*
What made the numbers had no number,
maker of place, the one
who lifted water like a box
and slid it under land or up in sky
then poised to fall in scintillations,
the scintillating sheets torn by the trees,
this one, the one who placed, could not be placed,
but lay and deeply lay within the waste,
a presence? could you call God that?
an absence? that was just a word
that poets used, but true words had to be
walked into, truth was more a kind of walk
that you had to *do* even to
know what you were trying to *do*.
*
Friday, May 12, 2006
Monday, May 01, 2006
Chapter 400?
*
Kierkegaard somewhere said that you cannot confront another person's ilusion head-on. You need to come from behind. What does this mean? The insight will not come out of the violence of a debate -- your respondent then just digs in and fights. You need a new arena that changes all the terms.
One is convinced by one's own experience, not someone else's. And the Spirit pushes inward from between the shoulder blades, not from outward into the eyebrows.
*
Una moved through the edge of the campus with her God behind her. He flowed into her movements as she allowed him to. Just insofar. Now God was not the thesis of an argument she had. He was not a point to be made. He was not a historical artifact to be sustained or recovered or polished or put away. Not just discussed per se, not possible. He was not a set of rules, relevant or otherwise. He was not an "experience". He was not an event in her spiritual autobiography. What he was she had to keep from blocking, she had to let him come into her perception -- into the act of her perception -- fostering it, sustaining it, keeping it from its own abject death and oblivion -- so that she might somehow be able to see the way he saw. One momentary flicker would be enough to nibble on for years and years.
She looked behind but the gardener could no longer be seen. Strongly felt but not located. Ahead of her the ruined chapel, left in decay. Crumbs and condom wrappers, graffiti on the helpless softening walls. A depression one simply needed to walk through. An ugliness that ate itself up. In the windows spiders rolled and unrolled like little yoyos.
The dorms at dawn were all in a tilted condition. They leaned like loose teeth. The light they were made of seemed a wavering substance, a flashlight in a jiggling hand. The buildings were only half plugged in -- were one to pull the plug, if you reached and pulled it, what happened to the contents, their existence? If the physical plant were turned off, what happened to the life inside? Would its being turn off too? Was it cradled elsewhere? How solidly grounded was this thing, existence? In what exactly was it grounded? Where did it come from, what was its source?
So much transience littering the soul. She felt the power behind her at an impossible angle, she felt the Lord move her forward, she rested in this immense capability. She yielded to his grandeur: Gelassenheit. Then the inexpressible joy. She walked and was walked.
Her breathing breathed her and left her breathless. "You are my refuge". Do not abandon me.
By the stairwell of the dorm, 2 students she knew slightly were lounging in their old chairs dangling coffee cups. One of them stood up to get more coffee.
Una stood next to the urn but the other didn't even look at her. Didn't see her. When she put her hand on the shoulder the woman shuddered and didn't move. They were not present to each other but rather haunted by each other.
I am invisible, Una thought.
*
Then each of the women backed away from the other as though what she'd touched had been a burning stove.
*
Photons are selfish little things whose dearest wish is to eat each other up, in the Physics that seals the land of God's abandonment. Their nature was to be overenergized and deadly. Through the sweep of them -- the concatenated physical hypotheses that popped inside the dorm staircase and made it occur -- Una moved carefully, the mud on her feet burning and cracking. Over her head the building was a construct as fragile as an untended row of trees. Sycamores say that no one loved enough to groom. She expected it to wink out of existence at any moment. She reached the floor of her own room and paused to catch her breath and pray, since even though the building felt unreal, her own prayer might still be grounded and hence a point of reference, and if so, one much needed. It would be the only surviving link between herself and this space. She opened the door and instantly her roommate rose up from her bed screaming and pointing.
You're dead! she screamed. What are you doing here? You are dead!
You have been certified already!
*
Kierkegaard somewhere said that you cannot confront another person's ilusion head-on. You need to come from behind. What does this mean? The insight will not come out of the violence of a debate -- your respondent then just digs in and fights. You need a new arena that changes all the terms.
