Get well soon! I'm sure that you know (but I must share it as it is such a quiet comfort to me through the long nights) that Origen (with his typical good sense) was a bold defender of what you call "quite another view that might have been extracted from the New Testament, the Pauline corpus in particular." Origen wrote in Contra Celsum (8.31) that "the water springs in fountains, and refreshes the earth with running streams" and that "the air is kept pure, and supports the life of those who breathe it, only in consequence of the agency and control of certain beings whom we may call invisible husbandmen and guardians." And Origen closed this point with: "but we deny that those invisible agents are demons."
Wonderful. On the topic of fairy lore, are you familiar with Susanna Clarke’s novels and short stories? My son and I recently read (and then immediately reread) Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Masterfully written and full of humor.
“A vision of reality this amiable is endlessly preferable to the sheer metaphysical boredom of the materialist view of things and, for that very reason, makes a moral demand on any responsible soul; boredom is, after all, the one force that can utterly defeat the will to care what is or is not true to begin with.”
Just so. Acedia and misology are the two direst horsemen.
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris, Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde…
As an exercise in healthy credulity, one ought to read the following excerpt from Kenkō until its truth becomes perfectly obvious:
“There was once a certain constable of some sort in Tsukushi who believed that the white radish was a wonderful remedy for all ills. Every morning for many years, he would roast two and eat them.
One day, his enemies seized a moment when the house was for once unguarded and empty to raid the place. They surrounded the house and attacked, whereupon two warriors emerged from the building and fought them back with no thought for their own lives, sending them all fleeing.
The constable was mystified. ‘Why should men who have no apparent connection to the place such as yourselves fight for it in
this manner?’ he asked. ‘Who are you?’
‘We are the two white radishes that you put such faith in and eat every morning,’ they replied, and then they vanished.
Clearly, his deep faith had produced this fine reward.”
As for me, I am still stuck with Hardy and his oxen:
Really? Well, then, I beg your pardon. I am sure I have read and found you here time and again. What is the wall that has blocked me from this truth? Perhaps there is a greater than a hand you do hold so open?!
To you, about my comment on your life and mine six, where I accused you of not yet “opening your hand,” whereas not only is your hand but your whole mindbody opened every on more occasions than, apparently, I can count.
No. I am here commenting on the place you take up in The Secret Commonwealth, in continuity with my comment on L & M 6. In this rerun of your article which I read before, and forgotten the openness and thoroughness of you imagination, I find what U had not yet, or thought you had not yet, displayed. Sorry for being so confusing, but I am making sense to myself.
Yes, David, and my apology. I have been communicating here with such leaps, Mnemosyne herself would be taxed. Let me attempt clarification.
I have been reading your Reflections on Life and Mind with great and increasing interest. Being preoccupied with something else, I have not gotten to these in a timely fashion, and have been a late-comer to the comments. Upon reading the sixth, with the promise of yet more to come, I made the following comment: [Duane A Lookingbill Nov 25], “David, as you have not "opened your hand" - you have, and are, and are promising to continue to indicate your "own most" take - as to your narration/ argument regarding the quest in question, I wonder what you make of someone like William H. Poteat (who relies on a supporting Colloquy), and the alternatives between Greek and Hebrew thought toward which he aligns? In the place of a Phenomenology of Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty), a phenomenology of the 'language user,' a postcritical logic, the difference between an aural/ aural dominant and a visual/ print dominant covenant between word and world, distinguishing "betwixt and between" the cyclical world view of Greek philosophical, language realism in the mode of "a very large but finite text," and the Hebrew, Yahwist, "speaker par excellence" world with history? You are being very accurate in these six reflections, and this is valuable, perhaps even the value of values. My saying, "Thank you!" is hardly more than a minimum, if not a reduction, of the gratitude you are so freely releasing.”
Upon reading of “the poor Rev. Robert Kirk,” and realizing I had read this before, I came to an “Aha!” I don’t know how many times I have delved into what you have consistently told us regarding Fairies-in-our-world, but this piece on “The Secret Commonwealth” brought before me how you have time and again “opened your hand” as to “Consciousness,” only I hadn’t registered this in relation to what I was at once figuring out and questing after. So, my initial, puzzling, remark – to which you wondered who I was addressing, and about what - was the bursting forth of my revelation.
