Tag Archives: Goethe

Is The GOP “Kraken Up”?

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Sydney Powell, an attorney that was included recently in the fold of Trump’s “legal team” suddenly found herself “written out of the script” of the Trump Show, her conspiracy-theory orientation reaching an extreme that even the Kingdom of Trump could not handle.  At one-point last week she even avowed that she was privy the information that would devastate Joe Biden’s status as President Elect, describing this purported bomb shell as a “kraken.” 

I must commend her to being familiar with Scandinavian folklore, however, “Kraken” being a sea monster in its mythology that could suddenly emerge from the depths of the sea and wreak havoc on ships and their crew.  And I also give a nod to Sydney for utilizing metaphor as many of her kind are metaphorically challenged, being in a linear-thinking overdrive.  But after this “praise,” the woman is nuts! 

However, I do think that there is a “kraken” in the depths of Powell, and the Republican Party, and all political parties…and all humans.  One expression of this within the GOP is their intense fear of a “deep state” that is threatening to destroy them and is responsible for “rigging the election” against Trump.  This “kraken” is just one culture’s creation to express the human intuitive fear that there is a monster in the depths of our heart.  And in our current political morass, the Republicans demonstrate just how “human” they are as they respond with this internal terror by projecting it “out there.”  I remember noting this being illustrated by Republican Senator Ted Cruz who declared, “President Obama is out to destroy the Republican Party.”  It was obvious, even then, that the GOP had a self-destructive element in their depths with “creatures” such as the Tea Party. 

I admit that I have spent most of my life terrorized by the “kraken” in my own heart and obeyed the teachings of the culture of my youth and blamed “them”, whoever the “them” of the day was.  It is so frightening to contemplate the heart’s darkness which is why the gods were so gracious to offer us a persona, or “fig leaf”, to cover it up.  They intended for us eventually to find the humility to recognize its presence and begin the lifelong process of acknowledgement.  This is what Goethe had in mind with his observation, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.” My country is now having an opportunity to acknowledge its collective “beastliness”; our religious culture is having the same opportunity. 

That “Deep State” That Besets Us.

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I too have a “deep state” that is besieging me!  Yes, “they” or “it” is after me.  Oh, I used to think it was “out there” in the person of all those bad people and institutions who did not “see the light” as I did; but now I realize that my fears and insecurities were misdirected.  That “deep state” was within and will always be…as long as I remain a “paltry” human. I now realize that the “deep state” I always projected “out there” is merely the unconscious, that hidden domain of my heart which I did not have the courage to acknowledge.  And, yes it is a dark and ominous region of human experience, as in Goethe’s observations, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.”  My unwillingness to withdraw my projections for most of my life has cost me the store house of treasures in my heart which I catch faint glimpses of every now and then.  But the “beastly” dimension of the heart is always there! 

What is that “beastly” dimension of the heart?  In my experience, including reading and study but certainly including the intricate, frightening dimensions of “experience”, I have found that it is believing what you “believe” in an ironclad fashion, failing to recognize and respect the limitations of our human-ness, especially cognition.  We believe what we want to believe; and even if these beliefs might be very “noble” when we elevate them to sacrosanctity, we risk disregarding the wisdom of the Apostle Paul who noted that at best we only “see through a glass darkly.” 

The problem is “believing in our belief.”  One simple example is paranoia, If you believe the world is out to get you at some point it is likely to fulfill your unconscious wishes and “come after your ass.”  That is because the deep-seated distrust of life that you harbor will eventually spill over to the point that your judgement is gravely impaired, and the legal system will have to fulfill its responsibilities to intervene.  But the core issue is the insecurity, fragility, and terror that reigns in your heart. 

AND, on the matter of “believing in your belief,” I’m reminded of my favorite bumper sticker, “Don’t believe everything you think.”  So, you believe the moon is made out of cheese???  Why not consider what some of the other people in your world think about this notion?  So, you think “the Lord has ‘raised up’ Trump,” how about toying with the notion there might be some degree of flaw in that vein of thought?  But when a vein of thought is based on profound fear and anxiety that cannot be acknowledged, one will be enthralled with that vein of thought to the point of certainty. 

