Harry Potter and the Gift of Death

A rough draft. I have other things I need to be doing this morning.

I love, of course, the big, swirly stuff, so I latched onto this recent post at Fr. Jake's place. However, following his link to the original, I already found so much to argue with in the opening paragraph (is there a "collective psyche of the West?" is there even a psyche, much less a collective one? I am too much an existentialist for that.), I've decided to stick with the parts Fr. Jake extracts:

...The modern experience of a radical division between inner and outer--of a subjective, personal, and purposeful consciousness that is paradoxically embedded in and evolved from a world that is intrinsically unconscious, impersonal, and purposeless-is represented historically in our culture in the great division between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In the world view of the modern West, the Enlightenment essentially rules the outer cosmos and the objective world, while the Romantic aspirations of our art and music, our spiritual yearnings, rule the interior world of the modern soul. In the Romantic tradition--represented, for example, by Goethe and Rousseau, Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Beethoven and Holderlin, Emerson and Whitman all the way up to our post-Sixties counterculture--the modern soul found profound spiritual and psychological expression. The Enlightenment tradition, by contrast, represented by Newton and Locke, Voltaire and Hume--and more recently by thinkers such as Bertrand Russell or Karl Popper, the cosmologists Stephen Hawking and Steven Weinberg, or the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins--has been mainly informed by rational-empirical science. In a sense, the modern soul's allegiance is to Romanticism, while the modern mind's allegiance is to the Enlightenment. There is a kind of schizophrenia within the world view that all of us grew up with in the twentieth century. Our spiritual being, our psychology, is contradicted by our cosmology. Our Romanticism is contradicted by our Enlightenment, our inner by our outer. There is no easy congruence between those two radically different world views; yet, to use Faust's term, they are somehow forced to "cohabit within our breast"...

This isn't really a new insight so much as a fairly well presented one (the further idea, that "humankind has entered into the most critical stages of a death - rebirth mystery", is a bit too apocalyptic for my taste. I'm a "wars and rumors of wars" kind of guy; like the poor, the advent of the Great Revelation Which Will Change Everything has always been with us, which means it will never be with us; not, at least, until everything really does change, once and for all). It does highlight the battle between the Enlightenment and Romanticism which is still going on (although I think it rages for reasons entirely different from those Mr. Tarnas cites. It's really a simple matter that neither has entirely run its course; and then there's the issue that neither is truly unique nor original in human thought; which is another reason a revelation is surely not at hand; pace, William Butler.). If nothing else, it presents a nice contrast to a far more interesting view of European (i.e., Western) history and civilization, as examined by Jan Patocka and related by Jacques Derrida. And that, in turn, points up that it's very hard to read the last book of the Harry Potter series and not think that J.K. Rowling has been reading Derrida and thinking about religion and responsibility and mystery:

In the proper sense of the word, religion exists once the secret of the sacred, orgiastic, or demonic mystery has been, if not destroyed, at least integrated, and finally subjected to the sphere of responsibility. The subject of responsibility will be the subject that has managed to make orgiastic or demonic mystery subject to itself; and has done that in order to freely subject itself to the wholly and infinite other that sees without being seen. Religion is responsibility or it is nothing at all. Its history derives its sense entirely from the idea of a passage to responsibility. Such a passage involves traversing or enduring the test by means of which the ethical conscience will be delivered of the demonic, the mystagogic, and the enthusiastic, of the initiatory and the esoteric. In the authentic sense of the word, religion comes into being the moment that the experience of responsibility extracts itself from that form of secrecy called demonic mystery."--pp. 2-3

That is Patocka on European history as a history of Christianity, via Derrida. Patocka's thesis is that religion introduces responsibility to the other into a society subject to "mystery" of the orgiastic and demonic, and is in fact distinguished by subjecting the latter to the duty of responsibility to the other. The "orgiastic," the "demonic," feeds the individual (one might say the "ego," if that can be done without invoking Freud). According to Patocka, says Derrida:

an experience of the sacred as an enthusiasm or a fervor for fusion....has as its effect, and often as its first intention, the removal of responsibility, the loss of the sense or consciousness of responsibility. --p. 1

I would pause right here to note that one of the key themes of the Harry Potter series is responsibility. The Ministry of Magic ("MOM"; I love that acronym!) keeps those with magical powers responsibile for their actions, and wants such persons trained up in the responsible use of their powers. Voldemort, of course, represents the "demonic," even the "orgiastic," use of magic, especially in his abuse of others, stories recounted in the last two volumes of the series. The demonic leads to the "loss of the sense of consciousness of responsibility." If there is anything Voldemort represents and even offers, and which Harry and Dumbledore symbolize the opposition to, it is that. And, of course, as even Dumbledore's story (not fully revealed until the end of HP7) represents, this matter of responsibility is always a matter of a vigil, a vigil that is related to, and made clear by, death. For Dumbledore, this revelation comes with the death of his sister. For Harry, this revelation comes when he learns he is "the boy who lived." Derrida, through Socrates and the Phaedo, connects this to the origins of philosophy, which is the origin of coming to responsibility:

For it is indeed a matter of care, of "keeping-vigil-for," a solicitude for death that constitutes the relation to self of that which, in existence, relates to onseself. For one never reinforces enough the fact that is it not the psyche that is there in the first place and that comes thereafter to be concerned about its death, to keep watch over it, to be the very vigil of its death. No, the soul only distinguishes itself, separates itself, and assembles within itself in the experience of this melete tou thanatou. It is nothing other than this concern for dying as a relation to self and an assembling of self. It only returns to itself, in both senses of assembling itself and waking itself, becoming conscious, in the sense of consciousness of self in general, through this concern for death....For it is thus that the soul separates itself in recalling itself to itself, and so it becomes individualized, interiorized, becomes its very invisibility. And hence it philosophizes from the very beginning. Philosophy isn't something that comes to the soul by accident, for it is nothing other than this vigil over death that watches out for death and watches over death, as if over the very life of the soul. The psyche as life, as breath of life, as pneuma, only appears out of this concerned anticipation of dying.--pp. 14-15

At the end of HP7, Harry is walking out into the Forbidden Forest to face Voldemort, to die at his hands because he knows he is the seventh Horcrux, the penultimate but unintended repository of a piece of Voldemort's tattered soul. It is the supreme irony of the book, crowning the initial irony of Voldemort getting a partial report of the prophecy from Snape, and choosing to make it true by choosing to kill the infant Harry Potter. He sets into motion a chain of events which end in his death 16 years later, but only because of the character of Harry Potter, because of the choices Harry makes. As he walks to his death, Harry takes out the Golden Snitch left him by Dumbledore, holds it to his lips, and whispers: "I am going to die." J.K. Rowling reported that she cried when writing some of the last portion of this book; I can only imagine it was at this scene she did so. Harry is not Abraham, choosing to give the gift of death to another. He is the sacrifice, choosing the gift of death for himself, having seen the deaths of so many friends, among them Tonks, Remus, and Fred Weasley. So now he gives the gift to himself, and to his friends, by giving them his death. But at that moment the vigil becomes "this vigil over death that watches out for death and watches over death, as if over the very life of the soul. The psyche as life, as breath of life, as pneuma, only appears out of this concerned anticipation of dying." And so the family and friends of the orphan appear, to comfort him, to succor him, to assure him that he is doing what must be done, not for his death, but for his life. It is a question of the weight of history, of events in place long before he was born. It is also, and more importantly for Harry, a question of responsibility:

History can be neither a decidable object nor a totality capable of being mastered, precisely because it is tied to responsibility, to faith, and to the gift. To responsibility in the experience of absolute decisions made outside of knowledge or given norms, made therefore through the very ordeal of the undecidable; to religious faith through a form of involvement with the other that is a venture into absolute risk, beyond knowledge and certainty; to the gift and to the gift of death that puts me in relation with the transcendence of the other, with God, as selfless goodness, and that gives me what it gives me through a new experience of death. Responsibility and faith go together, however paradoxical that might see to some, and both should, in the same movement, exceed mastery and knowledge. The gift of death would be this marriage of responsibility and faith. History depends on such an excessive beginning."--p. 5

