tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78252465184648641262024-03-13T21:14:13.882-07:00Broken LightsJoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-18838225127034645432020-06-29T18:42:00.001-07:002020-06-29T18:42:17.093-07:00Blog TransferI'm transferring my blog to a WordPress-hosted site. If you're interested to keep following my writing, you can find me at:<br />
<br />
http://www.brokenlights.blogJoshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-20566632372066027732020-06-28T22:14:00.002-07:002020-06-28T22:14:24.022-07:00Comments on Poems 5: "I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day"<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">'I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day'</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">BY </span><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gerard-manley-hopkins" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS</span></a></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-d2004be2-7fff-b3a5-6ee1-74d4bc705039" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">What hours, O what black hours we have spent</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And more must, in yet longer light's delay.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> With witness I speak this. But where I say</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">To dearest him that lives alas! away.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The lost are like this, and their scourge to be</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I have wondered how to wake from this poem many times in my life, and so my thoughts are abundant.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I’m caught first by the contrast between “wake” and “feel.” The term “wake” is related to “watch” and carries connotations of sight and seeing. What’s more, darkness is perceived by the eyes, and one would never say, “it feels dark tonight.” Instead, we speak of darkness as a state of being that occludes sight—“it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> dark.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But there is a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">felt</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> aspect to darkness. There is a sense of the oppressive weight of it. Darkness eliminates the distances that sight illuminates, which in turn points perception inward. There is a presence to darkness—a presence that is somehow also an absence. It interests me that Hopkins names this aspect the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">fell</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> of dark. What could a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">fell</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> be?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A brief jaunt through the OED has yields a number of different possibilities, the most obviously appropriate being the final:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Skin, or a membrane that covers an organ of the body</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">o</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I wake and feel the skin of dark not day</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">—this meaning would extend the visceral quality of the poem</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A hill or mountain</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">o</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Darkness is weighty and vast</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">An elevated stretch of uncultivated land</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">o</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And wild</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A marsh or a fen</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">o</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And mysterious</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A blow capable of knocking a person down</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">o</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The broken expectation of morning’s light hits like a fist</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The last line of weft at any given time when weaving on a loom</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">o</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">This is my favorite possibility. Using this definition evokes for me the long weave of what came before this moment—the hours, the black hours</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">-</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Gall, bitterness, animosity, rancor</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">o</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 6.999999999999999pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Darkness personified as bitter enemy holding feelings of animosity for the speaker</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The word </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">fell</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> encompasses a variety of possible meanings. In this, it matches the felt ambiguity of the dark and evokes a sense similar to the confusion of waking to the expectation of day and meeting dark instead.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I’m also interested in the prosody of the first sentence. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I wake and feel the fell of dark</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> is perfectly iambic, even sing-songily so. It builds an expectation of iambic pentameter that is broken emphatically by the spondee, “not day.” The percussive triple-beat of “dark not day” belong so closely together rhythmically that the comma between “dark” and “not” violates their unity with a visual separation. This all works to emphasize the contrast between what was expected upon waking (and our own lexical expectation of sight upon waking) with the reality of a felt darkness.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The next line utterly violates any iambic expectations we may cling to as the speaker laments to his heart, jumping foot by foot between meters. An iamb (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">What hours</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">) followed by a trochee (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">O what)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> followed by a spondee (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">black hours</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">), and then concluded by a cretic (</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">we have spent</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In these two lines, we learn something critical about our speaker—that there is a split between himself and his heart. The eyes of his heart saw sights in the night, and the legs of his heart walked countless ways. Through it all, he must have been nothing more through those black hours than a detached observer: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">with witness I speak this.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> He witnessed his heart seeing and wending, but from a distance.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And then a prospective lament: the heart must continue its bitter path </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">in yet longer light’s delay</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">. In yet a longer delay of light, or in the delay of yet longer light? This ambiguity prefigures the amendment of the subsequent line and affords reference both to the time before the dawn of morning and before the dawn of some far off salvation.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The amendment puzzles me. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But where I say hours, I mean years, mean life.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> To this point, I see in my mind’s eye a figure not unlike that depicted on the </span><a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1325/0879/files/09-nine-of-swords-rider-waite-tarot_large.jpg?v=1490459631" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Nine of Swords</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, woken abruptly in the night by piercing thoughts. But here Hopkins offers us a tempting way out of the picture—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I’m not actually here in my bed in the middle of the night—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">he tells us—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I’m speaking metaphorically about life itself. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I find this interpretation too simple—too easy—and too similar to the way sadness works upon the mind to really constitute the interpretative key to this poem.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I turn, instead, outside the poem to Emily Dickinson for a key:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Pain has an element of blank.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It cannot recollect when it began</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Or if there were a time when it was not.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It has no future but itself.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Its infinite realms contain its past,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Enlightened to perceive new periods of pain.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I take the universalizing amendment of Hopkins’ line about hours, years, and life to be a performance of the blank of pain. It is the tendency of the mind to project its disposition onto all of time. Psychologists recognize this as the “present bias”—a shortcoming in our ability to remember different mental states or imagine to different mental states in the future. When one feels sad, one can easily begin to feel as though sadness was all they had ever known and begin to believe that it’s all they’ll ever know—that black hours are in fact years, in fact life.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I do not imagine this line—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">but where I say hours I mean years, mean life</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">—to be the poet at his desk with a pen writing to the reader of how to interpret the poem. Instead, I imagine it to be the man of the Nine of Swords, upright in bed, noticing acutely his own incapacity to imagine a day where his pain was not, realizing that his lament has no future but itself (a realization that we might also call </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">the fell of dark</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In the next line, the speaker goes beyond Emily’s blank and turns his sadness into a religion. His lament is not merely his own—it is the total reaction to life that all honest people must share, “cries countless.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The second stanza continues the religious turn, and it is thick with biblical symbols in a way the first stanza is not. Our dark prophet has awoken from his bed in the night, and now he extemporizes a dense sermon on the fall of mankind and original sin. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">“Gall” occurs throughout the bible, but most particularly in Jeremiah, where the speaker repeatedly says that God gives the people “the water of gall to drink.” It symbolizes bitterness, and it is the bitter bile that our own bodies produce. Heartburn is an interesting contrast to gall, because it doesn’t occur in the bible, and it’s an opposite etymological formation. Gall is literally bile and symbolically bitterness; as far as I can tell, heartburn first meant anger and bitterness, and then later came to refer to the painful sensation of stomach acid lurching into the throat. And so the speaker declares identity with both ends of a metaphorical loop: bitter bile, bitter heart.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But what is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God’s most deep decree? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">My guess is that it’s the first commandment given to Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, and then later after they ate, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow thou shalt eat of it all the days of thy life…in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground…</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But what did the fruit of the tree of knowledge taste like when they ate it? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">My taste was me</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> is so strange grammatically because it’s preceded by the subjunctive mood. God’s most deep decree would have me taste bitterness, my taste was me. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Was me</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">. A completed action. God’s most deep decree presages future tastes, but the fruit of the tree has already been tasted: the fruit of the tree is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">me</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> and is therefore also gall and is therefore also heartburn. I taste the fruit and sense that my bones, my flesh, my blood—they are brimming with the curse that Eve brought onto the human race by abrogating God’s most deep decree. The fruit she digested lives on in my bile.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> But the very words “blood” and “flesh” hold intimations of redemption in the figure of Christ—a figure notably absent from the poem. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">. What a twist! This line contains within it the tension between the traditional Jewish symbolism of yeast as sin and Jesus’ shortest parable: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Although this redemptive potential exists in the line, it remains overwhelmingly sour. This is a poem that still awaits its Messiah, and so the selfyeast of spirit still reads as ruin. Indeed, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">the lost are like this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">: leavened but alone. Our speaker holds tight to some still-existing hope, for though he is separate from his heart, he is also apart from the lost. He sweats like them, but they are somehow worse.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I like to think that the speaker, upon finishing this stanza of thought, remains upright in his bed. He has merely given himself away to a waking nightmare. He sits, eyes wide, staring, ruminating on our fallen state, sweating the cold sweat of despair. How can he awake from this poem? He woke once to the fell of dark—to the blank of pain—he tastes the bitter bile of his own body—but how can he wake from the deeper sleep of the blank of these infinite realms?</span></div>
<br />Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-30408026885687395442020-06-28T22:13:00.002-07:002020-06-28T22:13:41.782-07:00Comments on Poems 4: "A Word Made Flesh"<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">From Emily Dickinson:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A Word made Flesh is seldom</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And tremblingly partook</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Nor then perhaps reported</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But have I not mistook</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Each one of us has tasted</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">With ecstasies of stealth</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The very food debated</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">To our specific strength —</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A Word that breathes distinctly</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Has not the power to die</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Cohesive as the Spirit</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It may expire if He —</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">“Made Flesh and dwelt among us”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Could condescension be</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Like this consent of Language</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: #fcfcfc; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 11pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #626262; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">This loved Philology.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In this poem, we receive the Gospel According to Emily. As Matthew and Luke’s gospels are said to be derivative of Mark’s, so Emily’s is derivative of John’s, whose gospel starts,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In the beginning there was the Word [</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">logos</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. […] And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us. […]</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In the remainder of John’s gospel, a few additional lines stand out as pertaining to this poem:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">John 3:6—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of Spirit is spirit.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">John 4:24—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God is a Spirit.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">John 6:4—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life…</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">***</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The more I recite this poem to myself, the more it feels like an internal dialogue wherein each line extends, responds to, or turns the line previous, with an air that is unplanned and spontaneous. It’s as if Dickinson is in her study reading the gospel of John, comes across the statement, “And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us,” and then looks up thoughtfully and speaks aloud—an accidental monologue wherein she reforms John’s notions in her own image.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Already in her first two words, she has transcended the gospel of John. For John, </span><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Word made flesh had been from the beginning, had been with God, and even was God. But Emily’s is only </span><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">a</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Word made flesh—one of an implied multiplicity. And what are the parts of this multiple? For John, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">logos</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> signifies something beyond symbols—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Word </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">is his figuration of the Divine— a metaphor. The switch of article from </span><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> to </span><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">a</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> shifts the referent from something outside of language to the parts of language, so I can only assume the dictionary to be her multiple. Her new article exchanges the metaphorical “Word” for literal words.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">“The Word made Flesh” is John’s figuration of God’s condescension—the enfleshment of a Divine Principle in the person of Jesus Christ. By shifting one element of that metaphor, “Word,” towards the literal, Emily constructs an entirely new metaphor. How can parts of speech be made flesh? I take it to symbolize that moment when a morsel of speech succeeds in meaning-making—the moment when a word’s contents seem tangible to the mind.