_Nymphs_finding_the_head_of_Orpheus.jpg)
[conversation. walking. at night.]
Actually, just comment and response
t writes: >> Your Image of the Imago Dei is just as conscious as you are, the person whose Image it is.One can only imagine what one can imagine, so a bartering G-d would be for a person on the level of bartering.Bargainig and barter are perfectly valid if that is where one is in life.>>
deb: I tend to think things come as you're ready; the old mystery religions knew this, thus initiates were supported through various levels to the pure abstractions of the Forms by the utterance of their whole complex being. But my concern -- what I was expressing in that image -- is what might (presently, in our materialistic/ literal minded mass culture) be taught. The complex psychic phenomena mistrusted, leaving the tale / myth without the meaning (meaning being the work of active symbols). There's real reason to be concerned about what might be forced on children in a very literal way. No Child Left Behind, deliberately underfunded, is primed to dump the unfulfilled into the Valhalla of the voucher's 'alternative,' which for many is (alas) the Bob Jones U curriculum in the ready. The funding that's been funneled in direct opposition to law re separation of church and state is staggering. If anyone doubts this anymore, they haven't been (the old cliche) paying attention.
>>Apeasing a distant god comes from our fear. We will do anything to keep him happy and away from us. In my opinion, as long as we live in fear, we will always look for help from an outside Fixer. And we will always bargain with him.>>
Well, a lot is asked of us. We are beings that know we die. That image of the face of the virgin as she holds her child (wonderful symbol), enacted over and over and over.
>> On the other hand why would one pray for even strength and love, if one believed thatwe were created with both, and had just forgotten?>>
Interesting. That's the myth of Lethe, drinking of the cup. The ones who remember, the teachers, make themselves expendable.
> ... I find few people who are looking for a place to stand. Instead they want someone to show them where, so they will feel protected.>>
And that's also what seems to be taught. Taught in everything. Keep your place. Buy this. If only X will happen. You're never too rich or too thin. Accept X as your savior/ The Way in X church in X way, or you will be Left Behind. In all honesty, I trust kids to 'get it' to a very high degree if they can just be allowed to open as their heart tells them. The real teaching is by example, not infliction. That's my true 'faith,' and it's Prayer as a life lived. As being. What expresses this so well, I think is Rossetti's story, Hand and Soul
It once moved me to write some 130,00 words.:) At its deepest heart, it tells the same truths that Diotima told Socrates, or that the old lady in the doorway told the woman in Y Tu Mama Tambien.
William Sharp, aka Fiona Macleod, mother of the Celtic Revival, writes about it in his bio of Rossetti. Sharp first gives a synopsis of the story Hand and Soul. Here, he touches it directly:
...To this point in Hand and Soul I have kept close to the narrative itself and have dealt with it in extenso, both because of its beauty as a creation by the subject of this record and because of its thorough individuality; but I wall now quote at length the important passaes that follow, valuable not only for their inherent significance but also because of their specifically affecting the personality of Rossetti himself. In fact, these passages may be regarded as directly personal utterances applicable to himself as an artist, and this I know from his own lips as well as from every natural evidence; so that I have no hesitation in transcribing what amounts to an artistic confessio fideli, to Rossetti's own convictions as to how an artist should work with both "hand and soul" towards the accomplishment of every conception. Their applicability to all imaginatively and emotionally creative work will be manifest to many, and the central idea is certainly that which it would be well if most persons besides those who "create" would take to heart -- that true life is the truest worship and truest praise, "for with God is no lust of godhead."
.... But when he looked in her eyes, he wept. And she came to him, and cast her hair over him, and, took her hands about his forehead, and spoke again: 'Thou hast said,' she continued, gently, 'that faith failed thee. This cannot be so. Either thou hadst it not, or thou hast it. But who bade thee strike the point betwixt love and faith? Wouldst thou sift the warm breeze from the sun that quickens it? Who bade thee turn upon God and say: Behold, my offering is of earth, and not worthy: thy fire comes not upon it: therefore, though I slay not my brother whom thou acceptest, I will depart before thou smite me. Why shouldst thou rise up and tell God He is not content? Had He, of His warrant, certified so to thee? Be not nice to seek out division; but possess thy love in sufficiency: assuredly this is faith, for the heart must believe first. What He hath set in thine heart to do, that do thou; and even though thou do it without thought of Him, it shall be well done: it is this sacrifice that He asketh of thee, and His flame is upon it for a sign. Think not of Him; but of His love and thy love. For God is no morbid exactor: He hath no hand to bow beneath, nor a foot, that thou shouldst kiss it.'
And Chiaro held silence, and wept into her hair which covered his face; and the salt tears that he shed ran through her hair upon his lips; and he tasted the bitterness of shame.
