Qtr. III

1974­75

Saturday Breakfast

(Read Zooey, part 1)

1. What phrases Struck you?

2. What in the reading surprised you?

3. What was the setting for the conversation? Why?

4. What is the phenomenon he's describing?

a. "... the prayer moves from the lips and the head down to a center in the heart and becomes an automatic function in the person."

b. "... sooner or later you'll get an answer. Not exactly an answer. A RESPONSE."

5. What's the importance of this phenomena in a time of the radically practical?

Saturday / Dinner

(Read Zooey, part 2)

1. Where in the reading did you take special note?

2. What's his picture of Jesus? (not _____ but _____ )

3. What issue(s) is he addressing?

4. Where are they manifest today? In society?

5. How is he dealing with them?

1. What would it mean to be a people of "Christ­consciousness"?

"If you don't yak at me," he said, after a pause, "I'll tell you what those two little books are about that Franny's got with her. Are you interested, or not? If you're not interested, I don't feel like­­" "Yea, I'm interested! Of course I'm interested What do you think I'm--" "All right, Just don't yak at me for a minute, then," Zooey said, and rested the small of his back against the edge of the washbowl. He went on using the nail file. "Both books are about a Russian peasant, around the turn of the century," he said, in what was, for his implacably matter­of­fact voice, a rather narrative tone. "He's a very simple, very sweet little guy with a withered arm. Which, of course, makes him a natural for Franny, with that goddam Bide­a­Wee Home heart of hers." He pivoted around, picked up his cigarette from the frosted­glass ledge, dragged on it, then began to file his nails. "In the beginning, the little peasant tells you, he had a wife and a farm. But he had a looney brother who burned down the farm ­­and then, later I think, the wife just died. Anyway, he starts on his pilgrimage. And he has a problem. He's been reading the Bible all his life, and he wants to know what it means when it says, in Thessalonians, Pray without ceasing.' That one line keeps haunting him." Zooey reached for his cigarette again, dragged on it, and then said, "there's another, similar line in Timothy--' I will therefore that men pray everywhere." And ought always to pray and not to faint."' Zooey used his nail file in silence for a moment, his face singularly dour in expression. "So, anyway, he begins his pilgrimage to find a teacher, " he said. "Someone who can teach him how to pray incessantly, and why. He walks and he walks and he walks, from one church and shrine to another, talking to this priest and that. Till finally he meets a simple old monk who apparently knows what it's all about. The old monk tells him that the one prayer acceptable to God at all times, and 'desired' by God, is the Jesus Prayer- 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.' Actually, the whole prayer is 'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner,' but none of the adepts in either of the Pilgrim books put any emphasis --thank God ­­on the miserable­sinner part. Anyway, the old monk explains to him what will happen if the prayer is said incessantly. He gives him some practice sessions with it and sends him home. And ­­to make a long story short ­­after a while the little pilgrim becomes proficient with the prayer. He masters it. He's overjoyed with his new spiritual life, and he goes on hiking all over Russia ­­through dense forests, through towns, villages, and so on ­­saying his prayer as he goes along and telling everyone he happens meet how to say it, too." Zooey looked up, brusquely, at his mother. 'You listening to this? You fat old Druid?" he inquired. "Or are you just staring at my gorgeous face?" Mrs. Glass, bristling, said, "Certainly I'm listening." "All right -I don't want any party poops around here." Zooey gave a great guffaw, then took a drag on his cigarette. He kept the cigarette stationed between his fingers and went on using the nail file. "The first of the two little books, 'The Way of a Pilgrim,' he said, "has mostly to do with the adventures the little pilgrim had on the road. Whom he meets, what he says to the, what they say to him ~ he meets some goddam nice people, incidentally. The sequel, 'The Pilgrim Continues His Way,' is mostly a dissertation in dialogue form on the whys and wherefores of the Jesus Prayer. The pilgrim, a professor, a monk, and some sort of hermit all meet and hash over things. And that's all there is to it, really." Zooey glanced up, very briefly, at his mother, then switched the nail file over to his left hand. "The aim of both little books, if you're interested," he said, is supposedly to wake everybody up to the need and benefits of saying the Jesus Prayer incessantly. First under the supervision of a qualified teacher -­a sort of Christian guru -­and then, after the person has mastered it to some extent, he's supposed to go on with it on his own. And the main idea is that it's not supposed to be just for pious bastards and breast­beaters. You can be busy robbing the goddam poor box, but you're to say the prayer while you rob it. Enlightenment's supposed to come with the prayer, not before it." Zooey frowned, but academically. "The idea, really, is that sooner or later, completely on his own, the prayer moves from the lips and the head down to a center in the heart and becomes an automatic function in the person, right along with the heartbeat. And then, after a time, once the prayer is automatic in the heart, the person is supposed to enter into the so-called reality of things. The subject doesn't really come up in either of the books, but, in Eastern terms, there are seven subtle centers in the body, called chakras, and the one most closely connected with the heart is called anahata, which is supposed to be sensitive and powerful as hell, and when it's activated, it, in turn, activates another of these centers, between the eyebrows, called ajna ­­it's the pineal gland, really, or, rather, an aura around the pineal gland -­then, bingo, there's an opening of what mystics call the 'third eye.' It's nothing new, for God's sake. It didn't just start with the little pilgrim's crowd, I mean. In India, for God knows how many centuries, it's been known as japam. Japam is just the repetition of any of the human names of God. Or the names of his incarnations ­­his avatars, if you want to get technical. The idea being that if you call out the name long enough and regularly enough and literally from the heart, sooner or later you'll get an answer. Not exactly an answer. A RESPONSE."

