In the Southern Hemisphere, where I live, Christmas (which is today) falls in the same week as the Summer Solstice, also known as Midsummer, the central turning point of the season. The solstices might be understood as rituals of light. They mark the shortening and the lengthening of the days, and with the day, [...]]]>

In the Southern Hemisphere, where I live, Christmas (which is today) falls in the same week as the Summer Solstice, also known as Midsummer, the central turning point of the season. The solstices might be understood as rituals of light. They mark the shortening and the lengthening of the days, and with the day, thus the light.   Terry Patten beautifully touched upon one way we might symbolically hold this turning of the light :

At this time something universal in the human spirit is rising to celebrate the light that defiantly, brightly shines — even now, in what is (in the Northern Hemisphere) the darkest time of the year. While the lights sparkle and rich aromas and melodies rise up, the cold bites and the body yearns to hibernate.

It can be one of the most wonderful, and, paradoxically, one of the most difficult times of the whole year. We are made to notice light and fullness, but also darkness and emptiness; we are reminded of our connectedness, but also of our aloneness.

Every person we love (including every person, alive now or not, who we have ever loved) awakens our recognition of the Universal Beloved, That which is the essence of all that is lovable and loving, the One from whom we can never be separated.

Giving gifts is a way to remind ourselves of love, to enact our gratitude, to express the spirit of generosity that is our only sanity.

And yet so is being quiet and still, and noticing the fullness that is always already present.

And so, of course, life requires us to choose again. To find our heart’s “yes” to both light and darkness. To find a way to walk with love in this still only half-made world, this place where love is yet to fully take its hold.

In the community where I grew up, our neighbors stepped over boundaries by gathering for a Hannukah party one night and singing Christmas carols through the neighborhood the next. Together, these rituals healed something in us, individually, and collectively.

May your heart find a way to practice this holiday season. May you find a way to notice the light in the darkness in every single body, to notice the non-separation that lets you reach across the gaps that face you!

The motif of the Frog Prince came up while talking with my psychoanalyst today about one of the characteristic dynamics of my intimate relationships: I’ve been finding wounded men, kissing them and waiting for them to transform and thus redeem my wounds. When I came home and [...]]]>

The Frog Prince ~ PJ Lynch

The motif of the Frog Prince came up while talking with my psychoanalyst today about one of the characteristic dynamics of my intimate relationships: I’ve been finding wounded men, kissing them and waiting for them to transform and thus redeem my wounds. When I came home and looked the story up I found the most frequently referred to version (Grimms Bros) very different to the one I remembered: of a princess who kisses the frog transforming him into his true form as the prince.

THE FROG KING – BROTHERS GRIMM

IN OLD times when wishing still helped one, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in her face. Close by the King’s castle¹ lay a great dark forest,² and under an old lime-tree in the forest was a well, and when the day was very warm, the King’s child went out into the forest and sat down by the side of the cool fountain,³ and when she was dull she took a golden ball,⁴ and threw it up on high and caught it, and this ball was her favorite plaything.

Now it so happened that on one occasion the princess’s golden ball did not fall into the little hand which she was holding up for it, but on to the ground beyond, and rolled straight into the water. The King’s daughter followed it with her eyes, but it vanished, and the well was deep, so deep that the bottom could not be seen. On this she began to cry, and cried louder and louder, and could not be comforted. And as she thus lamented some one said to her, “What ails thee, King’s daughter? Thou weepest so that even a stone would show pity.” She looked round to the side from whence the voice came, and saw a frog⁵ stretching forth its thick, ugly head from the water. “Ah! old water-splasher, is it thou?” said she; “I am weeping for my golden ball, which has fallen into the well.”

“Be quiet, and do not weep,” answered the frog, “I can help thee, but what wilt thou give me if I bring thy plaything up again?” “Whatever thou wilt have, dear frog,” said she – “My clothes, my pearls and jewels, and even the golden crown which I am wearing.”⁶

The frog answered, “I do not care for thy clothes, thy pearls and jewels, or thy golden crown, but if thou wilt love me and let me be thy companion and play-fellow, and sit by thee at thy little table, and eat off thy little golden plate, and drink out of thy little cup, and sleep in thy little bed — if thou wilt promise me this I will go down below, and bring thee thy golden ball up again.”

“Oh yes,” said she, “I promise thee all thou wishest, if thou wilt but bring me my ball back again.” She, however, thought, “How the silly frog does talk! He lives in the water with the other frogs, and croaks, and can be no companion to any human being!”