Aw, the sweet nectar of certainty!!! I remember it well.

Reason, Rationalization, Faith, and Trump.

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Faith traditions usually devolve into rigid distinctions, the “letter of the law” that Jesus chided us for. Christianity, which is my faith tradition, has a penchant for “legalism on steroids”, primarily the result of the Reformation. This has facilitated rigid distinctions leading to an “us” vs “them” mentality in many cases and a related penchant for seeing evil “out there.” This legalism coincides with the bastardization of Reason into rationalism in which our “rational-mind” orientation draws conclusions that Reason would be less likely to draw. This is related to the Goethe quote that I use here so often, “They call it reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.”

This is vividly illustrated with a strong contingent of evangelical Christians who are passionate supporters of Trump, using that “rational” mind to conclude, “Well, the Lord has raised him up, using an evil man to accomplish God’s purpose. ” That is very good “rationalization” but not very good Reason, Reason being that quality of heart that the Apostle Paul had in mind when he described the Holy Spirit as furrowing into the hearts depths where there He can be a “discerners of the thoughts and intents” of that heart. When one has ventured into that dimension of the Human/Divine experience, the Shakespearean “pauser reason” would posit the notion, “Well, maybe it was just my ego that wanted Trump to win so that my prejudices and biases about my life, including my faith life, can be validated.” One simple illustration of this rationalization occurred in in my youth as a fundamentalist Baptist; a deacon in my church…who I remember so fondly…told my Sunday School class that if an African American happened to enter the doors of the church, he would kindly inform him that he was not welcome. And that man was a “good” man, a Christian by all means, but in the tribal culture that he was part of he could see things only that way. After all, just a decade earlier President Eisenhower had forcibly desegregated Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas and my Baptist culture had not gotten over that example of “government intrusion.”

A very relevant concluding thought…my favorite bumper sticker…”Don’t believe everything you think.”

Another Take on, “That Giant Sucking Sound”

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“That giant sucking sound” is often less intense than it is with Trumpism. That “sound” is just the noise that happens when an ego, individually or collectively, is ripe for a needed change. God is up to his mischief, trying to nudge us into changing our perspective about the whole of life, including ourselves. Sometimes Her nudging is not adequate and She will hit us up the side of the head with a bat such as ..this twin-headed pandemic, Trumpism and Covid-19.

As explained yesterday, that “sucking sound” is merely the void/Void trying to get us to recognize and respect that dimension of life which is beyond the pale of reason. That heart of us lies beyond the representational world that we take for granted, offering us darkness and light simultaneously. This was what Goethe recognized when he told us, “The heart has its beastly little treasures.” To word this less philosophically, this Divine intervention seeks to make us aware of the unconscious and give us some appreciation for its role in life. ‘Tis so much easier to deny this, cling to our illusions, and dismiss any challenge with a stock response such as, “He was just kidding” or “he was just joking,” or even a non sequitur like, “It was Obama’s fault!” Seriously, our unconscious has to “nudge” us lest She is forced to, “get Medieval on our ass.” For in that depth of our Being lies a potential which cannot emerge without “birth pangs.”

“As a Man Thinketh, So Is He”

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I do not think that the Bible or any Holy Writ was given us to amuse ourselves “like a kitten given its own tail to tease.” (Goethe) And it certainly was not given to us to “make us Christian.”  The Bible is Holy Writ that has come our way to enable us to live more simply and honestly.  But our ego will have the tendency to take it and run with it, shaping it into one of those kittenish baubles.

Notions such as “ye shall be judged” by the words from your mouth was a simple instruction for us to self-reflect occasionally and pay attention to that “self-narrative” from which we speak and in some manner “speaks” us. It is very revealing. Such is the case here with my sporadic musings.  If you blog, or keep a journal, or are a professional writer, you really ought to peruse your work from time to time and self-reflect and, let your musings reveal your heart. Yes, this biblical admonition conveys the power of language and is related to the Christian belief that Jesus was “the Word made flesh.” There is a sense in which our very identity is simply “a word” enfleshed, a “word” that reveals the very intentions of our heart.  Yes, “as a man thinketh, so is he.”

