St. Jerome is best known as a fourth century translator of the Bible from its original languages into Latin, then becoming the language of the Church

JEROME

In Dürer’s engraving
You sit hunched over your desk,
writing, with an extraneous
halo around your head.
You have everything you need: a mind
at ease with itself, and the generous
sunlight on pen, page, ink,
the few chairs, the vellum-bound books,
the skull on the windowsill that keeps you
honest (memento mori).
What you are concerned with
in your subtle craft is not simply
the life of language—to take
those boulder-like nouns of the Hebrew
text, those torrential verbs,
into your ear and remake them
in the hic-haec-hoc of your time—
but an innermost truth. For years
you listened when the Spirit was
the faintest breeze, not even the
breath of a sound. And wondered
how the word of God could be clasped
between the covers of a book.
Now, by the latticed window,
absorbed in your work,
the word becomes flesh, becomes sunlight
and leaf-mold, the smell of fresh bread
from the bakery down the lane,
the rumble of an ox-cart, the unconscious
ritual of a young woman
combing her hair, the bray
of a mule, an infant crying:
the whole vibrant life
of Bethlehem, outside your door.
None of it is an intrusion.
You are sitting in the magic circle
of yourself. In a corner, the small
watchdog is curled up, dreaming,
and beside it, on the threshold, the lion
dozes, with half-closed eyes.

- Stephen Mitchell


Literally, yes, "the word becomes flesh," the sacred language comes alive, bursts from the text into life. "Flesh" is descriptive of more than human being, of mule and leaf-mold and sunlight, of all the earth.

If Jerome was the man evoked by Stephen Mitchell, and heard his words, I can imagine him at such a moment taking up his quill pen and writing his own poem in response, something in the spirit of these lines by Robinson Jeffers:


..... I entered the life of the brown forest,
And the great lfe of the ancient peaks, the patience of stone, I felt the
changes in the veins
In the throat of the mountain... and, I was the stream
Draining the mountain wood; and I the stag drinking; and I was the stars
Boiling with light, wandering alone, each one the lord of his own summit;
and I was the darkness
Outside the stars, I included them, they were a part of me. I was mankind
also, a moving lichen
On the cheek of the round stone...

_______________________

"I was mankind also, a moving lichen on the cheek of the round stone..." That is as lovely an image of homo sapiens as I know--as lovely and as necessary to absorb into our hearts, that we might renew ourselves and restore the earth we continue to destroy.

I am indebted to Leslie J. Hoppe, O.F.M., for his account of Jerome's life in the Church and the character of his translations, and to Joanna Macy's book, Coming Back to Life, for the gift of Robinson Jeffers' poem embodying earth consciousness. It is an excerpt from "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, ed. Tim Hunt (Stanford University Press, 1988).

Photo by www.justinknightphoto.com

Our State of Desperation in Iraq

To the Editor:

I applaud you for a serious treatment of our last best hope to extricate ourselves from the mess that is Iraq (editorial, Oct. 24).

Unfortunately, our executive branch seems incapable of truthful reflection. Any sort of truthful admission of error is still light-years away. At every turn, this administration has resisted with scorn the well-meaning advice of friend and foe alike.

It is a wishful fantasy that this administration would be willing to listen to reason, do the right thing, admit error, fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, give up its dreams of a utopian future and buckle down and do the hard work of reconciliation.

These officials will not change because there has been no pressure on them to do so from a fawning press that won’t face the truth, a deluded public that thinks “staying the course” and whatever other slogan lobbed at it is a “plan,” and a supine Congress that is busy feathering individual nests and attacking one another.

What will be the wake-up call for this country?

The real world is the world of compromise and peacemaking. I hope that there is a way out of our heartbreaking state of division and loss. I hope that the country I love is still capable of waking up from this nightmare and of restoring reason and sanity.

Elizabeth Scupham
Atlanta, Oct. 24, 2006

You Are a Hunter Soul

You are driven and ambitious - totally self motiviated to succeed Actively working to acheive what you want, you are skillful in many areas. You are a natural predator with strong instincts ... and more than a little demanding. You are creative, energetic, and an extremely powerful force. An outdoors person, you like animals and relate to them better than people. You tend to have an explosive personality, but also a good sense of humor. People sometimes see you as arrogant or a know it all. You tend to be a bit of a loner, though you hate to be alone. Souls you are most compatible with: Seeker Soul and Peacemaker Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Your Sexy Brazilian Name is:

Luciana Arósio

What's Your Sexy Brazilian Name?

