We continue to go traipsing along through the unknown remote Henry-field of scrubland interconnections, finding obscure Serengeti serendipities (in sync?) and conceptual rhymes, running into things seemingly by chance (or is it a narrow circle of H-recessive obsessions?). Yesterday I chewed the cud (in Jesus Thoughts #24) about the metaphysical frame-up of History, the intervention of Yahweh into the stream of Earth-time... as an impression of the Creator's inimitable thumbprint upon Nature (Stephen Dedalus's "signatures of things").
& last night I was re-reading Charles Stein's book about Charles Olson & Carl Jung, Secret of the Black Chrysanthemum - which digs deep into Olson's own radical sense of individuation & quidditas ("that which exists through itself is what is called Meaning" & all that). Olson wanted to shake up what he saw as the false consciousness of abstract "Greek" rationalism with a very earth-bound, local, particular kind of mysticism (he wouldn't call it "mysticism") - the Oneness of the "field" of all phenomena reflected in the integrity of the grounded, physical, real things we encounter....
Others (including Stein) have interpreted Olson much more scrupulously than I can here ... & there's much in Olson that gives me pause... yet I was struck reading this last night how closely - in some ways, not in others - Olson's values seem to rhyme with the program of the Russian Acmeists. Gumilev's notion of "chasteness" as a literary value - which he defined as a basic & spiritual respect for the particular dignity of all things as they are - & that such actual things provide the substance, the matter, the themes of Acmeist poetry (as against "Symbolist" otherworldliness).
Of course the Acmeists were also tremendously different from Olson : they had not that radical streak of American Emersonian (Poundian, Wm Carlos Williamsian) do-it-yourselfism - their sense of the spiritual integrity of things is perhaps closer to Joyce's neo-medieval Aquinas-quidditas; they were rooted in Russian Orthodox Christianity, with its contemplative emphasis on the whole as divine Creation... Yet this mystical aspect of Olson - late scribblings about everything having meaning-in-itself because All stems from the Black Chrysanthemum (his "Black Gold Flower" mandala-figure) - is not so different from Dante's final vision of the mystical Rose, the triple wheel of the Trinity... This ancient notion can give one sparks of glee, if you ponder it : that the One is reflected in the "oneness" - the beautiful distinction, the nonpareil wonderful whatness, the splendid unimaginable unique & hilarious actuality of all separate unique things... (in fact it's possible to see an analogy here with the spectacular 4th-of-July dazzle of metamorphosis, Transfiguration - eternal life)... Note this relevant, definitive passage from Mandelstam's essay "Morning of Acmeism", which Christian Wiman chose as the epigraph to his new collection of Mandelstam translations, Stolen Air : "To exist is the artist's greatest pride. He desires no paradise other than being."
Everything is paratactical in Olson, as in Pound - the poet is a bower-bird, joining things by affinity, contiguity, proximity, rather than logic... Speaking of which brings me to the other book I was reading last night - Sacred Fortress, by Otto v. Simson. About the Byzantine mosaics and architecture of Ravenna, which Dante saw. Simson explores the political-historical background to the art of these churches - and also their religious meaning. We can't grasp the artistry of the mosaics without understanding how they were united with, and illustrated, the rites of baptism and Eucharist, the sacramental processions, which happened below them, under the gaze of the icons. Simson goes very deeply into the meanings and messages which both the rites and the icons conveyed. He describes, better than anyone I've ever read, how the communicants, by participating in these sacraments (baptism, eucharist), enter into a symbiosis, first of all, with Christ in his self-sacrifice and martyrdom - in his dying - and at the same time, with Christ in his resurrection : his transfiguration into a heavenly dimension (early rites of baptism involved clothing the baptized in white robes : a representation of this dying-into-new-life most clearly imaged in the Book of Revelation - and in the mosaics of St. Apollinare Nuovo, in Ravenna).
Proximity, contiguity, affinity.... I had just been writing earlier in the day (in the Jesus Talks #23 post) about the divine play of gender roles... and the hieros gamos dimensions of the rites of the church, their sensitivity to a feminine psyche - only to find Simson characterizing the mosaics of the "virgin martyrs" in St. Apollinare, bringing their jewelled crowns of martyrdom to offer to the Bridegroom, in the very same terms I had been using (hieros gamos, etc.). So I felt a slight twinge of synchronicity there....
But I'm really rambling today. The deeper affinity or proximity I want to relate here is this clustering together of Jung's individuation, Olson's "things in themselves", the Acmeist devotion to the "chaste" dignity of things, Joyce's epiphanies... and what I was calling, in JT #24, the thumbprint of the Creator as witnessed by his righteous prophets (John the Baptist...). I'm finding these things all assembling in some kind of creative sandbox playpen...
(thinking of Olson's notes about the "Black Stone" - the "diamond" - the "Black Gold Flower" of his Maximus-vision.... & its echoes or rhymes in my poem Lanthanum - "Blackstone" leading to "St. Maximus the Confessor" by way of the octahedral, baptismal diamond of Black Elk's native American sign (pointing to the six directions)....
Affinities, proximities.... the church as tomb and marriage bed.... Olson & Mandelstam, hard-cut diamond figures, thumb-prints, opposing themselves to the drift of the times...
This coming weekend Sarah & I will be driving down to Princeton NJ, to visit Princeton cemetery, where Sarah's parents are buried. They just finished the memorial stone for both of them (her mother Pat passed away last year in November). They are buried just a few feet from the grave of Kurt Gödel, the great mathematician. Olson, maybe, would have appreciated Gödel, whose "incompleteness theorem" proved that some things in mathematics cannot ever be proved (rationally). I'm not a mathematician, but maybe Gödel in this way made an arc of closure back to the ancient Greeks, who were troubled by the "irrationality" of the diagonal to the square. There is a Jungian aspect of this uncertainty, this mystery, at the core of human reason....
So we'll be visiting a grave, and graves, there, in Princeton, at the dying of the year. I'll be thinking about them... & I'll be thinking about Simson's eloquent evocation of the mystery of death & martyrdom & glory articulated in the early church.... & I'll be thinking about the Princeton Univ. library, nearby - where they house the archive of the papers of Osip Mandelstam....