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And this, says Emily, is seldom. Of course, in the second line it is discovered (surprisingly) that “seldom” refers to “partook” and not to the “Word made Flesh,” but the first line on its own is too arresting not to take it as a full, complete thought in its own right before reshaping its meaning in the second line. It is so arresting that upon each internal recitation, I take it as aphorism.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> (And this is what I mean by the spontaneous, turning, unplanned feeling of the poem. This poem, more I think than any other I’ve sat with, transcends itself over and again by turning the thread of thought with each line.) (One more side-note on taking the first line as an aphorism: “seldom” is both adverb and adjective, enhancing the initial ambiguity of what it modifies. Were it instead “seldomly,” the entire cadence of the first stanza would differ, and this to the detriment of a poem so beautiful for ambiguity)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">So what could “A Word made Flesh is seldom” mean as aphorism? There is a great irony in this first line that I find difficult to express. Christianity maintains that </span><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">the</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Word was only made flesh </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">once</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">. Nothing is more seldom than </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">once</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, and so Orthodoxy might turn its head at this line in surprise and ask, “well, what were you expecting?” Although the article shift distinguishes Emily’s “Word” irrevocably from John’s, the starkly religious context can only indicate that she is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">also</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> saying something about religion in this aphorism. And what she seems to be saying contextually is the apparent opposite of what she is actually saying. If we take “Word made Flesh” (articles unconsidered) to represent some sort of Divine manifestation, then Emily troubles Orthodoxy by assuming most would find such revelation to be more commonplace than it is and then responding to this unvoiced assumption by saying not that it is actually more rare than supposed. Her aphorism responds to a question Christianity cannot ask.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Now let us reconsider the article. If I’m correct that she’s speaking metaphorically of the ability of words to convey meaning, then her aphorism is saying that words seldom work—the sense (as indicated by her allusion) being not for pragmatic, day-to-day tasks, but for the transcendent. And so her Orthodoxy-troubling aphorism troubles Orthodoxy yet again by maintaining that the sublime resists words: that which is meant to be signified by John’s “Word” itself resists signifiers.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And then, as though this were not puzzle enough, the sentence extends into the second line that reveals the true verb of the sentence—not “is” but “partook.” </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A Word made Flesh is partook</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">: this is the skeleton of the first clause we are given, stripped of modifiers. Notably, she writes it in the passive voice. Who is partaking? Is it her? Is it someone else? Is it a crowd of people? Is it all people? “Partake” holds communal connotations. To partake is to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">take</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> your </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">part</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> in a collective experience. It also evokes communion—of which John’s Jesus says, “whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life…”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And so Emily revises her statement about language. The aphorism is undone (and is, grammatically, a part of its own undoing). It’s not that words seldom touch transcendence, but that we seldom partake—and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">tremblingly</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> when we do. (I love the constriction of the mouth in the repetitive “leeenglee”—a vocal reverence that evokes, to me, the constricted repetitions of ritual). It’s as though Words ready and willing to be made Flesh surround us on all sides, but we seldom think to take our part in them. If the first line already transcended John, in the second, we have transcended that transcendence and entered a new realm entirely.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But what can we say of this new place the poem has taken us? As if the first two lines had been some negation (they weren’t), Emily begins her third line with a mystifying “nor.” The following “then” indicates that the trembling part we have taken in a Word made Flesh has constituted such an event that whatever comes next is separate. And now a “perhaps,” which I sense modifies “nor,” making that befuddling negation befuddle us further by the speaker’s uncertainty. I think it best to extend the grammar skeleton thus: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A Word made Flesh is partook then reported. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">So what is it that we can say of this new place the poem has taken us? We would like to report it, but we are befuddled by strange and tentative negations that stand in our way.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And this is, once more, a clever attack on conventional Christianity, whose Christ commands his disciples to go into all the world and report what has happened. “The Word made Flesh was partook then reported” could be a brief, slightly poetic, and entirely accurate account of the disciples of Jesus in the gospel of John.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But maybe we’re missing something. Emily herself wonders as much in the last line of the first stanza. Have I not mistook? The parallel takings in “partook” and “mistook” amplify the tension of her double-take. Even when we feel to have tremblingly partaken in the communication of something sublime, how do we know we have not mistaken, instead? By this point in the poem, so many possible meanings have floated through the mind that I cannot tell to which her question points. Or perhaps she does not question the potential meanings at all, but the entire project. Have I not mistook in trying to compose a poem about words becoming flesh? Have I not mistook in trying to use words to get at my meaning? Like the aphorism of the first line, this question arrests. And as the second line of the first stanza turns in a surprising direction that clarifies the direction of her thought, so the next line clarifies her question.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">...</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I’m very interested in the relationship and contrast between “condescension” and “consent.” She uses “consent of language” as a way to reframe the notion of “condescension.” In a way, these two words are synonyms. But in another way, they are antonyms. Importantly, both carry connotations with right, rank, power, and kingship (thus the religious use to refer to the descent of the “king of kings” into mortality).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Both words mean “to yield,” but it’s the directionality that differs. “Condescension” generally implies voluntarily waiving a superior position—to yield one’s rights of status. “Consent,” meanwhile, generally implies yielding when one has power to oppose; hence the phrase, “consent of the governed.” The directionality of “condescension” is from high status to low, of “consent,” from low status to high.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The implication of the statement “Could condescension be this like consent of language?” would be that language is both above us </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> beneath us. We yield to it; it yields to us. And this parallelism is itself paralleled in the final line which renames “this consent of language” as “this loved philology.” “Loved,” a quotidian word (and missing a definition of the “lover,” who I imagine as all of us), carries the directionality of “consent,” while “philo” carries the weight of Greek, implying love with the directionality of “condescension.” Could “philo” here indicate the love that language has for us? Understanding “Logos” as “the Word,” could “philology” be a stand in for the love of God?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And not just any “consent of language” but </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> consent. Where does the demonstrative point? Most immediately to the biblical passage.. But the quote is borrowed to complete the conditional “if” statement of the previous four lines, which is itself an extension of the simile “Cohesive as the spirit…” This simile only reframes her (aphoristic) comment, “A word that breathes distinctly/ Has not the power to die.” And this aphorism seems to follow from the logic of the eight lines that precede it, which are all the consequences of her own first thought, “A Word made Flesh is seldom.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Could condescension be that language comes down to us from the past and yet consents to our creative (mis)uses of it? Could condescension be that language allows for our partaking yet consents to our </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">mis</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">taking, as well?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-30f4b92c-7fff-23c7-80e4-5eb7d230ac84"><br /></span>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-48912568814344836902020-06-28T22:12:00.000-07:002020-06-28T22:12:42.674-07:00Comments on Poems 3: "I wandered lonely as a cloud"<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">BY </span><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-wordsworth" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">WILLIAM WORDSWORTH</span></a></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-46a45ee3-7fff-cdaa-da01-a8114ed6742d" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I wandered lonely as a cloud</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">That floats on high o'er vales and hills,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">When all at once I saw a crowd,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A host, of golden daffodils;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Beside the lake, beneath the trees,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Continuous as the stars that shine</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And twinkle on the milky way,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">They stretched in never-ending line</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Along the margin of a bay:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Ten thousand saw I at a glance,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The waves beside them danced; but they</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">A poet could not but be gay,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In such a jocund company:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I gazed—and gazed—but little thought</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">What wealth the show to me had brought:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">For oft, when on my couch I lie</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">In vacant or in pensive mood,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">They flash upon that inward eye</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Which is the bliss of solitude;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And then my heart with pleasure fills,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And dances with the daffodils.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I was very interested in this poem from the outset because John Stuart Mill credited Wordsworth's poetry for almost instantly catalyzing his recovery from an intense depression upon reading another of Wordsworth’s poems, </span><a href="https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/my-heart-leaps" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">“My heart leaps up.”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> For some time after his episode of melancholy, Mill said that he understood his calling in life as being the persuasion of those of an intellectual disposition that poetry has merit. In an essay on poetry, Mill said that Wordsworth was a writer who came to poetry himself from an intellectual disposition (as opposed to Coleridge, whom Mill described as more “poetical” by nature, and so more difficult for the intellect to grasp). Back when I was reading Mill, I'd never ventured into Wordsworth's poetry, so this was an exciting opportunity to me.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And what figures the disembodiment and loneliness made possible by intellect better than a cloud? The ruminating thinker floats above, over, on top of all that rambles through the mind, disconnected from the world of perception, alienated from subjective experience—lonely. But Wordsworth—almost intimating Mill’s satori—reports that a transformation can occur “all at once” upon perceiving something beautiful. Whereas the cloud is figured as all one (i.e., alone), the daffodils are not only a “crowd” and a “host,” but they’re also situated in a broader company “beside” and “beneath” other features of the landscape. And in a relationship perhaps more poetical than intellectual, the “golden” color of the daffodils seems to me the very antithesis of loneliness. What I love most about this first stanza is how the daffodils’ golden influence is so profound that it alters the very meter of the poem in the final two lines of the first stanza, when the words themselves begin to flutter and dance in a sudden turn from iambic to dactylic feet.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The emergence of the stars in the second stanza has puzzled me. Yes, stars do seem continuous, but to me, at least, they continue in a very different way than daffodils along a bay. The stars don’t merely continue in a line—they also continue across time with such stability as to provide orientation across many dimensions of human life (from sailing to astrology). Daffodils may dance with glee, but they’re seasonal ephemera, not continuous anchors. The only way I can redeem this simile is to judge it a prefiguration of the way daffodils serve to orient the mind of the poet in the final stanza, though it feels a stretch.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I love the third stanza. Again, we see the daffodils joined by other forces, emphasizing their togetherness with all that surrounds them. The enjambment in the first two lines strikes me as particularly important, given that it’s the only instance of enjambment in the poem. For me, it serves to emphasize the other “they”—the daffodils—and the verb at the start of the second line—“out-did.” My favorite thing about this stanza is the meta-commentary on what it means to be a poet. A poet can’t help but be affected by his company. A poet lets features of the world enter him and change his mood, thus overcoming cloudy loneliness. He builds up wealth for himself by implanting images within his mind that he can later use to repicture the world.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The final stanza was so relatable to me. Losing myself to spirals of thought or catching myself staring off vacantly have been features of my most poignant episodes of melancholy, and I love imagining Wordsworth caught away in such an episode when suddenly the flash of daffodils in his inward eye returns his heart to dancing. I imagine this precise experience also characterizes the effect of Wordsworth’s poetry on Mill after his melancholy. Much can also be said about the “bliss of solitude” and the way it contrasts with the loneliness of the first stanza. What comes to me now is the way this last stanza juxtaposes two varieties of inwardness—that of vacant pensiveness opposed to inward image-making—imagination. Loneliness, pensiveness, and vacancy all cloud our sight—but the inward eye sees what is not there now, blissfully.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Imaginative practices, I take Wordsworth as saying, are what make us truly wealthy. I completely agree, and I feel wealthier for having absorbed this poem.</span></div>
<br />Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-82753436580661797512020-06-28T22:11:00.000-07:002020-06-28T22:11:03.453-07:00Comments on Poems 2: "God's Grandeur"<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">God's Grandeur </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">BY </span><a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gerard-manley-hopkins" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="-webkit-text-decoration-skip: none; background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS</span></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The world is charged with the grandeur of God.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-034f1146-7fff-04c4-b629-e92d2fe71f73" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And for all this, nature is never spent;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And though the last lights off the black West went</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Because the Holy Ghost over the bent</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">My chief interest in this poem is Hopkin’s movement from irony to earnestness—or at least, what I read as such. I’ve played around with reading the entire thing as earnest and the entire thing as ironic, but for me the text sustains neither reading in its whole and instead communicates a sudden movement from one to the other.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">There is a duplicity to the word “charged” in the first line. For my first many readings of the poem, this word meant for me the same thing it means for a battery to be charged: filled with pulsating energy. But the more I sat with the following lines, the more I realized the possibility of an ironic reading—that the world has been charged with God’s grandeur the same way a thief may be charged with robbery in a court of law. Whatever meaning you ascribe to that first word completely changes the mood and tenor of the poem: the electric charge of the world fills the reader with awe, but legal charges fill me with bitterness and ire.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">I see no possibility beyond irony in the second two lines. “It will flame out” and “It gathers to a greatness” invoke the seriousness of scripture, but the appended similes are surprising. When I hear “the shining of shook foil,” I see in my mind the image of my uncle and his sons carrying metal sheets back behind the barn, and I wonder what other possible connotations “shook foil” could have beyond the glimmer of light reflecting on construction materials. When I read “like the ooze of oil,” something in me recoils, and I see gross barrels oozing at their seams. How could the charge be electric when the similes themselves are </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And then the timpani beat at the broken line: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Crushed.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> Grammatically, this is describing the oil, isn’t it? As if something is crushing barrels causing the oil to leak? Its place at the beginning of the line, though, brings it to the fore as a meta-comment on the poem thus far, and to my ear it does the same when I read it aloud. My own hopes that the world be charged with the electricity of God’s grandeur stand crushed when I try to understand the supernatural by means of such mundane and mucky metaphors. When I reach this word, I reread the first few lines of the poem and see “charged” as a legal term and “crushed” as what happens to promises like “it will flame out” and “gather to a greatness” when viewed in terms of the similes provided.