Desert Fathers

Antony

I know that this Sunday will be the feast of St. Teresa of Avila (who I wrote about here last October 15th), but when I hear the Gospel reading this coming weekend at Mass, I will--in part--be thinking about St. Antony of Egypt (a.k.a. St. Anthony of Egypt, or also either spelling with "of the Desert," or "the Abbot"), the "original Desert Father," regarded as the Father of Western Monasticism (as distinct from him regarded as the "founder" of Western Monasticism, which would be St. Benedict of Nursia), and the patron saint from whom I take my confirmation and oblate name, which I now use almost exclusively in public and private. You could sorta say that St. Antony is "my saint."

The reading (linked above) is from St. Mark's Gospel, chapter 10, about a wealthy young man who comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to "inherit eternal life." Jesus' answer to him is, "Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." And the man goes away sad, because the call is too radical; he cannot part with his wealth to fully follow Jesus as a disciple.

St. Antony (b. 251, d. 356) was a wealthy young man, raised by Christian parents. He heard that same Gospel reading one Sunday, and took it directly as God speaking to his own heart. And he obeyed what he believed to be the voice of God to him in the scripture. Literally. He sold his estate and gave the money to the poor. Then he went alone into the Egyptian desert to seek God.

Such a literal reading and application of the scripture may be embarrassing and unsettling to us today. And certainly, as I have delved deep recently into the Desert Fathers, I find that some of the stuff they did in terms of their asceticism was harsh, downright crazy, way over the top, by our ways of thinking today. Antony wasn't really much of an exception to this extremist tendency in the desert spirituality. It helps to understand the context and motivation of the "abbas" and "ammas" who fled the society and civilization of their day for the desert. They saw the world system in their day as corrupt beyond repair and often saw the Church as complicit in that corruption, as well as corrupted itself, by being so cozily married to the empire. Hmmm, I wonder if there are any parallels their to our own day...? But I digress. The purpose of this post is not a veiled political statement.

These were desperate men and women, the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and they lived their faith and call in desperate fashion. In the case of Antony (and others), he took to himself a single-hearted goal: Christlikeness. He renounced possessions so that nothing physical would have any hold on him, and would require his allegiance in any way. Then, as Richard Foster says about him in the book Streams of Living Water, "...he renounced speech in order to learn compassion; he renounced activity in order to learn prayer."

His biographer, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, tells fantastic tales of his battles with demons in the desert, stories that seem very strange to us now. But these "battles with demons" (literal ones, in the case of the biography), were against temptations. He fought demons of "food," "worry," "lust," and then more blatant sexual temptation, as the demon "assumed the form of a woman and imitated her every gesture" (from the Life of Anthony), and on and on. Antony fought the battles and he won, or rather, as Athanasius puts it, "..this was in Antonius the success of the Savior." Following the battles with demons, there were visions and mystical experiences.

Antony inspired me early on in my readings of the lives of the saints, and I chose him as my main patron and intercessor during my RCIA journey last year. One of the things that so resonated with me about Antony was that his story for me is more than a fantastic tale about battles with real demons. His story is about the conquering of self, of my demons within.... Antony was never afraid of honest self-examination, of brutal self-scrutiny. Neither must we be. We must honestly know ourselves, the good, the bad, and the ugly (very ugly) to progress in this life of radical discipleship in Christ. Self-knowledge is crucial to self-mastery. This is one of the lessons that Antony teaches me.

The purpose of the desert in Antony's day--and the purpose that remains today in each of our own "deserts"--was training in spiritual discipline. Whether it be fasting and/or solitude to achieve needed focus amid the din of life around us or the din within us, or meditation and prayer to deepen our communion with God, or scripture study and lectio divina to transform the mind and form it more in the way of Christ, these and many more are the "deserts" to which we must "flee" today. Athanasius writes about what distinguished Antony from others (bold emphasis mine): "...stability of character and...purity of the soul. His soul being free of confusion, he held his outer senses also undisturbed, so that from the soul's joy his face was cheerful as well."

Slacktivist

Oct 16, 2006

All dogs go to heaven

From comments, toxicfur writes:

When I was a kid and my first pet (a rabbit) died, I made a comment that at least I'd be able to see poor Wiggles in heaven. My dad, a fundie and an asshole, explained that animals don't have souls -- they just cease to exist, and that I'd never see the rabbit again. It seemed perfectly reasonable to him, but I was devastated. My mom -- a much more reasonable person -- explained that we don't really know what happens to animals, but that since heaven is perfect, then we should be able to see our loved ones, even our pets, after we die.

