(Photo: Toa Heftiba, Unsplash.com)

In writing essays I have, for several years now, followed the godfather of essay writing, Michel de Montaigne, in regarding them as essais or ‘attempts,’ even ‘tests.’ “What do I know?” Montaigne famously asked as justification for writing so freely on so many diverse topics, sometimes in the same piece. He was intent on testing himself, finding out what he knew and how he could best express it.

He was also unafraid to admit his learning curve, both morally and socially. “When the discussion becomes turbulent and lacks order,” he says, commenting on the art of conversation, “I quit the subject-matter and cling irritably and injudiciously to the form, dashing into a style of debate which is stubborn, ill-willed and imperious, one which I have to blush for later.”

Me too.

I envy Montaigne’s ability to skip lightly from a discussion of learning how to die to cannibals to educating the young. All the way along he quotes from Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Virgil, Hesiod, Horace, and Plutarch, as well as friends and enemies, Josephus and St. Augustine. The man knew everybody worth knowing in ancient and medieval literature and philosophy.

His book, he said in a note to his readers, was for his family and friends, so that when they lose him (as they surely will soon) “they can find here again some traits of my character and of my humours.” Yet having written and published his essays, he returned to them continually, adding, subtracting, revising, polishing, cutting and trimming, mulling over them, grafting in new ideas onto the trunk of his earlier efforts. He wrote and revised until he died, judging his work never to be finished, but rather always in transit.

Saved from self-absorption by his cheerful humility, Montaigne writes about himself because “Every man has within himself the entire human condition.” In a time when the individual was emerging from the crowd this was heady stuff; today it might be greeted with a yawn or roundly criticized as presumptuous and arrogant: “Who are you to say that you know my experience? Everybody is unique!”

What we have in Montaigne is a voice unafraid to speak up for itself, but one which will gladly learn from anyone, even those opposed to it. His confidence is infectious; he boldly goes where he has not gone before, relaying messages about his changes back to Federation Headquarters as they occur. His self-awareness is acute without being cloying: “And on the loftiest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own rump.”

Today, wanting to write and determined to try, I began with an idea that had leapt out from my current readings in history and historiography. Since I don’t outline before I write I trusted that having read and pondered and watered my tiny mustard seed of a thought I would be able to grow it into a bush that the birds could flock to in numbers. But from the first sentence I was riddled with doubt. If I took this particular path I would have to explain the background; if I assumed this point, I would cloud the context. On and on it went, the original beam forking into fractals, each one bending the light until I could no longer see.

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within,” says Emerson. “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” But that was precisely the issue! My thoughts had all been said and written before, usually better, by other people. A certain obsessive quality in me runs every idea through an originality sieve, sifting to find some gem that no one has thought of before.

That’s when I turned to Thomas Merton who wrote constantly and fluently on several dominant themes throughout his life. “No one need have a compulsion to be utterly and perfectly “original” in every word he writes,” says Merton. “All that matters is that the old be recovered on a new plane and be, itself, a new reality.”

Like most authors, Merton wondered if he was connecting, if what he wrote was making a difference in people’s lives. If a manuscript passed through the diocesan censors with minimal damage and then on to the publisher’s editing, Merton couldn’t help but worry that it was bland and forgettable. Later in life, musing on this need for writers to be needed, he says, “You give some of it to others, if you can. Yet one should be able to share things with others without bothering too much about how they like it, either, or how they accept it. Assume they will accept it, if they need it. And if they don’t need it, why should they accept it? That is their business. Let me accept what is mine and give them all their share, and go my way.”

Late in the day, going over this piece, those were words I needed to hear. I hadn’t written what I thought I would, but I had written, even though it was to stitch together the thoughts of others whose writing I admire. That was something, at least. “So do not worry about tomorrow,” said Jesus, “for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”

There is that.

I often turn to Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), the cheerful philosopher for the common man, for insight into life. In his essay, “On the Art of Conversation” (required reading for every person these days), he not only shows an admirable self-awareness and humility about his own sometimes quick judgments, but he also provides us a commonsense perspective on those who hold power.

Here is one example:

”It is the same for those who rule over us and give orders, who hold the world in their hands: it is not enough for them to have an ordinary intelligence, to be able to achieve what we can. They are far beneath us if they are not way above us. Since they promise more, they owe more too; that is why keeping silent is not, in their case, merely a courteous and grave demeanor; it is also more often a profitable and gainful one.”

And then in the category of “Checking for Clothes on the Emperor,” he offers this:

”Now I was just about to say that it merely suffices for us to see a man raised to great dignity; even though we knew him three days before to be a negligible man, there seeps into our opinions, unawares, a notion of greatness, of talents, and we convince ourselves that by growing in style and reputation he has grown in merit. Our judgements of him are not based on his worth but (as is the case with the counters of an abacus) on the tokens of rank. Let his luck turn again, let him have a fall and be lost in the crowd again, then we all ask in wonder what had made him soar so high! ‘Is this the same man?’ we ask.”

As a French nobleman, a courtier, and a former public servant, Montaigne could have been writing about any of the six kings who ruled in his lifetime from the Houses of Valois and Bourbon. He knew how Fate and Luck could thrust a man onto the throne, qualified or not, and just as easily take him down again.

