Posted by jonvon on March 13, 2005 at 17:59:38:
In Reply to: Flannery O'Connor, Dorothy Day, Edith Stein and more.... posted by giveawayboy on March 12, 2005 at 02:59:30:
: "About the only way we know whether we believe or not is by what we do...
how about, we know what we do not believe because of what we find ourselves not doing?
i can't help but think about this in the inverse. i am lately doing a LOT of stuff, and not doing a lot of stuff i used to do.
could probably write a small book about that. but i'm not going to. (yeah right.)
always fascinating the writers you are into bill, the wells you dug way back when, the rocks you fell asleep on and dreamed angels going up and down. you return to those places, as we all do, and it seems, draw fresh inspiration.
interesting as i think back to the authors who meant something to me, and who still speak to me now. for me it has been about turning everything upside down. inside out. all the money changers' gold on the floor and whips in my hand, turning out the spies that lurked in the folds of my own mind, the leeches on my soul, the voices whispering sadness and darkness.
i am probably still busy killing them all off, one by one, and shaving my being down inexorably to its most singular core. and lately i am finding a thing that is truly my own. i am finding a thing that many refer to as shamanic power. a lot of people will probably freak out reading that term. i suppose for christians it is a bit loaded. but really i just mean i am finding out what is important for myself. a shaman is essentially someone who finds a personal vision. someone who is not reliant on the priestly class or the religious subculture for that information.
i guess it was never in the cards for me to get this knowledge from the priests. i have been driven to find it on my own, fated to be restless until i discovered it. i have unknowingly moved myself to this end, losing one skin after another over the years. now more than ever a tide of symbol is arising in a palpable kind of power in my life. i hate the money changers partly because i have never really needed them. i probably did need them at one time. perhaps losing skin after skin has been about the weaning process. i move farther and farther into the deep of the woods, and my vision becomes more clearly my own.
and i think the authors i have been drawn to are more of that type, more those who charted their own course in some way, who weren't afraid to put on animal skins and own them and love them. authors who i read and could feel their personally wrought fire. i think flannery o'connor was one of those, i got that sense reading her stuff. she was amazing for sure.
well, as bill is known to say, "something like that". :-)