Growing up among the fundies, I met a few folks like toxicfur's dad -- stern men who believed God was a stern man, and who seemed to enjoy gravely informing children that their dead pets were soulless, unloved by God and unwelcome in the Great Hereafter.* Presumptuous idiots, all, speaking with utter certainty based on nothing. Literally nothing -- based on the absence of anything explicit in our Bible regarding God's relationship with other creatures.

I say "our Bible" because, inspired though it may be, it is a book written by and for humans and as such doesn't address questions that are, as C.S. Lewis put it, none of our business. God's relationship with the beasts is between them and God, so it's presumptuous to speak with certainty on the matter.

We do have some hints, however. Look around. Haldane's quip that God must be "inordinately fond of beetles" seems to me to be good theology. My sola-scriptura friends, of course, are suspicious of any theologizing except that from the page ("look around" is, to them, flirtation with heresy). But there are plenty of hints on the page as well.

The Book of Job, for example, tells us that God is immensely fond of, and proud of, ostriches. Just as small children can't imagine Heaven being heavenly without the presence of their beloved pets, it seems the God of Job couldn't imagine a Heaven in which there weren't ostriches running about, neglecting their eggs and generally behaving like ostriches. And it's worth mentioning that some of the imagery used to describe the blessed kingdom includes the presence of animals. See for example Isaiah 11:5-7. Toxicfur's dad is on shaky ground if he wants to argue that while that passage may mention wolves, lambs, leopards, goats, calves, lions, yearlings and bears, it doesn't specifically mention rabbits, so therefore Wiggles et. al. must be fated for annihilation.

In the same long monologue in which God praises ostriches, God also talks about Orion -- a reminder that the target audience for the Book of Job, as for the rest of the Bible, is humans from Earth (the only place in the universe from which Orion looks like Orion). And just as it would be pointless to look to our earthling's Bible to discern the particulars of the relationship between God and the Rigelians (if there are any), it's also pointless to look to our human's Bible for insight into the eternal disposition of other earthly creatures for whom our Bible was not written.

We are told that in our father's house there are many mansions. We are not told, and so we cannot say, whether there are also many gardens, pastures, forests, swamps, deserts and streams. I suspect, and also hope, that there are. It seems to me both parochial and chauvinist to decide that, since God has promised us heaven, God can't have promised any such thing to anyone else -- beast or bird, trilobite or pteradactyl, beetle or Betelgeusian.

The odd thing about people like toxicfur's dad is the vehemence with which they insist on excluding the animals from their vision of heaven. Here I think theologians can learn from those FBI profilers who hunt serial killers. The serial killers always start by doing things to animals, but they never stop there. They always end up doing the same things to humans.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* I appreciate that many reasonable people of good will don't believe there is any such hereafter, or any such thing as heaven. It's easy if you try. For my part, there are many heavens, or ideas of heaven, in which I don't believe either. Included among them is the idea that heaven is completely other-worldly, that it is wholly unrelated to the here and now.

*******************
Our odd ideas and arguments about God and the Bible will always be around. What's needed are more adult human being who have ingested what is whole and sound with the Bible, have made it their own.

Who have set out now to live that life that demonstrates God's love, and pours that out. As for the rest, maybe it's truly "none of our business."

(from Rigorous Intuition)

Fight the Real Enemy

Gonna raise me an army, some tough sons of bitches
I'll recruit my army from the orphanages - Bob Dylan

In the United States, in the forshortened weeks before its next post-modern election, every action appears to have an equal and opposite distraction. Telling one from the other, that's the hardest thing.

This time, the Democrats may do just well enough to revive faith that the system works and that its workings are of consequence. (Like Jonathan Richman sings in "Walter Johnson": "Boys, this game's no fun if you don't get a hit once in a while.") Simone Weil wrote that "imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life," and if we can't imagine a better world than this then we can be certain one will be imagineered for us. A bipartisan soft tyranny that rules by mass delusion will concede the odd happy ending, that is actually neither.

The quote is from Weil's essay "Some Thoughts on the Love of God." They're wartime words, written during the worst of it, and imagination and storytelling remain our best means to interpret our attenuated circumstance that already passes understanding.

And everywhere is war. Fourteen years ago, Sinead O'Connor's storytelling on Saturday Night Live sounded to many like hateful babbling, but I expect today it would sound to more like fearless love. The Pope's picture was remembered, but not the child's. Maybe now, because we know more, it would be.

