If I Lost You

Merry Christmas, or What's in a Greeting?

It seems Christmas has become thoroughly.. multicultural. The debate over whether one should say "happy holidays" or not should finally come to an end. One should have no more difficulty saying "Merry Christmas" than Happy Thursday or Merry Wednesday, though hopefully with a greater twinkle in the eye.

A friendly detractor may say, yes but hasn't Christmas always been multicultural?  To this I must agree, but add that it was multicultural in a different kind of way.  Christmas has always been multicultural precisely because Christians have always been multicultural.  The multiculturalism I speak of today is different.  Now not only Christians celebrate Christmas, but non-Christians too, and these in far greater numbers than ever before.  It has led to the now common sighting of the little white and red signs in front of people's houses or on their cars which say "Keep Christ in Christmas".  There would be no need to make such declarations unless already Christmas was seen as existing outside the circle of Christianity.  How odd this is considering "Christ" is already in Christmas, literally forming part of the word.  

This marks a transition I have perhaps not so subtly referred to above when I use the greetings "Happy Thursday" and "Merry Wednesday".  For some time now these words have lost their religious connotations for us, except for a very few pagans perhaps.   Wednesday of course was named for the Norse god Odin or the Saxon Wodan, the All-Father.  Thursday was named for one of his sons, the god of thunder Thor:  Wodan's-day and Thor's-day respectively.  We may greet one another quite cheerfully with a "happy Thursday" and think nothing of it.  There are many cultural/religious artifacts that we use in this way.  So the term "Christmas" has slipped toward this usage, demonstrated by the insistence of Christians that we keep the "Christ" in Christmas, as a kind of resistance to the transition that is already taking place. 

The insistence in so many schools that we refrain from saying "Merry Christmas" or have Christmas concerts is a sign therefore of a number of things.  First, interestingly it is a sign that schools are colluding with Christians to keep Christmas a religious holiday (and thus not a celebration appropriate for all their students), this despite the availability of a number of Christmas symbols that are capable of carrying both religious and secular meaning almost entirely in either direction.  Think of Santa Claus, the Christmas tree, gift-giving... all of these can be thought of in terms completely unrelated to the Advent of Christ, and in fact are thought of this way by many many people.  Following this point, schools themselves therefore restrict our freedom to define Christmas in whatever way we choose, already naming for us the meaning of Christmas (i.e. it has religious meaning).  This is similar to arguing that Santa Claus can only be white or Canadian etc., failing to take into account the symbolic givenness of the season and the signs of its presence.  Christmas, unchained from a specific cultural interpretation, becomes not devoid of meaning, but free in its openness to us.  Instead of shying away from its celebration in schools, now may be the time to ask each beautiful little child what it means to them and their families.  It is precisely in that chorus of small voices that we might hear the melody and meaning of Christmas emerge. 

The Prophet Dead, He the Wretch

 Rest in peace Harold Camping.  You deluded old man.  You instigator of broken lives and hope.  Your guilty conscience will bother you no more...

Blog post from the past

The following is taken from a blog draft written December 16, 2006, separated from my wife, on the verge of divorce, after returning home to spend Christmas with strangers.

How is it that a man can sit in a room surrounded by people and still feel alone?  Some men prefer it this way.  They are at ease until someone should happen to say something to them, at which point, the man feels suddenly shaken, even violated in some way.  The offence is worse if the person should speak directly to him.  It is not so bad if the other should sit down beside him and, gazing out into the crowd without looking at the man, say something requiring no more than a grunt or a “hmm”.  At this point the two can remain silent and feel no awkwardness.  It is only when one becomes aware of the other’s presence that discomfort should follow.  When one has the expectation that two people sitting next to one another should speak to each other then any silence is hardly tolerated.  One can often observe one of these people in action, trying to stimulate conversation, saying the most ridiculous things to prompt the other to speak.  “This is certainly a nice evening isn’t it?”  Or even more ridiculous: “I hear it’s supposed to get colder.”  The silent man, at this point, may do one of three things.  1) He will answer with a nod of the head or raise his eyebrows but for the rest of the evening bear a grudge against the one who violated his peace with such foolish statements; 2) He will simply move to another location where he can dip some shrimp in seafood sauce, or quietly stack a piece of cheese, some assorted meat, on top of a cheese or perhaps herb flavoured cracker; or 3) He will lash out at the offender with a verbal assault.  He may do all three.  Slowly he will nod his head, his neck and face beginning to flush with fury, his eyebrows will rise and his eyes bulge until suddenly he bursts out with “For God’s sake is that the most intelligent thing you can say?!”  Or perhaps, “Who really cares about the weather, it will be what it will be, and the evening is like any other!”  Afterwards he’ll make his way to the table with assorted cold cuts, cheese and crackers, and if he’s lucky the shrimp, where he’ll prepare a tasty tidbit which will distract him from the embarrassment of his outburst.  It is embarrassing in the end, though also gratifying.  It is embarrassing because he was forced to break his own silence, to violate his own spherical vacuum of silence surrounding his body.  He’ll realize he had a choice, that he could have remained silent, adhered to point 1) or simply moved straight to point 2) without calling any attention to himself.  But it was also gratifying, he’ll decide, as he eats his cracker and cheese.  He may even smile to himself.  The look on the other person’s face was priceless. 

The Fire i' the Blood

Look thou be true; do not give dalliance
Too much the reign: the strongest oaths are straw
To the fire i' the blood: be more abstemious,
Or else, good night your vow!

Prospero to the two lovers, The Tempest, Act IV, Scene 1

But language-
In thunder speaks the
God.
Often I have it, language
anger, she said, was enough and approved by Apollo-
If you have love enough, then, go on, rage out of love.
Often I tried to sing, but they did not hear you.  For
that was holy Nature's will.  For her you sang in your youth.
Not singing
You spoke to the deity,
but what all of you have forgotten is that always
the first-born belong not to mortals but to the gods.
More common, more everyday
the fruit must become, only then
will mortals possess it.

Hölderlin, Fragments.

This place I know.  My second gif.. hmm you had to be there :)

It moves

I just unfriended close to 40 people on Facebook.  That's a significant amount for my account, about 25% of my friends.  The criteria for selection was easy: if I had no interaction with them in over a year they were gone.  If I enjoyed their posts but didn't have any personal interaction with them they stayed.  There were a few nostalgic ones that slipped through too, even though I really had no meaningful interaction with them in any way. 