The logic and the rhetoric of Poteat’s phenomenology of his ‘thinking/ speaking/ writing’ as he is inspired by the puzzlement of Boman’s Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, as well Polanyi’s “innovative” uses of logic in his Personal Knowledge, (not to mention a hosting "cloud of witnesses") stands as an attempt to say something obscure well, just not nonsense. Whereas, through so-called nonsense, Kirk says something very well, most of us, most of the time, both trivialize and pass off as obvious, though we are self-obscuring the truth thereof.
Anyway, my question still stands – What do you think of Bill Poteat’s mindbodily reflexion? – and as to your saying quite forthrightly where you are coming from, I stand corrected before my own revelatory denouement.
I have not read it as of yet, but I wonder if the antithesis to Kirk's treatise is a book titled 'Om lappernes vildfarelser og overtro' (Concerning the Sami heresies and superstitions) (1715) by Isaac Olsen. There is currently a discussion around the Norwegianization of the Sami people by the 1700s Protestant missions. I would wish that the reports from such a commission had more the direction of your remarks than discussion of decolonizing theology, but perhaps one will get there in the end!
Get well soon! I'm sure that you know (but I must share it as it is such a quiet comfort to me through the long nights) that Origen (with his typical good sense) was a bold defender of what you call "quite another view that might have been extracted from the New Testament, the Pauline corpus in particular." Origen wrote in Contra Celsum (8.31) that "the water springs in fountains, and refreshes the earth with running streams" and that "the air is kept pure, and supports the life of those who breathe it, only in consequence of the agency and control of certain beings whom we may call invisible husbandmen and guardians." And Origen closed this point with: "but we deny that those invisible agents are demons."
Yes, the piece was published back before I was happily proclaiming myself as an Origenist. But you've sussed out the source of my reflections.
thanks for sharing hope you make a quick recovery glad to hear mill bank learned his lesson hes far too smart to not greet n meet the woodland spirits
Wonderful. On the topic of fairy lore, are you familiar with Susanna Clarke’s novels and short stories? My son and I recently read (and then immediately reread) Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Masterfully written and full of humor.
In any case, hope you get well soon!
Of course.
“A vision of reality this amiable is endlessly preferable to the sheer metaphysical boredom of the materialist view of things and, for that very reason, makes a moral demand on any responsible soul; boredom is, after all, the one force that can utterly defeat the will to care what is or is not true to begin with.”
Just so. Acedia and misology are the two direst horsemen.
Quoiqu'il ne pousse ni grands gestes ni grands cris, Il ferait volontiers de la terre un débris Et dans un bâillement avalerait le monde…
As an exercise in healthy credulity, one ought to read the following excerpt from Kenkō until its truth becomes perfectly obvious:
“There was once a certain constable of some sort in Tsukushi who believed that the white radish was a wonderful remedy for all ills. Every morning for many years, he would roast two and eat them.
One day, his enemies seized a moment when the house was for once unguarded and empty to raid the place. They surrounded the house and attacked, whereupon two warriors emerged from the building and fought them back with no thought for their own lives, sending them all fleeing.
The constable was mystified. ‘Why should men who have no apparent connection to the place such as yourselves fight for it in
this manner?’ he asked. ‘Who are you?’
‘We are the two white radishes that you put such faith in and eat every morning,’ they replied, and then they vanished.
Clearly, his deep faith had produced this fine reward.”
As for me, I am still stuck with Hardy and his oxen:
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
As appropriate a place as any to invoke Mary Oliver:
"Just a minute," said a voice . . .
"Just a minute," said a voice in the weeds.
