bottled in an oak-knot

LIGHT SHIVERS

A silver filigree of January ice

atop the Mississippi.

An eye from remote milky

paradise congeals mid-stream.

In the mandorla, the king smiles

who must die.  Rain

wells from Magdalenian

locks, sways down the aisles.

Reality’s an unctuous parasite

whose masculine will

melds to feminine style.

Psyche’s a rose (hermaphrodite).

You search the scriptures, yet

you do not come to Me.

My mother is a refugee,

her kid’s a goldfinch in a net.

Light shivers off the snow, & down

the stream.  Only a dream.

A 3-dimensional scheme

with vanishing pt. in Providence town.

They chased that woman to her grave,

who danced in Paris on the eve

of the Great War.  Her wave

of splendor... Morning Star’s mild sleeve.

La Mancha waits like Camelot

for the happy restoration

of good ship Madeleine –

Marie’s cosine (bottled in an oak-knot).

1.9.19

invisible Henry Church

LIGHT WINKS

A cup of sunlight floats across

the cedar octagon

of the gazebo.  June

leads summer nearer endlessness.

A squad of orange day-lilies

freckles the riverbank

where weedy Hobo sank

to the wheat.  His mother’s frieze

of blazing international neon

(banked by green hosta)

outshines them today.

These lily-petals arch a grain-

vault – great grey elevator

rounded with cloud-pillars,

where the safety-net was

knotted, finally – in memory

of J.  Shadow of a tacit planet –

moony-silver Saturn

waiting for the Golden

Age, maybe – foggy parapet

where earth meets sky (grey

overlapping waves

& clouds).  Dante’s grave’s

invisible, behind a clutter of gray

paint-pots, now – beneath a blur

of ink-wings over parchment

– where the bald eagle bent

his beak, pinned torn souls in tar

                  *

each to his or her last judgement.

Hobo looks up through grass

toward his own Ravenna’s

golden youth.  Incandescent cloud-sent

Tadzio, back from the ashes –

gesturing an orant Orient

from shore to shore.  Went

Jesus thus from Galilee, eyelashes

wet with tears (witnessed); so Henry

Tadpole Turtledove

breaches, scattering love

like baby spouting sperm whale (verily).

Invisible Henry Church is vagrant

as St. Franky’s mule –

flutters in a monarch school

through silver double dove-doors, bent

toward Mexico.  When that last Adam

lingers in a weed-garden

for Mary Magdalen,

she coos, Columbian, for him;

it is the beginning of the end.

An ancient raven hovers

over Hobo, bearing leftovers

(crumbs from a wedding).  Mend

your way, she caws.  Men do not know

how swift the river-flow,

how salt Gulf breezes blow.

Light winks from coral reefs below.

6.27.17

Jesus Thoughts (21) : poet is a troublemaker

I think I've been thinking like a poet since Thanksgiving.  Soon I'll go back to vol. 2 of John Meier's great study of the "historical Jesus", A Marginal Jew - and hence maybe I'll hew more closely to the main theme of this thread.  But for the time being, some very wayward and somewhat troubling thoughts & cloudy speculations have been rolling in over my mental landscape.  The poet is above all committed to the exercise of imagination, Lady Imaginativa - & has to follow where it leads, no matter what.

Poets have a special sense of the power of words, since they are held captive by language : but this awareness can at the same time give poets a sense of the limitations of human speech and writing.  There is a solid spine of historical actuality in both the old and new testaments of the Bible : in fact this concrete "chronicle" dimension is a key element of the Bible's fascination.  & yet the whole of it is suffused with poetry : moreover, the whole of it is enveloped in layers of tacit meanings - concepts of the sacred and the profane, earth and heaven, which are rooted in a very ancient cultural world.  Context is everything.  The acts of Jesus as Messiah : the declarations with regard to his mission and the works of God : all this testimony is part of a larger "universe of discourse" or set of cultural perspectives.

So we have to hold two distinct things in mind : first, that there is a real, historical actuality - a "facticity" - which undergirds the testimonies of the Bible; and second, that all the statements and language of Biblical religion call for - require - interpretation.  They are not to be absorbed uncritically : rather they are to be understood.

All this may sound fairly obvious.  But as I say, I've been thinking like a poet : like a prophet, like a natural-born troublemaker.  "The Spirit blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it..."  So we have to follow where it leads, because it is indeed (we desperately hope & believe) the "spirit of Truth."

Jesus was a scandalizer; Elijah was a "troubler of Israel"; now I (though not in their league) am thinking like a troublemaker too.

I think (here in this Advent season) maybe a new age is dawning.  The astrological "age of the Fishes" is passing away; the "age of the Water-Carrier" is coming in.  Jesus walked in Galilee, Palestine, Judea 2000 years ago : and it struck me this week that perhaps somehow we have to re-think the symbolism and vocabulary of the Divine Trinity.  And I don't say this lightly, without trepidation.  In many ways I think I'm close to the mentality of the current Pope!  I sympathize with his warnings to the West, his criticism of the spiritual Flatland of secularism - our vain devotion to merely human things, our idolatry of worldly "celebrities" as opposed to the life of the spirit in Christ.  I am nostalgic for medieval sensibilities; I wonder at the beauty of Byzantine art.  Yet at the same time I wonder if the time is approaching for a massive spiritual sea-change, a re-interpretation (not a rejection) of the ancient doctrines.