This is all part of a larger program I've initiated in my life.  It involves a reorientation toward real things and people, things I can touch and talk to, things that have a face, or cast shadows.  Of course I'm not cutting off the virtual completely.  This is in fact impossible- as Zizek has said: "Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction."  I'm simply scaling back on a particular mode of the virtual.  Its truths are still present for those who have ears to hear... I've simply heard another sound.

Gabriel's Oboe

Rainy nights

"Longing is the agony of the nearness of the distant."  Heidegger

How Big Is the Universe?

All rights belong to the Guardian and Newton.

Remember

War is a necessary evil.

Toasting and consignment

Come let us share this golden elixir and speak of our adventures, sitting long into the night as the autumn rain falls cold outside our warm company. This round is on me..

The Unbearable Weight

October 31

Along the floor
Of the small Cottage in the lonely Dell
A grateful couch was spread for our repose;
Where, in the guise of mountaineers, we lay,
Stretched upon fragrant heath, and lulled by sound
Of far-off torrents charming the still night,
And, to tired limbs and over-busy thoughts,
Inviting sleep and soft forgetfulness.

Wordsworth

My own little place

Weapon of War, Musical Instrument

"And consequently, by the 'art' of archery he does not mean the ability of the sportsman, which can be controlled, more or less, by bodily exercises, but an ability whose origin is to be sought in spiritual exercises and whose aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal, so that fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself." -Zen in the Art of Archery. 

My new bow. Keep it simple...

Incense

Decomposition

What is it that we have been given, only to have it taken away again?

The only true betrayal is not an orientation toward others, but the denial of the Two that love always incorporates.  It is an abandonment. 

Wanderings

My land.  As silent as a cemetery.

Suzuki

Ripping it up on a little 75cc.  Go Thanksgiving weekend!

Gift of the remainder

I find myself driving down back roads on crisp autumn mornings, mornings as crisp as the apples growing in the cold air of the local orchard I recently visited.  I like this image because the orchard was so quiet, like the inside my car. On warmer mornings I put down my windows and let the fresh air roll into the interior, swirl over me and fill me with the scent of bark, dew-covered earth, and composting leaves.  When I'm cold I keep the windows up and drive, trying not to think, trying not to be overwhelmed by the sadness of passing time, and just be filled with the wonder and ecstasy of creation. 

Sometimes I'm successful. Sometimes not so much.  At the best of times I realize what the philosophers say about a remainder, that leftover "something" after one has seen, has categorized, has filed away. The remainder can't be mastered so easily by the human intellect, it can't be submitted to scientific discourse.  It is what Wittgenstein was referring to when he said "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."  I have often been struck completely dumb by this remainder, when speaking about the experience can only be a nonsensical babbling.  Jean-Luc Marion calls it, instead of a remainder, a gift.  It is something that is given, given sometimes in such radiance, such overwhelming saturation, one is called on from and to a "place" of transcendence.  We have to put the quotes around it because the place from which the gift comes is not a place in the ordinary sense of the word: thereof one must be silent.

Most of the time though, and this is about 3/4 of the time (though I'm well on my way to 2/3), it's just me and the road.  I can talk about this easily enough, but I won't. There's sadness there mixed in with the wonder.  I've read that mystics worked to prolong the latter, but always knew there was no possibility of an enduring beatific vision in this life.  We are but ashes and dust after all, and I am not a mystic or a saint.  I am not sure what I am: an eater of apples perhaps, a country driver.

A'Falling

Steaming coffee.. freshly baked pecan tart warm in my hand
I go a'Falling

Further Up and Further In

I just finished reading through all 7 volumes of the Chronicles of Narnia with my son.  After turning the final page of The Last Battle I shed more than a few tears.  If there is a heaven may it be the one C.S. Lewis gave us in this final precious volume.  Thank, thank you Mr. Lewis.

Take care

O man, take care!
What does the deep midnight declare?
"I was asleep—From a deep dream I woke and swear:
—The world is deep,
Deeper than day had been aware.
Deep is its woe—Joy—deeper yet than agony:
Woe implores: Go!
But all joy wants eternity—Wants deep, wants deep eternity."

Nietzsche, Zarathustra

Marion on silence before God

"Moreover, not keeping silent concerning God can be taken in several ways: (a) First, obviously, it can be taken in the sense of pious chattering, or supposedly such, since it often joins rampant heresy with invalidity; we simply mention this for the record."

Ha ha!  I'm still laughing...

Derrida on Negative Theology

"Negative theology-> to record the referential transcendence of language: to say God, such as he is, beyond his images, beyond this idol that being still can be, beyond what is said, seen, or known of him; to respond to the true name of God, to the name to which God corresponds beyond the name that we know him by or hear.  It is to this end that the negative procedure refuses, denies, rejects all the inadequate attributes.  It does so in the name of truth and in order to hear the name of a just voice."

Sauf le nom

A little colour please

Re-collection

“People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, then found each other a few feet away.”

—	F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Sam Harris contra Theism

(He doesn't demolish it.. but he puts a dent in it with the help of some older critiques)
Update: We're down to 6.6 million under the age of 5 deaths per year now, or 18,000 deaths a day UNICEF/WHO.

The question

"The question whether we believe, and as believers truly know God, and know God truly, is far too radical and shattering for us to be able to direct it seriously to ourselves." 

Karl Barth, CD 2.1

For tomorrow we die

“Everyone praises the endurance of the ascetic, but no one appreciates the stamina of the hedonist. To laugh until the throat burns and smoke a cigar to soothe it, to black out but not pass out, to love without climax, to be immortal in the moment – what stoic has such fortitude?”

Bauvard

Hypocrite

hypo- under
krinein- decide/sift

Hypocrite: one who is under-decided.

