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I just finished The Art of the Wasted Day<\/em>, and Marsue was right\u2014it does appeal to me. But it doesn\u2019t appeal to my \u201cphilosophical\u201d side so much as to my deeper \u201cme\u201d side. Apparently, without even knowing it, Patricia Hampl \u201cgets\u201d me too. There is no linear narrative to the book, perhaps not even a \u201cpoint\u201d in the usual sense that the word is usually intended. And yet several interlocking people and ideas keep rising to the surface of Hampl\u2019s ruminations, items that have floated in and out of my writing, teaching, and consciousness for the past several years. My 16th<\/sup> century soulmate Michel de Montaigne, an increasing distrust of certainty of all sorts, a fascination with how bits and pieces of memory are stitched into a life, confusion and fascination with the need to write even if no one is reading what I write\u2014these obsessions of mine weave through Hampl\u2019s book like distinctive threads through a complex tapestry.<\/p>\n Hampl is not a particularly \u201creligious\u201d thinker or writer, but\u2014despite the title of this blog\u2014I would argue that I am not a particularly \u201creligious\u201d thinker or writer either, despite my obvious obsession with God and the life of faith. I am constitutionally allergic to organized religion, an allergy that has developed over many years as I have grappled with the effects of the organized religion into which I was born and which\u2014for both better and worse\u2014shaped me in many ways. And yet, despite this allergy, I find myself strangely attracted to, even comforted by, any number of things that, to an outsider, look \u201creligious.\u201d I resonate with many aspects of liturgy. I still love many of the Protestant hymns from my youth. I love artwork and architecture related to religion. I love many parts of the Bible. My dedication to the teaching profession, shaped by my training in philosophy, adds more cognitive dissonance to the mix. How are all of these apparently incompatible elements of thought, commitment, and life to coexist in one place? I\u2019ve wondered about that for most of my life. And so has Patricia Hampl.<\/p>\n Michel de Montaigne, the inventor of the self-reflective essay, the philosopher sometimes described as \u201cthe first modern man,\u201d is a frequent focus of Hampl\u2019s attention in The Art of the Wasted Day<\/em>. Two-thirds of the way through the book, she tells the story of her visit to Montaigne\u2019s chateau in southern France, where his monumental Essais<\/em> was written over the last decade or so of his life. Montaigne did his writing in a library located on the top floor of a circular tower on the grounds of the chateau. As she climbs the winding, stone stairs toward Montaigne\u2019s library, she passes his private chapel on the floor below, \u201cniched with an altar, a shrinelike cavern.\u201d<\/p>\n While exploring Montaigne\u2019s library above, a \u201clight-filled chamber\u201d that is more or less a secular shrine for those who love Montaigne\u2019s essays, Hampl notices\u2014next to the small alcove where Montaigne slept next to a fireplace\u2014\u201ca kind of chute, a peephole down to the chapel so he could hear\u2014even see\u2014Mass without going down there.\u201d A library, a fireplace, a place to sleep, listening to and participating in the Mass without having to descend the stairs\u2014this is a bachelor den, what we usually call a \u201cman cave\u201d nowadays. Montaigne, although Catholic his whole life, is not known for his religious devotion; as a matter of fact, he makes a frequent point of expressing the insanity of religious fervor and orthodoxy at the expense of doubt and careful thought, especially when such fervor and orthodoxy incites the sort of violence that swept over France throughout Montaigne\u2019s entire life.<\/p>\n Accordingly, Hampl is surprised both by the chapel and by Montaigne\u2019s apparent desire to stay connected to his faith, while at the same time crafting doubt and skepticism into an art form.<\/p>\n He built liturgy into his privacy, this first \u201cmodern man,\u201d this man we claim as a skeptic. He was a skeptic\u2014and also a believer. He bridged the gap. He lived above with his books in the unheated tower, and he tended, faithfully, the rituals down there in the candlelit dark where mystery abided.<\/strong><\/p>\n Built into the very architecture of Montaigne\u2019s tower is the realization that it is possible for faith and reason, mystery and logic, belief and skeptical doubt, to cohabit fruitfully without contradiction and without aggression. I smiled as I read Hampl\u2019s lovely, brief meditation on the relationship of Montaigne\u2019s library and his chapel, one located above the other as the head is above the heart. I smiled because I realized that, in my own humble and limited ways, I have been seeking to build such an internal space my whole life.<\/p>\n It perhaps never occurred to Montaigne to think that there was something odd or contradictory about keeping one foot in the faith of his youth while firmly planting his other foot in ideas, texts, and essays that, according to traditional ways of thinking, are a direct threat to the very faith that he maintained. But he knew that his faith was as much a part of him as his being French and his being male; he writes in the Essais<\/em> that \u201cwe are Catholic in the same way that we are German or Perigordian.\u201d In the same way, perhaps, I am Christian in the same way that I am male and an extreme introvert. I was born that way. Certainly, my faith is subject to rigorous challenge, doubt, and revision\u2014I do that all the time, more and more vigorously and explicitly the older I get. Yet I have never felt the need to explain or defend my strong connection to and belief in matters of faith that defy logical analysis or intellectual scrutiny.<\/p>\n When reflecting on these dynamics in Montaigne (and in herself), Patricia Hampl quotes John Keats: \u201cOne must be capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.\u201d The best way to \u201cbridge the gap\u201d between the chapel and the man cave is with a life committed to the value and importance of both, a life energized by both doubt and belief, by liturgy and logic. I\u2019ve often said that the best proof of the existence of God is a changed life. The life memorialized in Montaigne\u2019s tower is the sort of life in which that sort of change is most likely to happen.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" About a month ago I received an email from my friend Marsue, brief and to the point. \u201cI just finished the craziest book and thought of you,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIt might appeal to your philosophical side.\u201d The book was Patricia Hampl\u2019s The Art of the Wasted Day. I have learned over the years to take […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":14007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14,17,21,27,35,36,39,40,48,49,53,56,61,62,68,73,83,94,104],"tags":[169,221,222,242,287,337,350,375,383,463],"class_list":["post-13998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belief","category-books","category-catholicism","category-christianity","category-doubt","category-faith","category-family","category-friends","category-god","category-human-nature","category-humility","category-introverts","category-jeanne","category-literature","category-liturgy","category-mystery","category-philosophy","category-sacrament","category-teaching","category-writing","tag-christianity","tag-faith","tag-family","tag-god","tag-jeanne","tag-marsue-harris","tag-montaigne","tag-patricia-hampl","tag-philosophy","tag-teaching"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2018\/10\/Montaigne-chateau.jpg\")
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