Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Liberal Art, not to be confused with Liberal Artistry

I know a lot, smart as hell. I know about mitochondria and
melancholia, particles and waves and Schrodinger’s cats,
Hawthorne and Faulkner and Fibonacci, Bushmen of the
Kalahari and melting icebergs, gluten and golf and internal
combustion, consummations devoutly desired and phatic
communion, supraegmental phonemes and glottal and velar
consonantal drifts, the invisible hand and Goedel’s theorem,
conspiracy theories up the wazoo, man’s inhumanity to man,
the difference between irrational and ratios, logic and analogic:
I could go on and on and what I don’t know I can Google so
I’m smart as the smartest kid in class so to speak and as it were
but never the less and as it were so to speak  I might could still
have to sleep on the couch most every other night if I don't
watch out knowing so much and smart as I am: it’s a mystery.
It’s beyond me.

169 comments:

  1. Too many nouns; no interesting verbs. The verbs carry it says Lewis. And no music. If there is no music you can forget about it.

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  2. Yes--what you say. That was the implication.

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  3. A good theologian, too, says: look at your verbs!

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  4. "I choose you."

    Choose, is a powerful verb. To be chosen is something. But who chose?

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  5. "Choosing", is it too antropromorphic for you?

    I dropped in at a widow's place this week with soup, as she is always on a diet and subsists on bought frozen meals. The tour of the house was had, of all the family pictures and the fibreoptic Christmas trees here and there. She had a little plaque on the wall, her second husband gave her (she was widowed twice) that said "I would choose you again."

    I took a picture of it because it struck me and I thought I might blog on it. On one level it is a lovely affirmation and precious memento. On the other hand, it is philosophically problematic. Falling in love is to me never so much a "choosing". And then again, who chose whom. I like the biblical wording better: what God has put together. Whatever that means. For many people the finding of a spouse and a new family is a supernatural gift. We will talk about certain choices we made and then say, but no, we couldn't have done that, because I would not have met you, and not married you, and not had these children... And all the sudden, there were no other options. The option we "chose" was the onlyoption. How could it have been any different...

    Alright, that's all. Stopping. Stop.

    There are no more "prove you are not a computer" steps on your blog, anymore.

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  6. My blog is what I post to my colleagues each day (a huge presumption I've indulged c 15 years) and stick on Facebook--always looking for reaction, response, argument . elaboration. It's an academic practice as far as I'm concerned--wandering and wondering in the Groves of Academe. I chose to start it years ago when the TECH suddenly put us argumentative contact 24/7/365 as never before. And choose to continue it every day--feeling often foolish for doing it but feeling worse if not. Haven't succeeded in instigating the conversation across curriculum that I thought possible. Provocation. Everything I do is anthropomorphic. How could it be otherwise?. Same with others and the species. Humans humanizing. "ARGUE" as you know means "the shine" (argps) and was originally describing edification--building up a common sense. But mostly now is seen as a king-of-the-hill exercise--Right & Wrong contest. Win &Lose. So many don't like it and choose not to participate.

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  7. We feel we need to have the option of settling on something that is right vs. wrong, or at least the best, or the very least, that does the least harm. Things can't be permanently open. It does not work psychologically.

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  8. We need to "choose" something, though more likely it chose us.

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  9. Coleridge describes "genius" as the ability to willfully suspend disbelief (and belief)--and Fitzgerald sees it as the capacity to hold to radically opposed notions in mind without going crazy. Things can't be permanently open--but open in certain appropriate contexts as resourceful for new emerging realization.

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  10. You seem to insist that they are permanently open.

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  11. I'm sure I give that impression among those who seem
    permenantly closed.

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  12. The average person hardly ever uses the word "genius" except to talk about the very famous.

    But we might say that the genius of the Lutheran insight is to hold at the same time the completely and simultaneous sinner and saint. Simul Justus et Peccator.

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  13. It used to be the term that indicated one's "idiocy"--personal, private, unique spirit: the one who realized his calling or vocation. I believe it's "christian" to see that the saint is one who realizes his sin. Wretch like me.

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  14. I can settle on that dissonance!

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  15. http://christthetao.blogspot.ca/2014/12/crowd-sourcing-vacuity-not-ten-non.html

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    1. couldn't access this\. Put it in your own words?

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  16. Do those 10 non-commandments convict anyone of sinfulness. Does ambiguity do that? Or does it let us wiggle out of responsibilities? Is "realizing sin" just a fake humble way of talking?

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    1. sins (essence, being) is a given. The only ambiguity is in the estimater. One wonders, maybe. Others judge. Every response can be seen as "fake" by the observers, I delight and treasure my "conviction of sin" which evolved late and makes good sense. Fake humility galore, I'd say--but that's just me.

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  17. Neither real saint, nor real sinner, just limbo, simul nothing.