Mark Foley, we know, had been the co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, which was formed to provide federal assistance to the National Center of the same name. Its Board of Directors includes Floridian cocaine smuggler Hank Asher who founded the corporation which purged his state's voter rolls in 2000. In 2003 he was hired to help identify potential terrorists for Florida's Department of Law Enforcement. ("This has been highly controversial, largely because of Asher's alleged past links to drug smuggling.") Foley himself played a leading role in suppressing the hand recount. So what are such men with such histories, and in such a state as Florida, doing orbiting about the issue of missing and exploited children?

(And it may be more curious still. A poster on the RI forum links Foley with Bush family favourite Mel Sembler's juvenille mind control enterprise "Straight," and connects Straight to Paul Bishop of the Johnny Gosch snake pit.)

"Don't get distracted - stay focused" - a lot of Don't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow Democrats will be saying that more than usual this month. Many of them think Foley represents a distraction, albeit a happy one. But perhaps it's the election itself that distracts Americans with a shiny hoax battlefield, away from the real war they would know better if they would heed the dis-ease of their storytellers.

posted by Jeff

{in comments}


I think that to read Jeff's blog, you have to be able to maintain what my husband calls a "grey area" -- things that you neither know to be true nor know to be untrue, but are willing to entertain as possibilities pending further information.

Many of the areas Jeff covers don't even have an "official theory" that he's competing with -- nobody else is talking about them at all, or trying to draw the pieces together. Jeff is pointing to something real and meaningful, even if he doesn't have all the details right, and that in itself is far more important than asking "where a reader or thinker should draw the line of belief."

Similarly, I think the dichotomy between "incompetent profiteers" and all-knowing masterminds is a false and misleading one. We live in the realm of intermediacy, and like everything else, Cheney and company are somewhere in the middle -- doing their best to manipulate events but as often as not running up against the Law of Unintended Consequences.

{from Rigorous Intuition}

"A few months ago I read a book by Charles Upton that was pubished by Sophia Perennis press. The author Upton and this book have been mentioned by a number of posters on this site before as being relevant to most of the topics of discussion that are a focus of Rig Int. The first time through it, I was a bit skeptical. After reading the book through carefully once, I wasn’t sure whether to put much stock in either the author nor the book. But a second close reading has convinced me of the author’s sincerity and relative degree of insight.

After reading the book's 520 pages through a second time, and in light of current ongoing political events, I have come to the conclusion that, all in all, it is rather brilliant. Below is a brief excerpt that I ahve typed out by hand, because I think it hits the nail squarely on the head with regard to the current geopolitical machinations vis a vis the “clash of civilizations”. Keeping in mind this broader view could help innoculate the unwary against becoming infected by any potential upcoming "October Surprise", such as that which might occur this Friday, October the 13th, the 699th anniversary of French King Phillipe the Fair's arrest of the Knights Templar and seizure of much of their vast wealth.

While one may not have the time nor the inclination to read a 500+ page book, one might well find the following two page political meta-analysis to be of interest. I think that it is especially insightful, considering that it was written in the late 1990’s and year 2000, and published 1 February 2001. Upton seems to have anticipated such things as the “War on Terrorism”, a.k.a. the “Long War”, and the concerted efforts of the Western media to marginalize and demonise Islam, in service of protracted social and military conflict, all with a particular endgame or eschatology in mind. Note while reading this that Upton is not a Christian, but rather a Muslim, in particular a Naqshbandi Sufi.

“In a world profoundly polarized between the Gog of syncretist globalism and the Magog of exclusivist ‘tribalism’ – a word which is beginning to denote what used to be called ‘nationalism’ or ‘patriotism’ or ‘loyalty to one’s religion’ – the Transcendent Unity of Religions clearly represents a middle path, or third force, at least in the religious field. It is equally opposed to the universalism of the global elites and the violent self-assertion of the fundamentalist ‘tribes’ oppressed and marginalized by these elites. Perhaps this is one reason why groups and individuals who hold to this doctrine have been subjected to the immense degree of psychic pressure which observers on the outskirts of the Traditionalist School, such as myself, cannot fail to note. It is reasonable to conjecture that Antichrist would like nothing better than to subvert and discredit the Traditionalists, since the Transcendent Unity of religions is one of the few worldviews that could possibly stand in the way of the barren and terminal conflict between globalism and tribalism which is the keynote of his ‘system’ in the social arena.

