Down and out in Paris and London

Cassowary Colorizations, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

I first came across George Orwell in school and have read 1984 and Animal Farm and some of his essays. I recently picked up and read his mainly factual account of poverty first in Paris then in London, which first appeared in 1933 and was Orwell's first full length work. I love his lean style. He's very journalistic. The book has the distinction of having been rejected by T S Eliot.

While in Paris he is on the breadline working as a plongeur in hotels. In London he is a fully fledged tramp for 30 days. The two halves are not a neat join and the Paris section is probably more interesting. Apparently the supposed order of events is fictional.

The book reminded me a little of W H Davies' Autobiography of a Supertramp but when I checked that came out some 15 years before. Davies did review it favourably. Orwell mentions Jack London in the book and was apparently an admirer of hiss People of the Abyss about life in London's east end, which came out in 1903.

The book is interesting for opening the door on other worlds and the many anecdotes it contains. The thought that some people are wholly occupied simply with feeding themselves, working and sleeping is sobering. Perhaps some of us have too much time on our hands.

 

What is this life?

Earlier on today the line came up in conversation "What is this life so full of care, if we have no time to stand and stare?". It is by Newport poet W H Davies. Then tonight I noticed this at Reformation 21 by Carl Trueman.

One of the amazing things about modern American culture is surely the pathological fear of wasting time. It is especially evident in the attitude to children. Public school kids have their lives scheduled from morning till night; homeschool parents seem to regard any second of the day from the age of two that isn't used to learn Latin poetry or the cello or conversational Swahili as time that is wasted. It's a far cry from my childhood, when school ran from 9 in the morning till 4 in the afternoon, and then I was free to ride my bike, walk on the common, or just sit around with friends. And it continues in to later life: all the technology we have, and people seem to have less free time than ever.

Indeed, we have surely lost the virtue that is laziness. As Kierkegaard once said, 'Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good' -- a truly amazing theological insight. Some may think that that maybe going a bit far, but compared to the idea that the essence of humanity is busy-ness, it is much to be preferred.

The greatest testament to the power of wasted time in the history of the church is surely Luther's Table Talk. A collection of anecdotes and sayings collected by Luther's closest friends, it reflects the full range of Luther as pastor, mentor, Christian and friend. Reading the comments, from advice to young preachers (`The sixth mark of a good preacher is knowing when to stop.') to comments on lawyers (`One only studies something as dirty as law in order to make money') to general observations on life, some of which don't bear repeating on a polite blog such as this, I suspect Luther's table companions learned more about life and ministry while drinking beer and having a laugh with the Meister than in the university lecture hall.

Numerous applications come to mind: seminary is the people with whom you strike up friendships (a point which must be taken into account as seminaries move towards more distance education);friendships (real, embodied friendships that are not exclusively mediated through pixels) are crucial to staying the course of ministry -- laughter in the face of adversity and hardship not only being vital in this regard but also, of course, an almost exclusively social phenomenon that requires company; drinking beer with friends is perhaps the most underestimated of all Reformation insights and essential to ongoing reform; and wasting time with a choice friend or two on a regular basis might be the best investment of time you ever make.

Short Poem 07

Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 1882-1966 Photographer, Public domain USA,
via Wikimedia Commons

Thinking of poets from my home area I thought of W H Davies from Newport, where I was born, who is remembered chiefly for two lines he wrote that begin the poem Leisure. He was also the author of The Autobiography of a Supertramp relating his exoperiences tramping around the American continent. See Wikipedia article here.

Leisure

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.