. Do not think. Do not try to think. Go to sleep. The hell of everyday life will be hear soon. Enjoy your reprieve. Drink in that life duller. As Aldous Huxley said, “one cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.”