I'm pondering the spiritual geometry of Father, Son & Spirit.  I'm wondering if there will come a time when the Church no longer recites by rote the gender roles played out in these terms.  I would like to be able to conceptualize them in a new way, without rejecting them.  I realize many feminist theologians have already explored these issues in great depth (& I should read them!) : but generally I have to reflect & work things out for myself.

I think the fundamental meaning of the Incarnation is that God assumes the actual, fully historical, fully personal humanity of mankind.  God is Man in Jesus.  Jesus describes this actuality in terms of Fatherhood and Sonship for two main reasons : first, because this relationship illustrates the closest bond of love, merging with Oneness; and second, because, since in this oneness Jesus becomes the Father (God) on earth - he is "one with the Father" - this divine act has ramifications for the destiny of spiritual authority on the earth.  In other words, when Jesus says "I and the Father are one", or "no one comes to the Father except by me", he is declaring the will of God to rule (through his spiritual kingdom) in the lives of men and women and kingdoms and societies.

Yet Jesus also declares : "God is Spirit, and those who worship him must do so in spirit and in truth."  When I think of the personhood of God - the triune, distinct personhood(s) of the Trinity - I remember the words of St. Paul, that "in Christ there is no male & female".  I understand the personhood of God as a category of integral, substantial being, for which our own ordinary experience of persons (our own and others) gives only a limited, imperfect foretaste.  The consciousness of personhood, and the personhood of consciousness, is something deep, substantial, integral, and spiritual - involving conscious and unconscious, intellect and dream.  And it is something which transcends gender differences.  We have all learned over & over the various cultural stereotypes of gender roles, but we should remember that these shift and change across time and different cultures.  Strength and courage are not essentially "masculine" : empathy and compassion are not essentially "feminine".   The person subsumes and integrates all intellectual and emotional character traits within a more basic wholeness (the person per se).

So where does this leave us with respect to Biblical testimony, the language of Scripture?  Well, for one thing, I don't find the third Person of the Trinity - the Holy Ghost - identified anywhere in scripture as "male."  The Holy Ghost is Spirit, as the Father is Spirit.  When Jesus declares that he "is going to the Father" (after his resurrection and ascension) I think one could read this as saying "I have fulfilled my role in manifesting God's spiritual authority (the Father) on earth."

So I think we could start to imagine this authority, as defined by the terms "kingship of God" or "kingdom of God", as summarized or encapsulated or defined by a verbal formula.  This formula, or formulation, though on the surface exhibiting a "gendered" character, is actually just that - a formula, a verbal token for a deeper, unspoken actuality.   God is neither solely Father, nor solely Mother, but Spirit.  The union and distinction of the Persons of the Trinity - God the Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit - is a kind of symbolic play, representing an underlying fusion/distinction of divine and human which is neither male nor female, but incorporates both.  An integral Personhood - and shared Person(s)hood - which we experience as a deepening actuality in our own shared life, as persons of the human race.

I've run on longer than I would have liked - hopefully without too much obscurity and murkiness.  My overriding sense is of some kind of coming change - a metamorphoses of religious life in an age to come.  Not involving a rejection of the past, but an embrace of the past, with new understanding.  We must re-interpret our own sacred testimonies in the light of today : not to corrupt or destroy them, but to enliven them with "new things".

In this regard I was interested to read the recent New Yorker article by Kelefa Sanneh, on the "rock star" megachurch evangelical preacher Ron Bell.  Sanneh narrates Bell's dramatic theological struggle with traditional notions of the reality of Hell and divine judgement (and the effect of his changing views on his popularity, in his wildly-fluctuating world of evangelical preacherdom).  I haven't read Bell's best-selling book of meditations on this issue, Love Wins : but in some ways the whole controversy strikes me as a non-issue.  Why? Because I think if you interpret Scripture carefully on the question of Hell, you will find that we cannot assign any definite characteristics or structure to it (Hell).  Listen carefully to what Jesus says to those who do wrong : you are in danger of being cast into "outer darkness".  And : to those who claim to follow him but don't obey his will, he warns : on the Last Day, the Son of Man will say to them, "I never knew you."  Think of what this means in the context of a spiritual cosmos defined by an integral, spiritual Personhood.  Everything we do affects our relationships with others : in the same way it affects our relationship with God.   What worse hell could there be, than simply to be rejected by this Person at the end of our time on earth?  "I never knew you."

Furthermore : why would God ever define Hell as some fixed structure (ala Dante, or the human legal system) when we live on earth in a state of suspense - a constantly changing interaction with our neighbors and with God?  A time always open to inward change and repentance - with potential for repaired and renewed relationships.

