You’ll slide off, either up or down.

Supernaturalism: Nothing is just itself, it is part of something else.

Naturalism: Nothing is itself, it is parts.

Pomegranates in the Tabernacle

The little carved pomegranates in the desert tabernacle write a radical theory of “Christian” art.

The carved objects stand on their own. We are never taught what they “stand for”. They stand for pomegranates, which are beautiful enough to adorn God’s tent.

There is no further artistic act to connect the carved fruit to God.

Yet, we fret when Christian singers sing secular songs. As if there is the song, then there needs to be a Christian lyric to connect the music to God. Fools. God made pomogranates.  He doesn’t need a commentary to enjoy them.

Form

Form is immortality.

No form comes into being unless pushed by a life, but no life outlives its form.

Making decisions about form is living. Feeling and thinking are precursors to living, but ordering is living. Ordering is living.

Relationships without order are not real. They feel ephemeral because they are a tissue of randomnity, the storm of one pulse beating against another so that the two hearts synchronize every random number of hours.

Ecstasy is a transcendance of form, not an escape from form. Ek, stasis, to stand out: there must be a structure on which to stand. The greatest ecstacies happen in the midst of the liturgy, when the formalities are at their most dread.

Liturgies are spontaneous formalities. They can be recorded, but not enacted. All action in the presence of God is formal, meaning it is action consciously calibrated to harmonize with an external action — even though it be a dance.

At the same time, it is beyond all reason and honesty to read the character of Jesus as presented in the Gospels and think He would be concerned about the accurate rendition of a religious rite.

To choose the random is to be the devil.

Simple.

Not many things are needful:

silence of peaches, blue stoneware;

silence of sunbeams across the sisal rug;

silence of roses, sipping from their vase.  

One thing left strewn from late last year would clutter all.

So much is poised on where the roses sit;

maybe on the bar,  maybe on the hutch.

So much is poised on what I name their red:

venous, like the rising moon, or berried, like the rising spring.  

For when the red is named or when the petals shift

we sit headlong toward tomorrow and the poem starts anew.

A pure heart

Men fantasize about sex, women fantasize about romance.

These are both idols that sully, equally, the image of the real husband or the real wife.

Credo ut intelligam

I act

in order

to be

wise.