Showing posts with label Christianity1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity1. Show all posts
11.20.2012
Jesus Thoughts (20) : how to give thanks
Somewhere in his Adagia or other writings (you'll have to look it up) Wallace Stevens says that his (difficult) aim is to achieve "the normal". What does he mean? Well, perhaps he's thinking - or maybe I'm thinking - about the notion of "saving the appearances". The idea of life as a continuum, a balanced wholeness. Healthy, hale & whole is the ideal... the normal, the sane, the happy ending... the minor/major chord.
Plato (I think) has Socrates say somewhere that "the unexamined life is not worth living." True enough; but what if at the end of our examination we come to the conclusion that the human capacity of analysis and detached objectivity is not equal to the task? Not so much that we can't test for the truth : but that we lack the capacity to express it. All our formulas come up short before the continuum of wholeness; our words don't do life justice. Maybe only the glorious hymn of praise approaches what we want to say.
Yet our imperfect efforts are also natural, a part of the whole. There is something stubborn in the heart which resists simplistic, reductive abstractions - explanations which demean their subject. I think this is part of the artist's calling : to respond holistically to the Whole. To make icons rather than arguments (even though these two often trade places). The heart has its own hunches. "The Spirit blows where it wills : and you hear the sound of it, but you know not where it comes from, or where it goes." It seems like my own strange halting path through school and life has something to do with this inward struggle between holism and abstract knowledge. Poets often stupidly romanticize their ignorance; yet there is an argument to be made for intuition and vision, for wholeness vs. intellectual deracination. It's a balance with dangerous extremes at either end (Fascism, for example, was built on the cult of Romantic irrationalism).
We seek the normal, we seek peace, we seek reconciliation, we pursue happiness. We dream of a continuum of ordinary life, a "sane and productive atmosphere." Not to repress differences and individuality & eccentricity, on behalf of some prison of bourgeois conventionality - but rather a generous, magnanimous world, not afraid of change and otherness, but also, at the same time, cherishing the ordinary.
Wholeness and holiness sound similar, and share a common root. Around Thanksgiving, is it still possible to give thanks to the Creator? Or did the concept of God die off a long time ago? Wholeness, in this sense, is a kind of spiritual anti-gravity, which lifts the mind's eye past particular things toward a cosmic view. Jesus somewhere in the Gospels says something like "Get right with God, and all these good things shall be your as well." This is the epitome of the stance which used to be called piety : to see all things within the context of God's loving, creative will. To try to orient ourselves in the light of this conception.
The anti-gravity force pulls us away from self-centeredness, injustice, wrongdoing. Its consequences radiate throughout the socio-political fabric of human civilization on this planet, in every corner of the earth, in every dimension of human relationship. How can we come to the table of Thanksgiving with neighbors, friends and family, if we are not right with them? If some oppression, injustice, unkindness, manipulation, exploitation, thoughtlessness, heartlessness, indifference, malice, hidden wickedness, hatred - if any of these things lurk beneath the continuum of our "normality"? I think this is why the keynote, the touchstone, of the mission of Jesus is mercy and forgiveness. We cannot sit at table together, neither on this planet nor in our own homes, without acknowledgement of our own wrongs and mistakes, without mutual forgiveness and the grace of divine mercy. The "unexamined life" indeed!
Thus Christians at Thanksgiving have a lot to be thankful for : they could start by thanking the Jews. For the Jewish faith has served as a sacrificial priesthood to the whole planet. Where would we be, as a civilization, as a world, without the message of these ancient concepts - repentance; acknowledgement of sin; and mutual forgiveness, kindness, mercy, welcome? These are the true Biblical values. They echo in the universal human heart and find home there : they are the knot which binds us all together, Martin Luther King's "seamless fabric of mutuality". For Christians, the coming of Jesus, the Way he proclaims, is a fulfillment and a return to the basic values introduced through Judaism from the beginning : it could not have happened otherwise : it began within the families of Israel.
As I understand it, the artist expresses inborn talent for making beautiful things (music, art, literature) - a talent which often emerges in early childhood. I see these gifts as something offered to the continuum of wholeness : the dream of a peaceful world, a shared communion : this is the "providential" plan for the planet as a whole. & I think this vocation is the source of the artist's stubborn resistance to reductive abstractions, merely intellectual explanations for phenomena. The artist must love & merge with & celebrate the continuum of experience : this is how the over-arching serenity & balance of the greatest works of art come to manifestation. (I've written about some of these things more specifically with respect to poetry, in some of the review essays in Critical Flame.)
Plato (I think) has Socrates say somewhere that "the unexamined life is not worth living." True enough; but what if at the end of our examination we come to the conclusion that the human capacity of analysis and detached objectivity is not equal to the task? Not so much that we can't test for the truth : but that we lack the capacity to express it. All our formulas come up short before the continuum of wholeness; our words don't do life justice. Maybe only the glorious hymn of praise approaches what we want to say.
Yet our imperfect efforts are also natural, a part of the whole. There is something stubborn in the heart which resists simplistic, reductive abstractions - explanations which demean their subject. I think this is part of the artist's calling : to respond holistically to the Whole. To make icons rather than arguments (even though these two often trade places). The heart has its own hunches. "The Spirit blows where it wills : and you hear the sound of it, but you know not where it comes from, or where it goes." It seems like my own strange halting path through school and life has something to do with this inward struggle between holism and abstract knowledge. Poets often stupidly romanticize their ignorance; yet there is an argument to be made for intuition and vision, for wholeness vs. intellectual deracination. It's a balance with dangerous extremes at either end (Fascism, for example, was built on the cult of Romantic irrationalism).
We seek the normal, we seek peace, we seek reconciliation, we pursue happiness. We dream of a continuum of ordinary life, a "sane and productive atmosphere." Not to repress differences and individuality & eccentricity, on behalf of some prison of bourgeois conventionality - but rather a generous, magnanimous world, not afraid of change and otherness, but also, at the same time, cherishing the ordinary.
Wholeness and holiness sound similar, and share a common root. Around Thanksgiving, is it still possible to give thanks to the Creator? Or did the concept of God die off a long time ago? Wholeness, in this sense, is a kind of spiritual anti-gravity, which lifts the mind's eye past particular things toward a cosmic view. Jesus somewhere in the Gospels says something like "Get right with God, and all these good things shall be your as well." This is the epitome of the stance which used to be called piety : to see all things within the context of God's loving, creative will. To try to orient ourselves in the light of this conception.