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Upon reflection on lessons learned in my churchy youth, the oil metaphor, though initially material, does seem to point to something more divine. Oil is crushed from the olive in the press, and prior to his crucifixion, Christ bled from every pore in the olive garden of Gethsemane (a name that means “olive press.”) Though it may be ironic to say that God’s grandeur gather’s to a greatness in the ooze of man-made oil, and though all our hopes may be crushed by our toiling world, and though God himself may stand on trial for the world he has created, yet redemption oozes at the olive press through the torment of Christ’s atonement and intimations of the final earnestness of Hopkins theology withstand the battering winds of his doubts and live there, embedded beneath the irony in a turn that feels transcendent.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">But I hold that to be a mere suggestion, food for thought, not overtly present in the voice I hear when I chant the text to myself in my mind, because the intensity of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Crushed</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> speaks far more to the pain of doubt than to an epiphany of transcendence, and it’s followed by what must be the ironic highlight of the poem, a question to which both the preceding and following lines stand as answer. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Why do men then now not reck his rod? </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> I read this as seven concatenated drum beats of stress before the release of the final iamb, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">his rod. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">The tension is incredible. It makes this line one that you can keep in your mouth for hours, like a potent lozenge that refuses to finish its flavor. This question can be read in two ways: “Why, then, do men, after knowing this, not reck his rod?” And, the slightly more tenuous but still inescapable, “Why do men, then as well as now, not reck his rod?”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">Although we need look no further than shining of foil and oozing of oil to answer this question (that life is suffering and makes no sense and so it seems useless to reck the rod of a heartless God), the following lines further highlight the irony of the question, ringing with clear intonations of the Book of Ecclesiastes, whose author tells us that “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.” It may remain forever, but all our toil and our trade have shorn it of life, and our own feet are separated from contact with the earth by our shoes (that very same raiment that we must remove if we are to stand in God’s presence, as Moses before the bush).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> After the flurry of irony and percussive anger in the first two quatrains, I read a movement in the speaker’s mind that begins after the space. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">And for all this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">—“for” meaning “because of” or “on behalf of?” I prefer the latter—And for the sake of that whole nasty process</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">, nature is never spent / There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> No matter how I read these lines, I can intone no irony into their pure song, but doubt returns so quickly as even as the speaker must acknowledge that the very morning he celebrates comes at a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">brown brink</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> (which I read as a comment on the smudge of pollution that dirtied Victorian skies with hazy coal smog).</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">After paying brief homage to his doubts, the speaker moves further towards earnestness, acknowledging the brooding hen of the Holy Ghost over the world, a strikingly natural metaphor in a poem that has hitherto insisted on employing figures of trade and toil. The world is bent, yes, but </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;">ah!</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Calibri,sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"> the wings of God are bright despite it all. And how like this interjection comes God’s earnest grace amid the selfyeast of so much doubt! </span></div>
<br />Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-87155472797035015432020-06-28T22:10:00.003-07:002020-06-28T22:11:20.458-07:00Comments on Poems 1: "What Can I Tell My Bones?"<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">What Can I Tell My Bones?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">(Section 1 of 3)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Theodore Roethke</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">1</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Beginner,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Perpetual beginner,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The soul knows not what to believe,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">In its small folds, stirring sluggishly,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">In the least place of its life,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A pulse beyond nothingness,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A fearful ignorance.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> Before the moon draws back,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> Dare I blaze like a tree?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">In a world always late afternoon,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">In the circular smells of a slow wind,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I listen to the weeds' vesperal whine,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Longing for absolutes that never come.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And shapes make me afraid:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The dance of natural objects in the mind,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The immediate sheen, the reality of straw,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The shadows, crawling down a sunny wall.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> A bird sings out in solitariness</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> A thin harsh song. The day dies in a child.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> How close we are to the sad animals!</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> I need a pool; I need a puddle's calm.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">O my bones,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Beware those perpetual beginnings,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Thinning the soul's substance;</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The swan's dread of the darkening shore,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Of these insects pulsing near my skin,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The songs from a spiral tree.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> Fury of wind, and no apparent wind,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> A gust blowing the leaves suddenly upward,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> A vine lashing in dry fury,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> A man chasing a cat,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> With a broken umbrella,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 12pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> Crying softly.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">This poem reads to me like a stranger’s messy room. I hold up a sentence here, a couplet there, look at it a moment, wonder at its proper place, and then end up setting it back on the ground while I examine another. It's a floor littered with sentiment and meaning, strange objects that must be profound to the lodger, all arrayed in patterns suggestive of connections I cannot see.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Is it truly a mess, or did the tenant lay them out this way? What sort of a person lays out such an assortment of oddities? Who sets swan fathers and straw and dead insects all in spiral around a withered branch of pine? What meaning could the missing occupant have ascribed to this jumble?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Beginner</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">. I set a feather back in its place but can’t turn away from the floor and so pick up a dried hornet and just hold it in my hand, wondering softly—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">perpetual beginner</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">. I don’t know what to believe about this room, about its dweller. I’ve never met him, but I somehow see a balding, portly man in my mind, crescent of bare skin crowned by white, wispy hair, tears running down the crow-footed wrinkles round his eyes.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A cat meows, and I turn my head to see an orange tabby walking nervously, back arched, hair standing up on the end, and then it scampers away beneath a bed that holds a broken umbrella on its surface, arched backwards like an empty cup.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">This room stirs something inside me, something sluggish, something small—</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">a pulse beyond nothing, a fearful ignorance</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">. I’ve lost myself for hours here, I realize, and not a thing has been done. My head a-daze, my tongue dry, my body inflamed, my mind comes suddenly to a sharp point around the sad, harsh song of a solitary bird, and I peer outside the window to discover its source, but the bird hides from my view. It cries again and feels closer, closer.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I regard the world outside, a world windy though I see no wind at all—only windy shadows winding their way in slow circles of the late afternoon. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">And shapes make me afraid. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">In my eye's corners I think I see lashing vines and gusts of leaves but when I look, all jumps back to stillness. All I can see is the the immediate sheen of an ambient world all twisted by the day’s dying light.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Even sunset cannot save me from the dizzy of disobedient light. The full moon rises, casting darker shadows with its ebullience than daylight can muster and sets a single tree on the hillside ablaze and I suddenly yearn, I yearn, I yearn, but for what? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">To dare to somehow be a tree again.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 1.2839972727272726; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I want so badly for this room—this poem—to make sense to me, to mean something. But absolutes never arrive. In place of meaning, I find only mood.</span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-d6276d73-7fff-62b3-686a-38d113a03972"><br /></span>Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-42332922195809002462020-06-28T22:09:00.000-07:002020-06-28T22:09:19.259-07:00In Praise of Good Conversation<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We sometimes say that a person is good at conversation, but what can we say of what that means? When someone is good at chess, it’s because of how often they win. We don’t often say people win at conversation, but the contrast between chess and conversation could have something important to reveal.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both chess and conversation have rules. There are, of course, variations on these rules—when I was young, my dad decided that in our house, “en passant” was against our “house rules” because it was too obscure. The house rules of conversation likewise change from place to place. They can be a bit different between families, workplaces, and friend groups, but the biggest differences are between cultures and languages. House rules can only be so different, though. If I came across a house where they decided that the shape of chess pieces didn’t actually matter, that all the pieces could only move diagonally and that you took an opponent’s piece by hopping over it, I might say “This isn’t even chess anymore. It’s checkers.” Likewise, when I see one person talking at length and the other only listening, I might say, “this isn’t even conversation anymore. It’s a lecture.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both chess and conversation have goals. In chess, the player’s goals are part of the rules. We all know that both players want to yell out “checkmate!” once they put their opponent’s king in a position where it cannot move without getting killed. In this respect, conversation shows its dissimilarity: it’s a game that lets its players bring their own goals to the table, sometimes clear, sometimes obscure. Stranger still, you or I can feel the pull of a conversation, sense there’s something critical to be obtained, but remain completely, willfully or unwillfully, oblivious to our own goals.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both chess and conversation are made up of turns and moves. Each turn, the players make the move they think will best get them to closer to their goal. When we watch a game of chess, we can assess what each player’s moves do for their progress towards the goal of victory by saying, “this was a bad move” or “that was a good move” accordingly. In conversation, we take turns talking, and our moves are the comments we make, each taking us closer to our goals or moving us further away. When we watch people talking, though, it’s harder to say what’s good and what’s bad because we can’t be sure of everyone’s goals. I might say a comment was bad only to later learn that I’d misjudged the person’s goals.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So when we converse, it is critical that we understand what our goals are and that we have a picture of the way we’ll know we’ve attained them. Competitive games set up mutually exclusive goals. You and I cannot both win our game of chess: only one of us can cry “checkmate” at the end. Conversation’s flow is so flexible that not only can all players attain their goals, but new goals can emerge in a flash that change the meaning of each move. When a conversationalist’s shifting goals are out far beyond the horizon of his partner’s vision or sunk deep down below his own awareness, the radical change in the moves he makes can be alarming. To prevent this, he may need a higher goal, an anchor, a partner to the other goals that arise and fall in his heart.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">People who study games call the study of moves “tactics” and the study of how they fit together “strategy.” If a chess player is a marvelous tactician and an excellent strategist, we might say she is a “good chess player.” But if someone told me they had a friend who has great conversational tactics and is very strategic in the way she talks with people, I wouldn’t say she sounds like a good conversationalist. I’d say she sounds like a politician.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Games don’t come to mind when I think of a good conversationalist. Instead, I think of dancing. Some dances have set rules, yes, but in the case of dancing, the goal isn’t set out by the rules: the goal </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the rules. If you and I set out to tango, our goal is to perform the tango perfectly, with elegance and grace. Like conversation, the rules of dancing exist even when they can’t be expressed in words. Whether it’s the tango, or break dancing, or an informal night at the club, each dance is governed by the higher law of the beat.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When a dancer has spent years studying beats with her body’s motion, she develops ways of moving that are all her own. We call this her </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">style</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. When two people have danced long enough together, they find a style that belongs to both of them and to neither of them, some strange admixture of the moves they make within a ruled constraint, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The master duet is lost to self in a flow that follows the beat.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I meet a good conversationalist, it’s like this. No matter the rules of conversation that govern our interaction, whether he’s mastered them or not, he listens first to discern a rhythm. Once found, he moves to it in a way that’s all his own. When I take his hand, we dance in turn, move by move, building the very beat we follow but losing ourselves so completely that it feels beyond us.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everyone comes to conversation with goals, but we don’t always contemplate them. That’s not to say that no one is ever aware of their goals, but situations and needs tend to rule the day. I need money, so I have conversations with my colleagues at work that are governed by the goals of my role. I’ve offended someone close, so I seek to make amends. I want to persuade someone, so I put my voice behind a cause. Few people contemplate between all possible goals of conversation and discipline themselves to the ways of the very best one.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But is it possible to say anything that might apply to every single conversation? Can I find a higher goal to anchor myself to while I go about these lesser tasks so that whether I win or lose the small games, I can be sure to win the highest game I give myself to play?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here we have a microcosm of the ultimate question: is there anything I can say about the whole of life that would apply to every situation or circumstance? Is life merely a series of moves we make for a game we can never win? What is the best the goal for a human life?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A good conversationalist, of course, would address these questions by holding out his hand and inviting me to dance. “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What do you think?”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> he would ask. In my answer, he would hear the beginnings of a beat, and he’d follow it, then listen closely to my next move to watch where the beat would go. He would stay strictly to the beat of the talk but in a voice unmistakably his own. Before I could even pause to think of how it happened, we’d lose ourselves in the motions of a dance that would also be an answer, a high goal, an anchor and a partner to the flux of human life.</span></div>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-78677219971716556272020-06-28T22:07:00.003-07:002020-06-28T22:07:35.923-07:00Of God's Realness<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Life can feel enliveningly real or witheringly fake. Dreams can seem more real than waking life, but most we sense correctly as fabrications of the sleeping mind. I say there is an unseen organ of the soul that senses the realness of things and that communicates it's findings to the heart through the glow of meaningfulness. In the drift of depression, this organ goes blind, and our only touchstone to meaning becomes the void of meaning's absence. In that full-filling feeling some call enlightenment, the organ is sharpened so finely that all phenomena feel fully real, fully meaningful.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
