What an opening phrase ! Even against such classics as In the beginning was the Word or Call me Ishmael it bravely stakes its paradoxical claim, begging us to interrogate the It goes even as we enter the wordless silence to which it points.
In winter the weeds go without saying, pod by pod, stem by stem, into the ground. Some are pulled rudely into a kind of saying by my and my camera's eye. There is a transaction, an exchange, a conversation even; one could anthropomorphize it, and try to apply the lesson to the inscrutable and exasperating dynamics of that activity called "prayer." But, by and large -- how do I know this ? -- the weeds prefer silence. Just as the weedily anthropomorphized Ground of Being may also prefer silence.
Anonymity, solitude and silence -- I have come to understand that the whole project and ground of organized religion is based on states that are antithetical to these three most congenial ones: personal relationship, community, speech and text. Christianity, in particular, traffics in symbols, analogies and metaphors that are, like it's central Incarnate Word, human, and, moreover, human-in-relationship, -in-community, -in-history, -in-society.
To be alienated from these is to be alienated from God, which is, by definition, sin.
Outer darkness.
Maybe Christianity is not the best arena in which to work out one's neuralgic relationship with the great that there is something rather than nothing.
Christianity looks back, contemptuous, and says:
Who the hell knows. You're wasting your time and mine. Here are some pretty stories about it. Try to ignore the sexist and imperial language. Now go out and love your neighbor as yourself.
Oh, and by the way, don't forget that extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
6 comments:
I don't think I could survive without a sense of anonymity, solitude and silence and yet I also need relationship and community. Don't know about society and history though.
This is such a beautiful post with equally beautiful photos.
Thank you!
those who ARE outside might disagree
fabulous photographs
a feast for thought
xx
Until you suggested that the weeds preferred silence, it hadn’t occurred to me that the opposite is the case, I mean that they speak loudly to us in their own language. For you have tacitly acknowledged their message to you and the reader through your many wordless posts of photographs where Nature speaks outside the human context, yet we can in some way understand its language.
David Abram in his book The Spell of the Sensuous claims that it is we who limit the scope of written language to that which was first invented in Mesopotamia by impressing cuneiform marks on clay; where “we” is we of the Western tradition, which dinstinguishes the species homo sapiens from the rest of creation. Abram, drawing on legends and practice in the shamanic traditions, suggests that written language was first inspired by phenomena our ancestors learned to “read”, such as the tracks of animals which they analysed whilst hunting.
Abram acknowledges the phenomenological investigations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty as a source for his own musings on language. I haven’t started on this French philosopher yet, but suspect that Abram is the more readable, and may say all I need to know.
In particular Abram debates the topic you raise in this post, a topic on which I confess to being not quite clear where you stand. When you say, “To be alienated from these is to be alienated from God, which is, by definition, sin”, does “these” refer to “anonymity, solitude and silence”? For when you say “human, and, moreover, human-in-relationship, -in-community, -in-history, -in-society”, it seems to me, influenced by Abram, that we are brothers not just to our fellow human beings but to all Creation, which is equally alive, equally engaged in conversation with all its parts, whether or not we are blind to such goings-on.
You have often hinted a preference for the hinterland outside community and society, where solitude and perhaps melancholy can be embraced; but is this not an instinctive way to embrace a much wider parish, one which includes all of Creation and not just the stifling conformities of human society? So that anonymity, solitude and silence become ways to observe everything that goes on when the noise of human consciousness is stilled; so as to discover that the silence is not silent at all but teeming with life.
Wow to the post and wow to Vincent's response.
I think he's misread the "sin" reference but it's Paula's fault this time, an ambiguity of reference. I think the intent was to say that the church says that her non-communal favorite modes amount to a rejection of church, which is according to them a rejection of God and is therefore sin. And she implies by the simplicity of this statement that she doesn't accept that. Good for her. Vincent's summation is another way of saying why that is.
I could say a lot here but I won't. Just to say this to Paula: They don't own the topic of God, you do, in your sharp awareness. They don't own words, you do (magnificently). Same for symbols, texts. There are non-church communities. They don't own the grandeur of the world, you do (you've earned it, your eye has taken possession).
My only complaints about your majestic Quixotic obsession is that it is so relentless and so seemingly blind to fraud.
Tell us again in a post sometime about why you visit the weeds, what you feel and search for as you do it. I think that's the non-Quixotic true quest, the heartbeat of "this".
Pardon me if I have gone too far. Immense respect here.
Brava and thanks as always.
Yes, and thanks X4. The referent in that sentence IS unclear. My point (as V & S clearly got and eruditely elaborated upon) was that if one restricts the Divine to the human sphere, it leaves those who are alienated from the human sphere, by definition, alienated from the Divine -- which is one definition of sin. I did read Abram's book years ago, and probably owe him the notion of weeds looking back at me, returning my gaze, something I have been pondering in an attempt to understand "prayer." If I can posit a "personal weed" open to a relationship, perhaps it will help me with the notion of a "personal God" similarly available.
There is a sense in which being somewhat uncomfortably churched has FORCED me to expand my notion of the Ground of Being (which tends to be quite cosmic/nonhuman) to include humans. And salvation ? "No salvation outside the church" is legalistic and confining; of course we are not talking about pearly gates, post-mortem reward for good deeds and fidelity. But what "salvation" is available INTRA ecclesiam ? It does have to do with love of neighbor and all the personal and political praxis that flows from that; it does have to do with connection and cooperation; it does have to do with that extraordinary metaphor the "Body of Christ." As much as I self-depict as a loner, I am, of course, in relationship all over the place, and nourished by that.
The church does not have a monopoly on love of neighbor and distributive justice. It should, given Jesus' message, be very good at those things -- but there's also the awesome, mysterious metaphysical, existential, ontologic stuff that it should be extremely good at because, well, that's its job and what other institution is going to do it ? And no institutions have monopolies on any of this stuff. Then why am I still churched, albeit sitting very near the threshold this past year ?
Good question.
Awesome photos. Thought-provoking words.
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