Monday, May 26, 2014

Lux et Veritas

       Light and Truth

Describe Mode: 

Got no leg to stand on never the less I cast
first stones, live in  glass houses built on
sand, hate & call kettles black, Cretans liars,
cut & stretch whatever to fit my bed and lie
in it, flies on me & elite degrees  testify to my
liberal education.

No leg to stand on yet watch me lambaste the
crippled and the lame. Ignorant and ignorantly
I chasten stupidity. Soaking wet in desire, how
dry I am castigating horny & hungry. Suffused
in fear & hate: don’t I ridicule timidity & caution
& lack of courage swimming in a sea of
righteousness, I accuse. Hello! I stick in my
thumb,  pull out a plumb. What a good boy am I!

Faith. S’blood. Orphans and widows and their
welfare  don’t catch my imagination, visiting
sick and the embarrassed, feeding poor and
clothing homeless?  I’d rather play banjo. Mow
lawn. Prepare omelets.  Grade papers. Neuro-
surgery. Dentistry. Pastor congregations of
Fundamentalists. Front end  alignment.
Whispering to dogs: none of these  follow my
nose. The lame shall enter first &  I might not
postpone joy from time to time.

My belief system is Kansas.  Faith = the whole
earth cataloged.  Flatland & Sphere. Line &
Constellation. Terrestrial & Extraterrestrial.
Conscious. Unconscious. Thinking & Feeling.
They don’t  Just Get Along. Belief is boss  of me
of Little Faith 

42 comments:

  1. No leg to stand on
    yet watch me lambaste the
    crippled and the lame.
    Ignorant and ignorantly
    I chasten stupidity.
    Soaking wet in desire, how
    dry I am castigating horny & hungry.
    Suffused in fear & hate:
    don’t I ridicule timidity & caution
    & lack of courage swimming in a sea of
    righteousness?
    I accuse. Hello!
    I stick in my thumb, pull out a plumb.
    What a good boy am I!

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  2. Acknowledging if not embracing my shabby and shoddy-ness--what the hell. Hello.

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  3. Something goes wrong with the way.

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  4. Il me marche pas. So geht es nicht. Quo varies.(Check your Indoeuropean dictionary.)

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  5. I do it my way, not the high way. Quo vadis?

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  6. Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,
    To shine for Him each day;
    In every way try to please Him,
    At home, at school, at play

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  7. What is it you really seek: heat or light?

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  8. Heat is what you seek from your little corner. Firing spitballs in all directions.

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  9. Guilty pleasure. "I am good, but some stupid thing is wrong with everybody else."

    You are sneaky. You drew me out and made me write it. Hook, line and sinker.

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  10. If your samscoville and my samscoville passed each other on the side walk, they wouldn't recognize each other--and the question might could be: which is the real samscoville?

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  11. On my trip I was reading Alister McGrath "Mere Apologetics". His aim is to get people to "engage" and that in the most sensible and current ways. Alongside that I was reading Casanova's autobiography. He is, of course, known what he is known for, but is also writer, philosopher, chronicler of his times, adventurer, and definitely trickster and impostor, lover of intrigue and dissimulation. -- I was thinking of you and saw you as a kind of cross between the two.

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  12. Sorry, I don't write very good sentences on the I pad. Casanova's autobiography was recommended by a CBC radio show. It is available on I books for free, in very many short volumes. I am devouring them at the moment. The rationalizing is also quite interesting. A Muslim on Constantinople confronts him on some of his ways, but he says: yes, but our confessors are bound to absolve us, in Christendom. Says the Muslim. Yes, but you should repent. Says Casanova: yes, of course, we should repent. Which still does not help, because the rules of the church are seen as crazy by the Muslim, who criticizes Onanism and duplicitous rules about celibacy. (Big point of attack for the reformation also, which by then is long past, but does not get mentioned.)...

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  13. "Jesus loves me, this I know," my old man's delight in Karl Barth's reduction. Your intellectualism is way beyond my daily shuffle with ideas that fly in like black birds and crows. Room in the Inn. They brood., I engage with students and their ideas. I like to argue in Facebook--the variety of religious experience and insistence. I mow the lawn. Watch sitcoms. Retire early. Get up early. Walking on 3 legs.

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  14. Sorry. Your reading and acute vacuuming up of other people's thoughts and ideas as ammunition for your Lutheran "our Lord-ism) leaves me with nothing to do but jiggle dance in appreciation and awe. Nothing to argue with. Clap and Clap and Clap is all . Mock is what I do. Scorn. Ridicule. I don't scold though, i don't think. That's your gift. Here is where you usually shut down for weeks or months. Refuel.