Then the fair woman, that was his soul, spoke again to him, saying:
'And for this thy last purpose, and for those unprofitable truths of thy teaching, thine heart hath already put them away, and it needs not that I lay my bidding upon thee. How is it that thou, a man, wouldst say coldly to the mind what God hath said to the heart warmly? Thy will was honest and wholesome; but look well lest this also be folly to say, I, in doing this, do strengthen God among men. When at any time hath he cried unto thee, saying, 'My son, lend me thy shoulder, for I fall?' Deemest thou that the men who enter God's temple in malice, to the provoking of blood, and neither for his love nor for his wrath will abate their purpose, shall afterwards stand with thee in the porch, midway between Him and themselves, to give ear unto thy thin voice, which merely the fall of their visors can drown, and to see thy hands, stretched feebly, tremble among their swords? Give thou to God no more than he asketh of thee; but to man also, that which is man's. In all that thou doest, work from thine own heart, simply; for his heart is as thine, when thine is wise and humble; and he shall have understanding of thee. One drop of rain is as another, and the sun's prism in all: and shalt not thou be as he, whose lives are the breath of One? Only by making thyself his equal can he learn to hold communion with thee, and at last own thee above him. Not till thou lean over the water shalt thou see thine image therein: stand erect, and it shall slope from thy feet and be lost. Know that there is but this means whereby thou may'est serve God with man: Set thine hand and thy soul to serve man with God.'
And when she that spoke had said these words within Chiaro's spirit, she left his side quietly, and stood up as he had first seen her; with her fingers laid together, and her eyes steadfast, and with the breadth of her long dress covering her feet on the floor. And, speaking again, she said: Chiaro, servant of God, take now thine Art unto thee, and paint me thus, as I am, to know me: weak, as I am, and in the weeds of this time; only with eyes which seek out labour, and with a faith, not learned, yet jealous of prayer. Do this; so shall thy soul stand before thee always, and perplex thee no more. And Chiaro did as she bade him. While he worked, his face grew solemn with knowledge: and before the shadows had turned, his work was done. Having finished, he lay back where he sat, and was asleep immediately: for the growth of that strong sunset was heavy about him, and he felt weak and haggard; like one just come out of a dusk, hollow country, bewildered with echoes, where he had lost himself, and who has not slept for many days and nights. And when she saw him lie back, the beautiful woman came to him, and sat at his head, gazing, and quieted his sleep with her voice. ***
When I am in my heart and you are in your heart, there is no distance between us.
>.Until we all acknowledge the fear that is the center of our minds we will remain right here. Those who are forced to go further will, but I think we must allow for human weaknesses and not look down at people who we think "just don't get it" >>
Not looking down. Just -- in sorrow of a great step backward and all the loss and pain it will mean.
>> ( I do very much disagree with the interpretation of Abraham and Isaac. I see it differently and would not denigrate it. How to understand it? with the eyes of faith in love. T >>
Of course. Thank your Rabbi. I'm speaking of it in the literal Sunday School way. Of course, this image and tale has a great history. It links so directly to archetype, and it has the most sublime symbolism. http://www.aish.com/torahportion/moray/The_Binding.asp
Also, of course, there's Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.
But I keep feeling it speaks to what was learned in a far earlier tale of Iphigenia (note always the wind, that which "moves" ) :
PAUL WOODRUFF: Agamemnon was leading the Greek army against Troy. They needed a favorable wind in order to cross the Aegean Sea to get from Greece to Troy and the winds kept coming the wrong way. So he consulted the prophet. The prophet said if you sacrifice your daughter Iphigenia, you will have fair winds. So he sent a message to his wife saying, "I found a bridegroom for Iphigenia. Bring her in her wedding dress and we'll have an altar and everything will be ready." Well, she went to the altar and there was no bridegroom. There was her father there with a knife. The Roman poet Lucretius, describes this scene and then ends with a ringing line, "So much evil religion can bring about," and it certainly can.***
BILL MOYERS: Because?
PAUL WOODRUFF: Because religion is not always reverent. Religious wars represent a failure, I think, to recognize the common human experience of reverence in different religions. The great Israeli poet of peace, Yehuda Amichai, who died a few years ago, wrote in his last long poem a canto that has the theme, "Gods come and go, but prayer is forever."
And the English poet of war, Rudyard Kipling, said something like that in one of the poems he wrote for his novel, KIM, and he's speaking of a? of a man who's worshipping a burnished idol. And he says, "His god is as his fates assign/His prayer is all the world's, and thine."
Both poets in very? in different ways, I think, were trying to get at the same idea that if we can get beyond differences in articulate belief and focus on the reverence that is possible in the different religious traditions and the human vulnerability, the human needs which are represented in our common prayers, gods come and go, but prayer is forever. It's a very powerful line.
It is.
**
x's
post that inspired t's comments:
dancing amid the pyre
Oh, you're going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and I'll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don't confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I don't think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars - big bangs, black holes - who gives a shit? How did you pure logic / techs con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves? ~Arcadia, Tom Stoppard
:) Which is also to say -- why assume I'm against technology and progress and growth because I (like Jung) think we have something to learn from such as the Taos Pueblos? (below)
Jung frames it as a "truth or a self-understanding similar to that of Ancient Egypt." And the rest of what the chief says in that excerpt is very much to the present point. What is we have lost -- need to learn?
Setting: Abraham and his son. The knife in the air. And now?
We have that human reflex / instinct / condition of talking to the inner voice.
