Reflections on knowledge and love

I have reflected often on portions of this passage from 1 Corinthians 13:

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.....

Also:

.....Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

We come to the eventual understanding that secular knowledge (not relating to the spiritual world) is infinite, that we will never learn all there is to learn. The pursuit of new and greater knowledge will be the task of each new generation. We have come very far since our early days on earth in terms of the accumulation of secular knowledge. History is full of the stories of vast empires, overwhelming defeats, plagues, holy wars and wars in general, colonization, slavery and renaissance periods that moved humankind forward in great strides. Over the many centuries, humankind has become more civilized. Technological advances just within the past thirty years have changed our lives forever--personal computers, cell phones, the digital age. Accumulated earthly knowledge is at our fingertips for the most part; we need only do online searches to find what we are looking for. That was not the case thirty years ago, a century ago, a millennium ago. We keep up with all the new changes and innovations. We have to, since we belong to this generation. 

What I mostly wonder about is the pursuit of secular knowledge. We are told as children that education is very important for getting the right kind of job or career. But education in and of itself is not knowledge. It is the impartment of knowledge, but it is up to each individual to receive and accept that knowledge. A degree in a specific subject does not necessarily imply that the recipient is knowledgeable; it merely states that the recipient has fulfilled the requirements for a particular degree. The person may have cheated or obtained the degree unethically. There is no guarantee that education will produce knowledgeable individuals. But generally speaking, it does to a point. However, that knowledge is limited. There are people with advanced degrees who can tell you everything you'd like to know about a very specialized subject. They have a wealth of limited secular knowledge that they can impart to others if others wish. But they cannot necessarily impart knowledge in other areas, and if they try to do so, they can be criticized for doing so. 

However, let us imagine that such people had learned all that it was possible to learn in this life. Do they eventually come to the realization that the accumulation of secular knowledge will never cease? As long as humankind continues to exist, knowledge will change, grow and evolve. Current secular knowledge will pass away in the sense that the possessor of that knowledge passes away, but secular knowledge in and of itself does not cease to exist. Future secular knowledge will build upon it, just that it has yet to be discovered. Secular knowledge is infinite in its scope, even though we cannot imagine what the future will bring. It will always be in front of humankind, an aim, a challenge. It's tiring in some respects to realize this. Perhaps it is at this point that individuals realize that the accumulation of more and more secular knowledge isn't of paramount importance. Letting go of the quest for the incessant accumulation of such knowledge may be the right path for many people who have realized that no matter how much they learn, it will never be enough. Their current knowledge will eventually become passé, it will pass away as will they. We learn as we grow older that we are replaceable and that we will be replaced. Others will be younger, smarter, better equipped for the new world that awaits. That is the way of the world. We don't think about this when we are young. And that is also the way of the world. 

We will never have perfect or total secular knowledge as humans; that would be an existence in a realm outside of earth's. Corinthians is not saying that there is something wrong with pursuing secular knowledge, just that we need to be aware of its transience. Spiritual knowledge and learning to love are of equal importance. I don't think secular knowledge and spiritual knowledge are mutually exclusive; they are connected. We need to learn how to love and to recognize the divine, and that requires the impartment of a body of knowledge having to do with both. We will never have perfect human love, just as we will never have perfect secular knowledge. But God's love will always be there, it never fails. It underlies all that we do in our human lives. We learn by doing, by practicing the commandments, but we also learn by reading spiritual literature. We learn by adopting a mindset open to the spiritual. There ought to be more emphasis on imparting this kind of knowledge in the world. There are parents who take on this task; they are spiritual guides or at least they ought to be, but not all parents can open the non-secular world of knowledge for their children because they are not aware of it themselves. It's often left to religious schooling to do that, e.g. Catholic schools. My parents were my first spiritual teachers, and I'm grateful for the knowledge they imparted to me. They did the best they could. I'm also grateful to Catholic grammar school for the same thing. 

Embracing all of life, sadness and all

Dan Rather posted this quote from writer Louise Erdrich on his Facebook page today, and I wanted to share it with you.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

I am adding a few more quotes today, written by Mary Oliver, one of my favorite writers.

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

She also wrote this:

to live in this world

"you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go”

And last but not least, she offers her take on the gift of darkness in a life:

The Uses Of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

"Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.”

Cheating on someone and real love

A smart piece of advice and a good perspective for couples of any age to have and live by, but especially those starting out. Wish I had read and incorporated such advice when I was younger; it would have made a world of sense and might have made me look at some people quite differently. In other words, I would have wasted less time and expended less energy on the wrong people. Because if people cheat on you, they're the wrong people for you. They don't deserve your time, your love, or your loyalty.

