Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to.
Henry James, The Ambassadors

But there are degrees of feeling – the muffled, the faint, the just sufficient, the barely intelligible, as we may say; and the acute, the intense, the complete, in a word – the power to be finely aware and richly responsible.
Henry James, Preface to The Princess Cassamassima

Each week as I come to write here, there are usually a number of tales to tell, stories to weave, thoughts to share. It is always a matter of choosing some one thing, and saving some for another day. Someone asked me this week if I were going to write about Mother Teresa. I think I will, but not today.

It is Labor Day weekend, the traditional ending of summer. School begins this week for my wife and our two daughters. I begin teaching a course in Medical Ethics at a local college this week. 2008 will be here before I know it. Before leaving summer, I want to reflect on some reading I did, especially on vacation.

I took three books with me on our vacation: Henry James, The Ambassadors; Natalie Goldberg, Long Quiet Highway; and Maura O’Halloran, Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind. I did not finish James’ book until after our vacation, but there was an interesting confluence of ideas as I read all three.

I read The Ambassadors because it was a book I had been wanting to read for sometime. My interest in Henry James was sparked by the work of philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Her book, Love’s Knowledge was one of the first books on ethics I read after completing my Ph.D. in the subject of religious ethics. It is a book of essays on literature and philosophy, especially ethics. She writes with deep appreciation for Henry James and the kind of ethic she finds in his novels. In reflecting on James’ book The Golden Bowl, which remains on my reading list, she discusses the moral development of a character as James writes about it, her development of a new way of being in the world, a new ethic. We might describe the new ideal this way: See clearly and with high intelligence. Respond with the vibrant sympathy of a vividly active imagination (p. 134). Nussbaum believes many of James’ works seek to portray persons who have an ethic in life that is “finely aware and richly responsible” (to use James’ own words). The Ambassadors is one such work. The main character, Lewis Lambert Strether is a person who sees “fifty things” and appreciates them in his “quiet inwardness.” While he is not perfect in his ability to be finely aware, he strives for this, and seeks to act with rich responsibility. In reading James, I needed to slow down to catch all that he was trying to say in his long sentences filled with emotion and imagery. It was almost as if his style were trying to get readers to be more finely aware. I enjoyed letting James’ prose wash over me in waves.

While I was reading Henry James I was also reading the other two books mentioned. Each of these books is about a spiritual journey in Zen Buddhism. Maura O’Halloran’s book is comprised of journals and letters of this young Irish woman who went to Japan to study Zen in a monastery. In 1982, at age 27, after three years of studying Zen, she was killed in a motor accident, and the monks at Kannonji Temple in Japan dedicated a statue to her on that site, giving her the posthumous name of “Great Enlightened Lady, of the same heart and mind as the Great Teacher Buddha." Reading her journals and letters one gets inside, a little, the experience of Zen meditation and life in a Zen monastery. Slowing down, being aware, that is one point of Zen meditation – zazen. Natalie Goldberg’s book is both about her life as a writer and her own experience with Zen meditation, much of it in Minnesota at the Minneapolis Zen Center. Again, I was struck by the cultivation of awareness that is at the heart of this practice.

While it may seem a stretch, I saw some overlap in James’ encouragement of being finely aware and richly responsible, and the experience of two women with Zen meditation. I also recall many of the teachings of Jesus where he encourages people to watch, to pay attention. He chides those who think they see, but really don’t. Does Jesus, too, want me to be finely aware and richly responsible? Maybe so.

And then I consider how so much of modern Western life mitigates against just such a thing. We move at the speed of light and sound. Our schedules are crowded with events and "to do" lists – I know mine is. Where do we cultivate the habits and practices that help us slow down enough to be finely aware? There are practices in the Christian faith tradition that encourage cultivation of awareness, but they are often ignored. And such awareness is not an end in itself. As we see the world deeply, we need to respond to its joy and beauty, its pain and hurt and injustice. For Christians that would seem a no-brainer – “do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8). But Buddhists, too, are encouraged to respond to the world’s suffering. That, after all, was at the heart of the Buddha’s teaching - ending suffering.

So here I am, rushing headlong into fall. Will I be able to take the lessons of my summer reading with me? I hope so.

With Faith and With Feathers,

David