Candide and Utilitarianism

Reading Karen Lebacqz’s take on John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism for Social Justice class, I was brought back to sophomore year of college, to one of my all-time favorite performance experiences (I mean, check out that bouffant!). The musical theatre and vocal performance departments collaborated on a main stage production of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta, based on Voltaire’s novel, Candide. Throughout the protagonist Candide’s journey, he desires knowledge of how to lead a good, happy life with Cunegonde, the woman he loves. Along the way, Candide and Cunegonde meet a variety of idiosyncratic characters who promote various philosophies – extreme optimism, extreme pessimism, extreme egoism, and everything in between – which represent the perspectives of several of Voltaire’s contemporaries.

Candide and Cunegonde both witness and even participate in some despicable behavior in order to reach their end goal of happiness. At the conclusion of the operetta, the couple discovers that on their quest, a utopian society simply cannot be a realistic goal. Rather, they must strive to do things such as cultivating a garden, chopping wood, building a house, and other useful actions that will increase their happiness. I am struck by the utilitarian character of the operetta’s finale, the famous "Make Our Garden Grow."

CANDIDE

You've been a fool

And so have I,

But come and be my wife.

And let us try,

Before we die,

To make some sense of life.

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good

We'll do the best we know.

We'll build our house and chop our wood

And make our garden grow...

And make our garden grow.

CUNEGONDE

I thought the world

Was sugar cake

For so our master said.

But, now I'll teach

My hands to bake

Our loaf of daily bread.

CANDIDE AND CUNEGONDE

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good

We'll do the best we know.

We'll build our house and chop our wood

And make our garden grow...

And make our garden grow.

CANDIDE, CUNEGONDE, MAXIMILLIAN, PAQUETTE, OLD LADY, DR. PANGLOSS

Let dreamers dream

What worlds they please

Those Edens can't be found.

The sweetest flowers,

The fairest trees

Are grown in solid ground.

ENSEMBLE

We're neither pure, nor wise, nor good

We'll do the best we know.

We'll build our house and chop our wood

And make our garden grow.

And make our garden grow!

© 2012 Katie Davis

Bit by Bit, Putting it Together

When I first moved to Houston to begin Jesuit Volunteer Corps three years ago (gulp!), I began sending epic monthly(ish...) updates to friends and family, chronicling in far-too-great detail my experiences in Texas. As I navigated my journey living in intentional community with five strangers-turned-family and working at Cristo Rey Jesuit College Preparatory School of Houston, I was eager to process and share stories. In retrospect, I recognize that I was feeling compelled to communicate the ways in which I felt God working in my life with the amazing people who had revealed that love to me at home, in high school at Merion, and in college at CUA. "Blogging" via e-mail helped keep me connected to my loved ones in a unique way, and I always was deeply grateful for the responses I would receive from folks who wanted to offer their support and their own stories; in the midst of an incredibly beautiful, transformative year, I stilled missed people a great deal.

While I continued a similar pattern throughout another major transition into my first year in JVC Magis in Chicago (with KD's Windy City Blaga; blog + saga = blaga, of course), the balancing act of graduate school, 30 hours a week of Youth Ministry, and community life eventually took a toll on my commitment to sharing my reflections regularly. While I often thought about getting back into the swing of writing and sharing, in my mind, I made the task seem far too daunting to catch up on!

These past few months, however, have been full of transition, excitement, challenge, and JOY, and I am finding myself drawn to processing in this fashion once again, this time with a few particular goals in mind. Regarding transition, I recently finished my two-year commitment in Youth Ministry in Cicero (about which you surely will hear more in later posts!). I still am grieving the loss of the wonderful community of young people with whom I was so blessed to work; they have been such a gift in my life these past two years. Nevertheless, I am thrilled to be spending my final year in Magis in the ministry department of an incredible high school, surrounded by bright, passionate, and supportive colleagues. The "honeymoon phase" continues for now, but so be it! Additionally, my awesome community mate with whom I have lived for two years has graduated and moved on, and we have welcomed a lovely lady to join our new, all-female community for this year. Change is upon us, and life is good!

The component of my life that most directly brought me to blogging is my final year of the Master of Divinity program at Loyola University Chicago's Institute of Pastoral Studies. Last week, I passed my candidacy exam, a process that allowed me to look back over my first two years of grad school and ministry, identify areas of growth, challenge, and significant insight, and more clearly articulate my ministry focus for the remainder of the program and beyond. As you can probably tell from the blog's title (and if you know me, from my strange little journey so far), I am interested in exploring connections among the arts, spirituality, and social justice. This semester, I will be doing a guided study around those themes, a survey course that I hope to use as a springboard for my final M.Div. project as well as future ministerial and academic endeavors. I hope that this blog will be a primary venue for me to brainstorm, flesh out, and integrate my course readings, lived experience, and past and present ministerial encounters. For those of you who might be interested, here is an excerpt from the course description that I co-created with my professor:

"This course is designed to explore the intersection of the arts (theatre and music specifically), spirituality, and social justice, especially as that mix is relevant for passing on the faith. Narrative, ritual, transformation, vulnerability, sacrament, liberation, history, aesthetics, psychology, and education all emerge as critical components of this mix, and as lenses through which this the combination can be harvested in service to the new evangelization. The task of this guided study is to name more specifically how each of these discourse arenas is relevant to further exploration at the intersection of the theatre/music, spirituality and social justice in order to create a heuristic for further study. In doing so, I also intend to discover the cross-fertilization that has already occurred with regard to these various fields."

So there's that.

In any case, I am excited to do some reflecting/journaling here, to get some feedback from anyone who'd be interested in sharing, and to keep working toward some sort of understanding of this connection that I know in my gut and heart and mind to be very real and very powerful. If you don't believe me, check out this tried and true gem.

Just kidding. Or am I? Stay tuned to find out!

Additionally this semester, I will be taking two other courses in which our professors have encouraged creative modes of reflecting and sharing with fellow students and colleagues -- Foundations of Social Justice and Hearts on Fire, a course on Ignatian Spirituality -- as well as a class called Social Context. So I am hoping that this blog will be a place where I can starting putting it together.

Lastly, since it's me, I probably will be sharing some fun and/or ridiculous personal anecdotes and updates as life moves forward. As of now, my amazing sister Allison has been a JV in Sacramento for three weeks, and I could not be prouder of the great work she is doing with Sacramento Loaves and Fishes' Friendship Park. I am also ridiculously excited about the upcoming nuptials of my best friend Christina and her fabulous fiance Thomas. Best of all, I will get to spend Thanksgiving with my family and celebrate pre-wedding festivities with the bridesmaids that weekend. P.S. When did I get old?!

I hope this blog will provide an opportunity to connect or reconnect with some of you who I have been missing as life speeds by! Please feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an e-mail privately. Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful week.

Peace,

KD

© 2012 Katie Davis