"The task had been to forget, of course...the task had been to forget, to become clothed in forgetfulness as in robes and armor, robes over armor, layer upon layer, so that he could come to pass disguised into this sad city."
..............................
"You don't belong here," Beau Brachman said to Pierce.
"No?"
"No....Even though you've forgotten it," Beau said, "you're really from somewhere else. This is not your world, even though it seems to be. This cosmos. You arrive into it, come from a long way away, sort of stunned from the long journey, you forget you were on a journey at all. You started out an astral body, but during your journey you come to be clothed in material reality, in matter, like an overcoat. Inside is still the astral body. But now bound and asleep....And no matter how far back we travel, we won't reach home again till we reach God. From where we started."
John Crowley
Aegypt
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Aegypt - Meaning
"My lord life is strange. How is that Meaning comes to be? How? How does life cast it up, shape it, exude it; how does Meaning come to have physical, tangible effects, to be felt with a shock, to cause grief or longing, come to be sought for like food; pure Meaning having nothing to do with the clothes of person or events in which it is dressed and yet not ever divorceable from some set of such clothes?"
Aegypt
John Crowley
Aegypt
John Crowley
Aegypt - Crossroads
"...that sense of collision...as though he had come upon some kind of crossroads, no, as though he were himself a crossroads, a place where caravans met, freighted with heavy goods, come from far places, colliding there with others come from different far places, headed elsewhere: pack-trains, merchants with jewel sewn in their clothing, dark nomads from nowhere carrying nothing, imperial couriers, spies, lost children."
Aegypt
John Crowley
Evocative in meaning and just a gorgeous passage.
Aegypt
John Crowley
Evocative in meaning and just a gorgeous passage.
Aegypt - A poignant description of the 60's
"They're just going to dream their new world-age into being, Pierce marveled; but how otherwise do new world-ages come to be? You have to be on their side, he thought, you have to be: a pity and a love welled up within him for the children, the ragged ranks on pilgrimage along the only way there was to go, after all, making up the future as they went. And in the thought cloud over every head a single question mark."
Aegypt
John Crowley
Aegypt
John Crowley
Aegypt - A Little About Both (History and Vocation that is)
"He hadn't lost his vocation, he had only grown up; he had desired to grow up and there would have been no way to prevent it even if he hadn't desired it. History, that undiscovered country he had seen far off - yes, it had turned out to be only ordinary, different from his own not in kind but only in tedious details of geography and local custom, lists of which he had had to commit to memory: he knew, for he had explored that country, of course, just as he had wanted to; he lived there every working day.
His progress had always been outward, away from stories, away from marvels; it had been a journey, as he saw it, away from childhood, the same journey outward that the human race had long been on, and which he, Pierce Moffett, was only recapitulating in his own ontogeny, joining up with it, at his maturity, at the place it had by then reached.
....He had something fearfully wrong.
....Did the world have a plot? Had it only seemed to lack one because he had forgotten his own?"
"If he thought there was no story in history, just one damned thing after another, Barr had said, it was only because he had ceased to recognize himself."
Aegypt
John Crowley
His progress had always been outward, away from stories, away from marvels; it had been a journey, as he saw it, away from childhood, the same journey outward that the human race had long been on, and which he, Pierce Moffett, was only recapitulating in his own ontogeny, joining up with it, at his maturity, at the place it had by then reached.
....He had something fearfully wrong.
....Did the world have a plot? Had it only seemed to lack one because he had forgotten his own?"
"If he thought there was no story in history, just one damned thing after another, Barr had said, it was only because he had ceased to recognize himself."
Aegypt
John Crowley
Aegypt - Vocation
"How was it that he had come to lose his vocation?
He couldn't turn back now, of course, and find where the thread had been dropped, and pick it up again; time was only one way, and all that he had learned he couldn't unlearn. And yet. He sat with Barr's book in his lap, and listened to the silent city, and felt an unreasoning grief: something had been stolen from him, he had stolen something from himself, a pearl of great price, that he had forgotten the value of and had thrown away thoughtlessly, and now could never have again."
Aegypt
John Crowley
He couldn't turn back now, of course, and find where the thread had been dropped, and pick it up again; time was only one way, and all that he had learned he couldn't unlearn. And yet. He sat with Barr's book in his lap, and listened to the silent city, and felt an unreasoning grief: something had been stolen from him, he had stolen something from himself, a pearl of great price, that he had forgotten the value of and had thrown away thoughtlessly, and now could never have again."