One is convinced by one's own experience, not someone else's. And the Spirit pushes inward from between the shoulder blades, not from outward into the eyebrows.
*
Una moved through the edge of the campus with her God behind her. He flowed into her movements as she allowed him to. Just insofar. Now God was not the thesis of an argument she had. He was not a point to be made. He was not a historical artifact to be sustained or recovered or polished or put away. Not just discussed per se, not possible. He was not a set of rules, relevant or otherwise. He was not an "experience". He was not an event in her spiritual autobiography. What he was she had to keep from blocking, she had to let him come into her perception -- into the act of her perception -- fostering it, sustaining it, keeping it from its own abject death and oblivion -- so that she might somehow be able to see the way he saw. One momentary flicker would be enough to nibble on for years and years.
She looked behind but the gardener could no longer be seen. Strongly felt but not located. Ahead of her the ruined chapel, left in decay. Crumbs and condom wrappers, graffiti on the helpless softening walls. A depression one simply needed to walk through. An ugliness that ate itself up. In the windows spiders rolled and unrolled like little yoyos.
The dorms at dawn were all in a tilted condition. They leaned like loose teeth. The light they were made of seemed a wavering substance, a flashlight in a jiggling hand. The buildings were only half plugged in -- were one to pull the plug, if you reached and pulled it, what happened to the contents, their existence? If the physical plant were turned off, what happened to the life inside? Would its being turn off too? Was it cradled elsewhere? How solidly grounded was this thing, existence? In what exactly was it grounded? Where did it come from, what was its source?
So much transience littering the soul. She felt the power behind her at an impossible angle, she felt the Lord move her forward, she rested in this immense capability. She yielded to his grandeur: Gelassenheit. Then the inexpressible joy. She walked and was walked.
Her breathing breathed her and left her breathless. "You are my refuge". Do not abandon me.
By the stairwell of the dorm, 2 students she knew slightly were lounging in their old chairs dangling coffee cups. One of them stood up to get more coffee.
Una stood next to the urn but the other didn't even look at her. Didn't see her. When she put her hand on the shoulder the woman shuddered and didn't move. They were not present to each other but rather haunted by each other.
I am invisible, Una thought.
*
Then each of the women backed away from the other as though what she'd touched had been a burning stove.
*
Photons are selfish little things whose dearest wish is to eat each other up, in the Physics that seals the land of God's abandonment. Their nature was to be overenergized and deadly. Through the sweep of them -- the concatenated physical hypotheses that popped inside the dorm staircase and made it occur -- Una moved carefully, the mud on her feet burning and cracking. Over her head the building was a construct as fragile as an untended row of trees. Sycamores say that no one loved enough to groom. She expected it to wink out of existence at any moment. She reached the floor of her own room and paused to catch her breath and pray, since even though the building felt unreal, her own prayer might still be grounded and hence a point of reference, and if so, one much needed. It would be the only surviving link between herself and this space. She opened the door and instantly her roommate rose up from her bed screaming and pointing.
You're dead! she screamed. What are you doing here? You are dead!
You have been certified already!
*
Monday, April 24, 2006
Shoulder blades
*
As Una walked, someone alighted on her shoulder blades. They folded like Origami in intricate linen, and the weight upon them only made them lighter than before. God was behind her not in front. He dug into her with his vivifying spade. "Where could I flee?"
Orthogonal to the divine is still the divine. You turn 90 degrees and something different stands in front of you. But the same one stands behind. Always there, but only now noticed.
*
As Una walked, someone alighted on her shoulder blades. They folded like Origami in intricate linen, and the weight upon them only made them lighter than before. God was behind her not in front. He dug into her with his vivifying spade. "Where could I flee?"
Orthogonal to the divine is still the divine. You turn 90 degrees and something different stands in front of you. But the same one stands behind. Always there, but only now noticed.
*
Monday, April 17, 2006
The tears in the water
*
You ask about the stream and the chapel. How did they come to be? You know about the cheerleader who cried? No indeed.