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  18. Sorry, I didn't have all your comments. Can't summarize article either right now. Going out.

    I wrote and rewrote my creative non-fiction story. CBC is taking submissions after Jan. 1. It is still too long and needs a few more revisions. I would never have written a few things if you had not pushed me around some. Thanks.

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  19. Send me a copy. Do you know Nadia's (tatooed Lutheran Pastor) calls her church, the Church of Saints and Sinners. She's got charisma galore.

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  20. It has to be previously unpublished.

    I can never be Nadia. Saints and Sinners Is a good name, as long as we understand it. I can nail it down precisely, haha, but I will control myself. I remember most about Nadia 1). her time in lesbian colony and the attendant philosophy of non-attachment, which did not work for her ( I can't see how that works for any woman) 2). Her happy, gleeful rediscovery of Lutheran doctrine. (It is a great joy for me, too. I can follow her, there.)

    I read Flannery's talk on the Catholic writer in the South, this morning. Excellent stuff, but I will never be writing any fiction, that's for sure. I like how she dissects the problem with abstract writing. A story, even with a universal theme, must be flowing from a real time and place, from local manners, idioms and self-understanding. I like how she concludes that the Christian (Catholic) writer is one who has begun to see by Christ's miracle of giving sight to the blind--but as yet unclear. None of this makes her any less doctrinal. She is just by nature a story-writer, not someone into didactic teaching. There is a role for everything. If she had not been steeped in Catholic doctrine, she would not have been Flannery O'Connor, either.

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  21. Mystery and Manners--essays and lectures on writing, of which the Catholic writer in the South is one. Habit of Being--the collection of her letters. Doctrine is like freeze-dried coffee. Letters of the law. Nadia and Flannery both have spirit--charisma.

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  22. Doctrine is life and spirit. The right doctrine. The sun by which I see.

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  23. Doctrine is freeze dried--live and spirit emerge or descend but doctrine by itself: letters and law. People talk doctrine galore, put it on the bumpers of their cars, hang it on the walls, kneel in church, testify, clap hands, evangelize, witness. Many called. Few chosen.

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    1. Charisma can't be concealed. Or faked. It's a difference that makes a difference. Nadia, for example. Flannery. Charismatic.

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  24. Nadia, Flannery, doctrinal to the bone.

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  25. Can you hold it together in suspended animation: the tension of the sinner and saint in one person, and the tension between the doctrinal and the charismatic? We don't have to become all about process. Becoming about process is like becoming abstract. Here we have the freeze-dried.

    As Jesus said: I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. He was (is) as charismatic and galvanizing as you can get. He went to the synagogue and preached. Reading from Isaiah's prophecies, he said about himself: the scriptures are fulfilled in your hearing. (We notice he used fulfilled again. It could be an interesting word study). The people were going to throw him over a cliff.

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    1. Charismatic Christ--of course and no doubt. And then there's the choir and the amen corner and the worshippers and evangelists, testifiers testifying, witnesses witnessing, proclaimers proclaiming, bible studiers studying. circumsizers circumsizing, denominations, denominating, wool suits and neckties, culture and conventions and customs customizing. My Orthodox Presbyterian pastor quotes long solemn passage from the Westminster Confession justifying psalms over hymns in any decent worship & wretch-like-me holding it all together in suspended animation.

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    2. Admit it or not: we share the frustration over the Calvinist. Making rules where Christ had none. Very bad form.

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  26. You misread things concerning the letter and the letter of the law, vs. the spirit. The spirit comes from believing the right doctrine, the Word. The Word is logos, is God, was with God, and happens to have letters in it. That does not make it U spiritual. You are persistently wrong about this, and this is where the rub has been.

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    1. Did Charismatic Jesus make up all doctrine and it's distinctions rules, regulations. "For those no in love, there's law--to rule, to regulate, to rectify". To fight over, quibble, quarrel determine who's right and who's wrong, Scold. Warn. .

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    2. Jesus intensified the law by bringing it to the heart level. So he upheld and taught the moral law, and showed us to think and examine for ourselves what is really going on. Then he pointed to himself as God's merciful solution to our problems. We live in this mercy.

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  27. Unspiritual. (I pad does not accept the word).

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  28. I blame the Calvinists and Emerson. It is your own little, local teapot. Luther had that battle already, too, with those wanted to turn letter and law vs. spirit against him and his speaking sensibly. Against those he uttered some of you favorite quotes.

