Bakerwoman God
Bakerwoman God,
I am your living bread.
Strong, brown Bakerwoman God,
I am your low, soft, and being-shaped loaf.
I am your rising bread,
well-kneaded by some divine
and knotty pair of knuckles,
by your warm earth hands.
I am bread well-kneaded.
Put me in fire, Bakerwoman God,
put me in your own bright fire.
I am warm, warm as you from fire.
I am white and gold, soft and hard,
brown and round.
I am so warm from fire.
Break me, Bakerwoman God.
I am broken under your caring Word.
Drop me in your special juice in pieces.
Drop me in your blood.
Drunken me in the great red flood.
Self-giving chalice swallow me.
My skin shines in the divine wine.
My face is cup-covered and I drown.
I fall up
in a red pool
in a gold world
where your warm
sunskin hand
is there to catch
and hold me.
Bakerwoman God,
remake me.
(Poem by Alla Renee Bozarth, from, Womanpriest: A Personal Odyssey, Paulist Press 1978, rev. ed. Luramedia 1988, distributed by Wisdom House)Would only. . .
... Note:
[Festina lente or σπεῦδε βραδέως (speude bradeos) is a classical adage and oxymoron meaning "make haste slowly" or "more haste, less speed".]
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.[1]
^ Marx, K. 1976. Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Collected Works, v. 3. New York.1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people#cite_note-1Much deeper, I would say, that the oft-quoted epigrammatic dismissal.
Parent Post
"...you are stopping the cycle of life for that being."(CC)
...
Your post sent me thinking about Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,S.J., a paleontologist who thought wildly creatively. He had a theory about nature's suppression of the peduncle. In brief, something original (or originating, perhaps, like a fetus) if suppressed, finds its way through in another lifestream of emergence. What if we have become too black and white? What if an originating life is never finally eliminated, only suppressed and redirected into different opened path of birth?
Would this (stretching the point, and reaching for a metaphor, I admit) be like telling someone that if they did not take our directions to a party they would not be invited? Or, if you do not marry your first sweetheart your life will be catastrophic? (Maybe sadder; but, maybe not.)
You've introduced me to the notion that, eternally, there is no finality -- nor do things have to have the identity we think they should have.
What I'm trying to think about here is the possibility that each aborted fetus remains unborn until such opportunity it re-enters the birthing-stream with its urge-to-birth and comes to term(s) with its new emergence. And is born. And lives. Until returning to the unborn through the portal we call death.
.
As Teilhard de Chardin writes:
Man is psychically distinguished from all other animals by the entirely new fact that he not only knows, but knows that he knows. In him, for the first time on earth, consciousness has coiled back upon itself to become thought. To an observer unaware of what it signifies, the event might at first seem to have little importance; but in fact it represents the complete resurgence of terrestrial life upon itself. In reflecting psychically upon itself Life made a new start.3
Life's new start was momentous but not immediately noticeable. Indeed, like all other advances in evolution, this threshold disappears under the weight of the past.4
I Ibid., p. I80.
2 Ibid., p. I65.
3 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, New York, I964, p. 293.
4 Teilhard de Chardin, as an apologist for evolution, often makes reference to what he calls the suppression of the peduncles. At every critical stage, the earliest transitionary forms are the most fragile and vanish under the weight of history. This is true biologically even as it is technologically; where, he asks, are the very first buggies? Who was the first Greek or Roman? Cf. The Phenomenon of Man, pp. I20-I22.
47 "Man came silently into the world," says Teilhard de Chardin.I We must not make the mistake of treating this remarkable new human being as something other than a part of nature. The same play of tangential and radial energy that brought into existence the first crystals, the first plants, the first animals, here brought to birth the first occurrence of mind. In short, humanity is a natural phenomenon, the latest of life's successive waves.2Nunc dimittis!
http://www.memoireonline.com/02/10/3198/m_Panmobilism-and-optimism-in-teilhardian-humanism10.html
With That Moon Language
(By Hafiz)
Admit something:It doesn't matter who becomes pope. It is the ones who walk in selfless recollection of true nature that enliven the kinship and connection of all beings.
Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
From a similar darkened, hidden, and discarded place James Hanvey refers to, I read his article with reluctant cheer. I have so wanted to feel part of the community dear to my history and heart, the Catholic Church, but it has been remarkably difficult in the interstice between the Aggiornamento of the early 1960s and the Absurdity, (read: ridiculously incongruous or unreasonableness), of Church governance and awkward theology in this nascent 21st century.
Augustine recollecting the angel's words, “Why seek the living among the dead?” -- might have been a converting impetus for him, but resonates today as a departing trope for the disaffected leaving the empty tomb of Jesus and empty seat of Peter for more reasonable, accepting, and compassionate spiritual environs.
That said, I agree with the template of acknowledging desolation, moving through new sensibility, and standing at the unknown but heuristic emergence of a self which is willing to incorporate the mystery, mysticism, and mindful awareness of what is coming to be unconcealed.
The catch, and it is an important one, is that this emergence, this Christ-Minding and kenotic resignation might not need the ancient structure and archaic mindset of our hierarchical prelatry.
A Trappist monk once said to me: “Cheer up, Bill, things are only going to get worse!” It was a generous koan he offered me from the depths of his cheerful contemplative realism.