But the frog when he had received this promise, put his head into the water and sank down, and in a short while came swimmming up again with the ball in his mouth, and threw it on the grass. The King’s daughter was delighted to see her pretty plaything once more, and picked it up, and ran away with it. “Wait, wait,” said the frog. “Take me with thee. I can’t run as thou canst.” But what did it avail him to scream his croak, croak, after her, as loudly as he could? She did not listen to it, but ran home and soon forgot the poor frog, who was forced to go back into his well again.

The next day when she had seated herself at table with the King and all the courtiers, and was eating from her little golden plate, something came creeping splish splash, splish splash, up the marble staircase, and when it had got to the top, it knocked at the door and cried, “Princess, youngest princess, open the door for me.” She ran to see who was outside, but when she opened the door, there sat the frog in front of it. Then she slammed the door to, in great haste, sat down to dinner again, and was quite frightened. The King saw plainly that her heart was beating violently, and said, “My child, what art thou so afraid of? Is there perchance a giant outside who wants to carry thee away?” “Ah, no,” replied she. “It is no giant but a disgusting frog.”

“What does a frog want with thee?” “Ah, dear father, yesterday as I was in the forest sitting by the well, playing, my golden ball fell into the water. And because I cried so, the frog brought it out again for me, and because he so insisted, I promised him he should be my companion, but I never thought he would be able to come out of his water! And now he is outside there, and wants to come in to me.”

In the meantime it knocked a second time, and cried,

“Princess! youngest princess!
Open the door for me!
Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me
Yesterday by the cool waters of the fountain?
Princess, youngest princess!
Open the door for me!”

Then said the King, “That which thou hast promised must thou perform.⁷ Go and let him in.” She went and opened the door, and the frog hopped in and followed her, step by step, to her chair. There he sat and cried, “Lift me up beside thee.” She delayed, until at last the King commanded her to do it. When the frog was once on the chair he wanted to be on the table, and when he was on the table he said, “Now, push thy little golden plate nearer to me that we may eat together.” She did this, but it was easy to see that she did not do it willingly. The frog enjoyed what he ate, but almost every mouthful she took choked her. At length he said, “I have eaten and am satisfied; now I am tired, carry me into thy little room and make thy little silken bed ready, and we will both lie down and go to sleep.”

The King’s daughter began to cry, for she was afraid of the cold frog which she did not like to touch, and which was now to sleep in her pretty, clean little bed. But the King grew angry and said, “He who helped thee when thou wert in trouble ought not afterwards to be despised by thee.” So she took hold of the frog with two fingers, carried him upstairs, and put him in a corner. But when she was in bed he crept to her and said, “I am tired, I want to sleep as well as thou, lift me up or I will tell thy father.” Then she was terribly angry, and took him up and threw him with all her might against the wall.⁸ “Now, thou wilt be quiet, odious frog,” said she. But when he fell down he was no frog but a King’s son with beautiful kind eyes.⁹ He by her father’s will was now her dear companion and husband. Then he told her how he had been bewitched by a wicked witch,¹⁰ and how no one could have delivered him from the well but herself, and that to-morrow they would go together into his kingdom. Then they went to sleep, and next morning when the sun awoke them, a carriage came driving up with eight white horses, which had white ostrich feathers on their heads, and were harnessed with golden chains, and behind stood the young King’s servant Faithful Henry.¹¹ Faithful Henry had been so unhappy when his master was changed into a frog, that he had caused three iron bands to be laid round his heart, lest it should burst with grief and sadness. The carriage was to conduct the young King into his Kingdom. Faithful Henry helped them both in, and placed himself behind again, and was full of joy because of this deliverance. And when they had driven a part of the way the King’s son heard a cracking behind him as if something had broken. So he turned round and cried, “Henry, the carriage is breaking.”

“No, master, it is not the carriage. It is a band from my heart, which was put there in my great pain when you were a frog and imprisoned in the well.” Again and once again while they were on their way something cracked, and each time the King’s son thought the carriage was breaking; but it was only the bands which were springing from the heart of faithful Henry because his master was set free and was happy.

by the Brothers Grimm

Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm. Household Tales. Margaret Hunt, translator. London: George Bell, 1884.

I was taken aback by the girls violence towards the frog (although acts of violence are by far the norm in the non-Disney world of fairy tale). One commentator writes that Bruno Bettelheim:

explains that the princess’ anxiety becomes anger and even hatred here as she flings the frog against her bedroom wall. “By thus asserting herself and taking risks in doing so — as opposed to her previous trying to weasel out and then simply obeying her father’s commands — the princess transcends her anxiety, and hatred changes into love” (p. 288). In the end, he asserts, she has developed her own independence by going against her father’s commands. She becomes “more a person” (p. 288) and develops her own identity, and as she does so, the frog does so as well by turning into a prince.