The anti-gravity force pulls us away from self-centeredness, injustice, wrongdoing. Its consequences radiate throughout the socio-political fabric of human civilization on this planet, in every corner of the earth, in every dimension of human relationship. How can we come to the table of Thanksgiving with neighbors, friends and family, if we are not right with them? If some oppression, injustice, unkindness, manipulation, exploitation, thoughtlessness, heartlessness, indifference, malice, hidden wickedness, hatred - if any of these things lurk beneath the continuum of our "normality"? I think this is why the keynote, the touchstone, of the mission of Jesus is mercy and forgiveness. We cannot sit at table together, neither on this planet nor in our own homes, without acknowledgement of our own wrongs and mistakes, without mutual forgiveness and the grace of divine mercy. The "unexamined life" indeed!
Thus Christians at Thanksgiving have a lot to be thankful for : they could start by thanking the Jews. For the Jewish faith has served as a sacrificial priesthood to the whole planet. Where would we be, as a civilization, as a world, without the message of these ancient concepts - repentance; acknowledgement of sin; and mutual forgiveness, kindness, mercy, welcome? These are the true Biblical values. They echo in the universal human heart and find home there : they are the knot which binds us all together, Martin Luther King's "seamless fabric of mutuality". For Christians, the coming of Jesus, the Way he proclaims, is a fulfillment and a return to the basic values introduced through Judaism from the beginning : it could not have happened otherwise : it began within the families of Israel.
As I understand it, the artist expresses inborn talent for making beautiful things (music, art, literature) - a talent which often emerges in early childhood. I see these gifts as something offered to the continuum of wholeness : the dream of a peaceful world, a shared communion : this is the "providential" plan for the planet as a whole. & I think this vocation is the source of the artist's stubborn resistance to reductive abstractions, merely intellectual explanations for phenomena. The artist must love & merge with & celebrate the continuum of experience : this is how the over-arching serenity & balance of the greatest works of art come to manifestation. (I've written about some of these things more specifically with respect to poetry, in some of the review essays in Critical Flame.)
11.06.2012
Jesus Thoughts (9) : Election affinities
As it's Election Day here in the U.S., I will endeavor to steer this imaginary conversation toward the galaxy of spiritual election.
Cosmic oceans of ink have been spilled on the subject of monotheism, its historical/cultural development, & (recently) on the shifting, tricksterish, unaccountable personality of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible. I'm just going to try to articulate what strike me as the most basic & important features of this portrait.
Three features stand out :
1) this God is a Creator. As I tried to describe early on in this thread, the Genesis story of "creation in 7 days" sets the cosmos within a solar/planetary framework of day, week and year - a way of "domesticating" the universe for Man. The seasonal rituals of Judaism are in part, then, a kind of annual dance of celebration within this scheme. And this feature lays the groundwork for :
2) this God is a Savior. This may be the most distinctive aspect of Yahweh : he enters History as an agent on behalf of the lowly & the oppressed (saving the Hebrews from exile and oppression in Egypt : leading them to their Promised Land). The Bible is in this sense an epic, quasi-historical chronicle - a "transgressive" mix-up of genres (theology, history, poetry). Which leads to the third, fateful characteristic :
3) this God is Universal. The texts of the prophets make two great claims in the latter portions of the Bible : first, that Yahweh is the God of all things and all people, who has called the Jews to be a "priestly nation", offering worship and sacrifice for all nations; and second, that the Messiah promised through Moses is coming, at some future time, to complete the salvation of Israel and the whole world.
When, firstly, the Bible portrays a personal (though at the same time invisible, ineffable) God, who intervenes in history in order to establish his elect - his chosen people - for the purposes of world salvation - and then, secondly, declares through his prophets that he will send his Messiah - the combination of these two elements lays the ineluctable groundwork for the appearance of one who will claim that mantle, bring it to fruition (the Messiah). The Messiah, as the personal "representative" of a personal God, is what you might call "the elect of the elect" : one can imagine the wonder, unease and tumult that such a claim would unleash at any time or place.
I want to go back to the 2nd of the three original characteristics of Yahweh for a moment, since the Messiah is, again, presenting an enactment of salvation. The Hebrew "God as Savior" is distinct from other gods and religions in that, rather than being welded into a hierarchical, authoritarian structure of cultural power (say the Egyptian or Assyrian sacred kings), Yahweh is the God of the lowly, the poor & the oppressed : he challenges, undermines, and overthrows kings and empires on behalf of a universal spiritual relation between every person and his or her Creator. We need to underline this distinctive quality of the Bible (pointed out memorably by Eric Auerbach in his masterwork, Mimesis) : here even the great kings and priests of Israel (Moses, David, Solomon...) are delineated in all their comical human weakness and imperfection - as wholly dependent on the grace of their saving God.
One of the implications of this egalitarian emphasis is that it short-circuits, again, the official mediation of "sacred rulers" (priests or kings), who would "authorize" the relation between human persons and God. The barrier is beginning to be broken down. But the radical claim of Jesus : to be the Messiah himself, to be, in fact, "one with the Father" - coexistent with the eternal Spirit of God - completely dissolves that barrier of mediating authority. The personal God has manifested in person : the circle has come round. Man and woman - persons - made "in the image of God" have been set in a contextual frame of earthly time and space (of history) which incarnates, embodies, this abstract ratio (Logos). The spiritual relation between God and Man has been simultaneously universalized and personalized. The "God of slaves and servants" has appeared fully embodied, as Isaiah predicted, "in the form of a servant" : but in this lowly approach (through suffering), Jesus serves by opening the cosmic door : the "Way" which unites the cosmic Source with the "children of God", and the children with each other.