Samuel Johnson once pointed out that a hypocrite isn't one who has a firm conviction and yet fails to follow through with it.  There may be good reasons why someone is not able to live up to their own principles.  A hypocrite, rather (following the more original construction), is someone who cannot decide between convictions, someone who has a difficult time "sifting" the arguments and coming to a decision.  There is a sense of indeterminacy in the word that doesn't yet have the negative moral quality attached to it by later usage.  In fact the hypocrite was one who often provoked this indecision in others.  The ancient Greek hypocrite was an actor.  What experience did the hypocrite provoke in the audience?: a hypocrisis (modern: hypocrisy).  Every act of deciding is preceded by a crisis.  Avoiding the crisis by deferring the act of decision altogether was not a legitimate option.  The intention to decide was signalled not only by entering into the theatre environment, but by remaining in one's place within the theatre, by accepting the coming crisis.  We all take our exits eventually.. but while we choose to remain, the possibility -the inevitability- of a crisis also remains.

Aude Vivere!

I came into the world full of blue-eyed wonder.  At least that's the way an infant seems to me now.. The world is full of wonder, and suffering, and joy, and multitudinous things.  Each step I take is a wonder.  It is also a step closer to the end.  But I don't hold this against the stepping, or against the end.  We all know this is just the way it is.. the way all nature manifests itself, grows, reproduces, and declines.  These are just general categories of experience.. they have no power to determine anything.  The categories are passive observers.  We alone, we flesh and blood, are able to truly live and imbue categories with meaning, these ones anyway.  Carpe Diem is not the phrase to use here.  It is the sign of a male impotency, a taking by force what one does not have the ability to embody.  Rather, be seized by the day.. Dare to live!

When I was a boy I would visit my grandfather near the Lake of Bays.  Behind his house a path wound its way up a hill, through a broad-leafed forest, and into an open field.  In this field grew an apple tree.  It has been 30 years since I was last there.  The memory is faded around the edges, like an old treasure map.  I can remember the tree still, and my father, and the feeling of summer warmth.  I remember too my grandfather, though he has since passed away, following the swirling path of the leaves that once surrounded his home.  Life is incredibly brief.  It is a stroke of luck if you are able to fill it with joy and love.  It is a wonder.  Sometimes I can barely stand all the wonder. 

Kant on Freedom

Hence in a practical context (whenever duty is at issue), we understand perfectly well what freedom is; for theoretical purposes, however, as regards the causality of freedom (and equally its nature) we cannot even formulate without contradiction the wish to understand it.

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

On God

The starting point of our theological investigation is not whether there is a definitive proof for the existence of God (there can be no such empirical proof), but allowing that God exists, what can be definitively said about such a being.  We find, apart from the formal and thoroughly socialized subjective fantasies and wishful thinking of a great many people, that there isn't a hell of a lot.  We find the god of the churches almost undeniably does not exist.  This has been realized in the West for almost 300 years, and this by theologians themselves!  Where it hasn't been realized one continues to find the most powerful illusion at work, propagated by laypeople and theological upstarts, pastors and other parasitical people of "good intention" (at least initially), not to mention a programme of systemic indoctrination in the form of emotive collective music, sermons, and what amounts to religious self-help literature.

The strongest "proof" this God doesn't exist: He hasn't saved the Christians from Christianity.

Father God

The fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realised wishes of the heart; – the essence of Christianity is the essence of human feeling.  Feuerbach

 

I recently read something a friend wrote in which his experience of father was connected to his Christian understanding of God as Father.  This is a recurrent theme in Christian circles.  After a little reflection, however, it should be apparent how mistaken this is, or at least, how much wishful thinking goes into such comparisons.  God is perhaps the worst father that has ever lived.  It does more credit to my friend personally than to any neglectful, absentee father in heaven.  My friend may hold his son's hand when he is scared, but God is nowhere to be found when tragedy strikes.  The sense of God's "presence" that some Christians say they feel during troubling times is of course no more than wishful thinking or a heightened self-consciousness.. They attribute a divine quality to their own human feeling.  This kind of blasphemy from those who call themselves lovers of the truth never ceases to amaze and should have been stamped out with the paradigm shift inaugurated by Kant. 

 

On universal salvation

Note: the idea of universal salvation follows from a misunderstanding of God's love and grace. It is consistent in that it relates to a notion of God's infinite qualities, but it is not consistent with the teachings of Scripture.  The idea of universal salvation can only be found in obscure passages, and by following an interpretation already favourable to the assumption of infinite, unconditional, grace and love.  While one may argue humans do not merit this grace, this one nevertheless overlooks the fact that love and grace are conditional on God himself.  One's inability to earn grace does not equate to its being unconditioned.  It is still conditional on Divine will, and Scripture is clear that "who He wants to harden he hardens" and those he bears now with patience, so that later he may make his power and mercy known to the elect, he "prepares for destruction." 

How distasteful and horrifying some find this!  How shaped they are by a modern church culture that is itself shaped by a certain theory of parenting and school discipline, products of a liberalism now under attack.  To what lengths these Christians go to erase all hint of scandal from their faith in order to pay obeisance to their meek cultural god and season it with what they feel is more suitable to the delicate suburban palate. 

 

They don't see this for what it is:  a betrayal.

Aix-en-Provence

Près de La Ciotat, je suis tombé en amour ...

Marilyn

On this day 51 years ago a beautiful soul passed away.  Raising a glass to Marilyn..
Media vita in morte sumus.

"After-thought" by Tennyson

I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away. -Vain sympathies!
For backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall not cease to glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish; -be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.

Looking-glass

Once more come, see if you can.  You certainly only love what is good, and the earth is good with its lofty mountains and its folded hills and its level plains, and a farm is good when its situation is pleasant and its land fertile, and a house is good with its harmonious symmetry of architecture so spacious and bright, and animals are good with their animated bodies, and the air is good when mild and salubrious, and food is good when tasty and health-giving, and health is good without pains or weariness, and a man's face is good when it has fine proportions and a cheerful expression and a fresh complexion, and the heart of a friend is good with its sweet accord and loving trust, and a just man is good, and riches are good because they are easily put to use, and the sky is good with its sun and moon and stars, and the angels are good with their holy obedience, and speech is good as it pleasantly instructs and suitably moves the hearer, and a song is good with its melodious notes and its noble sentiments.  Why go on and on?  This is good and that is good. Take away this and that and see good itself if you can.

Augustine, De Trinitate

The Calmative

[A]nd it was always from the earth, rather than from the sky, not withstanding its reputation, that my help came in time of trouble.  -Beckett

Watts on Faith

“This attitude is not faith. It is pure idolatry. The more deceptive idols are not images of wood and stone but are constructed of words and ideas and mental images of God. Faith is an openness and trusting attitude to truth and reality, whatever it may turn out to be. This is a risky and adventurous state of mind.” Alan Watts

In my boyhood days -Hölderlin

In my boyhood days
  Often a god would save me
    From the shouts and from the rods of men;
      Safe and good then I played
        With the orchard flowers
          And the breezes of heaven 
            Played with me.

