God is dead, long live God

[ishmael]

The oft quoted Nietzche is mistaken. He didn't mean it the way it has been taken. I offer as evidence what he acutally said:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? - Nietzsche

If any man of the last two hundred years was tapped by God, and knew it, it was Nietzche. What he said, and I take him at his word, was that the old image of God was no longer sustainable. And man, the usurper, must take on some of the power that heretofore was projected.

He's very difficult, but I think he went mad trying to listen to this new image. And we, a little less callow, if as naive, must take up his struggle.

Perhaps more appropo of Good Friday, rather than the resurrection, but ours, not God's, nonetheless.

[ahp]

I don't pay much attention to Nietsche. I always thought he was a nut case.

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

In poor taste for today Ish

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

God isn't dead. I talked to him about his son today.

[ishmael]

Poor taste. Did you taste the risen Christ today, like a good Christian should? If you did, you are in the minor minority.

Wild mind. The Christ is not some nice story, some thing with pagan Easter-egg -gloss. He's right here.

Proclaiming him dead, praying for the resurrection, the real resurrection, as Nietzche did, not some idiot image, IS Easter. The Christ is risen, once again. Among us, now.

We haven't a clue what to do with it.

[LeeG]

we won't in words

[ishmael]

"If the flesh came into being because of spirit, it is a wonder. But if spirit came into being because of the body, it is a wonder of wonders. Indeed, I am amazed at how this great wealth has made its home in this poverty."

Jesus

The Upanishads speak of the miracle of human birth. It's hard to reconcile with the multiplicity. Yet, I think the basic image is right, there is something potentially miraculous in every human. The Upanishads say it is like a dove fingering a mountain top with a scarf; that is how special is a human birth.

Yet, here we are. The masses teaming for resources. And no messiah in site.

[TomF]

A comment from Leonard Cohen, from 40 years ago ...

GOD IS ALIVE
MAGIC IS AFOOT

God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is alive, magic is afoot
God is afoot, magic is alive
Alive is afoot, magic never died
God never sickened
Many poor men lied
Many sick men lied
Magic never weakened
Magic never hid
Magic always ruled
God is afoot, God never died
God was ruler
Though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
Though his words were twisted
The naked magic thrived
Though his death was published
Round and round the world
The heart did not believe

Many hurt men wondered
Many struck men bled
Magic never faltered
Magic always lead
Many stones were rolled
But God would not lie down
Many wild men lied
Many fat men listened
Though they offered stones
Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers
God was always served
Magic is afoot, God is alive
Alive is afoot

Alive is in command
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived
Though they boast of solitude
God was at their side
Nor the dreamer in his cell
Nor the captain on the hill
Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned
Round and round the world
The heart would not believe

Though laws were carved in marble
They could not shelter men
Though altars built in parliaments
They could not order men
Police arrested magic and magic went with them
Mmmmm.... for magic loves the hungry
But magic would not tarry
It moves from arm to arm
It would not stay with them
Magic is afoot
It cannot come to harm
It rests in an empty palm
It spawns in an empty mind
But magic is no instrument
Magic is the end
Many men drove magic
But magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied
They only passed through magic
And out the other side
Many weak men lied
They came to God in secret
And though they left Him nourished
They would not tell who healed
Though mountains danced before them
They said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh within my mind
This I mean my mind to serve
Til' service is but magic
Moving through the world
And mind itself is magic
Coursing through the flesh
And flesh itself is magic
Dancing on a clock
And time itself
The magic length of God

© 1966- Leonard Cohen.

[pcford]

Ish's writing takes boredom to a transcendental plane.

[geeman]

My question is,,,,,,, If any one particular persons writing is so boring,,Why do we read it?

[Joe ( Cold Spring on Hudson )]

My question is,,,,,,, If any one particular persons writing is so boring,,Why do we read it?