"The part that stumps me, really stumps me, is that I can't see why anybody ­­unless he was a child, or an angel, or a lucky simpleton like the pilgrim --would even want to say the prayer to a Jesus who was the least bit different from the way he looks and sounds in the New Testament. My God! He's only the most intelligent man in the Bible, that's all. Who isn't he head and shoulders over? Who? Both Testaments are full of pundits, prophets, disciples, favorite sons, Solomons, Isaiahs, Davids, Pauls­­but, my God, who besides Jesus really knew which end was up? Nobody. Not Moses. Don't tell me Moses. He was a nice man, and he kept in beautiful touch with his God, and all that ­­but that's exactly the point. He had to keep in touch. Jesus realized there is no separation from God." Zooey here clapped his hands together ­­only once, and not loud, and very probably in spite of himself. His hands were refolded across his chest almost, as it were, before the clap was out. "Oh, my God, what a mind," he said. "Who else, for example, would have kept his mouth shut when Pilate asked for an explanation? Not Solomon. Don't say Solomon. Solomon would have had a few pithy words for the occasion. I'm not sure Socrates wouldn't have, for that matter. Crito, or somebody, would have managed to pull him aside just long enough to get a couple of well­chosen words for the record. But most of all, above everything else, who in the Bible besides Jesus knew --knew ­­that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside , where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff. Why don't you think of these things? I mean it, Franny, I'm being serious. When you don't see Jesus for exactly what he was, you miss the whole point of the Jesus Prayer. If you don't understand JESUS, you can't understand his prayer­you don't get the prayer at all, you just get some kind of organized cant. Jesus was a supreme adept, by God, on a terribly important mission. This was no St. Francis, with enough time to knock out a few canticles, or to preach to the birds, or to do any of the other endearing things so close to Franny Glass's heart. I'm being serious now, God damn it. How can you miss seeing that? If God had wanted somebody with St. Francis's consistently winning personality for the job in the New Testament, he'd've picked him, you can be sure. As it was, he picked the best, the smartest, the most loving, the least sentimental, the most unimitative master he could possibly have picked. And when you miss seeing that, I swear to you, you're missing the whole point of the Jesus PRAYER. The Jesus Prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ­Consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier­than­thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who'll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and make all your nasty Weltschmerzen and PROFESSOR Tuppers go away and never come back. And by God, if you have intelligence enough to see that ­­and you do ­-and yet you refuse to see it, then you're misusing the prayer, you're using it to ask for a world full of dolls and saints and no Professor Tuppers."