Harry displays both responsibility and faith. It is his loyalty to Dumbledore that calls Fawkes to the Chamber of Secrets. His loyalty to Dumbledore remains unshattered, although shaken, in the Order of the Phoenix, and although what he learns about Dumbledore in HP7 disturbs his quiet honoring of his mentor, his responsibility to the charge given him remains unyielding. He declares himself Dumbledore's man in HP6, and reaffirms that position in HP7, when Dumbledore is gone. This faith, and the responsibility he undertakes because of it (the lone quest for the remaining Horcruxes, without revealing the secret of them to anyone who might help), exceeds both mastery and knowledge, the two arenas Dumbledore and Voldemort both lay claim to (and it consumes the latter, and sorely tempts the former, who in the end cannot resist the temptation and so is swept from the field before his time). And here again, having accepted responsibility and acted on faith (which should be understood as trust, not as belief), Harry is able to use the Resurrection Stone not to recall the dead from their peace (Dumbledore's error, as he freely admits to Harry), but to draw himself nearer to them, even as he approaches them and accepts their realm, readies himself to exchange his world for whatever their's offers. He is ready, too, to die, not in the place of the others, but in order to give them "a little longer to live:"

I can give the other everything except immortality, except this dying for her to the extent of dying in place of her and so freeing her from her own death. I can die for the other in a situation where my death gives him a little longer to live, I can save someone by throwing myself in the water or fire in order to temporary snatch him from the jaws of death, I can give her my heart in the literal or figurative sense in order to assure her of a certain longevity. But I cannot die in her place, I cannot give her my life in exchange for her death. Only a mortal can die, as we said earlier. That should now be adjusted to read: and that mortal can only give what is mortal since he can give everything except immortality, everything except salvation as immortality.--p. 43

The error, the sin, the evil, of course, of Voldemort: he is all too willing to let anyone and everyone die in his place, to bring their deaths so he can achieve immortality, or something near it.

In order to put oneself to death, to give oneself death in the sense that every relation to death is an interpretive apprehension and a representative approach to death, death must be taken upon onself. One has to give it to oneself by taking it upon oneself, for it can only be mine, alone, irreplacably. That is so even if, as we just said, death can neither be taken nor given. But the idea of being neither taken nor given relates from or to the other, and that is indeed why one can give it to oneself only by taking it upon oneself.--p. 45

Voldemort, of course, only gives deaths to others; he cannot give the gift of death, because he cannot first take it upon himself. In this way Harry is, again the "anti-Voldemort," but not because he is more powerful than Voldemort. Dumbledore has already shown, in HP6, that he is far more skilled a wizard than Voldemort. Dumbledore not only "casually" battles Voldemort (Harry notes that Dumbldedore seems no more concerned than if he was simply strolling through the lobby of the Ministry of Magic), he unravels almost all of Voldemort's secrets, and the ones he doesn't uncover, Harry and Ron and Hermione do. It is power, of course, which finally undoes Dumbledore, just as it threatened to do when he fought Grundewald and his sister was killed. That grief never leaves him, and finally undoes him when he tries to use the cursed ring for his own end (to disturb the dead, as he later puts it). Voldemort, in the end, is not undone by power, which he always fears, but by powerlessness, the one thing he cannot battle. There is no power without resistance, and when Harry offers himself unresistingly to Voldemort, it is Voldemort who, in that very instant and thereafter, because of Harry's choices and Harry's actions, loses the power of life and death. Voldemort fails because he refuses to ever take responsibility (Remorse is the one thing that would cure the soul of a wizard who kills with an Unforgiveable Curse. What is remorse except accepting responsibility?). Voldemort and Bellatrix represent the demonic, the orgiastic; it is all they pursue and all they desire. In the end, it is their undoing.

The concept of responsibility is one of those strange concepts that give food for thought without giving themselves over to thematization.....This paradoxical concept also has the structure of a type of secret--what is called, in the code of certain religious pratices, mystery....The exercise of responsibility seems to leave no choice but this one, however uncomfortable it may be, of paradox, heresy, and secrecy. More serious still, it must always run the risk of conversion and apostasy; there is no responsibility without a dissident and inventive rupture with respect to tradition, authority, orthodoxy, rule, or doctrine.--p. 27

The power of powerlessness. How powerful is Harry Potter, at any point in the stories? He is a gifted Seeker, but even that doesn't guarantee his team wins every Quidditch match. He is not as knowleadgeable as Hermione, nor as savvy as Ron. He needs his friends, and in the end it is his friends in Hogwarts who inspire him to do what must be done; it is their gift of death, taken upon themselves, that shows him he must give it to himself by taking it upon himself. But throughout the stories it is his "dissident and inventive rupture with respect to tradition, authority, orthodoxy, rule, or doctrine" which leads him to success, which creates the responsibility he finally fulfills by the most creative rupture of all: making a willing sacrifice of himself for his friends. Derrida quotes Patocka on what could be almost said directly on this point:

Responsible life itself was conceived in that event [The Christian reversal of what Patocka calls "the social problem of the Roman Empire...consolidated on the grounds mad possible by the Platonic conception of the soul, a soul which could have a relationship to the transcendent Platonic "Good" through the orgiastic or demonic. Christianity reverses this through responsibility] as the gift of something that, in the end, while having the characteristics of the Good, also presented the traits of something inaccessible to which man is forever enslaved--the traits of a mystery that has the last word. Christianity understands the good in a different way from Plato, as goodness that is forgetful of itself and as love (in no way orgiastic) that denies itself.==p. 30

It isn't that Harry is a Christ figure by making this sacrifice; it is merely that he is a Christian.

All quotes from Jacques Derrida, The Gift of Death, tr. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1995).

One size always fits all

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio....

Philosophy, Roy Scranton (honesty compels me to note, a Ph.D. candidate in English; all English majors think they are philosophers....) says, is about learning to die.  It is an idea central to his essay at NYT, which ends with these words:

The biggest problem climate change poses isn’t how the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, or how we should put up sea walls to protect Alphabet City, or when we should evacuate Hoboken. It won’t be addressed by buying a Prius, signing a treaty, or turning off the air-conditioning. The biggest problem we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront this problem, and the sooner we realize there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the hard work of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality.

The choice is a clear one. We can continue acting as if tomorrow will be just like yesterday, growing less and less prepared for each new disaster as it comes, and more and more desperately invested in a life we can’t sustain. Or we can learn to see each day as the death of what came before, freeing ourselves to deal with whatever problems the present offers without attachment or fear.

If we want to learn to live in the Anthropocene, we must first learn how to die.

Yes, we're all going to die, because we can't go on living like we have.  Which apparently means all of America will be Baghdad after the U.S. invasion, but frozen there in amber, in perpetuity, hell without end, Amen.

So get used to it.

First:  if philosophy is about learning how to die, I'll take theology, thanks.  Second, if philosophy is about learning how to die, then dying is some form of living, and again, I'll still take theology, thanks. 

Historian Philippe Ariès reminds us that death was a part of life. Medieval and early modern romances, chronicles and memoirs speak with one voice: when death knocked, the door was opened and the visitor was welcomed in remarkably similar ways.

Organization was essential. The dying person was responsible for the proper execution of his final exit. The doctor's principal task was not to delay death, but to guarantee that it was welcomed properly. And, indeed, the doctor wasn't alone. Family and friends gathered for the ceremony and the doctor was simply a face in the crowd. One and all understood their roles and the lesson that was imparted: they, too, would eventually be called.

The intimate relationship between life and death unfolded in unexpected places. The medieval and early modern cemetery was no less public place than the deathbed. For centuries, the activities we associate with the marketplace commonly took place in cemeteries, amongst the tombs and charnel houses. Merchants and scribes, musicians and dancers, jugglers and actors and, gamblers and the like sought to make a living in the company of the dead. When Hamlet clowns about with Yorick's skull, he's exceptional only in the fluency of his language.

By the late eighteenth century, language and attitudes began to change. Public authorities tried to stop profane activities in the newly redefined sacred spaces like the cemetery. At the same time, doctors began to sound the way they do today: the crowd of family and friends around the deathbed, they complained, complicated the job of attending to their patients.

Death thus got away from the dying person; it became the responsibility of others. It is only recently, with the rise of the hospice movement, that we're reminded of the ways in which we formerly responded to death. The recognition of death's finality, the planning for its arrival, the gathering of family and the redefinition of the physician's task: rather than confronting a brave new world, we seem to be returning to a simpler and older world. Ariès called this older understanding "tamed death." According to him, the old attitude in which death was both familiar and near, evoking no great fear or awe, [is in] marked a contrast to ours, where death is so frightful that we dare not utter its name. I do not mean that death had once been wild and [is no longer], I mean, on the contrary, that today it has become wild. And death has, in part, grown wild through the very tools with which medical science tries to domesticate it: an irony that would not be lost on Hamlet's creator.

If today, then, philosophy must be about learning to die, it is only because philosophy has first taught us that we should not die; that death is wild and untamed and terrible.  So now philosophy is about undoing what philosophy has done?  Isn't that like the "hair of the dog" cure for a hangover?