And as you make glad
The hearts of the plants 
When toward you they stretch
Their delicate arms.

So you made glad my heart,
Father Helios, and like Endymion
I was your darling,
Holy Luna.

O all you loyal,
Kindly gods!
Would that you knew how
My soul loved you then.

True, at that time I did not
Evoke you by name yet, and you
Never named me, as men use names,
As though they knew one another.

Yet I knew you better
Than ever I have known men,
I understood the silence of Aether,
But human words I´ve never understood.

I was reared by the euphony
Of the rustling copse
And learned to love
Amid the flowers.

I grew up in the arms of the gods.

Shopping Cart Empty

Poverty is not a measure of relative wealth.  It is, rather, the sense of hopelessness one feels in relation to a survey of one's resources and felt needs.  This is why poverty is a universal phenomenon felt in all world contexts.

Heidegger on Being and Faith

If I were to write a theology - to which I sometimes feel inclined - then the word Being would not occur in it.  Faith does not need the thought of Being.

Backstab

 'If the reports are true, it is reminiscent of the actions of enemies during the cold war'

When your friends act like enemies... When your friends have lost their way. 

Gay Marriage

What is the privileged status of male-female marriage?

I will say from the beginning that it has no intrinsically privileged status.  During the present gay marriage debate in the United States I've heard the phrase "sanctity of marriage" used by religious factions, without a single definition of what this means, other than the formula: "One man, one woman."  This formula doesn't give us the meaning of the term "sanctity" but it must be related to it.  I think when a Christian speaks about the sanctity of marriage what they must really mean is that in its founding moment (think Adam and Eve), God blessed the union of a man and a woman, i.e. his intention was that this fundamental relationship be comprised of male and female.  Furthermore, from the theology of the Christian scriptures one can derive a notion of marriage whereby the partners in a relationship have analogical significance, i.e. man=Christ, woman=Church etc.  Christian marriage is the sign of some greater spiritual reality.  Insofar as a Christian believes this it is sanctified, though a Christian will maintain that whether or not they believe it it is still sanctified.  This is their belief.

So a marriage that is sanctified is one that is pleasing to God (and therefore blessed by him).  What is pleasing to God?  What scriptures tell us is pleasing to God, what pattern one sees there, what tradition holds to be the case.  One who opposes gay marriage will not say love sanctifies a marriage, because obviously gay couples love one another, or one will qualify love by adding a "male-female" in front of it.  But we now know that gender is to a large extent socially-culturally constructed, and I don't know many Christians who would want to reduce the sanctity of marriage to the interaction of sexual organs (or at least admit to it).  No, marriage for these is about God, a qualified kind of love, and scripture.  I won't waste my time commenting on how a qualified love is a rather sad pretender to the real thing.   When you look into the eyes of your beloved, tell me, is the first thing that comes to mind "thank God you're the proper sexual orientation"? 

This still doesn't answer the question asked at the beginning.  "Sanctity of marriage" turns out to mean little more than "sanctity of my definition of marriage."  This can never be the ground for a universal determination or privileged status.

Suffer the little children

Two year Beauty
Killed by indiff'rence
Angels and God watch
You burn in hell
 

Child, 2, dies after being left in car

Suffer the little children

Children are society's most precious beings, and her most innocent victims.  Anyone who really knows a child can never accept that child's abuse, not without a deeply perverse heart.  Those who thirst for war are numbered among those with such a heart.

(Iraqi orphan drew a picture of his mom and went to sleep in its arms.) 

Signa

 

 

The icon and the idol determine two manners of being for beings, not two classes of being.  Jean-Luc Marion.

Sex and Christianity (Letter to a friend)

I think the sexual revolution of the 60's has something to do with much of the Church's attitude towards sex.  The blogger was right to point out that for the monastics purity extended to all aspects of their lives, not just their attitudes toward their sex organs (but let's face it, any spirituality that seeks to be truly holistic must also consider the physical act of sex or self-pleasure otherwise it risks becoming an elitist gnosticism scorning even the redeemed flesh). 
 

During the sexual revolution the churches reacted. Like any pushback the reaction may have gone too far. You present us with sexual freedom, we respond with a militant sexual ethic veiled in ideal purity. You say we are existentially free, we say your subjectivity is bound up with your sexual practice. 
 

The tricky part then is reclaiming a Christian subjectivity that is not reactionary.  But Christians, of all people, know something about a new creation.
 

 

Later than you think -Part II-

 

Green wall fecundity

Breathe you into my nostrils

Writhing mass of sand grain-covered worms

Along such paths men haunt

Traces, mud swirls in puddles

Thick description- abstraction

Not here the babbling of neuron excretion

In my right vest pocket I could feel a kleenex and an old receipt.  In my left was a rubberband and a pocket knife.  My hands rested comfortably there on old familiar objects and the day was cool.  The air smelled fresh after a night of rain.  Three weeks had passed since Lynn left.  In that time I had to leave my apartment because I was short on rent, but I was still working down at the grocery store.  When she left I lost half the rent income.  I ended up pitching a tent just off the bike trail and slept there.  It wasn't so bad.  Oh and I also found out that Lynn was pregnant, but not, as I first thought, with my baby (I'm still close with one of her friends who works at the store with me).  Turns out Lynn was a couple months pregnant when she broke up with me.  I guess they'd been sleeping together for a while before that.  I wasn't sure if I should feel relieved or not the baby wasn't mine.  The ache I felt in my chest when I thought about it could mean almost anything.

The trail stretched off into the distance ahead of me.  My tent was another half-kilometer away.  At least there I could get away from all the craziness that surrounded me lately.  As I came closer I noticed two things at once.  First, I began to make out some of my things laying on the path.  Second, I heard the zipper of my tent open or close, I wasn't sure which.  Immediately adrenaline started pumping through my arteries.  Fight or flight.  What the hell: fight.

Later than you think -Part I-

Vidi nihil permanere sub sole.