If all possible alternatives to the struggle between globalism and tribalism disappear from the collective mind, the Antichrist has won. He can use economic and political globalism and the universalism of a ‘world fusion spirituality’ to subvert and oppress all integral religions and religious cultures, forcing them to narrow their focus and violate the fullness of their own traditions in reaction against it. He can drive them to bigoted and terroristic excesses which will make them seem barbaric and outdated in the eyes of those wavering between a global and a tribal identification, and set them at each other’s throats at the same time. Unite to oppress; divide and conquer.

In this light, we can see that the exclusivism of conservative and/or traditional Christianity is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness; the same could be said, with certain reservations, of Judaism and Islam. The exclusivism of these Abrahamic religions allows them to consciously fortify themselves against the System of Antichrist – Christianity by its ‘catacomb spirit’, its ability, ultimately derived from monasticism, to build spiritual fortresses against the world, and Islam by the fact that dar al Islam remains the largest bloc of humanity which, in part, is still socially and politically organized around a Divine Revelation, although to greatly varying degrees, as were Medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire.

On the other hand, their very exclusivism has prevented these religions, in all but a few instances, from making common cause against globalist universalism and secularism. They remain vulnerable to the ‘divide and conquer’ tactics of the system of Antichrist, a phase which could well be the prelude, if traditional eschatological speculations such as those found in Dennis E. Engleman’s Ultimate Things are to be believed, to a later ‘unite to oppress’ phase – a capitulation by the exhausted exclusivists, longing for the end of endless conflict, to the satanic universalism of Antichrist himself.

According to Ultimate Things, Antichrist will reveal himself in Jerusalem and proclaim himself King of the Jews; the Jewish nation, as well as many Christians, will accept him. From the Islamic perspective, however, any world ruler who begins as a King of the Jews and is later submitted to by the Christians would be immediately and universally recognized as Antichrist himself. It is inconceivable, unless traditional and even fundamentalist Islam were to virtually disappear, that such a figure could tempt Muslims to accept him as the Mahdi or the eschatological Jesus. So if the predictions Engleman recounts are in any way accurate, he is in fact presenting, as the most likely eschatological scenario, a mass apostasy of Jews and Christians which would leave only the Muslims aware of who Antichrist really is, and ready to do battle with him. How then could Antichrist emerge as a true global monarch, albeit a satanic one? Perhaps the militant opposition of an Islam discredited in the eyes of the rest of the world to an almost universally admired ‘savior’ is the very thing which will ultimately consolidate his power. I hasten to say that this is in no way a prediction; God forbid. I am simply allowing myself to imagine various scenarios based on the quality of ultimate irony and self-contradiction which is the keynote of all historical forces in these latter days. And one of the twists of this irony is fact that many semi-secularized Muslims seem much more in tune with the mores of postmodern globalist culture than any Christian I could name.

If the greatest strength and greatest weakness of traditional Christianity is in its exlusivism, the comparable strength and weakness of Buddhism, especially in the West, is in its ability to ‘fit in’. (The same goes for heterodox Westernized Hinduism and various influences, such as Feng Shui, Taoist meditation, and Sino-Japanese martial arts, originating in the Far East.) At its best, this represents a radical detachment from the norms of ‘the world’, allowing it to avoid all forms of dogmatic literalism and fundamentalism and the marginalization such a stance often entails. At it worst, it indicates a capitulation to the collective egotism of this very ‘world’.

In the United States at least, Buddhism is an acceptable part of the general Neo-Pagan cultural drift, which, while it may not identify with globalism, nonetheless often ends by serving it. (The same is true of certain strands of American Sufism, especially those which attempt to separate the Sufi tradition from Islam.) As a religion which recognizes a fall (into ignorance) and posits a goal of salvation (via enlightenment), it ‘naturally’ has a much greater affinity with the Abrahamic religions than with a Paganism which accepts the ontological status quo and seeks only to profit from it. But that’s not how things have worked out sociologically. American Buddhism, as a non-theistic religion (though certainly not an atheism, since it possesses a doctrine of the Absolute), has been attractive to many people – especially, as it turns out, many American Jews – who are in flight from their own narrow-minded and superstitious ideas of God. An acquaintance of mine, a traditional Catholic who studied for years under the Hopi elders, tells the story of a ‘Buddhist Halloween party’ where a well-known American Buddhist teacher, dressed as a ‘Sufi’, made the statement that Buddhism is better than the Abrahamic religions because, just like the Native Americans, the Buddhists don’t believe in God – a statement which my friend knew, from long personal experience with Native American spirituality, to be totally false. It was nonetheless an idea which would ‘play well’ to the general liberal, New Age and Neo-Pagan culture from which this teacher draws his students, the kind of people whose appreciation for the American Indians is even more destructive to Native American spirituality than their attraction to Buddhism is to Buddhism.