I've puzzled long over what belief is. I decided it's the name we give to realness when its attached to ideas. Notice when someone says they "can't believe what is happening," they don't mean to say they deny the facts but that they have no sense that the idea of the thing is real. Our sense of reality or unreality does not hinge on facts.</div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Sensations of realness are unreliable narrators to the true events of the world. In fact, I don't believe them to be a function of reality at all, but a function of attention. The more we attend to an idea as real, the more our sense of its realness grows, nourishing our sense that life is meaningful. The more we attend to an idea as unreal, the more our sense of its unreality grows, and at times this can threaten our sense that life itself is meaningful.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> If one focuses on fantasies long enough, one can sense the reality of any number of gods.</span></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
What then could be said of God to assuage my skeptic soul?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Nothing, if not for beauty.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Ideas are portraits that we can sort by raw aesthetic appeal as much as by any other quality. What I call God is whatever idea stands atop my pantheon of beauties, beckoning my gaze. As I attend to the most beautiful idea, the realness I sense in its (and all) beauty grows.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> So s</span>eek beauty to fill life full with life! <br /></div>
<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
And I pray for a shapeshifting God. May my attention to beauty wander so wide that an equanimous realness compresses my pantheon of beauties until all hierarchy succumbs to its warmth, until the focus of my worship widens to embrace the Godliness of life.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-41035347599931101092019-08-09T10:51:00.003-07:002019-08-09T10:51:40.476-07:00RealnessWhen something significant changes in someone's life--a death, an upcoming move, a new job--people often say, "it doesn't feel real yet." Conversely, powerful dreams or hallucinations can feel just as real as daily life, and sometimes even more real. "It is as if," writes William James in the second chapter of Varieties of Religious Experience, "there were in the human consciousness <i>a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception </i>of what we may call '<i>something there,</i>' more deep and more general than of the special and particular 'senses' by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed."<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In the drift of depression and anxiety, it is possible for this sense of reality to be eroded altogether. Everything that anchors us to existence--the need to eat, to sleep, to connect with others--can suddenly seem no more than dancing shadows, vain illusions. James quotes a woman describing this experience:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"When I reflect on the fact that I have made my appearance by accident upon a globe itself whirled through space as the sport of the catastrophes of heavens...when I see myself surrounded by beings as ephemeral and incomprehensible as I am myself, and all excitedly pursuing pure chimeras, I experience a strange feeling of being in a dream. It seems to me as if I have loved and suffered and that erelong I shall die, in a dream. My last word will be, 'I have been dreaming.'"</blockquote>
<br />
This sense of realness is strange. Like seeing or hearing, we don't control it. I can't will myself to see what I don't see or hear what I don't hear, and likewise, I can't will myself into feeling that dreams are life or that life is only a dream. Unlike our other senses, though, realness is caught up in our sense of life being worthwhile. Being fooled by any individual sense--hearing something and then realizing it's something else, seeing something and then realizing it's an illusion--doesn't threaten the worthwhileness of life. The realness does. As things feel more and more real, the sense of purpose heightens. As the soul unlaces itself from the body and drifts into that sense that life is mere illusion, fewer and fewer things seem to matter.<br />
<br />
Consider Don Quixote. As long as he feels the realness of his beloved Dulcinea, of his quest, of his station as a knight errant, he moves forward with purpose and meaning, he <i>is </i>Don Quixote. He's capable of enduring hunger, cold, and violence because the palpable sense that everything he believes to be real is real sustains him. But at the end of the novel, doubt creeps in, and his sense of realness finally flips completely. He admits in the end that he was mad, and he dies, despairing.<br />
<br />
Our sense of realness is not tethered to truth, so what determines it? I suspect it has something to do with the system formed by our choices and habits over time. What we attend to, we nourish. What we nourish strengthens. What we disregard withers. Alonso Quixano only took on the name "Don Quixote" and embarked on his quest after years lost to dusty bibliomania, feeding his fantasies with novel after novel chivalric literature. Depression and anxiety, I think, are best understood as negative feedback loops that emerge slowly between thought, choice, biology, and social interaction. Large changes take time to feel real because realness is a slow-growing sense.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-20017558125973228312019-08-06T05:43:00.001-07:002019-08-06T05:43:49.691-07:00On Irrepressible CuriosityIn <i>Varieties of Religious Experience</i>, just after the passage naming the two forms of judgment I wrote about last week, William James writes a sentence that has returned to my mind over and over since I first read it:<br />
<br />
<i>Irrepressible curiosity imperiously leads one on.</i><br />
<br />
This sentence is poetry. The first three words are five syllables each. The first two, "irrepressible" and "curiosity" have identical rhythmic structures: the third syllable is heavily stressed, and the rest unstressed*. "Imperiously," though equal in length, violates this pattern: it is the second syllable stressed, not the third. This effects a turn in the rhythmic pattern of the sentence that concludes with three single-syllable words, each stressed––a percussive triple-beat. There's a musicality to the sentence that makes it memorable and sticky.<br />
<br />
And "imperiously" turns more than the form of the language––it violates our expectations. In what other context have you ever seen curiosity described as "imperious"? It's a new formulation. "Irrepressible curiosity" is evocative and strong, but there's nothing novel to thinking about curiosity as an inner force that can't be contained. But to apply to it imperious connotations of dignity, power, expansion––sovereignty, even––that seems new to me.<br />
<br />
What's more, "irrepressible curiosity" is purely descriptive––there's no value judgment. This kind of curiosity could equally drive one to break into locked rooms or to dedicate one's life to studying how plants grow. "Imperious" is not only a rhythmic turn, and it's not only a turn against our expectations: it's a normative turn, too. By choosing this word, James endows curiosity with the authority to guide one's path and suggests, however subtly, that our curiosities are the bedrock of our dignity, our power, our expansion––our sovereignty, even.<br />
<br />
Contrast the evaluation of curiosity in this sentence with <i>The Impertinent Curious Man</i>, one of the many short stories embedded within the first part of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lothario" target="_blank">Don Quixote</a></i>. In this cautionary tale, the Florentine nobleman Anselmo becomes dangerously curious about the limits of his wife's fidelity. He convinces his friend Lothario to try to seduce her, just so that he can find out whether or not she would capitulate. At first, Lothario refuses, but Anselmo insists more and more until Lothario finally gives in to his request. After Anselmo's wife, Camilla, passes the test, he convinces Lothario to try again in different ways. Eventually, Lothario falls genuinely in love with Camilla, and she with him. After Anselmo finally learns of their betrayal, he dies of grief.<br />
<br />
Far from imperious, Anselmo's irrepressible curiosity impertinently pulls him down. His curiosity is not the seat of his sovereignty, but the weight that drags him headlong into the abyss. On its own, curiosity is no more than a force of nature inside us. It transcends good and evil. It represents an inner drive for knowledge that has no mind for the consequences of knowing things. Anselmo was too eager to know whether his wife could fall in love with someone else to ever wonder whether he could handle knowing that she could.<br />
<br />
So what to make of William James? I turn to his context and to his percussive triple-beat. This poem-of-a-statement is embedded within a preface dedicated to expounding a method for approaching questions about religion. James carefully constructs the path through reasoning and research long before he invites the reader to walk it with him. It is only when he finishes foregrounding his work that he writes to us, "still, you may ask me...why threaten us at all with so much existential study of [religion's] conditions?"<br />
<br />
James writes of curiosity in response to a nihilistic question: why threaten us with questions about religious experience? Why should knowledge about these things matter if it threatens our very foundation? Lest we fall prey to the despair of believing that knowledge has no merit whatsoever, James reminds us of our natural urge towards knowing. He names that urge good, but tempers it with methodical considerations, with the patience to gain "acquaintance with the whole range of its variations." Most importantly, he names his chief aim not "the wholesale condemnation" of religious experience, but to "ascertain the more precisely in what its merits concist...[and] at the same time to what particular dangers of corruption it may also be exposed."<br />
<br />
James differs from Cervantes' Anselmo in his willingness to consider slowly, thoroughly, deliberately, and maintaining a balanced purpose to name the good along with the bad. As this line of poetry embedded in his prose echoes again and again through my mind, it reminds me of the imperious task of applying method, balance, and rigor to inner forces.<br />
<br />
*The "ir" in "irrepressibly" and the "cur" in "curiosity" both strike me as being minorly and contextually stressed, but when I say this sentence aloud to myself, I do not stress them.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-13218781196345309472019-07-28T16:56:00.002-07:002019-07-28T17:32:15.964-07:00Two Forms of JudgmentIn the first chapter of <u>Varieties of Religious Experience</u>, James draws a distinction between two forms of judgment: existential and spiritual.<br />
<br />
He defines existential judgment as an account of material causation. It's the kind of explanations that scientists aspire to, and they're based on the belief that if only we can break a thing down into its parts and see how these parts work together, we can understand and manipulate the world. Existential judgment is the source of all mechanics. It's an account of how things occur: how oxytocin contributes to interpersonal connection, how dopamine motivates us, how endorphins make us happy.<br />
<br />
Spiritual judgment, meanwhile, is an account of value. It's a judgment of what is good and what is bad. It's the form of judgment that we exercise when we decide the best way to live, the best way to work, the best way to govern.<br />
<br />
James uses this division of forms of judgment to distinguish between two ways of looking at religious records, like the Bible. Existential judgment of the Bible is the historical task of working out its origins in the particular histories and peoples of ancient Israel. This task tends towards to diminish its spiritual value for people, who begin to see that it is a product of its time and place. In this lens, it is difficult to maintain that the Bible is "true"--that it is actually an account of God and his communications to humanity.<br />
<br />
But in another sense, James says we can see the Bible as true. Exercising spiritual judgment, we can hold that the Bible and similar texts are "a true record of the inner experiences of great-souled persons wrestling with the crises of their fate" and that they are therefore worthy of spiritual appraisal.<br />
<br />
When I read this sentence, I was struck by the term "great-souled persons." What could it mean to be possessed of a great soul? And what differences could their be between the great-souled and everyone else. Answers to these questions depend on definitions of the terms. I take "great" to generally signify size, and I take "soul" to signify the total path and progress of internal life. Great-souled persons, then, are people whose inner life is immense.<br />
<br />
And what are these people like? In the next section, James describes them as "individuals for whom religion exists not as a dull habit, but as an acute fever rather"--"creatures of exalted emotional sensibility"--people with "discordant inner life." And then he shares an account of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fox" target="_blank">George Fox</a>, who once, a whim, ran through the streets of Lichfield, England screaming "Wo to the bloody city of Lichfield!"<br />
<br />
What would it be like to see a man running down the streets screaming "wo" to your city? It would seem to me Biblical, by which I mean to say utterly mad.<br />
<br />
Through this turn of reasoning, James invites us to reconsider madness, the people we take to be mad, the ideas we take to be mad: are these merely great-souled persons working out the crisis of their own fate?<br />
<br />
This reminded me of Don Quixote of la Mancha, who is utterly and completely mad with the idea that he is a knight errant. Cervantes' classic is sometimes called "the Spanish Bible," and under a Jamesian interpretation, this makes complete sense. What better description of Don Quixote could be made than "the inner experience of a great-souled person working out the crisis of his fate?"<br />
<br />
But how do we balance between existential and spiritual judgment? Despite the pull that characters like Don Quixote have on me, I remain addicted to the precision of thinkers like William James who carefully work their way from definitions to consequences of definitions to analysis of evidence through the lens of definitions. How do we pull value from texts like the Bible while remaining sensitive to their limitations as products of specific socio-historical environs?<br />
<br />
The answer I've come to is never to succumb to either impulse: to take words, their meanings, and evidence seriously, and also to lapse into poetry. I think that spiritual and existential judgment must exist in conversation with each other in order to be meaningful, and I have no interest in communities that excoriate one for the sake of the other: whether that be Sam Harris denouncing religion as purely evil or Baptists maintaining that the bible is the one and only true account of the origins of our world. I aspire to some mixture of punctiliousness of James and the great-souled madness of Don Quixote.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-63980568425107592782019-07-28T16:28:00.002-07:002019-07-28T16:28:42.696-07:00From ParticularsIn his preface to <u>The Varieties of Religious Experience</u>, James says that he believes "a large acquaintance with particulars often makes us wiser than the possession of abstract formulas, however deep." This struck me as concordant with my long-time skepticism of theory and preference for micro-historical accounts to large sweeping histories, but it carried a different valence for me now than it would have a few years ago.<br />
<br />
I find my own anxieties tend towards the abstract. Worries about my own character, about the future, about what other people may think--these tend to be the content of my ruminations when I ruminate, and they're very rarely specific, more like vague, daunting notions--shadow creatures lurking in the background. In a way, anxiety is just the body's reaction to a sort of theorizing: generating abstract conceptions of who we are, what might happen to us, the contents of other people's minds. I've found that particulars to be an antidote to these abstractions, and especially particulars anchored in one's immediate environment.<br />
<br />
For example, the practice of description has helped me soothe my mind quite a bit. When I'm walking down the street to and from work, or when I'm at work, or when I'm at home, if I find myself feeling anxious, I'll sometimes think or write verbal descriptions of the people and objects around me. This focus on the particulars around me has a soothing effect that has helped me to anchor myself quite a bit.<br />
<br />
James is talking here about method for a study of religious experience, but I think that intellectual methods carry broader applications than formal inquiries. They are a mode of mind--a mental practice that shapes and reshapes the patterns of how we think in everyday circumstances. Education is a process of cultivating an entire mind, not merely acquiring a set of mind. Focus on particulars becomes a matter of fruitful habit the purpose of which is something more abstract than the particulars themselves: it's the wisdom James says this focus brings.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-5781207668554629112019-07-28T16:06:00.004-07:002019-07-28T16:06:57.960-07:00Varieties of Religious ExperienceI've been intending to read William James' classic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank">The Varieties of Religious Experience</a> at least since the summer of 2014 when a YouTube lecture first introduced me to him. Recently, I read D.W. Pasulka's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/American-Cosmic-UFOs-Religion-Technology/dp/019069288X" style="text-decoration-line: underline;" target="_blank">American Cosmic</a>, and her exploration of UFOlogy from a religious studies perspective reignited my interest in reading James' investigation of individual encounters with "the divine." So I cracked it open this last week.<br />
<br />
What drives my interest in James' work? First, I like William James. His prose is beautiful, and he thinks with precision. I've been very influenced by his pragmatic philosophy, and I'm interested in exploring his thought further. Second, my own encounters with the feeling of divine inspiration leave me eternally curious about this phenomenon. I wonder what he, especially, thinks about this. I hope it will help inform my own views on the matter. Third, I'm interested in the history of social sciences, and this is a vital text in the history of religious studies. It's an important piece of intellectual history.<br />
<br />
I'm going to try to blog regular, small thoughts about my reading starting with this book in the hope that it will help me discover what I want my writing practice to become.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-68843272770593895862019-07-28T15:57:00.000-07:002019-07-28T15:57:00.929-07:00Writing ProblemsI've run into some problems while trying to write posts about the things I'm reading.<br />
<br />
1. I feel compelled to catch up<br />
<br />
I read recently finished <u>Don Quixote</u> and <u>The Qualified Self</u>, and I feel compelled to write out my thoughts about these books before moving on to what I'm currently reading, <u>The Varieties of Religious Experience.</u> What's more, I have so many thoughts about TV series I've watched this year--<i>The Umbrella Academy, Stranger Things</i>, as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I've started at least 6 posts exploring these things, and it's just become too much.<br />
<br />
2. I don't know what voice to write in<br />
<br />