A truth about love

"Each one of us here today will at one time in our lives look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding"

Norman Maclean, from A River Runs Through It and Other Stories

Why I loved La La Land

If you haven’t seen La La Land, the movie musical that won and lost the Oscar for best picture in the space of a few minutes (it was mistakenly announced as Best Picture at the Oscar awards), see it. It was nominated in fourteen Oscar categories, and won ten of them (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3783958/awards). The Oscar fiasco is quickly forgotten when you slip into the world that La La Land creates. I am not a real movie musical fan—it’s not my favorite genre—but if more of these kinds of musicals are made in the coming years, I may become one. The songs in this film are lovely, catchy, bittersweet and memorable. There is an air of respect in the movie that is rare these days. It was a refreshing change to experience that level of respect for nearly everything in a film--respect for the genre, for the actors, for the plot, for jazz music, for acting, for individual dreams, for good manners, for courtship and good old-fashioned romance (more important than one often likes to admit), for serious conversations, and overall for the art of movie-making. That art is on display in full force in this movie—stylish lovely sets, historical references to the Hollywood of a bygone era and to a Los Angeles of a bygone era as well. It’s a dreamy, dreamlike film in some respects that has its feet firmly planted on the ground in most respects. Boy meets girl, they don’t get together right away, and then they do. Both are talented individuals who have big dreams, and whose pursuits of those dreams unite them in a common cause. They love each other and they want the other to succeed. And when the other doubts himself or herself, they are there to remind them of the bigger picture, the goal, the big dream. They are there to remind them to never give up. Neither of them do. I loved pretty much everything about this movie. It evoked just the right amount of nostalgia for a (presumably) more innocent time, the longing for a time in one’s life when everything was still new and untested, when love was new, when conversations between people mattered as a way of getting to know them. It illustrated the importance of striving tirelessly to achieve your dreams regardless of the outcome (not always a happy ending), of not compromising or settling for the job that gives you the most money, of believing in yourself even when everything seems to be falling apart around you or when the voice of reason is telling you to give in and settle for less. Along the way, we are treated to acting that tugs at your heartstrings (Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were wonderful together and singly) and a story that reminds you of that time in your life when dreams and love were new and your future, largely unknown and somewhat daunting, was ahead of you. There were some really good dance numbers and some memorable songs. I found myself humming one of the songs (the one that Ryan Gosling whistles when he is walking out on the pier) on the way out of the movie theater. The director, Damien Chazelle, makes it clear that the typical Hollywood happy ending as depicted in the fantasy sequence at the end of the film is not always the ending in real life for those who achieve their dreams. Boy and girl don’t always ride off into the sunset together. We need that reminder, even though we are rooting for the couple to be together against all odds. Sometimes we experience a love when we are young that transcends us and our real lives, and we are not ready for it. Or it may simply serve another purpose—to bring out the best in ourselves and to help us achieve our dreams—and that kind of love is to be cherished for a lifetime. 

Reflections on the afterlife

There are dreams that you remember long after you’ve had them. They leave an intense feeling in their wake, the kind of feeling that you can carry with you for the entire day after you’ve gotten up. I’ve had such dreams, albeit not many, but those I’ve had often have to do with being visited by loved ones who have died. Both my father and my mother have visited me in dreams, talked to me without my responding, or we have had short conversations. I don’t always remember the specific words we’ve said to one another, but I do know that they are very real dreams and that the messages are not garbled or nonsense. Recently, I’ve had several such dreams, and it got me to thinking about the afterlife. I am starting to really believe in an afterlife, and I have come to that belief after many years of skepticism about its existence. I grew up with the idea that life continues on after death, and I’ve wanted the afterlife to exist. According to my religion, it does exist in the form of heaven, purgatory and hell. It’s been depicted in countless poems, novels and films, all of which have made a huge impression on me. But my skepticism kept me from fully embracing a belief in it. That has changed. It also changed because I began to seriously question the idea of love ceasing at death. How can it be that we work so hard to learn to love in this life and that we love the people we love, only to see that love die with death? It makes no intellectual sense to me, and I tend to reject arguments that make no sense to me. So that too has pushed me to embrace a belief in the afterlife, a place where love lives on, because that makes sense to me.

I searched for afterlife on the internet, and found this description of it on Wikipedia-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife

In philosophy, religion, mythology, and fiction, the afterlife (also referred to as life after death or the Hereafter) is the concept of a realm, or the realm itself (whether physical or transcendental), in which an essential part of an individual's identity or consciousness continues to exist after the death of the body in the individual's lifetime. According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity. Belief in an afterlife, which may be naturalistic or supernatural, is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.

