concerns on the medicalization of bereavement by harvard psychiatrist, anthropologist and widower Arthur Kleinman in thelancet
“My grief, like that of millions of others, signalled the loss of something truly vital in my life. This pain was part of the remembering and maybe also the remaking. It punctuated the end of a time and a form of living, and marked the transition to a new time and a different way of living. The suffering pushed me out of my ordinary day-to-day existence and called into question the meanings and values that animated our life.”
the atlantic reports on how to have a merry christmas
“The most important finding was that those who spent lots of time being with family, practicing their religion, and thinking about limiting consumption of electricity and auto use reported having the merriest Christmases.”
marc ian barasch on the mind/body connection, illness, new-age calvinism, and spirituality:
“This is one reason physical illness shows up as a turning point in so many spiritual biographies or as the catalyst of shamanic initiation. It’s a profound shock to the system. It dislodges you. You look in the mirror, and one of the unfortunate ill stares back. But in a way, you could say that disease also abrades away, painfully, all of these superficial ways in which we judge our worthiness, even life’s worthiness. Our worthiness, as in: "Am I strong, beautiful, competent, undamaged goods?” Or life’s worthiness, as in: “Life is good only when it makes me happy, or aggrandizes me, or favors my enterprise.” But who’s bigger, you or life? There’s a Rilke poem Robert Bly has translated: “This is how he grows - by being defeated, decisively, by ever greater beings.”
This attitude contrasts with that of the new-age movement, which supposes the mind can become sovereign over the body or “you make your own reality.” The belief is that your pure intentions will make life happen in a particular way, enable you to control things. Now, intentions can be powerful, but I wonder if this overemphasis isn’t fueled by a sense of outrage at the perceived injustice that we should be subject to the frailties of the flesh. If only we can make our spirits pure enough, our intellects bright enough, the new age seems to say, we shall never die. Death is perceived as an insult to our sense of ourselves as being a spirit or a mind.“
Twyla Tharp on Mozart, creativity, and the myth of unpracticed genius:
Leopold taught the young Wolfgang everything about music, including counterpoint and harmony. He saw to it that the boy was exposed to everyone in Europe who was writing good music or could be of use in Wolfgang’s musical development. Destiny, quite often, is a determined parent. Mozart was hardly some naive prodigy who sat down at the keyboard and, with God whispering in his ears, let the music flow from his fingertips. It’s a nice image for selling tickets to movies, but whether or not God has kissed your brow, you still have to work. Without learning and preparation, you won’t know how to harness the power of that kiss.
“Mozart”, Joseph Cornell
Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas.
The heart has its reasons that reason can not know.
Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.
-Pascal on God
God is a holy machine that loves us so fiercely, so perfectly he devours us, all of us. It is what we’re here for, to be loved and eaten.
Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days