i could be brave

Wednesday, August 25, 2004

The Opiate Of Love

Categories: Art • Books • Life • Religion • Writing

I should be writing cover letters to the two jobs I found on Craigslist but I feel like writing on my blog first.  My blog has really just turned into a more advanced form of procrastination.  It is just disguised as something more meaningful.  :)

I just came back from a trip to Virginia.  The picture above is one I took along the side of the road in Danville Virginia.  There are tons of these “vine lumps” all over in Virginia.  I’m not sure what they are called or what they technically are but I thought they made for some fascinating landscapes. 

The long flights provided me with some time to read and think about things like love, politics, art, and God who always seems to come into things when I think too much.

Well, if you are interested in the things I thought while flying over 4 different time zones please, by all means, read on.

The book I took along with me for the trip was Strangers And Sojourners. The book is the first part in a series by Michael D. O’Brien an artist and author from Canada.  O’Brien is blatantly Catholic in his theology which is very visible in both his art and his writing.  I think his visual art speaks for itself and I encourage you to check it out.  I just wish it didn’t cost so much.  O’Briens writing vacillates between absolutely beautiful prose and the occasional muddied paragraph that is blaring only because the words around it are so close to perfect.  This inconsistency in his writing is enough to make some critics dismiss him completely.  I think all he may need is a slightly more forceful editor going through his books before they are published. 

This was supposed to be about Strangers And Sojourners though so I will get back to the point.  In the book O’Brien follows the life of an intelligent and very well educated woman who continually feels a deep abiding unhappiness despite the many reasons she has for being happy.  I saw a small amount of my own self in Anne.  I often think myself into depressing thoughts much like she does.  Though I have a belief in God that has amazingly helped me through times when I think my personality might have lead me to do something drastic.  Through the almost 600 pages of the book (I’m about two thirds of the way through at the moment) you can see her life leading her inexorably towards a God whom she does not believe in.  My mother read the book and found O’Brien’s ability to get inside the mind of a woman fascinating and said he did a very good job in that area.  With this in mind I was taking notes as I’ve always struggled with female characters in my own stories.

What I originally meant to talk about before going off on these tangents were two things in the book that jumped out at me as I read on flight from Dallas Texas to Seattle Washington.

First there is a scene in which Anne is talking to her older sister who was a former member of the Communist party in Britain.  She lost faith in Marxism when seeing what it looked like in practice after taking a trip to Russia.  During her trip she was lead through a carefully scripted visit with the “common people” but managed to see through the script. Anne’s sister says (brackets added by me), “Politics [Marxism] is the opiate of romantic intellectuals.”

This statement stuck in my head partly because of its obvious play on Marx’s similar statement on religion.  However, I was drawn to it also because it is an allusion to a truth that I discovered during my own time of doubt and exploration regarding God and faith and what it meant to me.  (Of course I’m still on that journey running around every which way with a wanton abandon that probably makes God sigh in disgust.) The truth of which I’m speaking is that those who don’t believe in God still believe in a god.  Francis Crick’s god became a race of aliens seeding the galaxy with their DNA in his theory of Panspermia.  Stephen Hawking’s god became universes inside of universes continually spawning each other into eternity.  It would seem we have a need for something bigger and more important than ourselves be it the Christian God or the god of humanity that Marx subscribed to.  In their disdain for the Christian God atheists often construct a new God without knowing what they have done.

The god of politics is very evident in the American culture right now.

The other idea in the book that struck a chord with me was actually stated in a number of different ways in the most recent chapters I read.  One of the ways it was stated was a little more clear so I will use it.  Anne is talking to a preacher whom she has been friends with for many years.  She has opened up to him letting him know of her unhappiness with her husband and he says to her, “To truly love someone you need to forgive them for failing to love you as you wished.”

This is something I discovered by accident a number of times.  However, it dawned on me upon reading that line in the book that I had not really internalized it.  I hadn’t really learned from the times that this truth was revealed to me.  In my first real serious relationship with a girl I was hurt pretty badly by her.  I felt I still loved her for quite some time, yet my love for her wasn’t really love.  It was just an inability to forgive her for what she had done to me.  I didn’t really want her happiness.  What I wanted was vindication for my feelings that she had done me wrong.  It wasn’t until I got to the point where I was able to completely forgive her that I found I could see her and feel a true love for her that had nothing to do with my former romantic feelings. 

Even now I find myself in relationships where I would do well to remember the truth of this idea.  Truly forgiving someone sets both parties free.  Love has to be freely given or else it really isn’t love. 

I was in Virginia with my mother as she took my youngest brother to a military boarding school.  My parents love my brother an incredible amount.  The decision to send him away was not one they made lightly or easily.  To make it worse they are both often looked down upon by the other parents in my small hometown for the decision to send him and my other little brother away to boarding schools. 

“How can my parents be so cruel as to send their children away from their friends and family?”

“It serves them right if their kids hate them for it.”

Some just say these things with their eyes.  Others say them outright.  It is a hard decision my parents have made two times now.  It was a decision of love.

But these other parents are not really loving their children by keeping them here.  Sitka has a very real problem with drugs and alcohol in the junior high and high school.  It is hard to send your kids away when they don’t want to go.  Every parent says, “My kid doesn’t do those things.  He/She doesn’t have a problem.” But when 70-80 percent of the kids are doing drugs it is obvious that 70-80 percent of those parents are wrong.  My brothers are angry now but they will come to the point where they forgive my parents (one is already there) and then they will see that it was love all along. 

They will be free.

Posted by Jamie at 04:18 PM