The topic always makes me think of these words from Thomas Merton:

THE cross, with which the ashes are traced upon us, is the sign of Christ's victory over death. The words "Remember that thou art dust and that to dust thou shall return" are not to be taken as the quasi-form of a kind of "sacrament of death" (as if such a thing were possible). It might be good stoicism to receive a mere reminder of our condemnation to die, but it is not Christianity.--Thomas Merton

Christianity is not, in other words, concerned with reconciling us with death.  It never was.  Martyrs didn't commit suicide to be with God; they were faithful in life to the end, knowing they were already with God.  God, as Jesus said quite pointedly, is the God of the living, not the dead.  It is not death, or even the fear of death, that Christianity either teaches or ameliorates; it is life.  The Greek phrase usually translated as "eternal life" is not really so Platonic as that.  It is more correctly rendered:  "life into the ages."

With Merton, I'm not anxious to reduce all of Western philosophy to some form of Stoicism, any more than I can agree with modern Biblical scholarship which wants to root some of Christianity's teachings in Cynicism. No more am I anxious to see human beings in terms of computers as understood by non-computer nerds:  Mr. Scranton's editor plucks out a sentence clearly thought to be insightful, but actually quite pitiful, to the effect that we humans are "hard-wired" to think tomorrow will always be like today.

First:  "hard wired"?  Does anybody use that metaphor any more?  And isn't that fear that tomorrow won't be like today the source of modern anxiety?  Aren't we quite convinced tomorrow can't be like today, because of "progress" or "technology" or "Steve Jobs!" or something?  The whole idea is as ludicrous as the generalization that philosophy has anything to do with accepting death.

"My death," Jacques Derrida wonderfully asked; "Is it possible?"   Derrida wasn't trying to make us accept death with that question; he was confronting us with the fact that we could not imagine our non-existence.  It's not quite the same thing as being "hard wired" to think tomorrow, when you are dead, will be just like today, when you are alive.  It's a bit more particular and incisive than that.  Imagining your own death without the continuation of your existence (if you deny the immortality of your Platonic soul), is simply impossible.  To imagine your death is to imagine you observing your death, and death without immortality is simply the end.  There is no you left to experience, or observe, anything.  Imagining that is virtually impossible.  Perhaps the warriors of Beowulf's day didn't have trouble imagining their own deaths, but more likely they simply didn't dwell on the question.  Life was nasty, brutish, and short, and death was very long (in Andrew Marvell's felicitous phrase, "oceans of vast eternity").  Why dwell on the inevitable?  It is only as we have managed to push death back, to overcome infirmities of cancer and infection and even heart problems, that we need to consider the reality of our own death.  It is inevitable, but it is not coming from a sword thrust or an axe blow or an illness in the bloom of youth; it is more likely coming in slow, creeping decrepitude and decline.

"Learn how to die" sounds not just fatalistic to me but positively perverse.  I think if anything we should learn how to live.  We have learned how to kill:  people, animals, species, plants, ecosystems, perhaps the biosphere of a planet.  If that hasn't taught us equally how to die, nothing will.  "How should we then die?" is never the question; it is always "How should be then live?"

And the answer, at a bare minimum, is:  "Probably not like this."

What, then?  It's not death I need to learn, or dieing.  The moment I was born I began that, and I needn't learn it; it will happen in it's own good time.  It's living I need to learn.  It's living without killing, without destroying, without causing every other thing within my reach (and as a member of a highly industrialized society, my reach is long indeed) to learn to die.  No, I think we have dieing down to an art form, to a cultural norm, to an absolute given.

It's living that we need to learn.

"We Write with Both Hands"

The benefit of sitting in a doctor's examining room during finals week (a special time of year in the life of a teacher, I assure you!)(and nothing serious; just scheduling an exam I should have at this time in life's journey), the benefit, as I was saying, is that you get to read stuff like this:

For the death of God certainly means the dying off not only of ontotheology and of classical metaphysical theology but also of this notion of a supervening mystical unity conceived as the fulfillment or the crowning of metaphysical theology. The death of God entails the deconstruction not only of the ousia of classical metaphysics but also the hyperousios of Neoplatonic mysticism. The value of the notion of the death of God is that is gives a provocative name to an ancient and venerable tradition, the ongoing work of the critique of idols, one of which is certainly the idol of some naked prelinguistic ineffable given, which is pretty much what the hyperousios comes down to in classical mysticism. Mystics often claim to speak from within the heart of God, with a kind of absolute knowledge or absolute point of view. I value mysticism as an expression of our nonknowing, but my skepticism has to do with reaching this absolute point of view. One important thing we mean by the death of God is the death of the absolute center, of inhabiting an absolute point of view. That's the point of Derrida's critique of negative theology--which he calls hyperousiology--which is also why deconstruction is not negative theology.

That is John Caputo, from an interview titled "The Power of the Powerless," in a book I just found on my shelf, published in 2007, titled After the Death of God (ed. Jeffrey W. Robbins, New York: Columbia University Press 2007). I've read Caputo's book length treatment of Derrida and religion, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, so I must have absorbed the idea of the power of powerlessness from him as well as from Derrida (there is indeed nothing new under the sun! Bah! And here I thought I'd finally been almost original! Back to the drawing board!). This new book is edited, and introduced by, Jeffrey Robbins, who makes more than one interesting point in his introduction about the state of theology today. This, for example, should sound familiar to participants in any discussion of religion on the Internet:

...[T]he most prominent Enlightenment philosopher of them all, Immanuel Kant, defined the very project of Enlightenment by this most fundamental of all modern assumptions when he wrote that Enlightenment is the release from all forms self-incurred tutelage. What he had in mind, in addition to various forms of political authoritarianism, was the religious authoritarianism and dogmatism that for centuries had discouraged critical scientific inquiry. According to Kant, the enlightened subject would be one who could think for himself, and one in whom religion might still play a part, but only in the sphere of private morality.

How many fruitless arguments about religion have I engaged in with people repeating, in watered down form, this fundamentally 18th century idea, all the while imagining they are on the cutting edge of 21st century thought? Of course, that's usually a discussion with people who've never heard of Soren Kierkegaard or Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Bonhoeffer posed [the] possibility of a religionless Christianity while living out the final days of his life in a prison cell, before his martyrdom for his involvement in an assassination plot against Hitler. As such, his words had an added moral credibility, especially by those like the death of God theologians who were troubled by the moral ineptitude, if not outright complicity, of the church. For Bonhoeffer, this effort at purging Christianity of the comforts of religion would be a risky faith without assurances, one that severs the ties between Christ's call to discipleship and Christianity's association with the offices of power and the religious identification with the cultural trappings of civilization...

[Soren] Kierkegaard, like Bonhoeffer and the death of God theologians who followed, gave voice to the new anti-institutional, individualized Christian faith that stood in opposition to the easy alliance between religion and society. It was a radical faith purged of any vestige of authoritarianism and triumphalism that was unafraid to call into question the very meaning and purpose of the church both by being willing to admit the failure of its own tradition and by seeing the great success of the state churches as their great failure. In other words, for Kierkegaard, the apparent Christianization of culture and politics made it virtually impossible to live up to the radical existential demands of a truly biblical faith.

If you listen carefully, you can hear Bonhoeffer and Kierkegaard in what Caputo says:

...[O]n the one hand, serious philosophy and theology involve a work of ceaseless critique of our capacity to deceive ourselves. They reminds us that everyone is on the same footing, that no one enjoys privileged access. This has a salutary ethical ethical and political import because it shows us that we're all in this together and nobody is hardwired up to the Secret. That produces a desirable ethical, political, and religious effect--an egalitarian effect.

But I think that philosophical and theological thinking have to be--beyond critique and uncertainty--affirmative. If all there is to thinking is critique and delimitation, skepticism and doubt, then it will not inspire us. It will simply be disruptive and negative. So I think that philosophy is always looking for a way to articulate what we love, what we desire, what drives us. That is the Augustinian side of my work, which is emblematized by what Augustine calls at the beginning of the Confessions the cor inquietum--the restless heart. We write with both hands. Radical critique and delimitation is the left hand, but the right hand is the affirmation of something that we desire with a desire beyond desire, which is the sum and substance of my argument in Prayers and Tears, which conceives of praying and weeping in a deeply affirmative way. Something can be affirmative--we can say yest to it, for that is what we love--without being positive. That is to say, we may lack a positive formula for what we affirm. Whenever someone erects a positive content, making our affirmation into a determinate object, that can always be deconstructed. Whatever is constructed can be deconstructed, otherwise it is a menace or an idol. But the affirmation itself is irreducible. So I would say philosophy--philosophical and theological thinking, really any kind of thinking at all--has to be driven by a radically affirmative energy, by a desire for what is undeconstructable.

