Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Cosmos The In Lost

Home
Catholic
Liturgy, Fanny Howe, and the Horrors of Reality

Liturgy, Fanny Howe, and the Horrors of Reality

Last updated on: March 27, 2014 at 9:11 am by Artur Rosman

Liturgy, Fanny Howe, and the Horrors of Reality 2014-03-27T09:11:36-07:00 Artur Rosman

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Howe, Wiman, and Hirshfield sound off in this divine volume.

I’d like to enlist the poet Fanny Howe in the service of defending Eagleton’s characterization of humanity as “the scum of the earth.”

I didn’t make that phrase up, I borrowed it verbatim from the title of the first chapter of Reason, Faith, and Revolution.

What Eagleton said is not a term of opprobrium. It is a realistic assessment of life for those of us who do not inhabit a ship of the imagination.

Meaning: everyone including deGrasse Tyson when he’s not on set.

According to Fanny Howe, whom I consider one of our greatest living religious poets, the liturgy is revelatory in this regard:

“If I can only be horrified by reality, then I will have to kill myself. If I find it recognizable, I will be okay. The liturgy helps me to recognize the world and time. While the Eucharist is totally mad in terms of human reason, the ritual has another kind of intelligence, one that manages to be both earthy and cosmological. Metaxu–Simone Weil’s ‘Every separation is a link’–a bridge that you rarely cross outside of rarely cross outside of reality.

The calendar year for daily working life is the same for all of us, but there is a second calendar: the church calendar that refers to the birth, murder, and resurrection of Jesus, which is an absolutely archetypal story, a poetic rendition of any human life. The Mass, with its readings from the Gospel stories, and the the Eucharistic rite, repeated for centuries, is an account of the cooperation of transcendence with the ordinary. If it is an opiate, all the better.

After two failed marriages one day Fanny ran off and married the Roman Church.

To get up in the morning and go out the door and put your feet on the ground and walk: This is all the faith I know. I cannot have a spiritual moment without remembering the evils of war, poverty, and illness. So I am trapped with my one eccentric action, going to Mass to think about people I care for who are gone. If I think very hard about them, I call it prayer. I am safe in the building where I and other people can hide and concentrate on the possibility of change.

So-called spirituality is not the point of the Mass. There is as much of that in a pub on a rainy day, or on an underground train. Most of us know what is meant by suffering, pain, poverty, disease, oppression, betrayal by friends and politicians, illegitimate birth, imprisonment, and the insignificance/vulnerability of a powerless person. These are contained and contemplated in the readings at Mass, and then comes the Eucharist, and of that: the less said the better.”

This and more can be found in Howe’s essay “Footsteps Over Ground” in the collection A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith. You can find more of Howe’s unconventional prose meditations on being Catholic in The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life. Her Selected Poems are a good place to start on her poetry. Finally, there’s also Radical Love, a collection of five strange novels.

Catholic

Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey

Previous Post

March 25, 2014

Squishy New Atheist Pieties Miss Gospel Love's Ruthless Demands

Next Post

April 1, 2014 Famous Feminists Who Aren't Atheists: Luce Irigaray, Catholic

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category #WhyRemainCatholic Abortion Advent Anti-Catholicism Arts Atheism Beauty Benedict XVI Bible Book Review Catholic Cinema Comedy Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey Czesław Miłosz Dariusz Karłowicz Devil Easter Eastern Orthodoxy Economics Environment Family Famous Atheists Who Weren't Atheists Guest Post Hans Urs von Balthasar HHS Mandate History Imagination Interview Islam Jean-Luc Marion John Paul II Judaism Just War Lent Literature Little Sisters of the Poor Liturgy Martyrdom Music News Paganism Patristics Phenomenology Philosophy Pierre Hadot Poetry Poland Pop Culture Pope Francis Poverty Prayer Protestantism Rabelais Race Remi Brague Rene Girard Russia Sam Rocha Science & Religion SCOTUS Secularization Sexual Abuse Sexuality Silence Solidarity Stratford Caldecott Synod14 Terrorism Top 10 Uncategorized Walker Percy War Weakened Edition World War II World Youth Day WYD Krakow

Select a Month July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which disciple walked on water toward Jesus?

Select your answer to see how you score.

James Peter Matthew Andrew