Aegypt
John Crowley
Aegypt - History
John Crowley's Aegypt (retitled The Solitudes in later printings, as Aegypt is the title of the complete tetrology) is an odd book. I found the whole thing compelling in almost the exact same way that I found Doris Lessing's Shikasta compelling: While I find the framing mythology "not very interesting," the description of "how life is" rings amazingly true. For Lessing, Shikasta was the result of discovering Sufism, an interest that remained with her for the rest of her life. I'm not sure what Crowley's orientation really is, but his interviews give the impression of a non religious person.
Anyway, One of Crowley's themes in the first book is the nature of history:
"Once upon a time, when he was a kid, when he first decided or understood that he would be a historian, he had had the vague idea that he would do just that, that historians did that, kept shops, dispensed history somehow to those who needed it."
Resonates with Barbara Tuchman's description of being a historian without being a professor at a University. History outside the academe....
"Of course a vivid imagination was a help, and Pierce had that; as a student he had been able to browse happily amid statistical breakdowns of transalpine shipping in the sixteenth century or analyses of Viking boat-building techniques, because what he always saw proceeding in his mind was a drama, real men and women at real tasks, linked in the web of history of course but not conscious of that, men and women doing and saying, dreaming and playing, at once compelled absolutely to do what they had done (they were all dead, after all) and at the same time free in their moment, free to hope and regret and blame themselves for failure and thank God for success."
Anyway, One of Crowley's themes in the first book is the nature of history:
"Once upon a time, when he was a kid, when he first decided or understood that he would be a historian, he had had the vague idea that he would do just that, that historians did that, kept shops, dispensed history somehow to those who needed it."
Resonates with Barbara Tuchman's description of being a historian without being a professor at a University. History outside the academe....
"Of course a vivid imagination was a help, and Pierce had that; as a student he had been able to browse happily amid statistical breakdowns of transalpine shipping in the sixteenth century or analyses of Viking boat-building techniques, because what he always saw proceeding in his mind was a drama, real men and women at real tasks, linked in the web of history of course but not conscious of that, men and women doing and saying, dreaming and playing, at once compelled absolutely to do what they had done (they were all dead, after all) and at the same time free in their moment, free to hope and regret and blame themselves for failure and thank God for success."
Shakespeare on Discipline
The speech is spoken by Iago, the worst villain, perhaps, in all of Shakespeare's plays, but the meaning has its merits none the less:
"...'tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts..."
Shakespeare
Othello, Act I, Scene 3
"...'tis in ourselves that we are thus
or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant
nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up
thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or
distract it with many, either to have it sterile
with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the
power and corrigible authority of this lies in our
wills. If the balance of our lives had not one
scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the
blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us
to most preposterous conclusions: but we have
reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal
stings, our unbitted lusts..."
Shakespeare
Othello, Act I, Scene 3
Saturday, August 26, 2017
The Call to Adventure
I - Departure
1 - The Call To Adventure
"This first stage of the mythological journey - which we have designated the 'call to adventure' - signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
1 - The Call To Adventure
"This first stage of the mythological journey - which we have designated the 'call to adventure' - signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spiritual center of gravity from within the pale of his society to a zone unknown."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
The Herald and the Summons - II
I - Departure
1 - The Call To Adventure
"Whether dream or myth, in these adventures there is an atmosphere of irresistible fascination about the figure that appears suddenly as guide, marking a new period, a new stage, in the biography. That which has to be faced, and is somehow profoundly familiar to the unconscious - though unknown, surprising and even frightening to the conscious personality - makes itself known; and what formerly was meaningful may become strangely emptied of value....Thereafter, even though the hero returns for a while to his familiar occupations, they may be found unfruitful. A series of signs of increasing force then will become visible, until...the summons can no longer be denied."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
1 - The Call To Adventure
"Whether dream or myth, in these adventures there is an atmosphere of irresistible fascination about the figure that appears suddenly as guide, marking a new period, a new stage, in the biography. That which has to be faced, and is somehow profoundly familiar to the unconscious - though unknown, surprising and even frightening to the conscious personality - makes itself known; and what formerly was meaningful may become strangely emptied of value....Thereafter, even though the hero returns for a while to his familiar occupations, they may be found unfruitful. A series of signs of increasing force then will become visible, until...the summons can no longer be denied."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
The Fearful Herald
I - Departure
1 - The Call To Adventure
"...all moments of separation and new birth produce anxiety....the same archetypal images are activated, symbolizing danger, reassurance, trial, passage and the strange holiness of the mysteries of birth."
