Galveston Easter Sunset
Zoe & Edie on Galveston Island beach :: Just before sunset :: Easter
1977
Flowering Quince – North Little Rock, Arkansas – March 2008
to my sister
A gust hushed red at your cheeks;
Round brown eyes & red hooded jacket,
The bond between frost-sheathed mittens
That connected our hands
Even though we let go,
Our feet in red woolen socks
Tucked-in empty bread bags
Which Mother fastened to our legs
With green Gazette rubber bands
And tall, black rubber boots.
Your breath hanging ’round in the air
Like ghosts that snuck from you
between our faces
Climbing an ice-white rise
For the simple rush down
On cookie-tin sleds again
& again.
I butchered your hair;
Taped your eyes shut,
& burned a dollhouse roof
With a magnifying glass
and worse.
Do you and I agree?
Are our recollections enough, the same
That some geometry living in them
Presupposes memory,
Illumines patterns in static?
I don’t know.
I don’t know
If we are changed by remaining still,
Or hold on as long as we are able,
That we know what we know &
That we remember
Anything at all.
And you may yet have stories
More true than I can tell.
I hope you do.
So if you imagine a quiet hillside
Frozen beneath slick, bending trees,
Gravity enfolding us,
The curved moon &
Dome of fresh gray sky;
If you suspect these
of tiptoeing away -
Sister, ask what I remember.
praxymetry
What is praxymetry?
Etymology: (a): praxis- Medieval Latin, from Greek, doing, action, from prassein to do, practice; and (b): symmetry- Latin symmetria, from Greek, from symmetros symmetrical, from syn + metron – measure. balanced proportions; also : beauty of form arising from balanced proportions – also the property of remaining invariant under certain changes (as of orientation in space, of parity, or of the direction of time flow) used of physical phenomena and their descriptive equations.
Definition:
1) a practice of measured balance between advocacy and action in a geopolitical system.
2) a shift in perspective which radically alters traditional thought.
3) a means by which beneficial humanitarian policy is implemented.
Actions speak louder than words
Don’t just talk. Do. Don’t discuss serving the minority. Radically shift your perspective by including yourself in the minority. Don’t just lend your words. Lend your life.
Bigger cities are not necessarily better cities. And without a doubt, more government has never been – and will never be – better government. Progress, in this light, has nothing to do with change over time – or even growth in size. Genuine progress is that change which improves the quality of life of all peoples. Every tribe, tongue, people and nation.
Families are starving because they can no longer afford food. We cannot feed them money. Actions truly speak louder than words. It is time to bring radical understanding to bear on the growing problems of food shortage and the capitalist system. The “law” of supply and demand moves us closer and closer to a real system of passive genocide. How much is too much?
Become the Minority.
Mystic Christianity
Mystic Christianity:
Modern Translations of the Gospel of Luke
Early Zen teaching stories relate a number of anecdotes about a Chinese sage named Joshu. In one parable, (Reps, 175) recorded five hundred years before Christ, a monk accosts Joshu during a meal. The monk requests personal instruction – by which he hopes to achieve enlightenment. Joshu patiently asks the monk, “Have you eaten?” The eager student replies, “Yes, master, I have just finished the meal.” Joshu responds directly to the monk, “Then you had better go and wash your bowl.”
Tradition holds that the young man was instantly enlightened upon realizing the depth of Joshu’s instruction. These kinds of teaching stories have been used for millennia. They serve distinct purposes, in that the stories themselves convey truths which have inevitably remained clouded by conservative adherence to dogma and ceremony. The teachings of Christ, as found in the New Testament scriptures of the Christian bible, are quite similar to their spiritual counterparts in both the middle and far east. Christ’s teachings were intended to be gateways to perception. They are filled with intricate systems of interwoven thematic elements. What we shall uncover here will provide direct evidence of the suitability of Christ’s teaching, as recorded in Luke’s gospel, to withstand both tests of time – and translation. Specifically, Luke 17:21 reveals subtle phrasing which was crafted to ensure that the text passed on to future generations an apt representation of the archetype of Christian mystical thought. These intentions are clear today. Modern English translations of Luke 17:21 capably reveal the mystical nature of Christ’s teachings. One translation, drawn here from The New Testament in Modern English, states the lexis of Christ’s teachings regarding his followers’ identification with ultimate truth: “The kingdom of God never comes by watching for it. Men cannot say, ‘Look, here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ for the kingdom of God is inside you” (Phillips, 163).
