REL331

    Please see attachments for instructions on how to complete this assignment Uses parenthetical documentation (MLA style) to show how the text is being read and to. I have included the book in four parts  because the file was too big I also included the teacher guide for reading. This paper should be at least 1000 words. 

REL331

Exam 3

Please save the exam and label it with your last name, middle initial, first name, and exam3. For example, Doe.M.Johnexam3 would be the exam file label for John M. Doe.

What do you think of Paul’s responses to the challenges he faced so far in the story? Did he handle it well, did he “blow it,” did he do about as well as could be expected?

He was a child who wanted to be a saint, a blue-collar worker, a devoted servant of the urban poor, a journalistic success, and a dissolute libertine. To illustrate your view, select several events from his life. Be sure to cite the text to demonstrate your reading.

There are two basic kinds of challenge: his own individuality, and the historical situation. He – like the rest of us — has to come to terms with both of these. Personally, he’s unusually bright and talented, he’s attractive to (and attracted by) women, he has plenty of attitude, and he has strong religious interests. Historically, he’s a working-class Slovakian Catholic in a period when the whole cultural world – both the US culture and the Catholic Church (Second Vatican Council) — was changing. Neither the US (civil rights, feminist movement, general questioning of authority) nor the Catholic Church (liturgical reform, individual dignity and liberty, social justice), has “recovered” from this upheaval.

(If you don’t share his religious interests, then simply look at the situation from a pragmatic, existential point of view: that is, what is one going to think about life and its meaning, and what is one going to do?)

Remember, if you are inclined to be hard on him, that he had to work with the personality he had. Some of us are not alcoholics, for instance, but that is not a particularly impressive virtue: our own makeup is simply not susceptible to that; it’s not something to brag about.

Exam Criteria

Characteristics of a very good exam:

Integrates personal observation and knowledge in an insightful way.

Provides concrete examples from the readings to support observations and interpretations.

Integrates prior readings.

Uses parenthetical documentation (MLA style) to show how the text is being read and to
document sources.

Shows tolerance and humility.

Has correct spelling and grammar.

1,000 or more word count.

Characteristics of a good exam:

Integrates personal knowledge and observation in a relevant way.

Refers to examples from the readings to support observations and interpretations.

Refers to prior readings in a relevant way.

Uses parenthetical documentation (MLA style) to show how the text is being read and to
document sources.

Has largely correct spelling and grammar.

Shows tolerance and humility to authors, classmates, and instructor.

1,000 or more word count.

Characteristics of an acceptable exam:

Has a personal response to the readings.

Alludes to readings to support position.

Uses parenthetical documentation (MLA style) to show how the text is being read and to
document sources.

Has spelling and grammar than need improvement.

Shows tolerance and humility.

1,000 minimum word count.

Characteristics of an unacceptable exam:

Does not have a personal response but instead uses material (even correct and insightful
material) from other sources.

Does not document sufficiently or at all.

Does not have minimum word count.

Is late without prior arrangements being made.

· Paul Wilkes,

 

In Due Season, pp. xi-90.

Paul Wilkes, In Due Season, pp. 91-174

When you complete this module, you should be able to:

 

· Identify key life-challenges faced by Paul Wilkes.

· Describe Wilkes religious response to his situation.

· Relate your life today to Wilke’s life.

Would you like to be saint? As a bright working-class youth, Paul Wilkes formed such an ideal. But he was also a young Slovakian American during the sixties and the Vietnam War when many fundamental beliefs about government, gender, and personal life were being challenged. It was not an easy time for living easily with one’s traditions.

Instructor Reading Guide

He meets up with the well-known Dorothy Day, a true American saint, who manifested a “holy

fierceness” (101) and who was remarkable “present” (102).

But “my entire life had gone to hell.” The God whom he‟d been working with had “shoved a

new and improvisational story into my hands” (105).

Note the aspect of “story” and “improvisational.” Often it is assumed that we know in advance

the story of our life that we‟re writing. Paul here – a talented writer – is beginning to suspect that

the story is up for grabs and we have to improvise.

What do you think of this? if it is true, it pretty well makes a mockery of our neat five-year plans

with measurable goals and objectives.

His decision? An impromptu bus tour/retreat of his own devising. The first friars he stays with

feed his fantasies of a holy life, but in fact, “it was a sad place” (107). The Benedictines at Mt.

Saviour Monastery were highly disciplined, and he gets lots of inspiration. At Madonna House in

Canada, the well-known “Baroness” Catherine de Hueck he found to be just plain weird (113).

At Benedict Labre house in Montreal, Tony Walsh advises him to see Father Mark Delary at St.

Joseph‟s Abbey in Massachusetts. Paul goes on about his issues of holiness, and Father Mark

asks what fiction he‟s reading and advises that “what you do is also important.” And adds the

statement attributed to Lin Chi, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him”(116). [Meaning:

a finite image of true reality is an idol – but this applies to our thoughts and concepts also.]

