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Reflection for November 13, 2005

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"People mutht be amuthed"

"Girl number twenty . . . Who is that girl?" demanded Thomas Gradgrind, owner of a private school in 19th century England. " 'Sissy Jupe, sir," Gradgrind corrected her: "Sissy is not a name . . . Call yourself Cecilia." You can see Gradgrind was a stickler for accuracy. No loose ends in his precisely organized world. As Charles Dickens describes him in his story Hard Times, he was "A man of realities . . .of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds from the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over." With a rule and the multiplication table in his pocket he was ready to weigh and measure every parcel of human nature. "It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic."

Gradgrind then asked Sissy to define a horse. Sissy was speechless. So Gradgrind called on teacher's pet Bitzer to supply the answer. "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth. Sheds coat in spring, etc." Bitzer laid out all the facts scientifically known about a horse. And facts were what Gradgrind claimed education was all about. No fantasy, no poetry, no feelings to intrude upon the bare facts of life.

Gradgrind became curious about Sissy's background and so she led him to the visiting circus in town. (Her father had run off and left the circus manager Mr. Sleary to enroll her in the school.) It's interesting that Mr. Sleary lodged at a public house called The Pegasus Inn. Of course you all know who Pegasus was! Why it was a horse that in no way conformed to Mr. Gradgrind's definition of a horse. For Pegasus was the flying horse of Greek mythology who with one kick of his hoof caused a spring to flow on Mt. Helicon that became the source of all poetic inspiration. Dickens suggests therefore that when Mr. Gradgrind stepped into Mr. Sleary's circus realm, he would at last be challenged to step beyond his merely factual, pragmatic world to discover the vitality,
joys, and pathos of our world as viewed through the inspired imagination of the circus.

Mr. Gradgrind also found himself shaken by a language that transcends numbers and equations. For he heard slang like "If you want to cheek us, pay your ochre" and "Stow that" and words like ponging and Tight-Jeff and Slack-Jeff (meaning tight-rope and slack-rope). Not only that but he had to decipher Mr. Sleary's persistent lisp as when Sleary says," Well, Thquire, ith it your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?" Sleary then offers him and a companion some sherry: "What thall it be, Thquire? . . . Have a glath of bitterth!" (Is that an invitation to holy communion?) It's as though a burden was placed on Gradgrind to learn a new language, to reach beyond arithmetic for words and experiences whose meaning stretched him (even as the gift of tongues stretched people at Pentecost) - the lesson being that maybe ultimate reality has eluded him, encased as he is in a rigid system of definition, so inflexible as to amount to rigor mortis.

Which reminds me of the earlier days of my religious life - prior to Vatican II - when the Church itself was pretty much encased in abstract definitions (all quite valid but communicable only to scholars) and also within a beautiful but dead language to express itself in regulations and liturgy. And so like Sissy Jupe we would line up before the blackboard and be asked for the precise answer to profound questions like Who is God. But then the circus came to town led by our own Mr. Sleary, Pope John XXIII, and we began to find our doctrine expressed in the inspired language of Sacred Scripture - and our liturgy in the living language of the nations - with a touch, a lisp of poetry as well. "Don't be croth with uth poor vagabondth," says Mr. Sleary to Mr. Gradgrind. "People can't be alwayth a-learning, . . a-working, they an't made for it. People mutht be amuthed." In other words they must be allowed a healthy, eucharistic draught of our own Christian Muse - the Holy Spirit - to see life not drearily but with heart as well as mind.

-- Geoff Wood