Posted by cav on March 15, 2005 at 03:22:33:
In Reply to: how about, we know what we do not believe because of what we find ourselves not doing? posted by jonvon on March 13, 2005 at 17:59:38:
well maybe it's not new, but I've never experienced your thoughts expressed in this way. You're using metaphors and imagery that I'd never expected from you. Lest this sound too much like an insult, I'll try to clarify. I've always heard some deep resonance in the things you've posted here...something like it echoed a truth that I understood, but didn't directly feel connected to...kind of like reading some of the evangelical founders who speak great true things, but have never really spoken into the place I was at or the world as I was seeing it, if you know what I mean.
But this post could have been one of my own writings...of course I'd have probably written more angrily and biting, but that's just my style. Anyway, it seems to me now that perhaps many people are moving the same direction, but through a pathless place such that their movement in the short term seems to be divergent as they encounter different trees and obstacles. Sometimes perhaps they are obscured from each other altogether, but at other times they approach closely and realize that they are not alone, but a long line of people silently and deftly working their way toward their goal. I am not naive enough anymore to think that this will eventually converge into some great coalescence of power or meeting of minds, but now I think that more likely they will remain independent but gain encouragement that they are all tracking the same beast, and may speed up and even work together to close it in as they near it.
My image is maybe a hunting party. Rather than an army sweeping along it is a group of people alert to the sounds and indicators around them: the bent twigs, the pressed soil. They are refining their skills as they move learning to distinguish the true signs from the random similarities and tricks, and each is moving in their own direction but always toward the same secretive animal. In the end I don't expect anyone to actually kill it. Rather I think those who find it must simply stare at it in awe realizing that it is far more sublime a creature than we had ever imagined, and in that moment the last vestiges of self will be washed away.
So anyway in my wierd way this is just to say thanks for the encouragement, and I hope to spot you through the trees in the future. For my part you can know that even when you seem to have lost the trail, there is at least one other hunter carefully, silently making his way the same direction...listen for the signs, you may hear my padding along apace.
: : "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". :-)