As for the frog, during this unfortunate turn of events, Bettelheim (1975) writes that this moment of violence is necessary for him to gain independence as well. Up to this moment, we see him develop a “loving, dependent relationship to a mother figure” (p. 289), which is necessary for emotional growth. “What child has not wished to sit on Mother’s lap, eat from her dish, drink from her glass, and has not climbed into Mother’s bed, trying to sleep there with her?” Bettelheim writes. However, there comes a time in which the child must sever that bond and cease that behavior in order to become an individual. “Much as the child wants to remain in bed with Mother, she has to ‘throw’ him out of it — a painful experience but inescapable if he is to gain independence” (p. 289).

Tatar (1992) contrasts this hateful and destructive way of revealing the man inside the beast with the kinder method in Beauty and the Beast. “An act of passion (in its most rabidly violent form) rather than an act of compassion liberates the frog from his enchanted form” (p. 154).

Amongst the various versions of the tale, there are numerous means that bring about the frog’s transformation back into a man — throwing the frog against the wall (as in this version), sleeping in the girl’s bed, being kissed, chopping off the frog’s head, and even burning the frog’s skin (Leach 1972).

Even so, an older Scottish version of this story sits better with me.  It’s more clearly a classic hero(ine)’s tale with a voyage to the end of the world thrust upon the young heroine, with all the hindrances and magical helpers that such a journey entails, and the story has a better internal integrity.

In this version, as with the Grimm’s version it through an act of violence that could be symbolically read as the annihilation of the false self that the prince is freed from his the bondage of his spell. Yet in the Scottish version the violence is not an impulsive act. It follows the girl’s acknowledgment of the frog’s help and her reluctance to act against him despite her feelings of repulsion towards him. Symbolically, we may be repulsed by the false faces we show each other  (our immature, defensive, false selves), still reluctance to annihilate those selves is compassionately judicious; each thing has its own timing. Yet, the frog insists that she should do so, and she does, releasing him from the spell, and in turn, this act releases her from her bondage to her step mother.

The Well of the World’s End
(An English Tale)

ONCE upon a time, and a very good time it was, though it wasn’t in my time, nor in your time, nor anyone else’s time, there was a girl whose mother had died, and her father married again. And her stepmother hated her because she was more beautiful than herself, and she was very cruel to her. She used to make her do all the servant’s work, and never let her have any peace. At last, one day, the stepmother thought to get rid of her altogether; so she handed her a sieve and said to her: ‘Go, fill it at the Well of the World’s End and bring it home to me full, or woe betide you.’ For she thought she would never be able to find the Well of the World’ s End, and, if she did, how could she bring home a sieve full of water?

Well, the girl started off, and asked everyone she met to tell her where was the Well of the World’s End. But nobody knew, and she didn’t know what to do, when a queer little old woman, all bent double, told her where it was, and how she could get to it. So she did what the old woman told her, and at last arrived at the Well of the World’s End. But when she dipped the sieve in the cold, cold water, it all ran out again. She tried and tried again, but every time it was the same; and at last she sate down and cried as if her heart would break.

Suddenly she heard a croaking voice, and she looked up and saw a great frog with goggle eyes looking at her and speaking to her.

‘What’s the matter, dearie?’ it said.

‘Oh, dear, oh dear,’ she said, ‘my stepmother has sent me all this long way to fill this sieve with water from the Well of the World’s End, and I can’t fill it no how at all.’

‘Well,’ said the frog, ‘if you promise me to do whatever I bid you for a whole night long, I’ll tell you how to fill it.’

So the girl agreed, and the frog said:

‘Stop it with moss and daub it with clay,
And then it will carry the water away’;

and then it gave a hop, skip, and jump, and went flop into the Well of the World’s End.

So the girl looked about for some moss, and lined the bottom of the sieve with it, and over that she put some clay, and then she dipped it once again into the Well of the World’s End; and this time, the water didn’t run out, and she turned to go away.

Just then the frog popped up its head out of the Well of the World’s End, and said: ‘Remember your promise.’

‘All right,’ said the girl; for thought she, ‘What harm can a frog do me?’

So she went back to her stepmother, and brought the sieve full of water from the Well of the World’s End. The stepmother was angry as angry, but she said nothing at all.

