Matthew 23 King James Version (KJV)

St. Matthew 23 King James Version (KJV)

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."

Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples,

Saying The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:

All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.

For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,

And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.

And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!

Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?

And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.

Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?

Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon.

And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein.

And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous,

And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets.

Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.

Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city:

That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.

Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

إنجيل متى - الأصحاح 23

"الويل لكم أيها الكتبة والفريسيون المراؤون، فإنكم أشبه بالقبور المكلسة، يبدو ظاهرها جميلا، وأما داخلها فممتلئ من عظام الموتى وكل نجاسة."

1. وكلم يسوع الجموع وتلاميذه قال: 

2. ((إن الكتبة و الفريسيين على كرسي موسى جالسون، 

3. فافعلوا ما يقولون لكم واحفظوه. ولكن أفعالهم لا تفعلوا، لأنهم يقولون ولا يفعلون: 

4. يحزمون أحمالا ثقيلة ويلقونها على أكتاف الناس، ولكنهم يأبون تحريكها بطرف الإصبع. 

5. وجميع أعمالهم يعملونها لينظر الناس إليهم: يعرضون عصائبهم ويطولون أهدابهم 

6. ويحبون المقعد الأول في المآدب، وصدور المجالس في المجامع، 

7. وتلقي التحيات في الساحات، وأن يدعوهم الناس ((رابي )). 

8. ((أما أنتم فلا تدعوا أحدا يدعوكم ((رابي ))، لأن لكم معلما واحدا وأنتم جميعا إخوة. 

9. ولا تدعوا أحدا أبا لكم في الأرض، لأن لكم أبا واحدا هو الآب السماوي. 

10. ولا تدعوا أحدا يدعوكم مرشدا، لأن لكم مرشدا واحدا وهو المسيح. 

11. وليكن أكبركم خادما لكم. 

12. فمن رفع نفسه وضع، ومن وضع نفسه رفع. 

13. ((الويل لكم أيها الكتبة و الفريسيون المراؤون، فإنكم تقفلون ملكوت السموات في وجوه الناس، فلا أنتم تدخلون، و لا الذين يريدون الدخول تدعونهم يدخلون.

14. ((الويل لكم أيها الكتبة و الفريسيون المراؤون، فإنكم تقفلون ملكوت السموات في وجوه الناس، فلا أنتم تدخلون، و لا الذين يريدون الدخول تدعونهم يدخلون.

15. الويل لكم أيها الكتبة و الفريسيون المراؤون، فإنكم تجوبون البحر والبر لتكسبوا دخيلا واحدا، فإذا أصبح دخيلا، جعلتموه يستوجب جهنم ضعف ما أنتم تستحقون. 

16. الويل لكم أيها القادة العميان، فإنكم تقولون: ((من حلف بالمقدس فليس هذا بشيء، ومن حلف بذهب المقدس فهو ملزم )). 

17. أيها الجهال العميان، أيما أعظم ؟ الذهب أم المقدس الذي قدس الذهب؟ 

18. وتقولون: ((من حلف بالمذبح فليس هذا بشيء، ومن حلف بالقربان الذي على المذبح فهو ملزم )). 

19. أيها العميان، أيما أعظم؟ القربان أم المذبح الذي يقدس القربان؟ 

20. فمن حلف بالمذبح حلف به وبكل ما عليه، 

21. ومن حلف بالمقدس حلف به وبالساكن فيه، 

22. ومن حلف بالسماء حلف بعرش الله وبالجالس عليه. 

23. الويل لكم أيها الكتبة و الفريسيون المراؤون فإنكم تؤدون عشر النعنع والشمرة والكمون، بعدما أهملتم أهم ما في الشريعة: العدل والرحمة والأمانة. فهذا ما كان يجب أن تعملوا به من دون أن تهملوا ذاك. 

24. أيها القادة العميان، يا أيها الذين يصفون الماء من البعوضة ويبتلعون الجمل. 

25. الويل لكم أيها الكتبة والفريسيون المراؤون، فإنكم تطهرون ظاهر الكأس والصحن، وداخلهما ممتلئ من حصيلة النهب والطمع. 

26. أيها الفريسي الأعمى، طهر أولا داخل الكأس، ليصير الظاهر أيضا طاهرا. 

27. الويل لكم أيها الكتبة والفريسيون المراؤون، فإنكم أشبه بالقبور المكلسة، يبدو ظاهرها جميلا، وأما داخلها فممتلئ من عظام الموتى وكل نجاسة. 

28. وكذلك أنتم، تبدون في ظاهركم للناس أبرارا، وأما باطنكم فممتلئ رياء وإثما. 