Quite a bit to digest; but I detect Kierkegaard's "Concept of Irony" there, too. Socrates, as Kierkegaard showed, was intent on what we would now call deconstruction of whatever is constructed; but, as Kierkegaard also showed, Socrates was content to stop there, and to deny the validity of the undeconstructable. Upon that premise, if you want to boil it down to one thing, rests the entire post-modern enterprise. And yet that premise is not truth, either.

Searching for an earlier post, I inadvertently gathered this collection of posts, all items deserving of further discussion and more careful consideration. I'm leaving them here as a marker, or maybe a springboard. I just know I don't want to lose them soon.

Nothing to do with Bill Murry or Scarlett Johansson....

The Gift of Scarlett Johansson 

The French title "Donner la mort" plays on the ordinary sense of donner, meaning "to give," and the idiomatic sense of this expression, which is "to put to death," as in se donner la mort, "to commit suicide."  In translating Derrida's title with the noun phrase I seek to have heard in it (or behind it) the English expression "kiss of death."  In the text I have tried to flow the idea of "giving" or "granting" wherever possible, but I have used "to put to death" when comprehensibility so demands, sometimes adding the French for mnemonic purposes.  Whenever "to put to death" is used, however, the reader should also hear the sense of "giving."

--Translator's Preface, The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida, tr. David Wills, Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1995.

I start there because this is a fascinating problem in translation:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a well-known Jewish group, has sent a formal requestto France’s interior minister kindly requesting that the country rename a small hamlet south of Paris called La-mort-aux-Juifs, which, of course, translates to Death to Jews. Oh.

The French, however, declined to take up the suggestion:

Marie-Elizabeth Secretand, the deputy mayor of Courtemaux, the village that has jurisdiction over the hamlet, responded in the most blasé way: “It’s ridiculous. This name has always existed … No one has anything against the Jews, of course. It doesn’t surprise me that this is coming up again.

“Why change a name that goes back to the Middle Ages or even further?” she continued. “A previous municipal council, at least 20 years ago, already refused to change the name of this hamlet, which consists of a farm and two houses.”

It turns out the French aren't being insensitive or anti-semitic; the problem is in the translation:

La-mort-aux-Juifs has been thus named since the 16th century (and not the middle ages as Ms Secretand claimed) when Jews rose up against the local lord's excessive taxes and were slaughtered by his troops where the hamlet stands now.


La-mort-aux-Juifs Does Not Translate "Death to Jews": it translates as "Jews died here" or, if you want to be less literal and more accurate "The final resting place of Jews".

And:

As a person born, raised, and educated in France, I can say that the interpretation of the Simon Wiesenthal Center is most erroneous. "Mort aux..." is an injunction to carry "death to...," whereas with the article "la" in front, it becomes a simple statement of fact. 

So, the Simon Wiesentahl Center, back to French 101...

You see something similar in the translator's quote above:  donner le mort is "to give death," but "se donner le mort" is "to put to death."  "Mort aux" is "death to...."; "la mort aux" is "the death of."   As the first commenter above further noted:

By the way, claiming that the historical context is irrelevant is, quite frankly insulting to the people who died here: the toponym is literally the Only thing that publicly reminds people that Jews were slaughtered by a petty lordling: Take that away, and the only remaining references will in dusty old historical chronicles of the Orléanais.

In history especially, ironies abound; and history is always longer, and more complicated, than just the portion you know.

"To conquer death, you only have to die...."--Tim Rice

The "Terri Schiavo problem" is not over. It will merely go back to being private, to being personal; it will move out of the public eye again, and the ethics of the issue will fade. Or they will be debated in the simplistic terms of "Individual Right to life" v. "Individual Quality of life." Which isn't the debate at all; the debate is not about life, or when it begins. It is about death, and when death begins.

"Life," the sage told the king, is a mystery. It is like a bird that flies into your hall out of the storm, and flies across the room, through the noise and the lights and the gaiety and above the crowd, and then flies out again, through the opposite window, back into the storm. And where it came from, and where it went, we do not know. Until the years after World War II, and the discovery of antibiotics, we accepted life and death on those terms. Now we demand life, and we deny death. We insist that death be hindered, blocked, obstructed, and postponed, as long as possible. We have become as gods, with a power of life no generation has ever known before. But we still are not good at it. We still cannot make the decisions in foresight, only in hindsight. Would it have been better if Terri Schiavo had never been revived? This much we know about brain injuries: a loss of oxygen is not one the brain recovers from. But how much loss, and how much damage? We only know in hindsight. So how do we decide?

“ ‘Curse the day someone said ‘A child is born!’ ” That has long been our standard, in the negative: Job’s cri de coeur from the midst of his pain and horror; a wish to never have been born, rather than to suffer such anguish. But “man is born to suffer as surely as sparks shoot.” If eliminating suffering were indeed the highest purpose of life, the country would be chock-a-block with suicide clubs and euthanasia centers. It is not that simple. It is never that plain.

The questions here are the most fundamental possible: what is life? What is death? When does one, turn into the other? It used to be easy to tell. And then a wave of stories of premature burials swept 19th century America (at least); brought on no doubt by infections and diseases that reduced people to death-like states, but did not take them quite yet away. And now we have technology: respirators, feeding tubes; dialysis machines: all manner of replacing the ordinary functions with extraordinary functions; and we don’t know what to do with our new toys. The medical term “persistent vegetative state” only entered the medical vocabulary 30 years ago. Before that, there was no need to define it, because people in such a state died too quickly. Now we find it easy to keep the body alive; but the mind? Is there are mind at all is a fundamental question of materialist philosophy. Is it merely neurons and synapses and a rapid spray of impressions so complex and compelling it “seems” to be consciousness, the way the screen in front of me, and you, both of us reading these words, seems to be stable. Materialism may give us the ability to postpone the final breath almost to infinity, but can it give us “life into the ages”? That has been the promise made to Western culture for two millennia now, and we are anxious for its fulfillment.

Anxious, but uncertain about what we face. Sleep, a little rest, and then awake refreshed for eternity? Is death even a power, a thing, a “part of life”? Or is it just the end of the body? If the latter, then surely the longer we keep the body alive, the more good we produce. Yet clearly that is not so. What, then, is death? A crossing? A doorway, a passage, a bridge between life and….? We don’t know. And that is why we stay afraid, and uncertain, and beat drums and cry tears and howl rages and sometimes refuse to go gentle, sometimes refuse to go at all.

The irony is, this was not possible until medical technology and materialism made it possible. And the very philosophy that makes it so, denies that there is a problem to be concerned about. “My death; is it possible?” (Jacques Derrida) To the materialist, the empiricist, the positivist, the question is absurd. Of course “your” death is possible; it is even inevitable. But what does it mean to say “mine,” or “yours.” Is death something I can possess? Let me give it away then, and own it no more! Is death mine alone, personal, wholly existential and unknown to anyone else? Funerals and the circus surrounding Terri Schiavo’s existence prove that wrong. If death can be said to be “yours” as well as “mine,” what are we talking about? A thing, an object, an idea? All can be subject to possession, materially or at law. But is that what we mean by death?

The resurrection brings these questions into focus, too; but it doesn’t answer them, either. It, too, is personal, we say. Certainly belief in it is personal; understanding of it is personal; acceptance of it, is personal. At the end of Mark’s gospel, the earliest in the canon, Mary of Magdala, and Mary mother of James (and Jesus), and Salome, come to the tomb, and find it empty, and the angel tells them they will see Jesus in Galilee. But they run away, scared almost literally to death. By Luke’s gospel, Jesus appears in a different guise, and is only recognized when he wants to be, and seems to appear and vanish at will. John’s gospel is at great pains to make Jesus whole, not a ghost: he cooks and eats fish; Thomas touches his wounds. But Jesus appears in a locked room, and vanishes, and is clearly no longer wholly human. What mystery is this? How do we accept this, possess it, grasp it with out understanding? At least three ways are offered, and none of them exclusive.

Is death the end of physical activity? Is that all we are, the sum of our actions, and so long as some activity can be maintained, we are alive? To end that, surely, is to perform an execution. To remove wind, or food, or water; those things we can supply, can do for a body that finds any one, or all of them, no longer possible. Is this the promised “life into the ages”? And if it is not, how do we know when that life comes?

I have turned these matters over in my mind, and, in the words of the narrator of the novel The Good Soldier, it is all a darkness. It is all a darkness because too much is taken for granted, too little explained, and appearance determines all. Terri Schiavo cannot communicate. Is she dead, or alive? She can feel pain, respond to “noxious stimuli.” Animal reflex; or consciousness of agony? Is that consciousness momentary, perpetual, or non-existent. Is she, like the Sybil hanging in the cage, trying to tell us: “I want to die”? It is all a darkness. These are things we cannot know. But we have to decide; and we have to have a basis, on which to decide.

