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percy-l - RE: a good woman in a leafy enclave and living a moral life and where's God?

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Subject: Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion on Walker Percy

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  • From: Tpmonaghan AT aol.com
  • To: percy-l AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: RE: a good woman in a leafy enclave and living a moral life and where's God?
  • Date: Thu, 12 Sep 2002 11:54:39 EDT

Settling down with a good woman in a leafy enclave and living a moral life, sounds a lot like Eden to me.  God is obviously there.  God did observe that was His plan, and that even before the Fall, it was not good that man should be alone and there is all that about from the rib, not the foot, not the head... from the Church fathers then the madonna and child.....  As time goes by, the fundamental things apply....whether 20's, 30's, 40's, 60's, 70's, 80's and on and on and even millenniums...

The Great Books, the hot bodsky bite of bourbon whiskey, chicken soup, and grits all in a cave in Lost Cove, Tennessee with Ellen and a moral life...isn't this as close to the eschaton as some of us should think of getting on this side of the river?  Isn't that the good life for Tom and Ellen, and Adam and Eve, and .... And if that option is not our vocation, there is the prophet/hermit crying in the wilderness and enjoying the things of creation and studying and writing and pondering.  Both approaches depend upon each other.  Praying, moral living, and tending the garden are requirements for all.

Percy wrote somewhere that boy and girl finding each other usually solved a lot.  That would seem to be indicated as well in common experience.  It's also reflected in the pop reading of Westerns...man spends 19 chapters clearing out bad guys, building fences, etc. finds woman in last few paragraphs, kisses her and book ends and life begins....or in the Romance, man clears out the bad guys, builds fences, etc. in first few paragraphs and spends 19 chapters geting around to finding girl, kissing her, etc. which it turns out is a lot more complicated than he ever thought and book ends and life begins.

Actually, I just found the quote that I remembered.  It is on the back cover of "More Conversations with Walker Percy" edited by Lewis A. Lawson and Victor A. Kramer..."You would like for your characters to get out of the fix they are in and achieve some kind of happiness.  The best way to do it, the easiest way to do it, is to fall in love.  A man falls in love with a woman or vice versa.  If both happen at the same time, that's pretty good."



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