29. الويل لكم أيها الكتبة والفريسيون المراؤون، فإنكم تبنون قبور الأنبياء وتزينون ضرائح الصديقين 

30. وتقولون: لو عشنا في أيام آبائنا، لما شاركناهم في دم الأنبياء. 

31. فأنتم تشهدون على أنفسكم بأنكم أبناء قتلة الأنبياء. 

32. فاملأوا أنتم مكيال آبائكم. 

33. أيها الحيات أولاد الأفاعي، كيف لكم أن تهربوا من عقاب جهنم؟ 

34. من أجل ذلك هاءنذا أرسل إليكم أنبياء وحكماء وكتبة، فبعضهم تقتلون وتصلبون، وبعضهم في مجامعكم تجلدون ومن مدينة إلى مدينة تطاردون، 

35. حتى يقع عليكم كل دم زكي سفك في الأرض، من دم هابيل الصديق إلى دم زكريا بن بركيا الذي قتلتموه بين المقدس والمذبح. 

36. الحق أقول لكم: إن هذا كله سيقع على هذا الجيل. 

37. أورشليم أورشليم، يا قاتلة الأنبياء وراجمة المرسلين إليها، كم مرة أردت أن أجمع أبناءك، كما تجمع الدجاجة فراخها تحت جناحيها! فلم تريدوا. 

38. هوذا بيتكم يترك لكم قفرا. 

39. فإني أقول لكم: لا ترونني بعد اليوم حتى تقولوا: ((تبارك الآتي باسم الرب )).

Quatrains (10) , Drunk. - Rumi-

Quatrains (10) , Drunk.

- Rumi-

My tongue is parched, though I've drunk myself senseless.

I haven't heart nor head; nor patience, nor peace of mind.

My tears fall, bewildered at the thought of her, defenseless.

Saghi, please, do me a favor -- bring me some more wine.

*

You can't get drunk on the wine of her eyes,

You can't bury your hands in her hair.

Your enemies taunt you, night and day:

'You waste away, and still she doesn't care.'

*

We are drunk on the essence without even tasting the wine,

Filled with light in the morning, and joyful into the night.

They say our path leads nowhere--that's alright:

There's joy enough right here to fill all time.

*

Listen only to what drunken lovers say,

And loosen passion's ties to mean and low.

Each tribe draws you into its own circle;

The parrot sings of sugar; of ruins, the crow.

*

All day, Saghi, I was drunk on you.

God knows, all day I waited for you.

Give me the wine, let the world keep its traps.

I stalked you all day, tonight I will too.

*

Today I'm going for a drunken stroll.

I'll search the town for a rational man,

Pour him a drink from the bowl of my skull,

And turn him into a crazy fool.

*

Drunk, I asked my teacher, "Please, I need to know

What it means to be, or not to be."

He answered me, said, "Go!

Relieve the suffering of the world and you'll be free."

*

Was such a drunk ever seen in the tavern of love,

Or such broken and shabby old vats to hold the wine?

The courtyard's awash in wine, overflowing the sky --

Was such a full cup ever seen in a drunkard's hand?

*

I hear the song of a drunk nightingale,

And the voice of a temptress on the wind.

I see my love's illusion on the water,

And that flower I smell, I know it well.

*

Each day my lover comes again. She's drunk,

The cup of passion's riot in her hand.

If I take it, reason's flask will break.

If I don't, how can I let go her hand?

***

L’amour - Nathalie Feld -

Art of Kahlil Gibran

L’amour 

- Nathalie Feld -

Parfois douce pluie d’été, 

parfois vague qui fait chavirer, 

l’amour peut être feu d’incendie,
l’amour peut être lueur de bougie. 

L’amour peut se transformer en haine, 

l’amour peut mettre en chaînes, 

l’amour peut être amitié, 

l’amour peut tuer. 

L’amour peut toucher nos coeurs, 

l’amour peut sécher nos pleurs, 

l’amour peut effacer la douleur, 

l’amour a tant de couleurs. 

L’amour peut ensorceler, 

l’amour peut transformer, 

l’amour peut affranchir, 

l’amour peut épanouir.

L’amour peut guérir, 

l’amour peut unir, 

l’amour peut aveugler, 

l’amour peut déchirer, 

l’amour peut briser nos coeurs, 

l’amour peut laisser en pleurs, 

l’amour peut effacer le bonheur, 

l’amour fait peur. 

Paradis sur terre ou pire enfer, 

l’amour donne vie, 

l’amour détruit. 

Il sera peut-être sur notre passage un parmi ces mille visages mais quel sera son habit, 

le rouge, 

le bleu, 

le gris.

Deux passés, 

deux secrets, 

les amours qui vont se rencontrer apportent leur vie de chaque coté. 

Un amour, deux bouts, un amour, le tout.

