Unfortunately, 19th-century scientists were just as ready to jump to the conclusion that any guess about nature was an obvious fact, as were 17th-century sectarians to jump to the conclusion that any guess about Scripture was the obvious explanation . . . . and this clumsy collision of two very impatient forms of ignorance was known as the quarrel of Science and Religion.
Chesterton
There is something odd in the fact that when we reproduce the Middle Ages it is always some such rough and half-grotesque part of them that we reproduce . . . Why is it that we mainly remember the Middle Ages by absurd things? . . . Few modern people know what a mass of illuminating philosophy, delicate metaphysics, clear and dignified social morality exists in the serious scholastic writers of mediaeval times. But we seem to have grasped somehow that the ruder and more clownish elements in the Middle Ages have a human and poetical interest. We are delighted to know about the ignorance of mediaevalism; we are contented to be ignorant about its knowledge. When we talk of something mediaeval, we mean something quaint. We remember that alchemy was mediaeval, or that heraldry was mediaeval. We forget that Parliaments are mediaeval, that all our Universities are mediaeval, that city corporations are mediaeval, that gunpowder and printing are mediaeval, that half the things by which we now live, and to which we look for progress, are mediaeval.
Chesterton
“The only way of writing any kind of study, say the Thomas More one, is to so fully enter his sensibility that you become a part of it, and he becomes a part of you, ... In that process you begin to see the heart of his design. It would be foolish and unproductive to see it as a totally alien system of belief. Far better to enter it in a spirit of communion.” Peter Ackroyd (author of The Life of Thomas More)
The greatest artists, saints, philosophers and, until quite recent times, scientists, through the Christian centuries, . . . have all assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid, and that the great drama of the Incarnation which embodies it, is indeed the master-drama of our existence. To suppose that these distinguished believers were all credulous fools whose folly and credulity in holding such beliefs has now been finally exposed, would seem to me untenable; and anyway I'd rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw.
Malcolm Muggeridge
There are people for whom evil means only a mal-adjustment with things, a wrong correspondence of one’s life with the environment. Such evil as this is curable, at least in principle, upon the natural plane… . But there are others for whom evil is no mere relation of the subject to particular outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a supernatural remedy.
—W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Originally posted by HalitoseI guess you have to appreciate sublime and ridiculous both for a rounded view.
We forget that Parliaments are mediaeval, that all our Universities are mediaeval, that city corporations are mediaeval, that gunpowder and printing are mediaeval, that half the things by which we now live, and to which we look for progress, are mediaeval.
Chesterton
Interesting site on mediaeval history:
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/guide12/part10.html
Kadosh kadosh kadosh YHVH tzeva’ot
melo kol ha’aretz kevodo
Holy holy holy One-That-Is of hosts,
the fullness of all the earth is his palpable presence.
—Isaiah 6:3. My translation.
(Note: YHVH derives from the being verb, includes both the masculine and the feminine genders, and according to some authorities contains past, present and future tenses; melo is a noun—“fullness,” not “full of;” kavod implies heaviness, weightiness, manifest-ness—and is best translated as presence, as it is in the JPS Tanach.)
"In order that both he who is giving the Spiritual Exercises, and he who is receiving them, may more help and benefit themselves, let it be presupposed that every good Christian is to be more ready to save his neighbor’s proposition than to condemn it. If he cannot save it, let him inquire how he means it; and if he means it badly, let him correct him with charity. If that is not enough, let him seek all the suitable means to bring him to mean it well, and save himself."
(S. Ignatius Loyola. The Spiritual Exercises. Presupposition)
One Shabbos afternoon, Reb Reuven called me into is study. He was sitting behind his desk and motioned me to take the chair across from him. A volume of the Zohar was lying open in front of him.
“Do you know what the Zohar is?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “It is a mystical commentary on Torah written by Moshe deLeon, a thirteenth century Spanish kabbalist who....”
“Nonsense!” he yelled at me, half rising out of his chair. “The Zohar isn’t just a commentary; it’s a Torah all by itself. It is a new Torah, a new telling of the last Torah. You do know what Torah is, don’t you?”
