On Revolution

'We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress: personally I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form. It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image; to make it something that we see already in our minds. Evolution is a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling. Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road - very likely the wrong road. But reform is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape. And we know what shape.

'Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision.

'. . . Let beliefs fade fast and frequently, if you wish institutions to remain the same. The more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be left to itself. The net result of all our political suggestions, Collectivism, Tolstoyanism, Neo-Feudalism, Communism, Anarchy, Scientific Bureaucracy - the plain fruit of all of them is that the Monarchy and the House of Lords will remain.

'. . .We may say broadly that free thought is the best of all the safeguards against freedom. Managed in a modern style the emancipation of the slave's mind is the best way of preventing the emancipation of the slave. Teach him to worry about whether he wants to be free, and he will not free himself.'


-G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy ('The Eternal Revolution')

An Ode to the Erotic

'This land is not your land,
For the right hand takes what it can,
Ransacks to the mad man.
For this land is not yours or mine to have.
This land was made for the good of itself.'
From No Man's Land by Sufjan Stevens


. . .Perhaps. Perhaps English limps, needy promissory notes,
Each next novelty bleeding half-eaten dictionaries
To the point I'd sigh endlessly or weep;
And yet there is room for lack of faith in my lack of faith.

For
Although our language decays, all
Child-hearted Reality rallies still, bursts into laughter lengthily-
Warm gushes, flutters, wonders at each Other,
Rushing but discovers all destination in the journey.

Two souls long for another glimpse of each other, another chance
To exult in holding hands each other with the one they love.
This is not a spelling or a grammar rule, not something to be spelled out-
Delicate and fierce, something vaguely pronounced in embrace,
In the eyelash flutter of one upon a beloved's face,
Perhaps only to be told most clearly in silent presence.

Reality, no object, has freckles
And a peculiar laugh, or perhaps not.
-Somehow that has always been You,
And where would we go besides pursuing You?
Beyond bathroom stalls and tokens,
O Dirty Word - that is, Divinity - not ever enough spoken . . .


[An ode to the Erotic will inevitably be something reflective of what it praises, in that the ode will not be able to fully praise its subject (since the Erotic is always found in subjects - found in particular ways in particular persons and things - not in an isolated, distilled 'compound') but in this seeing beauty in the particular, the ode seeks for something beyond or 'yet again' in Eroticism itself. This is the reality of the Erotic, in its particular manifestations, in its beautiful tension: if lived-out healthily, the desirer truly seeks the Good beyond the particular person/thing, within which the person/thing subsists (not trying to 'freeze' or 'apprehend' the person/thing desired), but at the same time the desirer seeks and loves the person/thing for her/his/its very manifestation of the Good (not seeking to 'overcome' the person/thing in order to 'get at' the Reality 'behind' the person/thing). The Reality is something in which all persons/things subsist, something 'behind' all things, but It manifests itself in particular subjects, whom we must hunger and thirst to love simply because of their own sake.]

-a-

God's Division in Creation as Justification

Here's an odd notion that brought a lot of conversation; as of today, it's been expressed to me on three different occasions: God's creative act always involves division, as we see in the Creation story - God separates light from darkness, water above from water below, etc. And, naturally, God Himself is three-in-one. The thrust of this abstract gesture is one in a long line of attempts I've seen try to make 'Emergents' and liturgically-minded Nazarenes feel like everything is still going along swell on their particular side of the lawn party: Hey, the Reformation wasn't necessarily a bad thing! God's unity is expressed in our division, just like in Creation.

Along with the endless heretical theological/philosophical repercussions of such a statement, there are three problems to be briefly mentioned here:

(1) This notion is dubious in light of Jesus' prayer in John 17.
Jesus adamantly and specifically prayed that we 'be one, as [He] and the Father are one.' I know there is a knee-jerk response to this (and will be addressed under the next heading), but this in itself should say something to those among us who are content with the Protestant mange of our day. Do we really think God is happy with the situation we're in, with everyone doing her/his own damn thing? We wander off away from each other as we see fit, supposedly all under one banner...

(2) This notion is a faerytale rendering of the very real reality of the Protestant situation.
...which leads me to the next problem with this notion. It is foolish to speak as though the situation is so simple. 'We are unified, Rick - we're all part of the catholic Church, though not the Catholic Church.' Okay, cool. Well, then: which has authority? which rendering of the Truth is correct? or did Jesus mean 'you'll be taking various and equally valid stabs at it' when He said the Spirit would lead the Church into all Truth? The Calvinist portrait of God and life in general is a far different picture than that of the classical Arminian portrait, and both are acute disorders of the Catholic spectrum; all of these end up being completely contradictory, in fact. I'm not so silly as to think that all Truth is something to be referenced canonically and unequivocally in an 'Encyclopaedia of the Forms', but in this case there is only a 'harmony' or a 'tension' in the make-believe world of the frozen words on the paper. There is only 'tension' so long as we don't let the ideas talk to each other, because then that might lead to interaction, which would in turn show that something somewhere needs to have authority if the full Gospel does speak of a Saviour who supposedly narrates all of human existence.

