On Wellingness

You can’t be weller than well; that treats health as an asset. The physician isn’t for the well, but the sick. Seeking to be weller than all the others, you keep it for yourself, like the Pharisee who kept all the commandments and thought his soul was well. The doctor diagnosed him: he was sick as.

Ignatius calls the welling up of tears a consolation. For what must we be consoled? For our weakness, frailty, helplessness in face of the devastations of this world. It happens without us. Sometimes we cause it; sometimes it is caused. Where is the earliest cause? The prime vice is greed, though the ancients thought envy the worst of the lot. As a child I didn’t understand what’s meant by coveting, or why forbid it, what’s it doing in the Decalogue? It underlies so many evils. Land, and its resources; family advancement and security; national supremacy; peace and stability; grace and beauty. All to be attained and enjoyed by me and not by thee. Wellness: the earthly paradise. Can you envy another’s peace? Oh, yes. Wellingness: the welling up of compassion, remorse, justice, redress. Even tears. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. 

On Gathering Stones

It’s not what you did, it’s who you are. That’s why I find the virtues so suggestive. The classical virtues, prudence (reasonableness), fortitude, justice, temperance (moderation), form a practice, or what’s called a way. Prudence is a right relationship to reality. It tells you when courage is courage, not recklessness. Fortitude, more than courage, has endurance and longevity, like a mongoose confronting a snake. Justice returns to everything that which belongs to it (consider the depth of that), and temperance literally tempers behaviour, particularly greed. Each of these words has further meanings, evoking volumes of interpretation over the ages.

Who you are determines what you are. You can be the right person in the right place at the right time, or the wrong person in similar circumstances. You can be praised for wrong behaviour or condemned for right behaviour. There’s nothing objective here. Who you are is what you are. Observe that the mongoose, by nature’s grace, is free of snake toxins. By contrast, vices are actually boring: arrogance, envy, greed. Who wants to live there? The cardinal virtues are a kind of medicine, a way out. Activate your inner Mongoose. A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.