Suspecting that I didn’t, and afraid to invoke his wrath a second time, I waited silently, certain that he would answer his own question. I was not disappointed.
“Torah is story. God is story. Israel is story. You, my university-educated soon-to-be a liberal pain in the ass rabbi, are a story. We are all stories! We are all Torahs!...Listen, Rami,” Reuven said in a softer voice. “Torah starts with the word b’reishit, ‘Once upon a time!’”
—Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Hasidic Tales
Originally posted by vistesdLife is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
One Shabbos afternoon, Reb Reuven called me into is study. He was sitting behind his desk and motioned me to take the chair across from him. A volume of the Zohar was lying open in front of him.
“Do you know what the Zohar is?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “It is a mystical commentary on Torah written by Moshe deLeon, a thirteenth ce ...[text shortened]... ith the word b’reishit, ‘Once upon a time!’”
—Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Hasidic Tales
Or am I missing the point of this story?
Originally posted by lucifershammerIf you assume that all stories are told either by God or an idiot; or that human story, myth—as opposed to history or historical revelation—must signify nothing; or that the words “once-upon-a-time” necessarily signify a following-after of foolishness; or that your own story has no more depth than a newspaper bio.....
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Or am I missing the point of this story?
.....or if you think that’s the kind of message that I’m about here, then , yes you’re missing the point. Truth and meaning can be embodied in and carried by story—and for most of the human venture have been; and for most of the human venture, story has probably been the principal vehicle, whether oral or written—and probably still is, really. Whether the truth about the gods, or the truth about human beliefs about the gods, or the truth of the human condition. Whether woven around historical facts, or recurring themes of love and struggle and conflict, or pulse-pounding tales of human adventure and achievement—and human atrocities—or the wilderness of the human psyche, or the marvels of scientific discovery. Whether about pirates or peasants. Whether about a particular person at a particular time, or about “everyman,” anywhere, anytime.
And if today we have lost our regard for story as something more than entertainment, and insist on nothing less (or more) than a factual report (“Just the facts, ma’am” ) or a precisely decodable divine revelation—then I suspect that it is we who are missing the point(s) of the tales left by the ancients (at least the ancient ivr’im), in an ancient language, chock-full of word-plays and puns; the drama of open-ended readings, an adventure of meanings that rely on the listener/reader to pursue them—that indeed, demand the active involvement of the listener/reader if the story is to have any meaning at all. If you can’t put yourself in the story—not as someone else but as yourself—then it’s not yours. And the rabbis would say that leaves the whole story incomplete—but that’s another story...
Part of the art of such tales as are found in Torah is that they do not plainly disclose themselves to you all neat and tidy, with the appropriate climax, resolution, denouement—so that once you “know” the story, you don’t have to bother with it any more. Oh, some of them undoubtedly do; some of them are probably just entertainments, like Ridley Scott’s “The Gladiator,” in days before film. Or, what? you want to read them like a recipe-book?: Now, how many hin of oil did that call for...?
As Rami Shapiro’s Reb Reuven put it: “Torah is story. God is story. Israel is story. You are a story. We are all stories. We are all Torahs.” To know one another is to know one another’s story—not just a rap-sheet of facts; to know one another intimately is to share the ongoing living-out of our stories, to be part of the same story, for good or ill. If you are asking for more than that (is there more? ...an existential question...), then I suspect that you may not find even that much. Maybe I’m wrong. As for me: once upon a time.....
Stolen stolen I have been from out of the land of the ivr’im.....
Originally posted by vistesd🙄
If you assume that all stories are told either by God or an idiot; or that human story, myth—as opposed to history or historical revelation—must signify nothing; or that the words “once-upon-a-time” necessarily signify a following-after of foolishness; or that your own story has no more depth than a newspaper bio.....
.....or if you think that’s the kind ...[text shortened]... nce upon a time.....
Stolen stolen I have been from out of the land of the ivr’im.....