"Tant de choses que je n’ai pas pu te donner, 

tant de rêves que tu as dû laisser passer. 

Pourquoi es-tu encore avec moi, 

dis-le moi et elle prend sa main ridée pour tendrement la caresser. Parce que je t’aime comme tu es, 

tu n’as rien à me prouver. 

Je n’ai pas tout pu te donner, 

tant de choses t’ont sûrement manqué. 

Pourquoi toi tu es toujours là, 

dis-le moi et il prend sa main ridée pour tendrement la caresser, parce que tu n’as rien à me prouver, 

je t’aime comme tu es."

Nous cherchons tous l’amour infini, 

le grand amour de notre vie. 

Nous rêvons de l’amour parfait sans contraintes et à longue durée, nous cherchons l’amour pour la vie qui ne se plaint pas et sourit. 

L’amour a tant d’habits mais précieux est celui qui nous laisse la liberté d’être ce qu’on est et nous donne celle de développer nos ailes.

Gouffre - Nathalie FELD -

By Kahlil Gibran 

Gouffre

- Nathalie FELD - 

Si peu d'air

si peu de lumière 

même le ciel reste couvert 

et le soleil n'éclaire 

que ce voile gris 

qui recouvre ma vie 

étreintes de peur 

sur chaque heure 

les minutes s'étirent 

les secondes déchirent 

et le temps 

infiniment trop lent 

s'écoule dans le néant 

Elle, 1999 

Locked .............

لا يدوم أغترابي - فيروز

إنتظرتها طويلا جلست بين الليل و السنين .

و عندما أدركني المساء حبيبتي جاءت إلى الضياع

ما بيننا منازل الشتاء يا أسفا للعمر كيف ضاع

لا يدوم أغترابي -  فيروز

*

لا يدوم اغترابي لا غناء لنا يدوم

فأنهض في غيابي و إتبعيني إلى الكروم

هيئي هالدنانة كرمنا بعد في ربى

يوم تبكي سمانا نشبع القلب و الشفاة

حبيبتي زنبقة صغيرة أما أنا فعوسج حزين

طويلا إنتظرتها طويلا جلست بين الليل و السنين

و عندما أدركني المساء حبيبتي جاءت إلى الضياع

ما بيننا منازل الشتاء يا أسفا للعمر كيف ضاع

ما أحيل رجوعي متعبا أتبع المساء

و الهواء في ضلوعي جن من فرحة اللقاء

**

سكن الليل - جبران خليل جبران

سَكنَ اللَّيل وَفي ثَوب السُّكون تَختَبي الأَحلام

سكن الليل - جبران خليل جبران

*

سَكنَ اللَّيل وَفي ثَوب السُّكون تَختَبي الأَحلام

وَسَعى البَدرُ وَلِلبَدرِ عُيُون تَرصُدُ الأَيّام

عَلّنا نطفي بِذيّاك العَصِير حرقَةَ الأَشواق

فَتَعالي يا اِبنَة الحَقل نَزُور كرمة العُشّاق

اِسمَعي البُلبُل ما بَينَ الحُقُول يَسكُبُ الأَلحان

في فَضاء نَفَخَت فيهِ التّلول نَسمَة الرّيحان

لا تَخافي يا فَتاتي فَالنُّجوم تَكتُمُ الأَخبار

وَضَبابُ اللَّيل في تِلكَ الكُرُوم يَحجُبُ الأَسرار

لا تَخافي فَعَروسُ الجنّ في كَهفِها المَسحور

هَجَعَت سكرى وَكادَت تَختَفي عَن عُيون الحُور

وَمَليكُ الجنِّ إِن مَرَّ يَرُوح وَالهَوى يَثنيه

فَهوَ مِثلي عاشِقٌ كَيفَ يَبوح بِالَّذي يضنيه 

جبران خليل جبران

It is not true that the heart wears out - Albert Camus -

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
- Kahlil Gibran-

Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness. - Camus -

No, … it is not humiliating to be Unhappy. 

Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life. … 

What you must do now is nothing more than live like everybody else. 

You deserve, by what you are, a happiness, a fullness that few people know. 

Yet today this fullness is not dead, it is a part of life and, to its credit, it reigns over you whether you want it to or not. 

But in the coming days you must live alone, with this hole, this painful memory.

 

This lifelessness that we all carry inside of us — by us, I mean to say those who are not taken to the height of happiness, and who painfully remember another kind of happiness that goes beyond the memory.

Sometimes, for violent minds, the time that we tear off for work, that is torn away from time, is the best. An unfortunate passion.

*

It is not true that the heart wears out — but the body creates this illusion.

Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness. 

If they are happy by surprise, they find themselves disabled, unhappy to be deprived of their unhappiness.