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  15. Do you think Alister McGrath would advocate "engaging" with you?

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  16. I don't know him. Looks like a heavy weight on Wiki. What's the point of your question?

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  17. Sam, I have worked very hard this winter and have hardly had time to read. My first indulgence this summer is to finish the books I have started. If it is not allowable to talk about them, just as it is not permitted to quote the Bible, you must understand that jiggling with you is not always enjoyable, freeing or constructive. If Apologetics is also not allowed, I do not see how you can maintain saying that you prefer ideas to people. I do not think you like ideas, either, or else you have felt yourself outgunned by a simple woman. Could be. Meanwhile worship at the shrine of Emerson, Thoreau and Bateson. If you quoted them once in awhile In some sort of context, we might have an idea what they are about. We might even be able to engage with them meaningfully and without your censorship of our input.

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  18. Censorship? How can I censor? "Your goodness must have edge to it, else it is none." Emerson. "How can he well use his ignorance, which his growth requires, who has always to be use his knowledge." Thoreau. I engage and argue with many, with mutual delight, persecuting (satanic) and prosecuting, pumping up our rhetorical tricks, some citing their authorities and bible verses, some of us blowing it out our butts. And a pretty good sustained time is had by all. Nothing is not allowed. Say your sayings. Quote your quotes, Charge your charge-ings. Accuse your accusings How does my last response (or any) restrict you? I asked the point of your Alister question and you give me this treatise on your winter and your reading and my dislike of ideas and love for Bateson and the disallowing of apologetics and bible verses etc. A rant. A rage? Back up: what was the point of whether Allister would advocate engaging with me?

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  19. What's the point about asking about a point when there is only method? There is substantial overlap between you and Alister McGrath in terms of shaping apologetics approaches. He even speaks about struggling in company without being ashamed... But you seem to always want to pull out the rug from under everything. It does not seem effective.

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  20. http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Apologetics-Seekers-Skeptics-Faith/dp/0801014166/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401423353&sr=8-1&keywords=mere+apologetics

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  21. The point: I wondered what your question (whether this guy would approve of engaging with me ) might mean seeing as I don't know him. I don't use the term apologetics except to point out to students that apos means open, expose and the apology like apocalypse is an unfolding,revelation and not just II'm sorry and holy smokes. . "There is only method?" I "seem only to always want to pull out the rug from under everything." True. Overstated, of course Elenchus to aporia.

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  22. You flatter yourself with the Elenchus. Socrates makes a lot more sense.

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  23. You nail me again, Brigitte My Socratic wanna-be-ness I' m sure he's better at it. It makes a lot more sense that he would make a lot more sense .

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  24. We must be complete imbeciles compared to him.

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  25. No need to take it to that extreme. One of his virtues was asking genuine questions--rather than merely rhetorical.

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  26. I have no idea any more what is a genuine question or comment here any more. A game or play is not genuine. The whole business of matching wits and testing intensities is nothing genuine. Geniality in, genuineness out, it seems. I have thought sometimes that art making seems wasted on the insensitive. As Casanova says: the natural is so much better than art.

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  27. He probably means a woman in the flesh rather than a picture. No Platonism the man.

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  28. It's all genuine--question, comment. (The etymology of genuine and genuflect is genu - knee, and referred to the patriarch bouncing the legitimate child on his knee and leaving the other little bastards on the floor. . Game and Play (ludic mode) is (like art) genuine. Unless you consider yourself not a player, in which case--pooh pooh play. Matching wits and testing intentions is as genuine as kneeling to "our lord" and striving to be a goodie. Which activity appeals to some and not others. Didn't to Casanova I bet. Or Alister, I imagine. Do you prefer the choir and the amen corner?

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  29. Of course, there was none less insensitive and none less genuine than he, all while being natural. He, of course, would flatter himself with the utmost devotion to love and a genuine spirit. It really is all tested in the morals, and that is what Plato is about to me. What is really just? Certainly not the Greek gods or politicians. They are the true brothers of Casanova, even to the point of hoarding up women (The Republic, on Oligarchy)

    It is a fine day and I will finally be able to put in the garden. My breeding pair so swallows likes to perch on the peak of the arch over the back gate.

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  30. Casanova went to absolution regularly.

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  31. Brigitte wants to enter the Kingdom of God. " We're all crazy egos hungry for love." (Sherwood Anderson) want want want want--my poor I have with me always.

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  32. Back up, Sam, let's talk about Plato, since that's your turf.

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