Friday, May 15, 2009

Toward an Epistemology of the Sacred

Dear Dialecticians (& cross-curriculum colleagues),

Fools Rush in. (Where Angels Fear To Tread).
Bateson acknowledges the dialectic between angelic
discretion and foolish impulsiveness &
cherishes both--or what's
a dialectic for?

The Cutting Edge will always be an offense to
the conscientious, and ludicrous to the savvy
smarty-pants. How could IT be otherwise?

Toward an Epistemology of The Sacred.

“He who knoweth himself knoweth the Lord.”
Koran

“To believe your own thought, to believe that
what is true in your private heart is true for all
men—that is genius.” (Emerson’s “Self Reliance.”)

Religion = re-ligament: to be bound back to the source.
Connect and be connected. Fit and be fit.

Righteousness —if I can hose-off all the piety the word
“righteous” generates. Pious, if I can scrub down the
robes & sandals image that word hauls. Realignment.

“Sacred”: set apart for the “worship” of the whole (holy);
“sacrifice”: to set a part apart for the worship of the
holy (whole ) . “Sanctify.”

These words carry a load of smoke, incense, mirrors,
beads, gourds, rattles, carcasses of dead animals, slit
throats, ancient rite and masques, Sunday school
coloring books & bulletin boards, stained glass windows,
vacation bible school, itchy pants, saffron robes, shaved
heads & top-knots, begging bowls and sacred cattle…
efforts to manifest, embody the whole which is more
than parts.

Nothing is more antagonistic than the
Conscious & Unconscious. Hostile
by nature. War of the realms..

We never did nail down Bateson’s sense of sacred.
Nailing IT Down: noun-ing a verb, explaining dreams,
rationalizing the irrational, manifesting an Idea,
embodying an archetype & all its allo- variations.

Nailing IT down.

Of course I do: hammer IT, you got a problem with that?
Convert spirit to letter, nightmare to waking life, analogic
to logical, quality to quantity—stick in my thumb: pull out
a plumb, and what a good boy am I.

This is practical.
Good science.
System-Self validating.
Seek & I shall find &
get what I prey for.
Not necessarily in my
own terms of desire,
ooops, ouch, oh hell,.
damnit..

xxxooo, Sam

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