god, why?

…because why not!

Two posts, copied from my Instagram, both from January 1, 2023, will have to suffice for why this godforsaken blog on Balthasar and Speyr exists. It has everything to do with me finishing Balthasar’s book First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr on that day.

Here’s the first post:

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr is the book that is taking me into January 1. I picked it up in a used bookstore in Vancouver years ago. I’m not done with it yet — I’m at the part where Balthasar’s review ends and Speyr’s words begin — but I was reading it when I heard that Benedict XVI died yesterday.

They tell me that Balthasar (which of course means Speyr) was the favourite theologian of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. There’s even a story of Benedict taking a volume of The Glory of the Lord with him into his retirement helicopter. I’m often glad I learned this work from Fr Harry Cronin CSC. It was a properly queer introduction.

I did think while reading this book that it was such a way to usher in 2023 — and that was before Benedict died. I suppose I’m giving these guys another chance, though I look back at some of my more recent reflections on them, public and private, and I see that what’s always gotten me about them, whether or not I find them agreeable, is their vision for a secular community, which became the Community of St John. For them, consenting to the secular seems to be to agree to be part of the world’s existential terror at the death of God, but from the perspective of the God who shares this pain.

I think about this vision and this work as a secular academic. I like to think that my work is done in community. Certainly, my friends and fellow travellers tell me that they couldn’t do their work in the world without kin, and I like to think I’m becoming less of a psychopath so that I’m safe enough to travel with them.

But reading Balthasar and Speyr at the close of 2022, with Benedict’s passing to cap it off, has me thinking that the reason we need each other is because this world is terrifying. And yet, God sees, and in this sight, there are some friends who go with us along the way.

May I continue to be found among these friends in 2023. (January 1, before I finished First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr)

And here’s the second:

I think I really will do it. I really will end up reading The Glory of the Lord this year. Are you happy, Fr Harry? Have you called on St Lucy to open also my eyes to the beatific vision?

And so it is that on this Feast of St Basil, the Spirit has opened for me a way to finish Balthasar’s First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr. It’s been a long time in coming. I thought Handmaid of the Lord would get me back into Balthasar’s triptych. I’ve reviewed my posts. I really did read that at Annunciation last year. Maybe I’ll do it again this year too.

What I find hilarious is that these two reject psychoanalysis so out of hand. I suppose it is Speyr’s prerogative as a physician. But I think it’s only within German idealism that one cannot see how idealism opens the way to ideology. This is not just the Father’s world. It is Goethe’s too. As Randy Norman has Bonnie Raitt sing, it feels like home to me. That song was on Faust before it was on Dawson’s Creek.

I’m happy to think with Balthasar and Speyr this year precisely because of that. God knows Balthasar is as wordy as Žižek. This should be fun. A couple of pages a night, and I should be well on my way into this monstrosity in seven volumes.

Hello 2023. I should start a blog. Wouldn’t that be fun? (January 1, after I finished First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr)

And so I started one.