Thursday, June 11, 2015

Sociopathologic


                      


Sociopathologic: I’m not the boss of myself.
Mind-Set is: my bias/belief. prejudice/convictions
shape & jiggle-dance. Me—puppet knee jerk response
ability  to this and that and whatever: conservatives,
orthodox and fundamental Christians, atheists,
militant and mild, Justin Beiber, Wendy Williams,
tattoos and body piercings and rap,  homophobes and
flamboyant gays, liberals and libertarians, Lutherans
and mid-westerners, homeless and trailer trash,
platitudes and bromides on Facebook…  I could go on.
I am legion: I contain multitudes, covered and concealed
of course, makes good sense.  Be polite, political.

47 comments:

  1. I went to a poetry reading at the library last night. This is a vibrant little town with brand new civic building and my roses started blooming yesterday. But we need rain badly. It is supposed to rain today and indeed the clouds are drawing together...

    I liked it. She was good. She sold her book "Shadow Girls in the Spotlight". In it she details all the girls that live in her, from Addicted Angie, to Mad Mary, Hagar the Hag, and Darla the Dramaqueen. She has a guiding saying in the front, from Nietzsche. "One must have chaos in order to give birth to a dancing star."

    I don't know about chaos and Nietzsche, but some of the analysis is quite good.

    Maybe an analogy that works better for me is my stringed instrument. There needs to be some pressure in the fingertips and some calluses, in order to play a melody, many different kind of melodies, really.

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  2. "The gospel is bad news before it is good news" ??

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  3. The gospel is never bad news. There has to be a clear distinction.

    But I woke up thinking about chaos. Why chaos.

    The different personalities in our heads, the different voices talking, is that a chaos?

    War is chaos. Are all those voices at war with all this unpredictable, collateral damage, this horror and nightmare? Destruction. Deconstruction?

    It is not the good news. But it may be sometimes necessary. Are we then to promote it, precipitate it?

    Someone else talked to me the other day about having many voices in her head and at being at peace with herself. But in her case, I find the kind of peace she has made with herself, no doubt hard won on some fronts, is still too facile. It becomes a trying to get your own way and letting yourself get off the hook, while displaying your goodness to yourself in random acts of kindness.

    Ack, we are all that way, or part of us....
    The gospel is more radical.
    There is not chaos, but death of the old Adam.

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  4. https://lunchboxsw.wordpress.com/2009/07/31/the-gospel-is-bad-news-before-it-is-good-news/

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  5. It's Calvinist talk, I know. I have had it directed at me full blast.

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  6. Full Blast? Pity. Sound like a victim. I recall that Bror was more than a little persickity re Calvinism. I like the talk. I've read most of Buechner's books and he was one who opened up religion for me back in the 80's--him and Flannery O'Connor (Catholic) and Parker Palmer (Quakers)--Non-Lutheran: I guess that's important. Calvinist talk, Quaker talk, Catholic talk, Lutheran talk: the more the better if not always the merrier.

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  7. gayandevangelical

    July 31st, 2009 at 11:25 pm
    I agree with several things he says: the mercy of God must be presented as free and in terms of man’s sin. A free gift of God without stating why a man needs it in the first place doesn’t do anyone any good.
    However, I would make a bit more of a distinction than he does with law and gospel. In Luke 24, we’re supposed to proclaim repentance for sin (the Law) AND the forgiveness of sins in Christ (the gospel). The Law points out our sin and the gospel is the balm Christ gives for that sin. That is not exactly damaging to his point per se, but I think it’s a useful distinction that if not observed, creates legalism pretty quickly.

    Aaron

    August 1st, 2009 at 2:38 am
    I see your point. For me it is like trying to separate Ginger Rogers from Fred Astaire as they dance. It is obvious who is who, but they work together in such an intimate and flawless way it is really impossible to separate them and keep the same meaning to their dance.
    What I really appreciate is the idea of the Gospel being heard in silence. This has been my experience lately, hearing the Gospel chiming out above the muddle of my daily life. I think it is also the stunned silence that comes with a full realization of what the Gospel message really is in light of the ‘bad news’ of the Law.

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  8. See, they figured it out. Beecher was nor properly confessional either. This is how doctrinal it gets denigrated, when you can't follow it.

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  9. That voice of the law, the girl that judges me, is already there in my head.

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  10. The point they are unfortunately getting at is that some people like Catholics and Lutherans are not properly regenerate, only they are.

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  11. What I meant about Beecher was (my sentence was bad) that he had to sign on the dotted doctrinal line to become a minister. But he had misgivings. And his misgivings were not wrong.

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  12. Of course the law is good and right and needs to be preached, but we don't call it gospel, because it always accuses.

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  13. Lump all Christians together in one big basket. Among themselves, their differences and distinctions are crucial. For some, maybe many: no big deal & flip the hamburgers and pass the mustard

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  14. The law. Is from God. Satan is more of a slanderer.

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  15. The word satin means accuser, adversary--was a function in the Hebrew court--prosecutor. Everything is from God.

