Posted on: May 27, 2008
What is sacred? Knowing that the sacred has changed across time and space, knowing that it will change again and again and again, how do we deal with the quandary of holding certain things above the fray, versus switching the sacred as new evidence appears? Or as empires collapse?
Detail of the Acropolis. By Aaron Logan. 2004
There is a quandary. Rather, one of a multitude of quandaries. That we should cling to the sacred despite change, or the accumulated wisdom of centuries, or hold nothing above the fray. In other words, live in the moment, for the moment, with no hierarchies of the sacred, or remain locked in those hierarchies.
Perhaps the quandary is overstated. Most of us do not deal in absolutes. Most of us do not live either/or lives, black and white lives, manichean lives. Most of us do nuance, degrees, levels. We can handle complexity and uncertainty. Perhaps better…
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Posted on: May 27, 2008
Humans have two choices. Well, we actually have millions of choices, but for the purpose of this post, we have two.
Believe in a divinity that guides our lives and controls the universe, or in a universe that guides itself, leaving us basically on our own.
Strike that. There may just be a third choice in there somewhere. Yes. At least for the purpose of this post. The belief in a divine entity that no organized religion has yet described, defined, or even remotely gotten close to. Remember, there have been thousands of organized religions throughout the centuries, and thousands of deities on display. Putting them side by side for a moment, letting them hash out their differences across time and space, might just bring us the world’s greatest jam session. Or, the mother of all headaches. Devotees would root for their own, passionately, obstinately, vigorously.Perhaps more than…
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Posted on: May 24, 2008
Gorecki’s Symphony #3
Like Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 brings us to the extreme of grief, holds us there, locks us in that eternal space, with no escape, no way out, except through a kind of mysterium of hope. A mystery of overcoming something no one can overcome.
In this piece, motherhood is the focus, extreme suffering is the focus, cruelty is the plague. The Holocaust is a driving force for one of the movements, and it drives the vocalist to express something that can’t be expressed outside of music.
Theodor Adorno once said that "to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." But that didn’t stop Paul Celan, whose Deathfugue may be the single greatest poetic expression of unendurable grief ever written.
I feel extreme sadness for anyone who can’t see what war and empire really are, who benefits from that ugly couple, who pays for it, who profits from…
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