Tomorrow I will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, the man of Nazareth. I do not quite know what these things mean, but I know they are true, and they can be trusted. I do not quite know what life means, either; or if death is a thing, or simply the end of activities we call functions necessary to sustain life. If the latter, then death is almost wholly in our control, and while we cannot create life, we can create and control death; and we are as god, or at least demi-gods. So I think death is more than that, because if our control has extended that far, then it has extended too far, indeed. It is extended not only into things we do not understand, but has completely exceeded our grasp. Browning said that’s what heaven is for. But I think heaven is for those who die, and experience the resurrection.

Addendum: this morning, I came across this, which only underscores my point: we need an ethic of death. Not of euthanasia, or suicide, but of death.

The grinning skull beneath the skin

"Death is the only experience of life that is not lived through."--Ludwig Wittgenstein

I've written on this subject before; and perhaps the entry to any discussion of euthanasia should face on time ("when") rather than subject ("what").  Be that as it may, this is a very good article on the conundrum of physician assisted suicide.  Yes, it is a lovely idea that say that we can have a "good death," but like a "good war" we only know that in our intentions, never in our actions; and we only get to determine which one was "good" in retrospect; we never get to set the conditions so the outcome will be as we wished it.

And frankly, let me say up front that "physician assisted suicide" is still just suicide.  The shock of suicide, the pain it brings to those left behind, is that whatever problem led to the death is now irresolvable.   It leaves a tangled mess, a "why?" that can never be answered, never be undone.  It is neater and easier when physicians are involved and everyone agrees only if everyone agrees never to look back and everyone agrees death was better than asking, perhaps, just one more question.

One of my law professors impressed upon me the problem with euthanasia, the "easy death" that we now couch as "physician assisted suicide."  He pointed out we can never be sure the deceased agreed to the plan because they wanted the succor of death, or simply because they wanted to stop being a burden on the living.  Or perhaps it was the living who wanted to drop the burden of the dying, and get on with it.  The case in the article is a case in point:  a father is dying, and wants to end it early but not, it turns out, because the pain is unbearable (that is corrected for him); it is mostly because he doesn't want to burden his child, who is caring for him.  She has the opportunity to assure him he is not a burden, and his death is not hastened but met when it finally comes.  It wasn't necessarily easier that way for either of them, but no one was "responsible" for his death, and no one left a question unanswered that death would leave unknowable:  why did he want to die?

The author is right, too: we fear death.  We do all we can to keep it away from us.  I've known people refuse to return to a church building because a funeral was held there, and the memories of that being the last place the beloved was before burial, is too much.  It's why people prefer funerals at funeral homes.  We used to die at home, and the family prepared the body for burial and stayed with it.  Someone would stay up through the night, out of respect for the loved one.  Now death happens in hospitals and strangers take the corpse and perform operations on it you don't want to know about, and keep the body in a building we only visit if we absolutely have to, and inter it in a place no one goes who doesn't have a reason to be there.

"My death, is it possible?"--Jacques Derrida

No, it isn't.  Your death is possible; mine?  Inconceivable.  I will be a ghostly presence observing the world without me.  The world will fill up the hole you leave behind as certainly as water closes over a stone.  But I will be the stone descending into the water, aware I am sinking and wondering why no one will retrieve me.

You, on the other hand, will just be gone; and we will mourn you and get on with our lives.  My life cannot end, because I cannot imagine the world where I am extinguished; to even do so, is to imagine I am there to observe it.  It's a neat trick of consciousness; in order to be self-conscious, we cannot also be conscious of our absence.  Which is another reason we fear death.  It is the only experience of life that is not lived through.

And so we think we don't have to live through it at all; not if we don't want to.  We can go to death, rather than let death come to us.  We can live through it by being in charge of it.  And then what?  Like any first experience, we can report that it isn't that bad after all?  No.  And we can't decide it wasn't such a good idea after all.  It is the one irrevocable act.  Perhaps that is why, today, we fear it more than ever.

How We Die

"My death; is it possible?"--Jacques Derrida

"Death is the only experience that is not lived through."--Ludwig Wittgenstein

revenant, commenting below, has it exactly right:

RMJ: I commented at Atrios yesterday about my first wife's death when I honored her wishes to remove life support. Not a choice I ever hope to face again. The ethical difference is the persistent vegetative state. My wife had no frontal lobes left after 2 major CH's..she was no longer there, period. A shell was all that remained My wife was already dead. She had become a Catholic a few months previous, after suffering a stroke at the age of 36...mostly because of a very good man who was also a priest. Another priest, probably in his 60's, who didn't know us, stood at the foot of her bed with me as the supports were removed. He said one of the most profound things I heard during her very long illness: "We have a responsibility to prolong life; we do not have a responsibility to prolong death". That's what it would've been Again, I have the deepest respect for her husband.

I hope none of you are ever faced with this situation as more than a theoretical construct

We do not have a responsibility to prolong death. And it's a great and terrible burden to be the one to decide when "life" has become "death." But since our technology has made us as gods, we'd better learn to address the situation.

What is death, really? We can examine it empirically: define it as cessation of brain activity, heart motion, lung movement. Basically no more advanced than our ancestors, we can say death is the absence of animation in a previously animate body. But we do not see death. We see only the dead. That is the philosophical question. The physical question, paradoxically, actually leads us into our problems:

By and large, dying is a messy business. Though many people do become "unconscious and unconcerned" by lapsing or being put into a state of coma or semiawareness; though some lucky others are indeed blessed with a remarkably peaceful and even concsious passage at the end of a difficult illness; though many thousands each year quite literally drop dead without more than a moment's discomfort; though victims of sudden trauma and death are sometimes granted the gift of release from terror-filled pain--conceding all of these eventualities--far, far fewer than one in five of those who die each day are the beneficiaries of such easy circumstances. And even for those who do achieve a measure of serenity during separation, the period of days or weeks pr~ the decline of full awareness is frequently glutted with mental suffering and physical distress.--Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die, (New York: Vintage, 1995, p. 142)

That is the emotional part of the problem. "Life is messy," one of my wisest seminary professors used to tell us, to remind us there were no easy answers, no bright lines that could be drawn. Life is messy, and death is a part of life. But what part? And how do we admit it?

Because all of our medical technology is turned toward avoiding death. And yet we cannot avoid it; at some point, we have to recognize that prolonging life, is actually prolonging death. But when do we make that decision? On what basis? Uncomfortable questions, but less discomfiting than having the doctor walk into the room where you are waiting at the hospital and asking you for permission to remove the life support, because there is no reason to sustain the loved one: the father, the mother, the wife, the husband, the child; on life support. Remove it, and they will surely die. Keep it attached, and only the machine will simulate the conditions we call "life." That is the even more uncomfortable question, and it is literally "life or death," and you are literally unprepared for it, and in that moment of decision (because no decision is also a decision; the refusal to choose is a choice) you realize you have more power than you ever wanted, or ever should have, and you don't know what to do with it. And it will shake you right down to your soul. That is the mysterium tremendums, the great mystery that makes you tremble not just physically, but existentially. And no amount of brave conversation about "easy death" and "pull the plug on me" can prepare you for it. Because it's not you, that you are thinking about.

I do not base that knowledge on what revenant said. I base it on my experience as a pastor, in hospitals, with church members who have turned to me when the doctor asked the question they'd never prepared themselves for, and said: "Pastor, what do I do?"

"Death is the only experience not lived through." Not by us. We live past it, beyond it, after it. We don't live through it. Someone else does that, and at some point, sometimes, we have to decide for them what their experience will be.

Anecdotes are one thing: they are like hard cases; they make bad "law." But they are instructive: at some point, we must choose, and we must choose for another person. The question for us, before we face that choice, is: on what basis do we choose? What are we choosing? The priest would understand death as the separation of soul and body, but if it isn't that, what is it? If the body contains no soul, when and how do we decide the person we know physically, is now the person we can let die? On what basis do we make that decision? We can give directives to our family, but does that mean we think our death is possible?

Sherwin Nuland wrote his book for a reason:

No matter the degree to which a man thinks he has convinced himself that the process of dying is not to be dreaded, he will yet approach his final illness with dread. A realistic sense of what is to be expected serves as a defense against the unrestrained conjurings of warrantless fear and the terror that one is somehow not doing things right. Each disease is a distinctive process-it carries its own particular kind of destructive work within a framework of highly specific patterns. When we are familiar with the patterns of the illness that afflicts us, we disarm our imaginings. Accurate knowledge of how a disease kills serves to free us from unnecessary terrors of what we might be fated to endure when we die. We may thus be better prepared to recognize the stations at which it is appropriate to ask for relief, or perhaps to begin contemplating whether to end the journey altogether. (p. 143)

But we still cannot expect to be so clinical, so clear and cogent, about such a messy business. There are consolations of philosophy (which Boethius connected with his impending death), but the questions of philosophy are always social, never wholly individual. How do we decide what to do, and what to advise others to do? What do we think death is, such that we can decide how best to approach it?