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    1. "I blame the Calvinists and Emerson." Ok. Yours to blame. NOBLESSE OBLIGE. Don’t diminish any body’s fears, their hates &
      angers, their indignations, consternations, accusations, explanations, their blamations, reasons-why, cause & effects, because & affects, their escapegoating, homeland security efforts, beliefs & biases, prejudices &
      convictions, controlling metaphors, hidden assumptions & agenda. their contradictions. discrepancies & inadequacies, secret guilty pleasures, clanging brass and tons of angles. It puts them on the defense. Defensive.
      All is well and all is well and all manner of things is well. Noblesse Oblige

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  29. Entertaining is kicking into high gear now. Even the neighbours are announcing themselves. Christians of various stripes mostly. I don't think any of them know anything about Calvin or Emerson, nor, likely have heard of them. I should poll them all over the holidays. Those who are not Lutheran are Catholic or Alliance. Canadians are supposed to be United, but I am not close to any United Church people. I know I have cheesed some of the off by actually taking a position on some matters. -- There is no fury like that of those who refuse to take a position.

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  30. This is actually a revelation to me. I think I have upset people deeply at least three times because I challenged their assertion that they could choose to worship God any way they conceived.

    Notice the verb "choose" and who is doing choosing. Implied, however, is that if someone has "chosen", he is not allowed to assign any universal significance to this. God is like their personal hobby. If you then say, no this is the teaching and the story come down to us, and matters are not up to your own feeling and discretion--that view must immediately banished. There is a clash.

    I can accept that the person who goes by his or her feelings, experiences, preferences, longings... knows something about God intuitively, that we can talk about, but we cannot discuss a definite truth claim, because that is just not in the realm. This how it is that an orthodox position can listen and interact better with all the views out there, but a wide-open view becomes exclusivist, stubborn, and even rude or forceful. So it happens that you can interact more readily with someone with an opposing opinion rather than with one who does not allow for opinions. (Chesterton would have liked this reversal and paradox. It was his "method" to the thing on its head, and in the end you agree with him. Always very funny.)

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    1. The chosen. I didn't choose to be sociopathic, fearful and hateful, xenophobic, misanthropic, greedy, full of desire, narcissistic, solipsistic but I did choose no to deny or cover it up--wretch like me.

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  31. O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
    you open and no one can shut;
    you shut and no one can open:
    Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
    those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.


    O-antiphon for today.

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  32. Warms the cockles of my heart. Is this doctrine or expostulation?

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  33. We are having a sing along Messiah. A friend invited herself and her family to my house. Should be interesting. I have three scores, she has several. Another friend is coming from the country. Martin won't sing and dreads it already. Put him down for a nap. Maybe his attitude will improve.

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  34. Imagine Brahms Requiem or Handel's Messiah performed by kazoos--a kazoo choir, a kazoo orchestra. That's as close as I can get to representing what it sounds like to me--the braying of Xtians --the many, many, many called no doubt but unchosen. Profane. I'm just describing here, Not judging. Says everything about me and nothing about the braying xtians--bless their hearts.

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  35. We had champage and candles, and someone brought a foster child who was somewhat mentally challenged, but adult. She sang the whole thing by heart, but off key. My husband reconciled himself to it all, as he got to choose the DVD we used and began to appreciate the amateur enthusiasm.

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  36. You can't even insult me in the slightest with your unchosen kazoo stuff. Singing a beautiful piece in choir and ensemble is such a thrill. Maligning it is like maligning a beautiful vista. There is something the matter with the maligner.

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  37. Just talking to myself and trying to find the image that represents for me. I love the music--hate the kazooing which eclipses if not occludes it. I said it says all about me (maligner) and not about kazooers. I acknowledge that.

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  38. I polled a lady about Calvin and Emerson (missionary alliance, doctor's wife). She heard of Calvin but does not know anything about him; he never gets mentioned. She knew of Emerson. He is an American philosopher. Very secular, during the time when all the crazy cults arose in America. She said. That was the extent of it.

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  39. See: kazoo-ing. That's what I'm saying. Just trying to find the image (metapor) that might do descriptive justice.We kazoo--the poor we are with us. Thru a kazoo darkly and in part.

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  40. Ah-so. Des. Ne. Say the Japanese.

    My sister and her family are in Japan, as they are every Christmas, to see their grandparents... The niece has begun a bachelor in addictions counselling... My bothers's children are coming to spend the day. What will they like to do. They are getting older.

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  41. I caught up the photo albums this last month. One picture is of a plaque, in German, which I put on the front page as a title. It encapsulates our partial view and elevates it, too: "Memories are precious. Let us not be robbed of what God has given us already." Every widow with her fibre optic tree and row of pictures and mementos. It is a comfort to know that the best is yet to come.

    My sister-in-law is sending gingerbread houses. I asked them to bring swim trunks.

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  42. Every widow... Knows this. I meant.