The false ecumenism of Neo-Pagan, New Age culture is the seed-bed for that ‘world fusion spirituality’ in which fragments of every spiritual tradition are promiscuously thrown together, to their mutual corruption. True ecumenism on the other hand – the outer expression of the ‘esoteric ecumenism’ of the Transcendent Unity of Religions, which understands the very uniqueness and particularity of the authentic religious traditions as the transcendent basis for their unity – is not a syncretistic amalgam or a diplomatic glossing-over of doctrinal differences, but a united front against a common enemy: that unholy alliance of scientism, magical materialism, idolatry of the psyche and postmodern nihilism which is headed, with all deliberate speed, toward the system of Antichrist.”

Charles Upton, The System of Antichrist, pp. 490-492
The System of Antichrist: Truth And Falsehood in Postmodernism And the New Age

and

from a review via amazon of this book;

Make no doubt about it - Charles Upton has written an absolutely excellent book, destined to become a classic. Despite its length (500+ pages) it is written in a brisk, almost breezy style, and lends itself well to non-linear reading if you are so inclined. Indeed, you will probably wish to skip at least one or two small sections of the book, as the purpose of this book is several-fold.

First of all, it introduces the reader to the "Traditionalist" school of theology and philosophy exemplified by Coomaraswamy, Guenon, Schuon, Lings, et al. While it's difficult to do justice to the Traditionalists in one paragraph (and they are a disparate bunch in their own right) they can probably be said to espouse a "perennial philosophy" that strives for a universal spiritual understanding that at the same time sets absolute standards.

This is a sharp contrast from various postmodern and New Age doctrines, which essentially hold that "all paths lead to the same source" and that there is no objective truth. Upton traces the geneaology of postmodernism and the New Age movement, showing how successive strains of philosophic and scientific thought have gradually eroded at the notion of objective truth. In Dostoyevsky's words, "Without God, everything is permitted."

The book then refutes popular strands of New Age thought: the ideas and respective cults that have grown around Jane Roberts' _Seth_ material, Carlos Castaneda's _Tales of Power_, James Redfield's _The Celestine Prophecy_, _A Course in Miracles_, Theosophy, Jung, Terence Mckenna and Deepak Chopra's _Seven Spiritual Laws of Success_ all come under scrutiny. At this point, you can probably pick and choose whatever ideology you were exposed to. As a Gen-Xer, the Castaneda and _Seth_ material didn't have much impact on me, but _The Celestine Prophecy_ was certainly widely read during my undergraduate years at college. Upton is not down on everything that these authors have to say; indeed, much of it is positive. What's important to realize here is that, in his own words, New Age doctrines "don't take you all the way."

The problem with much New Age thought, Upton says, is that it might allow for some initial feeling of enlightenment, but it simply doesn't have the time-tested validity of a traditional path. Unfortunately, a lot of the 'follow your bliss' style of New Age thought is not geared towards the pragmatic realm that a spiritual path must take in to account; this often leads to the feeling of being let down after the initial rush of perceived enlightenment is had.

A later chapter on UFO's is particularly interesting. Upton effectively articulates Rene Guenon's notion of UFO's being representative "fissures in the great wall" that appear during the final phases of a complete coalescing of the spiritual into the material world (this is the Kali Yuga of Hindu cosmology, which is a centerpiece of most Traditional thought.) He also (correctly, I believe) points out that these phenomena are manifestations from the psychic or demonic plane, not space brothers heralding a new era of peace and harmony.

The book does occasionally bog down into polemics. Most readers will probably want to skip the chapter that Upton devotes to refuting William Quinn's "The Only Tradition" (which was an attempt to show that Theosophy is compatible with the Traditionalist School.) However, these small asides into academic nitpicking certainly don't detract from the overall strength of the book; it's an excellent introduction to religion, cosmology, and the End Times all in one, and there's hardly a page lacking in quote-worthy passages.