So I stood still
in the day's exquisite early morning light
so I didn't crush with my great feet
any small or unusual thing just happening to pass by
where I was passing by
on my way to the blueberry fields,
and maybe it was the toad
and maybe it was the June beetle
and maybe it was the pink and tender worm
who does his work without limbs or eyes
and does it well
or maybe it was the walking stick, still frail
and walking humbly by, looking for a tree,
or maybe, like Blake's wondrous meeting, it was
the elves, carrying one of their own
on a rose-petal coffin away, away
into the deep grasses. After awhile
the quaintest voice said, "Thank you." And then there was silence.
For the rest, I would keep you wondering.
Really? Well, then, I beg your pardon. I am sure I have read and found you here time and again. What is the wall that has blocked me from this truth? Perhaps there is a greater than a hand you do hold so open?!
Um, to whom are you speaking, and about what?
To you, about my comment on your life and mine six, where I accused you of not yet “opening your hand,” whereas not only is your hand but your whole mindbody opened every on more occasions than, apparently, I can count.
Then the comment got attached to the wrong article, it seems.
No. I am here commenting on the place you take up in The Secret Commonwealth, in continuity with my comment on L & M 6. In this rerun of your article which I read before, and forgotten the openness and thoroughness of you imagination, I find what U had not yet, or thought you had not yet, displayed. Sorry for being so confusing, but I am making sense to myself.
You credit me with a better memory than I actually possess, I’m afraid.
Yes, David, and my apology. I have been communicating here with such leaps, Mnemosyne herself would be taxed. Let me attempt clarification.
I have been reading your Reflections on Life and Mind with great and increasing interest. Being preoccupied with something else, I have not gotten to these in a timely fashion, and have been a late-comer to the comments. Upon reading the sixth, with the promise of yet more to come, I made the following comment: [Duane A Lookingbill Nov 25], “David, as you have not "opened your hand" - you have, and are, and are promising to continue to indicate your "own most" take - as to your narration/ argument regarding the quest in question, I wonder what you make of someone like William H. Poteat (who relies on a supporting Colloquy), and the alternatives between Greek and Hebrew thought toward which he aligns? In the place of a Phenomenology of Phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty), a phenomenology of the 'language user,' a postcritical logic, the difference between an aural/ aural dominant and a visual/ print dominant covenant between word and world, distinguishing "betwixt and between" the cyclical world view of Greek philosophical, language realism in the mode of "a very large but finite text," and the Hebrew, Yahwist, "speaker par excellence" world with history? You are being very accurate in these six reflections, and this is valuable, perhaps even the value of values. My saying, "Thank you!" is hardly more than a minimum, if not a reduction, of the gratitude you are so freely releasing.”
Upon reading of “the poor Rev. Robert Kirk,” and realizing I had read this before, I came to an “Aha!” I don’t know how many times I have delved into what you have consistently told us regarding Fairies-in-our-world, but this piece on “The Secret Commonwealth” brought before me how you have time and again “opened your hand” as to “Consciousness,” only I hadn’t registered this in relation to what I was at once figuring out and questing after. So, my initial, puzzling, remark – to which you wondered who I was addressing, and about what - was the bursting forth of my revelation.
The logic and the rhetoric of Poteat’s phenomenology of his ‘thinking/ speaking/ writing’ as he is inspired by the puzzlement of Boman’s Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek, as well Polanyi’s “innovative” uses of logic in his Personal Knowledge, (not to mention a hosting "cloud of witnesses") stands as an attempt to say something obscure well, just not nonsense. Whereas, through so-called nonsense, Kirk says something very well, most of us, most of the time, both trivialize and pass off as obvious, though we are self-obscuring the truth thereof.
Anyway, my question still stands – What do you think of Bill Poteat’s mindbodily reflexion? – and as to your saying quite forthrightly where you are coming from, I stand corrected before my own revelatory denouement.
Just bought the book! I’m excited to read.
I have not read it as of yet, but I wonder if the antithesis to Kirk's treatise is a book titled 'Om lappernes vildfarelser og overtro' (Concerning the Sami heresies and superstitions) (1715) by Isaac Olsen. There is currently a discussion around the Norwegianization of the Sami people by the 1700s Protestant missions. I would wish that the reports from such a commission had more the direction of your remarks than discussion of decolonizing theology, but perhaps one will get there in the end!
A notorious but typical text.