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  43. The Blame Shall Enter First: I confess in confidentiality not to be repeated please or held against me: leave the room if you can’t take this in confidence & the spirit: with which it is professed:: I feel more comfortable hanging with The Baddies than The Goodies, Baddies so transparently screwed-up & closer to the EDGE of our unsustainable sustain-abilities than us Decent Wanna-Bees maintaining a cover-up, wearing a wink & hoisting a proper sunday-school concern when needed so as to preserve our system against increasing varieties of Baddies hobble-de-hoyden trailing clouds of diagnostics & no elevator to hoist above & beyond a 3rd floor of Humane Division but rather re-habituating a habit tattoing our habitats & habilitations by stretch &
    by cut so as to fit Baddies into our Ways of Knowing as we Know it, do-it, have always done-it, will do-it and must: service equipping them poor huck finished tom-tom sawyers with helmets & kneepads & pharmaceutical soothe-saying counter-jitterbugging alternative attention efficiencies so as to not let them waste their precious time-managemental sustain abilities.

    We’ll show them. Stay their course. When they crack—eventually we’ll peek though the fissures & maybe see something re our habitual sustainability sustaining the unsustainable. News from Noise. How could it be other wise?

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  44. Luther called those preachers who deprived their hearers of the good news "robbers". I caught up the photo albums from not having been able to for six years. They are the albums of life after Stefan. It is surprising that there were high points.

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  45. Flannery O'Connor and her grotesquesness notwithstanding. But then, she was Roman Catholic. It has to come into here, somehow.

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  46. And Nadia--both beyond the goodies & the baddies and kazoos. Makes a difference that makes a difference: preachers and teachers who at best are kazoo-players are the robbers even with their golden intentions. Pity.
    .

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  47. You are a despiser. You have no Nadia and no Flannery on your side. And we pretty much never hear anything genuine from you, yourself, just things you have cycled through for decades.

    "Pity" is condescending. You have used it a few times now. It is a conversation stopper, like eye-rolling and some big sigh.

    At Christmas the announcement is one of great joy. Take it or leave it, but you don't need to ruin other people's. It is America that floods the world with this over-done, never-ending, commercialized Christmas. It is the commercial that sells everything in the rosy light--the good news with never a down-side, the American Dream.

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  48. Mixing in politics? Yes, America is to blame--most every other country will agree with you. . I don't claim to have a Nadia or Flannery on my side. I admire them both as examples of beyond-kazoo witness and testimony. Charisma. Don't so much despise the kazoo xtians (my designation--says everything about me, already acknowledged that)--as pity. Well, probably not pity. Too much of a sociopath to pity. I think they detract as through a glass darkly. (Why do you use "we" so often? As if there is a congregation of Brigitte who approves and disapproves Flannery's grotesqueness, assesses and estimates my redundancy...what is your standard for "genuine"?) Genuine might be what all this conversation has always been about. Do you know the word "sincere" means "without wax" originally referring to statutes so perfect that had no cracks to be filled in *(by wax)

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  49. Jesus calls Nathanael an Israelite "without" guile. But I am much too prosaic and unambiguous to be not genuine. Genuiness has been your concern, all along, perhaps, but maybe because of the lack of it in you.

    If you are humble you blush to talk about humility, if you are pure you blush to speak about purity (hats to Flannery), corollary: if you are genuine, you don't speak about it. There is no red flag like the one "I always speak honestly..." Yes, we haved talked about it, but your assertion is that there is no such thing, because everything is insufficient. It seems to sidestep the concern, if you ask me.

    My nine year old niece took a reading comprehension test and scored grade 12. We read three animal tales in German, yesterday, after we went swimming. The gingerbread house was a bust. It came in some made in China kit and the icing was like, hm, it's hard to describe.

    Do you know the Schildbuerger stories?

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  50. I insist I am not genuine, and I'm insincere, not even close to humble. definitely insufficient and inadequate,does that qualify me for genuine humility and sincerity? No defense against an accuser who is genuine and sincere of course as accusers must be to maintain the validity of accusation. Wretch like me --unblushing. Shameless. Guilty of course , how could it be otherwise? Kazoo galore.

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  51. Maybe we can try for "without guile".

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  52. No. Guile is one of my "skill-sets" as they say now. Tools. I couldn't do what I do without it. Slant and direction.Irony. Sarcasm Ridicule. Scorn. Dispicable me.A wretch. Marching as to war.

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  53. Luther has: in whom there is no "Falsch"--false, falsehood. No deceit.

    Slant, irony, ridicule, parables, literary devices are not designed to deceive, unless they are deceiving by design. In that we can use them "guilelessly". As in almost everything there is a wholesome use and an evil use. Flannery said so, too. Poetry is to show forth the things of God. Evil is the misuse of something good...

