7.11.2009
7.08.2009
7.07.2009
7.05.2009
7.02.2009
7.01.2009
Thundery ruminations in July
Rainy, dark, thunderous. Quiet in the library. Ruminating my usual crop of enigmas.
Relentlessly, in my thinking, I try to reconcile theological concepts with what seems reasonable or true to me.
One of my stumbling-blocks is the patriarchal/sometimes-misogynistic language and ideology in traditional Christianity. (Presently re-reading Susan Haskins' fascinating book, Mary Magdalen, which confronts some of these issues.)
The language about God and the Trinity is, indeed, enigmatic. The misogyny in much of the Bible & in ecclesiastical history (in contrast to what seems to be Jesus' own attitude toward women as depicted in the Gospels) runs deep.
I put this in sort of abstract/discursive terms here, which don't represent very well the inward (or psychological?) realities - where thinking & poetry intersect...
My view of the cosmos leans toward "idealism"... reality is psychic, "personal" - constructed deep in the mind - and the human mind sinks down at some deep layer toward a cosmic Mind or God (the "I Am")... (see the wonderful Erwin Schrodinger on this... or that sometime Rhode Islander, Bishop Berkeley... or Einstein... Coleridge... Nicolas Cusanus...)
The prophetic "plan of Providence", or the revelation of the divine Word in Israel & Christ, is a deeply dramatic event, a "disclosure" (see Hans Urs von Balthasar on this).
Part of this disclosure involves an element of spiritual power or authority - the authority of the truth itself, the authority of authority, the power of power, the truth of truth. I understand the "plan of Providence" in part as a disclosure of the spiritual rulership or authority of the divine Mind (or Person(s)) at the roots of the sentient soul. One of the consequences of this disclosure involves the instauration of human freedom (since - in the disclosure of spiritual authority rooted in the human soul - all tyrannical, "earthly" powers of human beings, over other human beings & creatures, are overthrown). The "kingship" of God & Christ - as worked out in history - shows itself to be a kind of anti-kingship (going back to the Mosaic opposition to Pharaoh, and up to Roger Williams' "soul liberty", or Martin Luther King's mission...).
(This is the kind of anti-history, by the way, that I have tried to juxtapose, in my poetry, to other, competing or parallel, "epic" visions - in Pound, Crane, Olson, David Jones...)
I think future theology (already underway) in both Judaism & Christianity (though I can't really speak for Judaism) will see a re-fashioning of gender perspectives and symbolism. Maybe the muse of poetry will have something to do with this. Yahweh & the anointed (king) Jesus will be seen as (male) "actors" in a political-historical drama, which also includes a somewhat subterranean feminine presence, influence and (stage) direction. (This is part of my interest in the (perhaps suppressed) role of Mary Magdalen.) Let's call it (after Harold Bloom's notion of a female author of the Bible) the deep Book of J (still in ms. form)...
The cosmos will not fit neatly into ancient human concepts... but I'm a conservative, I don't like to throw out old ideas just because they're old - I like to try to find the newness hidden in them, the enigmas.
I can imagine a Jesus-like figure emerging on countless various planets across the universe, with different forms of conscious life. Because what it represents is something (remotely) analogous to what happens when Alfred Hitchcock walks through his movie, or Durer paints himself in the corner of a crucifixion scene. That is, the incarnate, embodied figure is the living signature of the Maker : the sign, the seal of cosmic Presence and purpose. This is a very deep thing, at the root of Christianity (& perhaps Judaism too). Creation is indeed a work of art - a drama - one in which our Maker steps on stage, and in doing so, makes us one with the Maker...
Relentlessly, in my thinking, I try to reconcile theological concepts with what seems reasonable or true to me.
One of my stumbling-blocks is the patriarchal/sometimes-misogynistic language and ideology in traditional Christianity. (Presently re-reading Susan Haskins' fascinating book, Mary Magdalen, which confronts some of these issues.)
