Poetic Faith: Culture + Subcreation w/r/t Religion

"And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:17:23 -0400

“

And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole “beauty” of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.

Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the “necessary.” Beauty is never “necessary,” “functional” or “useful.” And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love… As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will “represent” it and signify it, in art and beauty.

”

- For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann

Anyone with an interest in aesthetics could quibble with Schmemann a bit here over the utility and necessity of beauty. It IS necessary for life as we want to live it. It IS useful for a host of things, not least breaking us out of our self-centeredness. But why quibble? We know what he means.

The church does get by, for a while at least, without beauty, so long as love is present. The ugliness of improvised meeting spaces (such as the school cafetorium of the start up church, or the catacombs of the early church) possess a certain spiritual beauty. But not all churches are scrappy start-ups or persecuted into hiding. A young lover’s gift may be a bunch of plucked wildflowers. But don’t we expect more from the married man of 40?

"[F]rom its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on..."

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:05:08 -0400

“[F]rom its very beginning Christianity has been the proclamation of joy, of the only possible joy on earth. It rendered impossible all joy we usually think of as possible. But within this impossibility, at the very bottom of this darkness, it announced and conveyed a new all-embracing joy, and with this joy it transformed the End into a Beginning. Without the proclamation of this joy Christianity is incomprehensible. It is only as joy that the Church was victorious in the world and it lost the world when it lost the joy, when it ceased to be a witness of it. Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.”

- For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann

"With no serious opposition left, former Massachusetts Gov. Robmey easily won Tuesday’s..."

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:20:32 -0400

“With no serious opposition left, former Massachusetts Gov. Robmey easily won Tuesday’s Republican primary.”

- Ky. sends message with Presidential primary vote

"If your congregation sings only Hillsong choruses, then their emotional repertoire will be limited..."

Tue, 22 May 2012 14:49:51 -0400

“If your congregation sings only Hillsong choruses, then their emotional repertoire will be limited to about two different feelings (God-you-make-me-happy, and God-I’m-infatuated-with-you) – considerably less even than the emotional range of a normal adult person. It is why entire congregations sometimes seem strangely adolescent, or even infantile: they lack a proper emotional range, as well as a suitable adult vocabulary. But in the psalter one finds the entire range of human emotion and experience – a range that is vastly wider than the emotional capacity of any single human life.”

- Faith and Theology: Psalms for all seasons: a contemporary psalter (via gmd)

"Homer, for example, makes men better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 15:48:37 -0400

“Homer, for example, makes men better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deiliad, worse than they are. The same thing holds good of Dithyrambs and Nomes; here too one may portray different types, as Timotheus and Philoxenus differed in representing their Cyclopes. The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.”

- Poetics by Aristotle

"…the beauty of of the evolution of the inanimate world from the Big Bang (or from eternity)..."

Tue, 08 May 2012 14:43:48 -0400

“…the beauty of of the evolution of the inanimate world from the Big Bang (or from eternity) would be quite enough of a reason for producing it, even if God were the only person to to have observed it. But he is not; we ourselves can now admire earlier and earlier stages of cosmic evolution through our telescopes. God paints with a big brush from a large paintbox and he has no need to be stingy with the paint he uses to paint a beautiful universe.”

- Is There a God? Richard Swinburne

I like it when Swinburne lets out the teeny tiny little bit of poetry inside him (normally with regard to the natural world). Wish he did more of this in his writing.

"ON ‘GODSPELL’: The first act appears almost totally random. Parables, games, stories,..."

Tue, 01 May 2012 12:51:05 -0400

“ON ‘GODSPELL’: The first act appears almost totally random. Parables, games, stories, and skits are happily placed here and there with songs interspersed with them. At first blush it all seems pretty uncontrolled. The reason for this is that the first act has only one real purpose: to get the audience to fall in love with Jesus and his followers”

- Godspell: Notes for Directors

"NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist—slack they may be—these..."

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:57:19 -0400

“NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why?
That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.”

- 40. (Carrion Comfort). Hopkins, Gerard Manley. 1918. Poems

"If that which has been said of her so far were all contained within a single praise, it would be..."