Sometimes the voice of my writing thickens with poetry, and sometimes it becomes boxy and academic. Other times, it seems oratorical and persuasive, and then suddenly it's journalistic or conversational. I'm not sure what voice to write in, and so I get stuck writing out my thoughts.<br />
<br />
3. My perfectionism kicks in...<br />
<br />
...and I labor fruitlessly over sentences and produce nothing.<br />
<br />
So I need to change my approach. I'm going to forego catching up for now and leave what I've tried to write about the works I mentioned unfinished. I'll start over where I'm at in my reading. And instead of trying to write out entire essays, I'll try writing the thoughts that strike me.<br />
<br />
My purpose here is to jump start the practice. I want to have a writing practice for all the reasons I explained in my last post, and I need to start small and let it take me where it will.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-52071773817040571292019-07-13T18:42:00.001-07:002019-07-13T20:40:33.311-07:00On Reading, ResponsiblyI admit to despising <a href="https://www.blinkist.com/?utm_source=gsn&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=934543119&utm_content=46923236592&utm_term=blinkist_e_222304046546_c_kwd-299463570893_CjwKCAjwgqbpBRAREiwAF046JZ-TCH69OKmhOkaWVC6xFDJOYeag5vp2fh_05q9OZcTl3CwA72ZVlxoCSz4QAvD_BwE&gclid=CjwKCAjwgqbpBRAREiwAF046JZ-TCH69OKmhOkaWVC6xFDJOYeag5vp2fh_05q9OZcTl3CwA72ZVlxoCSz4QAvD_BwE" target="_blank">Blinkist</a>. It was during a mindless scrolling session on my Instagram feed that I first watched one of their promotions, which advertised the 15-minute summaries of non-fiction books that they sell to their audience. In the Blinkist <i>consumption model of reading</i>, "key insights" are packaged and "delivered" to the customer, ostensibly for reflection and learning during free time. "Despise" is a strong word, I guess, but I think it's the flipside of how strongly I wish reading could be so simple.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And I have this wish because I suffer book-thirst. When I wander down the aisles of bookstores or libraries, I'm caught between an excitement for the knowledge and stories tucked away in the tomes I peruse and a gnawing anxiety at the limits of time and capacity for reading. To make matters worse, the excitement often evaporates when I've actually sat down with a book. I find myself distracted by the page number, caught in that same distortion of time that happens when I watch the hands of a clock tick and tock but feel that minutes take hours to pass. I scroll past pages like thumbing through Instagram––mindless until caught by some isolated thought that I love or hate.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Blinkist offers a seductive shortcut. What if I could merely shove plastic plugs into my ears and, as I walk, cook, or clean, passively receive the essence of the books I long to devour? Such a stream of content would surely slake the thirst, it seems. Isn't sound a more effective medium than sight for efficiently delivering the information I long to consume? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But <i>there––</i>that's exactly it––information is exactly the problem. We take "information" to be a neat package of facts to consume, but in his short, provocative <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/019685998801200202" target="_blank">history</a> of that word, John Durham Peters suggests otherwise. Uncovering the origins of the term among disciples of Aristotle in the late Middle Ages, Peters reveals that to "inform" originally meant "to shape from within." </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Sitting with this definition changes the idea of information completely, and with it, my concept of what reading could be. Instead of an object that lives in writing, information can become the subjective process of <i>in-formation</i>––those changes that happen inside me as I respond to what I read.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What is this "book-thirst" I feel? The longer I live with it, the more convinced I become that it's not a lust for knowing facts but a longing for insight into the rich connections of thought, to apprehend the notions I encounter and sense what they change inside my mind. It's not just a longing to read––it's a longing to <i>be</i> <i>in-formed. </i>And the result of the process of in-formation is, I think, to respond.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The experience of reading transforms when response becomes the goal. The clock-ticking, page-scrolling mindless stream of consumptive reading evaporates. My pace slows; time disappears. My mind expands beyond the words on the page and encompasses the colorful panorama of thoughts and feelings they engender. Instead of a feed of symbols to scroll over, the book becomes a world to enter.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In-formation bridges the gap between the excitement to read and the anxiety of never being able to read enough. The problem of "information overload" vanishes once I exchange information––the weight of innumerable facts––for <i>in-formation</i>––the dance of exposure and response.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What are the "key insights" Blinkist promises to deliver? Supposedly, they are the insights that already reside in the book––the nuggets of thought that purportedly live in the text waiting to be delivered to my mind by the process of reading. But like in-formation, in-sight is not a prepackaged item. It's what happens to me when I, painstaking, scale the edifice of a book. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
An in-sight is the summit waiting at the end of a trail of thought. It's the sweat-earned vista that drives climbers to mountaintops. The landscape witnessed at the peak of in-sight is the rivers of me that bend into the book, the ridges and the hilltops of me that rise to meet its meaning, the fields and the meadows of me cast into relief by its height. A 15-minute summary of key insights is just a series of images in a feed––alienated, devoid of context, absent of experience, mindlessly thumbed past on a journey to nowhere.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Contra my own wish for simple reading, I seek edification. The book is an edifice another mind built, and by reading it, I seek to amble their thoughtways and edify myself thereby. Like all dances, reading in this way requires my full participation. And so my primary intention for the new life of this blog is to record my responses––that is, to read responsibly.</div>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-12797599680841381952019-07-06T14:00:00.002-07:002019-07-06T14:00:22.926-07:00Catching UpMy life has changed so much since April of 2015. I decided it would be good to write out a brief narrative of those changes so that I can reference themes or events in future posts. So here goes:<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I remember myself in April of 2015 riding high on the wings of a brand new hope after long feeling paralyzed. The low point had been the month previous. One morning on my drive to school in early March, I had to pull over to the side of the road because I felt too stunned to drive. But stunned by what? A powerful <i>nothing</i> pulled at me––what Solomon Andrew <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Noonday-Demon-Atlas-Depression/dp/1501123882" target="_blank">might call</a> "the absence that is a presence"––what Emily Dickinson <a href="https://www.bartleby.com/113/1019.html" target="_blank">might call </a>"an element of Blank." I sat there, my hands gripped on the wheel the whole time, my eyes staring forward without seeing, breathing slowly and deliberately against the weight pressing in at my chest. It took me well over an hour before I could continue on my way to school.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In retrospect, I call this the weight of empty vision. Our hopes and dreams of the future enlighten us. I don't mean in some vague, mystical sense––I mean that it's actually easier to walk when you (think you) know where you're going (and whether or not you end up in that place)––that lacking a clear vision of what you want from the future can become an absence that presents as heaviness and pulls you down.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Weeks later, just before April dawned, I received news that I'd been admitted to the University of Chicago for an MA program. Suddenly, my future brightened, and the fog inside cleared a bit. I aspired to use my year there to build the portfolio of research I would need to enter a PhD program in Chinese history and eventually become a professor of history.</div>
<br />
But what can I say of what actually happened? From my vantage four years later, I don't think I ever really knew that I wanted to be a historian. I knew that learning about the human past inspired me, that I wanted to write, that I enjoyed conversation, but I didn't know what archival research entailed. I didn't know what questions would motivate my scholarship. I didn't understand academic politics. All I knew was that some institution far away had decided to fund my way out of Utah and into a new world.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And what a rich, enticing world it was! Filled with more people like me than I'd ever encountered––people who wanted to stay up all night talking about the riddles of human society and history, who wanted to explore the mysteries of the mind, who understood the root rage and anger that inspired me to critique the culture I came from. But my rage was often too much for me to sleep, and I learned to self-medicate my way to slumber.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After a blur of books, papers, seminars, music, and parties, it was suddenly August of 2016, and I was graduating successfully but had no idea what to do next. I wanted to pursue a PhD, but I couldn't even afford the application fees. In September, I decided to stay in Chicago and move in with friends, find a way to support myself, and try to make it eventually into a PhD program. But I had to borrow money from a friend just pay rent.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That was a dark winter. I struggled to undo the knots of self-medication that tied me to my bed, but I found myself accompanied once more by the Blank. Terrified, I tutored and freelanced and barely, barely squeezed by. I lost a friend to cancer. Another close friend moved away. But throughout it all, I had one close companion: a roommate who I could speak to in the language of my thoughts, who supported my faltering heart, who believed in me. If the story of my life in the last four years contains a hero, it's her. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In the darkness of that winter, I found <a href="http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEENietzscheSchopenTable.pdf" target="_blank">a passage from Nietzsche</a> on self-discovery that informed my struggle: </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Let the youthful soul look back on
life with the question: what have you truly loved up to now, what has elevated
your soul, what has mastered it and at the same time delighted it? Place these
venerated objects before you in a row, and perhaps they will yield for you,
through their nature and their sequence, a law, the fundamental law of your
true self. Compare these objects, see how one complements, expands,
surpasses, transfigures another, how they form a stepladder upon which you
have climbed up to yourself as you are now; for your true nature lies, not
hidden deep within you, but immeasurably high above you, or at least above
that which you normally take to be yourself. </i></blockquote>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What was the character of the soul that hung suspended above me? Who could I yet become? I contemplated my purpose in life over and over again that winter, and the further back I reached into my memory, the more firmly I believed that the law of my nature had always been to write. I began trying to draft novels in third grade. I've journaled consistently most of my life. I've written poems for as long as I've been able to write at all. So I began trying to jump-start my writing practice, but it felt like trying to start that old mower my family kept in our barn––like I was stuck yanking the pull cord of an engine unwilling to spin.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Slowly, though, everything else in my life improved. I started teaching for a few months in early 2017 and had a discretionary income again. Then a few months later, I was hired by a marketing research company and started making a real salary. I could finally go to the doctor, update my glasses prescription, buy new clothes. But it didn't last very long.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One morning in July of 2017, I woke up to discover the muscles of my hips bound so tight it felt like I was wearing a corset beneath my skin. I'd had chronic back pain since the age of eighteen, but I'd always been able to walk through it. That morning, I was completely stuck. I could barely move, let alone stand to walk. Luckily, though, I was still living with my hero. She rushed home to care for me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After a week of being in bed, I could walk for a few days. Then it hit again, and I spent another week barely able to stand before my muscles softened enough to limp around. The doctor thought it was just a muscle spasm at first, but then my torso contorted, and both of my legs started firing with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sciatica" target="_blank">sciatica</a>. Then my doctor thought it was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosing_spondylitis" target="_blank">ankylosing spondylitis</a>, but I was presenting so many strange symptoms that my physical therapist was flummoxed. For two months, my insurance denied an MRI, and I was trapped hobbling through strikes of pain.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Slowly, my condition deteriorated until one day I could barely lift my legs, and another roommate brought me to the ER. An emergency MRI revealed that my two lowest discs had both herniated in two directions. Discs usually herniate in one direction, and the bidirectional herniation had caused all sorts of atypical symptoms, like the weird contortion of my torso and bilateral sciatica.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
An emergency surgery was scheduled for the next day. I spent a total of 18 days in the hospital that month: first for surgery and recovery, and then for a second surgery to clear out an infection that developed in my spine and threatened my life. In the end, I had to have a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripherally_inserted_central_catheter" target="_blank">PIC IV</a> inserted into my arm so that for the next two months, I could inject powerful antibiotics into my blood each morning.</div>
<div>
<br />
By January of 2018, I was back to working and leading a normal life. The experience of surgery and recovery inspired a new focus on health and fitness, and I started working with a personal trainer. My physical condition steadily improved, and my mental health improved along with it.<br />
<br />
In September of 2018, I decided I wanted to make more gay friends. So I downloaded Grindr again, but I was explicit in my profile that I was just looking for friends. A guy named Zahid started talking to me. He'd just moved to Chicago from San Francisco, and he was looking to make friends, too. We met up one day and ended up spending the entire day together. And then we spent the next day together––and the next, and the next, and the next. Although we'd just been looking for friends, it was immediately apparent we'd discovered in each other something much more than that.<br />
<br />
The whole experience was so delightful and surprising to me. I'd never dated before, and I'd resigned myself to just being single forever. Zahid woke me up from a broken record of internalized self-doubt and taught me the enlivening joy of simply loving and being loved. I ended up taking him home to visit my family for Christmas. They welcomed him with open arms, and he made special efforts to connect with them, too. It was better than I'd ever dreamed it could be. It left me feeling the happiest and wholest I think I've ever felt.<br />
<br />
This year, my relationship with Zahid has continued to blossom. We recently moved in together in a lovely apartment in downtown Chicago. We live here with his dog, Toby, in a space filled with art and plants. He works as a software engineer, and I'm working as a design researcher. I'm enjoying my job, growing in my career, and my life feels the most settled it's ever been.<br />
<br />
As my life has stabilized, I feel new energy and motivation to apply myself to reading and writing again. And that's why I'm restarting this blog.<br />
<br />
There we go––all caught up :)<br />
<br /></div>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-83702547937586683322019-07-04T10:34:00.000-07:002019-07-04T10:35:23.599-07:00Back to bloggingIt's been a little over four years since I last posted on this blog, and I've decided I want to start writing here again.<br />
<br />
I miss regularly publishing on here. I think I stopped because the motivating forces behind my writing dissipated. I used this space to blog my way through a journey out of the closet and out of the LDS Church, but once I landed on my feet in Chicago away from the LDS community and interacting with people who had never known my closeted self, I didn't know what to write about. So I just stopped.<br />
<br />
Well, I stopped writing <i>here</i>, at least. I've done a lot of journaling in notebooks, written a fair amount of poetry, tried my hand at fiction, and kept regular logs of stray thoughts that occur to me from time to time, but I haven't given any of them formal expression in a public way.<br />
<br />
I've wanted to, though. I've tried to start a few different blogs, but it never goes anywhere. Eventually I've realized I don't need to start a new blog when I already have one that I'm not using. The themes and subjects may change, but there's something appealing about maintaining the public record I've already started.<br />
<br />
After all, my purpose for blogging isn't to persuade, to inform, or to educate on a particular set of topics: it's to become. My philosophy of writing, in part, is this: that the practice of passing thoughts through the sieve of language refines, edifies, and elaborates who we are. It gives concrete form to the otherwise nebulous parts of ourselves that pass unformed through the open sky of the mind. Written expression forces such concentration that its practice causes discoveries we could never otherwise make in the distracted, flitting freedom of open contemplation. Writing is an anchor to the soul. I guess the practice of writing has itself become my deepest faith, really.<br />
<br />
And of course, the hope implicit in a blog isn't just to write to me for myself: it's to engage with the thoughts of others. So I hope whatever I come up with in these pages ends up of interest and use to whoever stumbles on it.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-82662958482164503062015-04-13T13:51:00.000-07:002015-04-13T14:23:57.265-07:00Confessions from a Counterfeit: part two<div class="MsoNormal">
***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>**<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>**<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I don’t know. Maybe I believe in life after death because
it’s comforting. Maybe I just believe it because I’ve been taught to my whole
life. But there’s something in it that feels so certain to me. I’ve just never
doubted it before.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What’s so comforting to you about it?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I just love life. I don’t want it to end.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Haha. I’m like the opposite. My life has been really hard.