It's a response, not an answer; but the "Death Dirge" from the Carmina Gadelica has always seemed one of the most compassionate answers:

Thou goest home this night to thy home of winter,
To thy home of autumn, of spring, and of summer;
Thou goest home this night to thy perpetual home,
To thine eternal bed, to thine eternal slumber.

Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,
Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow,
Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy sorrow;
Sleep, thou beloved, in the Rock of the fold.

Sleep this night in the breast of thy Mother,
Sleep, thou beloved, while she herself soothes thee;
Sleep thou this night on the Virgin's arm,
Sleep, thou beloved, while she herself kisses thee.

The great sleep of Jesus, the surpassing sleep of Jesus,
The sleep of Jesus' wound, the sleep of Jesus' grief,
The young sleep of Jesus, the restoring sleep of Jesus,
The sleep of the kiss of Jesus of peace and of glory.

The sleep of the seven lights be thine, beloved,
The sleep of the seven joys be thine, beloved,
The sleep of the seven slumbers be thine, beloved,
On the arm of the Jesus of blessings, the Christ of grace.

The shade of death lies upon thy face, beloved,
But the Jesus of grace has His hand round about thee;
In nearness to the Trinity farewell to thy pains,
Christ stands before thee and peace is in His mind.

Sleep, 0 sleep in the calm of all calm,
Sleep, 0 sleep in the guidance of guidance,
Sleep, 0 sleep in the love of all loves;
Sleep, 0 beloved, in the Lord of life,
Sleep, 0 beloved, in the God of life!

"May it Be Unto Your According To Your Faith"

Well, if seminary doesn't make you lose your childhood faith, ministry will.  If it doesn't, then you are a True Believer.

Anne Grant is not an exception to the rule:

Phil and I were ordained ministers. I had accepted Jesus as my Savior when I was four at the altar of a revival tent in New York’s Catskill Mountains. Growing up in those woods, I talked to Jesus—not an audible conversation so much as my heart’s constant refrain of love and gratitude. When we married in 1965, I called Phil my “second best friend.”

Even after I became a feminist, I seldom questioned familiar creeds. The idea of domination no longer fit my worldview. So, I asked Jesus, “Is there a name I can call you instead of Lord?”

“Sure,” came the lighthearted reply: “Call me Cramps.” I laughed at this divine nod to women’s bleeding and birth pangs. That was the sort of conversation God and I had: a relaxed, confident projection of my own evolving beliefs.

I could not account for other people’s beliefs about God. In 2003, when President George W. Bush grew impatient with the search for weapons of mass destruction and launched his tragic invasion of Iraq, I suspected he thought he was hearing from God, like Joshua at Jericho. He seemed to think Iraqis would eagerly lay down their arms before our triumphant Lord.

And so on and so on....

In the year after Phil’s cancer diagnosis in 2005, we had begun to take comfort in the BBC documentaries of Sir David Attenborough, who thrilled us with the wonders of nature and never mentioned God. We snuggled in bed and watched the lumbering scholar describe the marvels of planet Earth. His diction remained precise whether he knelt in mud or dangled from a giant redwood. His self-deprecating humor and matter-of-fact summaries of evolution soothed us. Breathtaking photography of animals and plants on far-flung continents filled us with awe.

Phil and I felt no crisis of faith when we told each other we no longer believed in a supernatural being. The bad midwife had freed us from magical thinking of religious ideologues. The good midwife had welcomed us into a vibrant world of natural wonder that had been here all along.

I have no problem with this narrative.  I figured out shortly after seminary that I couldn't account for other people's beliefs about God.  It's probably why I failed in pastoral ministry.  I mean, I always knew intellectually that I couldn't account for other peoples beliefs in anything; but to learn it existentially (and to use the word correctly in context!), is another matter.  It's a Kierkegaardian moment, and knowing the Knight of Faith was a construct of S.K.'s ethical narrators (not a theological precept, IOW) and also knowing even if I was a K of F (I'm not) no one would know it, I moved on for the sake of my family and myself.

My only problem here is the sin of pride displayed before this narrative is over:

Later we understood how evolution had changed us in imperceptible increments over a long stretch of time. We were like fish that crawled onto land and, over eons, evolved into air-breathing, live-bearing, warm-blooded beings without knowing how that happened.

No, not that bit; but what it leads to

During millions more years, some returned to the sea, where legs morphed into flippers instead of fins. They became dolphins, whales, and manatees. But they remained warm-blooded and still breathed air. Their tails lay horizontally and moved up and down, the way legs had propelled their ancestors on land. They would never again be fish. Never again hold their tail fins vertically and swish them side-to-side. The change was irreversible.

We had become secular Christians. Though deeply rooted in Christianity, Phil and I discovered that our growing edge was secular, not bound by old familiar creeds. We still value our kinship with many Christians, but we no longer believe that a self-aware supernatural being sent his only begotten son to die for us. We no longer believe a blood sacrifice will bring us everlasting life.

Well, neither do I; but I don't consider myself a "secular Christian."  Still, that's a theological matter, and theologically grounded these two don't really appear to be.  No matter; that's my burden, not theirs.  The discussion goes on in terms of neuroscience (which I dare say she understands no better than theology), and then this:

Atheists can sound as smug and superior as fundamentalists. Creeds—or their adamant absence—can turn to concrete, crush our humanity, and sink this lifeboat we all share.

As much as Phil and I wish we could be together forever, we accept the scientific evidence. We belong to a species that dies. When our brain cells disintegrate, our unique identities will disappear.

This truth makes our fleeting lives on planet Earth more precious than ever. 

Probably they will disappear.  No one ever really promised otherwise.  Jesus is notoriously vague about the hereafter.  He speaks of a house with "many mansions" in John, but in the synoptics he speaks of God being the God of the living and the dead; all are alive to God, which isn't exactly the Platonic ideal of an immortal and eternal soul.  That's all post-Pauline stuff, and its the same metaphysic that supports the idea of the blood atonement and the acceptance of Jesus "into your heart" (between ventricles?) that I was told about in my childhood, and never understood.

What I don't get is this atheist idea that Christianity is about a fear of death.  Oh, no, I do get it; I just don't like it, especially because it leads to the hubris that atheists are "better" than Christians because they don't fear death.  Say atheists who have yet to lie on their deathbed, I always note.

I've seen people die; lots of them.  I have yet to see one smile in bliss like a Hollywood death and pronounce their sure comfort that God will take them.  That's what the family says, the friends, the survivors.  Death for the person dying is an individual affair, the most existential (again!) experience you can have.  As the atheist Jacques Derrida put it:  "My death; is it possible?"  To imagine your death is to imagine that you die, as the ex-pastor says here, when your brain cells disintegrate.  Oh, you die much, much earlier than that, and nothing of you is left behind except an exquisite corpse, if you're lucky. Usually you don't leave that much.

Let's be honest, if we're going to be honest.

Tolstoy, I've always thought, got it about right (but who knows, right?).  The last words of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich":

And suddenly it grew clear to him that what had been oppressing him and would not leave him was all dropping away at once from two sides, from ten sides, and from all sides. He was sorry for them, he must act so as not to hurt them: release them and free himself from these sufferings. "How good and how simple!" he thought. "And the pain?" he asked himself. "What has become of it? Where are you, pain?"

He turned his attention to it.

"Yes, here it is. Well, what of it? Let the pain be."

"And death...where is it?"

He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.

In place of death there was light.

"So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!"

To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that instant did not change. For those present his agony continued for another two hours. Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated body twitched, then the gasping and rattle became less and less frequent.

"It is finished!" said someone near him.

He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.

"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"

He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died.

However, at the beginning of the story, when Ilyich is already dead, the widow tells a friend how her husband screamed unceasingly for three days, until death stopped his throat.  Ilyich experiences joy; the world sees a screaming, dying person.

Which is correct?  And is Ilyich right?  Well, at the moment of death, death is no more.  Is there an afterlife?  Who knows?  "One short sleep past, we wake eternally," John Donne memorably put it, sure, as St. Paul said, of the resurrection.  Later we decided it was a short step from this life to the next, nary a break, hardly even a passage.  Is it fear of death that drives this belief from sleep to mere transfer station?  Ilyich is only nominally a Christian, yet death terrifies him, and the priest offers him no comfort at all.  Isn't Christianity about avoiding death, being spared from death, leaping over death into Paradise?