He and J.C. end their marriage 119.

Paul doesn‟t tell the reader much here, does he? What do you make of all this? Careful, it‟s very

hard to get “inside” someone else‟s marriage.

He now imagines himself an altruistic “man for others” (the phrase is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

the Lutheran theologian murdered by Nazis).

One good thing is his meeting another real saint, Jacques Travers. Paul reflects now that “there is

an entirely different dimension to these individuals. They see God in everyone…. It is so natural

as to be barely discernible” (123).

What do you think of such a meeting? Is it possible? It‟s very odd and arresting when it happens;

it sort of stops you in your tracks, sometimes when you least expect it. That happened to this

writer a month before writing this. I‟ve met holy people whom I expected to be holy, but I had

no expectations regarding this Cistercian monk (I know quite a few monks.) But his simple

presence, intelligence, and strange humility spoke for itself. Quite overwhelming.

He starts seeing a Jewish psychoanalyst, Barbara Koltuv. He sees her for four years, but she‟ not

encouraging about his seeking sainthood. She tries to get him real about his feelings (129).

Mr. Voluntary Poverty asks Kurt Vonnegut‟s girlfriend out (he doesn‟t know it‟s KV‟s woman)

who had come to photograph him for a Newsweek story on his book about an American family,

done in the style of the new “immersion journalism” (133). Westinghouse Broadcasting gets

interested in a TV series based on his book. He‟s “deeply unhappy” (139) in his current situation

as saint for the poor and looks for signs about what to do, has a sexual experience, and in the end

Jacques Travers lovingly bids him farewell. “Your heart ees good; listen to eet” (141).

He takes up a new life, with an office on Park Avenue and weekends in The Hamptons, partying

with famous people and celebrities, enjoying alcohol, drugs, a series of sexual encounters. “I was

a virtual teenager again…. The new god had arrived. It was me” (149). Christopher Lasch had

written: “In a dying culture, narcissism appears to embody – in the guise of personal „growth‟

and „awareness‟ – the highest attainment of spiritual enlightenment” (151).

An interesting fact about human beings in our culture: we can confuse personal growth with

egotism. When cultures don‟t give any choice of personal growth, this problem doesn‟t exist. But

our culture can have this – “in spades,” as we say. Do you perhaps have some form of this

problem? Note that if you did, it would be hard to tell since the whole issue with being

narcissistic is that your judgment is clouded and you can‟t see it clearly. Fun stuff, right?

He takes a week off (“off … from what?” he asks now) at a resort in Jamaica. “The rank putrid

smell of my life …. I sobbed until the back of my throat ached. The utter hollowness of it all

enveloped me” (154).

Do you know what he‟s feeling here? Do you think that having high spiritual expectations of

himself has anything to do with it?

It gets worse. The drinking and drugs increase, and he even goes to a church – Fourth Unitarian –

in order to have sex (159). Pretty far from the sainthood he‟d envisioned for himself earlier.

He yearns for someone he could talk to who knew that “life was an awful rowing toward God

and that sometimes your boat simply got swamped” (160).

At this point, Paul contrasts his situation with that of Thomas Merton‟s account of his experience

at Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, KY. This occurred on March 18, 1958. Merton had gone to

Louisville for medical reasons. Merton writes, “I loved all this people …. There is no way of

telling people that they are all waking around shining like the sun” (161). Merton here was

rejecting a dualistic theology that separates people in monasteries from ordinary folk on the

street. He was experiencing a wholeness of life, a unity, a oneness. Paul, on the other hand, is

focused on “me, me, me” (161) and he‟s not able at this point to bring together both his spiritual

aspirations and his daily life.

He‟s not alone in this problem, right?

He finds himself “trying to outrun the decaying smell of my dying soul” (164).

Does this sound overdramatic to you? Careful here. Remember, he‟s extremely talented with a

brain whirring all the time, he became fairly famous in a very short period of time, in a social

period in New York before AIDS that was known for “swinging,” and he had lots of

opportunities. Please keep in mind he knows of several successful people who have committed

suicide (130). Is it possible that there‟s a trap here, lying in wait for any one of us just as we‟re

being “successful”? Recall how “successful” Michael Jackson was, right? Perhaps you‟ve also

heard stories of people who win the lottery and what happens to some of them? Some have

ended up with even less money than they had before.

He meets Tracy Gochberg, the woman he‟ll eventually marry (it was not love but lust at first

sight [165]), but there are immediate problems. For one thing, “married life seemed too

ordinary” (172). For another, he wants to be a hermit for awhile! He thinks he may have a

monastic calling. Tracy, of course, is interested in another M word, marriage (174).

Whew! Are you exhausted yet? Well, there‟s more to come!