One of my new year resolutions is to pay more attention to writers and artists - and now monks! In my last post I wrote about a Claire Byrne RTE radio interview I enjoyed with a Glenstal
monk called Simon Sleeman.
An itch to
hear more led me to another RTE radio interview with
another Glenstal monk. Listen here to Mark Patrick Hederman talking to Marian Finucane about his new book the ‘Opal
and the Pearl’.
If you don’t
want to listen here’s my potted eavesdropped version.
It seems the
‘Opal and the Pearl’ was written by Hederman partly as a response to our President Higgin's suggestion that we need a new ethics. The flow of their conversation goes something
like this.
We should
listen to writers and artists. We are living in a state of chaos. We need rules
and ethics now that those of the church have disappeared. When we had a
catechism - when many people thought it was wonderful to be Catholic in Ireland
- we didn't have to ask questions – but now we do.
Bullyboys
have always run the world.
Hederman believes the problem is not about men or
women it's about the denial of the feminine – even perhaps war against the
feminine
Homophobics,
he says, are terrified of the feminine in self or in other. We are no longer a
fascist regime that determines the type of toy or colour that our children have
or wear. We are entering a new world. So we have to work out new rules and
standards. Marriage can be a prison rather than a liberation. Before, when it
was an institution, your big day could well be the end of your life. He finds
it strange that gay people want to get married. We should have more
imagination. He hates referenda. They
are, he says, more like hate fests than debates.
Religion, he
says, is something we associate with freedom and should never be forced. If you
want me to believe in your Redeemer you'd want to look a bit more redeemed
yourself. (He quoting Friedrich
Nietzsche here). If people find your way
of life attractive then….
Marion is reading
Hillary Clinton's book - she remembers Clinton saying at one point that she
could no longer put her arms around America. Hederman remarks that de Valera
put his arms around Ireland in a paternal way that worked for 100 years for a
percentage of the people.
They went on
to discuss how robots now run hotels and soon will run supermarkets. Hederman
says that should be a wonderful thing because everybody would be at leisure - but
not so - because we have become obsessed by the notion that your dignity has
become aligned to your work. At one point 2/3 of the world’s population were
slaves so that one third could live in the kind of leisure that we associate
with aristocracy.
He referred
to the President of another nation as the last bastion of male chauvinism and
patriarchy. The undercurrent to all this, he says, is that at the archetypal
level of the unconscious – thousands of years of male domination has ended and
there is now a feminine backlash.
He hates the
term parity of esteem. This seems to him to mean that we believe that we are
entitled to have a 500 seater bus pulled up outside our home regardless of
where we live. There is an anger out there that's to do with unreal desire.
We
are told lies all the time he say. Politicians
are not in charge it's money that's in charge. He spoke about Chuck Feeney the
financier. Feeney told him once that
every single person that is born on this earth could be given $1 million when
they start. This is perfectly possible
with all the trillions that are in various foundations. But within 10 years all
that money would be back in the hands of the five percent who know how to deal
with money.
Hederman had
his first computer in his 40s. He’s aware that now children of three are
perfectly conversant with how to work your iPad. Parents have no capacity to
prevent them from seeing things they shouldn't. There is instantaneous
awareness of everything that's going on. Democracy, while it may be better than
any alternatives, is still a crude instrument.
A listener texted
(among the many who were enthralled) to ask why, if he hates the church,
doesn't he leave.
Dancing with Dinosaurs
He doesn't
hate the church. He wrote a book called ‘Dancing with Dinosaurs’. Every institution has to become a huge corporate/amalgam
or it disappears he says. Seventy percent of every small business dies in the
first five years. Of that 70 percent 40 percent go within 10 years. So the fact
that Christianity has endured for 2000 years is a miracle - it should be gone
long ago. But the mahout of the dinosaur is the Holy Spirit….
But it is also
an institution that is made of human hands and has been guilty of the most
heinous crimes during the 2000 years of its existence. That is the principle of
the incarnation he says. The Trinity want to work with us as partners. It's an
amalgam - and unfortunately we have been as much use to them as a hole in the
head and the result is that most of what happens is our fault.
He believes
the church is as good as you get. He was born a Catholic. He’s studied a lot of
other religions and he believes this is the best one if you go deeply enough to
find where the nuggets are. There is, he says, a heap about it that he
disapproves of and finds completely unacceptable - but basically speaking he doesn't
have the energy or the time or the desire to use any other technology for what he
regards as the most important thing - his personal connection with God. This is as good away as he has found -
especially the Eucharist. The liturgy of
the church, for him, is the best possible way of making that connection and so
that's why he doesn’t want to become or study another religion. But he says the
same thing can be said about democracy.
Just now it seems to be the best possible way because it is human and
it's appealing. It is also appalling
when you go down through history to see what happens you wonder how on earth it
ever did survive.
Marion returns
to Hederman’s choice of jewels of beauty. He explains that the pearl get its
beauty by keeping out every other elements – by remaining spotless like your
first Holy Communion dress. This is one
kind of beauty. Most people find it
impossible to become pearls. But there is another kind of jewel that gets its
beauty from its imperfection and from the invasion from outside of other
elements like water and air and sand.
The Catholic
Church, he says, has imagined that perfection has to do with chastity. Ireland
was an island of purity surrounded by a sea of vice. It was important to keep
out dirty books coming from England and especially from the USA – to stay the
evangelisation that would've come through cinema - so there was an attempt to
censor and to keep Ireland a Pearl. We also censored our own writers and yet
they are of a reflection of the truth.
There is the
truth we call Catholic truth, he says, and the truth of human beings. Those
were meant to be brought together - the orthodoxy of the church mirrored by the
orthodoxy of humanity. We are living very human lives and if God doesn't want
that humanity then he doesn't want us at all. So if were talking about
partnership - incarnation - we've got to listen to all these wonderful people who
were banned. We have to have that conversation now with their intestines.
Asked if he would
ever retire the interview concluded by Hederman saying he can imagine 10 more
years ex Abbot as a wild old wicked man.
These monks
must never retire!
Eavesdropping
on this intestinal conversation cost me my sleep – but gave enough pointers
about the creative process for maybe the whole of 2018.
