Uncomfortable Dreaming

Serves me right - after my glib gab here yesterday about dreams, la vida es sueno, etc. - that last night I would wake up at 3 a.m. after a dark & troubling dream that stirred my conscience.  Jealousy, violence, remorse... strange symbolism of the heart.

"The heart is desperately corrupt"... says the prophet Jeremiah.

Lay awake thinking about the dream for a long time.

My comments in yesterday's post about holism in literature, philosophy, theology - and about the Union, and the common good, sought through the civic faith of Gorski's "American covenant" - were undercut a little by my own dream last night.  I lay there pondering things about which perhaps the Puritans and Roger Williams also meditated late at night.

The separation of Church & State, or Williams' (& others') distinction between the "two tables" of the Mosaic law (the sacred and the civil codes) perhaps grows logically out of a real, a factual, distinction, between a person's spiritual life - the life of the soul - and the collective social life we organize and share.  Between religion & government; between spirit & flesh.  Perhaps there is this deep and actual dividing line - in the midst of all the seamlessness of vision, the oneness of nature, and the unity of the common good toward which we strive together.

For me the problematics and contradictions of this situation are almost irresolvable and impossible to figure out.  Because, as the animale compagnevole, we obviously do not live our lives alone; we are born into relations with others; our very selves develop in these deep relationships.  Yet many (including Roger Williams, for example) would argue that true religion is about the individual soul's relationship with God.

Perhaps one solution is to suggest that the solitude of our relation to God is also the pivot of our personal liberty, and the foundation of our moral responsibility (freedom and responsibility being the very spine of personal selfhood).

We can understand, in this context, how the absolute transcendence of the Hebrew God stands as the basis, the historical origin, of moral freedom and human equality.  Not that moral freedom and equality did not previously exist in various kinship bands and human cultures beforehand; but the Hebraic covenant so to speak articulated this reality in stone, in the midst of empires and states devoted to sacred kings and unlimited, divine royal power.

But let me return to last night's dream.  The heart is desperately corrupt, the prophet cries.  Between the mind's dutiful bookkeeping and the heart's passions lies a wide dark gulf.  I woke from my disturbing dream with this thought : true religion is the soul's remorseful conscience, seeking the intercession of the Spirit, the mercy of God, because there is no other help.  John the Baptist at the river's edge, for example, demanding only personal simplicity and true repentance.  The universal "high priest" is essentially a healer of souls.

This spiritual dimension is personal.  It is an otherness, distinct from the public, civic, political sphere.  The two dimensions are obviously intertwined in each of our lives, and in all our cultures, societies, nations - yet they are distinct.  The two tables of the Law.  "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's".  Roger Williams, among others, believed in "natural law" - that human beings are naturally endowed with the conscience to determine right and wrong, and the ability to organize themselves in societies dedicated (however imperfectly) to liberty and justice.  The fact that people of all faiths and cultures are so endowed, whatever their denomination or confession,  is the prime basis for religious liberty and political tolerance.

I don't know if I've been able to express myself very clearly or well here this morning.  What struck me as I lay there thinking over the dream was a sense of contrast between our public and politically-charged debates about cultural and religious issues, our disputes over differing group demands, rights, and powers, one the one hand - and the inward spiritual dimension of "true religion" on the other.  Conscience, belief, reasoning, searching hearts, inwardness, and personal acts of repentance, humility and charity : these are religion.  "Do justice, and walk humbly with your God".  It's not about political maneuvering, bickering, and social power.  Those things are part of the civic world, the secular table of the Law.

through Narragansett smokehole

AGATE LAMP

A peaceful evening in late April

the trees barely budding

in mild light   while brooding

darkness rings   the besieged people

& this dissonance of visible   invisible

an indivisible fire   smoldering

criminals & saints   revealing

callous inhumanity    with humble

solidarity   courageous   all-compassionate

& in my flimsy gazebo

octagonal coracle or   Argo

with Sophie’s wind-chime   over the gate

delicate oak-leaf butter-knife design

tingling in the calm air   O

here in my Ariadne-lair   where

a Chartres J coils  toward her Eschaton

& my whisper follows Cautantowwit

through Narragansett smokehole 

southwest, southwest   while a soul-

hart sails back   to her monarch nest –

that circling square dance of Ocean beams

where the spirit of Jessie Ophelia

& Juliet Ravlin   abide in Thee   &

Eternity, O Eternity! cries Roger Williams

& you lift your agate lamp, Psyche

like a fiddlehead   in Holy-Land

& the soeur-coulombe of the Son

of Man   swerves   with a shining eye

4.27.20

only an echo of Jerusalem

SPEECH IMPEDIMENT

Uncanny quiet over the face of the earth

when a plague wind blows

like a Sabbath no one chose.

All the crumpled greed, the burnt-up wrath.

The painter paints, the poet bodies forth

rehearsals of embottled ships.

Righteous Ironsides in death-grips,

waves of evil crashing each wake-froth.

We recall the speech impediment of Moses,

his lame stuttering.

The stubborn mule, his bawling;

how the moth anticipates his metamorphoses.

The beard of flame, the copper serpent…

apotropes for lamb

muzzled to kingdom come –

the mute goodness, whose light is spent

in painful denouements of selfless love.

We know these weary nurses

of the commonweal.  Sursum corda

you sweet Cordelias, sent from above.

Amid stark silence of a vacant Mass

my murmurs of a restoration

seem almost abomination.

You must judge what ought to come to pass.

These incoherent old man’s mutterings.

Only an echo of Jerusalem

to come.  Your Jubilee, I AM –

brilliant integrity of all good things.

We hold these truths to be self-evident –

Williams' Carta (so fair,

kind, true).  Coke’s tender care

breathing to Providence (love’s fundament).