This description does not mention dreams at all. Suppose that dreams are part of the afterlife, or at least a portal between this world and the afterlife, through which deceased loved ones can talk to us. Perhaps there are other portals as well. I’m not actively looking for them, but perhaps deceased loved ones need to get in touch with us (albeit infrequently) for one reason or another—to give us a message, to reassure us, or to guide us. Nearly every such dream I’ve had has had to do with something I’ve been wondering about, and I’ve gotten the answer, or at least some semblance of one, in the dream. My mother telling me that she was fine, my visit to the beautiful house where she was living, or telling me that she was worried about someone in the family, or my father telling me that something I had written was good and worth sharing. I trust these dreams; I never wake from them thinking that they are nonsense. I believe dreams are a way of being able to have contact with those we loved who are now dead, or a way for them to contact us if they know that we subconsciously have a desire to talk to them. Now at Christmastime, it makes more literal sense to me when I read the passages describing how Joseph was visited by an angel in his dreams that told him to take Mary and Jesus and leave Bethlehem because Herod was going to search for Jesus to destroy Him, and that they should flee to Egypt. Joseph took his family and fled to Egypt because he trusted the dream and the message.  

It is easy to pay lip service to the ideas of an afterlife, of heaven, hell, purgatory, of resurrection of the body, life everlasting—all the things we say we believe in as Christians. I wonder how many of us really ponder the meaning that lies behind what we profess to believe in. I know most people want these things to exist, but that is different from knowing that they actually do. Most people, myself included, take it on faith that they do exist. But the scientist part of me has always been looking for proof throughout most of my life, for clues, for answers, and I have come to believe that the visitation dreams are evidence that the afterlife exists.

December reflections

We are midway through December and nearly at the end of another year. We are also more than halfway through Advent—a time before Christmas in the Christian church that lends itself to reflection. I haven’t written much on this blog lately; I’ve been very busy, but also unsure of what to write about. This year passed by rather quickly, and the tone of the year was influenced in many ways by my brother’s death from cardiac disease in February. When I received the news of his death, I realized yet again that there is no escape from life’s sadness and suffering. I knew that already when I was twelve years old and my father had his first of several heart attacks. He survived the first one, and was progressively weaker by the time he had his second one. I felt then that life was unpredictable, unsafe, and often dark. I struggled to find meaning in life. Was it only about suffering and death? I was a churchgoer but was at a loss to know what it was I really believed in or sometimes even why I went to church. It was not until a good friend of mine helped me to find what I could personally relate to in my faith that I began to understand what it was I professed to believe in. When I understood and believed that God cares about me personally—that is when my relationship to my faith changed. Many years later, my conclusion is that it is love, and love alone, that transforms people, changes lives, allows for forgiveness and acceptance, offers hope and gives us a safe haven during life’s storms. It gives us something to believe in and to act on. I am not talking about romantic love, although that is definitely a part of love. I am talking about the love described in 1 Corinthians 13, the passage about love that is read at countless weddings:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.        

These words were first uttered/written many centuries ago, and speak for themselves. They have shown themselves to be quite prescient in my life. It is clear to me after many years in academia, that higher education does not always enlighten its recipients or make them better people. Unfortunately, there are a number of self-centered people with PhDs and MDs who are mostly concerned with titles, incomes, amount of grant support, and the number of high impact-factor publications a person has. There is no direct correlation between higher education and good behavior, unfortunately for the world. It doesn’t matter much in our current world that a person treats his or her students well, gets along with his or her colleagues, or finds happiness in playing a supportive role for others. These characteristics are simply not valued in the same way as is being a cash cow for your organization. As long as a person brings in research money, bad behavior, bullying and envy are tolerated. So yes, knowledge will pass away, as will titles and honors. Aging takes care of that--the top person of the moment in any profession will lose that status, replaced by someone younger and smarter—and the cycle continues, as well it should. If all a person has had is his or her job, and he or she has not treated colleagues, friends or family well, then he or she can end up bitter and lonely in old age. Or frantic, desperate and borderline hysterical, because no one remembers the ‘important’ contributions he or she has made. You would think that people gain perspective as they age; some do, but you’d be surprised at the stories I’ve heard about former professors (men and women both) in their eighties and nineties arguing about who was the better scientist, or convinced that their contributions to the field were those that revolutionized it. ‘You’re only as good as your last publication’—is a common expression in academia. The problem begins when a person begins to believe the hype he or she hears about himself or herself—that one is irreplaceable, brilliant, a genius, the best in the field. It’s nice to receive the accolades. Far better to have reflected on what is really important in life, and to have treated your colleagues and students in a way that reflects the kind of love that 1 Corinthians 13 talks about--patience, kindness, lack of envy, lack of boasting, and humility. How many former top professors will mentor and encourage their one or two brilliant students without envy, and how many of them will keep those students down so as to hinder competition? How many of them will actually let go of their control over their students and let them fly and shine? I’ve seen a few of the latter, and many of the former.