I look at my baby sister, and I just feel bad that she has to live, too. She’ll
have to suffer like I have. And I still have so many years of shit left to wade
through. I kind of just want it all to end. I’d rather there be nothing after
this life.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“That’s so foreign to me. Isn’t there anything in life you’d
like to continue? I mean, if you could choose what heaven was, would life after
death be worth it?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What do you mean?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well, if there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is </i>a
life after death, then I don’t think I get to choose it. It just happens. If I
came up with my perfect heaven, it would just be some sort of counterfeit I
made up in my head.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I guess you’re right. But I still want to know, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if </i>there were a life after death, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if </i>it was the type that would satisfy
you, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if </i>you knew about it, don’t
you think it would make the suffering more worth while?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It wouldn’t change that the suffering happened.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I guess that’s true.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Let me ask you a question. If everything ended when you
died, and you knew it would end, would you still love life?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’ve never really asked myself that question before.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well what if you’re just doing what you asked me to do?
What if you’re just making some counterfeit image of life, calling it heaven,
and using it to comfort yourself? Death is just a part of life. If you can’t be
okay with it, how can you say you love life?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Wow. That’s a heavy question. But I think you’re right
about one thing. When I say I love life, I mean I love parts of life. I love
the sunrise. I love holding hands with my girlfriend. I love laughing with my
friends. But I really hate it when I get sick. And I hate watching people I
love suffer. And my roommate really frustrates me. When I say I love life, I
don’t think of any of those things.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well if there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was </i>a
life after death, and it was filled with sickness, suffering, and annoying
roommates, would you want that, or no life after death at all?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I mean, if it was all just bad, I wouldn’t want it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“So you say you love life, but really you just love the
parts you like. If life is bigger than just the parts you like, then isn’t your
view of the afterlife just a counterfeit?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m going to have to think about that.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*** <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We want our voice to be heard against all of the
counterfeit and alternative lifestyles that try to replace the family
organization that God Himself established. We also want our voice to be heard
in sustaining the joy and fulfillment that traditional families bring. We must
continue to project that voice throughout the world in declaring why marriage
and family are so important, why marriage and family really do matter, and why
they always will.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--L Tom Perry, April, 2015<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The Lord ordained marriage between male and female as a law
through which spirits should come here and take tabernacles, and enter into the
second state of existence. What is the object of this union? is the next
question. We are told the object of it; it is clearly expressed; for, says the
Lord unto the male and female, I command you to multiply and replenish the earth.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--Orson Pratt, 1852<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The Twelve…believe it to be their privilege before God to
raise up as many children here in the flesh as they can, that they may have a
greater kingdom to rule over in eternity…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oliver Olney, 1845<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“A man’s or woman’s glory in eternity, is to depend upon the
size of the family… A husband’s rank in eternity must greatly depend upon the
number of his wives.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
James H. Kennedy, 1888<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The purpose of increasing one’s family, by marrying several
wives, was to have a numerous posterity. It was taught that the larger the
family, the greater would be the Kingdom over which the father in the Celestial
order of marriage would rule and reign in Eternity.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Annie Clark Tanner<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“According to Joseph Smith, ‘each new woman brought into an
eternal union increased not only the potential size of the family kingdom but
the man’s exaltation as well.’”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Martha Sonntag Bradley and Mary Brown Firmage Woodward<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The principle of plurality of wives never will be done
away… go ahead upon the right principle, young gentlemen, <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">and God bless you forever and ever, and make
you fruitful, that we may fill the mountains and then the earth with righteous
inhabitants<i>.</i></span> That is my prayer, and that is my blessing upon
all the Saints and upon your posterity after you, forever. Amen”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Heber C. Kimball, 1855<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tom Perry:</b> You’re
very lucky you didn’t live to see what happened in the world to the institution
of the traditional family.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brigham Young:</b> I
knew it would get worse. God revealed to me that the world would increase in
wickedness until the end of days, and that only in the mountains of the west
would the true order of the family be maintained.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tom:</b> We fought
our hardest, but in the end the courts ruled against the traditional family,
and even in Utah, counterfeit families were given sanction by the government.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brigham:</b> So the
courts reached as far as Utah in banning the practice of plural marriage? Was
monogamy forced on the people? Surely you maintained the sanctity of God’s
proper order of marriage despite what the courts said?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tom</b>: …<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>…<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>…<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brigham:</b> You
mean, you allowed governments of men to change the will of God???<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tom:</b> Are you not
aware of the Manifesto?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brigham:</b> The
Manifesto? What Manifesto?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tom:</b> God revealed
to Wilford Woodruff that it was his will that the church end the practice of
plural marriage.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brigham:</b> Then
Wilford went astray. God revealed to me as plain as I am speaking to you now
that if the church of God ever abandoned the sacred practice of polygamy, or
allowed his blessed seed to intermix with the seed of Cain, the descendants of
Africa, then it would be apostate and no longer under his guidance.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tom:</b> With all
respect, I think you are mistaken.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brigham:</b> Marriage
between one man and one woman, or between men and women of different races, is
just a counterfeit of the true order of heaven, as things shall be in the
hereafter: that one white man should join in matrimony with many white women so
that they can build kingdoms in this universe to glorify the Most High God.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>****<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Our little systems have their day,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They have their day and cease to be;<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They are but broken lights of thee<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And Thou, oh Lord, are more than they.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At last [we] beat [our] music out.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There lives more faith in honest doubt,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Believe me than in half the creeds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--Alfred Lord Tennyson<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“So I thought a lot about what you asked me last time.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’ve been thinking about it, too. What do you think?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’ve realized that so much of what I think about the world
and how people should live their lives is all based on what I think the world
will be like after we die. But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I </i>created
that world. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I </i>decided in my head what
the ideal would be. And that ideal isn’t the way things are. It’s just a cheap
counterfeit. I’ve believed for so long that my counterfeit vision was the real
thing…but I’m starting to realize that it’s the opposite.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I always thought the suffering and bad parts of this world
were just cheap counterfeits of what was to come in the next life. But I’m
starting to realize, they’re part of the substance of life. They’re intimately
tied to everything I love about life. I can’t just love a part of life, because
the parts I love depend on the parts I hate. We haven’t talked in a few months,
and in that time my girlfriend broke up with me. It’s been miserable. But I
wouldn’t take the relationship back because of all the beautiful moments we had
together.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Life after death used to comfort me so much—but I want to be
done living my life based on counterfeits. I want to understand life <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as it is</i>. If I believe in anything, I
want it to be life <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">before </i>death.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Wow, that’s a big change. But I really like that. Life <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">before </i>death. I’ve been thinking lately
that my perspective was a bit grim. I think there’s something to imagination.
After we talked last, I started thinking a lot about what I wish my life was
like, and it’s caused me to change a few things. And I’m a lot happier.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“But you’re imagining things <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> life, not outside it. “<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I guess that’s right. And it seems to be a really important
difference. If you start with an impossible ideal you’ve made up, and then
judge life by it, life will never measure up. But I guess we can start with the
way things are, and then imagine ways to make it just a little bit better.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="276">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--StartFragment-->
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>***<o:p></o:p></div>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-81625229431157914532015-04-12T12:19:00.005-07:002015-04-12T12:33:04.489-07:00Confessions from a Counterfeit: part one<div class="MsoNormal">
We were sitting at McDonalds in Sunnybank, Australia, relaxed. Laughing with each
other. Enjoying our time. And then they told us they wanted to go see a movie.
We told them we couldn’t, and we needed to get back to work. Leslie looked up
at me and said, innocently,<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I always forget you aren’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i> people.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Twenty
minutes later, we were sitting at the bus stop, and something in me knew she
was right. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Real </i>people actually get
on the bus. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Real </i>people don’t sit at
the bus stop for hours collecting the phone numbers of strangers who might be
interested in their church. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Real </i>people
can care about people because they’re <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">people</i>,
and not potential baptisms.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That night,
when the day finally ended and my companion and I were back at the flat getting
ready for bed, I felt for the first time like missionaries were counterfeits. I
saw an incredible irony: our entire mission was supposedly to love people, but
the very parameters of our mission experience inhibited us from doing just
that—<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Like they
had when we stopped meeting with Andrea. She had become a good friend of ours.
We cared about her. She cared about us. And we had to stop contacting her
because she decided she didn’t believe the Book of Mormon was true. She didn’t
want to go to church anymore. And when we stopped hanging out with her I realized
that instead of loved, she must have felt used.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was easy to forget—we weren’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real</i> people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Counterfeits
aren’t just fakes. They’re fakes that are trying to pass as real. They’re fakes
that are carefully designed to be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
There’s an element of deception in a counterfeit. Maybe that’s why it stung so
deeply this last weekend when L Tom Perry inferred that LGBT relationships are
a “counterfeit lifestyle.” Maybe that’s why I had so much internal conflict
when I felt that night on my mission that missionaries were counterfeit. I
didn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">want </i>to deceive people—and I
wasn’t ever purposely doing that. But when you offer friendship to someone, and
then take it away when they don’t live up to your expectations, you’re
deceiving them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Offering
love only to take it away when someone doesn’t meet your expectations is to
lie.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Offering
acceptance with the hidden agenda of getting someone to behave a certain way is
to deceive.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It really
is that simple.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Something
else interesting happened at this conference weekend. People were in uproar
that anyone would dare decent when President Uchtdorf asked if “any were opposed”
to the sustaining of the General Authorities. It was shocking. And that is
fascinating.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
It is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shocking</i> to answer a question <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">honestly</i>.
Honesty is only shocking where deception and self-censorship are the norm. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SQxQGrM1M-I/VSrHXr0UteI/AAAAAAAADK8/4ldED1eNyAk/s1600/article-2448051-188C33EF00000578-135_634x298.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-SQxQGrM1M-I/VSrHXr0UteI/AAAAAAAADK8/4ldED1eNyAk/s1600/article-2448051-188C33EF00000578-135_634x298.jpg" height="149" width="320" /></a> And I think that among the greatest
deceptions is to say that someone else is a counterfeit. Because we are
deceiving ourselves into believing that we know something more than it is
possible for ourselves to know: the content of another person’s heart; the
intent of their soul.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I’m not calling missionaries counterfeit people. Missions are far too complicated to call any one thing. And I don't think that all the relationships I made as a missionary were counterfeit. But I <i>am </i>confessions something: I spent parts of my mission as a counterfeit.
In fact, I spent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">22</i> years as a
counterfeit: deceiving others and myself into believing that I was something I
wasn’t. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><br />
Honesty was
the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Because when I finally was willing to
honestly raise my hand in opposition to doctrines I find inhumane, people were
shocked. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="276">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]-->
<!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<!--StartFragment-->
<!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Because
honesty is shocking where deception is the norm.<o:p></o:p></div>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-73776252250840657692014-10-08T15:17:00.002-07:002014-10-10T07:21:48.641-07:00Your beliefs are not sacred. And neither are mine.<h4 style="text-align: center;">
</h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://i1.wp.com/tabernaclefortoday.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/holding_hands_by_irv_artshark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i1.wp.com/tabernaclefortoday.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/holding_hands_by_irv_artshark.jpg" height="303" width="400"></a></div>
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
last two posts on the Millennial Mormons blog have sent me thinking. Obviously
my mind first went to Chinese literature and political philosophy. In what
follows, I’ve tried to outline what I find troubling in the attitudes of Blake
Oakley and Samantha Shelley. A brief recap of what they said: Blake Oakley
<a href="http://www.millennialmormons.com/gay-marriage-means-millennial-mormons/" target="_blank">reemphasized the astounding fact that the Church’s doctrine has not changed </a>in
light of the recent Supreme Court decision, while Samantha Oakley <a href="http://www.millennialmormons.com/church-loves-gay-people-jesus-christ/" target="_blank">wrote thatthe Church, and Jesus, still love gay people</a>. It’s the last bit that draws my
attention, and that’s the aspect I’d like to address.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I left
a comment on the post that was sadly censored, but I’ll repost it here:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">“The problem is not that “the church” “hates” LGBT people.
The problem is that the culture and system of thought we have created cause
LGBT people to hate themselves.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">There are a few important points in what I just said that will raise questions:</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">1) “The culture and system of thought we have created”</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">I’m sure your first reaction to that statement will be that this is the
revealed word of the Lord. The problem with holding to that is that in order to
believe that anything is revealed by God by prophets, you either have to
believe that EVERYTHING every prophet has ever taught AS COMING FROM GOD is in
fact truth revealed from God, or you have to have an alternative method by
which to judge what is and is not revelation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">If you choose the former, then by necessity, you believe: that everything
Brigham Young ever taught was the word of God (he taught that there wasn’t a
single word he had uttered on the pulpit that wasn’t the will of God)–this
includes blood atonement, that slavery is moral, and that black people are
inherently inferior. I doubt you accept that as the word and will of God.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">That leaves you to choose the second option–that there has to be some criterion
external to revelation by which we gauge whether or not what the prophet says
EVEN WHEN THEY SAY IT IS THE WILL OF GOD (because Brigham Young did). To believe
this you must, by necessity, believe that there is something higher and more
important than revelation.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">To discover what that criterion is, ask yourself this: in 1852 Brigham Young
testified that slavery was ordained of God; would you as a Latter-day Saint at
that time be morally obligated to believe that, or morally obligated to stand
against God’s prophet and make arguments against slavery? If so, by what
criteria would you judge the morality of Brigham Young’s assertion?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">What’s happening here is far more complicated than revelation. I posit that it
is the process of cultural creation. We create the culture, call it revelation,
and then marginalize people as a result. For more information on the evolution
of church doctrine over time, see the book “This is My Doctrine,” available on
Amazon.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">2) What causes LGBT people to hate themselves?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">If it was only one or two LGBT people experiencing self-hatred or loathing for
their attractions to people of the same sex or gender dysmorphia, then we could
call it a statistical fluke. Based on research from John Dehlin, the accounts
of LGBT people, and my own experience as a gay man in the church, I can say
with surety that it is far more than just a few. Every LGBT person I have ever
met has experienced deep hatred of themselves, their situation, or their life
at one point or another. Because of its common occurrence, we must assume that
there is some external variable causing this phenomenon.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">All evidence that I have received and my own personal experience points that it
is the very culture and system of thought we call “the church” or “Mormonism”
that causes this. It is the very doctrines of the church that create a world
view under which LGBT people do not belong in the eternities–they must first be
transformed into something they are not or have never been–in effect, to gain
exaltation, they must die.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Your sentiments here are well-intentioned, but they fail to grasp the heart of
the issue. And the heart of the issue is this: that our experience in life is
created by the paradigm through which we approach it, that our paradigms are
constructed, and that any paradigm we construct that marginalizes people,
causes disproportionate numbers of youth to be on the streets (see the LGBT
youth homelessness rate in Utah), causes disproportionate amounts of people to
kill themselves (see the research on LGBT youth suicide in conservative
communities, and especially Utah), fails to live up to the values of universal
compassion that we espouse as the crowning value of our faith community.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Declarations of “this is the word of God” are not and never will be enough in
the face of the realities of self-hatred, youth homelessness, and suicide that
I argue are the result of the system of thought you present. And yes, sadly,
that implicates anyone and everyone who is a part of furthering the cultural
paradigm that causes these phenomena. Me, you, and each of us bear
responsibility.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">May we all be brave enough to rethink our deeply held beliefs, because in the
final analysis, beliefs are not sacred. Human life is.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And now for the Chinese literature.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Lu Xun’s “Diary of a Madman,”
published in 1918, laid the foundation of China’s “New Culture Movement.”
