OPM 277(278), November 20th (2004 & 2014) Meditation, Being and Learning, pp. ????

According to the dating of the original meditations, as they were printed out and filed in the three ring binders, one maroon the other green (cf. the very first blog post made prior to the beginning of 2.0), there was no meditation written on this day, November 20^th, in 2004.  And when I compare the meditation written on 11/21/04 with the material in Being and Learning that appears on p. 279 -- where the material written on 11/19/04 concludes -- it does indeed correspond.  In other words,  11/21 picks up exactly where 11/19 left on p. 279.  So what to do today, this rare day – if it did indeed happen – that I suspended (it that’s the best term!) my writing?  [I checked to see if 11/20/04 was Thanksgiving Day, and it wasn’t.  It’s likely that I might have taken a day off for a day that has always been a high holiday for the Duarte de Bono familia, a feast that begins on Wednesday and runs through Friday.]  

It so happens that regardless of what happened, or didn’t happen, on 11/20/04, this day, 11/20/14 is a day that stands out, especially with respect to the ongoing thinking/writing/teaching/learning that is being organized around koinonia, or, better, the thinking/writing/teaching/learning happening via koinonia.   I have come to appreciate that the gathering happening via koinonia is not simply one that is occurring as the spiritual work, the τέχνη (technē)  in response to the offering made by what remains in what is given (excess, excessive aka spiritual, or soul work); but also a gathering that is happening in the time that remains, happening in the location of messianic time.  This was thematized quite intensely today by my colleague Jane Huber who offered a powerful lecture on Bernard de Clairavaux.  And in the ‘absence’ of a meditation to revisit, I’d like to transcribe the notes I took today during Jane Huber’s lecture, and also follow-up on the notes I made to myself when reading Bernard’s 7^th Sermon on the “Song of Songs.”

Before getting into the notes on the lecture and book, a quick note on the book, which is part of the series that my old Fordham prof Ewert Cousins introduced us to.  Cousins (who received an homage in this blog in OPM 117, June 10th) was the consulting editor for the series The Classic of Western Spirituality: A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters. It’s not an exaggeration for me to translate that subtitle as ‘A Library of Sages.’  And it’s not an exaggeration for me to say that Cousins was the single most important influence on my thinking/practice of spiritual teaching (as opposed to a teacher of spirituality), or as one gathered into spiritual learning – the τέχνη (technē) of soul learning, the music-making philosophy captured by the category of μουσική (mousikē).   As I told my students today, for me the series title with its distinctive font is nothing short of an iconic brand, and when I encounter it a rush of memories floods over me. The first memory is the brown edition of the Bonaventure edition that Cousins was responsible for, and that we studied in his medieval philosophy and theology class.  The second memory is his charging me with the courier’s job of delivering an edited galley copy of one of the volumes to an editorial office in the Flat Iron building.  

I mention Cousins because he wrote the Preface for the volume of Bernard’s sermons that we studied today under the guidance of Huber. And it is an excerpt from Cousin’s Preface that initiated our section discussions, an paragraph that, I believe, may be the most succinct articulation of the underlying philosophical premises of my pedagogy and the ongoing formation of learning communities, especially this semester.   The following excerpt also complements quite well the Palabras that follow ‘Genesis Time,’ which I have discussed the past two days.  On Bernard’s 7^th sermon  on the “Song of Songs” Cousins writes:

“No wonder, then, that Bernard sees in the bride and bridegroom the most appropriate symbol for the soul aflame with love for the Word.  The love between the bride and bridegroom is a natural symbol – that is, structured into the very nature of reality – for the intimate love between the soul and God.  As Bernard has eloquently expressed, no other human relation can achieve more intimate love than that of the bride and bridegroom.  Moreover the two levels of the allegory – the soul and the Church – are not arbitrary.  One can detect in this distinction the basis of a philosophy and theology of interpersonal and community relations.  Of course, in this context the Church should be interpreted not as an institution, but as the community of believers.  What is it, then, that makes such a community possible?  The fact that the same Word is the Bridegroom of each individual soul.  Thus the Word provides the basis of interpersonal and community relations since all are already related by being grounded in the same Word.  It is this ground that is the ontological presupposition that makes interpersonal and community relations possible, and it this ground that is awakened when these relations are activated.”(10)

Genesis Time, the time of origin, the temporal modality of formation, messianic time?  The time when It gives, the time of giving, the eternal recurrence of the offering: ceaseless nativity.  All is given.

What’s up?  What’s going down?  What’s going on?  What gives?

It gives. “Es gibt.”

All is given.  All is present.  All is presence.

If All is present, is All presented?

What gives continues to give, and is a ceaseless nativity, an eternally recurring beginning.  To further denote ceaseless nativity we can play with the word ‘giving’ and ‘gift’ and say ‘presenting.’  But this doesn’t capture the offering made with the given, with the Giving.

What ‘captures’ the offering made with the given, with the Giving?  Music! Chanting, the spiritual, the Sorrow Songs, the Song of Songs, soul music, the singing of venturesome singers who gathered in the learning community (cf. OPM 263(264), November 4^th)  As Jane Huber reminded us, the gathering of Bernard and his brothers in the monastery was one that was most often celebrated in contemplation in song [joining the choir of angels, as a student suggested], which was one continuous expression of gratitude.   In this sense music and music-making is capturing the offering with the given, with the Giving in the sense of receiving it, and celebrating it with communal expressions of gratitude.  Huber also suggested that Bernard’s sermos (daily lectures to the community, which inspire me in this work!) were the stuff of the chanting that would happen during the mid-night service of matins.  When I heard this I couldn’t help recall what I wrote the other day when reflecting on these commentaries as reflections in-between the time of learning. --  but what is that  time?  Is it the time of thinking that is unique to solitude, to the dialogue Arendt describes as eme emauto, between me and myself?  And if it is distinct from the dialogue I experience with my students when we are gathered together in the learning community what is the time when we are gathered together in thinking?  Earlier today I conjectured in response to a question from a student regarding solitude if it might not be the case that we can experience solitude together with others?  Indeed, if we can experience loneliness when we are in the midst of a crowd (anomie, alienation), then perhaps we can also experience the ‘solitude’ of thinking with others?  A bold conjecture, for sure, and one that I explored under different terms in a paper I wrote many years ago for PES when I ‘mining/mine-ing’ Freire for the philosophical resources that are present in his praxis.

I jotted down many notes, and underlined many sections of the 7^th Sermon, but want to conclude by highlighting two moments.  The first is the very beginning of the sermon when Bernard is drawing our attention to the act of rumination, of chewing on the scriptures, which have the sweet taste of honeyed bread.  The analogical reference to the Eucharistic celebration and the consumption of the body of Christ are obvious, and important, but I’m making a note to follow up with my response to Rocha’s ‘Incarnate Reading: A Cerebralist, Cows, Cannibals and Back Again’,” and thereby return to Rocha’s paper. [I mentioned to Rocha yesterday the need to follow up on that paper via Bernard’s sermon.]  The second moment is from Bernard’s sermon, an excerpt I shared and discussed with my students today that re-turns us to the Palabras of ‘Genesis Time’ and the offering that is always already being offered:

“Yet he who is the ground of all being is not far from each of us (Acts 17:27), for without him is nothing (Jn 1:3).  But, to make you wonder more: Nothing is more present than he and nothing is more incomprehensible.  What is more present to anyone than his own being?  And what is more incomprehensible than the Being of all things?  I say that God is the Being of all things not because they are the same as him, but because “from him and through him and in him are all things” (Rom 11;36)  He is, as their Creator, the Being of all things that are made.”(226)