From inside I could hear the car door close and the engine come to life.  I sat down in the old canvas-covered chair my neighbour had given me, just in time to hear her drive off with her new boyfriend into the distance.  The place suddenly seemed pretty quiet.  Looking back on things I doubt I would have done anything differently.  That being said, I'll sure miss her.

The clock said 7:30 pm.  What the hell was I going to do now?  I grabbed my vest and went outside.  Down the street I heard Larry yelling at his wife again.  Not a very happy guy that Larry, but if you think he's miserable you should see his wife.  Almost everyday she walks her dog past my place.  She's overweight, never smiles, and just kind of plops along with some very flattened-out flip-flops that can't be giving her much support.  She has one of those little foo-foo dogs that look like stained mop heads.  I'm sure the mop has a great personality, but it looks as dumb as a brick.  Anyway I feel sorry for her.  Nobody deserves the crap she takes from her husband.  I mean what the hell is his problem? 

I turn the opposite direction and start walking.  My mind is numb and I'm thinking about Lynn.  Where did she even meet this guy?  My girlfriend was way more social than me, but when did she have time to get this far into a relationship?  At least he waited in the car while she grabbed her stuff.  How awkward would that have been if he came in to "protect her" or something?  She obviously knew me well enough to leave the meathead in the car. 

I wasn't paying attention to the road and almost stepped on some roadkill.  My street doesn't have sidewalks so every now and then you might come across a flattened out animal of one kind or another.  Know how you feel little buddy.  Ok maybe not exactly.. I mean the poor bastard is flatter than a pancake.  God I need help.

Transcendental

[The divine] is given to us only in the form of a distance that refers us to what is other than itself.  We never have direct access to it, nor can we grasp it immediately. It is given only by silently referring us to something other than itself, something finite that is the object of our direct intuition and action.  

Karl Rahner, Sheehan trans.

Old friends

"Old friends, old friends sat on their park bench like bookends." Simon & Garfunkel

Spectator: The more reading they have done the greater the distance between them, the less likely they will ever meet again.  What frame will they share?  What harmonious thought?  There is no hope for bookend friends.

Bookends: It is true the years separate us.  In distance we grow farther apart, in space the other seems smaller.  When life adds volumes we are drawn away.  But we have a common support, this ancient timber that sustains us, running beneath, touching the two.  Called by many names, Earth, Destiny, Being, and Love. 

Spectator: It is little consolation when two dying patients share the same doctor, or the same sun shines on both enemy and enemy alike.  Let me climb upon this timber and I too will share your "sustaining support" with you, and yet will I continue to mock!

Bookends:  Have you not noticed we face in opposite directions?  Of how little consequence is your mockery!  It is in our nature to be contrary.  But if one falls the other is lost so that even if we are 2000 km apart the one will always be a sign of the other.  This is so even if no observer is present, and so, farewell mocker.

The Spectator vanishes, having neither friends nor companions of any kind.

Out of the whirlwind

As the death toll from the recent tornado in Oklahoma mounts, Facebook and newsfeeds are full of prayers for the victims and their families. Meanwhile insurance companies and emergency services are designating this tragedy as an act of God.  The irony should not be lost on anyone.

On my own Facebook feed brave people of faith have called the event "disorienting" and even a "conundrum." This is an honest assessment.  When others have said "now is not the right time" (when is the right time? - life is full of tragedy) these have said "I don't understand."  This much is in keeping with a somewhat refreshing part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, perhaps we might call it the "Davidic" tradition.  This is a tradition not afraid to ask God the tough questions.  It recognizes both God's omnipotence, his promises, and God's responsibility to his people.  It holds God accountable when disaster strikes and seeks to understand why such things take place.  The "right time" is precisely when the tragedy unfolds. In this there is a certain consistency.  If one truly believes in God and what one learns from the church concerning his fidelity, his power, and his presence, it is a natural reaction to suddenly shout "Hey! What's going on and where are you?"  That more believers don't react this way I think must be explained by years of apologetic teaching most Christians have constantly been exposed to. But as the great Reformed theologian Karl Barth once said, Christian apologetics are fundamentally based on insecurity.  So too, I think, is the reaction "now is not the right time."

Churches are full of unbelievers and the falsely modest. The former only think they should believe but do not, and the latter, while also not believing, act a martyr in their disorientation.  The former are tolerable, the latter are insufferable. 

It is time for honest change. Obviously the old view of God is untenable.  Experience and good sense continue to prove this.  This does not mean the Christian must become an atheist.  It also does not mean aligning oneself with the Davidic stream of tradition. If you're not there already, a shift would only be disingenuous and in the end, unnecessary.  Continually crying out to God with every disaster will only grow wearisome when one achieves the same results.  Plus, doing this because David did it, or Job, does not make it authentic when you do it.  Imitation in such matters is unbecoming of a person of faith.

What view of God should one have?  God is obviously hidden from us, unwilling or unable to fulfill his obligations or answer the prayers of those who call on him.  This God is obscure.  This God is the Hidden God.  I will not say this is the dead God, though in many ways he might as well be.  I will merely say here that he is hidden, as are God's ways.  One should challenge those who say otherwise as hypocrites and deceivers, or at least, wishful thinkers.  They are obviously not interested in the Real, or are plainly deceived.  I recently spoke with a pastor who wondered at the loss of youth from his community.  I did not wonder.  No program or worship service will bring them back or attract more.  People are drawn to authenticity that corresponds with experience and what we know of the world.  Church has always adapted to its cultural surroundings and will continue to do so.  But today a radical change is needed.  People of faith will make it.  Cowards and hypocrites will praise God.

Beyond Gut und Bӧse

“Gut und Bӧse sind die Vorurteile Gottes”, sagte die Schlange.

"Good and evil are God's prejudices," said the Serpent.

L'homme Sauvage

Beneath the veneer of civilization...lies not the barbarian and animal, but the human in us who knows the rightness of birth in gentle surroundings, the necessity of a rich nonhuman environment, play at being animals, the discipline of natural history, juvenile tasks with simple tools, the expressive arts of receiving food as a spiritual gift rather than as a product, the cultivation of metaphorical significance of natural phenomena of all kinds, clan membership and small-group life, and the profound claims and liberation of ritual initiation and subsequent stages of adult mentorship. There is a secret person undamaged in every individual, aware of the validity of these, sensitive to their right moments in our lives. All of them are assimilated in perverted forms in modern society: our profound love of animals twisted into pets, zoos, decorations, and entertainment; our search for poetic wholeness subverted by the model of the machine instead of the body; the moment of pubertal idealism shunted into nationalism or ethereal otherworld religions instead of an ecosophical cosmology. But this means that we have not lost, and can not lose the genuine impulse. It awaits only an authentic expression. The task is not to start by recapturing the theme of reconciliation with the earth in all of its metaphysical subtlety, but with something much more direct and simple that will yield its own healing metaphysics.   Paul Shepard

Deep to deep

Il y a que l'esprit qui sente l'esprit.