What have I learned this year from my reflections upon the good and bad things that have happened? My brother’s death was a real shock to me (and to my sister), and permeated our lives during this past year. The complicated situations surrounding his death introduced me to a dark world where nothing was as it seemed. My brother was a master at pretending that everything was ok, when in fact it was not during the last two years of his life. He opened the window into his life a crack and let me see some of what he had to deal with (financial problems, his being the primary parent), but he shut it just as quickly, either so I would not worry, or so that he would not lose face. Either way, he was afraid that he would be judged, because he himself was often quick to judge. He knew that I would not judge him; perhaps that made it harder for him to open up, because it would have meant breaking down his own walls. I wish he had, because I loved him and however difficult his life had become, I would always have loved him. He, like many others in our materialistic society, did not want to admit that money, fame, a city job, an apartment in a tony Manhattan suburb, or materialistic things generally, were not the answers to happiness in life. But it’s hard in our society to let go of that way of thinking. He was on the verge of changing his life when he died. Sometimes you’ve got to just toss in the towel and start over in a simpler world, where love is the foundation, and not materialism. There were many people who got in touch with me after his death to tell me how he had affected their lives, especially when we all were younger—how he helped others, was a good listener, took a back seat to others—all things I knew and loved about him. My brother was my good friend when we were younger; we spent many a Saturday evening in Manhattan, meeting friends, dancing and having a good time together. My friends knew and liked him, and his friends knew and liked me. Despite having the Atlantic Ocean between us after I moved abroad, we always got together in Manhattan when I visited each year in the summertime. He would use his company expense account and treat me to lunch at one or another restaurant that he had discovered, and we would walk around lower Manhattan for a few hours and just talk. I am grateful for those memories.

I am grateful for so many other things this past year—my closest friends who were and are always there for me, in good times and in bad. I am grateful for having been a part of a joyous May wedding (the daughter of my close friend got married) that balanced out the sadness of my brother’s death. I am grateful for having met a lawyer (the father of my good friend) who helped me with a specific legal situation related to my brother’s death; I am forever grateful to my friend for having arranged that meeting with her father. I am grateful to my husband for always being there for me, without a lot of fanfare and fuss. I am grateful to my workplace that approved and financed a yearlong leadership course from which I learned a lot—a course that changed my perspective about leadership, about my own leadership qualities, and about the importance of real dialog and communication in the workplace. It seems strange to say it, but often out of sadness come many good things—reminders as it were that there is a reason to continue to hope and to believe.  There is good in the world, and real love does exist. 

A poem for Valentine's Day--How Do I Love Thee--by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43) 

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

(by Elizabeth Barrett Browning)

Leaving unkindness and tyranny

I was up late last night, so I sat and watched two old films on TCM—BUtterfield 8 from 1960 with Elizabeth Taylor as a part-time model/part-time call girl (I’ve seen it several times before but never tire of it), and The Barretts of Wimpole Street from 1957 with Jennifer Jones as the poetess Elizabeth Barrett who married Robert Browning. Whenever I watch the old films, I’m always struck by the depth of the character portrayals, by the richness of the stories they tell, and by the feelings I’m left with after they’re over. The old films make you think: about your life, others’ lives, different situations, different times, how you might have handled those situations, and so on. In Butterfield 8, Elizabeth Taylor’s character Gloria is looking to change her life and to find real love, and thinks she has found the way to do so in her relationship with Weston Liggett, played by Laurence Harvey, who is married, albeit unhappily. This being the film world of the late 1950s/early 1960s, we know that their story cannot end like that of Pretty Girl. Weston is a borderline alcoholic with an explosive temper also looking to change his life. While they enjoy some happy moments together, Gloria makes a mistake early on in their relationship that ultimately dooms it, and Weston’s behavior toward her in a restaurant in reaction to this ‘mistake’ is appalling—he is verbally and physically abusive to her in a harrowing scene. He treats her like dirt in a public setting, calls her a whore to her face in a loud voice, and provokes the wrath of other men around them, who step in to their argument to try to protect Gloria. Weston ends up getting punched in the face for his abusive behavior and quickly leaves the restaurant. His subsequent attempts to reconcile with Gloria, to apologize for his crude and caveman behavior, fail; she flees from him in her car, and he follows her. Their story ends tragically, with her dying in a car crash. It struck me that her attempts to change her life, to leave her past behind, to become a new woman, to find self-respect, were punished in this film. She was not allowed to find happiness, with or without a man. But what struck me most of all was the lack of kindness and understanding toward those attempts. With the exception of one person, her childhood friend Steve, played by Eddie Fisher, there were few others who understood her need to change her life; everyone else seemed bound by the conventions of society at that time—marriage, duty, respectability. Why she had chosen the life she chose comes to light when she reveals her secret (early sexual abuse by a father figure) to Steve. But by then we know it is too late. It seems rather horrible to me that she should pay for others’ sins as dearly as she paid in this film, but that says more about the time when the film was made. But it is the lack of kindness toward her that sticks with you after the film is over.