Suffering from paranoia, the purported author of the diary brings the reader
with him on his slow descent into madness. First, he fears that the Zhao family’s
dog is somehow angry at him. Then, out on the street, he notices how everyone
is talking about him. They’re watching him. They’re whispering plots against
him. “It’s as if they’re afraid of me,” he writes, “but also as if they want to
hurt me.” What is it? What could they be planning? What were they going to do?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They
wanted to eat him. He realizes it in third entry—the people on the street, his
neighbors, and even his older brother were all planning on eating him. This
sends the madman on a <o:p></o:p><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/greatworks2kaufman/files/2013/04/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/greatworks2kaufman/files/2013/04/1.jpg" height="400" width="341"></a></div>
frightened journey towards the source of their cannibalistic
designs. Looking for any precedence in history, he looks back through the
Confucian classics. Confucianism had been the foundation of Chinese society for
nearly two thousand years. As he reads through the books, the madman slowly
realizes that the hidden meaning between “benevolence,” “way,” and “virtue” was
“eat people,” “eat people,” “eat people.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the
final scenes of the book, the community and elder brother confront the madman.
As he begins to promise them that they can change—that they don’t need to eat
him or anyone else—that there is still hope for them, they call him “crazy” and
lock him in his room. In the closing passages, written in the confinement of
his room, the mandman realizes that it’s too late to save any of them. But the
children—they haven’t been corrupted yet. And so his diary ends with a simple
plea. “Save the children.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The
most striking piece of Lu Xun’s short story is what’s left out. While it’s very
clear that the community thinks he is mad, there is never any explanation of
whether or not he was correct about the people’s cannibalism. This forces the
reader to ask a question—the very question that propelled readers of “Diary of
a Madman” to rise up against the Confucian culture of the past—<i>was the madman insane because he was imagining
the cannibalism? Or was it because he was insane enough to speak against it?<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This
question is reminiscent of the works of political philosopher Hannah Arendt.
Attending the trial of Nazi war criminal Albert Eichmann, Arendt was struck
that he didn’t seem particularly evil. In fact, he was disappointingly normal.
He didn’t personally make the abhorrent decisions—he only carried out orders
given to him from above. And yet, his work was responsible for the death of millions
of Jews. Reflecting on the trial, Arendt wrote a piece for the New Yorker in
which she argued that Eichmann’s evil was not spectacular in its villainy, but
in its <i>banality</i>. In the German
philosophical tradition, banality represented simple thoughtlessness; a refusal
to engage in the critical thinking necessary for true selfhood and true moral
living. Eichmann simply carried out the orders someone gave to him, refusing to
consider his individual actions as carrying moral weight.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Likewise,
Lu Xun’s madman notes that no one particular person was to blame for the cannibalism
that threatened his life. Rather, it was the system of customs and traditions
that shaped them. Lu Xun’s critique was that the Confucian moral system turned
people against each other, causing the rich to metaphorically consume the poor,
and even families to turn against one another. But because they held
Confucianism as sacred, they were trapped up in the banality of evil. Eichmann
was not particularly wicked. He could have been anyone’s father or grandfather.
He was merely convinced of the sacredness of Nazism. He held his beliefs as
sacred. And the result was the ultimate tragedy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I
hesitate to use the example of Eichmann because the hyperbole of Nazism is not
directly applicable to the conversation of LGBT issues and Mormonism. I <i>do not</i> mean to say that any of my further
analysis bears any resemblance to that particular brand of pure evil; I bring
it up to explain and emphasize the <i>banal</i>
characteristic of evil. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Walking away from Arendt’s insight
and Lu Xun’s madman, we are forced to ask ourselves a series of questions. <i>Are beliefs sacred? Can what we believe be a
source of harm to other people? Are values we hold up, like “charity,” “obedience,”
and “traditional family,” really just masks for “eat people,” “eat people,” “eat
people”? </i>I argue that these questions are essential for anyone who takes
morality seriously. And I argue that your beliefs are not sacred. And neither
are mine.<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve
got to qualify this. Belief is a complex process driven by sacred personal
experiences, family connections, and deep historical relationships. I don’t
mean to say that personal experiences with the divine are not sacred. I don’t
mean to say that family relationships are not sacred. What I mean to say is
that your conclusions in regards to what they mean are not sacred.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We encounter
a problem when people begin to lead conclusion-driven lives. When people treat
their beliefs as sacred, they act as if the conversation is closed. Their
beliefs enter a realm beyond questioning and beyond criticism. The answer has
been reached. The solutions are at hand. This is how the Confucians in “Diary
of a Madman” approached life. This is how Albert Eichmann approached things.
And this is how so many on <i>both</i> sides
of LGBT issues in Mormonism approach things. And I include myself in this
criticism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But
obviously I <i>do</i> have an agenda with
this post. I’d love to say that we just need to listen to each other and
everything would be fine. And I <i>do</i>
think that we should listen to each other more. But equally important in that
process is speaking up. And this is what I have to say about the church’s love
for LGBT members:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Behind
the sincere (and I <i>do</i> think they’re
sincere) expressions of love lies a dire, albeit <i>banal</i> phenomenon. The problem is not one of intention—it is
systemic. As a system of belief, Mormonism simply precludes eternal LGBT
identities. This leaves LGBT Mormons floundering for a place. And it results in
<i>real</i> harms—youth homelessness, depression,
anxiety, and suicide.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so
I say that Mormonism eats LGBT people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Let me
repeat myself: Mormonism <i>eats</i> LGBT
people. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> And so, Samantha Shelley, when you tell me the church and Jesus love LGBT people, what so many of us hear is not "come, let us love you," but "come, let us feast on you." </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
And this is a <i>banal</i> phenomenon. It is not purposeful. It happens because people
hold their beliefs to be more important than the sanctity of life. It is a
tragedy. And tragically those who realize it are often labeled insane. Doubters
and LGBT people alike can easily identify with Lu Xun’s madman when, in regards
to the eyes that peer at him and the whispers he hears around him, he says “it’s as
if they’re afraid of me…but also as if they want to hurt me.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
I end now with the same wish I
wrote at the end of my censored comment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
May we all, myself included, have
the bravery to question<i> everything </i>we
believe. Because your beliefs are <i>not</i>
sacred. And neither are mine.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
In fact, they may just be eating
people.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br></div>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-64615302763996251942014-07-31T13:51:00.000-07:002014-07-31T13:52:26.549-07:00Exploring the LGBTQ Experience and Faith through ArtMy own ongoing journey of reconciling faith with a minority sexual orientation has been the defining struggle of my life. It's been deeply rewarding and transformative. Many times throughout the process, the only medium I've found adequate enough to express the complexity, nuance, and contradiction of it all has been poetry. When the thoughts and feelings became too much, they spilled out of my pen in an attempt to understand myself and my own experience.<br />
<br />
The more I've come to know other LGBTQ/SSA Mormons, the more I've found many who have similarly turned to art to express their own experiences. Late last year, I had the idea of starting a community for people to share and explore the intersection of sexuality and faith through art. So many of the poems, songs, and stories shared in that group have touched me and resonated deeply with my own experience, and I think they deserve to be heard.<br />
<br />
So in the upcoming weeks, I'd like to start a new blog dedicated to sharing the diverse artistic expressions of LGBTQ/SSA Mormons as they creatively explore their own experiences. In my experience, art has a unique capacity to express emotion and circumstance without judgement and inspire empathy and compassion in those who are exposed to it. My hope is that as we can build a community of empathy and creativity and find resonance and identification in the artistic work of fellow LGBTQ Mormons.<br />
<br />
Anyone interested in sharing their poetry, stories, songs, or any other artwork that deals with themes of Mormonism, faith, and the LGBTQ/SSA experience, please <a href="mailto:jdefriez@gmail.com" target="_blank">contact me</a> and join our Facebook community. I look forward to working together to release the artistic and creative potential of the LGBTQ/SSA Mormon community. I hope that this can be a place where everyone, no matter their perspective, current position with the church, or choices in regards to how to handle the LGBT experience in the Mormon context can feel safe to share their most intimate and creative expressions.<br />
<br />
While the intersection of minority sexual orientation/gender expression and Mormonism is the main object of the community, everyone is invited to join the Facebook group, no matter how they identify in terms of sexual orientation, gender, or religion.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-49101875526120866842014-05-31T15:10:00.003-07:002014-07-30T17:20:38.787-07:00A Short Story Narrated by God<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9VXT_oExqac/U4pRWElwV9I/AAAAAAAACrk/nIm7kSjfBhg/s1600/god-writing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9VXT_oExqac/U4pRWElwV9I/AAAAAAAACrk/nIm7kSjfBhg/s1600/god-writing.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
Last night I was thinking of what I think of God...and so, in utter blasphemy, I attempted to write a short story from the perspective of the Almighty.<br />
<br />
I'm not pretending to know what God actually is or means--this is just the best expression I could come up with of what I currently think of God.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><u>Words and
Wordlessness</u></b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
There will come a point in time, if
you have not reached it already, when the words you’ve put together to contain
your life will burst from internal pressure. It was just such a moment, now,
for Thomas. His arms curled around his knees; he sobbed. He’d thought of
calling someone—maybe his sister, or one of his close friends. But he didn’t
know what he’d even say.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was
all too big, he realized. No amount of explanation would bring anyone close to
understanding the immensity of it all. Nothing would fully explain the origin
of the tears lightly licking his cheeks or the tremors of hyperventilation
shaking through him. He’d had moments like this
before. But there was something different about this one. It was the first time
he couldn’t put together a complete explanation that was free of contradiction.
There was no neat story-line that had brought him here. It was just too much.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so
he sat there on the floor, curled up in the space between his dresser and the
door to his bedroom, releasing the wordless immensity in wordless, inward
cries.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Allow
me to introduce myself. I’m sure you’ve heard much about me—I don’t mean to be
presumptuous, it simply happens that along with the title of “Divine
Omnipotence,” most people think they know a thing or two about you. People have been labeling me for countless centuries—God, Yahweh, Shang Di,
the Tao, Shiva, Kali, Krishna, Osiris, Zeus…the list goes on and on. I get
quite bored of all the names, to be honest.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In
fact, it might surprise you to find out that the Word Made Flesh is not much of a fan of words at all. I’m sure you’ve heard the
story of when I appeared to Moses at the burning bush. He asked me what I was
called, and I had no idea what he even meant. Called? In many human languages to introduce their name, people say “I call myself…” But what do you say
when you’ve never called yourself anything before? It caught me off guard. Most
people had simply made up names for me—but Moses actually had the decency to
ask what I thought of myself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so
I told him—No name. I simply am. Funny thing is—it just became another name.
The Great I AM. Another thing to call me. Frankly, his people missed the point
completely— I really wish they wouldn’t have called me anything at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And
here, now, Thomas finally understands a small piece of what I’m talking about. How
did he get here? Why was he crying on the floor? Well the simple answer was
that Alecia walked out on him. Yes, Alecia, the girl with the hair like a
sunset and eyes as fierce as the sky on a bright summer’s day. Alecia, the girl
whose voice was like the light breeze whistling through the trees. Alecia, the
messiah of Thomas’ loneliness. She left him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But his tears were much more
complicated than that. He wasn’t just crying for Alecia—he was also crying for
his friend Anthony, who would perhaps never leave the hospital. And for his incurable loneliness. And for the time when he
was six and hid in the bushes because he didn’t want his cousin to call him
more names. And for the rejection letter he'd received from Ohio State University. And he was crying for his pathetic
excuse of a job. No, it wasn’t just Alecia. It was the <i>everything</i> of which she was only a part.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And to
be quite honest, I think she was in the right. Really—despite all those
beautiful words Thomas used to describe her (the above were his, not mine—like
I said, I rarely work in words), he never quite understood her. Their
relationship was like that of painter and his subject, always trying to force
her to be still—not out of maliciousness, but because he saw some deep beauty
in her that he wanted to capture on canvas. And Alecia, dear, wild Alecia,
could not be kept still.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sure it
seemed noble—he saw her beauty. He wanted to capture it—to preserve it—to keep
it there for all to see. But in the end, he stifled her. And so she left.