Apophasis

The question concerns neither dogmatics nor any articles of faith.  The question is simply, whether God has fled from us or not, and whether we are still able to experience this flight truly and creatively. 

Heidegger, 1937/38.

There was a Boy by Wordsworth

There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs
And islands of Winander! many a time
At evening, when the earliest stars began
To move along the edges of the hills
Rising or setting, would he stand alone
Beneath the trees, or by the glimmering lake;
And there, with fingers interwoven, both hands
Pressed closely palm to palm and to his mouth
Uplifted, he, as through an instrument
Blew mimic hootings to the silent owls
That they might answer him.—
And they would shout
Across the watery vale, and shout again,
Responsive to his call,—with quivering peals,
And long halloos, and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled; concourse wild
Of jocund din! And, when there came a pause
Of silence such as baffled his best skill
Then, sometimes, in that silence, while he hung
Listening, a gentle shock of mild surprise
Has carried far into his heart the voice
Of mountain-torrents; or the visible scene
Would enter unawares into his mind
With all its solemn imagery, its rocks,
Its woods, and that uncertain heaven received
Into the bosom of the steady lake.

This boy was taken from his mates, and died
In childhood, ere he was full twelve years old.
Pre-eminent in beauty is the vale
Where he was born and bred: the churchyard hangs
Upon a slope above the village-school
And through that churchyard when my way has led
On summer-evenings, I believe that there
A long half-hour together I have stood
Mute—looking at the grave in which he lies!

Terminal Will

Our deeds are simply no first beginning, for in them nothing actually new attains existence: rather, through that which we do, we simply experience what we are.

Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer

The Fisherman by Goethe

The waters hissed, the waters rose,
The Fisherman alongside,
Quietly gazing at his rod,
Cool at heart, inside.
And as he listens, as he sits,
The waters split and rise:
Out of the flowing waters hiss
A mermaid meets his eyes.

She sang to him, she spoke to him:
‘Why do you lure my children
With human art and cunning,
Up to their warm extinction?
Ah, if you knew how snugly
Little fish live in the deep,
You yourself would join me,
You’d be happy indeed.

Doesn’t the sweet Sun bathe
And the Moon, here, in the sea?
Show with the waves they breathe
Faces doubly bright to see?
Doesn’t this heavenly deep,
Lure you, this rain-clear blue?
Doesn’t your own gaze leap
Drawn down to eternal dew?’

The water hissed, the water rose
Wetting his naked feet:
His heart so full of yearning, oh,
As if him his Love did greet.
She spoke to him, she sang to him:
All was soon done, and o’er:
She half pulling, he half sinking,
And he was seen nevermore. 

Kaufmann on Christian Interpretation and Hell

Millions of Christians agree on this claim and back it up by citing Gospel passages they like; but different people pick different passages. To some, Jesus looks like St. Francis, to others like John Calvin, and to many more the way a man named Hoffmann painted him. Pierre van Paassen's Jesus is a Socialist and Fosdick's a liberal, while according to Reinhold Niebuhr Jesus' ethic coincides, not surprisingly, with Niebuhr's. To use a political term: almost everybody gerrymanders, carving an idealized self-portrait from the Gospels and much less attractive straw men from the literatures of other faiths. A great deal of theology is like a jigsaw puzzle: the verses of Scripture are the pieces, and the finished picture is prescribed by each denomination with a certain latitude allowed. What makes the game so pointless is that not all pieces have to be used, and any piece that does not fit may be reshaped, provided one says first, "this means." That is called exegesis.

Finally, the Jesus of the New Testament believed, and was not greatly bothered by his belief, that God would damn and torment the mass of mankind in all eternity. According to all three Synoptic Gospels, he actually reassured his disciples: "If anyone will not receive you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha than for that town."  This is no isolated dictum; the Sermon on the Mount, for example, is also punctuated by threats of Hell.

Augustine, Aquinas, arid Calvin stressed Hell, but many Christian apologists today simply ignore all such passages. A few insist that in a couple of inter-testamentary apocalypses we find far more detailed visions of Hell. They do not mention that these apocalypses would not be known today if it had not been for the esteem in which the early Christians held them. For the Jews rejected them while accepting the humane teachings of men like Hillel and Akiba. Rabbi Akiba, a contemporary of Paul and the Evangelists, taught that "only those who possess no good deeds at all will descend into the netherworld"; also that "the punishment of the wicked in Gehinnom lasts twelve months."

On writing

"Warum willst du dich von uns Allen
Und unsrer Meinung entfernen?"
Ich schreibe nicht euch zu gefallen,
Ihr sollt was lernen!

"Why do you wish to leave us
And our opinions?"
I write not to please you,
You should learn something!

Goethe

Sister passing

In mother's eyes streamed love
Child born into the world
Heart and lungs too weak to work
Hope's finger grasped in little hand

Today you died sweet infant
Heaven does not answer prayers
Can those prayers bring comfort now?
She's gone false consolation!

(Indifferent heaven Thee we curse
Oh that we might forget Thee
Unrequited love Thou mockest
Impotent Omnipotence!)

Tiny child we loved you
More than gods know how
Tonight a candle lit
To honour sister's passing

Spiritus

Nos habitat, non tartara, sed nec sidera coeli: Spiritus in nobis qui viget, illa facit.  A.N., Epist. v.14.

It dwells in us, not in the underworld, and indeed not in the starry heaven: the Spirit who is living in us makes all this.

The logic of Sacrifice (A letter)

Something beautiful?  I wish I could draw it out of the very field of molecules whirling about me.  Perhaps I could if I had more time.

