On Matthew Wickman’s Life to the Entire Being
Matthew Wickman’s Life to the Whole Being: The Spiritual Memoir of a Literature Professor is a exceptional e-book. On one stage, it’s a nuanced examine of the connection between spirituality and literature. It discusses inspiration and the bounds of approach, how each spirituality and literature practice our consideration and permit us to see issues anew, and the way we want poetic language (metaphor, analogy) to speak about God and non secular expertise. Full of life readings of poems and novels intersperse these discussions: poems by Denise Levertov and Gerard Manley Hopkins, novels by Louise Erdrich and Fyodor Dostoevsky. On this stage, Life to the Entire Being is the work of a grasp scholar who can write about complicated concepts within the clearest of prose. However on a deeper stage, Life to the Entire Being, as its subtitle suggests, is a piece of autobiography, of sincere soul-searching. On this deeper stage, the Brigham Younger English professor explores the connection between spirituality and literature in his life. The ensuing work is by turns smart and questioning, witty and candid, self-effacing and impassioned.
In relation to non secular memoirs, Augustine’s Confessions casts a protracted shadow. Wickman does sound some “Augustinian” notes, however finally his story doesn’t match Augustine’s template. Life to the Entire Being recounts a lifelong integration and continuous reconversion slightly than a singular dramatic conversion. The e-book’s departure level is a troublesome teenage determination. Wickman decides to postpone a possible performing profession to finish a Latter-Day Saint mission in France. He’s moved by the experiences of converts however troubled by how many individuals appear detached to non secular questions. He begins studying Sartre, Camus, and Dostoevsky, who sharpen his existential concern. He finally by no means returns to the performing profession. Existential concern as a substitute leads him into the academy. It additionally retains him within the LDS church. He’s at occasions annoyed by each establishments. The church will be saccharine. The secular academy will be smug. Each, in their very own methods, will be small-minded. There are critical tensions between them. In a second main determination, in the midst of this e-book and the center of his profession, Wickman has the prospect to completely be part of the school of a prestigious Scottish college. His first two books have been scholarly therapies of Scottish literature and philosophy, and he and his household love life overseas. In the end, although, he decides to return full-time to Brigham Younger to steer a newly based humanities middle. In doing so, he decides to maneuver spirituality and literature to the guts of his tutorial work. Wickman thus tells a narrative of deepening (albeit imperfect and ongoing) integration between the literary examine he pursued within the academy and the spirituality he cultivated within the church. In the end, he tells a narrative by which the spirit of God works via each to deliver “life” to his “complete being.”
Whereas Wickman discusses dramatic types of non secular expertise, he focuses on consideration and discernment. Artwork has the facility to defamiliarize, to assist us see in new and deeper methods. Wickman observes that “literature is, formally, a revelatory train: via it, we see the world afresh.” Lyric poetry, for example, can stir surprise on the pure world. It might assist us see “God’s Grandeur,” to borrow the title of Hopkins’ well-known sonnet, which is simply too usually obscured by behavior and sin. Literature might help us see others in deeper methods. Curiously sufficient, studying a sure type of literature in a sure method can remind us that others usually are not mere secondary characters in our personal story. Literature can even encourage self-reflection. Wickman claims that “Life is literary in its method: nuanced, layered. And literature is instructing me to learn it a bit of extra deeply, admire it a bit of extra absolutely.” Within the memoir sections of the e-book, Wickman is fast to acknowledge his missteps, however I used to be struck by how in his interactions with others—together with with those that appear troublesome, irritating, or boring—he’s regularly stunned by them. He involves see them in new methods and to be taught from them. There may be an openness concerned on this, a readiness to comprehend that one just isn’t seeing deeply sufficient or is seeing in a distorted method. Undoubtedly, that is the product of lengthy years of church membership and management, of praying with others, listening to their issues, and providing counsel and non secular route. Undoubtedly, additionally it is the product of studying novels and poetry with sensitivity, of collaborating in looking out classroom conversations about them.
