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When God created the World, it was unitary, much like what Jesus prayed for in John 17. But with that unfortunate(?) digression from 'God's will', polarity came into existence. The consequence was the miry clay in which we live, as to the Bible, a long trail of God's promises and Man's disobedience; the consequence of that was the inevitable punishment, especially War and Death (of thousands).
One of Man's sins led to the confusion of tongues, so nobody understood what anybody else was saying.
In the course of time God sent his Son, just like the man who owned the Vineyard did, to suffer and die for our sake. And on the day of Pentecost the curse of duality was removed and people understood one another, an approach at least to the fulfilment of the prayer that we might be one.
Unity -- Polarity -- Forgiveness -- Redemption: God's plan in the beginning for us all. Hallelujah.
11 comments:
Hmmmm. The owner of that Vineyard sent his son because he'd gotten very tired of 'no grapes'. In the prophetic tradition, that vineyard was Israel, and God had hoped it would produce justice and righteousness. In Jesus' parable, he was recognizably talking about that same vineyard, hinting that the leadership was producing something quite other, and that Jesus had been sent in hopes they'd listen this time. "Suffering and dying for our sake" was contingent, not an intrinsic requirement.
There's this 'tension' between unity and complexity; as with many such polarities you probably get the most interesting results with the right mix of both.
Admittedly I've gotten very tired of "War and Death (of thousands ['and ten thousands']" and would like to see people getting more of a clue, doing less of that. But it's a delicate process: the Spirit clobbering people with unity without obliterating their specific features.
People don't "understand one another" unless they allow for the divergence that makes for the difficulty in the first place. No diversity, nothing to unify. On that Pentecost, as I understand it, it wasn't that everyone talked one language, but that they could understand all languages. More to understand, not less-- the fruit of all that duality.
Given 'unity', justice and righteousness cease to be a problem. These are needed, precisely when there's enough disunity to make them difficult. Now, for example. In a world groaning towards a climax of some sort, at maximum tension, just here-and-there beginning to feel what the resolution might look like...
Pentecost, Larry! Do say what’s happened since ...
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
~ Jim
Praise God, Jim. Teaching Blake at the local college I tried and tried to get my voice around Jerusalem--a pretty hard tune to remember. Take a look at
"http://ramhornd.blogspot.com/" and look at the label for Jerusalem.
Forrest wrote" "Admittedly I've gotten very tired of "War and Death (of thousands ['and ten thousands']""
Yes indeed! A typical response from so many Quakers; they would rather not hear about it; just pretend it doesn't exist. But the wars in my life took most of my third decade and left me undoubtedly scarred-- not to mention stunted.
Of course FDR hated 'wawr';
his wife, Eleanor hated 'wawr';
his dog Fala hated 'wawr'.
And then St. Paul hated war when he wrote Epesians 6.
WB hated war with a passion:
"Bring me my Bow of burning gold; Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire! I will not cease....."
Some of us prefer the severe contentions of friendship.
Look at http://ramhornd.blogspot.com/2010/10/blakes-war.html
a) I just thought of a marvelous way to settle arguments.
Everybody who thinks that my gang should control all your land and make yours work for us for subsistence wages... will get together next week, and everyone who thinks it should be the other way around, will do the same...
and we'll tell lies about why we're doing this, and your gang will tell lies about why you're doing it
and then while we're doing this we'll see how many of our gang can kill how many of your gang while they're trying to kill how many of our gang.
We'll call this "the survival of the fit'nest (if we win, otherwise we'll call it bloody murder and tyranny!)
b) I just thought of a really great way to settle arguments.
Anyone who disagrees with what the fools in charge are doing to us... will get together next week, and we'll make signs pointing out how dumb what they're doing is
and they'll ignore everything we've written, and arrest us for taking up space, and maybe thump on us a little (or maybe treat us nice, if they agree that what they're doing is dumb, all right)
and they'll go right on doing what they want.
The side with the hardest heads, the most used-to-suffering, wins... until the fools in charge go right on doing what they've been doing all along.
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Yes, I'm tired of it AND I'm tired of hearing about it! Any questions?
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but I've had too many damnfools disagree with me-- and turn out to have been right-- for me to confuse disagreement, even angry disagreement plus pejorative words, with "violence.'
Larry, the “Caverns of the Grave III” is intense. Amazing. I’m studying some older theories of liminalia (art theory) wherein liminalia and spectral evidence (dreams) are mischaracterized as diffuse and undifferentiated. Some liminal stuff is undifferentiated. Not all. Blake’s liminal stuff is profoundly stylized. And the demonic elements of reason are overdetermined. Poor Newton. Maybe it’s a mistake to reduce Blake down to a mere artist? For science, see my favorite, Kekule’s dream.
Forrest, yes on the distance between angry disagreement and violence. I guess I’m too optimistic that learning can help domestic partners express anger directly in words rather than sublimating violence in domestic physcial violence. Evil is irrational, or so it seems. I admit I have no better explanation.
Irrational, but in a very 'rational' way.
It's about establishing dominance, trying to get and keep "a winning advantage" in the real world.
Keeping other people intimidated and miserable (read _1984_) is one way to know you're 'winning'.
It's irrational because it's a strategy that loses in the larger game of "getting through Eternity happily."
People persist in doing evil because 1) It provides a limited sort of satisfaction which may be the only sort they know; and 2) sometimes they're too fearful of what will happen to them if they stop playing; and 3) a lot of people don't realize how very much Eternity there is to spend at whatever they may be doing with it.
Yes, Jim; he was much more than a "mere artist"; he was a prophet, imo the greatest prophet since St. Francis. No doubt to many, if not most, that will sound extravagant, but maybe if we're blakeans we should be extravagant.
Jim,
Re: Kekule's Dream; well Organic Chemistry was my downfall at Duke.
One of my best buddies, the second mate at the Cuba Victory, was an ole boy named Bill Wolfe; he hailed from Sou Cal, but his father had been a professor at Heidelberg. Rumor was Bill had gotten 'clap' eight times: I guess he was pretty intense sexually speaking, but then most of those old sea dogs were--especially in port.
What would Blake have thought of the benzene ring? Would he have denounced it, or taken it up.
Jim,
from Blake's Milton:
Milton, PLATE 15 [17], (E 109)
"Himself:
His real and immortal Self: was as appeard to those
Who dwell in immortality, as One sleeping on a couch
Of gold; and those in immortality gave forth their Emanations
Like Females of sweet beauty, to guard round him & to feed
His lips with food of Eden in his cold and dim repose!
But to himself he seemd a wanderer lost in dreary night.
Onwards his Shadow kept its course among the Spectres; call'd
Satan, but swift as lightning passing them, startled the shades
Of Hell beheld him in a trail of light as of a comet
That travels into Chaos: so Milton went guarded within."
ellie
Rich comments. Thank you. Heavy workload for now, just thank you!
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