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  54. Die Schildbuerger stories are about a medieval town where the inhabitants were stupid fools. They execyte many silly decisions, and in the end they burn down the entire village, so that they disperse into the entire world. Now there are Schildbuerger everywhere you go. The questions, in analysis, is whether they were really stupid or only pretending to be so stupid for some other reason. Apparently the Wise Men of Gotham, represents analogous literature. Since the stories go as children's literature in German, I have not spent too much time thingking about them. I would see them in the vein of instruction. If you are going to be this stupid, this is what is going to happen to you. Of course, it is all lies, but everyone knows that they are lies. The design is to entertain, surprise, teach, make think... not to deceive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_Men_of_Gotham

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  55. My design is not to deceive (unless I am deceiving myself) but to provoke, educe, play and be played, school and be schooled. The etymology of "stupid" is the same as with "student" and "study" I.E. steu --to be hit with a stick, stunned, stunning. Prerequisite for the beginning of study. "Aporia" the early Greeks called it (no pores, doors, exits) Conviction of Sin...Bottoming Out. The stunned stated and stupor where all one's foundation of knowing and believing has been annihilated. To die for. The beginning of philosophy, religion, liberal art...

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  56. It's not happening to me. is it how it was for you? Someone took you to task and you turned from being a Presbyterian into a theosophist/ Swedenborgian/Emersonian/ Quaker/ choir hating/ Platonist?

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  57. No one took me to task. I did have the benefit of 4 hospitalizations over a 10 year span for depression and mania. I majored in philosophy and my study of literature has always been as a token for inquiry rather than as a subject for its own sake. This makes me somewhat alien in English Departments. I carry an appreciation of my upbringing and heritage most of my life, and consider "religion" the crucial inquiry. Experience with Naked Pastor and then Carl and various (for me) kazoo Xtians sealed-into their exclusive xtian doctrinal and catechismic citadels has shifted my attitude toward xtianity considerable--and I go about my father's business poking and prodding and tweaking and twerking best I can as the spirit calls: listening and hearing and obeying though the ongoing choir and chorus of kazoos.

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  58. I am going to make my turkey this morning; then I'll serve it in sauce over mashed potatoes . This house is too small to cook and entertain in simultaneously. With the new designs, you are practically cooking in the living room. Then I have to finish wrapping presents, and then a friend is coming after work. Then the kids finish work and come for dinner and then we go to late church.

    I am reading Flannery for bedtime. She threw Luther and Calvin in together on double-predestination. She was wrong. She also said she would not dare interpret Romans 9 on her own. That is kind of sad. I will make Romans 9 my morning meditation.

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  59. I cannot imagine four hospitalization a for depression and mania. I wish I could. But I think being doctrinal keeps me grounded. Singing keeps me grounded. All of of the things you don't like keep me grounded... How are we the same and different?

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    1. Every one's the same and different And our differences pretty much mostly occlude the same. You're doctrinal. Carl's doctrinal. Bror's doctrinal. My orthodox Presbyterian pastor's doctrinal (they don't observe Christmas or hymns), Clark's doctrinal. Naked Pastor 's doctrinal. All of them grounded in defensive as well as offensive. Homeland security.

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  60. If you could correct Flannery: what would you tell her?Re Luther and Calvin, re her trepidation re Romans 9, Recitfy.

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  61. Can't correct what she won't say.

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    1. She said something about L & C and double predestination. She said she wouldn't dare interepret Roman's 9 on her own which provoke a brave response of you own. She needs your corretion on both counts. I want to hear it.

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  62. In the meantime you might favor us with an interpretation of Romans 9.

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  63. "Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump done vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?" Let that challenge stand for the whole. What's honorable/dishonorable to Pot makes no never mind to Potter, who's boss and beyond Pot Good & Evil--as well as the quavering of kazoos.

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  64. favor "us" --is this a Canadian habit--or German--refering to your self in the plural, the royal we? You do it repeatedly as if you are an audience and not just a person.

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  65. I don't know sometimes. It is just in my brain.

    The turkey is roasting. The potatoes are boiling. The bean salad is marinating. The music for tomorrow has been practiced. Martin's sister, the gerontologist, has been called re latest issues with Mother, and what I am supposed to bring.

    The German uses the impersonal quite a lot-- "man" for "one". The French say "on", as in "on y danse, sur the pont D'avignon". In English it is usually avoided and in colloquial speech nobody knows what you are saying when you say "one".

    But here, being on the Internet, I don't know who there is, and so as a readership, or God who knows everything, "we" seems to be the choice. It bothers you or it is just strange?

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  66. I use "I'--not "one" (British) or "we" Both somewhat disguise the fact that it is always the first person that is talking.

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  67. I think in some languages it is quite gauche to refer to yourself. The French often say: pour moi, as for me, to dress it up a little. The oven is beeping. With everything digital, nowadays, everything beeps; often you don't know what.

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  68. I believe the topic was Flannery's errors or shortcoming and why one might hesitate to interpret Romans 9 while other might boldly step up to it.