One of many oldest, and to my thoughts most irritating, debates about literature is whether or not studying it results in advantage. Within the Western custom, it’s an argument that goes a minimum of way back to Plato and Aristotle (and Aristophanes). Arguments about this proceed apace, with examples and counter-examples produced advert infinitum. The issue is that the query is commonly framed too broadly and categorically, as if studying (all?) literature (in any method?) both does or doesn’t make one a greater individual. Framed this fashion, the query strikes me as hopeless. I’d as a substitute say that studying literature could result in advantage, relying on the literature studied, the issues delivered to it, and the way studying practices are built-in with different moral and non secular practices in a single’s life. Wickman doesn’t dwell on the argument within the summary, however his memoir is a nuanced and considerate exploration of how literature can contribute to ethical development. We see him not solely analyzing sure novels’ sensitivity to others’ views however working towards this sensitivity himself. We additionally see how his non secular practices and group membership reinforce this method to literature. Literature helps illuminate the “wholeness” of his life, however literature can also be only one a part of that wholeness.
Moreover, whereas Wickman is well-attuned to the moral affordances of literature; he sees the impediments it will possibly produce. These existentialist novelists deepened his seriousness in regards to the massive questions, however he additionally displays on how he at occasions performed the a part of melodramatic and oh-so-complex existentialist in his life. Take into account this self-deprecating and humorous passage:
I’ve by no means seen myself because the church chief kind….I spent the primary couple a long time of my grownup life because the existentially overwrought dude sitting on or close to the again row. I had lengthy hair, then shorter hair however a goatee, then no goatee however a thick moustache that was a bit of too, nicely, itself. Then I used to be clean-shaven however refused to put on a white shirt. Then I wore white shirts however spoke in tutorial jargon and talked about scripture by the use of philosophy. Briefly, I used to be obnoxiously, implacably idiosyncratic.
Wickman can also be conscious that whereas spirituality and literature can deliver “life to the entire being,” whereas they will grant a contemplative depth to motion, they can be methods of retreating from actuality or justifying a spurious elitism. Wickman acknowledges the temptation towards the latter, not solely typically but in addition in his personal life.
After all, one other criticism of the controversy about literature and advantage is that it reduces literature to ethics. That is maybe a selected hazard of Christian approaches to literature. Christianity itself has been accused of conflating faith with ethics, of decreasing the numinous to the normative. Right here, too, Wickman is considerate and expansive. “However faith just isn’t really itself,” he writes, “till we ask it to do the inconceivable—till, fasting, praying, and serving, we petition it to assist deliver us, mere mortals, into the presence of what’s most sacred.” Literature, too, generally is a conduit to the sacred. Critical literature—particularly spiritually critical literature—is all the time working up towards the bounds of what will be stated. It entails gaps, uncertainties, thriller, a way of “extra.” Right here once more, spirituality and literature converge: “Non secular illustration, like literary illustration, thus reminds us that there’s something perpetually extra to come across, one thing beforehand unappreciated or unseen—one thing newly if not but absolutely defamiliarized—in what we deem most essential.” This has its optimistic aspect, all the time delving deeper into the richness of Creation, of relationships with others—all the time delving deeper into the infinite of God. There’s a sublimity and a way of journey right here.
However gaps and uncertainties can be disturbing. The “extra” can at occasions appear to be an abyss, the richness an vacancy. It is a memoir of doubt in addition to religion, of studying to dwell with frustration and uncertainty. It’s a memoir that takes evil, struggling, and lifelong disappointment critically. Right here, too, literature performs its half as a faculty for dwelling in uncertainty. Pope Francis just lately launched a letter “on the Function of Literature in Formation.” The letter makes good companion studying for Life to the Entire Being, and this passage may very well be an epigraph for Wickman’s e-book: “It’s clear, then, that the reader just isn’t merely the recipient of an edifying message, however an individual challenged to press ahead on a shifting terrain the place the boundaries between salvation and perdition usually are not a priori apparent and distinct.” Wickman, too, presses ahead on shifting terrain. “My story is of a pilgrim greater than a guru,” Wickman writes, “of a seeker greater than a sage.”
Wickman’s e-book is written for an LDS viewers, and particularly for younger individuals like his college students at BYU who’re combating the deep questions. He attracts insights all through from LDS custom. A exceptional passage by Parley Pratt on the numerous items of the Spirit serves as a touchstone. It can enchantment to bookish believers from quite a lot of traditions, although. As a Catholic English professor, I discovered it shifting and instructive. I discovered from its high-level discussions of, say, apophaticism and language, however I benefitted much more from Wickman’s makes an attempt to dwell extra absolutely via spirituality and literature.
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