Editors' Letter

In spite of trite media clichés, the troubles of 2020 are not really unprecedented. There have been other global pandemics, political upheavals, natural disasters, and ideological divides in the history of the world—and they shall all happen again. What pundits and retailers are really saying in such statements is that these times have been unprecedented for us, and in this, they are correct. In the West, we have so far been a shallow generation. But this year, the depths have been stirred. Here at FORMA we want to offer a means of contemplating the moment within the context of the tradition. But we are not interested in superficial platitudes or trendy dogmas. As always, we are committed to curating a robust, humane exploration of meaningful issues.

This Winter 2021 issue invites readers to engage in a collective vision for private and public virtue in the midst of a troubled season. After all, if we are plagued by common traumas, we are also ennobled by shared consolations. In this issue, you will find responses to contemporary topics such as cancel culture (from Missy Andrews), the work of Marilynne Robinson (from Aaron Brown), and human rights (by David Hicks). The issue also abounds with timeless contemplations of enduring relevance: poetry and prayer (from poet Malcolm Guite), Shakespeare’s bloody Coriolanus (from Sarah-Jane Bentley), and healing hospitality (from Joshua Gibbs). And, as always, you will also find book reviews and poetry to challenge your minds and nourish your hearts.

In an uncertain season, there is much to inspire gratitude, including a vibrant community of thoughtful folks around the world living courageous, ordinary lives in extraordinary circumstances. We at FORMA are encouraged by your presence and hope to refresh and revive your souls today.

Cheers,

The Editors

Publisher: Andrew Kern, President of The CiRCE Institute

Editor-in-Chief: David Kern

Managing Editor: Heidi White

Art Director: Graeme Pitman

Poetry Editor: Christine Perrin

Associate Editors: Emily Andrews, Sean Johnson

Senior Editors: Jamie Cain, Matt Bianco

Contributing Editors: Ian Andrews, Noah Perrin

Copy Editor: Emily Callihan

Part I: The Family Person

With apologies to Gene Roddenberry, entertaining is actually the final frontier.

Modernity has made us all such private, inhospitable people. We no longer need to leave our homes, but neither do we want to. We have lately given up on theaters, on restaurants, even on travel. A phone call, formerly a sign of prestige, now seems a crass intrusion. The business trip out of town—which, in a prior age, would require an airplane and a taxi, conversations with the concierge, reservations at a diner’s club—are now to be conducted with no formality, negligible decorum, and no more than a few minutes of planning. During Zoom meetings, I prefer to turn my video off and listen in while I fold laundry, do the dishes, or cook dinner, which is to say I have become even more impatient and ill-mannered than before. I regularly confess the sin of rudeness. My face is now covered in public, which means I take a good deal of my privacy with me when I leave the home, for I am now free to mouth or whisper the profanities I could only think before. When we all gave up on shaking hands, we might have done the reasonable thing and reverted back to bowing, an elegant and deferential gesture that can be accomplished without physical contact (if that is actually important), but we instead adopted the elbow bump, a formal “greeting” which subtly communicates distrust and suspicion that our friends and colleagues are sick and dirty. That we never really considered the bow is not particularly surprising. The meaninglessness of the elbow

Cultural Currency

bump comes naturally to a people which no longer cares for people.

We still make plans with friends “for old dignity’s sake,” as James Joyce once put it, but we take little delight in fulfilling these plans, for we are glad when plans fall through and we have “the evening off.” We are far happier sharing photographs of our dinner, which will elicit jealousy, than actually sharing our dinner, which will bring boredom. When friends come over, we cannot scroll them away with our index fingers when they cease to interest us. Our attention spans have atrophied. We no longer have any incentive to find people interesting, or to figure out better questions to ask boring people that we might conjure intrigue from their rubbery souls. The moment something bores us, we escape.

The dangers of inviting someone into your home are threefold, then. First, they might be unclean, a fear brought on by the pandemic. Second, they might be boring, a fear brought on by our addiction to smartphones. The third is really the most unsettling, though, and has always been a danger of hospitality, even before broadband and the pandemic. When we invite people into our homes, they come to judge us.

The first thing we try to establish upon entering the homes of other people is whether they are normal or not. At the same time, there is no way to do this without simultaneously figuring out whether you are normal, for “normal” is typically a judgment we make after a broad survey which invariably involves ourselves, as well as others. While we often use the word to imply something is “narrow”