I’m sure they’re out there but I know where some can be found right here.
From the last chapter of my ‘bible’, Iain McGilchrist’s The Matter With Things, which specifically deals with the sacred, spiritual and religion. A couple of quick quotes now that I’m back on a proper keyboard:
What is encountered spiritually can be conveyed best by poetry, drama, ritual, image, narrative, music - by means, in other words, that are implicit, embodied, and contextually rich. They are resonant rather than declarative
One of the myths of atheists is that science and religion are incompatible.
All in all, the history of the supposed ‘conflict’ between science and religion makes fascinating reading. But it has done great harm to clear thinking. It has entrenched a false alternative to ‘superstition’. This has done immeasurable harm. According to Hart,
…the materialist metaphysics that emerged from mechanical philosophy has endured and prevailed not because it is necessary support of scientific research, or because the sciences somehow corroborate its tenets, but simply because it determines in advance which problems of interpretation we can all safely avoid confronting.
Despite being deeply suspicious of a great deal of ‘God talk’ myself, and while fully acknowledging the problematic nature of the very word God, I feel our repudiation of God is not a wise move. It is easy to misunderstand what cultures wiser than ours were trying to express by speaking of God; still easier to reject the idea of God entirely. But easy is not enough. It is our duty to do the more difficult thing: to find out the core wisdom in this ill-understood, though universal, insight, for that there is such an inestimably valuable core seems to me more credible than anything else I know.
Surely somebody is overlooking something here! I should think any taxidermist worth their salt could have former librarians stationed around any public library glowering over their half glasses helping to keep noise at bay.
Hadn’t thought of it that way. Thanks for perspective, Merv.
Ironically, I have often been the one shushed! Fortunately, the main floor at my library is seen as a place where we work with information, which means having spoken (not whispered) reference interviews with and giving bibliographic instruction to patrons. I could never survive as an employee or conscious person in an old-style study library.
That’s nice. My wife was once a small-business owner who worked without pay for two years so she could keep her employees paid, as minimum wage went up something like $2 in less than three years.
Then we spent close to a decade paying off the loss.
I took the meme to be criticizing billionaire investors whose bottom line depends on governments supplementing starvation wages with social services at taxpayer’s expense. Your wife’s experience is not the subject of the meme nor a meaningful exception.
Just PERFECT.
OMG! Nailed it.
However. We have not gotten to the end yet, when she gives in to love and her lover, and then dies. Because it’s written in the code of the fictive universe that she may not have her intellectual, personal, spiritual and physical felt needs all met in one life.
Thanks for these tips, @LM77! I will add to them with:
I’m watching “Solaris” (1972), and Kelvin’s father has at least twice sent his wife, Krisa Kelvina, out of the room to have important discussions with the menfolk. However, any science fiction movie that has a traditional Russian fine knitted-lace shawl in it automatically gets a few gold stars! And some serious visual study accompanied by graph paper.