(3) This notion ignores the very real reality of present-day Catholic harmony.
As usual, Protestantism gets caught up in its own amnesia and locks Catholicism out of the shoe-box council from the very beginning. If someone would like to see the idea of 'division' or 'harmony' or 'tension' in relation to the unity Jesus prayed for, one need look no further than the Catholic Church. Sure, the Latin Rites are the most prominent in the Church, but the Latin Rites comprise several different Rites, and there are also the Eastern Rites and the Alexandrian Rites. The Mozarabic Rite, for instance, breaks the Eucharist bread into seven (or nine) in correlation to the notable mysteries in Jesus' life; the Eastern Rite priests can marry, and many churches of the Eastern Rites use the ancient Confessional that is in front of the church. Yet all of these Rites in their various expressions of the Faith are in complete union (theologically and politically) with the one holy Catholic and apostolic Church, which continues to teach the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

-Rick

An Ode of Sorts

(The two remaining papers will be the final chore before a return to a balanced lifestyle, and I'm looking forward to it.)


Man measuring heads
Hovers over a knife with a steak
Quivering jaw on fat knife stalling
Sawing on, 'I saw, I taste, I
Analyse; I
Am man measuring heads well (by
The men measuring heads).
I, yes, probe little skulls-
Know what they say? I can't say,
But know: humans are sad little things,
My little onions to peel,' and
Gulps he his predictably sweet tea.

Sawing steak, sipping tea, - but not from Olympus?? Lo, now
Descended, he holds our pitiful little spheres in his encompassing head:
Every galaxy is precise and precisely spaced;
Space itself is lined precisely-
Patients and faces, sterile placards
(The catfooted smothering of the void arriving no worry).

He slipped his list out at lunch;
I saw his today to do list:
-
(1) Distill mysterium
(2) Get coat lined
(3) Line universe

Cross-armed with bulging keys,
Ogling in Id his next act of soul cannibalism,
Gnawed he a steak in no
Straight jacket, so
Methinks he is wearing the sleeves
We beware in our closeted hearts all along.


-Rick

Criticising the Catholic Church

'You apparently think the Catholic Church can do no wrong.' Well, I think the Church will be continually 'led into all truth' as Jesus promised, but no, I'm not about to put a fresh coat of white-wash on everyone and everything that has ever been or been done within Christ's Church (and using Christ's name). I could spend the rest of my life offering honest and heavy criticism of the Church past and Church present, and most of us probably will spend our lives in such a way (in one way or another). There is scandal there that would actually make Her accusers blush - carousing priests, Jew-killings, wars over who is Pope, etc. etc. etc. Personally, I'm always quick to remember, however, that I'm one of these idiots that God has had to answer for; yes, guilty as charged: the Church seems to be full of us sinners.

Truthfully, there is much more to critique in Catholicism, since she aimed/aims for complex/harmonic Truth, the Truth that her Founder taught and actually was. Perhaps this is why there are so many Protestants - a dime a dozen - who are anxious to give the world two earfuls of the 'whore of Babylon' spiels and all that crap; they must have run out of things to critique in Protestantism and thus needed to start finding elsewhere dragons to slay.

I say this all in good humour and good fun, but being immersed in a Protestant culture, the lazy and propagandist way in which the Church is theologically criticised truly grates my nerves. I'll be the first to criticise the Church when she doesn't proprely educate her children in matter of Faith (and though I'm new to the scene and speak with no authority, I've been told that this is the current case in American catechism). Then again, in this our 'information age' Catholic teachings are not hidden in a closet somewhere, and it never fails that core Catholic beliefs are ignored, butchered, or translated into something completely different by Protestant critics. This is simply unacceptable; in that context - that of the open-mouthed, closed-ear Protestant - I'm hardly interested in playing along. There is certainly room to criticise, but let's make sure (on the broader spectrum) that we're criticising the same Institution - the one that exists, and not the one that suits Protestant protest.

-Rick

Romancing Our Age

A Litany to Excommunication (In Praise of Its Intended Purposes)

[Nail this down for our communities,
So they may offer it up:]

When Incarnation is lightninged into two-
Offer this up.
When incarnation is splintered and distilled-
Offer it up.
When existence is no longer a tangible love or even a word to pursue-
Offer it up.
When what was said kneels to what has been stilled,
to what has been said to be misunderstood-
Offer it up.

When roses become removed from their stems and petals-
Offer this up.
When flowers are called by any other (regardless) name-
Offer them up.
When all words become promissary notes and nickels-
Offer them up.
When they're repealed into hibernations and safe-
Offer them up.

When certain bubblings are rescued from laughing inaccuracies-
Offer all of this up.
When vulgar is blushed away,
When they are dredged up to be a cornerstone-
Offer all of this up.
When the seams of the human universe's vocal-cords clench upon themselves,
the astral expanses written in the heavens
ever tightening out rivets and soon-to-be-scissored excesses-
Offer all of this up.

When a man avoids staking his lot to any Ship,
who drowns in his vessel-of-flesh critiquing their drowning-
When the tolerated Interval becomes holy Reality,
what we see beholding what is that which we see-
When Meaning is wrung from the gleaning,
wrung and ringing any sweat from the bell-
When Virtue turns to Vice for advice, relative to the age,
asking Her shadow if shit or smoking is acceptable these days-
When all that is Seen and Unseen becomes what has Not,
When Light is seen to be lapse of the Dark-
It is then,
It is now:
There is nothing
to offer.


-Rick

Asyndeton

33 me but
love-seat bowers open to
me to you or whomever
rushing
ahead

thoughts've boats
now we grin motors
rush to the end
the question
meaning?


-Rick