For example, take a gander sometime at politicians and you will find their words say so much more than what they intend. This is vividly illustrated at this time when our world is terrified by this “pestilence” the gods have sent our way. No, I am not speaking of Trump here though, though  Trump and Trumpism are part of the same pestilence. And for even greater amusement, “take a gander” at preachers.

“Whew, Trump Got By Once Again.” Or Did He?

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Yes, he screwed up with bleach and heat nonsense the other day. But his crisis-management team immediately convened and one of them quickly dug into his always-ready folder, just beside the one marked, “binders full of women,” and pulled out, “Well he can say it was sarcasm, that or ‘irony’ and both have worked before.”  Another countered with, “Just deny that it happened or was ‘being taken out of context’ and that will likely fly.”  A crusty old veteran then stood up, stroked his beard, appearing to be wise, pondering studiously for a moment,  then noted, “Hey, we could use the old tried-and-true maneuver, blaming it on Obama…or Hillary…or Biden or China. Hey, the “deep state” always works.!” So, an hour later, this group of advisors opted with the “sarcasm” defense, after sucking down tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars” to employ this “CYA contrivance”.  They quickly adjourned, pleased with themselves for again arming the president with “BS” that would satisfy Fox News and the rest of his devotees.

Speaking from experience, when you have so much to hide in the depths of your heart, any bit of lame-ass denial will suffice to satisfy your need to cover up your heart’s insecurity, fear, and anxiety.  I should know, having done that for most of my life.! And  that will keep you from admitting, “I  made a mistake. I goofed,” or even Rick Perry’s famous, awkward, admission of faltering in a debate in 2016 when he could not recall the third of “three points,” shame-facedly uttering, ‘Oops!’”

Yep, life is often tough as we plod along in the “tale told by an idiot” that we have contrived to save face, disregarding that this “tale” is always “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But even then Shakespeare wisdom must be taken with the body of his profound work, that beneath the surface of our collective falderal there is “Something” undergirding the apparent “nothing-ness.”  But when we are so deeply ensconced in falderal, this “nothingness” we inevitably will take it to be “the real.”

And with this organized, systematized denial system, we go merrily along our way, as in Goethe’s observation, “When folks made all the week a holiday/With scanty wit, yet wholly at their ease/like kittens given their own tail to tease.” W. H. Auden put it even more bitingly, describing humankind as, “bland, sunny, and adjusted by the light of the collected lie.”

” Oh my,” I am often wont to say, realizing that honest, human admission of fault must never be utilized.! We must keep from appearing “human” even though our “human-ness,” with all its frailty and shame, is our most valuable God-given treasure.

Hamlet’s Wisdom for Our Political Impasse

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Shakespeare had wisdom relevant to the political impasse of my country. He realized that human nature often leaves us trapped in a cognitive grid, i.e. being “lost in our head,” which W. H. Auden described as the world of a “logical lunatic.” In the following passage Hamlet is in deep anguish and pines for his mother to listen to him, listen not merely be “waiting” until he finishes talking:

(Hamlet, speaking to his mother, Gertrude)
Leave wringing of your hands. Peace. Sit you down
And let me wring your heart. For so I shall
If it be made of penetrable stuff,
If damnèd custom have not bronzed it o’er so
That it is proof and bulwark against sense. (i.e.feeling)

Gertrude was wringing her hands with her own anguish and guilt over her son’s misery. But Hamlet, consumed by rage…teeming with “mother issues”…would not give her any mercy and asked her to take a seat and let him “ring her heart.” And Hamlet knew he could, for he knew that with his murderous rage he was able to, “speak daggers to her, not use them.”