***********
and this;

The more chaos there is in the world, the more many people will wish for a figure who will hold out a carrot and offer to solve the humanity's problems if he is given unquestioning obedience. "Traditionalism" remains an interesting school of thought among a handful of scholars, but it is nothing more than "a school." It cannot attract a mass of believers of all levels of intelligence and education like the Church can. In all, a great book on the nature of reality. The second law of thermodynamics states that as the universe continues, so does entropy. You will NEVER get as much out of something as you put in. Loss, decay, death, dissolution, disorder, darkness. "Matter is entropy," writes Upton, as even our earth is nourished by a Sun, slowly burning itself out. The only hope in this age is indeed a return for whoever can to repent, return to the ancient Way, realize that the world only ends in death, the ultimate defeat, and look forward to where one's state will be in Eternity, unto Ages of Ages.

********
ADDENDUM:

More insight from Upton:

"Our elite rulers did not lead us into tyranny and environmental collapse because they are evil people, but because they were forced to by the nature of capitalism. Capitalism must continually grow in order to survive. If investors have nowhere to increase their funds then they stop investing and the whole system collapses like a house of cards.

"Propaganda myth tells us that capitalism and free enterprise are one and the same thing. They are not. Under free enterprise a business can provide a service or product, make a profit in the process, and continue on stably for many years. Under capitalism such a business would be considered a failure - it does not provide a growth opportunity for an investor. Under capitalism society is forced to continually destroy old ways of doing things and adopt new ways - not because it is good for society but because that is how wealthy investors can increase their wealth still further."


I would add the comment that "capitalism" is a form of - Mammon.

CORRECTION

The quote about capitalism that I said was from Upton was actually from
"Globalization and the Revolutionary Imperative: from Global Tyranny to Democratic Renaissance" by Richard K. Moore, which was mentioned by someone else in this thread. The URL was also mentioned:

http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewcommentary.php?storyid=55

morningstar, rock , vine, and bread

A French-Syrian archaeological mission discovers decorated
human skulls dating back to 9,500 years ago near Damascus.

Both of the following posts located via Fr Jake Stops the World.

"Jesus our Mother"

The Rev. Ann K. Fontaine, a supporter of The Episcopal Majority, is a priest in the Diocese of Wyoming. There she spends her Sundays driving across South Pass, where the Oregon Trail crosses the Continental Divide, to serve churches in Rock Springs and Eden, Wyoming. She is also President of the Standing Committee, EFM Trainer and Mentor for two online EFM groups, Deputy to General Convention (Lay 1985-91, Clergy 1997-2006), member of National Executive Council (1985-91), and author of Streams of Mercy: A Meditative Commentary on the Bible.

Recently there has been another upsurge in the discussion about our Presiding Bishop-elect and her use of the metaphor "Jesus our Mother" in her homily at the Closing Eucharist June 21 at General Convention. Most of the church, by now, knows the phrase comes from Julian of Norwich and others, especially those of the 14th century. It was a common image from that era that has recently come back into use. It is often paired with the image that Jesus uses in his Lament over Jerusalem where he likens himself to a mother hen gathering her chicks. As used in Katharine Jefferts Schori’s first sermon after her election, we were called to remember the blood, pain and sweat of the cross as the birth of our community. Some are very upset for a variety of reasons and are calling her a spewing heretic and seem to be demanding an apology for upsetting them.
(continued at the link)

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Monday, October 02, 2006

Mother Jesus

Note: The following will appear this Thursday in my monthly column, "Faith Matters," in the Daily Record.


These are certainly interesting times in the Episcopal Church. In June of this year, we elected a new Presiding Bishop, and life has never been more interesting.

You may have heard. Her name is Katharine Jefferts Schori. Yes, our new Presiding Bishop is a woman. In fact, she is the first woman in our history to hold the highest position in our ecclesiastical structure. She’s also the first woman to be elected Primate (of a total of 38 Primates) in the 77 million-member Worldwide Anglican Communion.

The conservatives, neo-puritan evangelicals and those of our members who consider themselves ‘biblically orthodox’ were, of course, desperate to find something against her – other than that she’s a woman. They were positively euphoric with her first convention sermon, which they proclaimed as flat-out heresy. As time has passed, many remain in a state of near apoplexy about it.

Here, in part, is what she said, “Our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation – and you and I are His children. If we're going to keep on growing into Christ-images for the world around us, we're going to have to give up fear.”

Yes, that’s right. She said, “mother Jesus.”

The outcry has ranged from the anticipated hand-wringing about “liberal revisionism” to the predictable laments about “radical feminism,” “Gnosticism” and to the outrageous claim that she had created a “transgender Jesus.”