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  69. Romans 9 needs to be seen in the context of the entire letter and the situation in Rome where Gentile and Jewish believers needed to be integrated into one congregation (as Christians we are always "we", many members of one body, with individual functions.)

    Romans 9 is also like the book of Job, where we are dealing with unanswerable questions and we are stand still and keep our mouths shut. Why some and not others? Why this function and not that? The doctrine here is to Not make a doctrine. As with Job, the answer lies only with God himself. The Redeemer promised, and then the Redeemer come. So we shut our mouths and lift our eyes. But in the Redeemer we may rejoice. This we can, should and must. We are enjoined to do it. No false modesty allowed. All are invited and all are called. You, too. "Lift up your hearts"--"we lift them to the Lord". Goes the ancient liturgy which we still use.

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  70. Replies
    1. Sometimes to keep the cross in Christianity. Other times to represent kazoo-xtianity and it's seeming prevalence.

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  71. Why do you suppose Flannery expresses hesitancy rush in like a fool where angels might fear to tread. I believe my sample * summary (Job-like) expresses the essence of unknowing (as, as you say, no doctrine). Beyond kazoo-like Good & Evil. Mum's the word.

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  72. The context with Flannery was: why does she bow to the Curia? It is a valid concern. It kept Lewis away from the papacy.

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  73. Calvin and Luther--the notion of double predestination, I thought was your WRONG concern. Curia? Lewis remains Church of England. Chesterfield? TS Eliot? My orthodox Presbyterian says Christmas is pagan. Many do. Are they all WRONG in their own ways? Or RIGHT in their own ways? Do they view themselves as righteous? AS far as I can tell--each embraces his faith and belief as "against" all others and so there is this ongoing defense/offense going on. Kazoo xtianity?

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  74. Varieties of Religious Experience--William James.Inclusive and yet significant distinctions.

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  75. Remember: no William James. Chesterton is my favorite Papist. He can even make some Marian devotion palatable to me. Eliot I have not read. Calvinists need to get rid of their catechisms and go to Luther's. I feel for Emerson. Rules about dates and festivals and unimportant things are clearly forbidden. Christ is the key to the door, it does not matter when or how you celebrate his birth. Calvinists are really the Schildbuerger of theology, burning down the village with the cat that they fear.

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  76. But there may be the bottom-line you mention. We are forever tempted to comparisons and self-righteousness. Hence so many petty, human-made rule about things of little consequence, which we can actually keep if we try. The big concerns, the big moral and eternal questions we like to leave aside rather than admit our incompetence and need.

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  77. I binge-watched the entire Orange is the new Black.

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  78. Horrible. Funny. Brilliant. I wake up in the morning and something in my head says "you fucking bitch." I feel like saying to my husband "how do you want your fucking eggs?" Actually, I said it to him and we are playing at prison talk. But the women are with me.

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  79. Yeah that word's been washed in the blood of the spam with heck darn and damn

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  80. Sam, I am. Green eggs and ham...

    How is Ann?

    In the middle of the days, I have been phoning all the relatives Germany (that way it is after dinner, there.) Some of the older aunts and uncles are getting deafer and more confused. The women my age are in menopause. The younger women are having babies. One had a Xavier, and one had a Jaron (like Jaron Lanier, I told them; but they did not know him. I told them I watched in on the Tagesschau: he received the Frankfurt book fair prize for peace; they did not know that either; I said it was on TV, in the Frankfurt Paulskirche with the organ in the background. -- Forget it. Anyways there are babies named Jaron. It must be a coincidence, but I had never heard of the name before.)

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  81. My husband's mother refused to have Christmas with the rest of us because she was so angry over losing her driver's licence over incompetence. It is everyone else's fault, but not hers. Her mind is quite good but she has always been paranoid, we usually say from war-damage. She has a horrible story of parental neglect and harrowing flight. This generation is almost gone.

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  82. It's falling to me, to take her to surrender her licence on Friday, and get some different ID made. She has left it to the last day.

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  83. Golden Years and the best is yet to come as my parents seemingly firmly believed.

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  84. "The best is yet to come". You are so bad, Sam. But I love you. Heading out for a winter walk with some people. Moped the morning away on FB. Martin is gone fixing some things. Jan. 2, is the anniversary of Stefan's accident and the bad memories of succeeding New Year's just cascade. Layer over that the mother-in-law. It's not so bad now, that she can't interfere with any childrearing... Read some very well written analysis in the Frankfurter Allgemeine. No time for that now. Out, out, out, into the slippery white. Maybe put on some traction aids...

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  85. We went for a walk, and then I went for a walk with my daughter and her mother-in-law and their dogs and then I chipped the ice off the sidewalk, as it was nice out. All the neighbors were chipping the ice off, too.

    I felt better after that, but my heel hurts, now, again.

