“I’M NEVER HAPPY WITHOUT JUGGLING three or four levels of meaning at once, no matter what the subject,” said Ol’ Thinkypants, and scratched meditatively. “Maybe two before coffee. But three or four is where it’s at. And if you can kick it up to eight or nine, you can have yourself a time.”
Accented Enlightenment
SO MANY OF OUR VERBAL surroundings are invisible to us; we live like blind fish in a sea of words. Two experiments to make the background pop out:
1. Try shifting the accent on multiword phrases; e.g., “Vanity Fair” turns from a magazine into a wry comment on mores (Vanity Fair instead of Vanity Fair). That may actually have been the original intent, FAIK.
2. From where you’re sitting now, how many words can you see (e.g., ID tags, slogans, ads)? Of these, how many are necessary for the worded thing’s function (e.g., the colorful packaging on a soda can)? If not, then why do they exist?
By paying attention to our attention, we become open to universes-next-door … right in front of our faces.
Whence Snark?
SERIOUSLY — CAN SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL me the advantage or otherwise positive aspect to snark? Because something can’t have so infested every aspect of our culture without it being good for something. Does it help make us more patient? Wise? Smarter? Or just delude us into so thinking, by allowing us to take out on others our impotence and frustration at all the Big Stuff (planetary death/rude salesclerks/insane cost of living/grindhouse politics/endless war)? I can only think it’s the latter, because the alternative — that a significant percentage of the human mind really enjoys such vicious petty self-important voyeurism — is much too horrible to contemplate.
Pithyism #26
“I MEANT WELL” DOESN’T MEAN enough.
Arm’s Reach To The Stars
PERHAPS “ARM’S REACH TO AN asteroid” would be more accurate, but: For the first time ever, humanity has reached out with metal fingers and grabbed a hunk of asteroid to hold before its face.
To put it less poetically, Japanese scientists announced today that the space probe Hayabusa, battered and crippled but still greatly game, did indeed scoop up a bit of asteroid Itokawa and return it to Earth. As John Matson writes on Scientific American‘s blog today:
Material scooped out … with a special spatula and examined with scanning electron microscopy revealed “about 1,500 grains…and most of them were judged to be of extraterrestrial origin, and definitely from Asteroid Itokawa,” according to a JAXA press release. Most of the rocky particles are less than 10 microns in length. (A micron is one millionth of a meter.)
For the rest of the story, click http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=hayabusa-probe-succeeded-in-returni-2010-11-16. Meanwhile, could we please have a standing ovation?
Pithyism #2a: A Daily 22-Year-Relationship Joy
“I WAS JUST ABOUT TO say the exact same thing!”
5 Thoughts: The Whole God Catalogue
1. DESPITE THAT THIS BLOG’S SUBTITLE is “A Journalistic Exploration of Experiential Holiness and Snack Bar,” there seems to me to be little direct dealing with the “experiential holiness” end of things: why any 2010 Renaissance Man would fall in love with a 3,000-year-old tradition, say, and non-ironically to boot.
2. Partly, that lack is due to a recent focus on my writing. But mostly it’s that, in order to discuss “religion” (which term I prefer to “spirituality,” as implying a more disciplined approach), it’s necessary — and only possible — to discuss my experience of it. And my experience is both weird and conventional — and I suspect it’s that way for everybody.
3. On the weird side are experiences which I would call “ecstatic visions” due to their immediacy and primarily visual character. I have had several of these, which always leave me feeling both humble (as in small) and “included” (as if I’m in on some cosmic joke). Those who know, know (including how difficult it is to relate something like, oh, praying really hard and feeling your body dissolve into happy twinkling lights); those who don’t, should know that while I have no firm idea or dogma about what these events “really are” I am reporting them as accurately as I can. (Although I favor the thought that it’s “simply” my brain chatting with its collective unconscious.) Stay tuned for updates.
4. On the conventional side are the love of a familiar liturgy and narrative, even of narrative structure and theme. (I’ve written of this elsewhere too, largely within a Jewish context but also to understand the four ways of encountering God.) This includes the unspeakable joy of praying by myself in a room full of people; the taste of bread and wine (or grape juice) afterward; the glow of familiar faces; leading services for people I love; being led in services by same; the look of the letters; the smell of a room full of prayers and old books. CS Lewis is said to have replied, when asked why he was a devout Christian, “Had I been born in India, I would be a devout Hindu.” (To which I say, “Me too.”)
5. Another way to put it: “It ain’t the finger — it’s where it POINTS!” What gets left out of the Great Culture Clash Debate is that many people aren’t clashing at all — they’re integrating, using their religious or spiritual practice to help themselves become more compassionate, more loving, and (especially Talmudists and Sufis) more wise. We cannot afford to let those louder and nastier define what it means to live religiously.