She fell in love with the football star. You are the one. He told her how special she was. The girls warned her. Be independent. Don't let a man push you around.
Good rule -- but not in this case. His words were love-infused and love-informed. He meant what he said. Surely. She abandoned herself as if he were a little god. Or a big god.
An idol in shoulder pads. Blissful love like a giant stop in her ordinary life. The stop swelled like a bruise, the life disappeared. Then he grew distracted.
The team had an away game and for some reason she wasn't supposed to go. Or didn't go. Her friend convinced her to check out the locker rooms, the sanctum of the alpha males. Let's see how they live.
There in the men's room with the toilet paper lying dissheveled on the floor. Words about her on the wall, words in permanent ink. He had written the words, she recognized the hand.
Dear Lord. That man has reduced me.
Then the cheerleader began to cry. She was unable to stop crying. She squatted on the cold gray floor and cried. The tears accumulated as she cried herself away.
The tears flowed and at the same time stood still, had nowhere to go. So the standing still became this landmark, it was on the map -- and at the same time the landmark was nothing but this constant flow. Children played next to the water. The young tour guides would bring their visitors, the prospective freshmen, to the side of the stream and stand there looking out. The chapel stood next to the water. It was the cheerleader's place and at the same time stood there empty and abandoned. Abandonment was what such a girl was. It was like her attribute. But she herself had cried herself out and was no longer anywhere to be found.
*
You ask about the stream and the chapel. How did they come to be? You know about the cheerleader who cried? No indeed.
She fell in love with the football star. You are the one. He told her how special she was. The girls warned her. Be independent. Don't let a man push you around.
Good rule -- but not in this case. His words were love-infused and love-informed. He meant what he said. Surely. She abandoned herself as if he were a little god. Or a big god.
An idol in shoulder pads. Blissful love like a giant stop in her ordinary life. The stop swelled like a bruise, the life disappeared. Then he grew distracted.
The team had an away game and for some reason she wasn't supposed to go. Or didn't go. Her friend convinced her to check out the locker rooms, the sanctum of the alpha males. Let's see how they live.
There in the men's room with the toilet paper lying dissheveled on the floor. Words about her on the wall, words in permanent ink. He had written the words, she recognized the hand.
Dear Lord. That man has reduced me.
Then the cheerleader began to cry. She was unable to stop crying. She squatted on the cold gray floor and cried. The tears accumulated as she cried herself away.
The tears flowed and at the same time stood still, had nowhere to go. So the standing still became this landmark, it was on the map -- and at the same time the landmark was nothing but this constant flow. Children played next to the water. The young tour guides would bring their visitors, the prospective freshmen, to the side of the stream and stand there looking out. The chapel stood next to the water. It was the cheerleader's place and at the same time stood there empty and abandoned. Abandonment was what such a girl was. It was like her attribute. But she herself had cried herself out and was no longer anywhere to be found.
*
Monday, April 10, 2006
Poem: The hook
*
The chosen one, he thrashes like a fish
upon the hook -- and the hook like a choice
one did not choose, a choice I did not wish
to have -- this choice a sheer transparency
through which the chooser, not myself,
chose my own choosing -- I have not
brought this upon myself, it was imposed.
It was thrown into me, a hook
of suffering on which my body closed.
Should I reject it, "I" becomes a word.
This I like flesh, it isn't really mine
but someone that invades me. Till my voice,
my poem has no subject of its own.
It's just a skin -- with God the flesh and bone.
*
The chosen one, he thrashes like a fish
upon the hook -- and the hook like a choice
one did not choose, a choice I did not wish
to have -- this choice a sheer transparency
through which the chooser, not myself,
chose my own choosing -- I have not
brought this upon myself, it was imposed.
It was thrown into me, a hook
of suffering on which my body closed.
Should I reject it, "I" becomes a word.
This I like flesh, it isn't really mine
but someone that invades me. Till my voice,
my poem has no subject of its own.
It's just a skin -- with God the flesh and bone.