Nope.

Maybe you think it is.  May it be unto you according to your faith.  Me, I don't think about it.  All that focus on death is morbid, to begin with; it's also escapist, if all you care about is accusing brownie points redeemable at the Pearly Gates.  Life is for living, not for thinking about what happens when you die.  You die, that's all we know.  That doesn't mean that's all I know about God, because while Grant thinks she's describing the merely material world in which she finds such wonder, I hear a description of the Creation, of which God has made humankind stewards.  No mention in her narrative of what we're doing to those wonders she so admires; and clearly her Christianity never taught her about Adam's stewardship of Creation in Genesis 1 (I'm sure the emphasis was on Eve's sin in Genesis 2).  Whatever it was, just don't tell me know how superior you are (especially by denouncing such arrogance before engaging in it) because you are bravely unafraid to die.  I have no death wish, but that's not the same as not being afraid to die.  I dare say I will fear it at the time; the unknown is always scary.  I was scared to get married; I was scared to stand up in court on my hind legs and address the judge; I was scared to give my first sermons.

Let's make this seasonal:  the coming if the Magi will be celebrated in 2 weeks, on January 6.  The gifts they bring:  frankincense and myrrh, oils and scents for burying the dead so the smell of decaying flesh is not too repulsive.  These are the gifts they bring the 2 year old child, and right after their visit the Holy Family flees to Egypt to escape the Massacre of the Innocents.  Mark's gospel doesn't even end with the resurrection, just the death (the original; the disciples find only an empty tomb).  Even in John's gospel, when Jesus learns of the death of Lazarus, does he snap his fingers and say "No big!"  No:  "Jesus wept."

Christianity isn't about escaping death.  It's about accepting it.

If you aren't afraid of death, you aren't there yet.  You may well be there long before you die; I've seen that, too.  Where is the person in the body of the Alzheimer's patient convulsively performing physical actions while tied in a bed for their own safety, unable to speak or even eat or recognize anyone, even themselves?  Sometimes we seem to be gone long before our brain cells disintegrate, so expecting your death to be in your control is no advance on the rest of us.  Indeed, it makes you one of us.

Just try not to be smug about it next time, okay?

"What an edifying spectacle."

It isn't, of course; nor did Thersites mean to be anything but sarcastic, by saying it is.

What has happened, of course, is that two subjects have become confused with each other. The two subjects are the law, and ethics. "As soon as there is law, there is partition." (Jacques Derrida) And in this case, a seeming partition between what ethics would require, and the law provide. Derrida also rather infamously asked: "My death; is it possible?," as an existential question, an epistemological problem. Is it possible to actually have knowledge of our own death, to actually think through the one experience we cannot live through. The case of Terri Schiavo raises that very issue viscerally, for those paying attention. And while the law must remain magisterially indifferent to such matters in such cases, ethics requires that we grapple with it, even that we cry out against it. "Do not go gentle into that good night" meets "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

And I alone am escaped alive to tell thee.

At least, it begins to feel that way, standing as I do with a foot in both camps, understanding the legal issues while wrestling with the ethical ones. It is one thing to say the law allows for the refusal of treatment; it is another matter entirely to consider food and water "treatment," even though, in this case, they are. And they are not the beginning or end of the treatment someone in a persistant vegetative state needs, either; but they are the beginning of the end, if they are withdrawn. But the question of allowing death, or even abetting death, is a strong one, and will not rest quietly or easily. As a chaplain on NPR said today: we all personalize this issue. We all compare it to our own experience, to what we have done, imagine we would do. And in that, we are all wrong.

One thing I have learned in ministry, is that every decision is individual, every life is particular and peculiar, and none of us is fit to sit in judgment on any other one of us. None of us is in the situation of another, even if we have been in a similar situation at some time in our lives. Our situation is not theirs; our feelings are not theirs; our understandings, copings, sensitivies and sensibilities, are not theirs. This is inescapable, but we struggle hard to escape it. We try hard to incorporate the other into ourselves, to break down that implacable barrier between self and other and absorb the other. We try, in other words, to establish a hierarchy, a priority, a privileged position, in which we are superior to "them," and their particularities and peculiarities are cancelled out by our need for consonance and resonance and finally harmony and assimilation. We struggle against the reality that we are alone, and that while we live together, we, too, will die alone.

The one thing no one else can do for us.

And so we turn this situation into an edifying spectacle, with all the irony that term conjures up. We create nightmare and horror show and circus, all to drown out the loud and clanging reality that it is not us in that bed, but it could be; that it is mortality we all fear, and that we all bluster about and divert our attention from, and that wounds us with scars that never heal, that never even make scares, but remain open and running and sore. We insist we are not afraid, but we are terrified. We know that there, but for the grace of God, go we. We know we could be next.

We handle death very poorly in this society. It terrifies us. It literally scares us to death. That is the worst fear we can imagine, and the worst thing we can imagine is life-in-death, because it means our death is real, and is coming, and it will be the one experience we will not live through. And it means our death is possible. And the touch of that cold hand is more than we can bear.

So we shout loudly: at the state, or the court, or the protestors, or each other. Scream and yell and bellow and make symbols of ourselves and hold up signs, all to drive the demons away, all to shield ourselves from what we fear most, and handle the worst. We are all terrified, because we still understand the power of symbols, we all see a piece of ourselves, our possible selves, our potential selves, in that breathing not-yet corpse in the pictures, and we know someday, somehow, it will be us.

And we would do anything to keep that from happening.

By Good Friday some of us will say: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Will we think, secretly, of Terri Schiavo? Of her husband, her parents, her family? Perhaps we should; for her sake, and theirs, and ours. It might actually do us good. It might actually bring something useful out of this edifying spectacle we have all created.

DHS And The Cloud Of Unknowing

Definitely a message you want to hear from the Department of HOMELAND SECURITY pic.twitter.com/BVhWdrXkhA

— Jason Selvig (@jasonselvig) August 28, 2025

First, let’s put that passage in context.

Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. 5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. 7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

12 We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, 13 and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. 14 And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. 15 See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

25 Brothers, pray for us.

26 Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss.

27 I put you under oath before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers.

28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Not my favorite translation, but it was easy to copy. Notice here that v. 17 is not rendered as a separate sentence, but as a clause in a longer sentence. V. 17 raises two questions, neither of which make this verse more appropriate for government use. The first question is: “what is prayer”? The second is: how do we do this unceasingly?

Jacques Derrida actually introduced me to this verse, at the end of The Gift of Death, if memory serves. Google AI tells me:

For Jacques Derrida, to "pray without ceasing" refers not to a continuous religious act but to a fundamental, indeterminate address to an absolute other, which he describes as a "prayer without prayer". This idea, which is explored in his work Circumfession and his lectures on prayer, transforms the religious command into a radical philosophical and ethical posture.

The pure apostrophe

Derrida distinguishes between traditional prayer and what he calls "pure prayer," or the "apostrophe".

A prayer without referent: While a conventional prayer addresses a specific, known divine figure, Derrida's pure prayer addresses a "you" whose identity is unknown and indeterminate. It is a call directed to "nobody" in particular.

An uncertain act: This prayer is defined by its skepticism and suspension of certainty. You cannot be sure anyone is at the "other end" of the call. If you were certain of a response, it would cease to be prayer and become an order.

Pure performativity: This pure prayer is a pragmatic or performative act rather than a theological statement. It is a demand for the other's sheer presence, not for anything specific. The prayer is "absolutely heterogeneous to the minimal description, evaluation or narration".

A radical spirituality

This concept of ceaseless prayer is part of a "radical spirituality" that goes beyond traditional religious frameworks.

A "spectral" faith: Derrida's prayer is enabled by a suspension of belief in a supernatural being, making it a more "spectral" and radical form of faith. This perspective allows him to embrace an atheist perspective while still engaging in "prayers and tears".

A ceaseless desire: This constant state of prayer is a ceaseless human aspiration and longing, not a religious ritual. It is a fundamental hope and expectancy that cannot be monopolized by organized religion.

A childlike and skeptical posture: He describes his own prayer as having a childlike aspect intertwined with the "suspicion of the childish". It is a humble, ongoing call marked by both hope and an absolute lack of certainty.

The impossible prayer

Derrida suggests that authentic prayer must, in some way, affirm its own impossibility.

A fragile hope: The prayer for the absolute other is made precisely because the other's presence is not guaranteed. This hopelessness, or "epoché," is necessary for prayer to be authentic .

Contamination is inevitable: In texts like "How to Avoid Speaking," Derrida acknowledges that a pure, indeterminate prayer is ultimately threatened by contamination. Any articulation of prayer, with its concrete language, codes, and rituals, inevitably reintroduces the metaphysical elements that pure prayer seeks to avoid. However, this contamination may also be what makes prayer possible at all.