This morning, however, I've been reading de Sade.  He is the opposite of beautiful.  He is destruction.  He is rape and murder.  He is the slit throat of a dead prostitute.  He is a child torn to shreds in a frenzy, broken skulls, wine and blood, bloody corpses, screaming and blasphemy.  People are his playthings.  His pleasure is their suffering.  Try as I might there is no beauty to be found here. But somehow he finds the divine in all this.  Perhaps it is because the Divine once desired the destruction of peoples, once demanded the blood of gentle lambs soaking his altar, spilled from gaping slit throats.  Even Christianity touches on violence and the divine, as Bataille says:

"The ordeal of the Cross itself links Christian conscience to the frightfulness of the divine, though blindly.  The divine will only protect us once its basic need to consume and to ruin has been satisfied."

And this is true.  Why the cross, that torturous stake?  Only after the scourges and rending of the Saviour's flesh can we receive the blessing!  Marcion was wrong to deny the God of the Jews was the same God of the Christians.  Here's how we know: This God is bloodthirsty.  He demands blood before bestowing gifts upon the people.

But I have to add a qualification here.  The God of the Jews demanded death as a satisfaction.  The God of the Christians demands death so he can create anew.  Bataille stops at the cross, but he should visit the empty tomb.  This is little consolation in the end however.  Why, one might ask, must we destroy before we can witness the new creation?  Why must the Saviour be covered in his own blood and filth, pierced by crude nails, before he can know his own exaltation?  This is still the logic of the old god, the logic of satisfaction, now with a promise.  When I sacrifice myself for the love of Christ I do so to remove myself out of my own way in order for the new man in Christ to come forth.  I cannot pour new wine into old wineskins.  But when Jesus was sacrificed, who was it he had to remove?  He was already the man of God, full of the new wine.  Here we see the scandal: We do not die like Jesus, he was a true sacrifice.. the last bloody corpse to satisfy the old god.  Sacrifice today means something quite different.

Ghost

Hopi Prophecy

If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.

Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.

A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans.

Kayleigh

Life's fragility
Kayleigh
Ripples spread across the face
Of saltwater-rimmed puddles
Your delicate feet tread lightly home
Dear Kayleigh

Blind machine blind hand! (a scream)

Rose crushed beneath a boot
O God, the finality.
"My child is gone..." (a horror!)
Did you say goodbye
Dear Kayleigh?

Will your crumpled frame not rise?
Will your tiny feet not walk?
This steam that rises from your body
As spirit flees indifferent earth
O broken little heart

Our few live seasons

"I remember how you bide your time in the city, and think, if you stop to think, 'next year... I'll start living; next year... I'll start my life.'  Innocence is a better world. 

Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough, and time..."

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Down Zhongnan Mountain

 

Down the blue mountain in the evening,
Moonlight was my homeward escort.
Looking back, I saw my path
Lie in levels of deep shadow....
I was passing the farm-house of a friend,
When his children called from a gate of thorn
And led me twining through jade bamboos
Where green vines caught and held my clothes.
And I was glad of a chance to rest
And glad of a chance to drink with my friend....
We sang to the tune of the wind in the pines;
And we finished our songs as the stars went down,
When, I being drunk and my friend more than happy,
Between us we forgot the world.

Li Bai, 701-762 C.E.

Despisers of the body

"I," you say, and are proud of the word. But greater is that in which you do not wish to have faith - your body and its great reason: that does not say "I", but does "I."

Valentine

Love for sale
On the shelves
Young men line up
For prepackaged roses
For identical cards
Absurd pink baubles
"How nice"
Smile producers of junk
"It's the thought that counts"

Study of the trunk of an Elm tree

Constable, c. 1821

Post facto

The sheer weariness of life
A dull needle stuck in a shallow track
All our words arrive too late
And are never enough
Go to the ant to learn industry
And to learn repetition
There you see the universe
In a single insect
You have it

Blind man in a new place
Will you hear the children
Place a block in your path
Or will you not trip and fall
I have waited quietly
To see your fate

Nietzsche's Madman (or 1637)

"Have you ever heard of the madman who on a bright morning lit a lantern and ran to the marketplace calling out unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!" As there were many people standing about who did not believe in God, he caused a great deal of amusement. Why? is he lost? said one. Has he strayed away like a child? said another. Or does he keep himself hidden? Is he afraid of us? Has he taken a sea voyage? Has he emigrated? - the people cried out laughingly, all in a hubbub.The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. "Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? - for even Gods putrify! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife - who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us? Shall we not ourselves have to become Gods, merely to seem worthy of it? There never was a greater event - and on account of it, all who are born after us belong to a higher history than any history hitherto!" Here the madman was silent and looked again at his hearers; they also were silent and looked at him in surprise.At last he threw his lantern on the ground, so that it broke in pieces and was extinguished. "I come too early," he then said. "I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is traveling - it has not yet reached men's ears. Lightning and thunder need time, the light of the stars needs time, deeds need time, even after they are done, to be seen and heard. This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star - and yet they have done it themselves!" It is further stated that the madman made his way into different churches on the same day, and there intoned hisRequiem aeternam deo. When led out and called to account, he always gave the reply: "What are these churches now, if they are not the tombs and monuments of God?""

The Gay Science, 1882

Beyond the foothills

"In contrast to a steady progress, where we move unawares from one thing to the next and everything remains alike, the leap takes us abruptly to where everything is different, so different that it strikes us as strange.  Abrupt means the sudden sheer descent or rise that marks the chasm's edge.  Though we may not founder in such a leap, what the leap takes us to will confound us."

Reading in the Shadow of the Law

"In the middle of our life's path
I found myself in a dark forest
Where the straight way was lost."
Inferno

There was a time when the forests covering Europe provided a home for vagabonds and outlaws, outside the king's grasp.  Nevertheless these forests were considered property of the monarch, and so under the canopy and out of sight, outlaws lived in the shadow of the law. 

In every institution, especially religious ones, there are forms of normative discourse, proper ways to read and expound texts.  "Normative" could be replaced with "dominant" in the previous sentence because as we know the -normative is- by virtue of coercion and power.  This coercion and power may take many forms.  Think of this normativity as the clearings and cultivated land of the kingdom.  Here the king may bring his full power to bear on the inhabitants of these open spaces, open to his force and to his gaze.  In such places the reading of a text has a genealogy, a tradition.  Interpretation and explication is grounded in this tradition, and is known as "received" or "majority." 

