Hear! Hear!
Honestly, if we aren’t dealing with philosophical issues, I think we’re barking up the wrong tree. 1) How does one live a life of faith, while not denying reality and the real as we learn to understand it better? 2) What, other than considerations of faith within a world that is more and more understood scientifically, should we be concerning ourselves with — what things that will inform our thinking differently? 3) What sort of life do we live in light of how we answer question 1 and 2?
Stealing from Francis Schaeffer, whom I don’t hope to emulate, “How then shall we live?” But that is a philosophical question. If we, especially those who claim to be christians, are unwilling to face that question, we really need just to pack our toys, go home, shut down the website and congratulate ourselves for having achieved … having achieved what?
While true enough, you can set your mind at ease about this. Yes - there are plenty of people out there who can certainly waste our time - but you’re not one of them. And besides, the vast majority of my own participation here isn’t as a moderator, but as “just another participant”. I wouldn’t be spending so much time here if I wasn’t getting something out of it myself.
Actually - it isn’t that I was delving too deeply into anything (yet) - but more just that among her (Lamott’s) self-deprecating and entertaining banter, the fact that she brought up Kierkegaard was kind of cool, and I just used that as an excuse to splash some of her stuff around here. It will be fun to see if she makes further use of it as I read on.
You always find good questions. I find myself splashing around between thoughts and responses to these but they aren’t coming together into anything coherent yet. Feel free to give me a push if the effort gets lost in the maze of memory.
Parts of my morass to help me remember where I was with this:
I’m for forming coalitions of the willing to encourage each other’s fragile faith in what is supra-rational, recognizing that everyone must play the hand they’re dealt and follow the truth allowed to us so as also to encourage, through the practice of gracious dialogue, the cultivation of each other’s ‘affections’ as Hume called them, those as operate more calmly, and cause no disorder in the temper.
We should take on the mission of doing all we can to help as many as possible in what time remains. A frame of mind I acquired by beginning to listen to this discussion between IM and climate scientist Dougold Hine who quoted someone else who suggested we think of the state of civilization today as being on hospice care (at 4:30). We shouldn’t be looking for ways to perpetuate the cancerous increase in our use of resources but there is nothing within science itself that rules out efforts made in that direction. Regarding the pressures put on scientists he says that those desiring to be a friend to science should not push it to do more than what it is equipped to do. (The scientist gives a great analogy around 10:00 and 11:00 minutes in.). It is a tool that enables the achievement of ends but has no special insight into what would count as good ends. I also need to hear the rest of this still.
Well bless your little heart. You got me wondering whether she too was godless. Nothing definitive but this bio can found on that link. Interesting life at any rate. I wonder whether it is better to live in interesting times or to live an interesting life? Probably the latter as the former almost never gets used except when conditions are dire.
Kathleen Raine
1908-2003
Kathleen Raine was born in London in 1908, where she grew up; taking on a number of unsatisfactory jobs. Through one of her later jobs she met the nephew of the Indian mystic Rama Coomaraswamy Tambimuttu, who invited her to contribute to his new magazine, Poetry London, she did of course, and soon developed a lifelong passion for all things Indian. Raine began to seriously write toward her late twenties, and by 1943 she had published her first collection of poetry Stone and Flower, which was illustrated by Barbara Hepworth. Three years later the collection Living in Time was released, followed by The Pythoness in 1949.
Raine married twice, each time unhappily due to dissatisfaction with domesticity. She was even quoted as saying she felt "as if I were living in someone else’s dream.” This unhappiness led to an affair with a gay writer named Gavin Maxwell. This affair helped to inspire the works in The Year One 1952, which she released in 1952. Raine stayed frequently with Maxwell on the island of Sandaig in the Scottish Islands. The relationship ended in 1956 when Raine lost his pet otter, Mijbil, who inspired Maxwell’s best-selling book Ring of Bright Water. She published a book of poems called Collected Poems that same year.
She began her autobiography 1973 and it was out in 1977. Four years later Raine had founded her own magazine, called Temenos, to help articulate her views. Raine went on to win several awards, including the Harriet Monroe Prize, Edna St. Vincent Millay Prize from the American Poetry Society, and the Queens Gold Medal for Poetry in 1992. In 2000, she was made a Commander of the British Empire.
I had the pleasure of visiting Barabara Hepworth’s studio and garden in Cornwall, 2008 and I recall reading Ring of Bright Water even before I retired.
Known for her interest in various forms of spirituality, most prominently Platonism and Neoplatonism, she was a founding member of the Temenos Academy.
Learned that one while visiting relatives in South Carolina. Who could have guessed an expression prominently featuring “bless” and “heart” could have a dark side?
Since it all already belongs to God anyway, one might be forgiven for wondering why it needs … to be … appropriated? And one can further ask, just who is the attempted ‘appropriation’ really for then?
I prefer Paul’s general and generous attitude of blessing: If anything is true or honorable or just, if anything is commendable or lovely or of good report, if there is anything excellent and if anything is worthy of praise - meditate on these things!
And Paul didn’t hesitate to put that into practice apparently!
I did not say that graciously, as is my wont , and I would that more Christians would be producing more insights and beauty. But we don’t need to apologize for using great tunes like Slane (not that it was necessarily godless in origin) in our worship of the true Source of all beauty, knowledge and wisdom.
I think of objective creation as pertaining to the cosmos and subjective creation has two meanings: the creation of our subjective experience, and, the creation we produce by way of our subjective experience.
Interesting. Thanks for clarifying. There being a flow indicates we do rise above our subjectivity, and that we can talk about that which is objective.
By that way of speaking I assume you are speculating about what is true of people generally. It is a common way to do that and one I certainly don’t object to so long as we don’t do it too stridently.
But I don’t know about rising above our subjectivity. We do sometimes become enthused and speak with more confidence and perhaps channel some higher nature and at least feel we speak with greater authority. But it would be folly to expect everyone will fall in with what we say at those times. We are all equally capable of drawing on such inspiration after all.
Reality, truth and the good must continually be discovered in each moment in every new context, IMO.
As I consider what might be said about the objective, the moon is fitting. Any object would do, but the moon is something that we both experience. Not a pencil that is real for one of us, but hypothetical to the other. There the moon is very independently of how either of us subjectively experience it. Of the mystery or eros it inspires, it’s place in the universe is genuinely not contingent on you or I.
, and I would that more Christians would be producing more insights and beauty. But we don’t need to apologize for using great tunes like Slane (not that it was necessarily godless in origin) in our worship of the true Source of all beauty, knowledge and wisdom.