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  16. I read the Harris/ Chomsky e-mail exchange, last night. Does the U.S. as worldwide policeman have good or evil intent?

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    1. "No one does wrong knowingly" Every one has "good" intent.

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    2. Does the death cult of ISIS have good intent. "Smite the unbelievers wherever you find them,in the neck." ???

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    3. Did Hitler have evil intent? Do social Darwinists have evil intent?

      As a member of a clan liberated by Americans and having lived under their occupation, I appreciate what they have done.

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  17. No, there is evil and malevolence and it is not from God, though he presently us still letting it go on. It gets difficult.

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  18. I am reading this Jewish book on speech, somewhat connected to this.

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  19. But they weren't Lutheran. You'll have to cherry pick.

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  20. Can you tell me something straight out what you have against Lutherans?

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    1. Nothing, but against the seeming fact that you seem to fault everything non-Lutheran, and I'll always cherish Broh's remark about the abomination which is Calvinist theology.;; '';;souin''

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    2. You seem to use it like a dirty word.

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    3. I use it disparage those who abuse it to seemingly stigmatize all that is non-Lutheran. I have orthodox and reform Presbyterians whose sealed-in exclusivity I hold in the same disrespect.

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    4. Lutherans have made their disagreements with the Roman church quite clear and were therefore kicked out of it. Calvinists have broken later with the Lutherans because of what? The burden of explaining this split is on them.

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    5. A pox on the whole bunch.

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    6. How and where have I stigmatized something?

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    7. If I were in my satanic mode, I'd detail your dismay if not disgust with various thinkers and writers that surfaced during our arguments--but I'm not, so I'll just assume my "stigma" accusation is wrong as far as you;re concerned--and take it back. You're a free thinker. We're all brothers and sisters in God and forgiven forr we know not what we do.

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    8. You wanted me to accept them all uncritically, all along. That's what the love of argument is for!?

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    9. Here is a stigma for you. Read it on facebook: in every liberal there is a totalitarian struggling to get out.

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    10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=82&v=b41NFk3kBsA

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  21. What do you think is the matter with Virginia Woolf?


    VIRGINIA WOOLF AND T.S. ELIOT
    The fury and almost physical disgust of the Bloomsbury novelist Virginia Woolf at T. S. Eliot’s conversion to Christianity is an open expression of the private feelings of the educated British middle class, normally left unspoken but conveyed by body language or facial expression when the subject of religion cannot be avoided. Mrs. Woolf wrote to her sister in 1928, in terms that perfectly epitomize the enlightened English person’s scorn for faith and those who hold it:
    "I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic, believes in God and immortality, and goes to church. I was really shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God."
    Look at these bilious, ill-tempered words: “Shameful, distressing, obscene, dead to us all.” There has always seemed to me to be something frantic and enraged about this passage, concealing its real emotion — which I suspect is fear that Eliot, as well as being a greater talent than her, may also be right.
    Peter Hitchens, "Rage against God"

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  22. It does sound like the voice of a malevolent, smearing Satan.

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  23. Or maybe just not enough chaos for her. ???

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  24. The lust for power speaks to the poverty of the ideas. Woolf's disgust maybe communicates what Peter Hitchens suspects.

    While knitting a row on my grandchild's baby blanket (Virginia would not approve--too stereotypical and pedestrian for her, too much fireside, also), I contemplated whether my answer should contain a nice, little ubiquitous obscenity. It would have been properly anarchic and endearing no doubt.

    My knowledge of Woolf comes only from trailers and clips from The Hours, Wikipedia, 2 articles, and the widely circulated suicide note. I think one can really suffer from being wife and mother, perhaps especially coming out of Victorian England into the modern world. But on the aching dilemmas life thrusts us into, most women are truly oriented that way, and instead of denying that role, it should be supported better. Our current generation seems to have fewer rather than more opportunities to fulfill these roles well. I am not at all convinced that revolution in gender issues related matters is what we need.

    I am of the generation of women who were actually encouraged and courted to be in science related fields, and I excelled in math, geometry, calculus, and all that. But I could not, for the life of me, imagine a life without husband and children. As little, as I can imagine a life without worship and song or fireside comfort. The human life, nor specifically the female life, cannot be pressed to be something or other, willy nilly. And I dare say, the will to power is more male, and it certainly does not work for the female. But we already have that spelled out in Genesis.

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  25. Some hilarious comments on the story of the white woman pretending to be African American leader suffering racial harassment. As someone wrote about Americans recently: they all have Selma envy. It is a way we try to give meaning to our lives. Again, it speaks to a hunger, poverty, dissatisfaction, or lack of direction. If we could all be rebels, we could all have meaningful lives...

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  26. http://www.aww.com.au/latest-news/in-the-mag/lost-innocence-why-girls-are-having-rough-sex-at-12-20831

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  27. http://www.soulmyths.com/archetypalexploration.pdf

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  28. We see, for one thing, that Bloom reigns supreme here in scriptural exposition, and he is a confessing Gnostic. There is no reason to distance an OT Satan from a NT Satan.

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