Many of the early Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom as they traveled through the Roman Empire proclaiming this new "kingdom" of God. But a pivotal change took place when, in a.d. 313, Emperor Constantine ended the suppression of Christian worship. The Church, especially in the East, gradually became aligned with the authority of the State; while in the West, the decline of the Empire and the social disorder caused by the barbarian invasions forced the Church to take on many of the former responsibilities of government; bishops oversaw the safety and welfare of local communities. The development of the Byzantine theocracy and medieval feudalism not only re-established archaic forms of mediating authority between the person and God; they also set in motion fateful changes in the relationship between Christians and Jews. What had formerly been a matter of polemic and religious debate, became a rule of enforcement and discrimination (once Christianity became aligned with the power of the State). The destiny of this fateful divide unfolded catastrophically in the 20th century, when malevolent Nazism exploited ancient religious divides and social enmities, the deep & poisoned well of anti-semitism.
The original message to Man is direct, without mediation of any earthbound authority. It is a personal spiritual invitation to believe and understand. Roger Williams (of Rhode Island) - who called himself a "seeker" - is the great saint of this principle, which he termed "soul liberty." Williams' Rhode Island colony is considered the first government in history founded on an explicit separation of church and state.
I feel a curious personal connection with this particular story, since I was born on May 29, 1952, & thus celebrated my first birthday exactly 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (the conquest of Constantinople, 5.29.1453).
Cosmic oceans of ink have been spilled on the subject of monotheism, its historical/cultural development, & (recently) on the shifting, tricksterish, unaccountable personality of Yahweh as portrayed in the Bible. I'm just going to try to articulate what strike me as the most basic & important features of this portrait.
Three features stand out :
1) this God is a Creator. As I tried to describe early on in this thread, the Genesis story of "creation in 7 days" sets the cosmos within a solar/planetary framework of day, week and year - a way of "domesticating" the universe for Man. The seasonal rituals of Judaism are in part, then, a kind of annual dance of celebration within this scheme. And this feature lays the groundwork for :
2) this God is a Savior. This may be the most distinctive aspect of Yahweh : he enters History as an agent on behalf of the lowly & the oppressed (saving the Hebrews from exile and oppression in Egypt : leading them to their Promised Land). The Bible is in this sense an epic, quasi-historical chronicle - a "transgressive" mix-up of genres (theology, history, poetry). Which leads to the third, fateful characteristic :
3) this God is Universal. The texts of the prophets make two great claims in the latter portions of the Bible : first, that Yahweh is the God of all things and all people, who has called the Jews to be a "priestly nation", offering worship and sacrifice for all nations; and second, that the Messiah promised through Moses is coming, at some future time, to complete the salvation of Israel and the whole world.
When, firstly, the Bible portrays a personal (though at the same time invisible, ineffable) God, who intervenes in history in order to establish his elect - his chosen people - for the purposes of world salvation - and then, secondly, declares through his prophets that he will send his Messiah - the combination of these two elements lays the ineluctable groundwork for the appearance of one who will claim that mantle, bring it to fruition (the Messiah). The Messiah, as the personal "representative" of a personal God, is what you might call "the elect of the elect" : one can imagine the wonder, unease and tumult that such a claim would unleash at any time or place.
I want to go back to the 2nd of the three original characteristics of Yahweh for a moment, since the Messiah is, again, presenting an enactment of salvation. The Hebrew "God as Savior" is distinct from other gods and religions in that, rather than being welded into a hierarchical, authoritarian structure of cultural power (say the Egyptian or Assyrian sacred kings), Yahweh is the God of the lowly, the poor & the oppressed : he challenges, undermines, and overthrows kings and empires on behalf of a universal spiritual relation between every person and his or her Creator. We need to underline this distinctive quality of the Bible (pointed out memorably by Eric Auerbach in his masterwork, Mimesis) : here even the great kings and priests of Israel (Moses, David, Solomon...) are delineated in all their comical human weakness and imperfection - as wholly dependent on the grace of their saving God.
One of the implications of this egalitarian emphasis is that it short-circuits, again, the official mediation of "sacred rulers" (priests or kings), who would "authorize" the relation between human persons and God. The barrier is beginning to be broken down. But the radical claim of Jesus : to be the Messiah himself, to be, in fact, "one with the Father" - coexistent with the eternal Spirit of God - completely dissolves that barrier of mediating authority. The personal God has manifested in person : the circle has come round. Man and woman - persons - made "in the image of God" have been set in a contextual frame of earthly time and space (of history) which incarnates, embodies, this abstract ratio (Logos). The spiritual relation between God and Man has been simultaneously universalized and personalized. The "God of slaves and servants" has appeared fully embodied, as Isaiah predicted, "in the form of a servant" : but in this lowly approach (through suffering), Jesus serves by opening the cosmic door : the "Way" which unites the cosmic Source with the "children of God", and the children with each other.
Many of the early Christians suffered persecution and martyrdom as they traveled through the Roman Empire proclaiming this new "kingdom" of God. But a pivotal change took place when, in a.d. 313, Emperor Constantine ended the suppression of Christian worship. The Church, especially in the East, gradually became aligned with the authority of the State; while in the West, the decline of the Empire and the social disorder caused by the barbarian invasions forced the Church to take on many of the former responsibilities of government; bishops oversaw the safety and welfare of local communities. The development of the Byzantine theocracy and medieval feudalism not only re-established archaic forms of mediating authority between the person and God; they also set in motion fateful changes in the relationship between Christians and Jews. What had formerly been a matter of polemic and religious debate, became a rule of enforcement and discrimination (once Christianity became aligned with the power of the State). The destiny of this fateful divide unfolded catastrophically in the 20th century, when malevolent Nazism exploited ancient religious divides and social enmities, the deep & poisoned well of anti-semitism.
The original message to Man is direct, without mediation of any earthbound authority. It is a personal spiritual invitation to believe and understand. Roger Williams (of Rhode Island) - who called himself a "seeker" - is the great saint of this principle, which he termed "soul liberty." Williams' Rhode Island colony is considered the first government in history founded on an explicit separation of church and state.
I feel a curious personal connection with this particular story, since I was born on May 29, 1952, & thus celebrated my first birthday exactly 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire (the conquest of Constantinople, 5.29.1453).
11.03.2012
Jesus Thoughts (7) : in the beginning....
Improvisation is part of this thread; I'm not always completely sure of what I'm going to say. This is just a journal, Henry's Logos-log : I have to seize the day, free time is scarce... so when the moment is opportune, then here I am. Maybe this diary will accumulate gradually into something of value.