*
Friday, April 07, 2006
The blade of forgiveness
*
What is the pressure between those blades? Forgiveness, it is forgiveness. Given received. The shoulders loosen and relax, they go lower, they sink down -- the shoulder blades fold and brood, a dove making ethereal gulp sounds, while the heart lifts to the sky. It is forgiveness that pushes you forward. And the will? What exactly is the will? Is it the little guy who sweeps the street in front of you so that you can move at all?
*
What is the pressure between those blades? Forgiveness, it is forgiveness. Given received. The shoulders loosen and relax, they go lower, they sink down -- the shoulder blades fold and brood, a dove making ethereal gulp sounds, while the heart lifts to the sky. It is forgiveness that pushes you forward. And the will? What exactly is the will? Is it the little guy who sweeps the street in front of you so that you can move at all?
*
Monday, April 03, 2006
Imitation and Kierkegaard
*
Kierkegaard talks of true faith as "imitation" of our "prototype" Christ. But (1st but) imitation is impossible because the distance is too great! But (2nd but) recognizing this distance leads one to "grace". But (3rd but) "grace" then becomes a device for the human to go on living as before that same empty life and relying on "grace" like a crutch. But (4th but) all of this is what the human does only as facing forward and willing her redemption. But (5th but) that is not how it works, dear Mr K.
Grace is not in front of one to be willed but behind one and between the shoulder blades. It pushes the blades and so you move tentatively toward the God who is everywhere. But (6th but) doesn't the will get in the way of this? Or can you will to be pushed ever so gently by that push?
*
Kierkegaard talks of true faith as "imitation" of our "prototype" Christ. But (1st but) imitation is impossible because the distance is too great! But (2nd but) recognizing this distance leads one to "grace". But (3rd but) "grace" then becomes a device for the human to go on living as before that same empty life and relying on "grace" like a crutch. But (4th but) all of this is what the human does only as facing forward and willing her redemption. But (5th but) that is not how it works, dear Mr K.
Grace is not in front of one to be willed but behind one and between the shoulder blades. It pushes the blades and so you move tentatively toward the God who is everywhere. But (6th but) doesn't the will get in the way of this? Or can you will to be pushed ever so gently by that push?
*
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Thursday, March 02, 2006
The dog in God's hand
*
At the crossing, a little dog
a little dog
has 4 legs now,
has 4 legs now
looks at the girl and turns
looks back at the girl
walks to the girl
sits by the girl
wags his tail at the girl
runs away from the girl
laughing on 4 legs -- has 4 legs!
splashes in existence
swimming in the ivy like a dog swimming in the ivy.
God's hand
God's hand
my surface is God's hand
God pets the dog
God throws a bone.
God's throw. God's bone.
*
At the crossing, a little dog
a little dog
has 4 legs now,
has 4 legs now
looks at the girl and turns
looks back at the girl
walks to the girl
sits by the girl
wags his tail at the girl
runs away from the girl
laughing on 4 legs -- has 4 legs!
splashes in existence
swimming in the ivy like a dog swimming in the ivy.
God's hand
God's hand
my surface is God's hand
God pets the dog
God throws a bone.
God's throw. God's bone.
*
Conversion
*
At transitional points, at breaks -- where the skin turns into fingernail: that is where conversion occurs.
*
At transitional points, at breaks -- where the skin turns into fingernail: that is where conversion occurs.
*
Chapter 15: Green trees
*
Una walked with the crown of her head as touching heaven, her spine straight as a thrust spear. The core lay upward and became squeezed. Her heart seemed to pierce the clouds. The book of the shoulder blades closed, tight shut. The granite dormitories stood skewed on either side, as if unable to resist the pressure of God's thumb. There was a crack down the front of the world's rational complacency and coherence, an opening of mathematical wrongness -- there for students to ponder, to fall through or ignore. It lay quietly across her forehead too. The world -- considered by itself -- did not add up. But as a kneaded paste of what was to come, it made a different kind of sense or was about to -- always on the verge, just like a human.
There was a man in the garden. Who was that man? He did his work and didn't look at her.