    "The best is yet to come." The Golden Years: they can be good years; they can be bad years; it really depends, doesn't it.

    On my mantle I have kept a verse: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." Whatever you make of it, and whatever context one may want to give it... I have let it pick me up, when down.

    The other day I bought a bathing suit at Costco, a size smaller as I hope to loose a bit more weight; but you can't try it on there. It turns out that it is much too small. I call it an exercise in visionary thinking. But then, maybe I won't get there. Maybe the bathing suit will never fit. Maybe we will die. Maybe we will be paralyzed. Maybe I won't be able to loose another ounce. Maybe I am just at the door of old age, weight will keep creeping up; I will be old and ugly with hear issues... No doubt various scenarios open up, now that we are well into the 50's.

    Then it hit me and it made me laugh. In heaven. In heaven the body will be good. Incorruptible. Beautiful. Loved.

    The best is to come. It gives me pleasure to think about it now. It gives me the strength to keep trying here and now.

    I am sad today. I am still sad after walking with dear ones and dogs and chipping ice.

    But it will lift.

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  86. I read a lot of poems from the English anthology with all the introductions by Harold Bloom. Then I read about Harold Bloom. All of that made me sad, too, I think. The poem that moved me most was Kipling's "Vampire."

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  87. I'm sorry. This is hard time for you.

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  88. I am sorry I enter into English poetry via Bloom's selections. Online, there is an interview with him, in the Paris Review, where he says that the expansion of the American empire serves the expansion of Gnosticism.

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  89. A disciple of Emerson. Provocation not tuition.

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  90. Always had a soft spot for gnosticism.

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  91. Not sure what yr saying about Emerson here--provocation not tuition. But I'm always a fan.

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  92. A byword of Bloom's. Emerson's thought.

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  93. That's my pedagogy: provocation and educing. as opposed to information and instruction.

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  94. I read the entire thing about Snarks and Boojums. I always thought writers were always writing a our writers and writing. Now it looks like they are writing about masculinity. Can I be a poet and a man? Can I have a wife and be a man? Does killing animals make me a man or does it diminish me? If love is passion and fodder for art, what happens when my wife starts harping on me? Etc. Etc. I am soon going to retreat to the Bach cantatas. How about "from the depths of woe, I cry to you... Israel hope in the Lord". Would not be the thing for Bloom. He is at best Kaabalistic.

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  95. Haven't read it. But I know he's not Lutheran. You should stick with Lutheran writers--and of course Bach,

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  96. I could never make through Alice in Wonderland.

    We are snowed in. Travel not advised.

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  97. Yes--Carroll isn't Lutheran either. Shouldn't torture your self with these over thinkers, writers. They will never match up.

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  98. You don't even know Snarks and Boojums. How come there are no selections from Chesterton in these anthologies?

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  99. I don't have an answer for that -- how come? And I'm not sure your point? "These anthologies? I don't "even" know most stuff.

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  100. It is elementary. Chesterton does not fit with Gnosticism nor Kaabalism.

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  101. What point are you making? And if IT (whatever IT is) is elementary, why did you ask? .

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  102. It is only coming together now, Watson.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vqqFQGV-H54

    I guess we are going out, weather and all.

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  103. IT? What is IT that IT is only coming together now? And for whom is IT coming together? And what does going out have to do with IT? And who is Watson? Are you Sherlock? Do you smoke weed?

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  104. Provocation gets old. A little brush fire here and there.

    It just struck me that Kabbalah and the Kaaba are very similar words. Both systems, or upon closer look, lack of systems, want a universal God, but Christ cannot be it. He must go. The anti-Christ wants to be born in Bethlehem. In his stead. In his place. Why?

    Why?

    Why can you never mention him?

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  105. Replies
    1. I am asking You. You make sure he is never discussed. We have the entire Middle East in convulsions, hundreds of thousands dispossessed at sabre-point for his name, and we must be silent. And those people are slated for religious cleansing. Why must he go? Why was Herod right on his heels, wanting him killed? Why? What has he done?

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    2. I make sure he is never discussed?

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  106. He is the alpha and the omega, and we can't talk about him, and a whole host of other things, besides. The list of taboos is a mile long. It would be profane, or some such gnostic shit. Or maybe "inauthentic", or some such hypocritical shit. I could go on. But the comment must not be too long.

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  107. Are you going to run off on the circumcision thing, again, this year?

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  108. There, there Brigitte , all is well is well and all manner of things is well. You got the choir and the amen corner and Bror and Carl and Nadia to talk about the alpha and the omega with. Rapture and foreskins and 6 days of creation, a personified devil--plenty of company for you. Ridiculous to the savvy and offensive to the conscientious.

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  109. MISSION IMPLAUSIBLE.
    The System is inherently flawed, broken,
    The System is always state-of-the-art.
    Walk on Eggs (WOE).
    Walk on Water (WOW)
    Which team?
    Choose your Magistery
    No myn can serve both.