That very evening they heard something tap-tapping at the door low down, and a voice cried out:

‘Open the door, my hinny, my heart,
Open the door, my own darling;
Mind you the words that you and I spoke,
Down in the meadow, at the World’s End Well.’

‘Whatever can that be?’ cried out the stepmother, and the girl had to tell her about it, and what she had promised the frog.

‘Girls must keep their promises,’ said the stepmother. ‘Go and open the door this instant.’ For she was glad the girl would have to obey a nasty frog.

So the girl went and opened the door, and there was the frog from the Well of the World’s End. And it hopped, and it hopped, and it jumped, till it reached the girl, and then it said:

‘Lift me to your knee, my hinny, my heart;
Lift me to your knee, my own darling;
Remember the words you and I spake,
Down in the meadow, by the World’s End Well.’

But the girl didn’t like to, till her stepmother said: ‘Lift it up this instant, you hussy! Girls must keep their promises!’

So at last she lifted the frog up on to her lap, and it lay there for a time, till at last it said:

‘Give me some supper, my hinny, my heart,
Give me some supper, my darling;
Remember the words you and I spake,
In the meadow, by the Well of the World’s End.’

Well, she didn’t mind doing that, so she got it a bowl of milk and bread, and fed it well. And when the frog had finished, it said:

‘Go with me to bed, my hinny, my heart,
Go with me to bed, my own darling;
Mind you the words you spake to me,
Down by the cold well, so weary.’

But that the girl wouldn’t do, till her stepmother said: ‘Do what you promised, girl; girls must keep their promises. Do what you’re bid, or out you go, you and your froggie.’

So the girl took the frog with her to bed, and kept it as far away from her as she could. Well, just as the day was beginning to break what should the frog say but:

‘Chop off my head, my hinny, my heart,
Chop off my head, my own darling;
Remember the promise you made to me,
Down by the cold well, so weary.’

At first the girl wouldn’t, for she thought of what the frog had done for her at the Well of the World’s End. But when the frog said the words over again she went and took an axe and chopped off its head, and lo! and behold, there stood before her a handsome young prince, who told her that he had been enchanted by a wicked magician, and he could never be unspelled till some girl would do his bidding for a whole night, and chop off his head at the end of it.

The stepmother was surprised indeed when she found the young prince instead of the nasty frog, and she wasn’t best pleased, you may be sure, when the prince told her that he was going to marry her stepdaughter because she had unspelled him. But married they were, and went away to live in the castle of the king, his father, and all the stepmother had to console her was that it was all through her that her stepdaughter was married to a prince.

Jacobs, Joseph. English Fairy Tales. London: David Nutt, 1890.

I bought this tree seventeen years ago.

For years,  I carried her from share-house to share-house.  She weathered life in some very dim inner city room corners, stoically holding on with six very countable leaves.  Yet, over those years I became affectionally attached to this beautiful Benjamina Ficus and made her whispered promises that I [...]]]>

I bought this tree seventeen years ago.

For years,  I carried her from share-house to share-house.  She weathered life in some very dim inner city room corners, stoically holding on with six very countable leaves.  Yet, over those years I became affectionally attached to this beautiful Benjamina Ficus and made her whispered promises that I would one day plant her in the ground.

And so I did. When I moved from Sydney in 1999 I dutifully packed the still slender sapling in the moving truck and later found a place to plant it on a farm in the hills outside of Byron Bay.

Ten years later this tree stands at around 4 metres tall, with thick knarled fingers of roots, wide flung arms with graceful weeping leaves and the beginnings of aerial roots twisting down from above. It how has a riot of what must be more than 16,000 very uncountable leaves.

When I visited her recently I was filled with wonder. I find her growth a complete marvel.  It’s not unlike watching my beautiful son morphing from child to man. This child who somehow, through some completely ordinary everyday miracle, that I made human.

And yet, it’s so unremarkable; this is a tree that’s grown from a seedling, like any other.

But this one has become a gift to me.  With its story entangled with my own it’s transformed from an ordinary tree. As a consequence, I get to watch and grow with it, in awe-filled appreciation.

It means being who you are rather than who you thought you were supposed to be.

This is an act of love, not to mention authenticity, joy, daring, kindness. Vulnerability.

Belief in your own [...]]]> A perfectly cast article by Susan Piver about tuning into our own inherent goodness:

It means being who you are rather than who you thought you were supposed to be.

This is an act of love, not to mention authenticity, joy, daring, kindness. Vulnerability.