In The Barretts of Wimpole Street, we meet Elizabeth Barrett, her sisters and brothers, and their tyrant of a father, a widower (played by John Gielgud) who refuses to let any of them marry and who vows to disinherit them if they do. Suffice it to say that the household atmosphere is stifling and life-killing, with the father determining how they live, what they eat, who they see, and so forth. It is implied that the father treated his wife in much the same way as he treats his children; she may have loved him early on but came to fear him as his children do. He has absolute control over them, is unkind in word and action, and prefers having his children fear rather than love him. Elizabeth is an invalid with what seems to be some sort of heart problem; in truth, her illness is probably a reaction to her father’s psychological abuse. She is bedridden and her brothers and sisters try to keep her in good spirits; it is her dog Flush who seems to do the best job at giving her some sort of happiness, and he plays a major role in the film. The film is really the story of how Elizabeth comes to life and gets well after meeting the poet Robert Browning, who has fallen in love with her through her poetry and who wants to marry her. It doesn’t take Robert long to figure out that her father is a major cause of her illness and unhappiness. They carry on their romance in secret, as does Elizabeth’s sister Henrietta with her Captain. But we know that Elizabeth’s father will eventually find out, and he does. So the question then becomes, how will they escape their tyrant of a father? He is truly a scary man; he dominates any room he walks into with his dourness and life-killing behavior. You could say about him that a flower would wither in his presence. In a rather sickening scene toward the end of the film, he tells Elizabeth that he is moving the family out of London to the country to get away from the bad influences (visits from friends and suitors), and that he hopes that she will come to love him and not fear him. He then makes the mistake of professing his feelings for her, which border on incestuous. Elizabeth understands that he will ultimately destroy her, and that she needs to get away from him immediately, which she manages with the help of their housemaid Wilson. The scene where she, with her dog Flush in her arms (she could not leave him behind) and Wilson are sneaking out of the house while the rest of the family is sitting down to dinner, is actually terrifying. I kept waiting for her father to appear, to crush whatever little courage and spirit was left in her. Had he appeared while she was escaping, he would have won. And had she left Flush behind, it would have been awful; her father, when he discovers that Elizabeth and Wilson have gone, orders the dog destroyed. But of course Elizabeth knew that this would be his fate, and since she loves her dog, he goes with her. I have never rooted for a character to escape her tyrant the way I did with Elizabeth; when they paused on the staircase, just a few feet from the front door, I found myself saying ‘go, leave, get out now’. It would have been awful had she been stopped. But she does escape, does marry Robert, and Flush stays with them. It's a true story with a happy ending, in other words, and thank God for that.

Both films deal with women who want to change their lives and leave unhappiness and abuse behind. Both women decide to leave their abusers—men who mete out nothing but unkindness, misery and unhappiness, men who confuse love and control, men who dominate and bark out orders, men who can say and do things that they would never tolerate from the women in their lives. It made me appreciate the courage and the energy these women showed in the face of abuse; they knew they had to leave their situations and they did. In one case it ended tragically, in the other, it ended happily. So it goes in life; it’s not always easy to leave an unhappy situation. But the courage involved in trying to leave is what stays with you long after the films are over. 

Talking about loss and sorrow

This past summer has been a reminder that life is fragile and that sorrow and loss are ever-present parts of life. I have written several posts about loss during the past several years; it strikes me how we can never really quite come to terms with loss and the grief that accompanies it. It can be the loss of a friend or family member due to illness; I know of several people who have ‘lost’ their spouses to Alzheimer’s disease and to the slow descent into oblivion that accompanies it. The healthy spouses live with a sorrow that they silently carry around with them. Sometimes they are able to talk about their loss; mostly they do not. Others deal with illnesses that may rob them/have robbed them of their mobility and physical freedoms. Others deal with separations and divorce, or the loss of treasured friendships. Most times it is death that takes our loved ones from us. We need only listen to the TV news to know that this happens every day due to crime, war, or tragic accidents (as just happened to my husband’s good friend who drowned last week after falling off his boat); or just the inevitable progression toward old age where again, people we love move into old age, forge the paths they are able to forge through that barren wilderness, before they move on into the world where death takes them physically from us. Learning to let go of those we love is probably the most difficult thing we will ever be asked to do in this life. Wondering if we will ever know happiness again, that question haunts us.