"the disgusting and rejected frog or dragon of the fairy tale...is the representative of that unconscious deep...wherein are hoarded all of the rejected, unadmitted, unrecognized, unknown or undeveloped factors, laws, and elements of existence....The herald or announcer of the adventure, therefore, is often dark, loathly, or terrifying, judged evil of the world; yet if one could follow, the way would be opened through the walls of day into the dark where the jewels glow. Or the herald is a beast...representative of the repressed instinctual fecundity within ourselves, or again a veiled mysterious figure - the unknown."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
1 - The Call To Adventure
"...all moments of separation and new birth produce anxiety....the same archetypal images are activated, symbolizing danger, reassurance, trial, passage and the strange holiness of the mysteries of birth."
"the disgusting and rejected frog or dragon of the fairy tale...is the representative of that unconscious deep...wherein are hoarded all of the rejected, unadmitted, unrecognized, unknown or undeveloped factors, laws, and elements of existence....The herald or announcer of the adventure, therefore, is often dark, loathly, or terrifying, judged evil of the world; yet if one could follow, the way would be opened through the walls of day into the dark where the jewels glow. Or the herald is a beast...representative of the repressed instinctual fecundity within ourselves, or again a veiled mysterious figure - the unknown."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Havel and Hope
Reading through Letters to Olga again. The last few letters have addressed the issue of hope from a variety of angles -
1) A stubborn innate cheerfulness (something I share with him)
"I am...a bit of a die-hard...who, when he is feeling particularly miserable, can always find - Lord knows where - a new source of vitality and joy of life."
2) The whisperings of the Holy Spirit (my recognition, not his)
"I don't know exactly why, but I have a vague feeling that my future - in the long run, of course - is not as bleak as it might seem at first glance."
3) An underlying sense of being true to his mission or vocation
"One of the more frequent themes of my meditations and daydreams are the friends that have left the country. Initially, I feel a slight nostalgia and even some envy (of their artistic achievements) and a slight anxiety (they are doing what they enjoy at last, they are involved in their work, free from endless complications, no doubt viewing our toiling and moiling as pointless now, while I on the other hand am deprived of all that, without the slightest chance of working in a theater and reveling in the ideas that theater has always inspired in me). That is how such meditations begin, and they always end with a particular sensation of inner joy that I am where I should be, that I have not turned away from myself, that I have not bolted for the emergency exit, and that for all the privations, I am rid of the worst privation of all (one that I have known myself too) the feeling that I could not measure up to my task, though I may not have set it myself - at least not in this form and to this degree - but merely accepted it from the hand of fate, accident and history."
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
1) A stubborn innate cheerfulness (something I share with him)
"I am...a bit of a die-hard...who, when he is feeling particularly miserable, can always find - Lord knows where - a new source of vitality and joy of life."
2) The whisperings of the Holy Spirit (my recognition, not his)
"I don't know exactly why, but I have a vague feeling that my future - in the long run, of course - is not as bleak as it might seem at first glance."
3) An underlying sense of being true to his mission or vocation
"One of the more frequent themes of my meditations and daydreams are the friends that have left the country. Initially, I feel a slight nostalgia and even some envy (of their artistic achievements) and a slight anxiety (they are doing what they enjoy at last, they are involved in their work, free from endless complications, no doubt viewing our toiling and moiling as pointless now, while I on the other hand am deprived of all that, without the slightest chance of working in a theater and reveling in the ideas that theater has always inspired in me). That is how such meditations begin, and they always end with a particular sensation of inner joy that I am where I should be, that I have not turned away from myself, that I have not bolted for the emergency exit, and that for all the privations, I am rid of the worst privation of all (one that I have known myself too) the feeling that I could not measure up to my task, though I may not have set it myself - at least not in this form and to this degree - but merely accepted it from the hand of fate, accident and history."
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
Thursday, August 24, 2017
Discipline III
"We live in a cacophonous age, swarming insects of noise and interruption buzzing about - emails, text messages, cable news, advertisements, cell phones, meetings, wireless web connections, social media posts....If leadership begins not with what you do but with what you are, then when and how do you escape the noise to find your purpose and summon the strength to pursue it?...leaders can - indeed must - be disciplined people who create the quiet space for disciplined thought and summon the strength for disciplined action. It is a message needed now more than ever, else we run the risk of waking up at the end of the year having accomplished little of significance, each year slipping by in a flurry of activity pointing nowhere."
