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Farewell to My WoodchuckLate yesterday afternoon Brother Dunstan came up with typed copies of the book Barth's Dream (Conjectures)--much bigger than I expected. Then it rained (quietly) most of the night and it is cooler. I said Mass (of St. Anselm) for all my friends in England and Anglican friends everywhere. There is a woodchuck which has dug a new hole outside my jakes, and I watch him furnishing it with dead leaves for the winter.Evening. A turning point in the weather. The heavy rain clouds broke up a bit in the morning. There were patches of sun, a few short showers late in the afternoon. It is turning cold. I noticed that my woodchuck had buried himself completely, covering up the entrance to his hole, and had gone to sleep for the winter in his bed of leaves. I wish him a happy sleep! And today is very autumn-like--cold clouds flying, trees half bare, wet leaves lying around everywhere, the broad valley beautiful and lovely. The wonderful, mysterious, lonely sense of an autumn evening.October 20 and 23, 1965, V.307-08
Karl Barth's Dream
Karl Barth had a dream about Mozart. (Mozart a Catholic and Barth is piqued by the fact that Mozart did not like Protestantism, for he said it was "all in the head" and that they didn't know the meaning of Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi.) Well, Barth dreamt he had to "examine" Mozart in Dogma. He wanted to make it as favorable as possible, and in his questions he alluded pointedly to Mozart's "Masses." But Mozart did not answer a word.
I am tempted to write Barth a letter about his moving dream, which of course concerns his own salvation.
He says that for years he has played Mozart every morning before going to work on dogma himself. (Just think! Dogma is his daily work!!)
The Mozart in himself is perhaps in some way the better, hidden, sophianic fact that grasps the "center" of cosmic music and is saved by love (yes, Eros!). The other, the theologian, is seemingly more occupied with love, but it is a stern, actually more cerebral, agape ... a love that is not in us, only in God.
I remember my own dream about "Protestants." (They are perhaps my aggressive side.)
Barth seeks perhaps to be saved by the Mozart in him.
September 22, 1960, IV.49-50
Clarity and Redemption
How much I need clarity. I live in great darkness and weakness, occasionally getting some smell of the fresh air where light is outside my cellar. The center of the problem: my own pride, the pride of others, the pride of my monastery. I enter into dialogue with the pride of others, and it is my own pride that speaks. Hence I have to see their pride and not my own. Fury after Prime, or brief spasm of it, resentment, clearly seen. And the realization that the whole thing can someday break off like a cliff and fall into the sea, if I don't learn to not identify myself with my own angry, righteous and spiteful image. Moving words of Karl Barth preached on Good Friday, 1948, in Hungary at Debrecen, the great Calvinist center: "For in His meekness, which we remember today, He achieved the mightiest of all deeds ever fulfilled on earth. In His own person He restored and re-established the violated law of God and the shattered law of man. In this meekness the grace of God appeared in His person, and the obedient man, at peace with God and in whom God has pleasure, was revealed. In this meekness of His, Jesus Christ, nailed to the cross as a criminal, created order in the realm of creation, the order in which man can live eternally as the redeemed, converted child of God" (Against the Stream). September 18 and 23, 1960, IV.50-51