Someday I'll try to write in more detail about the crisis, back in 1972-3, which entirely reshaped, re-oriented me. I've posted scattered things here & elsewhere about it (including an essay in the 1994 anthology for Edwin Honig, A Glass of Green Tea), but much more could be written. Someday. For now, let's just say that - to paraphrase Simone Weil - when I was about 19 years old, I had come to the end of my "natural" self - I reached an inner limit, my merely personal spiritual resources were exhausted, burnt out. I was sinking under the weight of my own natural gravity - I was in need of supernatural grace. & grace arrived, in the nick of time.
Faith itself is a spiritual gift. Without it, the mystery of truth is too deep for any one person. I know exactly how meaningless these phrases sound to someone who doesn't think they believe in God. I've been there. I'm still there. But my convictions are firmer now than they were three, five, ten, fifteen years ago. When convictions and principles are weak, then the short day's distractions, mistakes, temptations are strong. Yet, as Roger Williams well knew, and proclaimed from his rustic rooftop - you can't force belief or conviction of any kind, on anyone. An imposed conviction is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms - a mode of intellectual tyranny.
No doubt I could be dwelling in utter delusion; yet I feel confident instead. I feel my vision of things as they are is growing more clear. Not wise myself (& never have been) - still, I sense my perception becoming aligned with a truth that is inherent in reality.
I say these things because, to repeat, I understand how extremely difficult it can be to attain a rational basis for a spiritual truth. I spent many years in the mid-1970s as a kind of wandering seeker, a dreamer - mostly in a kind of meditative trance (while hitchhiking around out West, or doing odd jobs in New York City or Minneapolis, or traveling to London with musical ambitions) : reading, reading, thinking, pondering... trying to grasp 1) what had happened to me, and 2) how to imagine - realistically - a "personal" divine Being.
Many writers & thinkers fall back on mystical paradoxes when confronted with these issues. I can't disagree with them : I agree (reservedly) with Nicolas Cusanus, that there is a fundamental distinction between the finite and the infinite, the human and the divine - a logical distinction, in other words - which is, nevertheless somehow bridged and transcended in the Incarnation (the union of finite and infinite, of divine and human). But mystical paradox can result in a sort of explanatory cul-de-sac. It's poetry, not prose.
So today, here, I am going to sidestep in my discourse, make a flanking maneuver. I'm simply going to assent to the irrational bridging of that distinction (as the diagonal bridges a square with an irrational number). I'm going to take it, for the moment, on faith. And I'm going to turn (return) to a schematic mapping of what seem to be some implications of such a (cosmological, ontological) logos-design.
To do that, let's go back and reiterate, in a new figuration, the main plot of the Bible. We recall the "hexaemeral" cosmology of the opening chapters of Genesis. The story is metaphorical, analogical - we were never meant to take it literally. When Genesis states that God created the universe in 7 days, what the author is doing is aligning the cosmic, seasonal order of solar time with a theological explanation of that order. It's convenient : it's "fitting" - it fits, since the 365 days of the solar year and the 12 months of the lunar cycle divide into 52 weeks of 7 days. The story that the world was made in 7 days is a kind of hymn of praise disguised as a prose narration : it allows a people, a tribe, a community, to align itself with the cosmic order on a human level - on an ordinary, daily (weekly) basis.
All the seasonal festivals of ancient peoples are simply elaborations of this fundamental cultural orientation. This is what is called piety : the structuring of human works and days on an attitude of trust and supplication offered toward the logos, the divine order, of the universe. The dome, the house, the temple - fundamental, global phenomena representing what Osip Mandelstam (in a literary analogy) termed an attitude of "domestic hellenism" - a radiant push-back against harsh existence with "teleological warmth" : confidence in humanity's ultimate place, a being-at-home on earth, a dwelling.
Of course, we are no longer ancients : we are modern. In the context of 19th-21st century history & science, the voices conceptualizing a remote, impersonal cosmos, subject to randomness, chance, violence, and the finality of death, have grown strong. For many, the notion of a cosmic Spirit, a somehow "personal" God, simply outrages our own rationality. It's a shock to the mind.
Yet the mind itself is the key. One meaning of Logos is "ratio". The poet, the seer, deals not so much in analysis, but with analogy (leading to synthesis). An analogy is a kind of ratio. The fundamental ratio that structures belief in God was narrated at the climax of the creation story at the opening of Genesis : when "God made man, in his own image and likeness". This too is a literary fiction : it was never meant to be taken literally. But it symbolizes a ratio inherent in nature, in the entire cosmos. Here is the analogy : just as the mind of Man (male & female) senses, interprets, & orders life on this planet, so the ineffable mind of God orders the cosmos which emerged from nothing. Body is to mind as Man is to God : and the "Son of Man" is the verbal sign given to the summary, the totality, of that physical manifestation, that embodiment of the logos, the ratio. "God is Spirit," declares Jesus, "and those who worship him do so in spirit and truth." In this spirit, then - in this light - it's possible to recognize the signs of the "Son of Man" as omnipresent and pervasive throughout the natural world.
Suddenly we understand we are participating, mostly without being aware of it, in a planetary and cosmic mystery play : as St. Paul wrote, we are all dying to this "body of death", all at once - & all rising too : into that "third heaven" (the intellectual heaven, above the 1st heaven of the sky and the 2nd heaven of the stars). Into the dimension of the eternal, "uncreated" Logos. There the spirit of God is the living "person of persons" - that is, a personal being more personal than our own deepest experience and consciousness of personhood (as we have known it, imperfectly, in our own lives).
These are the strange metaphysical mysteries I've come to accept, after much hard experience, seeking & searching. I know exactly how drastically they overturn the modern "rational" worldview. But this is the way home; this is the fireplace in the kitchen of "domestic hellenism."
Someday I'll try to write in more detail about the crisis, back in 1972-3, which entirely reshaped, re-oriented me. I've posted scattered things here & elsewhere about it (including an essay in the 1994 anthology for Edwin Honig, A Glass of Green Tea), but much more could be written. Someday. For now, let's just say that - to paraphrase Simone Weil - when I was about 19 years old, I had come to the end of my "natural" self - I reached an inner limit, my merely personal spiritual resources were exhausted, burnt out. I was sinking under the weight of my own natural gravity - I was in need of supernatural grace. & grace arrived, in the nick of time.