***

My friend, I am not what I seem, - Rumi & Gibran -

My friend, I am not what I seem..

- Rumi & Gibran -

Study me as much as you like,

you will not know me, 

for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. 

Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, 

for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.” 

- Rumi -

**

My friend, I am not what I seem. 

Seeming is but a garment I wear—a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. 

The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and

therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable. 

I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I

do—for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my

deeds thy own hopes in action.

- Gibran -

About Champville (My School).

En marge du cinquantenaire du Collège Mariste Champville

Témoignage sur son fondateur : le frère Mario Corradi (1914-1984)

Le frère Mario est l’être le plus extraordinaire que j’ai rencontré dans ma vie de laïc engagé. Ayant postulé à un poste auprès de l’administration de Champville, il m’a offert un travail de grande responsabilité en tant que « secrétaire de direction » du Collège Mariste Champville.

Le rythme de travail était intense et passionnant car le collège venait d’être transféré de Jounieh à Dick-el-Mehdi. Le travail était si volumineux que déjà à quatre heures du matin les lampes de la chambre du frère Mario étaient éclairées : c’était ainsi tous les jours de la semaine car il préparait l’ordre du jour du travail à accomplir au cours de la journée naissante. Cela dénotait que c’était un homme travailleur, exigeant et actif, d’autant plus que le chantier de Champville était en état de finition complète. Le prénom du frère Mario prend son étymologie du prénom de « Marie ».

Donc, il était doublement mariste, d’abord par son prénom ensuite grâce à sa vocation religieuse dans la Congrégation des frères maristes. Sur le plan religieux, il m’a fait comprendre que réciter une fois par jour le « Pater Noster et l’Ave Maria » était amplement suffisant pour plaire à Dieu et à la Sainte Vierge comme prières du soir.

Son planning (agenda) journalier était saturé de noms et de rendez-vous avec des personnalités qui devaient le rencontrer en cours de journée et de la semaine commençante. C’était un visionnaire et un chef né car il ne craignait pas le travail immense qu’il devait embrasser tous les jours sur le plan administratif, religieux et social.

De surcroît, il ne faut pas omettre la surveillance du suivi de l’achèvement de la construction du Collège Champville avec tous ses aléas et difficultés, sans compter l’éducation de la jeunesse – main dans la main – avec les frères éducateurs de la Communauté des frères maristes, en parallèle avec les frères préfets et les membres du corps professoral. Dans toutes ses activités, il avait des graines de générosité à distribuer par la parole et le geste. Ce ne serait pas mentir que d’affirmer que sa générosité et son altruisme n’avaient aucune limite — par respect pour sa modestie je m’abstiendrai d’en parler.La construction du Collège Champville a été son chef-d’œuvre. Il avait l’habitude de répéter que Champville ne finirait jamais et nous sommes là pour confirmer que c’était vrai jusqu’aujourd’hui. Il avait deux maximes éloquentes qu’il répétait aux étudiants : « Il faut viser haut pour tomber juste » et cela dans tous les domaines de la vie estudiantine et professionnelle ; la deuxième maxime se définit ainsi : « L’homme doit se considérer toute sa vie comme un “écolier” et chercher à devenir plus capable et meilleur. »

Dans son apostolat catéchétique, il enseignait qu’il « faut être et non paraître ». Lorsqu’une mère de famille lui disait qu’il était bon, il répondait inopinément « Seul Dieu est bon ». Dans nos rapports professionnels, c’était un homme supérieur qui se transformait en homme serviteur. Il avait un sens avancé des rapports de sociabilité. Il était de ceux qu’on n’oublie pas lorsqu’on a eu le bonheur de le connaître, de collaborer et de servir.

Dans sa vie de tous les jours, il était un exemple dans l’art de se dépasser et de se surpasser en donnant le bon exemple de près et de loin. C’était un religieux très apprécié par son entourage : professeurs, élèves, parents d’élèves, travailleurs et ouvriers, tous l’aimaient et le respectaient. Il a été une fois en 1968 l’objet d’une interview télévisée sur le thème « L’éducation de la jeunesse au Liban », une interview qu’il entretint avec beaucoup de brio, d’adresse et de maîtrise.

Dans l’exercice de ses fonctions en tant que directeur et provincial, il n’a jamais pris de congé et son amour pour le Liban était si proverbial que l’on disait qu’il était beaucoup plus « libanais qu’ italien ». C’était un dirigeant à l’allure napoléonienne.