Hence, the abandoning exodus of the faithful to other horizons, where similar experiences of desolation, revived sensibility, and prayerful emergence will, no doubt, recur. But the experience, tried and suffered, will be without the heavy burden of disappointment that is an unhearing institution -- a weight disturbing enough to extend the stations of the cross and innumerable fallings of the suffering servant beyond their typical end.
Still, I remain, poised and open, in the dark....
Epochs of great confusion and general uncertainty in a given world contain the slumbering, not-yet-manifest seeds of clarity and certainty. The manifestations of the aperspectival world... show that these seeds are already pressing toward realization. This means that we are approaching the "zenith" of confusion and are thus nearing the necessary breakthrough.
(--Jean Gebser, 1953; The Ever-Present Origin)
Dr. Macquarrie wrote about two dozen books. Reviewing one, “Paths in Spirituality,” for The New York Times Book Review in 1972, Nash K. Burger wrote that “unlike some modern theologians, John Macquarrie writes about God as though he believes in him.”
The God in which Dr. Macquarrie believed was Being itself, a definition that to him made it meaningless to suggest that God was dead or did not exist. In this, he adopted aspects of Heidegger’s search for the meaning of being, although he eschewed Heidegger’s pro-Nazi views.
Dr. Macquarrie wrote that all language about God was symbolic and not to be taken literally. But it must be taken seriously. To him, what separated believers from nonbelievers was that believers had experienced the revelation that the creation and its existence are good.
“Faith’s name for reality is God,” Dr. Macquarrie wrote in “Paths in Spirituality.”God as Being itself. That must have been ground zero for theological preference and philosophical intuition.
(from obituary, "Rev. John Macquarrie, 87, Scottish Theologian, Dies,"), by Douglas Martin, published June 3, 2007, New York Times)
I crossed seas and rivers, climbed mountains, andI knew a drunk who never stopped being a drunk. He's a sober drunk. He just got tired of lying.
Forded streams in order to interview the masters,
To inquire after Truth,
To delve into the secrets of Zen;
And ever since I was enabled to recognize the path.
I knew that birth and death are not
The things I have to be concerned with.
For walking is Zen,
Sitting is Zen,
Whether talking or remaining silent,
Whether moving or standing quiet,
The Essence itself is ever at ease;
Even when greeted with swords and spears,
It never loses its quiet way,
And all that befalls cannot perturb its serenity.
- Yoko Daishi
When the thinking mind takes a break for even a few seconds, a kind of relaxed awareness replaces the usual stream of thoughts. We need to encourage this and not fill this space with anything else; just let it be.It's not esoteric.
- Tsultrim Allione, "Feeding Your Demons"
Good journey Maggie! We have been so fond of your and Walt's many year participation in Poetry, Tea, and Thee at Quarry Hill. Your kindly spirit and keen listening gave the gatherings a deeper feel for the words everyone read. To Walt and the family: our gratitude for Maggie! Continue well in her memory!
Palestinian Funeral Shot Earns Award for Photographer
Details Published on Friday, 15 February 2013 14:03
HENSEN'S WINNING PHOTO (COURTESY OF: AFP)
by Associated Press
Swedish photographer Paul Hansen won the 2012 World Press Photo award Friday for newspaper Dagens Nyheter with a picture of two Palestinian children killed in an Israeli missile strike being carried to their funeral.
The picture shows a group of men marching the dead bodies through a narrow street in Gaza. The victims, a brother and sister, are wrapped in white cloth with only their faces showing.
"The strength of the pictures lies in the way it contrasts the anger and sorrow of the adults with the innocence of the children," said jury member Mayu Mohanna of Peru. "It's a picture I will not forget."
Hansen's Nov. 20 shot won top prize in both the spot news single photograph category and the overall competition. It portrays 2-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her 3-year-old brother Muhammad, who were killed when their house was destroyed by the Israeli attack. They are being carried by grieving uncles, as their father Fouad was also killed, and his body can be seen in the background of the picture.
The children's mother, whose name was not provided, was in intensive care.
"This prize is the highest honor you can get in the profession," Hansen told The Associated Press. "I'm very happy, but also very sad. The family lost two children and the mother is unconscious in a hospital."
(from, Palestine News Network: http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/culture/3938-palestinian-funeral-shot-earns-award-for-photographer)I'm trying to.
Dreams
Hold fast to dreamsWhat is attractive about facts is their reluctance, of themselves, to wear disguises.
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
(Poem by Langston Hughes)
Does the hand know it is a hand? Does the chair know it is a chair? No! It is thinking/naming that says so. So, in the absence of thinking, where is the hand and chair? They are nowhere to be found.The two people in their car during blizzard found both warmth and death. Seeking one the other slipped into back seat to sit awhile with them taking shelter from digging out.
...
Only consciousness is ever truly present, knowing and being itself eternally, taking the shape of sensing, perceiving and thinking but never being or becoming anything other than itself. The presence of all seeming things properly belongs to consciousness alone.
(--Rupert Spira, p.184, in Presence, The Intimacy of All Experience, Vol II, c.2011)
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
(By Wallace Stevens)
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.It is stanza nine (IX) that rivets my attention. The edge. Even as it gives way to circles beyond itself. The never-ending going there, flying through edges no longer edges.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
