A Listening Heart
O'Brien, William James
Her conclusion ought to be pondered carefully: "The real Cuban threat may be the reaction that forces the United States into untenable alliances with right-wing regimes, involves the United...
...IRVING MALIN'S books include Saul Bellow's Fiction, The Achievement of Carson McCullers, and Conrad Aiken's Prose...
...when they do see it, they remain silent...
...On the Other hand, the phrase also has a biblical sense and speaks of an abiding relationship with the giver of life and identifies the basis for citizenship in the city of God...
...There was no telling whether the city hidden under that mantle was still the same or whether in the night, another had taken its place...
...Dunne goes on to describe a double movement undertaken by those who respond to the invitation to embark on the _9 also of the dark world through which she courses, not aimlessly like the vagabond but mindfully in the manner of a pilgrim moving in tune with the liturgy...
...What is the contemplative life in the present age...
...As warning he _9 himself one who has become lost beyond himself in a region the human sciences know nothing about, unable to return to the human circle...
...9 Yet while it may be true that the life of the contemplative makes more sense than ever in times like our own, the challenges presented to one who embraces that calling are awesome...
...Is the solitary seeker, or the seeker in community, called to a timeless life of at-oning with God, absolved from responsibility for the present historic moment...
...10019...
...nently sane, not always in need of repair as much as o f understanding...
...BOX 1799, LA JOLLA, CA 92058 (619) 454-1477 (Day or night) , ..~ 6 April 1984:221 ing and value of the contemplative vocation itself in the present, critical moment...
...David Steindl-Rast understands that the real task is learning to listen...
...Her conclusion ought to be pondered carefully: "The real Cuban threat may be the reaction that forces the United States into untenable alliances with right-wing regimes, involves the United States in unpopular and often illegal overseas entanglements, alienates many of its citi11 11111 I1111ll II I zens, and undercuts its prestige and influence abroad...
...But Calvino insists that Marcovaldo has an imagination, a special gift for seeing the extraordinary in the grimly realistic city...
...I have quoted the passage at length because it Commonweal: 222...
...I _9 don't...
...He had counseled, and then led, the flight toward advancing Allied forces...
...l l [ __ 1 III I l l The extraordinary vision, the grim city MARCOVALD0 italo Calvino Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, $9.95, 121 pp...
...However, adds Groeschel, A person interested in spiritual growth must overcome the tendency to remain aloof from things of material concern...
...The image of the man who speaks profoundly disturbed but frequently emithe single sentence is both sign and warning...
...At the fountain, like Rodin's Thinker perched above the "Gate of Hell," the old man ponders the events of that day of flight, searching in vain for a shred of meaning...
...Is it ~t life in which there is no night of the shooting stars...
...The very word obedience comes from ob-audire, which means to listen intently...
...he is trapped in the neverending repetitions of time...
...SPIRITUAL PASSAGES Benedict Groeschei Crossroad, $12.95, 210 pp...
...We must . . . recognize the oppressed, the poor, the defrauded and trapped as our only hope of finding God in this world...
...Thoughtful Americans have always despaired the fact that their country atways seems to line up on the side of_9 "bad guys" in its foreign commitments These books help explain why...
...I r v i n g Malin M ARCOVALDO is an ordinary citizen of an Italian city...
...In the twenty stories which are in effect different "seasons" of his soul, Marcovaldo is really not different from the average man...
...I become one with these ashes, and repent...
...Beyond their insights into the life that opens before one who embarks upon the spiritual journey, each work also addresses the perplexing questions of the meanBEING CHRISTIAN BEING HUMAN BEING ' " THE CHRISTIAN CENTER FOR GROWTH offers a n i n t e n s i v e f i v e - d a y c o n f e r e n c e : MATURING IN FAITH The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Adult Meaning with JAMES FOWLER AND THEODORE A. GILL and other resource persofis AUGUST 12-17, 1984 SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA write or call DOUGLAS A. LAND, D[RECTOR THE CHRISTIAN CENTER FOR GROWTH 12.O...
...But what about the holocaust...
...In the mirror of his memory are the present hells of campesinos caught in the crossfire between latter-day fascists and would-be liberators...
...Finally, Benedict Groeschel's Spiritual Passages offers an elaborate reminder that the "child of God" who sets out on a spiritual journey stands to benefit from humanist psychology's contributions toward understanding aberrations which any right-minded individual spiritual journey, to enter into the to and would prefer to avoid...
...Its opposite is to be utterly deaf, and the word for this is literally ab-surdus...
...Lawrence provided breakfast for the haggard stranger and attempted to engage him in conversation, but the man remained silent and finally returned to the desert having said not another word...
...David Steindl-Rast's A Listening Heart offers profound insight into the movement into solitude, a movement undertaken deliberately in the monastic life and yet a movement that one does not have to be a hermit to make...
...rifice, persecutor and victim, executioner and r e d e e m e r . . , in the hope of seeing God with my own eyes, I melt away...