Faith itself is a spiritual gift. Without it, the mystery of truth is too deep for any one person. I know exactly how meaningless these phrases sound to someone who doesn't think they believe in God. I've been there. I'm still there. But my convictions are firmer now than they were three, five, ten, fifteen years ago. When convictions and principles are weak, then the short day's distractions, mistakes, temptations are strong. Yet, as Roger Williams well knew, and proclaimed from his rustic rooftop - you can't force belief or conviction of any kind, on anyone. An imposed conviction is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms - a mode of intellectual tyranny.
No doubt I could be dwelling in utter delusion; yet I feel confident instead. I feel my vision of things as they are is growing more clear. Not wise myself (& never have been) - still, I sense my perception becoming aligned with a truth that is inherent in reality.
I say these things because, to repeat, I understand how extremely difficult it can be to attain a rational basis for a spiritual truth. I spent many years in the mid-1970s as a kind of wandering seeker, a dreamer - mostly in a kind of meditative trance (while hitchhiking around out West, or doing odd jobs in New York City or Minneapolis, or traveling to London with musical ambitions) : reading, reading, thinking, pondering... trying to grasp 1) what had happened to me, and 2) how to imagine - realistically - a "personal" divine Being.
Many writers & thinkers fall back on mystical paradoxes when confronted with these issues. I can't disagree with them : I agree (reservedly) with Nicolas Cusanus, that there is a fundamental distinction between the finite and the infinite, the human and the divine - a logical distinction, in other words - which is, nevertheless somehow bridged and transcended in the Incarnation (the union of finite and infinite, of divine and human). But mystical paradox can result in a sort of explanatory cul-de-sac. It's poetry, not prose.
So today, here, I am going to sidestep in my discourse, make a flanking maneuver. I'm simply going to assent to the irrational bridging of that distinction (as the diagonal bridges a square with an irrational number). I'm going to take it, for the moment, on faith. And I'm going to turn (return) to a schematic mapping of what seem to be some implications of such a (cosmological, ontological) logos-design.
To do that, let's go back and reiterate, in a new figuration, the main plot of the Bible. We recall the "hexaemeral" cosmology of the opening chapters of Genesis. The story is metaphorical, analogical - we were never meant to take it literally. When Genesis states that God created the universe in 7 days, what the author is doing is aligning the cosmic, seasonal order of solar time with a theological explanation of that order. It's convenient : it's "fitting" - it fits, since the 365 days of the solar year and the 12 months of the lunar cycle divide into 52 weeks of 7 days. The story that the world was made in 7 days is a kind of hymn of praise disguised as a prose narration : it allows a people, a tribe, a community, to align itself with the cosmic order on a human level - on an ordinary, daily (weekly) basis.
All the seasonal festivals of ancient peoples are simply elaborations of this fundamental cultural orientation. This is what is called piety : the structuring of human works and days on an attitude of trust and supplication offered toward the logos, the divine order, of the universe. The dome, the house, the temple - fundamental, global phenomena representing what Osip Mandelstam (in a literary analogy) termed an attitude of "domestic hellenism" - a radiant push-back against harsh existence with "teleological warmth" : confidence in humanity's ultimate place, a being-at-home on earth, a dwelling.
Of course, we are no longer ancients : we are modern. In the context of 19th-21st century history & science, the voices conceptualizing a remote, impersonal cosmos, subject to randomness, chance, violence, and the finality of death, have grown strong. For many, the notion of a cosmic Spirit, a somehow "personal" God, simply outrages our own rationality. It's a shock to the mind.
Yet the mind itself is the key. One meaning of Logos is "ratio". The poet, the seer, deals not so much in analysis, but with analogy (leading to synthesis). An analogy is a kind of ratio. The fundamental ratio that structures belief in God was narrated at the climax of the creation story at the opening of Genesis : when "God made man, in his own image and likeness". This too is a literary fiction : it was never meant to be taken literally. But it symbolizes a ratio inherent in nature, in the entire cosmos. Here is the analogy : just as the mind of Man (male & female) senses, interprets, & orders life on this planet, so the ineffable mind of God orders the cosmos which emerged from nothing. Body is to mind as Man is to God : and the "Son of Man" is the verbal sign given to the summary, the totality, of that physical manifestation, that embodiment of the logos, the ratio. "God is Spirit," declares Jesus, "and those who worship him do so in spirit and truth." In this spirit, then - in this light - it's possible to recognize the signs of the "Son of Man" as omnipresent and pervasive throughout the natural world.
Suddenly we understand we are participating, mostly without being aware of it, in a planetary and cosmic mystery play : as St. Paul wrote, we are all dying to this "body of death", all at once - & all rising too : into that "third heaven" (the intellectual heaven, above the 1st heaven of the sky and the 2nd heaven of the stars). Into the dimension of the eternal, "uncreated" Logos. There the spirit of God is the living "person of persons" - that is, a personal being more personal than our own deepest experience and consciousness of personhood (as we have known it, imperfectly, in our own lives).
These are the strange metaphysical mysteries I've come to accept, after much hard experience, seeking & searching. I know exactly how drastically they overturn the modern "rational" worldview. But this is the way home; this is the fireplace in the kitchen of "domestic hellenism."
11.02.2012
Jesus Thoughts (5) : fields of Messiah
Context is everything. The framework, the field of the message-in-embryo nurtures its meaning, forms the protective husk of the traveling pigeon-signal. Thus when we think & talk about Jesus we have to envision the wider field, the landscape, the ground upon which the Messiah-figure stands.
We could start with the meaning of "Messiah" itself. The root of the messianic phenomenon lies in the character & nature of Yahweh, the High God, the only God, as presented in Hebrew monotheism, the beliefs and practices of Judaism. Two characteristics, it seems to me, distinguish Yahweh from other ancient mythologies of the divine. First, is the monotheistic concentration of all power and benevolence in the one God, a creator-God, apart from whom nothing exists at all. Second, is the active, personal character of Yahweh : as narrated in the Bible, God intervenes in history in a way that can be chronicled. Yahweh is a saving God, coming to rescue the poor and oppressed, raining down judgement on the wicked - in this life, in this world.