The language about God and the Trinity is, indeed, enigmatic. The misogyny in much of the Bible & in ecclesiastical history (in contrast to what seems to be Jesus' own attitude toward women as depicted in the Gospels) runs deep.
I put this in sort of abstract/discursive terms here, which don't represent very well the inward (or psychological?) realities - where thinking & poetry intersect...
My view of the cosmos leans toward "idealism"... reality is psychic, "personal" - constructed deep in the mind - and the human mind sinks down at some deep layer toward a cosmic Mind or God (the "I Am")... (see the wonderful Erwin Schrodinger on this... or that sometime Rhode Islander, Bishop Berkeley... or Einstein... Coleridge... Nicolas Cusanus...)
The prophetic "plan of Providence", or the revelation of the divine Word in Israel & Christ, is a deeply dramatic event, a "disclosure" (see Hans Urs von Balthasar on this).
Part of this disclosure involves an element of spiritual power or authority - the authority of the truth itself, the authority of authority, the power of power, the truth of truth. I understand the "plan of Providence" in part as a disclosure of the spiritual rulership or authority of the divine Mind (or Person(s)) at the roots of the sentient soul. One of the consequences of this disclosure involves the instauration of human freedom (since - in the disclosure of spiritual authority rooted in the human soul - all tyrannical, "earthly" powers of human beings, over other human beings & creatures, are overthrown). The "kingship" of God & Christ - as worked out in history - shows itself to be a kind of anti-kingship (going back to the Mosaic opposition to Pharaoh, and up to Roger Williams' "soul liberty", or Martin Luther King's mission...).
(This is the kind of anti-history, by the way, that I have tried to juxtapose, in my poetry, to other, competing or parallel, "epic" visions - in Pound, Crane, Olson, David Jones...)
I think future theology (already underway) in both Judaism & Christianity (though I can't really speak for Judaism) will see a re-fashioning of gender perspectives and symbolism. Maybe the muse of poetry will have something to do with this. Yahweh & the anointed (king) Jesus will be seen as (male) "actors" in a political-historical drama, which also includes a somewhat subterranean feminine presence, influence and (stage) direction. (This is part of my interest in the (perhaps suppressed) role of Mary Magdalen.) Let's call it (after Harold Bloom's notion of a female author of the Bible) the deep Book of J (still in ms. form)...
The cosmos will not fit neatly into ancient human concepts... but I'm a conservative, I don't like to throw out old ideas just because they're old - I like to try to find the newness hidden in them, the enigmas.
I can imagine a Jesus-like figure emerging on countless various planets across the universe, with different forms of conscious life. Because what it represents is something (remotely) analogous to what happens when Alfred Hitchcock walks through his movie, or Durer paints himself in the corner of a crucifixion scene. That is, the incarnate, embodied figure is the living signature of the Maker : the sign, the seal of cosmic Presence and purpose. This is a very deep thing, at the root of Christianity (& perhaps Judaism too). Creation is indeed a work of art - a drama - one in which our Maker steps on stage, and in doing so, makes us one with the Maker...
6.26.2009
Kermit Roosevelt, Noam Chomsky & the East Side Monthly
Poets & spies... the links go back a long way (to Christopher Marlowe, if not before). The recent turmoil in Iran, and the sense that the Iranian Revolution may be coming full circle, got me digging around in my old cardboard files - since the Iran hostage crisis of 1979 set the stage for my own slight, indirect (& comical) brush with cloak-&-dagger.
In 1979 I was hanging around Providence after graduation from Brown, running a food coop & trying to write. One day I was behind the counter at Kneecap (the storefront coop) when I was approached by one of our volunteer members, a grad student and film maker. He told me he had been working as a graduate assistant for one of the elder professors at Brown (possibly in the Poli Sci or History depts, I can't remember which) - a professor who had retired previously from a long career with the CIA.
