Die tweede boek van Richard Holloway wat ek bespreek, is Looking in the Distance: The Human Search for Meaning (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005, 227p). Anders as toe hy sy vorige boek gepubliseer het, is Holloway hier nie meer 'n kerklike ampsdraer nie. Soos verwag kon word, is hy nou selfs meer uitgesproke in sy kritiek op religie en kerk. Jesus beskryf hy as "a divine figure sent to rescue us from God's wrath at our God-inflicted sinfulness" (p 40) en God as "the helpless architect of human freedom" (p 44). Ek sou hom eerder nie-religieus as anti-religieus noem. Daar is baie raakpunte tussen sy standpunt en dié van bv Roger Scruton (SêNet, 9 tot 11 April).
As bejaarde besin Holloway oor die lewe en die dood. Dit is 'n vervolg op sy vorige boek (SêNet 7 deser): "It attempts to do for human spirituality what Godless Morality tried to do for ethics" (p ix). "For many people today religion is no longer a way of life that is possible for them" (p x). Hy verwys na hierdie mense as "the Church alumni association" (p x). Hy is een van hierdie alumni. Die boektitel is ontleen aan die volgende woorde van Vasilii Rozanov: "All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance" (p 3).
'n Mens stel vrae soos: "How we came about" en "Why we came about" (p 5). Ons hou nie daarvan om in onsekerheid te lewe nie en kies dan in baie gevalle religie, want "it can bring distinct psychological advantages" (p 5). Religie word dan 'n soort "therapeutic self-culture" (p 7). Maar Holloway reken religie "is dangerously volatile stuff," want dit bied "absolute certainty about matters that are intrinsically unknowable ... Montaigne dryly observed that it was rating our conjectures highly to burn people alive for them" (p 9).
Die opsegging van religie hoef nie tot die soort nihilisme te lei waaraan Philip Larkin in sy gedig "Aubade" uitdrukking gegee het nie: "The sure extinction that we travel to / And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, / Not to be anywhere, / ... no sight, no sound, / No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, / Nothing to love or link with, / The anesthetic from which none come round. / ... Most things may never happen: this one will" (p 11-12). Miguel de Unamuno word soos volg aangehaal: "If it is nothingness that awaits us let us so act that it will be an unjust fate" (p 55). RS Thomas het gedig: "God is the great absence / in our lives, the empty silence / Within ..." (p 17).
Rondom die ongelowige is daar die "pointless plenitude of Being" (p 12) en "sensing an absence" (p 15). "Out There is not a place of neutral agnosticism. It is a place of committed unknowing" (p 16). Hieruit volg "the moral importance of atheism ... It is a verbal noun, atheising, a dynamic process that constantly tries to rid the mind of conceptual idols" (p 17). "For those of us who are living in the absence of God, waiting is not anticipatory; waiting is its own meaning, it is a permanent state of unknowing" (p 19).
In hierdie godloosheid "nature itself provides the best basis for ethics because it prompts us to live prudently and to care for one another, as well as for the earth" (p 28). Holloway is nie blind vir die goeie wat religie en kerk steeds kan doen nie: "It is in its work of organised care for others ... that Christianity is at its most compelling" (p 49). "Story-telling is the way we try to make sense of the world" (p 60). Ook in hierdie opsig kan die mites van antieke godsdienste vir ons nuttig bly, "so long as we don't make the mistake of claiming a factual or rational status for them" (p 66-67). "A religion that has produced so much pain has also produced great art, particularly great fiction" (p 90). "Christianity ... is a profound myth that can still teach us much about the archaeology of our own souls" (p 102).
Holloway gaan die geskiedenis na en kom tot hierdie gevolgtrekking: "Christianity has a genius for appropriating elements of other people's traditions, which it then stitches into a patchwork pattern of its own devising" (p 74). "As with all ancient narratives, the metaphors and allusions in the fully developed Christian story mix and multiply in a gloriously inconsistent way" (p 77). "While [stories] are in the fluid, oral stage they are not too dangerous, but once they are written down they begin to assume absolute authority over us" (p 79).
"The great narrative of Christianity has been replaced, as a working paradigm, by the great narrative of science" (p 90). Volgens wetenskaplikes, "instead of being the hero of the narrative from the beginning, our species appeared on the scene comparatively recently ... And far from having a divinely ordained purpose and direction, the whole thing seems to be in a permanent state of Heraclitan flux, a vast and meaningless explosion of energy" (p 91). "The most powerful effect of the abandonment by society of any overarching meaning in life ... is the sense of homelessness ... it can provoke in us" (p 95-96). "The main characteristic of the post-modern era is its lack of a single unifying story" (p 96).
Oor die laat verskyning van mense op die aarde, het Frederick Crews geskryf: "Why, we must wonder, would the shaper of the universe have frittered away thirteen billion years, turning out quadrillions of useless stars, before getting around to the one thing he really cared about, seeing to it that a minuscule minority of earthling vertebrates are washed clean of sin and guaranteed an eternal place in its company?" (p 101).
Holloway: "The universe is no longer cozy, no longer exclusively organized around our protection and welfare. We may not be ready for it, but we are on our own ... this is the way it has always really been, though we could never admit it to ourselves" (p 108). Annie Dillard bevestig dit: "There is no one but us, there never has been" (p 109). Holloway: "We have lost the protection of the old certainties, it's true, but it is also quite liberating to be responsible for ourselves at last" (p 109).
Die derde afdeling in die boek is grootliks 'n herhaling, hoewel anders bewoord, van wat Holloway in sy vorige boek oor etiek geskryf het. Die laaste afdeling handel oor "leaving". "We are always old enough to die" (p 175). "The melancholy truth is that we are life's passing guests ... This is true for institutions as well as individuals. They, too, are transient and have to adapt to the way the next generation wants to operate" (p 187). "Social change always has its losses as well as its gains" (p 191).
"Adapting to increasing age and learning to accept the inevitability of death are the final spiritual challenges that confront us" (p 193). "Dying is our final work and, like everything else, we can do it well or badly" (p 195). "Dying well is an act of love towards those we leave behind" (p 211). Dan 'n groot waarheid van Gail Holst-Warhaft: "In the end is the body" (p 198). Holloway: "Death is ... the ... ultimate, irrecoverable loss" (p 211).
"There was a long time when we were not; then there was a brief time when we were; and again there will be a long time when we no longer are" (p 213). "Some among the living will mis us for a while, but the earth will go on without us" (p 214).
Volgende keer skryf ek oor Holloway se outobiografie.
Johannes Comestor
Kommentaar
Aardeland! Johannes C,
Ek geniet jou skryfstyl, soos altyd, maar sommige van hierdie boeke wat jy lees stem mens negatief en depressief.
Voorwaar is hierdie mense wat moet heengaan se grafte koud sonder God en Sy heerlikheid. Wel, tenminste laat dit my met groter dankbaarheid om te weet dat ek 'n warm, liefdevolle en lewendige God aanbid.
Wat 'n kontras.
Nogtans, dankie vir jou moeite.
Trienie