Jim Collins
Preface to Lead Yourself First
Jim Collins
Preface to Lead Yourself First
The Herald and the Summons
I - Departure
1 - The Call To Adventure
"...a preliminary manifestation of the powers that are breaking into play...can be termed the 'herald'; the crisis...the 'call to adventure.' The herald's summons may be to live...or, at a later moment of the biography, to die. It may sound the call to some high historical undertaking. Or it may mark the dawn of religious illumination. As apprehended by the mystic, it marks what has been termed 'the awakening of the self"...[or] no more than the coming of adolescence. But whether small or great, and no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration - a rite, or a moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
1 - The Call To Adventure
"...a preliminary manifestation of the powers that are breaking into play...can be termed the 'herald'; the crisis...the 'call to adventure.' The herald's summons may be to live...or, at a later moment of the biography, to die. It may sound the call to some high historical undertaking. Or it may mark the dawn of religious illumination. As apprehended by the mystic, it marks what has been termed 'the awakening of the self"...[or] no more than the coming of adolescence. But whether small or great, and no matter what the stage or grade of life, the call rings up the curtain, always, on a mystery of transfiguration - a rite, or a moment, of spiritual passage, which, when complete, amounts to a dying and a birth. The familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit; the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Monday, August 21, 2017
Discipline II
"The key...is to develop two practices. First, systematically build pockets of solitude into your life. We all have no more than twenty-four hours in a day, and they will be chewed up unless you deliberately structure time for solitude, inserting some "white space" in your calendar. White space does not mean vacation; it simply means nothing scheduled....time scheduled with yourself, honored as you would any other vital appointment. The second discipline is to recognize unexpected opportunities for solitude and seize them....an unexpected life change...or...in a more pedestrian form. What do you do when stuck in traffic or with an unexpected flight delay?"
Jim Collins
in his forward to
Lead Yourself First
Jim Collins
in his forward to
Lead Yourself First
Sunday, August 20, 2017
Discipline
I've been reading and pondering a great deal about discipleship. Here are some thoughts on a closely related word - DISCIPLINE:
"Leading...requires discipline - disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who take disciplined action. To engage in disciplined action first requires disciplined thought, and disciplined thought requires people who have the discipline to create quiet time for reflection. The next result is not doing more, but doing less. Stop-doing lists reflect greater discipline than ever-expanding to-do lists of frenetic activity. This book is all about creating those pockets and putting them to good use."
Jim Collins
in his foreward to Lead Yourself First
"Leading...requires discipline - disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who take disciplined action. To engage in disciplined action first requires disciplined thought, and disciplined thought requires people who have the discipline to create quiet time for reflection. The next result is not doing more, but doing less. Stop-doing lists reflect greater discipline than ever-expanding to-do lists of frenetic activity. This book is all about creating those pockets and putting them to good use."
Jim Collins
in his foreward to Lead Yourself First
The "accidental encounter" as a call to adventure
I - Departure
1 - The Call To Adventure
"...one of the ways in which the adventure can begin. A blunder - apparently the merest chance - reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood. As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance, the are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are the ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep - as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
1 - The Call To Adventure
"...one of the ways in which the adventure can begin. A blunder - apparently the merest chance - reveals an unsuspected world, and the individual is drawn into a relationship with forces that are not rightly understood. As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance, the are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are the ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep - as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
The American Evangelical Church
Bill Hull starts his assessment of American Protestantism with a quote from de Tocqueville:
"Where you expected to find a priest, you found a politician - or a salesperson."
Hull seems to feel that the emphasis on numerical growth in your congregation, or on the increasing number of souls who have gone through a one time experience of being "saved" is one way that America's background culture affects the outlook of its pastors and teachers.
Hull goes on to give what he feels are the characteristic flaws of what he calls "the American Gospel."
He very much disagrees and spends his book urging a "faith that embraces discipleship."
"Where you expected to find a priest, you found a politician - or a salesperson."
Hull seems to feel that the emphasis on numerical growth in your congregation, or on the increasing number of souls who have gone through a one time experience of being "saved" is one way that America's background culture affects the outlook of its pastors and teachers.
Hull goes on to give what he feels are the characteristic flaws of what he calls "the American Gospel."