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:37:00 -0400

“

If that which has been said of her so far
were all contained within a single praise,
it would be much too scant to serve me now.

The loveliness I saw surpassed not only
our human measure-and I think that, surely,
only its Maker can enjoy it fully.

I yield: I am defeated at this passage
more than a comic or a tragic poet
has ever been by a barrier in his theme;

for like the sun that strikes the frailest eyes,
so does the memory of her sweet smile
deprive me of the use of my own mind.

”

- Dante, Paradiso Canto 30

(via @mattfrost)

"…the whole weird premise of Savage’s claim is that eros is so powerful and irrational,..."

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:45:02 -0400

“…the whole weird premise of Savage’s claim is that eros is so powerful and irrational, sexual fulfillment such an obvious non-negotiable, that… we should talk things out like rational adults before we get married and then stick to our rational rules and goals. Eros is simultaneously overwhelming—breaking down the strong norm of marital fidelity—and easily-tamed, contained within little well-contracepted well-communicated honest and generous mini-affairs.”

- MarriageDebate.com: A FEW COMMENTS ON THAT NYT MAGAZINE COVER STORY: Eve

"Our own epoch is the epoch of nothing positive, only of transition. Since we move from transition to..."

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:14:31 -0400

“Our own epoch is the epoch of nothing positive, only of transition. Since we move from transition to transition, we may suppose that we exist in no intelligible relation to the past, and no predictable relation to the future….The logical development of the doctrine of perpetual transition is that the only criterion by which we may decide if an object has meaning for us is the novelty of the object.”

- The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction - Frank Kermode

"This is the modern apotheosis of Joachism: the belief that one’s own age is transitional..."

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:11:42 -0400

“

This is the modern apotheosis of Joachism: the belief that one’s own age is transitional between two major periods turns into a belief that the transition itself becomes an age, a saeculum. We strip the three-and-a-half years of the Beast, which was the original Johannine period glossed by Joachim, of all its ‘primitive’ number associations, and are left with eternal transition, perpetual crisis.

Crisis is a way of thinking about one’s moment, and not inherent in the moment itself. Transition, like the other apocalyptic phases, is, to repeat Focillon’s phrase, an ‘in- temporal agony’; it is merely that aspect of successiveness to which our attention is given. The fiction of transition is our way of registering the conviction that the end is immanent rather than imminent; it reflects our lack of confidence in ends, our mistrust of the apportioning of history to epochs of this and that.

”

- The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (with a New Epilogue) - Frank Kermode

"ASTRONAUT’S VOICE (o.s.) But according to Dr. Hasslein theory of time in a vehicle traveling..."

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 22:09:03 -0400

“

ASTRONAUT’S VOICE (o.s.)

But according to Dr. Hasslein theory of time in a vehicle traveling at close to the speed of light, old Mother Earth has aged a few thousand years since our de- parture — while we have scarcely aged at all.

CLOSE ON ASTRONAUT

This is TAYLOR. He wears simple dungarees (or Churchill suit) and comfortable boots. He seems calm and pensive. Extracting the butt of a cigar from the breast pocket of his dungarees, he lights it, then continues:

TAYLOR
It may be so. This much is probable: the men who sent us on this journey have long since been moldering in forgotten graves; and those, if any, who read this message are a different breed. Hopefully, a better one.

He begins to roll up his left sleeve.

TAYLOR
I leave the twentieth century without regret. Who was it? Marshall? … said ‘Modern man is the missin ‘a link between the ape and the human being.’

He removes the cigar from his mouth, turns to look out through one of the portholes into the astral night.

TAYLOR
One final thought — nothing scientific, purely personal. Seen from up here, everything looks different … Time bends and space is boundless. It squashes a man’s ego. He begins to feel like no more than a mote in the eye of eternity. And he is nagged by a question: ahat if any- thing, will greet us on the end of man’s first journey to a star? Are we to believe that throughout these thousands of galaxies, these millions of stars, only one, that speck of solar dust we call Earth, has been graced — or cursed — by human life? (pause) I have to doubt it.