There are other losses that are not spoken about very openly, despite the means for communication that are continually available to us. We as a society seem to be at a loss for words when it comes to truly describing how we feel about losing our jobs, our identities, our pride or self-esteem, about how it feels to be displaced or frozen out of the ‘good company’ at work or in school, or simply ignored by our workplaces and schools. We talk about bullying in society and that it should stop, but it doesn’t. People who are bullied and harassed experience a loss of self-esteem and happiness that is difficult for them to deal with and that may affect them for the rest of their lives, and they may grieve silently for those losses. We are told to deal with constant change in our workplaces, and while most of us adapt to the new changes and patterns, it is neither as fast as management wishes nor as successful as they might hope. ‘Something’s lost but something’s gained, in living every day’, as Joni Mitchell sings. That’s true, but sometimes the gains don’t outweigh the losses. I would argue that it depends upon what is lost and what is gained. Nonetheless, we cannot stand still and we must live in the now. So we are forced to deal with loss and change.

Our sorrows are often right under our surfaces, but we are silent about bringing them to light. I was at a summer party recently, and I met a young woman who told me about her father’s quiet sorrow; he was born in another country and came here to live many years ago, probably as a political refugee. He married and had a family, but he never stopped missing his birth country. For her young age, she was deeply reflective, and her love and understanding for her father were clear. Her description of his sadness was something I could understand viscerally. For I too miss my birth country; it is a tangible feeling of sorrow that I carry around with me, and that I have done a good job of keeping under my surface until now. But I cannot do that any longer. At the same party, I met a fellow expat, who told me that he hated America and that he would never go back there to live. I could never say the same. I love my country the way I love a person—we are intertwined. I couldn’t tell you why it is this way; it just is after many years of living away from my birth country. So I could not understand my fellow expat, although I registered his words and opinions. It made me think of my grandparents who left Italy for America in the early 1900s and who never once returned there, as they could not afford to do so. What must it have been like to know that you would never see your father, mother, or siblings again, unless they followed you to America? Loss and sorrow on both sides. How their sorrows must have defined their lives, especially when their lives took a downturn during the Great Depression when my grandfather lost his pharmacy. I know that their sorrows colored their later lives because my father told me a lot about his family life and how his father suffered. Not all immigrants miss their birth countries; I know several people who have moved from Europe to the USA, who have become successful and who would never move back to their birth countries. But I also know immigrants to the USA who miss their birth countries regardless of their successes. It is an individual thing—how we deal with loss and the sorrows that accompany it. But it is good to talk about it sometimes, because you find out that you are not as alone in this life as you may think.  

A poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning for Valentine's Day

Sonnets from the Portuguese - 43

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Some wise words about fathers

Tomorrow is Father’s Day, so in honor of my father (who passed away in 1985) and of all the other fathers I know who work hard at doing the hardest job of all—parenting, I am posting some inspirational words about fathers and fatherhood. I was fortunate to have had a very close relationship with my father, one that started when I was very young. We shared a love of books and literature that has stayed with me my whole life, and I will never forget our discussions at the dinner table about everything under the sun. My father was my friend as I grew into adulthood; I know that I lost him all too soon. He never got a chance to see how my life changed, nor did he ever get to meet my husband or my stepdaughter. Nevertheless, I know he is watching over me as he always did when I was a child, and I am grateful for the time I did have together with him. He taught me to appreciate the time we have together with our loved ones, that we don’t have them with us on this earth forever, so we should not take them or our time together for granted.

·         It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
~ Anne Sexton

·         He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.  ~Clarence Budington Kelland

·         A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.  ~Author Unknown

·         Father! - to God himself we cannot give a holier name.  ~William Wordsworth

·         Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!  ~Lydia M. Child, Philothea: A Romance, 1836

·         Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance.  ~Ruth E. Renkel

·         A father carries pictures where his money used to be.  ~Author Unknown

·         It is much easier to become a father than to be one.  ~Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son: Reflections on Becoming a Man, 1994

·         The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering-galleries, they are clearly heard at the end and by posterity.  ~Jean Paul Richter

·         Any man can be a father.  It takes someone special to be a dad.  ~Author Unknown

·         The greatest gift I ever had
Came from God; I call him Dad!
~Author Unknown

·         I love my father as the stars - he's a bright shining example and a happy twinkling in my heart.  ~Terri Guillemets

·         Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever.  ~Author Unknown

·         You will find that if you really try to be a father, your child will meet you halfway.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

·         Why are men reluctant to become fathers?  They aren't through being children.  ~Cindy Garner