...In the fourth story Calvino writes: "Streets and avenues stretched out, endless and deserted, like blanched chasms between mountainous cliffs...
...Can the contemplative make sense of a search for God in a "professional [monastic] environment" (Steindl-Rast) at a polite remove from mangled and mutilated corpses...
...The film raises disturbing questions for the contemplative...
...I. I LII 1!1 III Pilgrims on spiritual journeys THE PASSIONATE LIFE Sam Keen Harper & Row, $14.95, 274 pp...
...Mindful in-gathering even of present hells is carded on in hopes that even the night of the shooting stars will find its ultimate context not in an Inferno but in a Paradiso...
...a maze of snowy forms...
...Sam Keen has much more to say about the movement into the human circle, trusting that his penetration of his own individual life story _9 will afford him access to the whole human story as well...
...The first movement isinto Groeschel has apprenticed himself to _9 the region where one is most alone, into _9 company of spiritual masters who know solitude...
...Maggie Ross's The Fire of Your Life, divided liturgically into months from December to December in order to begin appropriately with Advent, is a personal record of her own pilgrimage...
...a blinking commercial sign which is shaped like the moon (and the moon itself...
...On the one hand, the phrase has been used to refer to unwanted infants left to die outside the city gates and, by extension, tO all who live marginal lives cut off from the human city which will not incorporate them...
...Every story turns swiftly from "realism" to "fantasy" -- and back again...
...the second is back to the human _9 well that children of God are not always circle...
...He or she should nourish a constant, dedicated interest iri those who suffer from injustice...
...The more one can directly associate with the victims of injustice, share their lot, plead their cause and defend them, the more one will grow spiritually...
...In the monastary, space has been carefully prepared and time taken to absorb the shock of events that incline one to despair...
...And it is this imagination -- this "shaping spirit" -- which enables his hero to rise, if only momentarily, above his predicaments...
...And like the chronicles of medieval pilgrims, her observations afford a glimpse not only of the march _9 but _9 I|1111~ IIIIIil I II IIII REVIEWERS JOSEPH A. PAGE, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, is the author of Peron: A Biography (Random House...
...How do I understand holocaust, any holocaust...
...Everything is absurd until we learn to listen to its meaning . . . . To listen you have to be s i l e n t . . , l i k e . . , a forester totally mindful of the game he is stalking...
...WILLJAM JAMES O'BRIEN /8 the author of Stories to the Dark: Explorations in Religious Imagination (Paulist...
...The man becomes for Dunne an image _9 of the "child of God," a phrase with several connotations...
...Benedict Groeschel speaks most directly to the questions raised by the film when he warns that spiritually minded people . . . since they themselves try to be fair and giving . . . lose sight of the fact that we live in a wicked world...
...A LISTENING IIEART David Steindl-Rast Crossroad, $5.95, 95 pp...
...she respondssimply "I can't do anything else...
...He dislikes his job, but he must work to survive and to help his family to survive -- barely...
...THE FIRE OF YOUR LIFE Maggie Ross Paulist, $$.95, 143 pp...
...Marcovaldo sees an odd mushroom in the cracks of the sidewalk...
...Frequently they cannot cope with injustice so they do not see it...
...These transformations occur swiftly, Calvino apparently implies, because the average man has only brief encounters with t h e obscure, the uncanny, the transcendental shining, before he is forced to return to earth...
...Near the end, the leader of a remnant of survivors sits by a town fountain, alone with infernal memories _9 of a long day's journey...
...As sign he points to a destination beyond the self for which anyone might set out...
...In different ways, each of the works selected here for review attempt to map the spiritual journey Dunne speaks of...
...William James O'Brien I N the opening pages of his Reasons of the Heart, John S. Dunne introduces the striking image of a man emerging out of a desert wilderness to utter enigmatically to T.E...
...Maggie Ross meets the question most directly...
...Who could say if under those white mounds there were still gasoline pumps, news-stands, tram stops, or if there were only sack upon sack of snow...
...For that task he finds contemporary developmental psychologists most apt to offer assistance to the person who is less interested in adjustment and more interested in conversion...
...He alone had seen through the treachery of fascists who had ordered the townspeople to gather in the cathedral...
...To be present where we are means to wake up to this place...
...At the same time, fro with God...
...Lawrence, who had himself just emerged from bathing in an oasis, "The love is of God, and from God, and to God...
...I hope to spend the rest of my life in the exploration of the awful knowledge of man as both priest and sac_9 ' i i n CORRECTION Omitted from the featured listing of "Human Family" books in our March 23rd issue: The complete list of "Human Family" books can beobtained by writing to' The National Conference of Christians and Jews, 43 W. 57th St., New York, N.Y...
...For me one of the most difficult questions to live with now is presented in the recent Italian film, The Night of the Shooting Stars...
...Asked "Why are you a hermit...
Vol. 111 • April 1984 • No. 7