The student told me that the professor had received the proofs of an unpublished book from one of his former colleagues, a career CIA man named Kermit Roosevelt (the grandson of Theodore). The book was titled Countercoup. The book was ready for publication and distribution when the hostage crisis suddenly erupted, in November 1979. At that point, publication was halted : the copies were warehoused. Roosevelt's story of his role in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government, and the installation of the Shah, while not completely new and unknown, was explosive.
Anyway, this student told me he had surreptitiously made a copy of the proof version of Roosevelt's book, and he would relay it to me. We both felt at the time that the truth should come out, though in retrospect our motives seem naive and self-interested (grandstanding, in a situation where hostage lives were endangered). I felt like I was playing an exciting bit part in a spy drama.
After receiving the xerox copy of the proofs, I read through the book and wrote a long "expose" in the local neighborhood paper (probably one of the most unusual articles which the very parochial East Side Monthly has published in its 40-yr history). I also contacted Noam Chomsky, and eventually sent him a copy of the ms. I have Chomsky's correspondence with me from that time : in retrospect he seems prudent (warning against doing something rash in that overheated situation).
That, I think, is the extent of my spy experience, at least up to now... (I suppose it was also the last time the elderly Brown prof - ex-Company man - was himself the object of an espionage attack...)
p.s. on 2nd thought, maybe I'm being too hard on myself & the young grad student. At the time, we thought the Kermit Roosevelt book might simply be deep-sixed, shredded. That's why he passed it to me in the 1st place. & that's why I wrote the whistleblowing article for the East Side Monthly. "Shout it from the rooftops". God is Great. Death to the Dictator.
(p.p.s. I'm reading old Graham Greene novels these days. A high school favorite. My father's favorite movie : Our Man in Havana (reading that now). He's great... so much better than John le Carre...)
In 1979 I was hanging around Providence after graduation from Brown, running a food coop & trying to write. One day I was behind the counter at Kneecap (the storefront coop) when I was approached by one of our volunteer members, a grad student and film maker. He told me he had been working as a graduate assistant for one of the elder professors at Brown (possibly in the Poli Sci or History depts, I can't remember which) - a professor who had retired previously from a long career with the CIA.
The student told me that the professor had received the proofs of an unpublished book from one of his former colleagues, a career CIA man named Kermit Roosevelt (the grandson of Theodore). The book was titled Countercoup. The book was ready for publication and distribution when the hostage crisis suddenly erupted, in November 1979. At that point, publication was halted : the copies were warehoused. Roosevelt's story of his role in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government, and the installation of the Shah, while not completely new and unknown, was explosive.
Anyway, this student told me he had surreptitiously made a copy of the proof version of Roosevelt's book, and he would relay it to me. We both felt at the time that the truth should come out, though in retrospect our motives seem naive and self-interested (grandstanding, in a situation where hostage lives were endangered). I felt like I was playing an exciting bit part in a spy drama.
After receiving the xerox copy of the proofs, I read through the book and wrote a long "expose" in the local neighborhood paper (probably one of the most unusual articles which the very parochial East Side Monthly has published in its 40-yr history). I also contacted Noam Chomsky, and eventually sent him a copy of the ms. I have Chomsky's correspondence with me from that time : in retrospect he seems prudent (warning against doing something rash in that overheated situation).
That, I think, is the extent of my spy experience, at least up to now... (I suppose it was also the last time the elderly Brown prof - ex-Company man - was himself the object of an espionage attack...)
p.s. on 2nd thought, maybe I'm being too hard on myself & the young grad student. At the time, we thought the Kermit Roosevelt book might simply be deep-sixed, shredded. That's why he passed it to me in the 1st place. & that's why I wrote the whistleblowing article for the East Side Monthly. "Shout it from the rooftops". God is Great. Death to the Dictator.
(p.p.s. I'm reading old Graham Greene novels these days. A high school favorite. My father's favorite movie : Our Man in Havana (reading that now). He's great... so much better than John le Carre...)
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