Now, Ong embraced evolutionary theory. Ong also never tired of celebrating the French Jesuit paleontologist and religious thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955).
Teilhard's two most important books are (1) The Human Phenomenon, translated by Sarah Appleton-Weber (Sussex Academic Press, 1999; orig. French ed., 1955) and (2) The Divine Milieu, translated by Sion Cowell (Sussex Academic Press, 2004; orig. French ed., 1957).
Generally speaking, if you see the universe as creative, and if you see yourself as embracing and embodying the creative universe in your decision-making and actions, then the spirit of creation spirituality as articulated by Fox and Aquinas in their creatively constructed conversations may appeal to you.
For an introductory survey of eleven of Ong's books and selected articles, see my book Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication, 2nd ed. (Hampton Press, 2015; 1st ed., 2000).
TRYING TO EMBRACE THE CREATIVE UNIVERSE THROUGH AN EXTRAMARITAL LOVE AFFAIR
Now, as noted above, in 1970 and 1971, Robinson interviewed Dr. Murray at length and tons of other people, with the explicit agreement that he would not publish his planned biography of Dr. Murray until after his death - thereby assuring all the other people that he interviewed that Dr. Murray would not see their comments. Robinson's 1992 book Love's Story Told: A Life of Henry A. Murray (Harvard University Press) is a major biography of Dr. Murray.
Now, the young Dr. Murray formed an extraordinary identification with the American novelist and poet Herman Melville (1819-1891) after he read Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick in 1924, the year in which Dr. Murray turned thirty-one - roughly Melville's age when he was writing his 1851 novel. Granted, in terms of class background, perhaps Melville and Murray were somewhat similar, except that Murray's family was obviously far richer than Melville's family had been - and Murray's father did not die when he was twelve, as Melville's father did.
Great literary fame had escaped Melville in his lifetime. He died in relative obscurity. The Melville revival, of which Dr. Murray became a part, started in 1919, the centennial of Melville's birth. Around the same time, Hopkins' poetry, mentioned above, was posthumously published.
For accounts of Melville's father, see Laurie Robertson-Lorant's Melville: A Biography (Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1996) and Hershel Parker's Herman Melville: A Biography: Volume 1: 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
But skipping over those dis-similar features in his fanciful identification with Melville, Murray interpreted Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick as representing a defiant protest against conventional Christianity. Now, by the time Murray started reading Melville's 1851 novel in August 1924, during a transatlantic voyage, he had already launched his thirty-year-long love affair with the married mother Christiana Morgan. So Murray, himself a married father, fancifully imagined himself as also engaged in a defiant protest against conventional Christianity - but never to the point at which he would divorce his wife, Josephine Rantoul Murray. Figuratively speaking, Murray wanted to have his cake and eat it too.
Moreover, Christiana Morgan then read Moby-Dick and joined Murray in his fanciful interpretation of their secret love affair as an Ahab-like defiant protest against conventional morality.
But let's take a step back from their fanciful view of their love affair. If a man, say, wanted to be really defiantly unconventional, he could, in theory, remain a bachelor, and he might even live alone in the wilderness of Montana, as Ted Kaczynski (born in 1942; Ph.D. in mathematics, University of Michigan, 1967) did. But that would be far too unconventional for a man like Dr. Murray. No, Dr. Murray did not want to be that unconventional. Rather, he wanted to be conventional enough in certain ways such as having a conventional marriage and a conventional father (of a daughter) and a conventional social life. But his sex drive evidently needed other outlets than just his conventional wife. Moreover, his fancy needed to embellish his extramarital sex life with an elaborate fanciful dress.
Christiana Morgan also found it convenient to embellish her extramarital sex life with an elaborate fanciful dress. So these two were clearly well-adapted to one another as extramarital lovers.
In addition, Dr. Murray tended to work out analogies between events in his own life and certain events in Melville's life circa 1850-1852. Now, in 1926, Dr. Murray began researching a biography of Melville, which he never got around to completing. As a matter of fact, Dr. Murray started a number of projects that he never got around to completing. However, Dr. Murray mistakenly saw Melville's life after 1852 as involving a sharp decline, so he had little interest in Melville's works after 1852.
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