More Tidbits from Taylor
….. and so the penitent pilgrim, bearing the 850 page burden, struggles upward toward the elusive goal. He/she stumbles onto Purgatorio’s twentieth terrace (aptly titled “Conversions“), and here the revelation, so long desired, at last occurs.
Beatrice-like, the guiding genius of the entire pageant appears. “Benedictus qui venit,” the choir intones. Behold: Ivan Illich!
What is Illich telling us? That we should dismantle our code-driven, disciplined, objectified world? Illich was a thoroughgoing radical, and I don’t want to blunt his message. I can’t claim to speak for him, but this is what i draw from his work. We can’t live without codes, legal ones which are essential to the rule of law, moral ones which we have to inculcate in each new generation. But even if we can’t fully escape the nomocratic-judicialized-objectified world, it is terribly important to see that that is not all there is, that it is in many ways dehumanizing, alienating; that it oftens generates dilemmas that it cannot see, and in driving forward, acts with great ruthlessness and cruelty. The various modes of political correctness, from Left and Right, illustrate this every day.
Codes, even the best codes, can become idolatrous traps, which tempt us to complicity in violence. Illich can remind us not to become totally invested in the code, even the best code of a peace-loving, egalitarian, liberalism. We should find the centre of our spiritual lives beyond the code, deeper than the code, in networks of living concern which are not to be sacrificed to the code, which must even from time to time subvert it. This message comes out of a certain theology, but it could be heard with profit by every body (p. 743).
Whether this be, for bloggers and other networkers, license or warning, is left to right judgment. But here the pageant ends, the lights dim, the music fades.
And before finally falling into easeful slumber, the weary pilgrim wonders: “”Ivan who?”
code or network of living concern.. . . sounds familiar: letter or spirit?
But I haven’t read the book yet.
Cathy,
you mean 2 Cor 3:6: “for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life?”
and that it took C.T. over 800 pages to say what Paul says in 9 words (actually 8 in the Greek)?
As I suggested earlier, the book is somewhat repetitious :).
Yes. is that what he’s getting at?
I think I’ll take 800 pages in English over 700 in Greek!
Insofar as he’s saying there is spirit beyond the letter, sure. Especially if the living God is a real player and center in these “networks of living concern.”
But insofar as he’s promoting Christian anarchy, it’s a pipe dream. People don’t grow to maturity without structure–one reason why anarchists are usually young, before they have to raise children.
In, for example, the school of St. John of the Cross, spirituality aims towards the day when God will be known *in se*–without images (because God is spirit) and without form. As John says, “And even on the mount, nothing.” But, before this kind of apprehension of God can happen, there is a long ascetical formation in which the person continually says, “No, nothing,” to many lesser goods. Chief among them are the desires for the dominon of my mind, my heart.
“Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?” (Auden)
If someone could find a way to form souls without the demands of ascesis and community, then maybe there could be a life without structure. But without community–and communities always come in codes–how would anyone learn to accommodate anyone else? Where would anyone learn to be accommodated?
This morning on NPR there was an interview with a man who has been the doorman of the Plaza Hotel in New York for 45 years. He said that he has tried to live his life based on the philosophy of his father, who was once a garage attendant at the Plaza:
“Be such a man, live such a life, so that if every man in the world lived as you do this would be God’s paradise.”
One of my in-pilgrimage conclusions is that we are living in Purgatory. I like this doorman’s wisdom for getting to Paradise. Now, for me the question is this, should we leave such a statement in the declarative, or do we risk ruining its spirit by turning it into an interrogative and asking, “What does such a life look like?”
Ivan Illich. I have some vague recollection. Very radical advocate of reforms. Brazil comes to mind.
A number of New York clergy who were trained in Puerto Rico for the apostolate to Hispanics were instructed I’ve heard by illich.
Maybe we could get some perception about him from those who had direct contact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich
You young whippersnappers have just had your research done for you, assuming that you trust wiki-info.
It surprises me that Ivan Illich has fallen so completely off the radar screen. In 1971, when I was teaching at Mother Butler High School in the Bronx, (yes, that REALLy was the name!) I spent several weeks, with the nuns’ blessings, at Illich’s CIDOC in Cuernavaca. I attended a seminar given by Herbert Kohl (author of “36 Children” and “The Open Classroom”) and lived with a Mexican family to improve my Spanish. Upon my return, I presented Kohl’s- and some of Illich’s- ideas for educational reform to a faculty meeting.
At that time CIDOC was an exciting place: Erich Fromm, who lived in Cuernavaca, dropped by frequently, and Paulo Freire hosted seminars there. Illich socialized freely with the students. I remember him sipping wine at a party and switching easily from English to Spanish to German to languages I couldn’t even identify as he chatted with everyone in the room.
Illich may have been a “thoroughgoing radical” who wanted to subvert certain codes, but his ideas still deserve discussion. It’s sad that his name draws a blank ….
My regrets to Joanne and Joseph, if my tongue-in-cheek close, “Ivan who?” misled them into thinking I was ignorant of the man.
In partial reparation I share one of my favorite Illich tales.
It was 1968 or 1969. I was studying for my doctorate at Yale, and Illich had been invited to speak at the Law School.
The auditorium was jammed, people sitting in aisles. Outside a group of conservative Catholics were protesting, I know not what Illichian transgression of orthodox thought.
Illich strode onto the stage, and when the applause had died down, he declaimed, in his best stage voice, the Nicene Creed!
The “liberals” who a moment before had cheered widely in support, were completely befuddled.
Not even Bill Clinton could upstage Ivan Who.