But Hamlet’s creator, Shakespeare, knew that Gertrude was like all humans, insulated with a thought-world shaped by “damned custom” that had “bronzed o’er” her heart so that it would prevent any affect which would allow genuine listening. “Damned custom” is a necessary gift of human culture, to fill our heads with contrived thinking designed to help us function in our tribe which means to minimize the influence of “bothersome” affect. But if the “bronzing o’er” is done too completely, then one is not capable of listening to anyone but only in interpreting what is heard in terms of a medley of pre-conceptions and premises. Without that “proof and bulwark” being in place, listening to the anguish of another person would prove too painful so culture provides us platitudes such as, “Oh, it will pass” or “My, I know how that feels” or, “Oh hell. Why don’t you just get over it,” or, “God knows what is best.”

In the current political situation this denial system leads to the “hunkering down” phenomena in which some, when faced with contradictions and absurdity in their stances, merely assert their beliefs with greater emphasis. This is because core beliefs are seen to be under attack and these “core beliefs” …always to some degree unquestioned assumptions…are not subject to question. And, of course it is this morass of the unquestioned that harbors “material” that is deemed too painful to address.

“They call it Reason, using light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.” Goethe

“Like Kittens Given Their Own Tails to Tease”

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Vaclav Havel was a playwright, poet, and artist who became the first president of the Czech Republic in 1992 after helping lead a successful revolution against the Communists.  His involvement in politics was not the route that most men of his artistic persuasion would follow but his voracious reading in religion and the arts led him to action, not idle thought, or as pointed out recently in the Times Literary Supplement, “working for social and political improvement, not for glory, but to put his soul in order.”  Havel had a hunger in the heart that led him into the ethereal, even the occult, but he also was grounded in reality and recognized that the lure of intellectual and spiritual escapism must not be allowed to capture him.  He recognized that passion, that as Hamlet put it, “the native hue of resolution, sicklie’d o’er with the pale cast of thought…(would)…lose the name of action.”  Or, to put it in New Testament words, “Faith without action is dead.” (This was from a book review of “Vaclav Havel” by Kieran Williams.)

Havel lived through social and political turmoil in his youth during the Communist Revolution when his comfortably ensconced family suffered loss of wealth and status making the young Havel “self-conscious about his social origin.”  This “self-consciousness” produced what the book reviewer, Lesley Chamberlain, described as “productive friction” in his soul which simultaneously created or affirmed a belief in a soul and the insight that engagement in the human endeavor was an important part of “putting his soul in order.”  This “productive friction” will not take place in anyone’s life without some unsettling experience at some point in life as otherwise one will just bumble along life’s way comfortably ensconced in one’s view of the world, like “kittens given their tail to tease,” as Goethe put it.

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Two other blogs of mine are listed here which I invited you to check out:

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

Emily Dickinson & “Internal Difference”

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In one of my favorite Dickinson poems, quoted a few days ago, she describes a descent into the interiority of one’s soul where is found “internal difference where the meanings are.” In modern terms this descent is an openness to one’s unconscious which is given us if we start paying attention to the whims and fancies that pass through our mind…including those that are unsavory…as well as to dreams.  It also involves enough “self” awareness to begin to ask, “Why does this always happen to me” as we recognize repeated patterns of behavior in our life and find the courage to tolerate the suspicion that it is not necessarily someone else’s fault. But focus on this subterranean dimension of life is dangerous to those who have spent their life on the surface, busying themselves with the baubles that life tosses their way, “like kittens given their own tails to tease.” (Goethe)

This adventure was described by Dante at the beginning of The Inferno as a journey into “the deep forest” for in the forest conveys a childhood fear of getting lost; and, on this journey one pretty well has to “get lost” at sometime.  Here is an excerpt from a W. H. Auden poem which describes this risk:

Heroic charity is rare;
Without it, what except despair
Can shape the hero who will dare
The desperate catabasis
Into the snarl of the abyss
That always lies just underneath
Our jolly picnic on the heath
Of the agreeable, where we bask,
Agreed on what we will not ask,
Bland, sunny, and adjusted by
The light of the accepted lie.