C’était également un homme de Dieu hors norme qui entraînait les autres à se dépasser dans l’amour du prochain et dans la prière. Il était un exemple vivant qu’on ne peut pas oublier de si tôt à cause de ses œuvres édifiantes. Il a personnalisé avec succès les trois symboles de saint Champagnat : l’humilité, la modestie et la simplicité et a été au service de la parole de Dieu et de la culture ainsi qu’au service de l’éducation de la jeunesse libanaise jusqu’à la fin de sa vie en laissant un souvenir inoubliable à tous ceux qui l’on connu de près comme de loin.

Les textes publiés dans le cadre de la rubrique « courrier » n’engagent que leurs auteurs et ne reflètent pas nécessairement le point de vue de L’Orient-Le Jour.

Wat is a Poem ? -Jean-Pierre Simeón

“Poetry can break open locked chambers of possibility, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire,” Adrienne Rich

**

— A poem? grandpa says, tugging on his mustache and looking worried. A poem, well… it’s what poets make.

— Oh…? All right.

— Even if the poets do not know it themselves!

**

A poem

is when you have the sky in your mouth.

It is hot like fresh bread,

when you eat it,

a little is always left over.

A poem

is when you hear

the heartbeat of a stone,

when words beat their wings.

It is a song sung in a cage.

A poem

is words turned upside down

and suddenly!

the world is new.

A Philosopher on Brain Rest - Megan Craig - NYT's The Stone .

A Philosopher on Brain Rest

By Megan Craig, June 18, 2019

In January 2018, while I was chaperoning my daughter’s school ice-skating trip, a sturdy third-grade boy lost control and came sliding into me from behind on his knees. He was just the right-size projectile to undercut my skates and send me flying backward on the ice, where I landed on my head. Thus began my ignoble descent into becoming a philosopher on brain rest.

When I got up I was not my usual self. Feeling disoriented and unable to remember my own address or the date, I was taken to the emergency room, where I was examined and told I had whiplash and a concussion. I found the medical terminology for my condition, “mild traumatic brain injury,” confusing and humorous. It was confusing because I’m not sure how anything can be both mild and traumatic at once. It was humorous for the same reason.

The elegant doctor who saw me assured me that I would stop weeping for no apparent reason very soon, and that all I had to do to hasten my recovery was commit to “brain rest” — essentially no reading, writing, screens or strenuous thinking until I could sustain focus without a headache or other symptoms of injury. The predicted time for recovery was three months. It was at this point that she nonchalantly asked me what I do for a living. “I’m a philosopher,” I replied. And I’m pretty sure we both thought that was hilarious.

Being a philosopher on brain rest is like being a point guard on hand rest. The major asset for your profession is suddenly not working reliably. I have often lamented the fact that my job as a philosophy professor confines me so much to a chair and a desk. I’ve wished that philosophy entailed more calisthenics, rugged walking, running outdoors. With my concussion, I found myself suddenly freed from the professional obligation to think. I even had a doctor’s note.

Sadly I was in no condition to run, and absent a clear head, walks and daily movement were more difficult and less enjoyable than before. Brain rest itself was elusive, as I seemed incapable of arresting thought. There was no protective cone to keep the wounded place from being itched, no cast to keep the brain still. Perhaps predictably then, brain rest inspired more thinking about the very nature of thinking.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of the immediate days and weeks following my concussion was the degree to which I found my self missing. I felt bad in so many ways, but the profound gap in my identity had to do with my lack of basic recall and the challenge of carrying out previously simple mental steps. I was moving about with no apparent difficulty, but my head felt like an anvil and my mind felt like slosh. It made me question anew the degree to which I am my brain.

Ever since Descartes insisted upon the separation of mind and body, philosophers (especially feminist philosophers) have tried to impress upon us the necessity of attending to the body. Descartes thought the mind was the divine and indubitable aspect of his own being, that single point of certainty on which to rebuild his crumbling world: “I think therefore I am.”

Descartes’ theory of mind recalls Plato’s theory of the soul as the immortal, essential and indestructible part of the human being, the body a temporary prison or shell. Mind-body dualism is often ridiculed in contemporary philosophy as a legacy of stubbornly metaphysical, patriarchal and Western thinking. Dualism oversimplifies both mind and body and leads to a devaluation of the complexly embodied, psychosomatic ways in which beings inhabit the world. No serious philosopher or neuroscientist today thinks that mind and body can be neatly parsed into two distinctly separate objects or systems.

But a concussion has a way of changing one’s sense of the balance between mind and body. It’s one thing to be hit in the arm or the gut. It is an entirely different thing to be hit in the brain. Dualism is terrifying in part because the separation of mind and body implies the possibility of radical skepticism, brains in vats and other “Matrix”-like specters of disembodied life. Such modern-day versions of Cartesian skepticism ask us to imagine the entirety of the external world as an illusion or the intricate deception of an evil genius. What if we are just brains hooked up to an elaborate virtual reality?