Considering the tone of Luke 17:21 in Phillips’ translation, one word readily jumps from the text. This word, “inside,” is a translation of the Greek preposition “entos.” Entos is critical. It designates the whereabouts of the kingdom of God; “regnum Dei intra vos est” (Blue Letter Bible, Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, Luke 17:21). According to Phillips, Christ teaches that the kingdom of God is not a worldly kingdom. Paradise, if we should seek to find it, can be found in this life. It has been placed within each of us. Lexical information supports this. Entos is an “adverb of place” – “only as an improper prep. w. gen. inside, within, within the limits of…” (Bauer, 268). Other lexical references reveal that use of the Greek word entos in the New Testament is tremendously rare. (The Analytical Greek Lexicon, 137). Here, we find the first and only other occasion of the term’s occurrence in the New Testament scriptures. Matthew 23:26 reads: “Blind Pharisees! First wash the inside of the cup, and then the outside will become clean, too” (Blue Letter Bible, New Living Testament, Matthew 23:26). This is no coincidence.
It should be duly noted that some choose to interpret Luke 17:21 using the English phrase “in your midst,” or “in the midst of you” for the Greek entos: “nor shall they say, Lo here, or, Lo there; for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Blue Letter Bible, Darby, Luke 17:21). This presents an interesting deviation from our previous course. Additionally, this translation for entos illustrates an important facet of the English language. As is readily evident, the phrase “in the midst of you” can be seen from several viewpoints, distinct from those we examined above. We can infer that many have taken this phrase, “in your midst,” to refer to something that happened outside those Christ was addressing – something among them, perhaps. As Davidson points out, Christ may be “referring to Himself and the life He was living among them” (856). This interpretation seems a far cry from any mystic elucidation. Here, some students of the text of Luke 17:21 believe we are introduced to an elite and limiting Christ – who believes he contains what others do not, and cannot contain. By this interpretation, the kingdom of heaven is not found within anyone but Christ. Many early Christians must have favored this interpretation. Mystics disagree.
The King James Bible, perhaps the single most important document in the shaping of the English tongue, communicates the vitality of early Christian mysticism brilliantly. Luke 17:21 is therein translated: “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Blue Letter Bible, King James Version, Luke 17:21). This translation provides a solid, direct link between Luke’s gospel and its apparent parent text in Matthew 23:26, which we examined above. Christ clearly equates consciousness with a vessel or cup. He discounts appearances, or ‘signs’ of a kingdom yet to come, and refers in both instances to that which occurs within. The use of the present tense also suggests that the condition already exists – that it must be comprehended. Again, we may study the not so subtle variance in translations of Luke 17:21 and draw our own conclusions:
The positive half of the saying asserts the utter futility of all such popular interest in signs. Our interpretation of it will depend on the meaning we give to the preposition entos. The KJV and the RSV represent two possibilities. (1) Within (KJV; RSV mg.) corresponds to the normal Greek use of the word, and this translation makes Jesus declare that God’s rule is a new spiritual principle already operative in the lives of men. [...] (2) In the midst of (RSV) (or “Among”) is a translation that removes the saying from its exceptional category among the kingdom references in the gospels. (Buttrick, 300).
Obviously, interpretations of Luke 17:21 do not fall far from the tree of one’s personal philosophical and theological preferences. This seems an overtone of Christ’s, or, at the very least, the gospel writer’s intent. We should note that, due to some more restrictive or exclusive interpretations of Luke’s gospel, many scholars and theologians have taken to highlighting the absolute – and often partisan authority of Christ. Others have opted to broaden a more subtle, personal authority in the interpretation of Luke’s gospel. These seemingly more forward-thinking scholars entrust the infinite possibilities of Deliverance to the hearts and minds of those who devote themselves to the teachings of Christ. In essence, they leave interpretation to the students of the text. This certainly appears to be more in line with the gospel writer’s intent for entos.