My excuse is I have a laptop with WiFi so I tend to read in the bathroom Beats reading the labels on after-shave

[Meerkat]

My excuse is I have a laptop with WiFi so I tend to read in the bathroom Beats reading the labels on after-shave

Perhaps this explains why the forum has gone brown.

[PatCox]

He's one of us, like the crazy aunt in the attic, its always interesting to see what he's going to go off on next. Thats why we read Ish.

[ishmael]

I just want people to stop thinking so concretely. The world we live is built of concrete, yet these metaphors are active, have been pushed aside, and we ignore them at our peril.

The president of Iran is on record thinking he's the prophet of the twelfth Immam, here to destroy Israel and the current order and usher in the age of the Islmamic messiah. It's hard to grok, but that's what he believes.

The conservative Jews are expectant with their messiah, and the fundamentalist Christians are expectant with their second coming.

I don't like it. I have a modicum of rationallity left. But like it or not these people are driving, they've got the controls, they have way too much power. If you were doing a mental health intake you'd lock them up as a danger to themselves or others.

What the F do we do to stop this madness? I'd like to put all the world leaders on an island populated with archetypal psychologists and the food laced with LSD. Keep all weapons away. Let them wrestle.

But that's not going to happen, LOL. Instead, I fear, we are going to lolly gag down a path of self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem is, when and if we awake, the messiah is still going to be sorely missing from our ranks.

[skuthorp]

Ah yes, the inmates in charge of the asylum. I used to think that our species would go out with a whimper not a bang, maybe I was wrong.
We're in more danger now than in the cold war, that was professional brinkmanship, now....................?
But 'god', in some form or another will be believed in as long as our species does exist, it's part af our rationale as sentinent beings I suspect. But after, well, then the reasons for his existence will have passed.

[ishmael]

I take this "god thang" very seriously. I have my own imaginations about it, but the archetypal images in the monotheisms are very much alive right now.

To eschew it as superstition is not the right approach. I'm not sure, exactly what the right approach is, but it's very much alive in a whole bunch of folks, so ignoring it isn't an option.

I still come down very much to Jung's ideas on this matter. The more people become aware of the psychological underpinnings of this nascent apocalypse the better. He felt we might just squeak around the corner without too much devastation, if enough people awoke to the peril.

James Watt, Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, exemplefied the ideation when he said he wasn't worried about preserving America's national forests because Christ was about to return. He really SAID that! And that ideation is widespread in the halls of power across the West and Mideast today. Well, if the great mumbly jumbly's return is at hand, why worry about any of our stupid earthly concerns?

Amazing. But not to be taken lightly.

[Chris Coose]

What the F do we do to stop this madness?

Not a goddamned thing.
Ultimately, balance will occurr.
The back door is always as big as the front door.
This pendulum swing just may not be seen in this liftime.

dubbya is an excellent example of the swing in a shorter time frame.

[ishmael]

I'll agree, in part, Chris. Fighting it directly only gives it power. But fight it we must, in small ways, in meditation, in action showing the Christ, the messiah, the twelfth Immam is already here, never left, in no need of a return or a coming..

That's what happens when you begin to think mythologically rather than concretely. Teaching that thinking is part of what I'm trying.

[LeeG]

[QUOTE=ishmael]
The more people become aware of the psychological underpinnings of this nascent apocalypse the better.
QUOTE]

You want people to agree on symbols and delusion, much better they agree on things like "I won't kill your brother, you don't kill mine","I buy, you sell, you buy, I sell"

[ishmael]

Jung once remarked that if God himself came down and told him to do murder he would refuse. Yep, spit in God's eye and say no.

People don't understand the power in these collective images. We don't know what they are. I'm of the opinion that habit creates grooves that we stumble along. They are odd, strikingly wonky, but they are there, and we ignore them at our peril.

[LeeG]

talking about the groove doesn't get one out of it

[ishmael]

Talking about it is a place to start. That's all. Are you suggesting that promulgating ideas is wrong? Where would you start?