Belief in your own goodness is the ground, path, and fruition of such an attitude toward yourself–not the kind of belief that comes second, after it is “earned” through appropriate behaviors, accomplishments, or mindsets, but the kind that comes first, an a priori assumption that creates the outer and inner environments of your very existence; a proclamation of the goodness you naturally possess and need do nothing to come by. You were born with it.

We each have to figure out what this means exactly, but the innate expectation of and need for love is our biggest clue.

The love we can offer ourselves is simply this: opening to your experience again and again, seeing what you feel, think, want, abhor, adore, disdain, and allowing it all to be so. When you judge yourself positively or negatively, you allow that too. See it. Take an interest in it. How fascinating. Because it is.

What it is not, however, is the truth.

The truth of who you are has much more to do with the one who takes an interest than the one doing all these interesting things. She, this latter being, is constantly changing, a kaleidoscope of beautiful forms, pleasing sounds, deliciousness, mystery, and also of grasping, aggression, delusion, and all such things beyond all such things. The you who is reading this email will be gone by the time this sentence has been read and a new, equally fascinating you is taking shape. Dive into this stream. This is love.

This love is gentleness.

It creates itself.

It is your home.

You deserve it, right now.

And now.

And now.

And now.

Your meditation practice teaches you exactly how to do this, rather than how to believe in it. Through sitting with yourself as you are, you practice taking this attitude of gentleness, relaxation, and, yes, bravery–breath by breath and thought by thought.

How many times have you turned toward yourself with the love, care, and tenderheartedness that you would toward a child, a lover, best friend, or brother? The answer could be never or I can hardly recall. Maybe today will be the day you begin.

http://www.susanpiver.com/wordpress/2011/12/01/you-are-good/

and say sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger [...]]]> The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you,

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

The Aztec goddess Mictecacihuatl, queen of the underworld, presides over the Mexican Day of the Dead remembrance and celebration of the passed loved ones and ancestors. In Celtic lore,  this is the time of Samhain, when the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead become thin, [...]]]>

Mictecacihuatl

The Aztec goddess Mictecacihuatl, queen of the underworld, presides over the Mexican Day of the Dead remembrance and celebration of the passed loved ones and ancestors. In Celtic lore,  this is the time of Samhain, when the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead become thin, and the cycle of death and renewal,  the beginning and ending of all things are recognised and celebrated.  Samhain marked not just the ending of harvest but also the beginning of a new year.  And so too, in the Christian tradition these days marked remembrance of the dead in the form of  All Saint’s and All Soul’s day.

I have been thinking alot about the passing of things over the last month: the end of relationship, the death of parts of the self that mark growth, and of actual death also;  the loss of potential lives, loved ones, lost children. And I  felt called to make a formal ritual remembrance and letting go to mark the sadness of those being that didn’t come into being; beings that “appeared just as we all do, from the undifferentiated mind, and who passed away after a few moments of flickering life, just as we all do” (Aitken)

I reflected after finishing my last blog that I’ve been talking about my Buddhist practice alot, and yet I am far from a Buddhist.  My practice life is so deeply eclectic that mourning and celebrating the cycle of life with the Celts, Aztecs and Christians makes perfect sense.

So today I made a small pilgrimage. Where better to revere death on All Souls Day than a cemetery? I found a grave so old that it no longer bore a name, yet alone of its fellows flowers grew by its headstone.  Here I lit sticks of incense. As I placed them in the ground images of beloveds no longer with me flashed through my mind: Alecia who committed suicide when we were just young women (I remembered the nut I planted for her in the mountains. Did it grow into a tree?), and beautiful, luminous Heidi who was murdered just a few years ago. Perhaps it’s not strange then that I’ve been seeing her recently. Last week in the  joyful, open smile of a kirtan singer, and yesterday in the pixie litheness of my dance teacher. These reminders of her have been only a little bitter in their sweetness. It gives me joy to be reminded of her luminosity even while I wish it was her.

And so I lit incense, spoke aloud the words of a ceremony, and planted and watered the seeds of paper daisies alongside the flowers already growing to offer new life, reverence and remembrance.

~ Heidi ~

Robert Aitken writes that “in our culture, we place great emphasis upon maintaining life, but truly death is not a fundamental matter, but an incident, another wave… clouds fading in the sky. ” While this absolute truth asks us to accept what is, and as Byron Katie reminds us “When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time”, what of sadness? I take these ritual days of remembrance to be a time for fully being with loss, with both joyful appreciation and tears, as the great cycle, the wheel of letting go, continues to spin.