4.21.20

like a gouache by David Jones

LITTLE GROTTO

Day like a gouache by David Jones.

Diaphanous vision, muted

by sea-wind, raincloud.

Mountain, meadow, rust (earth tones).

The nightmare of the Great War

like sulphur tuning fork

or buried line in Eden Park

commingles its dilemma in a metaphor

like rose in steel dust (Roger’s compass,

pointing NNW).

& Image of the Beast is

emblem for the matrix of that enterprise

encrypted at the center of a corn maze

where Satan & his Minotaur

(ICE-bound, possessed) are

snared (handcuffed in their own cold glaze).

The Man of Lawlessness, like Terrible

Ivan – he makes his own desire

the absolute measure;

he’s lost to caritas (in his own bubble).

Imagine Ghiberti’s golden doors

at the Baptistery in Florence

with angels forced to dance

to the lash of demonic matadors…

imagine Eugenio, alongside Clizia

locked in the library

with Mussolini – her sturdy

sun-glance, over the chessboard… ah,

*

bright wings!  When Everyman & Woman

breathe in the heartland

of their living temple… &

Joachim’s eagle plummets through the Plan

of Ages!  Providential restoration, O

downglide of Holy Ghost!

Multitudinous host

of human happiness – blue emerald glow

of soft & silent cat’s-eye revolutions,

roll!  & be the planetary

hearthland, wide prairie…

deep swell of Thunderbird flute sessions!

Because all the world’s a stage, coach;

the play’s the salty verse

for catching Eddy the Perverse,

who suckles his Corona like a roach

out of the Minotaur’s bleak heart –

rotten as… who can say?

God knows.  Only way

’s to pinwheel back where we start,

Pocahontas – up to the swirling

origin of springs.

A little grotto brings

its whisper of clear water.  Everything

draws near.  Pleroma for Fisher King

(little lad in oak tree)

shines, golden, leafy.  His

mother smiles… rainbows from nothing.

3.28.20

to imagine governance anew

CURVE-MIRROR

Everything resolves into the question

of good will.  The mystery

of this most simple anti-

gravity (11.32 ft/sec, a-falling down).

Firebranded sign of imago Dei.

So we desire the good –

wholeness (soul food).

The skeleton key of MLK,

the metaphysical hope informing

scapegrace Providence;

little Ocean State’s immense

rose light (perpetually intensifying).

Only a memory of Henry’s youth.

That community-building élan

of the VISTA legion –

to imagine governance anew, in truth

& conspicuous joy (Roger’s liberty

of conscience).  Dante

& his animale compagnevole

on Dante Street (on Federal Hill)… si, si!

Canopic geometry – vanishing point.

The apse at Sant’Apollinare.

One solitary shepherd, & the sky

a coracle of stars around one smile (anoint

her compassionate Pilot over Kings).

In the curve-mirror of the dome

you sense her light.  Calm

Shekinah… mild restoration of all things.

3.12.20

pokey asphodel

SMOKE-TREASURY

That the diamond exists, murmurs Black Elk

justifies your dream.

Octahedral theme

of orientation by humility (MLK

& JFK meet in your mandala-canoe).

As Roger the Seeker christened

Providence a refuge, at the end

of seeking (for beginning anew).

To model the heavenly kingdom of God

in clay, or dusty speech

like a doorway, or Gateway Arch;

like rose mandorla, made of flesh & blood.

Not city on a hill, but village

in a valley, by the river’s

mouth – one Narragansett

giver’s canonical Key into the Language

of America.  That the diamond exists

justifies your dream

in shades.  Mandelstam

(in Pushkin & Scriabin) writ of this –

because the Redemption has already happened

art is set free, to celebrate

(watch Oscar Cullmann adumbrate

this meaning in his diagram).  The End

is the beginning.  Not that the end has come.

Only interrogate

this blistered heart

to find that smoky rite of Eastern Rome

                   *

spring in the limping step of herald Hart

or the epileptic anguish

of poet Prof. English

Berryman (in his hexagonal ziggurat

of Resurrection Cemetery – over the river

from St. Paul).  Come home,

patters that silver stream

from crane-bone flute (archaic sliver

flinting mica, in Cahokia); a raven

laughter diagram

or Bluejay paradigm

or Jonah-dove conundrum (rune haven);

a sweeping cry out of Cautantowwit’s

smoke-treasury; an answer

for yon affectionate peacemaker

when he crawled into the Narragansetts’

welcome-tent.  A smile (ineffable

as that 6-sided snowflake

traced by Black Elk

over the grave of Buffalo Bill).

All this intricate nautical geometry!

– these asides by Hobo,

his obeisance to Venus (Virgo-

ascendant sunset cemetery) –

is just the flimsiest balsa-wood scale model

of an Old Ironsides ark

or Constitution… spark

for Gravesend dancing-floor (pokey asphodel).

3.11.20

in the dawn mirror

SINGLE SPOKE

These quiet late winter days.  My mother

lies in her small bed.

The past is not restored

but rows to its island across the water.

I see it in the distance, there –

dark rocks, pines wrapped

in mist.  What happened

to those springing years?  Vibrant affair

of VISTA volunteers… Rhode Island

skipping in my early heart.

JFK’s Newport.

A tiny sea-casket of azure, sand

in the dawn mirror of a rose lighthouse

casting Roger’s heart’s eye-

beam – his Providential replica

of conscience-liberty (human Cosmopolis).

You elevate my Minnesota grain

toward your red-violet wine

welding human & divine

on the river’s leaping arch – then

paddle further… through green pillars

from Columbia to Gravesend,

Pocahontas Williams (raven-

haired pilot for milky stars).

Where the Wain of Charles is chartered

to an evergreen holm oak –

your Ocean State a single spoke

spinning my reel & sarabande, wholehearted.

3.10.20