She was certain she knew him. She couldn't remember how. He was very attractive to her. Not knowing what to do with it, she took the attraction and shelved it like a book on some back shelf (behind the shoulder blades?), leaving it there to be latent and ready. Then she looked back and found the attraction unshelved, in front of her, bursting her heart. It had nothing to do with sex. As she stepped forward the man no longer stood in front of her, was no longer visible. But he was still there.
All around her were the green and succulent trees. As still as her own heart.
*
Una walked with the crown of her head as touching heaven, her spine straight as a thrust spear. The core lay upward and became squeezed. Her heart seemed to pierce the clouds. The book of the shoulder blades closed, tight shut. The granite dormitories stood skewed on either side, as if unable to resist the pressure of God's thumb. There was a crack down the front of the world's rational complacency and coherence, an opening of mathematical wrongness -- there for students to ponder, to fall through or ignore. It lay quietly across her forehead too. The world -- considered by itself -- did not add up. But as a kneaded paste of what was to come, it made a different kind of sense or was about to -- always on the verge, just like a human.
There was a man in the garden. Who was that man? He did his work and didn't look at her.
She was certain she knew him. She couldn't remember how. He was very attractive to her. Not knowing what to do with it, she took the attraction and shelved it like a book on some back shelf (behind the shoulder blades?), leaving it there to be latent and ready. Then she looked back and found the attraction unshelved, in front of her, bursting her heart. It had nothing to do with sex. As she stepped forward the man no longer stood in front of her, was no longer visible. But he was still there.
All around her were the green and succulent trees. As still as her own heart.
*
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Poem & Digression: On loving the enemy
*
You must know what's at stake to understand
what cursing curses and who is
the enemy one must forgive but first
there has to be an enemy -- one must
live where these stakes continue to exist --
where men are wrenched in pieces and their blood
accumulates and starts to flood
all judgment. You cannot stay wrapped
in affluence like cotton. Never boast
you have no enemy or you are lost!
Faith must be founded in reality,
this little piece of it that juts out from
the wider providence you cannot know,
except as bone that breaks the way you go.
*
You must know what's at stake to understand
what cursing curses and who is
the enemy one must forgive but first
there has to be an enemy -- one must
live where these stakes continue to exist --
where men are wrenched in pieces and their blood
accumulates and starts to flood
all judgment. You cannot stay wrapped
in affluence like cotton. Never boast
you have no enemy or you are lost!
Faith must be founded in reality,
this little piece of it that juts out from
the wider providence you cannot know,
except as bone that breaks the way you go.
*
The shadow of God's hand
*
As she walked the mud spread and covered her -- it was a mask. One that expressed and revealed, not concealed, or one that spread its palm over untruth to conceal that and reveal the other.
God the potter spun the sharp wheel and shaped a pot or a girl. Una rolled down the hill exhilarated, hung in her cocoon of devotion. The creed was a bodily space that the body moved through. Her flesh solidified over time and flaked off. She was new.
The greatest miracle was the Crucifixion, not the Resurrection. For given an "entity" that is God, who can be surprised about its being born again from oblivion, which is merely standard behavior for a god. But that God, being who he is, would have bent forward to hollow out his own eternity and allow it to be submerged in death? Not that a given man would live forever but that God, our God, would dare to experience the other thing.
He must be crazy about us, Una said.
*
So why didn't everyone walk down her pleasant campus path, the garden walk of faith? Oh because the access was so much pain. The path was pain. So all because of pain. Or rather the fear of pain -- which is actually a form of pain.
*
As she walked the mud spread and covered her -- it was a mask. One that expressed and revealed, not concealed, or one that spread its palm over untruth to conceal that and reveal the other.
God the potter spun the sharp wheel and shaped a pot or a girl. Una rolled down the hill exhilarated, hung in her cocoon of devotion. The creed was a bodily space that the body moved through. Her flesh solidified over time and flaked off. She was new.