It has been a long time since I took any of these images seriously. They seem easy to dismiss when one’s health is good. When things are otherwise, dualism takes on a new dimension. The injury to my brain highlighted the degree to which my identity and my powers of identification have a specific seat in my brain. The concussed condition was an intimation of how terrifying dementia and other brain disorders must feel — the loss of a thread that has so far tied together one’s life and tethered it to the lives of those one loves. In my case, the loss was temporary, but it was the first time that I have ever felt so distinctly the efforts of thinking, the brain as a muscle and the depression that accompanies the feeling of having lost oneself.

Unable to rest my brain, I thought about N.F.L. players and the progressive loss of identity and mental aptitude common to those who experience consecutive concussions and C.T.E. (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). I thought about memory and the loneliness of being unable to recall names and places that are the road marks of a communal life. I thought about the elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease whom I helped to care for when I was in high school. I would arrive each morning at her door only to have her greet me with the same wide-eyed gaze and question: “Who are you?”

Though my condition was transient, it highlighted the degree to which the brain serves as an anchoring center of control. For months, uncertainty accompanied my every move. In the immediate days after the concussion I mustered all of my energy to read my daughter several pages of a Daniel Tiger storybook (against my doctor’s orders), only to fail to reach the end. I felt embarrassed and demoralized. I recalled my grandfather, late in his life, describing his own failing mind as a library where all of the books were shelved too high to reach.

Over time my symptoms subsided. I started to read again — not only Daniel Tiger, but Henri Bergson and Toni Morrison — and eventually I began to write. But how does one know when the brain has healed? I’m not sure where my identity resides or even what my identity is or consists in, but I am sure that my brain is crucial in the continuing orchestration of a world that feels inhabitable and a life that feels livable. Brain and body cannot be separated, and yet there are episodes when they fall out of phase, the one wounded and diminished while the other projects a picture of health and ability.

Philosophers tend to make terrible patients. I’m fairly sure that by thinking so much about brain rest I have prolonged my own recovery time. I also suspect that my thinking about my own brain and the specter of dualism is symptomatic of the injury itself. Perhaps when I recover fully, dualism will seem as ridiculous as it once did, receding into the background along with the muscular effort required to read. But I suspect I am altered.

On the bright side, philosophy has been relentless in my life as a thinking person, and a little brain rest was long overdue. Without a doubt, philosophers have to remember and insist upon the dignity and complexity of embodied life. We have to attend to our bodies, to care for our fitness and psychosomatic health. But we also need to care for our brains. I wish someone had told me that long ago, and that my education into philosophy included more common-sense doses of rest for the primary organ of my thinking. It would not have saved me from the injury, but it would have better primed me for the work of recovery.

Now more than a year since my injury, I am grateful for neural plasticity. I am alert to a difference between the everyday phenomenon of forgetting and blanks that intercede like dark matter in a brain laced with gaps. I remember the date, my address, my children’s names, with intention, holding them in place like precious stones in a ring. And I know that rest and recovery are as complex and meandering as thought itself.

Megan Craig (@waterstreetprojects) is an associate professor of philosophy and art at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and the author of “Levinas and James: Toward a Pragmatic Phenomenology.”

Democracy Is for the Gods - Costica Bradatan - NYT's The Stone .

Democracy Is for the Gods

By Costica Bradatan, July 4, 2019

"Yet democracy is one of those elusive things — happiness is another — whose promise, even if perpetually deferred, is more important than its actual existence. We may never get it, but we cannot afford to stop dreaming of it."

“Why do democracies fail?” 

We’ve heard that question a lot in the past few years, in books, on opinion pages and cable news shows, and in an increasingly anxious public debate. But I almost always find myself answering the question with another question: Why shouldn’t they? 

History — the only true guide we have on this matter — has shown us that democracy is rare and fleeting. It flares up almost mysteriously in some fortunate place or another, and then fades out, it seems, just as mysteriously. Genuine democracy is difficult to achieve and once achieved, fragile. In the grand scheme of human events, it is the exception, not the rule.

Despite democracy’s elusive nature, its core idea is disarmingly simple: As members of a community, we should have an equal say in how we conduct our life together. “In democracy as it ought to be,” writes Paul Woodruff in his 2006 book “First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea,” “all adults are free to chime in, to join the conversation on how they should arrange their life together. And no one is left free to enjoy the unchecked power that leads to arrogance and abuse.” 

Have you ever heard of anything more reasonable? But who says we are reasonable?

Fundamentally, humans are not predisposed to living democratically. One can even make the point that democracy is “unnatural” because it goes against our vital instincts and impulses. What’s most natural to us, just as to any living creature, is to seek to survive and reproduce. And for that purpose, we assert ourselves — relentlessly, unwittingly, savagely — against others: We push them aside, overstep them, overthrow them, even crush them if necessary. Behind the smiling facade of human civilization, there is at work the same blind drive toward self-assertion that we find in the animal realm. 