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ADDENDUM–I am about to diversify with this literary effort of mine.  In this blog I plan to focus more on poetry and prose.  Below you will see two other blogs of mine relevant to spirituality and politics which have lain dormant for most of the past five years.  I hope some of you will check them out.  However, the boundaries will not be clear as my focus is very broad and my view of life is very eclectic/inclusive/broad-based.  Yes, at times too much so!

https://wordpress.com/posts/anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com

https://wordpress.com/posts/theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com

 

I am a Writer

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I’m a writer.  It has taken me 65 years to make this bold assertion though this blogging experience of the past five years has been a very tentative, left-handed way of making this announcement.  And “endeavor” was a deliberately chosen term as it has been and always will be a struggle as writing of any substance must come from the heart; and anything that flows from that bastion of “beastly little treasures” will be a struggle.  The heart is the innermost recess of our being, so “inner most” that, if you will let me slip into Zen for a moment, it is a “No Thing” and can best be described as emptiness.  Therefore, if you “know” what your heart is…that is if you cognitively grasp your heart, or think that you do…I would beg to differ with you.  For the “heart” always lies beyond our conscious grasp.  And this “emptiness” is very much related to the Christian teaching of “losing your self to find your self” and finding our “self” in the sense that Jesus had in mind is much more than a cognitive, rational, linear-thinking enterprise.  You could even say it is a “work of the cross” but not in an intellectual way but in the constellation of archetypal energies which will often feel like a crucifixion.

Acknowledgement that anything is beyond the grasp of our conscious mind is frightening to most people, especially those of us in the West.  Since the Descartes dictum, “I think, therefore I am” the West has been worshipping thinking or reason and we have slowly come to be convinced that the whole of life can be reduced to linear thinking, i.e. reason.  And this has made us technologically and scientifically great but left us with a spiritual emptiness that will soon leave my country, the United States, with a man who is egregiously mentally ill as its President.  “They call it Reason, using Light celestial, just to outdo the beasts in being bestial.” (Goethe)

But writing and all artistic enterprises can only spring from a heart that novelist Toni Morrison described as “petal open.”  That is where spirituality flows from, other than the “letter of the law” variety which is only what the Apostle Paul called a “work of the flesh.”  My favorite description of this vulnerable heart was written by Shakespeare whose character Hamlet, with great intensity lamented to his mother that he could never unburden his heart to her because it was, “bronzed o’er with the damned cast of thought so that it” is a barrier against “sense” (or feeling) and thus not “made of penetrable stuff.”  Shakespeare knew that an open heart can be “penetrated” while a closed heart, one shrouded by an enculturated verbal patina will be reduced to mindless palaver, “the well worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” (Conrad Aiken)

But words do have the capacity to furrow into the depths of our heart and there we can use them to “unpack our heart.”(see footnote below).  But the unopen heart will only reflect from its patina a slough of jargon and packaged, formulaic speech in accordance with what the speaker perceives will gain him the greatest approbation.  Here is the opening stanza of a poem by Irish poet W. R. Rodgers who in 1942 recognized the “post-truth” dimension of language that is currently plaguing our world.

WORDS (an excerpt)

By W. R. Rodgers

Once words were unthinking things, signaling

Artlessly the heart’s secret screech or roar,

Its foremost ardour or its farthest wish,

Its actual ache or naked rancour.

And once they were the gangways for anger,

Overriding the minds qualms and quagmires.

Wires that through weary miles of slow surmise

Carried the feverish message of fact

In their effortless core.  Once they were these,

But now they are the life-like skins and screens

Stretched skillfully on frames and formulae,

To terrify or tame, cynical shows

Meant only to deter or draw men on,

The tricks and tags of every demagogue,

Mere scarecrow proverbs, rhetorical decoys,

Face-savers, salves, facades, the shields and shells

Of shored decay behind which cave minds sleep

And sprawl like gangsters behind bodyguards.

(FOOTNOTE:  For you Shakespearean scholars, I am misapplying this line of “unpacking my heart with words” to describe something useful, when in the play “Hamlet” it described prostitutes deliberately plying their trade knowing that they could then go and perfunctorily confess their sins.  Hmm!)