37. Winter Stores (Charlotte Brontë)
El móvil dice que está nevando pero sólo llueve. La universidad y los colegios tienen “delayed opening”, así que la mañana ha comenzado dominguera.
Hoy en la universidad hay dos eventos que me hacen mucha ilusión:
William Desmond, autor de un libro cuyo título más o menos define a lo que quisiera dedicar mi vida (The Gift of Beauty and the Passion of Being: On the Threshold between the Aesthetic and the Religious), viene a dar una conferencia sobre “La filosofía, la revelación y el bautismo del pensamiento.”
Más tarde, Ross Douthat y Spencer Klavan vienen a hablar de sus nuevos libros (Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious y Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith) que tocan un tema que me interesa mucho: el giro religioso que parece estar dando la cultura. Hace unos meses Douthat escribió un buen artículo sobre este “vibe shift” (¡la palabreja de moda!):
The new-atheist idea that the weakening of organized religion would make the world more rational and less tribal feels much more absurd in 2024 than it did in 2006. Existential anxiety and civilizational ennui, not rationalist optimism and humanist ambition, are the defining moods of secular liberalism nowadays. The decline of religious membership and practice is increasingly seen as a social problem rather than a great leap forward. People raised without belief are looking for meaning in psychedelics, astrology, U.F.O.s. And lately the rise of the “Nones” — Americans with no religious affiliation — has finally leveled off.
So the world seems primed for religious arguments in the same way it was primed for the new atheists 20 years ago. But the question is whether the religious can reclaim real cultural ground — especially in the heart of secularism, the Western intelligentsia — as opposed to just stirring up a vague nostalgia for belief.
Ya os contaré. Mientras tanto, una pequeña reflexión sobre el paso de tiempo y la interioridad que vamos cultivando…
WINTER STORES
Charlotte Brontë
We take from life one little share,
And say that this shall be
A space, redeemed from toil and care,
From tears and sadness free.
And, haply, Death unstrings his bow,
And Sorrow stands apart,
And, for a little while, we know
The sunshine of the heart.
Existence seems a summer eve,
Warm, soft, and full of peace;
Our free, unfettered feelings give
The soul its full release.
A moment, then, it takes the power
To call up thoughts that throw
Around that charmed and hallowed hour,
This life’s divinest glow.
But Time, though viewlessly it flies,
And slowly, will not stay;
Alike, through clear and clouded skies,
It cleaves its silent way.
Alike the bitter cup of grief,
Alike the draught of bliss,
Its progress leaves but moment brief
For baffled lips to kiss.
The sparkling draught is dried away,
The hour of rest is gone,
And urgent voices, round us, say,
“Ho, lingerer, hasten on!”
And has the soul, then, only gained,
From this brief time of ease,
A moment’s rest, when overstrained,
One hurried glimpse of peace?
No; while the sun shone kindly o’er us,
And flowers bloomed round our feet, —
While many a bud of joy before us
Unclosed its petals sweet, —
An unseen work within was plying;
Like honey-seeking bee,
From flower to flower, unwearied, flying,
Laboured one faculty, —
Thoughtful for Winter’s future sorrow,
Its gloom and scarcity;
Prescient to-day of want to-morrow,
Toiled quiet Memory.
’Tis she that from each transient pleasure
Extracts a lasting good;
’Tis she that finds, in summer, treasure
To serve for winter’s food.
And when Youth’s summer day is vanished,
And Age brings winter’s stress,
Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished,
Life’s evening hours will bless.