·         Fathers represent another way of looking at life - the possibility of an alternative dialogue.  ~Louise J. Kaplan, Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual, 1978

·         There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.  ~John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994

·         There are three stages of a man's life:  He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn't believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus.  ~Author Unknown

·         Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.  ~Bill Cosby

·         When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.  But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.  ~Author unknown, commonly attributed to Mark Twain but no evidence has yet been found for this 

“There are no answers, only choices”

I watched the sci-fi movie Solaris (from 2002) with George Clooney and Natascha McElhone for the third time the other night, and each time I watch the film I ‘discover’ something else about it that I didn’t remember from previous viewings. The film was directed by Steven Soderbergh and is a remake of the classic film (from 1972) of the same name directed by Andrey Tarkovskiy. I have not seen the 1972 film although it is on my ‘to watch’ list; nor have I read the novel by Polish author Stanisław Lem published in 1961. I’m guessing that the Tarkovskiy film would probably be as haunting a film as the Soderbergh film. Because that is the only word I can use to describe Soderbergh’s film—haunting. It gets under my skin in a way that no other sci-fi film/story can, with the possible exception of ‘I Am Legend’ (film(s) as well as the story by Richard Matheson). Everything about the film, the atmosphere, lighting, sets, music—combine to create a poignant and haunting film. In my view, the casting of Clooney and McElhone in the major roles as Chris Kelvin and Rheya (his wife) was a small stroke of genius. They are both wonderful to watch in their roles as partners in a sad marriage that ends with Rheya committing suicide.  McElhone manages to portray Rheya as an extremely interesting and attractive woman despite her psychological problems—beautiful, intelligent, classy, and sad. Rheya is a seeker, open to ideas of faith and belief in things one cannot see, and she is uncomfortable with aggressive, all-knowing people who bark out their opinions as though they were the only correct ones. But she is also a depressive personality, a woman who lives on the fringes of life and society, looking in and wanting to be a part of the life she sees around her, but knowing that she does not fit in. Chris is a psychologist and a pragmatist; he only believes in what he can see and know and dissect, and there are several points in the film where he almost gloatingly scoffs at Rheya’s faith in something other-worldly. He is right and she is not. You know by watching her eyes and body language in the film that his lack of faith and his pragmatism are helping to destroy her slowly, because she loves him but does not seem able to reach him. But he does not understand this nor does he intend to hurt her deliberately. Theirs is a marriage where you know that they love each other but their love is doomed to difficulties and problems from the start because they are such contrasting personalities. You know that the only way that things will change for them is through a tragic event. Chris just does not understand his wife, her vulnerability or her psychological problems, even though he is a psychologist and even though she has tried to be honest with him about them. She aborts their baby without telling Chris because she does not want to pass her depressive tendencies on to a child, and he explodes in anger at her when he finds this out and storms out of their apartment, whereupon she commits suicide thinking he has left her for good. After her death, Chris ends up out in space, a long way from earth, in orbit around the planet Solaris, after having been asked to investigate the crew on board who are acting strangely and reporting strange events onboard the ship. Solaris is a planet that seems to be able to read the minds/dreams of Chris and his colleagues on board the spaceship, and manages to ‘recreate’ the people they have lost to death back on earth, the ‘visitors’. Chris’ visitor is Rheya, and even though he knows that she is not really human, he becomes involved with her all over again and realizes that he wants to be with her for the rest of his life, with all of the implications surrounding that choice. He is warned by one of the team members named Dr. Gibarian to leave Solaris and to return to earth, because otherwise he will die there. Gibarian is also another of Chris’ ‘visitors’ who committed suicide shortly before Chris’ arrival; on earth he was his colleague and friend. When Gibarian ‘visits’ Chris, they have a conversation, where Chris asks him “What does Solaris want from us?” Gibarian replies: “Why do you think it has to want something? This is why you have to leave. If you keep thinking there's a solution, you'll die here.” Chris replies “I can't leave her. I'll figure it out”, whereupon Gibarian says to him “Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? There are no answers, only choices”.  And Chris makes his ‘choice’, and it is a choice that moves him from guilt to forgiveness to peace—his own spiritual evolution that allows him to move beyond his pragmatism and to take a leap of faith into the unknown. It is only by taking that leap of faith that he can know happiness, but he does not know that before he takes it. But he takes the risk.

