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Spiritual Exercises in a Humanistic Register (II): Denise Levertov
In 1992, the American (immigrant) poet Denise Levertov received a frightening medical report: she had contracted lymphoma. Localized and not—yet—life-threatening, the illness prompted in Levertov a desire for a more vivid spiritual awakening. Having converted to non-denominational Christianity during the mid-1980s, then to Catholicism in 1989, she met with a priest and expressed an interest in undertaking the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the sixteenth-century priest and founder of the Jesuits. Consisting primarily of prayer and meditation, this four-week program was designed to help people feel more intensely the effects of their faith. (Participants begin by dwelling on their personal abjection and then, in a series of steps, increasingly affirm their need for, and access to, Christ’s grace.) The exercises may be best known for their encouragement of imaginative identification with scriptural texts. With the help of spiritual guides, exercitants ponder Biblical episodes, striving to visualize themselves within these scenes. From that immersive vantage point they witness not only the arc of a well-known story but also scores of unmentioned details: air temperature and odor, the look and texture of clothing, ambient noise and the murmur of peripheral conversations, and so on. These meditative practices bore immediate fruit for Levertov as she reported such carryover effects as intensely happy dreams. She also recounted another experience, less an occurrence than an epiphany, that would prove important to her work as a poet. Donna Krolik Hollenberg, Levertov’s biographer, relates that this revelation happened one day when Levertov was waiting for a taxi. Levertov’s own account is interspersed with Hollenberg’s: Looking at the play of light on the leaves … [Levertov] had the “familiar thought, ‘I wish Mother could see this too,’”...
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Spiritual Exercises in a Humanistic Register (I): Pierre Hadot
A few years ago, I became invested in spirituality as a humanistic subject. By “humanistic” I mean a category that pertains to the humanities more than to the history of humanism per se, but also something irreducible to religion or theology, which is where one typically finds attention to spirituality. Or so one used to. While one still finds extraordinary scholarship on the meaning of spirituality within religious traditions (e.g., the robust scholarship on mysticism), spirituality in the “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) era has widely come to represent a turn away from the definitions associated with organized religion to those that are more personal and self-willed, earthier (whether imagined in terms of ecological consciousness or New Age hipsterism), eclectic and idiosyncratic, more responsive to changes of mood and life circumstance, less implicated in belief than in modalities of belonging.[1] As the sociologist Robert Wuthnow puts it, spirituality in our present era is more one of “seeking” than of “dwelling,” of negotiation than of covenant, of ephemeral flow than of steady cultivation.[2] This is, in short, a spirituality fitted to the sensibilities of a modern (better said, perhaps, a postmodern) age. And yet, for all its pop cultural cachet, many scholars in the humanities are still loath to speak its name given its historical associations with the inner life of religion. One scholar who recently invoked it in the context of literary studies acknowledges that she did so with trepidation: “Spirituality is a charged word, one I use gingerly.” And yet, she continues, she appeals to it “deliberately, in hopes that it might give [her peers] a way of thinking broadly about the intellectual, moral, ethical, personal, and political...
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On Being Vulnerable, as Experience and Symposium
When I was eighteen and a freshman at UC Irvine, I was deeply unsure of what I wanted for my short- and long-term future. Of one thing I was certain: I did not wish to be a college student. Symptomatic of that wish to be elsewhere and otherwise, I made a weekly trip up to Burbank, where I enrolled in a class for aspiring actors. (Feel free to insert joke here. Sometimes, when I think I’m doing poorly at being an academic, I think of how bad I might have been in my job had I actually tried to become a professional actor. That thought gives me a strange, self-flagellating form of comfort.) One day, the instructor had us discuss qualities we appreciated about successful Hollywood actors. The observations were fairly typical. Meryl Streep? Chameleon-like ability to get into character. Robert DeNiro? Riveting intensity. Robert Redford? Here I offered my two cents: “He always appears to be in control.” The instructor turned toward me – and, it seemed, turned on me. “Control is a dangerous word for an actor!” As he explained it – and he was right – the desire for control prevents an actor from channeling certain emotions and from opening herself or himself to fellow actors onstage or in front of the camera. Control destroys scenes, productions, and eventually careers. If you wish to nail a scene or a part, you have to be willing to open yourself, render yourself vulnerable; to find your life as an actor, you must be willing to lose it, to lose control. Right, so I never became an actor, though I did, for a few short breaths, get an agent....
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On Teaching Postsecular Theory as Postsecular Practice
“Do you consider yourself postsecular?” That was the last writing prompt I crafted for students of my graduate course on postsecular theory this semester. The responses were creative and frequently moving, as I expected they would be. More on those responses, including my own, below. First, let me provide some backdrop for those who may be less familiar with postsecularism or its contexts. Postsecularity broadly names a renewed interest in religion, spirituality, or some combination thereof. This is an academic field, and it designates a body of theory – a field defined by a densely secular history – so it should surprise no one to learn that postsecularity is characterized by wide diversity of opinion and approach, much of it ambivalent. Some scholars in the field are devoutly religious and welcome the prospect of addressing religion and religious experience – in language that is, or is almost, religious – in academic work. A greater number are not religious, at least not overtly so, but express fatigue with the hegemonic “hermeneutics of suspicion” and delight in a resurgent cultural poetics of wonder. Still others embrace the postsecular as part of an unfolding, global project of enlightenment, contending that “we moderns” must make a space for religious cultures in the public sphere lest we betray our secular ideals by becoming as dogmatic as they. And then there are those who, affecting a kind of world-weary wisdom, argue that it might be nice if we could actually invest faith in religious nonsense, given how important it is to our history and all that, but alas … pass the vodka. The end of that last paragraph grows a bit glib, but actually, I...
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Events
Education Week 2018
When: Monday, Aug 20, 2018
Where:
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Colloquium: Marianne Hirsch
When: Thursday, Sep 13, 2018
Where: 4010 JFSB
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On Being Vulnerable: "Crisis" & Transformation
When: Friday, Sep 21, 2018
Where:
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Humanities Center Blog
Spiritual Exercises in a Humanistic Register (II): Denise Levertov
In 1992, the American (immigrant) poet Denise Levertov received a frightening medical report: she had contracted lymphoma. Localized and not—yet—life-threatening, the illness prompted in Levertov a desire for a more vivid spiritual awakening. Having converted to ...
continue reading ->
Spiritual Exercises in a Humanistic Register (I): Pierre Hadot
A few years ago, I became invested in spirituality as a humanistic subject. By “humanistic” I mean a category that pertains to the humanities more than to the history of humanism per se, but also ...
continue reading ->
On Being Vulnerable, as Experience and Symposium
When I was eighteen and a freshman at UC Irvine, I was deeply unsure of what I wanted for my short- and long-term future. Of one thing I was certain: I did not wish to ...
continue reading ->
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