- It "limits grace to the forgiveness of sin."
- It "separates justification from sanctification."
- It "teaches faith equals agreement with a set of religious facts."
He very much disagrees and spends his book urging a "faith that embraces discipleship."
Discipleship - II
"Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ"
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"We have not only been saved by grace, we have been paralyzed by it."
Dallas Willard
"Discipleship is the relationship I stand into Jesus Christ in order that I might take on his character. As his disciple, I am learning from him how to live my life in the kingdom as he would if he were I. The natural outcome is my behavior is transformed. Increasingly, I routinely and easily do the things he said and did."
Dallas Willard
"For two years, one of my friends followed the rock group The Grateful Dead. He was known as a Deadhead. he didn't follow the Dead casually like a fan who follows baseball. He travelled from city to city, living out of his car. He wanted to live the same life the band lived.
My friend might have been misguided, but he was totally committed. He was a true disciple in much the same way the New Testament describes discipleship."
Bill Hull
All quotes taken from
The Complete Guide to Discipleship:
On Being and Making Followers of Christ
Bill Hull
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"We have not only been saved by grace, we have been paralyzed by it."
Dallas Willard
"Discipleship is the relationship I stand into Jesus Christ in order that I might take on his character. As his disciple, I am learning from him how to live my life in the kingdom as he would if he were I. The natural outcome is my behavior is transformed. Increasingly, I routinely and easily do the things he said and did."
Dallas Willard
"For two years, one of my friends followed the rock group The Grateful Dead. He was known as a Deadhead. he didn't follow the Dead casually like a fan who follows baseball. He travelled from city to city, living out of his car. He wanted to live the same life the band lived.
My friend might have been misguided, but he was totally committed. He was a true disciple in much the same way the New Testament describes discipleship."
Bill Hull
All quotes taken from
The Complete Guide to Discipleship:
On Being and Making Followers of Christ
Bill Hull
Discipleship - I
I've run onto an interesting protestant book titled "The Complete Book of Discipleship."
I've found it fascinating. The author is one of a group of protestants calling for a renewed emphasis on discipleship in American Christianity.
Names that seem to be important are -
Simon Chan
Robert Coleman
Richard J. Foster
Bill Hull
Brian McLaren
Michael Wilkins
Dallas Willard
William Law
and looking backwards they draw a great deal of inspiration from -
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
C. S. Lewis
St. Benedict
Phillip Jacob Spencer
I've found it fascinating. The author is one of a group of protestants calling for a renewed emphasis on discipleship in American Christianity.
Names that seem to be important are -
Simon Chan
Robert Coleman
Richard J. Foster
Bill Hull
Brian McLaren
Michael Wilkins
Dallas Willard
William Law
and looking backwards they draw a great deal of inspiration from -
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
C. S. Lewis
St. Benedict
Phillip Jacob Spencer
Friday, August 18, 2017
Monomyth III
"The cosmogonic cycle...gives to the adventure of the hero a new and interesting turn; for now it appears that the perilous journey was a labor not of attainment but of reattainment, not discovery but of rediscovery. The godly powers sought and dangerously won are revealed to have been within the heart of the hero all the time. He is "the king's son" who has come to know who he is and therewith has entered into the exercise of his proper power - "God's son," who has learned to know how much that title means. From this point of view the hero is symbolical of that divine creative and redemptive image which is hidden within us all, only waiting to be known and rendered into life."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
The Monomyth II
"...the adventure of the hero normally follows the pattern of the nuclear unit above described: a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life enhancing return....Everywhere, no matter what the sphere of interest (whether religious, political or personal), the really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the interval of the hero's nonentity, so that he comes back as one reborn, made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unanimous in declaring. We shall have only to follow, therefore, a multitude of heroic figures through the classic stages of the universal adventure to see again what has always been revealed."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Monomyth
"The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation - initiation - return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth.
