Posted on by Kurt Bodling

From hope deferred to a tree of life

I am here to confirm the truth of Proverbs 13:12 “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Just 5 months ago I was on my way home from Mount Katahdin, Maine, a place I had wanted to be for more than 50 years. Climbing Katahdin was the goal of a long-deferred hope of mine: to hike the Appalachian Trail. I felt that my time this past summer, my months on the Trail, was a personally holy time; that the hike was a pilgrimage taking me to “a tree of life.”

A pilgrimage is usually a long trek to a religious or spiritual shrine of some sort. Katahdin, if it is that for some (it is held sacred by the Maliseet, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot nations), is not a Christian shrine in the usual sense. It commemorates no saint or martyr, has no church or monument, witnessed no miracle or event in the life of the Church.

For me, this pilgrimage was first of all just a part of my ‘pilgrimage through life’ on my eventual way to heaven. But it was also a pilgrimage within. I spent a lot of time in prayer, reading Scripture, and re-reading the Christian spiritual classics “The Imitation of Christ” and “The Practice of the Presence of God.”

So maybe my time was more of a walking retreat? It doesn’t matter.

Near the end of my time on the Trail another hiker excitedly asked me “So, what’s next?” He had in mind other treks, trips, and experiences, and was happy to share with me where he was headed after he finished the Appalachian Trail. What I replied was something like, “Well, I want to do some reading.”

And my last 5 months have included a lot of reading. A variety of things. Short stories by Flannery O’Connor, and by Leo Tolstoy; silliness by Jasper Fforde and by Douglas Adams; more of the Eastern Orthodox collection of spiritual texts called the ‘Philokalia’; some of Evelyn Underhill’s classic ‘Mysticism’; a Charles Dickens; some William Faulkner; and more. All tied together only by the fact that I had never read those works before. And if that is my selection criterion, I have a long way to go.

This leads by a winding path to something I’ve been thinking about since I got back from Katahdin: There are already way too many words floating around out here.

There are already words in books, words in articles, words in blog posts, words in conversations, words in arguments, words on the Internet, words on paper, words in broadcasts and podcasts, and more. Some days it seems that everybody is either talking or typing, and that almost everybody is publishing in some form or another. All of greatly varying quality.

And now I have just added more and published more. Mea culpa.

I actually feel like there is nothing I can say or write that is either new or interesting or of great quality.

So this blog, for now, will just let people peer into my commonplace book. I’ve already been doing that sporadically. Now I want to be more regular about it, to copy out notes from things I have been reading, and to offer my brief comments (so, yes, sorry, I will be adding yet more words to the world).

If there’s one thing I learned during my career in libraries, it is that there really are “too many books, too little time” because “of the making of books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12). At best, these notes will lead you to find and read the full texts from which the snippets come. Do read some of those old texts. They’re better anyway.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

Apophatic Theology and True Theologians

“In accord with the ecstatic and negative theology, by means of which God is praised in a way beyond expression and by being silent because of the amazement and wonder induced by His majesty, so that now the worshiper feels that not only every word is less than His praise, but also that every thought is inferior to His praise. This is the true Cabala, which is extremely rare. For as the affirmative way concerning God is imperfect, both in understanding and in speaking, so the negative way is altogether perfect. … Therefore our theologians are too rash when they argue and make assertions so boldly about matters divine. For, as I have said, the affirmative theology is like milk to wine in relation to the negative theology. This cannot be treated in a disputation and with much speaking, but must be done in the supreme repose of the mind and in silence, as in rapture and ecstasy. This is what makes a true theologian. But no university crowns anyone like this, only the Holy Spirit. And whoever has seen this, sees how all affirmative theology knows nothing. But this matter perhaps experiences more things than modesty.”

Luther, Martin. On Psalm 65:1. In “First Lectures on Psalms, I” Luther’s Works, American edition. Volume 10. St. Louis: Concordia, 1974, p. 313. [lectures delivered in 1513-1515]

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Breadth and variety in study

“There is no more effective means of keeping the mind fresh and its faculties at the height of their performance than the occupation, within proper limitations, with some side-line of study. When we inquire how it is that some men maintain even into old age a peculiar freshness of mind and true balance of mental faculties, here is the answer.”

From: Graebner, Theodore. The Pastor as Student and Literary Worker: Lectures Delivered at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis. Second, revised edition. St. Louis : Concordia Publishing House, 1925, page 68.

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simplicity can be simple

“Given the same external circumstances, a desire for simplification can do much, and what one cannot get rid of outwardly, one can always remove from one’s soul.”

Sertillanges, Antonin G., O.P. The Intellectual Life: its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987, p. 41.

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Spring[er] Fever

From a modern English translation of lines 1-14 of the General Prologue of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”:

When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun
Into the Ram one half his course has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-
Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in sundry lands.

An Appalachian Trail hike isn’t a pilgrimage, not in the sense Chaucer was waiting about, and not in the sense of the Camino . But it can be a spiritual experience. There’s lots of time for prayer, silence, and solitude. There’s time and opportunity for growth.

And a lot of people start their hikes in April. I started on 30 March, and there were already over 2,115 people who has started before me. That’s more than twice as many who has started by this time last year.

I’m trying to be ready for engagement as well as solitude.

Posted on by Kurt Bodling

The source of the wise men’s wisdom

Now that Christmas is over, here’s something for Epiphany:

“These magi were carefully prevented from finding Christ by their own efforts or with the aid of men. They found him solely because of the prophet, written word, and the star that shone from heaven, in order that all natural knowledge and human reason might be rejected and every enlightenment repudiated except that which comes through the Spirit and grace. For human reason boasts and claims arrogantly to teach truth and show the proper way, just as the blind men in the universities, of whom we spoke earlier, at present claim to be able to do. Here is determined for all time that Christ, who is the truth that brings salvation, will not permit himself to be taught or found through the teachings or aid of men. The Scriptures alone and the light of God must show him.”

Martin Luther. “The Gospel for the Festival of the Epiphany, Matthew 2” Luther’s Works, American edition, vol. 52. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), page 194.

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Blessed Christmas

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” St. John 1:14

I was at a Christmas service once where the lay reader choked up at the phrase “became flesh” in this Gospel. I’ll always remember that, and I’ll think ‘You know what? She was right to get overwhelmed by that.’

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prophecy and Christmas

“The entire Old Testament contains nothing but Christ as he is preached in the gospel. Therefore we see how the apostles adduce testimony from the Bible and how in this manner they prove everything that is to be preached and to be believed concerning Christ. … Thus we see that the law and the prophets, too, cannot be preached or recognized properly, unless we see Christ wrapped up in the Scriptures.”

Martin Luther. ‘The Gospel for Christmas Eve’ from the Christmas Postil. Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 52. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 21-22.

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the valuable nugget

“In the church nothing other than the gospel shall be preached. … See there what the gospel is: a joyous sermon concerning Christ, our Savior. He who preaches him properly, preaches the gospel and nothing but joy. What greater joy may a heart know than that Christ is given him as his very own? … If there were something else to preach, then the evangelical angel and angelic evangelist would have touched on it.”

Martin Luther. ‘The Gospel for Christmas Eve’ from the Christmas Postil. Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 52. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 18, 20-21.

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first things first

God has commanded “that if you see that your neighbor errs, sins, is in need, and suffers in his body, possessions, or soul, then and there you should get busy, let everything else go, and help him with all you are and have. When you can do no more, then you should help him with words and with prayer.”

Martin Luther. ‘The Gospel for Christmas Eve’ from the Christmas Postil. Luther’s Works, American Edition, vol. 52. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 17.