The greatest miracle was the Crucifixion, not the Resurrection. For given an "entity" that is God, who can be surprised about its being born again from oblivion, which is merely standard behavior for a god. But that God, being who he is, would have bent forward to hollow out his own eternity and allow it to be submerged in death? Not that a given man would live forever but that God, our God, would dare to experience the other thing.
He must be crazy about us, Una said.
*
So why didn't everyone walk down her pleasant campus path, the garden walk of faith? Oh because the access was so much pain. The path was pain. So all because of pain. Or rather the fear of pain -- which is actually a form of pain.
*
Monday, February 27, 2006
The intelligent design
*
If there were a God, "how would we know?" the scientist asked. (American Scientist, Jan-Feb 2006, p, 4).
The answer might be that If I *didn't* know, then I *wouldn't* know. There is no way I "would" know unless I "did" know. In pretending the slate is bare the writer is starting from a fictional position and so will never come to the one awkward fact. It is more than pre-supposed. I would say that my "knowledge" of God was hard-wired in my being -- certainly deeper than a postulate. Whatever in me knows would come from this, or this would be what knew, or what did the knowing. You can't exactly dispute about a wiring nor can you, the wire, redo the wire. Nor prove, nor disprove. This is deeper territory than the flat hall of debate, unless you imagine a debate that you ride inside like a wild train and come out as a being changed and disclosed, maybe killed. That would not be very scientific.
*
If there were a God, "how would we know?" the scientist asked. (American Scientist, Jan-Feb 2006, p, 4).
The answer might be that If I *didn't* know, then I *wouldn't* know. There is no way I "would" know unless I "did" know. In pretending the slate is bare the writer is starting from a fictional position and so will never come to the one awkward fact. It is more than pre-supposed. I would say that my "knowledge" of God was hard-wired in my being -- certainly deeper than a postulate. Whatever in me knows would come from this, or this would be what knew, or what did the knowing. You can't exactly dispute about a wiring nor can you, the wire, redo the wire. Nor prove, nor disprove. This is deeper territory than the flat hall of debate, unless you imagine a debate that you ride inside like a wild train and come out as a being changed and disclosed, maybe killed. That would not be very scientific.
*
Saturday, February 25, 2006
The landscape
*
Had the landscape then been evil? She could not see it that way. Even the bugs being eaten were not in themselves suffering evil. Death was not an evil, it was something that occurred. Death gave life its shape.
Where then did evil come from, since it was so swarmingly there? Was the devil -- who was not a real entity on his own but more like a virus that could seize a distracted will and simulate existence -- so was his whole existence nothing but your own loss of focus?
*
Suppose that suffering were something external that the will encountered as an object. Its final meaning might be what the will made of it. It might be like a weight whose lifting made you stronger. That was what it was as an object, not a subject. Why didn't it stay that way?
*
Through some terrible metamorphosis, no, it was a literal invasion and a passing through the membrance, suffering became subject instead of object, it became you. The person suffering the pain became the pain. all sentience about anything became pain's mentation, a damned entity to be sure. There was evil. There was damage. You might say that when this happened, even the devil now had hands and feet of his own to flex. But how did it happen?
*
Was it about focus? Did it happen because a human, knowing it had a goal, took its eyes off the goal?
*
Was it about the periphery being allowed to seep in and take control?
*
Was it when the creature, already full, felt its own fangs being sunk into food that it didn't even want? Then food rose into consciousness and began its ugly sobbing. And the sobbing was waste and about waste. Something now gone off track.
*
Had the landscape then been evil? She could not see it that way. Even the bugs being eaten were not in themselves suffering evil. Death was not an evil, it was something that occurred. Death gave life its shape.
Where then did evil come from, since it was so swarmingly there? Was the devil -- who was not a real entity on his own but more like a virus that could seize a distracted will and simulate existence -- so was his whole existence nothing but your own loss of focus?
*
Suppose that suffering were something external that the will encountered as an object. Its final meaning might be what the will made of it. It might be like a weight whose lifting made you stronger. That was what it was as an object, not a subject. Why didn't it stay that way?
