Stray Thoughts

In human terms, how are we to describe… our own Western civilization, or any other of the 10 or 20 civilizations which we can count up on our fingers? In human terms, I should say that each of these civilizations is, while in action, a distinctive attempt at a single great common human experience, or, when it is seen in retrospect, after the action is over, it is a distinctive instance of a single great common human experience. The enterprise or experience is an effort to perform an act of creation. In each of these civilizations, mankind, I think, is trying to rise above mere humanity — above primitive humanity, that is, — toward some higher kind of spiritual life. One cannot depict the goal because it has never been reached, — or, rather, I should say that it has never been reached by any human society. It has, perhaps, been reached by individual men and women. At least, I can think of certain saints and sages…. But if there have been a few transfigured men and women, there has never been such a thing as a civilized society. Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. No known civilization has ever reached the goal of civilization yet. There has never been a communion of saints on earth. In the least uncivilized society at its least uncivilized moment, the vast majority of its members have remained very near indeed to the primitive human level. And no society has ever been secure of holding such ground as it has managed to gain in its spiritual advance.”

Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial

I was going through some old saved messages, and came across this, which seems timely and in fact is probably always timely. I sent it out Feb. 15, 2013 and titled it “Causes.” As far as i can see, nothing has changed.

My friends send me emails and links about various things that concern them. Many of them I agree with but find myself unable to give more than casual assent. I was reading about something or other, realizing that I agreed but couldn’t bring myself to actively care, when I all but heard this:

“Care about what you care about, not what you think you should care about. Leave the things you think you should care about, but can’t, to those who are called by them.”

If we each stick to the things we care about, nothing important will be neglected. We are all specialists in this world.

I have spent the past few days extensively reading more about JFK, from several books borrowed from the UVA library – among them Jack and Lem (about his lifelong friendship with Lemoyne Billings) and JFK: Reckless Youth (a rather long-winded and badly written but compendious account), and got a copy of Counselor, Ted Sorensen’s memoir / autobiography written in his old age, finished a few years before his death at 82 in 2010.

A few things I copied to my journal:

From a letter to Billings describing seeing the Pope in Rome in 1938, showing JFK’s wonderful needling sense of humor: “The pope didn’t actually mention you by name but he gave me the impression that he was thinking of you.” [quoted in RY but I didn’t note the page.]

Billings, retrospectively, on Kennedy and combat: “I always thought that it was kind of interesting that Jack read Hemingway an awful lot, with all those flawed heroes coming on strong; striving, enduring, spoiling for fights and for opportunities to prove themselves. That was Jack.” [J&L, p. 98]

“A Catholic priest at Buna, New Guinea, wrote home that Jack Kennedy was a `fine, upstanding lad, guts, brains, courage to give away, generous, worshipped by his lads.’” [RY, 623]

Jim Reed: “He claimed to me once that he’d never had an unhappy day in his life.” [RY 629]

Torbert Macdonald, visiting Kennedy in the hospital where he lay incapacitated. “`I feel great,’ he said. `Great?’ I echoed? `Well,’ he smiled, `great considering the shape I’m in.’” [RY 655]

Sorensen on Joe Kennedy: “Ultimately, whatever names might have been hurled at him by his critics – bigot, right-winder, isolationist, ruthless capitalist – the fact remains that Joseph P. Kennedy fathered the most idealistic, open-minded, internationalist president since World War II, and he deserves much credit for his family’s many other remarkable accomplishments.” [C, 261] (I would include Eisenhower as idealistic, open-minded and internationalist, but in general I agree with Sorensen.)

Sorensen quoting his own eulogy for JFK delivered in December, 1963. “`Elders who had scoffed at his youth felt suddenly that they had been orphaned,’ I said. `Youth, who had been impatient with his patience, felt suddenly older and grayer.’” [C, 371

There is much more, but that’s enough. What a privilege it was to be young and have John F. Kennedy’s star blaze across the landscape! The joy and inspiration he provided outlived the grief and darkness that followed. It seems like it is destined to outlive those of us who still remember him, as the memory of Lincoln endured far beyond his own time and seems likely to endure as long as history itself remains.

Robert Henri, who was an artist to the core, it seems, was once better known to the public than he is today. He died in 1929, but these quotes from his book The Art Spirit have not dated in any way. And they aren’t about “art” as a profession, or even as an orientation, so much as about art as a way of living. Try these:

Every movement, every evidence of search is worthy of the consideration of the student. The student must look things squarely in the face, know them for what they are worth to him. Join no crowd, but respect all for the truth that is in them. [P. 106]

Do not be afraid of new prophets, or prophets that may be false.
Go in and find out. The future is in your hands. [P. 106]

Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition. [P. 115]

Find out what you really like if you can. Find / out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing. [Pp. 125-126]

Don’t take me as an authority. I am simply expressing a very personal point of view. Nothing final about it. You have to settle all these matters for yourself. [P. 129]

Blunder ahead with your own personal view. [P. 129]

Use the ability you already have, and use it, and use it, and make it develop itself. [P. 166]

What I would say is that you should watch your work mighty well and see that it is the voice that comes from within you that speaks in your work – not an expected or controlled voice, not an outside educated voice. [P. 176]

Go to your work because it is the most important living in you. make great things – as great as you are. Work always as if you were a master, expect from yourself a masterpiece. [P. 178]

It is a mistake to think that spirituality is seen only through a mist. [P. 196]

Nobody wanted Walt Whitman, but Walt Whitman wanted himself, and it is well for us that he did. [P. 198]

Our education has led away from the realization that the mystery of nature is in each man. When we are wiser, we will not assume to mould ourselves, but will make our ignorance stand aside – hands off – and we will learn from ourselves. This habit of conducting nature is a bad one. [P. 199]

Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not what they should be, stop you. go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway. [P. 214]

The only sensible way to regard the art life is that it is a privilege you are willing to pay for. [P. 228]

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development. [P. 241]

I have come across the most amazing book. Found it in my library, can’t remember buying it. The author is artist Robert Henri (google him) and the book is The Art Spirit. Published in 1923, it could have been written yesterday. As for instance the following quote from pages 93-94:
“In these times there is a powerful demarcation between the surface and the deep currents of human development.
“Events and upheavals, which seem more profound than they really are, are happening on the surface.
“But there is another and deeper change in progress. It is of long, steady persistent growth, very little affected and not at all disturbed by surface conditions.
“The artist of today should be alive to this deeper evolution on which all growth depends, has depended and will depend.
“On the surface there is the battle of institutions, the illustration of events, the strife between peoples. On the surface there is propaganda and there is the attempt to force opinions.
“The deeper current carries no propaganda. The shock of the surface upheaval does not deflect it from its course.”

“The idea of a meaningless universe, however, is in itself a highly creative imaginative act. Animals, for example, could not imagine such an idiocy, so that the theory shows the incredible accomplishment of an obviously ordered mind and intellect that can imagine itself to be the result of nonorder, or chaos ….”
-The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, p. 141