°2004.09.14.tu | Epistemology
Marcus Borg describes three states he passed through with respect to faith: naivet° (a superstitious child), critical (a skeptical adult), and post-critical naivet° (an open heart). Paul Ricoeur has a similar delineation:
Stated briefly, "first naivete" signifies the human subjects enmeshment with the symbolic/mythic foundations of the surrounding culture. "Critical distance" signifies the human subjects use of interpretive structures to create distance from mythic symbol systems. "Second naivete" signifies the human subjects interpretive stance, informed by the use of critical models, open to the depth of symbolic meaning. Second naivete is the tension sustained between first naivete and critical distance.
This is also akin to Heschel's situational (versus conceptual) thinking, and Marcel's "secondary reflection."
°2004.09.14.tu | haiku glossary
The The Haiku Anthology is an excellent collection — Gary Hotham is a favorite — and the book has a useful glossary:
- onji
- sound syllable
- kigo
- season word
- hokku
- the first stanza of the linked-verse poem (haiki no renga)
- senryu
- has the same form as haiku but is about humanity with irony and humor
- renga
- English adaptation of haiku no renga, with 36 or fewer stanzas of 2/3-lines
- haibun
- Japanese prose piece written in an elliptical style of the haiku; a short sketch to book-length the diary
°2004.09.07.tu | Life is for Loving
Given the upcoming elections in United States, and the protests of the Republican National Convention last week, I've been wondering how one should approach those with whom one has very serious disagreements. One of my favorite tracts in the Christian tradition is "Life Is For Loving", by Hugh Bishop. The excerpt below, from an inspiring 27 page booklet, guides much of my thoughts on this question:
But how can I love everyone? How can I pretend to love someone who is a bully and a liar and coward when in fact I hate everything about him? How can I love people whom I've never seen, like the refugees in Hong Kong or all those thousands of Africans who were serving sentences, or still awaiting trial, in the overcrowded prisons and labor camps of South Africa? How can I love my enemies, whether personal or national enemies?
My answers reminds you of what I said yesterday. Love, as Christ and the New Testament understand it, is not so much emotion as a policy. It's a way of treating other people, rather than a way of feeling about them. To love someone means to treat them as love treats them. That may mean resisting them, if necessary even by force, if they're threatening to do some serious harm to themselves or others — just as you would forcibly prevent your own child, if he had lost his temper, from bashing another child in the head with a hammer. That's why and how it's possible to love your enemies, and that's what Christ meant when he commanded us to do so. We can't always liked our enemies, or our neighbors, for likes and dislikes are largely temperamental and beyond our control. But we can always love those whom we can't yet like: for loving them is a way of treating them. And who knows? Those whom we began by trying to love may end by succeeding in liking. So you see, love continually expands.
— "Life Is For Loving", by Hugh Bishop, C.R. as broadcast on the BBC in the last week of September, 1960 and first published in 1961 by the Faith Press, London.
__
Copyright 2004 NrrrdBoy. All Rights Reserved. https://goatee.net/