*
Through some terrible metamorphosis, no, it was a literal invasion and a passing through the membrance, suffering became subject instead of object, it became you. The person suffering the pain became the pain. all sentience about anything became pain's mentation, a damned entity to be sure. There was evil. There was damage. You might say that when this happened, even the devil now had hands and feet of his own to flex. But how did it happen?
*
Was it about focus? Did it happen because a human, knowing it had a goal, took its eyes off the goal?
*
Was it about the periphery being allowed to seep in and take control?
*
Was it when the creature, already full, felt its own fangs being sunk into food that it didn't even want? Then food rose into consciousness and began its ugly sobbing. And the sobbing was waste and about waste. Something now gone off track.
*
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The mud
*
What was the mud? The mud was penance. The mud was made of penance, soul-building pain.
Her body was softer than a worm's, more vulnerable. She fell through this putty-like water and felt it reshape her. That was yieldedness. It was terrifying. An ana-baptism!
The process: you yielded to God (a yielding like death), you felt God knead you, and you then resurfaced into the world but it was now a different world. The world you left was a godless one, the world you re-entered was God's world. Here you were in no way alone.
And the filth made no difference.
And it didn't matter now how frail and damageable your own being was. You no longer brooded on that. God was in control.
And in that thought you submerged and were kneaded once again.
*
What was the mud? The mud was penance. The mud was made of penance, soul-building pain.
Her body was softer than a worm's, more vulnerable. She fell through this putty-like water and felt it reshape her. That was yieldedness. It was terrifying. An ana-baptism!
The process: you yielded to God (a yielding like death), you felt God knead you, and you then resurfaced into the world but it was now a different world. The world you left was a godless one, the world you re-entered was God's world. Here you were in no way alone.
And the filth made no difference.
And it didn't matter now how frail and damageable your own being was. You no longer brooded on that. God was in control.
And in that thought you submerged and were kneaded once again.
*
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Chapter 13: The invertebrate
*
So Una gave herself to God to be kneaded -- a worm within the mud. The walls of the body were just about nothing -- they were liquid or putty. They were ready -- to be shaped into anything.
She fell off an invisible cliff without any purchase at all. The risk of death -- well, it was more than a risk. Was this nothing but the force of gravity? Was God really there?
As for gravity, that too was no more than a shape that God shaped.
All of the elements dissassembled and gave themselves to God.
I hate a world where all the creatures eat each other, she cried. But the cry, that was eaten too.
And the falling continued to fall. She felt her being continue to pull into pieces, softish ones. A poor shell-less invertebrate, what could it do but expose its own weakness in utter hope?
*
So Una gave herself to God to be kneaded -- a worm within the mud. The walls of the body were just about nothing -- they were liquid or putty. They were ready -- to be shaped into anything.
She fell off an invisible cliff without any purchase at all. The risk of death -- well, it was more than a risk. Was this nothing but the force of gravity? Was God really there?
As for gravity, that too was no more than a shape that God shaped.
All of the elements dissassembled and gave themselves to God.
I hate a world where all the creatures eat each other, she cried. But the cry, that was eaten too.
And the falling continued to fall. She felt her being continue to pull into pieces, softish ones. A poor shell-less invertebrate, what could it do but expose its own weakness in utter hope?
*
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Food
*
Darwinian pit, abandoned by God but perhaps not by his son. They say that Jesus recognized that food had become the subject (subject not object) within our wicked hearts and that blood was tickling our souls with lust -- a forbidden engorging -- and so he came, broke into our vile fratty games and put his own breast in the path of the fang -- "I am the bread of life" -- so that through his own and voluntary breaking-open, food could be clean once again.
*
Darwinian pit, abandoned by God but perhaps not by his son. They say that Jesus recognized that food had become the subject (subject not object) within our wicked hearts and that blood was tickling our souls with lust -- a forbidden engorging -- and so he came, broke into our vile fratty games and put his own breast in the path of the fang -- "I am the bread of life" -- so that through his own and voluntary breaking-open, food could be clean once again.