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces
A Non-Theist's experience with God - III
Related to this is my constant compulsion to reconsider things - originally, authentically, from the beginning - that is, in an unmediated dialogue with this god of mine; I refuse to simplify matters by referring to some respected, more material authority, even if it were the holy writ itself. (I accept the Gospel of Jesus as a challenge to go my own way.) When it gets right down to it, I am a child of the age of conceptual, rather than mystical, thought and therefore my god as well - if I am compelled to speak of him (which I do very unwillingly) - must appear as something terribly abstract, vague and unattractive (all the more so since my relationship to him is so difficult to pin down). But it appears so only to someone I try to tell about him - the experience itself is quite vivid, immediate and particular, perhaps (thanks to its constantly astonishing diversity) more lively than for someone whose "normal" God is provided with all the appropriate attributes (which oddly enough can alienate more often than drawing one closer). And something else that is typical of my god: he is a master of waiting, and in doing so he frequently unnerves me. It is as thought he set up various possibilities around me and then waited silently to see what I would do. If I fail, he punishes me, and of course he uses me as the agent of my own punishment (pangs of conscience, for example); if I don't fail, he rewards me (through my own relief and joy) - and frequently, he leaves me in uncertainty. (By the way, when my conscience bothers me, why does it bother me? And when I rejoice, why do I rejoice? Is it not again because of him?) His last judgment is taking place now, continuously, always - and yet is always the last: nothing that has happened can ever un-happen, everything remains in the "memory of Being" - and I too remain there - condemned to be with myself till the end of time - just as I am and just as I make myself.
But I began with something quite different: with the question of whether it all had a meaning. That I can only find the final answer within myself does not mean, of course, that I'm not interested in what the "external world" thinks of it, or that this external world does not interest me. After all, I live in it, it shapes my possibilities, my own alternatives in life are structured from its materials and it is only through the world that I relate to that "higher" horizon.
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
I find his account of his personal relationship to the divine not so very different from mine - a useful data point to extrapolate from. His final point brings to mind D&C 84:46. What does the phrase "through the world" mean?
But I began with something quite different: with the question of whether it all had a meaning. That I can only find the final answer within myself does not mean, of course, that I'm not interested in what the "external world" thinks of it, or that this external world does not interest me. After all, I live in it, it shapes my possibilities, my own alternatives in life are structured from its materials and it is only through the world that I relate to that "higher" horizon.
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
I find his account of his personal relationship to the divine not so very different from mine - a useful data point to extrapolate from. His final point brings to mind D&C 84:46. What does the phrase "through the world" mean?
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
A Non-Theist's experience with God - II
What, in fact, is man responsible to? What does he relate to? What is the final horizon of his actions, the absolute vanishing point of everything he does, the undeceivable "memory of being," the conscience of the world and the final "court of appeal"? What is the decisive standard of measurement, and the background or the field of each of his existential experiences? And likewise, what is the most important witness or that secret sharer in his daily conversations within himself, the thing that - regardless of what situation he is thrown into - he incessantly inquires after, depends upon and toward which his actions are directed, the thing that, in its omniscience and its incorruptibility, both haunts and saves him, the only thing he can trust in and strive for?
Ever since childhood, I have felt that I would not be myself - a human being - if I did not live in a permanent and manifold tension with this "horizon" of mine, the source of meaning and hope - and ever since my youth, I've never been certain that this is an "experience of God" or not. Whatever it is, I'm certainly not a proper Christian and Catholic (as so many of my good friends are) and there are many reasons for this. For instance, I do not worship this god of mine and I don't see why I should. What he is - a horizon without which nothing would have meaning and without which I would not, in fact, exist - he is by virtue of his essence, and not thanks to some strong-arm tactics that command respect. By worshipping him in some model fashion, I don't think I could improve either the world or myself, and it seems quite absurd to me that this "intimate-universal" partner of mine - who is sometimes my conscience, sometimes my hope, sometimes my freedom and sometimes the mystery of the world - might demand to be worshiped or might even judge me according to the degree to which I worship him.
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
Ever since childhood, I have felt that I would not be myself - a human being - if I did not live in a permanent and manifold tension with this "horizon" of mine, the source of meaning and hope - and ever since my youth, I've never been certain that this is an "experience of God" or not. Whatever it is, I'm certainly not a proper Christian and Catholic (as so many of my good friends are) and there are many reasons for this. For instance, I do not worship this god of mine and I don't see why I should. What he is - a horizon without which nothing would have meaning and without which I would not, in fact, exist - he is by virtue of his essence, and not thanks to some strong-arm tactics that command respect. By worshipping him in some model fashion, I don't think I could improve either the world or myself, and it seems quite absurd to me that this "intimate-universal" partner of mine - who is sometimes my conscience, sometimes my hope, sometimes my freedom and sometimes the mystery of the world - might demand to be worshiped or might even judge me according to the degree to which I worship him.