Just scratch the surface of the human community and soon you will find the horde. It is the “unreasoning and unreasonable human nature,” writes the zoologist Konrad Lorenz in his book “On Aggression,” that pushes “two political parties or religions with amazingly similar programs of salvation to fight each other bitterly,” just as it compels “an Alexander or a Napoleon to sacrifice millions of lives in his attempt to unite the world under his scepter.” World history, for the most part, is the story of excessively self-assertive individuals in search of various scepters.

It doesn’t help matters that, once such an individual has been enthroned, others are only too eager to submit to him. It is as though, in his illustrious presence, they realize they have too much freedom on their hands, which they find suddenly oppressive. In Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov,” the Grand Inquisitor says: “There is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, as long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible.” And what a sweet surrender! Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler and Mussolini were all smooth talkers, charmers of crowds and great political seducers. 

Their relationship with the crowd was particularly intimate. For in regimes of this kind, whenever power is used and displayed, the effect is profoundly erotic. What we see, for instance, in “The Triumph of the Will” (thanks, in good measure, to Leni Riefenstahl’s perverse genius), is people experiencing a sort of collective ecstasy. The seducer’s pronouncements may be empty, even nonsensical, but that matters little; each one brings the aroused crowd to new heights of pleasure. He can do whatever he likes with the enraptured followers now. They will submit to any of their master’s fancies. 

This is, roughly, the human context against which the democratic idea emerges. No wonder that it is a losing battle. Genuine democracy doesn’t make grand promises, does not seduce or charm, but only aspires to a certain measure of human dignity. It is not erotic. Compared to what happens in populist regimes, it is a frigid affair. Who in his right mind would choose the dull responsibilities of democracy over the instant gratification a demagogue will provide? Frigidity over boundless ecstasy? And yet, despite all this, the democratic idea has come close to embodiment a few times in history — moments of grace when humanity almost managed to surprise itself.

One element that is needed for democracy to emerge is a sense of humility. A humility at once collective and internalized, penetrating, even visionary, yet true. The kind of humility that is comfortable in its own skin, one that, because it knows its worth and its limits, can even laugh at itself. A humility that, having seen many a crazy thing and learned to tolerate them, has become wise and patient. To be a true democrat, in other words, is to understand that when it comes to the business of living together, you are no better than the others, and to act accordingly. To live democratically is, mainly, to deal in failure and imperfection, and to entertain few illusions about human society. The institutions of democracy, its norms and mechanisms, should embody a vision of human beings as deficient, flawed and imperfect. 

Ancient Athenian democracy devised two institutions that fleshed out this vision. First, sortition: the appointment of public officials by lot. Given the fundamental equality of rights that all Athenian citizens — that is, free male adults — enjoyed, the most logical means of access to positions of leadership was random selection. Indeed, for the Athenian democrats, elections would have struck at the heart of democracy: They would have allowed some people to assert themselves, arrogantly and unjustly, against the others.

The other fittingly imperfect Athenian institution was ostracization. When one of the citizens was becoming a bit too popular — too much of a charmer — Athenians would vote him out of the city for ten years by inscribing his name on bits of pottery. It was not punishment for something the charmer may have done, but a pre-emptive measure against what he might do if left unchecked. Athenians knew that they were too vulnerable and too flawed to resist political seduction (their complicated affair with Alcibiades gave them ample proof of that), and promptly denied themselves the pleasure. Man-made as it is, democracy is fragile and of a weak constitution — better not to put it to the test.

After Athens’ radical experiment in equality, democracy has resurfaced elsewhere, but often in forms that the ancient Athenians would probably have trouble calling democratic. For instance, much of today’s American democracy (one of the best versions on the market right now) would by Athenian standards be judged “oligarchic.” It’s the fortunate wealthy few (hoi oligoi) who typically decide here not only the rules of the political game, but also who wins and who loses. Ironically, the system favors what we desperately wanted to avoid when we opted for democracy in the first place: the power-hungry, arrogant, oppressively self-assertive political animal.

Yet we should not be surprised. “If there were a people of gods, it would govern itself democratically,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote. “So perfect a form of government is not for men.” Democracy is so hard to find in the human world that most of the time when we speak of it, we refer to a remote ideal rather than a fact. That’s what democracy is ultimately about: an ideal that people attempt to put into practice from time to time. Never adequately and never for long — always clumsily, timidly, as though for a trial period.

Yet democracy is one of those elusive things — happiness is another — whose promise, even if perpetually deferred, is more important than its actual existence. We may never get it, but we cannot afford to stop dreaming of it.