Yes, that’s right. They said, “transgender Jesus.” Make no mistake: these otherwise intelligent, well educated, pious and dedicated Christians are dead-serious. Apparently, misogyny can destroy brain cells.

Never mind that scripture, psalms, and the historical tradition of the church hold a rich treasury of feminine images for God and Jesus. Julian of Norwich, the great English mystic of the 14th century, wrote this: “…. A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself. He does so most courteously and most tenderly, with the Blessed Sacrament, which is the precious food of true life.”

The great theologian Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in the years 1093 to 1109, prayed these words: “Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you; you are gentle with us as a mother with her children. Often you weep over our sins and our pride; tenderly you draw us from hatred to judgment.

Or, these traditional words: "And thou, sweet Jesus Lord, art thou not also a mother? Truly, thou art a mother, the mother of all mothers, who tasted death in thy desire to give life to thy children."

Clearly, Bishop Katharine, as she is affectionately known, is standing in the footsteps of giant figures of church history and is neither the heretic nor blind innovator her detractors would like to make her. Neither was she being intentionally provocative, or, as one wag complained, “politically maladroit.”

When asked why she chose this particular phrase, she replied, "It was very deliberate and conscious. I was wrestling with the image of blood on the cross, the image of labor. It's medieval imagery actually, Julian of Norwich. It seemed appropriate to the text and the hard work we are trying to do in this place."

These are interesting times, indeed. Life in the “Age of Terrorism” seems to leave little room for the mysteries of life. We want our God, like our borders, secure and fixed. We want Jesus on the cross – not resurrected near the empty tomb. We want the comfort of the “faith of our fathers,” not the challenge of discerning the face of the Divine Feminine.

Bishop Katharine is right. If we are going to have any hope of bringing peace and reconciliation into this world, we’re going to have to give up fear. That’s going to take the kind of courage women throughout the ages have had to claim who know what it is to shed blood in order to bring new life into the world.

Here’s how Bishop Katharine ended that sermon. Actually, I find these words, these images of the work of the human enterprise, infinitely more challenging than anything she could have said about the image of God:

“Our invitation, both in the last work of this Convention, and as we go out into the world, is to lay down our fear and love the world. Lay down our sword and shield, and seek out the image of God's beloved in the people we find it hardest to love. Lay down our narrow self-interest, and heal the hurting and fill the hungry and set the prisoners free. Lay down our need for power and control, and bow to the image of God's beloved in the weakest, the poorest, and the most excluded.

We children can continue to squabble over the inheritance. Or we can claim our name and heritage as God's beloveds and share that name, beloved, with the whole world.”

Somebody in the church say, “Amen.”

posted by Elizabeth Kaeton

ANGELIC INFORMATION

(from Monastic Mumblings)

Michael and All Angels

Today is the Feast day of Michael and all Angels. This is the first since my younger brother, Michael as joined that vast throng in heaven, and is especially important to me.

The Bible tells us that God's creation is vast and richer than we can know in our simple minds. There are beings that worship God in heaven, and are some sort of messengers between Heaven and Earth, they also seem to act as His agents here in this world. We don't know a lot about them but Michael is mentioned as the leader of the Heavenly armies against the dragon.

Traditionally it is understood that there are Nine Choirs of Angels

They can all be called Angels, but they go from the highest order the Seraphim, who devote themselves to worshiping God, beholding Him face to face, down to the lowest order, the Angels we interact with here on earth the most. It has been understood that each Order helps to reveal and declare God's glory to the Angels in the Order below

Choir
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Seraphim
Cherubim
Thrones

Dominions
Virtues
Powers

Principalities
Archangels
Angels

Michael (the name means, "Who is like God?") is mentioned in the Scriptures in Daniel 10:13,31; 12:1, Jude 9, and Revelation 12:7. We usually see him depicted in full armor, carrying a lance, and with his foot on the neck of a dragon.

Gabriel (the name means "God is my champion") is mentioned in Daniel 8:16; 9:21and in Luke, he is the Angel of the Annunciation. He has been viewed as the bearer of special messengers between God and man.

Raphael (the name means "God heals") is mentioned in the book of Tobit, where he appears as a man to Tobias.

Uriel (the name means "God is my light") is mentioned in 4 Esdras.

Everlasting God, You have ordained and constituted in a wonderful Order the ministries of Angels and mortals: Mercifully grant that, as Your holy Angels always serve and worship You in heaven, so by Your appointment they may help and defend us here on earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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