While a close reading of the works of some analysts reveals clear lines of mystical thought, it remains that mysticism in any form and any religion has had its share of opponents. Many speak ardently against the alleged intrinsic capacity of humanity for knowledge of “self” through a direct knowledge, or even subjective experience of “the kingdom of God.” And yet others have taken a more philosophical approach to Luke 17:21, perhaps in an attempt to avoid its theological pitfalls. This is evident in Wycliffe’s commentary: “…entos may mean among. A kingdom is not just a territory, nor a system of governmental machinery. Its basic existence is in the unity and loyalty of a people. Jesus asserted that the kingdom of God was already present and needed only to be recognized. He had brought the kingdom with him and was living among them” (Pfeiffer, 1056). Additionally, when modern analysts look into early Christian debates concerning the translation of Luke 17:21, they find the same questions – the “within” versus “in your midst” dialogue – well preserved. This debate began to propagate quite early in the history of Christianity. “Tertullian reads it as “within your grasp” (or “possession”),” Michaels says, “it can be shared in by you, if you want it…” He then quotes a colleague, Fitzmeyer, who paraphrases Tertullian; “to take it lies among your choices and within your power” (478). “In short,” Michaels says, “Tertullian affords a basis in the very early history of the interpretation of Luke 17:21 for suggesting that “within you” meant “in your hands” or “within your power,” in the sense that the Pharisees, as “lovers of money” [Luke 16:14], had the opportunity to gain the kingdom by opening their hands in reckless generosity to the poor” (480).
If everything we have examined above simply begs the question, “What does all this have to do with mysticism?,” perhaps a succinct examination of mysticism’s definition is in order. Webster defines mysticism, in part, as “the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be obtained through subjective experience (as intuition or insight)” (Merriam-Webster OnLine). In Webster, we may also note that a more concrete approach to the term reveals “vague speculation: a belief without sound basis – a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power.”
What Luke 17:21 pushes toward, if anything, is direct personal knowledge through individual subjective experience. No matter how one goes about translating the text, it remains apparent that the gospel writer fashioned it as something of a red flag. In other words, a serious student of Christ’s teachings cannot examine the many interpretations of the verse and remain unconscious of its numerous and highly potent implications. It is with this awareness, that we conclude where we began. Joshu demands of a monk, as Christ of the Pharisees in Matthew 23:26, “you had better go and wash your bowl.” Like Joshu, Jesus isn’t really talking about dirty dishes. There is something else – beyond the words. Christ directs traffic down the inward path. It should be clear that this is no dime-store theology. This technique is prevalent in religions pre-dating Christianity by thousands of years. Parables and metaphors are not new devices. We have looked at several translations of Luke 17:21. It is clearly a verse which, after a close first reading, necessitates a sincere personal inspection. In the verse’s original Greek, as we have seen, the word “entos” is a designator of place – of space at the core. Indeed, modern English translations of Luke 17:21 capably reveal the mystical nature of Christ’s teachings.
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Works Cited
Bauer, Walter. Griechisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften
des Neuen Testaments und der übrigen urchristlichen Literatur.
4th Rev. ed. Trans. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich.
Cambridge: University Press; Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1957.
Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2002. Nov. 2005.
<http://www.blueletterbible.org>.
Buttrick, George Arthur, et al., eds. The Interpreter’s Bible.
Vol. 8. New York: Abingdon Press, 1952.
Davidson, F., et al., eds. The New Bible Commentary. 2nd ed.
Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans, 1954.
Merriam – Webster Online. Nov. 2005. <http://webster.com/dictionary/mysticism>.
Michaels, Ramsey J. “Almsgiving and the Kingdom Within:
Tertullian on Luke 17:21.”
The Catholic Bible Quarterly. 60.3 (1998): 475-83.
Pfeiffer, Charles F. and Everett F. Harrison, eds.
The Wycliffe Bible Commentary. Chicago: Moody, 1962.
Phillips, J.B., trans. The New Testament in Modern English.
New York: MacMillan, 1962.
Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki, eds. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:
A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings.
Boston and London: Shambala, 1994.
The Analytical Greek Lexicon.
London: Samuel Bagster and Sons, Limited; New York
and Evanston: Harper and Row. (no date given).
© 2005 Sam Heard