This narrative depiction of Yahweh, as an actor in history as well as all-powerful Creator, lays the foundation for the prophetic expectation and reception of a Messiah : one who comes to fulfill all the promises of justice and salvation made by God to Israel (and through Israel, to the world).
And this is the context, I believe, in which we have to build a mental sketch (merely a conjectural hypothesis!) of Jesus's self-understanding : how he himself comprehended his vocation, his mission in life. He believed himself to be the Messiah : the one called upon to fulfill the messianic expectations of the people of Israel. From this original position flows the application of all of his spiritual, intellectual, charismatic and rhetorical gifts, and the expression of decisive moral choices, as he faced up to the consequences of his vocation.
Let's think about this for a moment in a yet wider context. The Jewish "fulfillment of Scripture" in the embodiment - the personhood - of a Messiah shows imperfect parallels with the rhetorical denouements found in other philosophical & religious cultures. Buddhism was embodied by the Buddha. Platonic philosophy culminated (theoretically, as befits Plato) in a "philosopher king" who would implement, in the real world of history, the ethical paradigms of Platonism. Aristotle, Plato's pupil, inculcated a living ruler - Alexander the Great, no less - with the precepts of his own philosophy. What I'm looking at here is what might be (in my admittedly very sketchy and unsystematic review) a general tendency : the expressions of religious world order tend to become personified, embodied, expressed in action by representative figures (ie. the prophet Daniel's messianic "Son of Man").
With this in mind - this sense of Jesus shaping his mission as a messianic fulfillment - perhaps we can appreciate his message itself in greater depth. His message, to put it simply, is that he is opening the door to God. God as the universal, ever-living fulness of an overwhelming love, wisdom & mercy : as the eternal cosmic Mind of creative lovingkindness, out of which all creatures have emerged. Thus, in this vision, we are re-shaped, "reborn", as "children" of this God - children, with Jesus, of his divine "Father". & so we begin to share a new life in this new, divine-human nature. Moreover, Jesus aims to create a community in which "we shall all be one." Through the recognition of our common "creaturehood" - offspring of a divine Mind - we begin to live together according to the precepts of such an understanding - the original Logos, what "was from the beginning."
The message is challenging, radical & strange. It is also rooted in ancient worldviews & conceptions which we sometimes fail to grasp today. But it is "possible, possible"... when we go back to the original comprehension or insight : that is, when we ask ourselves, "why is there something at all, rather than nothing?" When we consider : "What if human consciousness and action, as we know it on this planet, represent a ratio, an analogy, a proportion - ie., a Logos - with a universal Consciousness from which reality proceeds (is given)?"
We could start with the meaning of "Messiah" itself. The root of the messianic phenomenon lies in the character & nature of Yahweh, the High God, the only God, as presented in Hebrew monotheism, the beliefs and practices of Judaism. Two characteristics, it seems to me, distinguish Yahweh from other ancient mythologies of the divine. First, is the monotheistic concentration of all power and benevolence in the one God, a creator-God, apart from whom nothing exists at all. Second, is the active, personal character of Yahweh : as narrated in the Bible, God intervenes in history in a way that can be chronicled. Yahweh is a saving God, coming to rescue the poor and oppressed, raining down judgement on the wicked - in this life, in this world.
This narrative depiction of Yahweh, as an actor in history as well as all-powerful Creator, lays the foundation for the prophetic expectation and reception of a Messiah : one who comes to fulfill all the promises of justice and salvation made by God to Israel (and through Israel, to the world).
And this is the context, I believe, in which we have to build a mental sketch (merely a conjectural hypothesis!) of Jesus's self-understanding : how he himself comprehended his vocation, his mission in life. He believed himself to be the Messiah : the one called upon to fulfill the messianic expectations of the people of Israel. From this original position flows the application of all of his spiritual, intellectual, charismatic and rhetorical gifts, and the expression of decisive moral choices, as he faced up to the consequences of his vocation.
Let's think about this for a moment in a yet wider context. The Jewish "fulfillment of Scripture" in the embodiment - the personhood - of a Messiah shows imperfect parallels with the rhetorical denouements found in other philosophical & religious cultures. Buddhism was embodied by the Buddha. Platonic philosophy culminated (theoretically, as befits Plato) in a "philosopher king" who would implement, in the real world of history, the ethical paradigms of Platonism. Aristotle, Plato's pupil, inculcated a living ruler - Alexander the Great, no less - with the precepts of his own philosophy. What I'm looking at here is what might be (in my admittedly very sketchy and unsystematic review) a general tendency : the expressions of religious world order tend to become personified, embodied, expressed in action by representative figures (ie. the prophet Daniel's messianic "Son of Man").
With this in mind - this sense of Jesus shaping his mission as a messianic fulfillment - perhaps we can appreciate his message itself in greater depth. His message, to put it simply, is that he is opening the door to God. God as the universal, ever-living fulness of an overwhelming love, wisdom & mercy : as the eternal cosmic Mind of creative lovingkindness, out of which all creatures have emerged. Thus, in this vision, we are re-shaped, "reborn", as "children" of this God - children, with Jesus, of his divine "Father". & so we begin to share a new life in this new, divine-human nature. Moreover, Jesus aims to create a community in which "we shall all be one." Through the recognition of our common "creaturehood" - offspring of a divine Mind - we begin to live together according to the precepts of such an understanding - the original Logos, what "was from the beginning."
The message is challenging, radical & strange. It is also rooted in ancient worldviews & conceptions which we sometimes fail to grasp today. But it is "possible, possible"... when we go back to the original comprehension or insight : that is, when we ask ourselves, "why is there something at all, rather than nothing?" When we consider : "What if human consciousness and action, as we know it on this planet, represent a ratio, an analogy, a proportion - ie., a Logos - with a universal Consciousness from which reality proceeds (is given)?"
11.01.2012
Jesus Thoughts (3) : Day of the Dead
Halloween. Day of the Dead. Strange carnival abolishing time & space, life & death, the living, the undead - by way of twilight parades of kids en masque, costumes from other times, other planets. Thinking as I walked home from work today of T.S. Eliot's line from Four Quartets : "Humankind cannot bear very much reality." & of the famous phrase of Pascal : "Le silence eternel de ces espaces infinis m'affraie." (The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.)