”

- Planet of the Apes - Shooting Script

True thing. My wife’s great grandmother (Celiney Yasbeck) was on the Titanic with her new...

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:28:00 -0400

True thing. My wife’s great grandmother (Celiney Yasbeck) was on the Titanic with her new husband. He was bringing his new bride back from Lebanon to Wilkes-Barre, PA, where he had a shoe shop.

He went down with the ship. She lived.

Instead of going to Wilkes-Barre, Celiney went to Norfolk, VA, where there was a Lebanese community. In Norfolk, she met and married my wife’s grandfather, Elias Decker.

Elias and Celiney begat Frank, who begat Dennis, who begat Karen Decker, who I married. She begat Marnie, Marion, and Pollyanna.

Ergo, if the Titanic had not sunk, this kid would probably not exist.

This explains why my wife’s family, on special occasions, raise their glasses and toast, “To the iceberg!”

"Q: What is the difference between alternative comedy and regular comedy? A: Good question. The main..."

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:39:42 -0400

“

Q: What is the difference between alternative comedy and regular comedy?

A: Good question. The main difference has to do with the tedium of air travel. Regular comics can joke about this, but alt comedians cannot. (Note: The tedium of bus travel is fine, but unfortunately buses are not funny.)

Q: I don’t understand.

A: Maybe a joke will help clarify things. A regular comedian and an alt comedian walk into a bar. There’s a woman sitting on a stool, crying. The regular comedian says something clever. The alt comedian also says something clever, but only a certain type of person will enjoy it.

Q: How is that a joke?

A: The punchline is that the woman’s husband has died.

”

- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: FAQ: Alt Comedy.

"There are two kinds of dissertations. Good ones. And finished ones."

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:01:00 -0400

“

There are two kinds of dissertations.

Good ones.

And finished ones.

”

"The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics. Perhaps the most..."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:56:05 -0400

“The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics. Perhaps the most everyday instance of this point is in the case of women; and their strange and strong loyalty. Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man’s friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis’ mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.”

- G.K.C, Orthodoxy

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130.html

"Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico. If we think what is really best..."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:51:02 -0400

“Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—say Pimlico. If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary. It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico: in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico: for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico: to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason. If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved. For decoration is not given to hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it. Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”

- Chesterton, Orthodoxy

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130.html

"Macbeth, more than any other of Shakespeare’s plays, is a play of crisis, and its opening is a..."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:39:00 -0400

“Macbeth, more than any other of Shakespeare’s plays, is a play of crisis, and its opening is a figure for the seemingly atemporal agony of a moment when times cross; when our usual apprehension of successive past and future is translated into another order of time…Macbeth moves to abandon the project [of killing the King to assume his throne, as prophesied]. He is dissuaded by his wife in a speech which brings past, present, and future tenses to bear at one juncture: ‘Was the hope drunk…?…Art thou afeard/ To be the same in … act… as… in desire?… Will you let “I dare not” wait upon “I would” … ?’ She seeks the abolition of the interim between desire and act, the shrinking allowance of time in which men are permitted to consider their desires in terms of God’s time as well as their own. The distinction is ancient. Christ waited for his kairos, refusing to anticipate the will of his Father; that is what he meant when he said ‘Tempt not the Lord thy God.’ So Irenaeus explains; and when we sin we act against God’s time and ‘arrogate to ourselves a sort of eternity, to “take the long view” and “make sure of things,” ’ as Clement observed.”

- The sense of an ending: studies in the theory of fiction : with a new epilogue - Frank Kermode

"Now one of the differences between doing philosophy and writing poetry is that in the former..."

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:34:25 -0400

“Now one of the differences between doing philosophy and writing poetry is that in the former activity you defeat your object if you imitate the confusion inherent in an unsystematic view of your subject, whereas in the second you must in some measure imitate what is extreme and scattering bright, or else lose touch with that feeling of bright confusion.”

- The sense of an ending: studies in the theory of fiction : with a new epilogue - Frank Kermode