Mansfield Park

I was rereading Mansfield Park, my third favorite Austen novel. Well, really, I still feel the need to punch Edmund in the nose sometimes--how like a man, to recognize a woman's real, material, moral imperfections at first but then to fall so much under her charm that his own judgment was compromised and it took adultery and a family crisis to make him see the truth--but this exchange caught my eye. I am not sure how Jane Austen truly felt about the clergy; her father was a rector, which might point either way, and in her books she paints such different portraits of them (as Lizzie of Pride and Prejudice said) "as to puzzle me exceedingly". But I hope she meant something of what she says through Edmund's character in this small exchange between Edmund Bertram and Mary Crawford.

"So you are to be a clergyman, Mr. Bertram. This is rather a surprise to me."

"Why should it surprise you? You must suppose me designed for some profession, and might perceive that I am neither a lawyer, nor a soldier, nor a sailor."

"Very true; but, in short, it had not occurred to me. And you know there is generally an uncle or a grandfather to leave a fortune to the second son."

"A very praiseworthy practice," said Edmund, "but not quite universal. I am one of the exceptions, and being one, must do something for myself."

"But why are you to be a clergyman? I thought that was always the lot of the youngest, where there were many to chuse before him."

"Do you think the church itself never chosen, then?"

"Never is a black word. But yes, in the never of conversation, which means not very often, I do think it. For what is to be done in the church? Men love to distinguish themselves, and in either of the other lines distinction may be gained, but not in the church. A clergyman is nothing."

"The nothing of conversation has its gradations, I hope, as well as the never. A clergyman cannot be high in state or fashion. He must not head mobs, or set the ton in dress. But I cannot call that situation nothing which
has the charge of all that is of the first importance to mankind, individually or collectively considered, temporally and eternally, which has the guardianship of religion and morals, and consequently of the manners which result from their influence. No one here can call the office nothing."

My favorite part--the only important part, really; I just wanted to contextualize--was the last paragraph. What do you consider important in life? Grades? Fine, that's important; family? I would be crazy to deny its importance, too. But there is something that comes far and away above these things; the thing that is of most importance, and therefore the thing that should occupy the most of your mind, your heart, your soul, your strength. And funnily enough, to most of the world, this essential thing, this one necessary thing, is "nothing."

What is the value of the things you are doing? If you don't direct them properly, the trans you're reading, the exam you're taking, the five years you spend in med school and all the years beyond--each action, whether small and insignificant or of serious moment--can end up being worthless when you die. The things you amass on earth, they say, you cannot take with you. But if you amass struggle, and good intentions, and a sincere desire for the good--sincerity being self-knowledge and the humility of knowing that no, you are not the best judge of things and there is a God whose intellect is greater than yours, you tiny insignificant human--these are things you can take with you when you die.

The Little Prince said that all that is essential is invisible to the eye; to that I say, maybe it's more correct to assert that: all that is essential is eternal. All other things pass away. As John Donne wrote,

All other things to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay ;
This no to-morrow hath, nor yesterday.

Sometimes I want to shake my friends and bemoan that I am surrounded by Mary Crawfords, who see things humanly and shallowly (not that I can't outstrip others in shallowness sometimes). Yesterday I went to the wake of someone I never saw before she died; we stood in front of her coffin in the oratory and we said the responsory for the dead as we came in. And even though I had never known her before, I know that I know the essentials: that she was loved, and that she had struggled, and that she will soon be in heaven, if she is not there now.

Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. Are you putting your heart and your treasure into things that will never last? Or are you looking toward eternity?