*
Feeding
*
A terrible truth about Darwin's land. When the ants there fed on a scorpion, and ingested her alive, it was not her stinger, her poison or her carapace that they relished, it was her resistance, that was what they fed on and what tasted so good to them.
*
A terrible truth about Darwin's land. When the ants there fed on a scorpion, and ingested her alive, it was not her stinger, her poison or her carapace that they relished, it was her resistance, that was what they fed on and what tasted so good to them.
*
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Chapter 11: Una's encounter
*
They said that every encounter with God ran the risk of death. That was why so many even who called themselves religious shunned that encounter.
Are you orthodox? Are you orthodox? How can you be alone in the mud?
To most it seemed better to live in echoes of the encounter and to retell the old stories that concerned it, simply as stories. Good things to share with our children, they said. History, art, politics, anything but truth.
When a story ended it was like a curtain coming down on a play. Everyone stood up and went home. But an encounter was different from a story.
The people had curled themselves into a ball and hung immersed in the stream that burst the mud. A tadpole sewed through and pierced their sphere, and a demon looked down from a leaf overhead. Behind another leaf Una now hid. She was frightened of this world. Oh Darwinism is the land of God's abandonment. Now there was a membrane separating Una's realm from that land -- one quick movement would make it tear.
So she was smart enough to be afraid.
The creatures in the sphere made a village, a community. We are one, we are close. But some of them were tied and hung upside down. Others slithered along the bloodshot surface. They would nip each other and chew slowly. Sometimes a carapace would suddenly implode. Love was predation in Darwin's land. There was a pair of people each of whom was busy eating the other's haunch. They reached their extensors into each other's belly, pulling out pieces of meat.
It's all just natural, someone said, a budding ethicist, or a demon probably. It's just the way things are. Nothing beyond this. Accept it.
On the bank a group of peasants in yellow pajamas engaged in a tug of war but the thing being tugged was themselves and the flesh would be pulled back and forth until you couldn't recognize it. One of them grabbed her wrist to pull her into the healthful game.
She was now terrified enough to risk the encounter with God. The risk of instant death, that was why more people didn't do this. The kneading of your heart in God's hand, the potting that might kill you.
Conduct, sullen and inexpressive boy, held her other hand as if to encourage her -- or to keep her from running away.
*
They said that every encounter with God ran the risk of death. That was why so many even who called themselves religious shunned that encounter.
Are you orthodox? Are you orthodox? How can you be alone in the mud?
To most it seemed better to live in echoes of the encounter and to retell the old stories that concerned it, simply as stories. Good things to share with our children, they said. History, art, politics, anything but truth.
When a story ended it was like a curtain coming down on a play. Everyone stood up and went home. But an encounter was different from a story.
The people had curled themselves into a ball and hung immersed in the stream that burst the mud. A tadpole sewed through and pierced their sphere, and a demon looked down from a leaf overhead. Behind another leaf Una now hid. She was frightened of this world. Oh Darwinism is the land of God's abandonment. Now there was a membrane separating Una's realm from that land -- one quick movement would make it tear.
So she was smart enough to be afraid.
The creatures in the sphere made a village, a community. We are one, we are close. But some of them were tied and hung upside down. Others slithered along the bloodshot surface. They would nip each other and chew slowly. Sometimes a carapace would suddenly implode. Love was predation in Darwin's land. There was a pair of people each of whom was busy eating the other's haunch. They reached their extensors into each other's belly, pulling out pieces of meat.
It's all just natural, someone said, a budding ethicist, or a demon probably. It's just the way things are. Nothing beyond this. Accept it.
On the bank a group of peasants in yellow pajamas engaged in a tug of war but the thing being tugged was themselves and the flesh would be pulled back and forth until you couldn't recognize it. One of them grabbed her wrist to pull her into the healthful game.
She was now terrified enough to risk the encounter with God. The risk of instant death, that was why more people didn't do this. The kneading of your heart in God's hand, the potting that might kill you.
Conduct, sullen and inexpressive boy, held her other hand as if to encourage her -- or to keep her from running away.
*
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