We're doing it all the time. It's taking the place of our life, this bargaining.
Is this impulse built into the mindset of having a distant god that must be pleased? Because having that makes us give away all *real* responsibility for the outcome. And that means we give away the responsibility for living life. Our own living.
When did this sickness come, this immobilizing stepping back from life? It's the religion of victims, Revelation, the Apocalypse. The impulse for vengeance in the oppressed. That part of a Diaspora.
Elohim. That's a plural. GodS from the beginning.
And God is whatever created and creates. Does it ask me to come begging to it, trying to make deals? It seems to me that unless you're asking for strength and love that that's what you're doing in most prayer. It seems to me that a creator created me to be exuberant in what it made me. That my exuberance itself is the prayer and offering it seeks from me. If it leaves me to define my space and actions, to schedule my curiosity's impulse to longing as my being's best guide, then I shall do that with the best energy as it informs me is fit. Who am I to question what god has made, and what god has made of me?
Living, full living for all. That's the best praying I can think of.
What is our marriage with death to be? Like Psyche, our dark lover whose face we can't see, the mystery we come out of and will all yield to, our sublime friend there in the unconscious at all times? Or is death hated and belittled? The latter makes our living pointless, all just a test for some greater deathlessness. Yet to be deathless is to dance in and with and through our season. To understand we're never lost or alone or even here.
We're never not in the act of love.
The answer to this, that endless act of love -- a state -- is to find the deity again in ourselves. In each other. In this flesh and blood of a living earth.
The stars and heavens do move us. Do you know that pendulums go mad during eclipses? Einstein would love it. He knew he didn't have it all. He knew it was more... that it's all of a piece. Sure, of course, Christ is of the higher mysteries, that tradition we see in the Greek, Orphic, Mithraic. (Jung does great leg work on this. It's why the Nag Hammadi scrolls were taken directly to him; else, like the Dead Sea Scrolls, it would have been a bear getting them into the light day.) But it's a mockup of an Old Testament prophecy that never even existed that he's been dressed in by our present theocracy of Leftbehinders.
But back to Jung. What was he saying, what did it mean? I think reading his later works directly, and maybe the orientation in Shamdasni's new history (also an essay here:http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/Joap/JOAP119.pdf ) are about the best grounding in Jung, imho and for my purposes. I'm not an analyst and not even especially interested in an analyst's work. Jung was much more than just that. And much more than any New Age or second sloggings of him will ever yield.
But I apologize for the rant. But it felt good, and you did ask. You sat down at my table. So let's leave you where you came in...
How do we live in a world that's slowly winding down, Spinning into the void, consuming itself in fire, Heading for chill extinction in universal ash? Is "wanting to know" enough? Or dancing amid the pyre? Or seeking to be immortal in the glow of the world's renown? How long can these sustain us while we're waiting for the smash? How comforting to have lived in the Age of Enlightenment, Secure in the classical concept of perfectibility: A slow, steady ascent; a striving to regain; Newtonian Law the root of our fixed stability; Restoring the lost gardens, eager to attain Arcadia: the crown of human accomplishment. But Newton's physics cracks; chaos conceived the world: I snap my playscript shut: a swirl of wind gusts Into flame the dry brush of the barren African veldt; In an ocean of ashes, islands of order violently hurled, Mirages only, fractured fractals; security trusts Only its own complacency, which the flame of a candle will melt. Entrapped in entropy then, do we give up or go mad? Out of chaos can there be order? Is that a justified stance? If not, why do artists strive to impose a shape on the world? Are hexameters patently pointless? Is rhyming merely a fad? No: though poetry may be no weapon, and music no banner unfurled, And we can't change our future by dancing - yet all we have left is the dance. Enlightenment after Tom Stoppard's Arcadia Peter Malin April 1999
We are sorely in need of a Truth or a self-understanding similar to that of Ancient Egypt, which I have found still living with the Taos Pueblos. Their chief of ceremonies old Ochwiay Biano (Mountain Lake) said to me : 'We are the people who live on the roof of the world, we are the sons of the Sun, who is our father. We help him daily to rise and to cross the sky. We do not do this for ourselves, but for the Americas also. Therefore they should not interfere with our religion. But if they continue to do so (by missionaries) and hinder us, then they will see in ten years the sun will rise no more.' He correctly assumes that their day, their light, their consciousness and their meaning will die, when destroyed through the narrow-mindedness of American Rationalism, and the same will happen to the whole world, when subjected to such treatment. That is the reason I tried to find the best truth and the clearest light I could attain to, and since I have reached my highest point and can't transcend any more, I am guarding my light and my treasure, convinced that nobody would gain and I myself would be badly, even hopelessly injured, if I should lose it. It is the most precious not only to me, but above all to the darkness of the creator, who needs man to illuminate his creation. If God had foreseen his world, it would be a mere senseless machine and Man's existence a useless freak. My intellect can envisage the latter possibility, but the whole of my being says 'No' to it...
~CGJung, letter 9/14/1960
http://web.archive.org/web/20100226051757/http://www.jungcircle.com/muse/plato.htm