These came to mind today as I had been pondering (& bloggifying) the riddle of resurrection. If there are countless earth-like planets out there, circuiting a zillion stars - and even if, as Giordano Bruno speculated, God has sent his cosmic "Son" in some fashion to redeem those myriad worlds - still, on the Day of the Dead, that infinity, that vastness, can project a melancholy image : chill the bones a little, when we think of all that space as a theater of final separation from everyone we love & keep near.
Yet there is something bracing in the effort to imagine that daunting "very much reality". Jeffrey Schnapp, in his book on Dante (The transfiguration of history at the center of Dante's Paradise), describes how Justinian's architects laid out the mosaics in the Ravenna church at St. Apollinare in Classe - & how Dante figured their design in his Paradiso. Over the image of the martyr-saint (Apollinare) hovers a tremendous cross-in-circle, composed of 99 stars, with a small face of Christ at its center : representing both the resurrection-body of Christ - prefigured in the Gospel narrative of the Transfiguration - and the eschatological "sign of the Son of Man" which was to appear in the heavens at the Day of Judgement. In the church, the sacrament of the Eucharist, performed at the altar over the fragmentary relics of the saint, enacts a communion of transfigurement : the body of Christ becomes bread and wine, becomes the collective Body of Christ (the Church itself, the "communion of saints"), and finally becomes the unimaginable "resurrection-body", when "in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed" (St. Paul).
& when we circle back to the logical foundation-stones of this "Way", which I sketched very casually in the first section of this thread - that is, when we keep in mind the concept of God's creative Mind & Being as the origin of the universe which we inhabit (as in a dream) - then suddenly the idea of death's finality, the threat of remote separation from those we love - is modified. We recognize the limitations of our human vision : we acknowledge the brevity & fragility of our lives within the framework of eternity & infinite space : in an almost Buddhist or Hindu or Zen state of mind, we behold the road of infinite experience stretching out before the soul. But most of all, we sense, in the love-beauty-joy that we have actually experienced in this world (somehow manifested out of nothing at all) - we sense a promise of future happiness, we feel the warmth, the smile of a cosmic victory hidden within the suffering at hand. (Relativity & quantum physics have begun to alter our sense of mystery in this regard : things are seldom what they seem. What seems infinitely remote may actually be too close to perceive; what we thought was matter might actually be mind; life might indeed be more like Poe's "dream within a dream" - to quote a well-known Halloween author).
It's intriguing to remember that behind the stodgy old stone walls of ancient churches, people are gathering for a rite of communion which is indeed a kind of pantomime, a mystery play, representing the transfiguration of the "body of death" (the body we know so well) into the body of Christ - the holy fellowship of spiritual glee : that is, the grace of an intellectual perception of shared life beyond death, when "Death itself shall die" : and then "Death, where is thy sting?" And "Death is swallowed up in victory."
Here's a Halloween poem I wrote years ago, which glances at some of these things :
These came to mind today as I had been pondering (& bloggifying) the riddle of resurrection. If there are countless earth-like planets out there, circuiting a zillion stars - and even if, as Giordano Bruno speculated, God has sent his cosmic "Son" in some fashion to redeem those myriad worlds - still, on the Day of the Dead, that infinity, that vastness, can project a melancholy image : chill the bones a little, when we think of all that space as a theater of final separation from everyone we love & keep near.
Yet there is something bracing in the effort to imagine that daunting "very much reality". Jeffrey Schnapp, in his book on Dante (The transfiguration of history at the center of Dante's Paradise), describes how Justinian's architects laid out the mosaics in the Ravenna church at St. Apollinare in Classe - & how Dante figured their design in his Paradiso. Over the image of the martyr-saint (Apollinare) hovers a tremendous cross-in-circle, composed of 99 stars, with a small face of Christ at its center : representing both the resurrection-body of Christ - prefigured in the Gospel narrative of the Transfiguration - and the eschatological "sign of the Son of Man" which was to appear in the heavens at the Day of Judgement. In the church, the sacrament of the Eucharist, performed at the altar over the fragmentary relics of the saint, enacts a communion of transfigurement : the body of Christ becomes bread and wine, becomes the collective Body of Christ (the Church itself, the "communion of saints"), and finally becomes the unimaginable "resurrection-body", when "in the twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed" (St. Paul).
& when we circle back to the logical foundation-stones of this "Way", which I sketched very casually in the first section of this thread - that is, when we keep in mind the concept of God's creative Mind & Being as the origin of the universe which we inhabit (as in a dream) - then suddenly the idea of death's finality, the threat of remote separation from those we love - is modified. We recognize the limitations of our human vision : we acknowledge the brevity & fragility of our lives within the framework of eternity & infinite space : in an almost Buddhist or Hindu or Zen state of mind, we behold the road of infinite experience stretching out before the soul. But most of all, we sense, in the love-beauty-joy that we have actually experienced in this world (somehow manifested out of nothing at all) - we sense a promise of future happiness, we feel the warmth, the smile of a cosmic victory hidden within the suffering at hand. (Relativity & quantum physics have begun to alter our sense of mystery in this regard : things are seldom what they seem. What seems infinitely remote may actually be too close to perceive; what we thought was matter might actually be mind; life might indeed be more like Poe's "dream within a dream" - to quote a well-known Halloween author).
It's intriguing to remember that behind the stodgy old stone walls of ancient churches, people are gathering for a rite of communion which is indeed a kind of pantomime, a mystery play, representing the transfiguration of the "body of death" (the body we know so well) into the body of Christ - the holy fellowship of spiritual glee : that is, the grace of an intellectual perception of shared life beyond death, when "Death itself shall die" : and then "Death, where is thy sting?" And "Death is swallowed up in victory."
Here's a Halloween poem I wrote years ago, which glances at some of these things :
Halloween. The sun’s already down. Everywhere leaves are gathering, lightly rustling and shivering, their ruddy bloom already fading, the sun’s dry wine drunk to the dregs. The neighborhood grows anonymous. Soon the small ghosts will appear, flickering and half–transparent under the streetlights, costumed for space travel, or the Middle Ages. This is that ancient harvest night. Harvest of time, harvest of souls. Tonight the years are buried quietly under a shroud of old leaves, and I am a child too, standing at the door.
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