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
Saturday, August 5, 2017
A Non-Theist's experience with God - I
In the early 1980's Vaclav Havel was in Hermanice prison under a communist warden who was a "self-professed admirer of Hitler." Some members of the dissident movement had given up hope, some actually turned and collaborated with the totalitarian state, while others fled Czechoslovakia for the West. At this point Havel found himself wondering about the value of his stand for freedom and human dignity. "Once you are here," he admitted in a letter from prison to his wife, "whether you want to or not, you have to ask the question: does all of this have a meaning, and if so, what? The more I think about it, the more I realize that the final and decisive answer is not to be found in external factors that rely on so-called information, for no mere information can give me the answer to that question. Ultimately, I can only find an answer - a positive answer - in my general faith in the meaning of things, in my hope." With these words he launches into a description of his own theology, so to speak, his relationship with the transcendent. Over the next few days we'll listen to him describe his faith from his prison cell.
quote from
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
quote from
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
The Dark Night of the Soul
"...like all who have elected to follow, not the safely marked general highways of the day, but the adventure of the special, dimly audible call that comes to those whose ears are open within as well as without, she has had to make here way alone, through difficulties not commonly encountered....She has known the dark night of the soul, Dante's 'dark wood, midway in the journey of our life'..."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Thursday, August 3, 2017
A European "take" on the "Greatest Generation"
"At that time West Germany was swarming with starved, frightened, suspicious, stupefied hordes of people who did not know where to turn and who were driven from town to town, from camp to camp, from barracks to barracks by young American boys, equally stupefied and equally shocked at what they had found in Europe. These boys had come like the crusaders to conquer and convert the European continent, and after they had finally settled in the occupation zones, they proceeded with dead seriousness to teach the distrustful, obstinate German bourgeoisie the democratic game of baseball and to instill in them the principles of profit-making by exchanging cigarettes, chewing gum, contraceptives and chocolate bars for cameras, gold teeth, watches and women.
Brought up worshiping success, a success to be achieved only by the daring use of one's wits, believing in equal opportunities for everyone, accustomed to judging a man's worth by the size of his income and a woman's beauty by the length of her legs, these strong, athletic, cheerful men, full of the joy of living and the expectation of great opportunities lying around the corner, these sincere, direct men with minds as clean and fresh as their uniforms, as rational as their lives, as honest as their uncomplicated world, felt an instinctive contempt for the people who had failed to hold on to their wealth, who had lost their businesses and their jobs and dropped to the very bottom of society. But their attitude towards the courteous German bourgeoisie who had managed to preserve their culture and their fortunes, and towards the pretty, cheerful German girls, as kind and gentle as their sisters, was one of understanding and friendly admiration. They had no interest in politics (that part of their lives was taken care of by the American Intelligence and the German press). They felt they had done their duty, and now they wanted to go home - partly because they felt homesick, partly because they were bored, and partly for fear of losing their jobs and missing out on their opportunities."
Tadeusz Borowski
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
An interesting look at the GI's from the point of view of a Pole who survived Auschwitz. Both the strengths and the weaknesses of the generation appear in this description, allowing for distortion created by the specificness of the point of view. It can be usefully paralleled to Hugh Nibley's description of his generation during the occupation of Europe.
Brought up worshiping success, a success to be achieved only by the daring use of one's wits, believing in equal opportunities for everyone, accustomed to judging a man's worth by the size of his income and a woman's beauty by the length of her legs, these strong, athletic, cheerful men, full of the joy of living and the expectation of great opportunities lying around the corner, these sincere, direct men with minds as clean and fresh as their uniforms, as rational as their lives, as honest as their uncomplicated world, felt an instinctive contempt for the people who had failed to hold on to their wealth, who had lost their businesses and their jobs and dropped to the very bottom of society. But their attitude towards the courteous German bourgeoisie who had managed to preserve their culture and their fortunes, and towards the pretty, cheerful German girls, as kind and gentle as their sisters, was one of understanding and friendly admiration. They had no interest in politics (that part of their lives was taken care of by the American Intelligence and the German press). They felt they had done their duty, and now they wanted to go home - partly because they felt homesick, partly because they were bored, and partly for fear of losing their jobs and missing out on their opportunities."
Tadeusz Borowski
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen
An interesting look at the GI's from the point of view of a Pole who survived Auschwitz. Both the strengths and the weaknesses of the generation appear in this description, allowing for distortion created by the specificness of the point of view. It can be usefully paralleled to Hugh Nibley's description of his generation during the occupation of Europe.
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