Costica Bradatan is the author, most recently, of “Dying for Ideas. The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers,” and the religion editor for The Los Angeles Review of Books.

A Lesson for (and From) a Dystopian World - Rowan Williams - NYT's The Stone .

A Lesson for (and From) a Dystopian World

By Rowan Williams, May 24, 2019

Throughout his life, the American writer Russell Hoban produced a number of startlingly original novels. Perhaps the most startling of them all is “Riddley Walker,” first published in 1980. (Hoban died in 2011.)

The book belongs to the dystopian genre that has become fairly popular in recent decades. What makes it unlike any other is its language — a version of English as it might be spoken by people who had never seen words or place names written down, an idiom among the ruins of half-remembered scientific jargon, folklore and garbled history.

In the post-apocalyptic universe created by Hoban, words create ripples of meaning, echoes reaching into the heart of language and thought through a thick fog of cultural trauma and loss. People live in the shadows of the myth of Eusa, a character modeled after St. Eustace, the Roman general who, according to the legend, converted to Christianity after having a vision of Christ between the antlers of a stag.

In the myth, the ill-intentioned “Mr Clevver” encourages Eusa — whose name deliberately echoes “U.S.A.” — to hunt for the Addom that “runs in the wud,” the woods (but also the “would,” a reference to human desire and will). When Eusa finds the Addom (standing for both a split atom and a mortally wounded and divided “Adam”), he tears him apart, causing everything in the world to be devastated in a nuclear explosion.

At the center of the novel is Riddley Walker, the narrator and protagonist of the story — the vessel through which Hoban reflects on the forces that rule nature and human life.

Just a teenage boy, Riddley is reeling from the sudden death of his father when he stumbles upon a secret plot to recreate the weaponry that wrecked the world. At one point, he finds himself among the ruins of Canterbury Cathedral — “Stoan branches unner a stoan sky,” stone branches under a stone sky.

Here he is reduced to inarticulacy by what he sees and senses. What he believes he is encountering is power, the living force of the natural forest that the stone branches echo in their shapes. For the cathedral’s builders to have been able to produce such an effect, Riddley recognizes, they must have “put ther selfs right” with the “girt dants,” the great dance at the root of the world’s life.

Riddley feels growing in him the imperative to let go of the attempt to oppose power with power. “THE ONLYES [onliest] POWER IS NO POWER” is the message he hears: Approaching the world’s living energy with the goal of enforcing our control over it is the beginning of that destructive process that reaches its climax in the nuclear apocalypse.

But the threat of disaster must always have been there, he realizes, from the very first human attempts to find and to speak order in the world. Even Canterbury, from the moment of its creation, bore within itself the potential for corruption. “May be soons [as soon as] that 1st stoan tree stood up the wrongness hung there in the branches of it.”

And yet, human beings still have the ability to put themselves right with the power that lies around them. Such ability depends on their readiness to loosen their grip on the world that is crushed and torn by the force of their holding. Only in doing so they can achieve a fusion of natural and human energy, and a beauty that is so intensely harmonious that it hurts.

It is anything but a passive response to the world. It requires our own focused attention, listening for the flow of life to discover an energy that pulls together and not apart. This is what human power is when it is “put right”: an alignment with nature that, rather than being destructive, leaves behind the violent battles for control and domination.

Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

We regularly think about power in the context of rivalry and contested space, as the element that allows us to realize our projects without being hindered by other agents. Hoban invites us instead to imagine power in terms of convergence and alignment, not as the expression of individual capacities in lethal competition.

To be clear: I am not talking about encouraging the powerless to abandon any hope for some measure of control over their lives. The hope that all may find the power to speak for themselves is fundamental to a healthy society. But such a hope is illusory if it is simply the desire to reverse existing patterns of control to our advantage.

Today, global politics is trapped in zero-sum games, and the massive menace of a climate crisis is as terrifying a prospect as the nuclear horrors described in “Riddley Walker.” It is time for us to look unmercifully at our expectations of limitless economic growth — a fantasy that will eventually strip us of all power to manage our environment.

We must step back from the feverish language now prevalent in politics, where opposition is increasingly absolute and there is no room for compromise. We must search for ways of giving voice to and empowering the most vulnerable people among us, and to say goodbye to a world ruled by unaccountable elites. And we must create effective global vehicles of cooperation in the face of crises that do not recognize national boundaries — from climate change to disease outbreaks, to forced migrations prompted by diseases, ecological disasters and bloody civil wars.

Time is running out. Unless we reimagine the power we seek for ourselves in terms of solidarity and compassion, our future will be the wasteland of Russell Hoban’s fantasy.

Rowan Williams is the former archbishop of Canterbury.