I think possibly this mode of interpretation offers an (imperfect) example of how (one way, at least) to approach the sacred texts : we cannot take them "literally", beyond the historical record itself : we must read them so as to penetrate the veils of symbolic meaning and ancient worldviews, and discover what truth they bring now, today.

p.s. an afterthought.  I don't want to be misunderstood.  I may be a monkish old librarian, but I don't want to appear to diminish or deny the real differences between men and women.  No doubt our biological inheritance (male or female) involves differences in the way we think, feel and behave - some of them obvious, some of them delightful - part of the dance of polarities, the sexual dance, which is so basic to everything beautiful & joyful, painful & sorrowful in life.  Indeed much of the charm and majesty of the Middle Ages, explored famously by Henry Adams in Mont St.-Michel and Chartres, and other books - reflecting the Catholic worship of the Virgin Mary - probably involved in part a feminine cultural counterweight to the masculine brutality of that era.  But as Jesus states in the Gospel - "God is Spirit : & those who worship Him do so in spirit and truth."  This spiritual dimension is, as St. Paul wrote, "neither male nor female, neither slave nor master, neither Gentile nor Jew" (rough quote from memory).  This is the spiritual personhood which we all share alike : it is the actual bond of person to person and person to God, which leads us all together into a "deeper communion".

Going back to comments here of 3.18:

I wonder how the Biblical concept fire - as in, "you shall all be salted with fire"; "I baptize you with water; but one is coming who shall baptize you with spirit & with fire" - compares with the Romantic notion (Coleridge, Blake, maybe Yeats) of vision.

Roger Williams' parochial battles, late in life, with the Quakers & the followers of Anne Hutchinson. He advocated a kind of scriptural realism (Christ's work was a particular historical activity & event) vs. the dangers of spiritual solipsism (pride, vanity), which he believed were lurking in the Quaker's radical antinomian "inner light".

The imagination inhabits a borderland between subjective & objective.

In what way is faith dependent on imagination? A believer would say that faith proceeds from, is a gift from, the Holy Spirit. But there is a sort of co-operation between the mind/imagination and that "inspiration". The imagination as the vital activity of the mind - the "integration" of human capabilities ("personality").

Readings in Maximus (the other Maximus, the Byzantine theologian) - about the "divinisation" of mankind by means of the Spirit.

Maybe the outcome of the co-operation of Spirit & imagination is - fire.

& what is fire? Light, for one thing. The instantaneous recognition of something which represents both the limit and measure of ordinary time/space. That light of which (in the old-fashioned typological sense) physical light is the image.

Still thinking on millionaire Mel & his Mad-Max Jesus.

I guess my irritation stems in part from a sense of identification. Gibson's "Passion" is his own; this vast expense of expensive spirit stems, as passions will (as Dante knew) from a listening, hearing, reading experience; somewhere in his (or his strange father's) biography there was a response to, & some kind of identification with, the Biblical Word.

In the summer of 1973 I was working on a ranch, haybaling, with my brother, in a remote & beautiful part of Wyoming (Cora, WY, pop. 3). After work, in the bunkhouse, with Jim & the rancher's cocky 14-yr-old son, who wore a cowboy hat & liked to shoot gophers with his .22, & liked to bug Jim & me with his sarcastic comments on whatever we mature 19-21 yr olds talked about, with his twangy "well, wowzee-wowzee-woo-woo!"), I lay there reading the Revised Standard Version from beginning to end.

Why was I reading the Bible? I can't remember exactly when it started. But my biography was no less weird & eccentric than anyone else's. I think I was reading the Bible in an attempt to ground myself more securely, in a literary-historical sense, as a response to psychological shock. Because I really was in shock & mental torment at that time.

I had finished 3 years of college. I had written lots of adolescent poems, but had no concept of a practical future. I had played the fool in numberless ways trying to relate to my female compatriots. & I had read Shakespeare's Sonnets, & received the ineradicable impression that Mr. Shakespeare was addressing me, personally, from some extra-chronological dimension. This experience added to my deep fear & justified concern that I might be out of my mind, to put it euphemistically; ie. insane.

The Bible, basically, in a time of personal crisis, took me out of myself, into its epic & social & deeply practical/political/worldly-ironic atmosphere. It must have been that fusion of worldly knowledge and intense theological articulation - added to the fact that I had been brought up & confirmed in & fallen away from a church-oriented family - which utterly overpowered me.

Imagine a reading experience, at that age, which works steadily through the Mosaic books, the histories, the Psalms, the prophets, the wisdom books, the proverbs - this immense cultural epic - & concludes in the crosshairs of the "New Testament" : a kind of panopticon, or multimedia-dramatic grand finale to the consecutive narrative of the "Old Testament". You can't imagine this, actually, unless in some hidden or not-so-hidden corner of your experience you've been through it yourself, & heard the prophetic & not-so-prophetic messages.

So I do not need a filmic resume which dully & brutally pounds upon my head a literalist dogma about a deterministic scapegoat-atonement. I do not need Mel Gibson's version of "right reading". I've read the Word. It's alive, more than any film adaptation; & I'm still reading with it.