The wilderness has long been a place of refuge.  It is the oldest form of sanctuary, the sylva sacrosancta, the inviolable wood.  It is both a place of shelter and of madness.  In it the most powerful forces of chaos lurk, the savage, the beast, the wildman.  Here too the gods and a host of spirits dwell unseen.  A chance encounter with these may lead to terrible things indeed.  While some may travel into the forest out of necessity, others may do so for adventure.  The forest has claimed these as well, turning some mad, killing others.  Some, like Tristan or Lancelot, endured their madness and returned to civilization triumphant over the forces of the forest. 

Here in the shadows of the trees, in the shadow of the law, we sit down to read and write.  We cannot dwell here long lest the gods drag us into the darkness, lest we be punished for our own presumption.  Yet we do not come here merely for adventure.  When we return to civilization we will remember, and we will not think we have overcome the ancient sylva sacrosancta like these others.  We will not forget that along the edge of every civilization the forest lies in wait, as outside the walls of Rome or the stockades of the New World, to reclaim what was once its own.  We will respect the law, but we will not allow it a purchase on our soul.  And yet we must resist the urge to abandon ourselves to the forest, for this is another kind of madness, one in which we are liable to be torn to shreds.  Can we dance with Dionysos without falling prey to his Bacchae?

From a Requiem

"When somewhere, from deep within me, there arises
the vivid sense of having been a child,
the purity and essence of that childhood
where I once lived: then I don't want to know it.
I want to form an angel from that sense
and hurl him upward, into the front row
of angels who scream out, reminding God."

Rilke

Great thoughts

Make for lonely nights

Behold a mystery

A hooded figure makes his way among the cenotaphs of a great city
And as I stand honouring the dead he passes near
I hear him whisper, a violent exhalation
And grasping my collar he collapses

"I give you my last words, draw near," he gasps for breath
"I am Azazel, now mortal," and spitting gnashed his teeth

Speech of a madman I think.  I will give this wretch his parting company

"You think I am mad.  But no more than you who stand before a corpse
You defile a flower to honour the worms and yet think me mad," choking with mirth says he

I bite my tongue, for he will soon join the worms by the look of him

"Very good.  You are not the fool you appear to be
Now listen fine fellow I give you a gift"

From his filthy pocket he passes me a tattered cloth, his hands shaking. 

"Take this and read.  It contains a great mystery revealed to me by our father"

"Man there is nothing written on it" I cry

Laughing and spitting, gnashing his teeth into the ground he breathed his last

And leaning back against a tombstone shiver
But upon glancing at my hand I leap to run
And fancy hear the madman at my back
Behind me drop the tattered cloth
Whose filth-stained threads now bear the words:

"the perversion of sin is the secret of salvation"

In Praise of Love

"When I lean on the shoulder of the woman I love, and can see, let's say, the peace of twilight over a mountain landscape, gold-green fields, the shadow of trees, black-nosed sheep motionless behind hedges and the sun about to disappear behind craggy peaks, and know - not from the expression on her face, but from within the world as it is - that the woman I love is seeing the same world, and that this convergence is part of the world and that love constitutes precisely, at that very moment, the paradox of an identical difference, then love exists, and promises to continue to exist.  The fact is she and I are now incorporated into this unique Subject, the Subject of love that views the panorama of the world through the prism of our difference, so this world can be conceived, be born, and not simply represent what fills my own individual gaze.  Love is always the possibility of being present at the birth of the world."

Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love.

Symbol

"All symbols assert that the good for man is to live realistically; where they differ is in the vision of reality they construct."

Geertz

Victor Turner

"Cognitively, nothing underlines regularity so well as absurdity or paradox.  Emotionally, nothing satisfies as much as extravagant or temporarily permitted illicit behaviour."

Felix culpa

Infinite Night

My feelings regarding the afterlife are well-known and may be found on this blog.  They are based not just on science, but common sense (and by that I mean a common method of reasoning, not popular sentiment).  That there is nothing beyond this life, no conscious existence outside of the present, is without doubt. 

It is interesting that others have accused those of us who hold this position of wishful thinking!  The reasoning goes like this: "When forced to choose between eternal damnation and complete annihilation the choice is an easy one.  You deny an afterlife out of fear, yes out of psychological necessity."  On the face of it and from a certain perspective this is a reasonable critique.  A similar one is made in the opposite direction, namely, that heaven is the product of a similar type of wishful thinking, a consolation in a world desperately in need of such a comforting thought.  The two arguments are not equal however.  In the former, a certain assumption is being made: it presupposes belief in a place of damnation or hell.  Out of fear of this place, a real possibility, one turns to annihilation.  This argument can only be framed from the perspective of faith.  As such it constructs a straw man, only to blow him down.  It is simply not the case that those who reject the notion of an afterlife are secretly harbouring religious beliefs.  Now regarding the latter critique the presumption of faith is warranted.  Those who believe in an afterlife, for the most part, hold religious beliefs.  While wishful thinking may shape the debate on both sides, one should not define that wishful thinking on the side of the afterlife deniers as a religious fear of hell.  This is simply a false attribution, a religious projection.

This latter view also makes the assumption that annihilation is a comforting thought to afterlife deniers.  This again is a reflection of the influence of a religious alternative creeping in, i.e. hell.  On the contrary, the thought of nothingness can be somewhat unsettling at times.  Even when one reflects that the same condition will exist after death as it did before conception and development of the nervous system, it is still quite a pill to swallow at times.  Before conception and nervous system development, one had no relations, no memories or loved ones.  At death, however, one has all these (unless the brain has already started to decline).  It seems like a great loss, and I suppose it is at one level.  But I suppose there is also something quite fitting about it.. a kind of sacred simplicity even.  Every symphony must end..  every string on every instrument cease its vibration.. We must all, as conductors of our own lives, lay down the baton a final time.

Malinowski contra Durkheim

"The lover near his sweetheart, the daring adventurer conquering his fears in the face of real danger, the hunter at grips with a wild animal, the craftsman achieving a masterpiece, whether he be savage or civilized, will under such conditions feel altered, uplifted, endowed with higher forces.  And there can be no doubt that from many of these solitary experiences where man feels the forebodings of death, the pangs of anxiety, the exaltation of bliss, there flows a great deal of religious inspiration.  Though most ceremonies are carried out in public, much of religious revelation takes place in solitude."