It was the sentence —“There are no answers, only choices” that caught my attention this time while I watched the film.  I thought--how true that is. But I never ‘heard’ or truly internalized these words before, not the way I did the other night. Maybe because I have come to that point in my own life, where I have realized that there are no answers to certain situations, to certain problems—there are really only choices, and it is the fear of making the ‘wrong’ choice that can keep us stuck in one place. I seem to continue to want specific answers to specific problems though, and perhaps they will never be forthcoming. So if I learn to accept that there are no answers, then I turn to the choices to be made and ask myself, which is the right choice? But perhaps there are also no right or wrong choices, even though we want so much to make what we think is the ‘right’ choice—in love, in life, in work.  Perhaps we need to take more ‘leaps of faith’ into the unknown—because really, even when we make what we think is the right choice, we can never really know for sure what we are doing and whether it was the best choice. It simply is a choice that we made, that then led to a life. This is what is scary—should we take the leap of faith into the unknown of a new life, a new job, or a new relationship? And could we have escaped sadness and problems if we had chosen differently? Perhaps. But since we also do not have control over the lives and choices of others who impact on our lives because they are part of our lives, we cannot predict what will happen to us. It’s not easy to accept this sometimes, which makes it difficult to take the leap of faith into the unknown.

What Mother Teresa said

At Easter time, I am reminded of the words of Mother Teresa. She had a lot to say about living in the modern world, about loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted. At mass this past Sunday, the priest spoke about the very same things, and talked about the heavy crosses that many people in our society live with each day—depression, loneliness, unemployment, a demoralizing job, family problems--the list goes on. The priest meant that these conditions are our chance to share in the cross of Christ, and while that idea is very unappealing—to have a cross on our shoulders weighing us down that may ultimately lead to our demise--the fact remains that this is the human condition from time to time. I find some reassurance in knowing that my faith is founded on the suffering and death of a man who cared for others. His life was remarkable; the circumstances surrounding his death were not. He was treated as a common criminal and left to die, and before he died, he struggled with not wanting to fulfill his mission here on earth. How many times have we had that feeling ourselves? How many times have we wanted to run away from our problems, from unhappiness, from depression, from heavy responsibilities, from unpleasant situations, from unpleasant people? How many times has it been hard to smile after being pushed down one more time, after being trampled on one more time? How difficult it is to smile in the face of injustice, abuse, and ridicule. And yet there are people who do this every day. Get up and keep on going. Smile kindly and accept what others would not accept. Are these people crazy? Do they have something to teach us? Even Mother Teresa knew that most of us could never live her life. She was adamant about starting at home, that we had to learn to love the ones we live with before we could go out into society to do the same. Her wisdom is timeless and precious and too important not to share again. I read her books when I was younger, and here I am many years later, and her words make even more sense to me now.

·         Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

·         Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

·         Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

·         Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

·         I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

·         If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

·         If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

·         If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.

·         Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

·         Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

·         Peace begins with a smile.

·         We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.

·         Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.

·         Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

·         Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

·         Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.

·         Love begins by taking care of the closest ones - the ones at home.

·         We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

·         Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

·         The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.

·         The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.

·         There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in - that we do it to God, to Christ, and that's why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.

·         Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

·         There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.

·         We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

·         Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

·         We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.

'Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels'.......

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing". 

1 Corinthians 13

I was reminded of this passage today while in conversation with a good friend. I thought of it because we are both scientists and we both work in an academic research setting. We were talking about some of the sociopathic behavior we have been witness to or recipients of on different occasions in our workplace, and it struck me that a high degree of intelligence is absolutely no guarantee of good behavior (in the moral sense). Many young people are often told that education is the key to a better life, and while that may be true in the materialistic sense, it does not have to be true in a spiritual sense. A long education, an advanced degree, and a corresponding advanced career do not necessarily make a person a good person; they only make a person qualified for a specific job or career. And that is fine, but I have seen so much morally questionable behavior in my years in the workplace that I have learned that the quest for knowledge is an admirable thing, but not at the expense of your spiritual life or your soul. And that is what the above passage is trying to say to us—that we can have all the knowledge in the world but if we have not learned to love, all that knowledge is useless. It cannot help us.

I continue to be surprised by the poor behavior I see in people whom, as my mother would have said, are intelligent enough to know better. That is the responsibility that knowledge should impart—to use that knowledge carefully and responsibly, to treat others with respect—‘to do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Well-educated people should know how to behave—should know that cheating, stealing, lying and misusing others are wrong and that it is best to avoid them. They should be actively leading the way toward a good spiritual life. The competitive world of academic science opens the doors to a lot of strange and morally ambiguous/morally wrong behavior. So then I ask, what is the point of all this knowledge if it is not to make the world a better place? If all this knowledge does not make us better people, then perhaps we would be better off without it? Perhaps it would be better to emphasize love and compassion in school instead. To paraphrase the above passage—‘what good does a high-impact factor publication do if I have not love? And though I have the talent for making money and gaining power and prestige and high rank, but have not love, I am nothing’.