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  110. You educed some "negativity"; should have found it adorable, a veritable Christmas present.

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  111. The fruits of wrath are the most delicious, righteous or unrighteous, sensible or insensible.

    Food.
    Peace?
    Never.

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  112. Going about my father's business, best I know. Accentuate the negative. (Positive's a piece of cake).
    Many mansions.

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  113. Gospel for today: boy Jesus in the temple. His father's business, what is it? Gentle reminder to his parents that Joseph is not his father. And carpentry won't be his business.

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  114. "Speak lord, for thy servant hearest," Samuel's reply to the repeated calling after Eli assured him it wasn't coming from his voice

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  115. Wrath was not Jesus' business. Nor Jihad. Nor keeping things secret. He is not your guy.

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  116. And the literary geniuses who want to have the devil as their father, can go join him, as they won't be delivered by force. They can pass into the next life with their manhood intact, one sceptre to rule them all.

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  117. Why do you think so many of them are occultists or spiritualists? Why does Faust need Mephistopheles to get knowledge? Why was Lewis seriously tempted by it before his conversion? What is the draw?

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  118. Poetic work itself is neutral. The search for knowledge in itself is neutral. The prophetic impulse in itself is neutral. Why Mephisto?

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  119. I have no idea what you are talking abouit, getting at? But it seems important to you.

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  120. Why the occultism, why the Swedenborgianism... among the poets. And why the fear of domestication or domesticity? Why your concern over Christ's circumcision?

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  121. Jesus's foreskin:--a precursor of his crucifixion, who wouldn't be concerned?

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  122. If that brings it home to you... He died naked, did you know. Makes the humbling, or humiliation complete. Nothing serene about it.

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  123. I crucify our lord daily, nailing it down, hammering and hammering so it won't wiggle. And my good old-man's comment that he had a crucified ego made that whole morbid image wonderfully fresh and significant in terms that made my hammer-&-nails sense. Foreskin's played no part it it for me but that's just me.

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  124. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

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  125. What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs. 4 "I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies ? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. 7 Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. 8 "I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God.

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  126. I think it is pretty clear that Jesus nor John are metaphorically speaking.

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  127. If that brings it home to you...

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  128. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY&feature=youtu.be

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  129. We had that a couple of years ago and we had a long discussion about it then.

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  130. Twisting a religion's text to your liking, does it make you a man, or does it diminish you?

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  131. I have an open mind and accept everything that comes along and twist and stretch and cut it to fit my procrustean bed. That doesn't make or diminish me as "man"--it's what I am as a person. (I could always deny and cover, and sometimes dol) I agree with what he says--twisted of course (what depraved means) but I am depraved--depravity a characteristic of me-as-'man) It seems to me he was pointing out that depravity-among-us and what we do to "religion." Not Lutherans, of course, that has to go without saying.

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  132. I typed in "why are so many poets..." and Google suggested "gay". I found a very good essay on that subject, by a gay poet. Then I typed in what I wanted "Swedenborgian". I found someone who had planned a meeting, recently. They started out with lighting a candle, with opening a Bible, with singing "what a friend we have in Jesus", some sayings of Swedenborg, followed by two poems by lady Browning. How do I love you... Followed by another hymn, the closing of the Bible, and the candle was extinguished last.

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  133. Do you have a point here--or are you merely descripting (aesthetic)

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  134. Coming at unsuspecting Christian woman slantly, does it make you a man, or does it diminish you, or does it make you a poet.

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  135. Insulting people by calling Messaiah singing a kazoo chorus does it make you a man, or does it diminish you, or does it make you a poet?

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  136. Ask the unsuspecting Xtian woman: it's her opinion that counts for her--more or less man or poet.

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  137. If I say I love this particular hymn and it comforts me, and you have to characterize it as some Lutheran dirge, does that make you a man, or does it diminish you, or does it make you a poet?

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  138. I have a few more in my craw, but I have to go.

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  139. Bowling, drilling teeth, climbing Mt Kilamanjaroo, playing guitar, reading books or bible, cooking dinner, skiing, making large animals jump over fences, feeding the poor, scolding, mocking, ridiculing the ignorant, practicing yoga, teaching sunday school... make you a myn or diminish you--or make you a poet?

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  140. Craw seems appropriate description.

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  141. Not sure if you got my Messiah/kazoo image. I love the Messiah--probably my favorite orchestral and choral work. To suggest it being performed on kazoos all around was an effort to express my sense of the contrast between the ideal and the reality.Knowing The Messiah, imagine you'd feel performed on kazoos.The boy-poet was rapping a similar sense of the difference. Always: the gap between the IDEA and the represetation. Always an injustice. i

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