That was in a political system without a vote or a choice by the people as to who would lead the country. We have it better: our leaders answer to us—as long as we insist on it. Montaigne’s words reveal the tension in a democratic republic: anyone can run for office; they need only persuade us that they are qualified.

Before U2’s iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE album and tour (2015) there was William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and Experience.” Here’s a look at how we begin in innocence, drop into experience, and rise—if we are able—to a new form of Innocent Experience, through what I call The Compassion Curve. Click on the link below to see the presentation.

The Compassion Curve

What might our present age look like to historians in 100 years? What would we save now, going forward, that would give historians of the future a credible look at who we are today? This presentation looks at a particular moment in the history of one American church, but the principles of historiography—the study of history and the writing of history—can apply to any group or era.

Click on the link below for a PDF with presenter notes.

FuturePresent

Words matter: when we bend and distort them they crack open and their life drains away. When we say “unity”, but we mean “conformity” something dies in the body of Christ.

The word “religion” is from “religio“, to bind. What does it bind? We could imagine that it binds us in constraint, that it keeps us from something—perhaps the world, perhaps each other, maybe even from sin. In this reading religion is a preventive measure, a prophylactic against anything to do with the senses, with the imagination, all things bright and beautiful, all features great and small. It becomes suffocating, rigid, a straitjacket laced tight with shame and humiliation.

“To love the past may easily be an expression of the nostalgic romanticism of old men and old societies, a symptom of loss of faith and interest in the present or future.”

— E. H. Carr, What is History?

When I walk into a college classroom these days it is as quiet as libraries used to be. Every head is bowed and every thumb is purrling away at a screen. There are few, if any, conversations between students. No one looks up until I take record. When the class is over the students depart as silently as they came. Even if they are drifting in the same direction they rarely talk to one another. It’s almost impossible to catch the eye of a student walking toward me, and if I break the spell with a cheery “Hullo!”, there is a startle reflex that reveals the depth of the self-isolation.

In one of his most famous essays, Michel Montaigne says, “To my taste the most fruitful and most natural exercise of our minds is conversation. I find the practice of it the most delightful activity in our lives.” He likens a good conversation to vigorous sparring, his “strong and solid opponent will attack me on the flanks, stick his lance in me right and left; his ideas send mine soaring.” There is joy in the friction of ideas, a closeness made possible by an unspoken willingness to play up and higher than one’s own level of thought. “In conversation,” says Montaigne, “the most painful quality is perfect harmony.”

Montaigne’s essay, “The Art of Conversation,” is a primer for civilized and vigorous conversation. It should be read and reread, taught at the high school level, and carried about in one’s pocket. I would be delighted if it were read into the Congressional Record, but its good-natured guidelines would be obliterated or simply ignored. We don’t know how to talk with one another about things that matter.

“You cannot teach a man that which he thinks he already knows,” said Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher some one hundred years after Christ, who taught humility as a prerequisite to learning. Epictetus was striking at the arrogance that prevents us from even considering unfamiliar ideas. Today his words would be shrugged off: we make no claim to know but we know where to look it up—and that’s the end of it. No need to look elsewhere; the goal of education is to tag what comes up in response to a query. Decades of teaching to the test and demanding quantifiable results have taught our students to take the quickest route to the first answer that presents itself on Google.

Montaigne, who positively reveled in being contradicted by another because “he is instructing me,” wouldn’t have known what to do with humility in conversation. “My thought so often contradicts and condemns itself that it is all one to me if someone else does so, seeing that I give to his refutation only such authority as I please.” Montaigne didn’t need to give up anything in order to learn from another, especially not pride, because what mattered to him in conversation was the diligence in finding the truth, no matter where it came from.

If Montaigne were here today I would take issue with him about conversation and communication. Especially as it regards conversation in schools and universities, I would ask him to look farther back and deeper down to the seed of learning, which is curiosity. Actually, come to think of it, Epictetus’ call for humility first could be set aside if only the student had curiosity.

In learning through curiosity there is no need to curb one’s arrogance first. If we are truly curious, then arrogance plays no part in thwarting us in the pursuit of truth. Curiosity is the engine of learning: without it we wouldn’t be clothed, sitting at our computers, able to tap into the world’s knowledge at the touch of a screen. But finding the facts is only the beginning for the curious learner. Curiosity isn’t satisfied with just the facts, but hungers for meaning, context, application beyond the immediate problem. Curiosity is the air that the sciences breathe, but it’s the heart that beats within the humanities.

I suspect that what generates even the briefest conversation among strangers is curiosity about what another is experiencing and feeling and thinking. Surely it would be curiosity that could break through our ear-budded walls and lure us into conversation about . . . anything. Within the classroom it would be curiosity that would go beyond the facts to ask not only how and where, but when—and most importantly—why? I do not see this very often.

Today, as I left a class in which the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the life’s work of one of his mentors, Myles Horton, was the subject of discussion, and in which only one student commented, asked questions, and generally showed the fire of curiosity, I decided I was not angry or frustrated or wounded or even nostalgic. I was wistful for the leap and thrust and joyful friction of real conversation.

What does it mean to say we live in a ‘secular age’? Charles Taylor, professor emeritus in philosophy at McGill University in Montreal, and winner of the Templeton Prize, asks a simple question with a profound answer. Click on the link below for the presentation with notes.

Religion Unbound