January 9, 2007

Enquiry

“The strains of rewrite.” James Thurber once used these words to suggest the awkward language that can appear when a piece has been reworked once too often. Lewis Thomas, philosopher/scientist and one of the better essayists I’ve ever read, claimed never to rewrite. What he wrote is what you got, and no editor had better ever lay a blue pencil on it.

This quote from Thurber, something of an essayist himself, prompted me to realize that perhaps I could use an editor — or more rewrite — whenever I hear from my old friend and mentor Canon P D Quirk. His opinions are anything but vague, and I try to report them as accurately as I can, but it is apparently not always easy for the reader to separate them from my own. Actually, I depend on you readers (where on earth would I be without you?) to do that, especially when I struggle with satire, an endeavor which is not all that easy or simple.

A while back, I reported on one of my conversations with the Canon about his disdain for centering prayer and his preference for what he calls eccentering prayer,  and that his chaplaincy at the convent with the Sisters of Constant Concern is beginning to annoy the Abbess (as it has for some time). One reason is that his penchant for ellipses in communication as a result of his prayer life is beginning to affect their capacity for centering, namely concentrating on their tasks and their own prayer life. As if he weren’t difficult enough already to understand, this ellipsis business simply complicates it further. (An implied pun — the best kind — is in all this somewhere, but I’ll attempt to ruin it by explaining it. An ellipse, as you know from geometry, has two centers as differentiated from a circle which has only one, hence, it might be construed to be eccentric. An ellipsis is the omission of one or more words  that are obviously understood, but that must be supplied to make a construction grammatically complete. It is a generally annoying habit.) 

Anyhow, a reader wrote: “We just read your blog (Ed note: ugh) on centering prayer and are totally perplexed by this obvious disdain for a healthy spiritual practice. We are Episcopalians who found CP (Ed note: Centering Prayer, not  the CP who is my life’s companion and frequent mentor) draws on the best of the spiritual knowledge of the Church’s fathers and mothers. While T. Keating is RC we know nothing about any ‘papist’ push of CP (”papist” was Quirk’s word) which leads one to contemplation. Are you opposed to contemplation or to prayer that unites one to God?” 

He went on to add, “My background is as a theologian with a PhD in classical spirituality.” 

I don’t usually reveal my background, largely  because fortunately it came long before the practice of background checks came into vogue, and I see no value to bring it up at this late stage in my career.  Anyhow, I answered this obviously genuine enquiry by suggesting it might be best to ask Canon Quirk directly. This wasn’t altogether fair of me, for I knew that his several communication systems are generally unlisted or broken down. However, perhaps the next time I hear from him, maybe I’ll remember to ask him myself. Now that all this is perfectly clear and rewritten, what else can I possibly say?

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