Earlier this very afternoon, she told Thomas she was leaving and not coming
back. She had packed all of her important belongings into two, black suitcases,
and took a taxi to the airport. She was returning to her childhood home, some
small town in Oregon whose name Thomas could never quite remember. And a few
hours later, his heart had finally processed what his eyes had seen and ears
had heard, and his body could no longer contain the torrent of anguish it had
been keeping inside for so, so long. The reservoir of pain finally outgrew the dam he’d built to keep it in. Rushing down, it became
a flood of destruction.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This
will be a very short story. You’ll notice that it begins at the climax, with
our hero <o:p></o:p></div>
overcome. I’ll warn you that he stays there for its duration. <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m not
the one to come to if you’re looking for solutions or prescriptions. I don’t
solve things. Solving is something that ought to be partitioned to the realm of
eighth grade algebra classes, and stay there. Solutions occur only in the world
of the fixed and the finite, where just enough manipulations can create the
desired outcome. No, I don’t deal in solutions. If I had to choose a name, it
would, perhaps, be Infinity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But
this is precisely why I don’t like names. I’m sure you’re familiar with the work
of the artist Rene Margritte? My favorite is the large image of a pipe against
a solid background, with the appellation, “this is not a pipe.” I wish that
every name I was called, including “Infinity,” and every description of me, and
every painting and image made of me, could be accompanied by the appellation, “this is not a God.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sJ_29D6aLuc/U4pS5w0W3CI/AAAAAAAACrw/RAWvzM0nS_c/s1600/jesus-christ-pics-2001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sJ_29D6aLuc/U4pS5w0W3CI/AAAAAAAACrw/RAWvzM0nS_c/s1600/jesus-christ-pics-2001.jpg" height="297" width="320" /></a> Words—it
always comes back to words. They were your invention, you know. The sensory
world was just too much for the human mind to handle. Oh yes, you humans like
to think you’re somehow special—like your ability to manipulate symbols somehow
makes you better than other creatures. But I’ll tell you just what words do.
They steal you away and hole you up into fantasies of your own creation, fooling you all the while into thinking that the never-never land of your descriptions are an accurate map of reality. The
words you use hardly describe things—they call forth simplifications, that’s
all. Just simplifications. And I’ll tell you why, try as you might, you’ve never
been able to find me completely—because I am a thing that cannot be simplified.
Irreducible. Absolute, even. Which is why even my current attempt to describe myself will, ultimately, fail completely.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And to
be honest, that is not my intent. I hope to do no more in this short sharing
than to show to you the tears of Thomas as he sat there in the corner between
his dresser and his bedroom door, with his arms around his knees, rocking back
and forth, and to tell you that you, like him, will reach the point where what
you are is too big for the stories you tell about yourself.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thomas
was too much now. He and Alecia were a contradiction—yes, you heard me say that
he stifled her. But I could give you another picture to show that it wasn’t
just a one-sided stifling. Imagine the oft-repeated image of the donkey whose
master is leading it on by a carrot on a string. The donkey lurches forward,
always trying to catch the carrot. Alecia often knew what she was doing, and
did it anyway. And Thomas saw the maliciousness, but wanted the carrot too
badly to care.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Are you
starting to see? I understand why Alecia left, and I don’t blame her—no one
wants to be the subject of a portrait for that many years. But I can also see
how pitiful it is that Thomas, after following the carrot for so long, had even
its mirage stolen from him by her sudden withdrawal. And now, with no one to
lead him forward, he sat bathing in the waters of his own tears.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Living
waters. That’s one description of me that is apt, indeed. And think of all the
things that living waters do—they pour from the sky, bringing life-granting
moisture. They escape from your eyes when the pain is too much. They surge with
the destructive force of tsunamis, mercilessly ripping to pieces the homes of
the innocent. Living waters can do much more than quench your thirst—you can
also drown.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And so I am life, love, joy, and creation, but also death, anger, vengeance, and destruction. No one name or description even comes close.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do you
see now? I’m too much for words. Once you use them, you lose me. Now,
sobbing and in the depths of misery, Thomas is closer to me than he’s ever been—and
I don’t say that to try to give you some false sense of comfort and joy that I’m
with you always. I say that because it is the literal reality of the matter.
Thomas’s stories have broken down. He’s seen the contradiction of his life.
Words have become smaller than him. Words can no longer contain his reservoir,
and so it spills over, entering the wider, wordless world.<o:p></o:p></div>
Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-81312754027925176862014-04-03T09:46:00.004-07:002014-04-03T09:57:24.415-07:00Thoughts on SalvationI just ran across this poem/prose thing I wrote about salvation sometime last year. Thought I'd share it.<br />
<br />
<i>I often find myself pausing to ponder exactly from what it is </i><i>that we want so badly to be saved. </i><i>The concept of salvation permeates our thoughts and theology </i><i>to such a deep degree that it shapes our views and shifts our focus. </i><i>An emphasis on salvation lends itself so naturally to the condemnation of sin. </i><i>How often do we glory in salvation only at the cost of living a life of stress at our mistakes? </i><i>And especially potent is salvation's potential in contrast to the </i><i>destitute drone of our sometimes hellish reality.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Scripture teaches that man has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. </i><i>Religious rhetoric attempts to reveal the immediacy of our own imperfection. </i><i>A theology manufactured to save so often succeeds only in condemnation--</i><i>if not outwardly, then at least inwardly as the self resolutely rejects its every flaw. </i><i>Psychology confirms that people have a proclivity to focus on negatives. </i><i>In the mind's eye, a negative vastly outweighs a positive. </i><i>And so while salvation promises the potential of a perennial positive, </i><i>it delivers the more psychologically potent </i><i>damage of emphasis on the events from which we're taught we need to be saved.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And so the question coming to me over and over is this:</i><i> if I was never told to want to be saved from sin, then would I feel so far removed from salvation? </i><i>Is the need for salvation only truly found in the creation of the concept? </i><i>Perhaps if I approached life more organically, not as if it were a test imposed by deity, </i><i>but instead the grand evolving of a species that creates and extracts meaning from the paradoxical complexities of a reality beyond our comprehension, </i><i>perhaps then peace would be more present and the ever burning need to correct the constant inconsistencies of the phenomenon of "self" would gently fade away. Is sin the problem? </i><i>Or is it the concept of a salvation that keeps me bound in chains by promising to set me free?</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-61926672878681156062014-01-28T07:39:00.006-08:002014-01-29T08:42:18.303-08:00To be Free from SufferingA comment on my last post made me realize I need to clarify something.<br />
<br />
How can I accept the world exactly as it is, and yet desire that people be free from suffering? Isn't this an incredible contradiction?<br />
<br />
It isn't, for two reasons: this sort of acceptance comes from a place of nondual thinking, and so to accept the world is to accept my desires, as well. Second, to be free from suffering does not necessarily mean that the suffering ends.<br />
<br />
The path of accepting the world precisely the way it is begins with a deep inquiry into our own nature and the processes of our conception and cognition. The more deeply I understand the nature of reality, the more willing I will be to accept it. And this inquiry into nature's essence has, for me, yielded the conclusion of the nondual nature of the world.<br />
<br />
What do I mean by this? Much of our philosophy and perspectives on life are based on the idea that we are something separate from life itself. There is this self, and there is everything that happens to it--two separate things. There is mankind, and then there is nature--two separate things. There is self, and there is God--two very separate things. Watch yourself, though. Watch your thoughts and your motivations and ask this one crucial question: where do they come from? Where is their origin?<br />
<br />
This is the incredible thing about studying history. When you study a time period deeply and then read the writings of people who lived and thought in that time, you see their thoughts and feelings in context--almost everything they write can be viewed as the product of historical forces. Likewise, my every thought, and many of my fears and pains, are the product of historical and social forces. My hunger, thirst, and fatigue are the product of the laws of nature. So what exactly am I?<br />
<br />
Nothing separate from the whole. I am the intersection of many different things, but I am not separated from the world or from life itself. And so, to accept the world is to accept my own desires and thoughts about the world--but to accept them for what they are, which is not any product of my own uniqueness, but rather the culmination of the intersection of historical and social forces that I represent.<br />
<br />
And this is why acceptance is never quietism. I believe that the world is perfect just as it is, including my desire to change it. I do not want people to be hungry, and so I accept the world of hunger and my own desire to change that world. These are not two separate phenomena. They are one.<br />
<br />
Second, to be free from suffering does not mean that pain ceases. Freedom from suffering comes when we stop identifying in suffering. When we recognize ourselves for what we truly are--which I believe is loving awareness--we find an incredible capacity to greet our own suffering with love. Instead of identifying in the pain, we can identify in the awareness that is aware of the pain (and the awareness of the pain is not in pain--it is simply aware of it. Awareness of depression is not depressed. Awareness of anxiety is not anxious.)<br />
<br />
As we cease identifying in our suffering, something changes about its nature. We stop desiring for it to leave. We find an incredibly deep acceptance. Ironically, it is this very acceptance that changes things. It is this very acceptance that makes us, like Hafiz, "always kind and full of wonder." This is the step between desiring change and <i>becoming</i> change.<br />
<br />
Suffering can be a beautiful and wonderful thing, because it is a call to awaken to our own nature.Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7825246518464864126.post-67409679029642863602014-01-27T09:25:00.003-08:002014-01-27T09:25:43.346-08:00The Morality of AcceptanceTrev left an important comment on my blog post yesterday: he said that to argue that "virtue is constructed of vice" is a "huge jump." And I agree with him. I think I need to clarify a bit what I mean here, and I've realized that the words I've been using to express this idea have been inadequate. So I'm going to clarify what I mean and delineate what I call "the morality of acceptance."<br />
<br />
I think that "vice," specifically is the wrong word. It's not big enough. Vice is generally interpreted as a specific bad habit that leads to more suffering, and thus ought to be overcome. What I mean is that everything we view as negative literally constructs everything we view as positive. And also, everything we view as positive constructs what we view as negative.<br />
<br />
This first began to occur to me when I read "The Great Divergence" by Kenneth Pomeranz. The book explores the question of why industrialization was sparked in Europe and not in Asia; China and India were both significantly more economically advanced than Europe prior to the nineteenth century. One of the important reasons Pomeranz discusses is slavery. Slavery enabled economic growth in such a way that encouraged industrialization (I'm not going to get into his argument as to why; you can see the book for more details.)<br />
<br />
This was really profound to me. I thought about my entire life, which has been extremely comfortable in terms of material well-being. And I suddenly realized that none of that material ease or comfort would be possible if slavery hadn't have existed. Now this doesn't make me grateful for slavery, but it made me realize something profound--when you step out of the judging mind and look at life for what it is, you realize that every benefit comes associated with costs. And likewise, every cost brings along certain benefits.<br />
<br />
I believe that the same principle can be applied to individual people. Every particle of suffering I've ever experienced has worked to make me more compassionate. My own inability to overcome my vice has constructed within me the virtue of empathy. My understanding of myself as essentially limited has led me to judge others much less. What I view to be my own greatest virtues have been constructed of what I know to be my greatest vices.<br />
<br />
And so I advocate for a morality of acceptance. A morality of prescriptive injunctions, "I should...I ought...I have to...", seems to me to generate more suffering than not. On the other hand, mindful acceptance generates important changes. When we step out of the judging mind and stop thinking in terms of good and bad, we see things more clearly--we see that what bothers us most about other people is also what enables their good qualities. We see that what we hate most deeply in ourselves is what enables our best qualities.<br />
<br />
From what I've been able to observe, this seeing changes things. Because as you accept life exactly for what it is and rejoice in it as it is, you develop equanimity. You react to all things the same. You're less bothered, less filled with hate, and more likely to be compassionate. Instead of wishing for people to be righteous, you just hope that they'll be free from suffering. Instead of getting down on yourself, you treat yourself with compassion.<br />
<br />
And this is a great irony. Because as you begin to appreciate vice, it begins to dissipate. This is because you no longer judge it. Instead of talking and thinking about change, you <i>become</i> the change.<br />
<br />
And this is the base of the morality of acceptance. instead of judging life, you accept it. This acceptance works within you the change you never could have done with judgment or prescription. To me religion is deeply symbolic of this reality. God is the great "I AM." He is the personification of existence itself. Scripture observes that as we accept God, he begins to change us through his grace. I believe that as we accept reality just as it is, we experience this phenomenon of grace. Life works inside of us to change our very nature. It changes us from beings of judgment and prescription to beings of acceptance and love.<br />
<br />
And love itself is to <i>accept</i>. It is to embrace people just as they are and only have the best of wishes for them. There is no judgment or condemnation in love.<br />
<br />
For anyone who desires to be more loving, I would ask this: how do you expect to cultivate love by the means of rejecting the reality that meets you? Acceptance is cultivated by accepting. It's counter-intuitive because there are many things we feel we should not accept. But practicing acceptance on the most difficult of issues (such as our own vice) builds the quality of acceptance, of love, within us and fundamentally changes the way we approach living.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Joshhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02429901511386748378noreply@blogger.com7