I have taken  the wisdom of  Buddhism for many a [...]]]> Refuge connotes  a nurturing shelter from potentially harsh elements. A cave on a mountain pass, or perhaps a hut at the end of a long walk; a shelter freely offered to the lonely traveller on the way.

But why refuge in Buddhist precepts ?

I have taken  the wisdom of  Buddhism for many a long country drive over the last fifteen years of practice,  and have concluded that it has strength, depth and complexity way beyond my limited ken.  It is a path that consistently asks me (moment by moment by moment) to  check its teachings against the wisdom of  my deepest truth. And I have found it a  generously offered, nuturing shelter on a sometimes boulder strewn life road.

In The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics Robert Aitken writes that “the true Zen Buddhist center is not a mere sanctuary, but a source from which ethically motivated people move outward to engage in the larger community”. In this sense the taking of precepts is not just a turning towards Buddhist community but is also a purposeful turning outward into  awakened, deepened engagement with the world, and all people and things of it.

My decision to commit to Buddhist precepts comes from my desire to meet life more directly by coming more fully into integrity with myself.  The process of actively living with the precepts calls me to live purposefully and with goodness, to look squarely at  my reactions and actions as they arise and to evaluate my decisions against what Buddhist wisdom considers good action.

But I can’t pretend that process is anything other than profoundly difficult. Etymologically, refuge comes from the Latin for “a place to flee back to”.  I have a picture of my altar with the word “return” transposed over a picture of a Buddhist statue, and  in many ways I find “return” at the centre of my practice life. Lost? Start again, start again. Stumbled from the path? Come back, try again.

And so, I see the taking of the precepts as one more thread that will be intimately woven into the tapestry of my practice, a layer which deepens my understanding and my commitment to the profoundly beautiful process of trying to bring awareness to this unknown moment, and to wrestling myself into life.

Johnathan Franzen’s deeply engaging novel Freedom is an exploration of the disappointments of adult life and of what depth may emerge, through complication and pain, when the glow and bloom of youthful certainty, hedonism and adventure burn away.  Set inside the questions of this age, Franzen’s principle characters stare into the void of a [...]]]>

Johnathan Franzen’s deeply engaging novel Freedom is an exploration of the disappointments of adult life and of what depth may emerge, through complication and pain, when the glow and bloom of youthful certainty, hedonism and adventure burn away.  Set inside the questions of this age, Franzen’s principle characters stare into the void of a classic existential crisis of meaning: Who am I? What is all of this about? What is it to be good? How can I be good when I’ve never been me? What is virtue? What has value?

“He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know how to live. Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive’s sake.”

Life in Freedom is not without hurt, pain and loss; but, neither is it without joy, awe, connection and celebration. Growth is found through grappling with the complexity of the resolution of the cost of the sorrows with the joys; the costs of living and the costs of not living. In the end Freedom’s characters seem to have found a way to love each other and the world; they have perhaps experienced love and forgiveness in its right measure. In this Freedom verges on a celebration of the tragedy of life in Nietzsche’s sense:

“saying Yes to life even in its strangest and most painful episodes, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustible vitality even as it witnesses the destruction of its greatest heroes … Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by its vehement discharge… but in order to celebrate oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity — that tragic joy included even joy in destruction.” (Twilight of the Idols)

When I heard Franzen speak at the Sydney Opera House in October he said that he fell in love with his characters –  “full of contradiction and possibility” – and felt empathy with their life challenges. It was perhaps most compelling for me to hear him admit that he takes “no moral position” on them. I thinkFranzen offers his reader a great gift in doing this. If you identify, as I did, with the struggle of Freedom’s characters to find their way inside this beautiful and difficult world, with the struggle to be good to one other and to themselves, with the struggle to love and to confront its costs,  then Franzen’s loving gaze and his empathic, non-judgmental curiosity become transmissions that flow through the river of the text and into you. And that, that truly is a great gift.

“…one of the most strange,

most stubborn, most difficult,

most backward, most stricken … persons I have ever met…

I look into the mirror

and there she is again.

Waiting for my eyes to soften;

my touch, to be tender,

my life not to exile her life,

my wiser self to instruct her

in [...]]]>

“…one of the most strange,

most stubborn, most difficult,

most backward, most stricken
…
persons I have ever met…

I look into the mirror

and there she is again.

Waiting for my eyes to soften;

my touch, to be tender,

my life not to exile her life,

my wiser self to instruct her

in better ways she has heard about,

but has never understood.

I step into the mirror…

I pull her from the wreck…”

dr.c.p. estés