In summary, for Derrida, to "pray without ceasing" is to live in a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other, an incessant call that persists without the comfort of religious certainty.

This is more helpful than it seems because Derrida is discussing prayer outside a specific religious context. That actually helps the government’s use of the phrase; but it’s clearly not what Paul, or DHS, meant.

I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up, trying not to address this artificial summary as the words of Derrida.

First, the “certainty” of religion is always uncertainty. Abraham was certain God had demanded Isaac as a sacrifice, but the terror of the akedeh (the ritual binding of an animal for sacrifice in Hebrew practice, and the name applied to the story in Genesis, just as Christians speak of “the prodigal” for the story in Luke) lies precisely in the certainty of Abraham and the uncertainty that this is, in fact, God’s will. There is, in fact, more uncertainty than certainty in the Biblical witness. Jesus himself invokes Jonah, famous for his uncertainty about God’s command. Isaiah cries out in frustration “O, that you would come down, as in days of old!” Isaiah is desperate for some certainty. Peter is so certain of death he denies knowledge of Jesus three times. Death is certain. God? Eh, not so much.

I’m not trying to be glib, but certainty is not a mark of faithfulness. “I believe, help thou my unbelief!,” is more like it. Or at least more properly humble.

Which is not to deny we should “live in a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other.” The first person to claim they know the will of God is a liar, not a person of faith. Just ask Job and his friends. Again, I’m not proof-texting to settle an argument; I’m trying to appreciate the complexity of the Biblical witness. Certainty is supposed to be a hallmark of religious faith. I think it is only arrogance and a lack of humility, the latter of which is a Christian touchstone (I limit myself because of the verses, not because “religion” is co-terminous with “Christianity.”). A lot of the blast in the last five chapters of Job is against the arrogance of Job and his friends; the failure of God to speak of the events of the prologue just underline what Derrida would call God’s absolute otherness. That’s a good concept to keep in mind; especially for government agencies laying claim to the word of God (DHS is clearly exclusively aiming at Xians, so I’ll use the Christian term for the contents of the Bible.).

We’re still no closer to our questions, though. Derrida says the action (”praying without ceasing”) is a conscious and willed state of existence. (I hesitate to propose that as a proper restatement, but I think Derrida means it as a similar concept to S.K.’s Knight of Faith. In the terms of Johannes de Silentio, one always making the movements of the Infinite. Yeah, I know that doesn’t help much, either. But the Action

(Paul’s admonition) is a matter of will in existence, a sideways answer to Tolstoy’s question: “How should we then live?” Sideways because, despite the conclusion drawn by Google AI, we still don’t have a good definition of “prayer.”) Praying without ceasing is, to simplify it, the ultimate act of faith, with all of one’s life turned toward the goal. How, for example, do you learn to be last of all and servant of all, without devoting your life to the task? And yes, says Johannes de Silentio, that is what the Knight of Faith does, even as he appears to live an ordinary, bourgeois life. (Here we seem to part company with Derrida, because the Knight of Faith is in the religious, and Derrida’s pray-er is still seeking an ethical alignment. But I don’t think Fear and Trembling (ironically, a phrase from another Pauline epistle) is the fundamental touchstone it’s often made out to be. Not any more than religious faith is about absolute certainty. We can keep the ethical with the religious, for now; although the terms are NOT co-terminous.)

Prayer as an “openness,” however, appeals to me more than prayer as an action, or especially as a demand. Yes, there are prayers for intercession, and prayers of supplication; there are five categories of prayer, if memories of seminary serve. Useful for thinking of uses of prayer beyond “O Lord, won’t you buy me a…,” but ultimately just a way to justify the prayers we want to pray. Every Christian knows the Lord’s Prayer/Pater Noster, but how many think of it as a blueprint for prayer?

The prayer comes up when Jesus is asked: “How should we pray?” And Jesus says: “Like this.” And then we all take off one shoe, to follow his example. The prayer is instructions. We turned it into rote recital. I still can’t recite the 23rd psalm from memory. But the KJV version of the Pater Noster?  I could probably get a severe blow to the head and still recite it without thinking.

The instructions are pretty simple:

Address your prayer to God, and keep God’s name holy.

Seek first God’s kingdom (by which I mean work (without ceasing?) to see that it is here, now, and carry on accordingly)

Ask for nothing more than food for the day, mindful it is from God

And be humble; ask for forgiveness only insofar as you forgive. A reminder, IOW, that it’s not about you.

The doxology is a later addition. We’ll skip over it for now.

Okay, there are your instructions. That’s how you should pray. Not much room for a plea for a Mercedes Benz ; but plenty of room, I dare say, for “a state of ethical openness to an indeterminate and unknown absolute other.” That ethical openness inexorably directs you to others, without whom there is no ethical responsibility (there are no ethics for an individual on an island. But no person is an island, separate into themselves.). And “religion is responsibility, or it is nothing at all.”  So, to whom are you responsible? That’s a very ethical question, isn’t it?

If not, indeed, a very personal one.

We still haven’t settled what “prayer” is. Is it a generalized activity directed at nothing in the blind hope there is something after all, and our ethics are not, after all, just the behavior of the successful people in our society (Aristotle’s Nicomachean ones)? The point then is us, not the…whatever…to which our prayers are directed. Which is not far from wrong, though the effort to ground an ethic in something transcendent, if not knowable, seems a little weak to me. “Do to others what you would want done to you” seems like a pretty solid ethic, so long as you’re not in a society of masochistic sociopaths.

There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

But the question of ethics and how we should then live is not our question today. Our question is: how should we then pray? And why? What, in other words, is prayer for? And what is it?

Annie Dillard, by the way, is on Derrida’s side:

The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blinded note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to "World." Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.

"Quit your tents" is a reference to Exodus, to Moses in Sinai. Terrified by the theophany of Moses receiving the law from God, they tell Moses they’re just going to stay in their tents until the show on the mountain is over. It is, as they say, a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

There’s a connection here, which is why Dillard reaches from Moses to Thessalonians. Sinai marks the end of one way of life for the Israelites, and the beginning of another. Paul is marking the same for his church at Thessalonika.  He wants them to start it with doing everything in prayer. For their sake, obviously. He doesn’t say, doesn’t even imply, that God needs their prayers. He says they need it. The admonition to prayer is made to them. No different than Annie Dillard, actually. But her direction is towards the silence. Because her God is similar to Derrida’s: one who is not personal, and is wholly other.

We think of government that way: impersonal and wholly other. And usually dealing in directives. We call those “laws.” So is the tweet from DHS a directive? No; but what else would it be? And we still haven’t moved from “to what/whom?”and “how?”

If prayer is for us, are we just talking to ourselves? Possibly. As Derrida says, we can’t know. But we can trust; which is to say, have faith. We can believe. Which, as William James said, doesn’t mean believing what you know ain’t so. Back to Derrida: we can’t know.

There’s actually a great deal we can’t know. I can’t really know what people think of me (maybe they’re just being polite). I can’t know that some people love me. I trust they aren’t lying; it’s all I can finally do. I can’t even know that atomic theory, or relativity, or quantum mechanics are sound. Others tell me it must be so; but mostly they trust what they are told. The whole world, really, runs on faith. It has to. There’s no other way. Religious faith is really no different. I’ve never seen a germ, a molecule, RNA. But I’m told mRNA can be the basis for vaccines, and I accept that I’m given that vaccine and not saline or poison. I trust, where RFK, Jr. does not. My faith in science is, I think, better than his denial. I certainly do less harm than he will. And I believe I am ethically, and existentially, obligated to take care of others, to do what is in my power to help them, even if it’s just a cup of water, or a visit when they’re sick. What is RFK’s ethical obligation? And to whom?  He seems to believe in something even more unknowable than the God of Abraham. And to address himself to a more certain nothingness than the cloud of unknowing described by the anonymous Christian mystic as the way to knowing God.

You address your prayer to that, and you have taken a step in the right direction. The prayer is for you, anyway. To remind you of your position in the cosmos; your posture toward it; what you should expect from it; and your position and posture toward the people you are fortunate to know. It’s not for nothing that you do it. It is not towards nothing that you direct it. But it is a cloud of unknowing that you enter into when you assay it.

Things the DHS knows absolutely nothing about. So ignore them.

Scott: At the end of the day, can't we just think the good lord we have a president who cares about all Americans? pic.twitter.com/R0AENrv5hc

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 30, 2025

Yeah, I guess that’s what we’re really supposed to think. But that’s just credulity; not faith. That’s actively not knowing. Who needs that?