the world
It's okay if I go counter to my own rules, including linking my Wednesday +Time blogpost on Facebook after I said I'd not do that except on Sundays during Lent.
Watching the national scene, I'm thinking that each branch of government may need their own armed enforcement power, thus, as well as the US Army under the Executive, an army for Congress and an army for the Supreme Court; and one might actually see them warring with each other, shooting and killing, holding hostages if they resort to that level of subhuman barbarism, especially helpless, innocent hostages.
We could all take sides.
As it is, suppose a court holds an executive branch official in contempt and issues an order for arrest?
What happens when government goes berserk and refuses to follow the rules, standards, practices, customs, traditions that are the deck of cards that hold the whole thing up?
+++++++++
What happens to religion when people reject its rules as well as its myths? What happens to religion when various groups of it differ on its basics? What happens in religion and government when they are intertwined such that one religious group has power to force other groups to their rules?
Can religion hold to its sacred myths, celebrate its festivals, sing its songs, hear its stories, recite its belief tenets, without insisting that they are historically literally "true"? Can the religious stay inside with integrity if they doubt?
Wir Glauben: in one parish I led, instead of reciting the creed, we sang a beautiful setting of it, and it was much more palatable. When the bishop came we reverted to reciting it for his visitation.
Christianity seems to divide into two completely different basic camps; in simplest terms,
one camp holding that Christianity is about Jesus Christ coming to be sacrificed for the forgiveness of our sins and each person accepting him as Savior in order to secure Salvation into heaven after death;
the other camp holding that Jesus Christ came to show us how to return to the godly image in which we are created by living one's life as it understands Jesus' to have taught; and whatever happens after death is not a major concern.
++++++++
A day or so ago, Linda noticed the small yellow boats again speeding back and forth on the bay; we hadn't noticed them for a long time, maybe several years. Might it be the Mercury outboard motors being tested again, were they really gone for a while?
++++++++
Up way too early this morning, read more of Wiman, section 21 again, "The Drift of the World," a poem by William Bronk,
Of lovers, one senses how coupled, their joy is to think
their singleness, together, to find themselves,
how, holding each other, they think to hold
as well as themselves, the truth, reality,
We honor their wanting; what better could we want than that?
Or, more than honor, we feel what they feel.
If not for another sense, then this were all:
we sense that what they held is not the truth.
"The Holding"
And other and more Bronk poems, Wiman dissecting Bronk, a cadaver with its medical student cutting away. Is that what a college poetry course does? Is that what/how Wiman teaches at Yale Divinity School?
Bronk's "The Holding" reminds me again of Tomas Transtromer's poem "The Couple" with the poets winning in both cases, and the cynical critic sent to sit on the stool, wear the booby hat, face the corner, and contemplate himself. A note gets sent home, telling his parents they need to call and make an appointment for a conference.
+++++++++
What am I doing today? Nothing, dammit, it's Wednesday, cool outside, cloudless light blue sky, calm Bay, and a just a hint of a breeze. I tried sitting outside on 7H porch earlier as I watched the moon, but it was just a tad too chilly to be comfortable.
Which reminded me, as always, of the people in Gaza and Ukraine who can't go back inside if the morning is chilly. Why them and not me? Why am I not feeling so privileged or guilty these days, to be an envied American?
+++++++++
Early morning contemplations, memories too personal to share. What I would and would not do again, and the good parts I would have missed had I taken Frost's other road in the yellow wood simply to miss the bad parts.
If your life is summed up, do all the good parts make all the bad parts worthwhile? Ronnie Milsap again, "I wouldn't have missed it for the world" - - take care, because if you go back and change anything, you'll miss the part that you now treasure most.
++++++++
enough nonsense for Wednesday
T
image: waning moon at 77% illumination, on the Bay at my feet, reality v. illusion
If you don't know Tomas' poem, here are two English translations from his Swedish:
The Couple
They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then a rising.
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven’s darkness.
Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.
It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer
tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.
The second translation is by Robin Fulton
The Couple
They switch off the light and its white shade
glimmers for a moment before dissolving
like a tablet in a glass of darkness. Then up.
The hotel walls rise into the black sky.
The movements of love have settled, and they sleep
but their most secret thoughts meet as when
two colours meet and flow into each other
on the wet paper of a schoolboy’s painting.
It is dark and silent. But the town has pulled closer
tonight. With quenched windows. The houses have approached.
They stand close up in a throng, waiting,
a crowd whose faces have no expressions.